Why further RBA interest rate hikes are less likely now than even 1 week ago

November 21, 2023

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

Since Australia’s Reserve Bank hiked interest rates two weeks ago, there have been two important developments – one in the United States and the other in the United Kingdom.

If it’s not clear to you why events overseas influence Australia’s interest rates, which are meant to be set to control Australian inflation, read on.

US and UK inflation close to zero

We haven’t been complete masters of our own destiny since the Australian dollar was floated 40 years ago next month.

What happened in the US last Tuesday was news of dramatically lower US inflation. When increases and decreases in prices were taken together, overall US prices moved not at all in the month of October. That’s right, inflation was zero.

While zero movement in one month doesn’t mean zero over the entire year, it helps bring down the rate over the entire year. US inflation fell from 3.7% in the year to September to 3.2% in the month to October.

Then the next day we got similar news from the UK.

Taken together, prices in the United Kingdom scarcely grew at all in October, climbing just 0.1%. The screeching halt to UK monthly inflation took the annual rate down from 6.7% for the year to September to 4.6% for the year to October.

In both the US and the UK, there’s talk there will be no need for further interest rate hikes – and very probably a case for interest rate cuts – as soon as next year.

We don’t yet know what happened to Australia’s inflation rate in October – the Bureau of Statistics will tell us next week.

But we have an early indication.

The Melbourne Institute inflation gauge, which roughly tracks the bureau’s measure, fell 0.1% in October. If that is what the bureau finds – that overall prices barely moved (or fell) in October – Australia’s annual inflation rate should fall from 5.6% for the year to September to around 5.2% for the year to October.

Inflation down all over

All over the world, inflation is falling for much the same set of reasons: the price of oil is heading back down after Saudi Arabia and Russia tried to restrict supply in the middle of the year, and the price pressures caused by shortages are easing.

As Australia’s Reserve Bank conceded in the minutes of the November board meeting, in which it pushed up rates, there has been “an easing in supply chain pressures and raw materials prices”.

Not that this means the bank is relaxed about what’s happening to inflation; far from it.

In the minutes released on Tuesday and in remarks delivered at a conference ahead of their release, Governor Michele Bullock said what concerned her was stronger-than-expected demand pressures. Australians remained keen to spend.

And she drew attention to disturbing

growing signs of a mindset among businesses that any cost increases could be passed onto consumers

But what has just happened overseas will help, big time. Here’s why.

Australians’ buying power just jumped

As soon as the news of low US inflation came out last Tuesday, the US dollar slid.

Investors became less keen to hold US dollars when it became less likely that US interest rates would rise further, and a good deal more likely they would fall.

Against the Australian dollar, the US dollar fell 2%. From an Australian’s point of view, the buying power of an Australian dollar jumped from 63.7 to 64.9 US cents and has since jumped to 65.8 US cents.

A sudden jump in the value of the Australian dollar

This means that, for as long as it lasts, Australian dollars will buy more than they did.

Australians will pay less in Australian dollars for the goods and services ultimately paid for with US dollars. The changed interest rate outlook in the US will act to keep Australian prices low.

In this way, decisions made in the US not to increase interest rates or even to cut them make it easier for Australia’s Reserve Bank not to increase rates – or even to cut them.

A higher dollar means lower inflation

The effect isn’t big. The RBA believes it takes a 10% change in the value of the Australian dollar to move the Australian
inflation rate 0.4 percentage points.

But it is better than things moving in the other direction, which is what has been happening until now.

For more than a year now, whenever interest rates have climbed in the US, Australia’s Reserve Bank has been under pressure to push up its rates to stop the Australian dollar falling and prices climbing.

No longer. After last week’s news from the US and the UK, Australian financial markets began pricing in a close to zero chance of further interest rate rises – with a fair chance of a rate cut next year.

It’s always impossible to tell for sure what the Reserve Bank will do to rates. A lot will depend on what actually happens to inflation.

But for the first time in a long time, the Reserve Bank has tail winds from overseas, rather than headwinds.

For the first time in a long time, the bank won’t feel pressured to push up rates just because rates have been pushed up overseas.

Peter Martin is Economics Editor of The Conversation.

– ref. Why further RBA interest rate hikes are less likely now than even 1 week ago – https://theconversation.com/why-further-rba-interest-rate-hikes-are-less-likely-now-than-even-1-week-ago-218225

A year after Pakistan’s floods, 44% of children have stunted growth. What can be done about it?

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

The extensive flooding in Pakistan in August 2022 submerged one-third of the country. This affected 33 million people, half of them children. Some 9.4 million acres of crops were destroyed, and more than 1.1 million farm animals perished.

One year later, the rate of child undernutrition has increased by 50% and an estimated 44% of children under five are now stunted, meaning they have a low height for their age.

A recent assessment of 43 rural districts in the three provinces most affected by floods found 29% of the population was experiencing high levels of hunger and weren’t consuming enough energy.

Food prices remain high in both urban and rural areas of Pakistan and achieving food security will remain a challenge for many families. So what’s being done to address this crisis?

What is undernutrition?

There are three types of child undernutrition: wasting, which reflects recent weight loss and greatly increases the risk of early death; stunting, which reflects long-term food deprivation; and underweight, which is a combination of the two. The type most common in Pakistan is stunting.

Stunting is irreversible – you cannot regain lost height. It leads to more illness, premature death, poor school outcomes, lower employment opportunities and may increase the risk of chronic diseases.

A girl who is stunted is also more likely to give birth to a low birth weight baby when she grows into an adult.

How big is the problem, worldwide?

In 2022, 9.2% of the world’s population experienced what is called undernourishment, or low energy intake, compared to 7.9% in 2019.

Almost 600 million people are projected to be chronically undernourished in 2030.

Worldwide, food insecurity is more likely to affect women and people living in rural areas. Food insecurity affected 33.3% of adults living in rural areas in 2022 compared with 26% in urban areas.

Globally in 2022, an estimated 148.1 million children under five years of age (22.3%) were stunted and 45 million (6.8%) were wasted.

The stunting rate has declined from 33% in 2000 but the pace of decline has slowed.

Only about one-third of all countries are on track to halve the number of children affected by stunting by 2030, a goal of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Who is most at risk?

A large population study in India looked at the contribution of 15 known risk factors. The five leading factors were: the mother’s short stature, the mother having no education, the household being in the lowest wealth quintile, poor dietary diversity, and the mother being underweight. These five were causal factors in two-thirds of stunted children.

Other studies have found the critical age of vulnerability to stunting is six to 24 months and is associated with poor breastfeeding practices, nutritionally poor food (given in addition to breast milk after the age of six months) and repeated infections, which may be due to poor water quality and sanitation.

What’s being done to address undernutrition?

The main global initiative to address child undernutrition is the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, which was launched in 2010 and has 66 member countries, including Australia.

The Scaling Up Nutrition movement strategy and roadmap is the product of a collaborative dialogue between member countries, the UN and donor agencies and other international and national non-governmental organisations and businesses. It promotes a focus on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life when they are most likely to develop stunting.

It also encourages a dual approach of nutrition-specific interventions (which address the immediate causes of undernutrition) and nutrition-sensitive interventions, such as agriculture, water and sanitation, and gender equality.

Australia was initially an enthusiastic supporter of Scaling Up Nutrition and during the previous decade (2010-2019) made nutrition a priority in its international aid program. The Australian government’s 2014 development policy identified early childhood nutrition as “a critical driver of better development outcomes”.

A nutrition strategy was developed in 2015 and a broad-ranging evaluation of the aid program’s impact on nutrition was commissioned by the now-defunct Office of Development Effectiveness.

However, that enthusiasm has disappeared since 2020.

How can Australia help?

So far in 2023, record floods have been recorded in Libya, Somalia, Kenya, India, Italy, Rwanda and South Sudan. Deadly storms have raged in western Europe. We’ve seen cyclones in Myanmar and southern Africa, devastating landslides in Cameroon and a powerful hurricane in Mexico. Wildfires have spread in Greece, Argentina, Canada and Hawaii, and Asia has experienced a stifling heatwave.

Computer modelling of real data shows the frequency and intensity of these events are influenced by climate change.

The most obvious long-term strategy is to accelerate efforts to control carbon emissions and decelerate the momentum towards global warming.

In the short-term, the government must reinstate nutrition as a priority in the Australian aid program.

Michael Toole receives grant funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. A year after Pakistan’s floods, 44% of children have stunted growth. What can be done about it? – https://theconversation.com/a-year-after-pakistans-floods-44-of-children-have-stunted-growth-what-can-be-done-about-it-218123

In September we went past 1.5 degrees. In November, we tipped over 2 degrees for the first time. What’s going on?

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

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

In September, the world passed 1.5°C of warming. Two months later, we hit 2°C of warming. It’s fair to wonder what is going on.

What we’re seeing is not runaway climate change. These are daily spikes, not the long-term pattern we would need to say the world is now 2 degrees hotter than it was in the pre-industrial period.

These first breaches of temperature limits are the loudest alarms yet. They come as the United Nations Environment Program warns the world is still on a path to a “hellish” 3°C of warming by the end of the century.

But they do not signal our failure. The sudden spike in warming in 2023 comes from a combination of factors – climate change, a strong El Niño, sea ice failing to reform after winter, reduced aerosol pollution and increased solar activity. There are also minor factors such as the aftermath of the volcanic eruption near Tonga.

How significant are these factors?

1. Climate change

This is by far the biggest factor. What many of us don’t recognise is how recent our intense period of emissions is. If you were born in 1983, fully 50% of all of humanity’s emissions have gone into the atmosphere since your birth. Human emissions and other activities have so far contributed about 1.2°C of warming.

Greenhouse gases trap heat, which is why the Earth is not a snowball. But the 2 trillion tonnes of fossil carbon we’ve taken from underground and put back in the atmosphere are trapping more heat. And more heat. And will continue to do so until we stop burning fossil fuels for heat or power.

2. El Niño

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate cycle in the Pacific has the biggest natural influence on climate. That’s because the Pacific is huge, accounting for 30% of Earth’s surface. When in the El Niño phase, the seas off South America heat up. This, in turn, usually makes average global temperatures hotter.

Right now, there’s a dangerous heatwave in Brazil, where heat and humidity combined makes it feel like 60°C. The intense heat contributed to the death of a fan at Taylor Swift’s Rio concert last week.

El Niño will likely peak in the next two months. But its effects may well persist throughout 2024, driving global average temperatures higher by perhaps 0.15°C.

3. Antarctic sea ice isn’t bouncing back

The declines in Arctic sea ice are well known. But now Antarctic sea ice, too, is failing to recover. Normally, the ring of frozen seawater around the ice continent reaches maximum extent in September. But this year’s maximum is well below any previous year.

As we enter summer, that means more dark water will be exposed. And since dark surfaces absorb more heat while white ones reflect it, it means still more heat will go into the oceans rather than back out to space.

4. Increased solar activity

Our Sun runs on a roughly 11-year cycle, going between lower and higher output. The solar maximum was forecast for 2025 and a clear increase is occurring this year. This brings spectacular auroras – even in the Southern Hemisphere, where residents have seen auroras as far inland as Ballarat, in Victoria.

Solar maximums add extra heat. But not much – the effect is only around 0.05°C, about a third of an El Niño.

5. The volcanic hangover

Normally, volcanic eruptions cool the planet, as their vast plumes of aerosols block sunlight. But the largest volcanic eruption this century near Tonga in January 2022 did the opposite.

That’s because the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano was under the sea. Its explosive force evaporated vast volumes of seawater – and water vapour is a greenhouse gas. While some sceptics like to point to this eruption as the root cause of our recent spike in warming, the Tonga eruption is a blip – it will add an estimated 0.035°C for about five years.

6. Cutting aerosol pollution

In 2020, new international shipping rules came into force, mandating low-sulphur fuels. This cut sulphur dioxide emissions by about 10%. That’s good for health. But aerosols in the atmosphere can actually block heat. Cutting pollution may have added to warming. But again, the effect seems small, adding an estimated 0.05°C of warming by 2050.

What should we take from this?

The climate is enormously complex. We should see the first day 2°C warmer than the same day in the pre-industrial period as a stark warning – but not as a sign to give up.

In short, this isn’t a step change. It’s a combination of factors which has driven this surge. Some of those, like El Niño, are cyclical and will switch back.

But as negotiators prepare for next week’s COP28 climate talks, it’s yet another sign that we cannot relent.

We are – at last – seeing signs of real progress in the clean energy and clean transport roll out. This year, we may even see emissions from power generation finally peak and then begin to fall.

So – we haven’t failed, yet. But we are on a rapidly warming planet – and we can now clearly see the effect, even in these new daily temperature records.

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. In September we went past 1.5 degrees. In November, we tipped over 2 degrees for the first time. What’s going on? – https://theconversation.com/in-september-we-went-past-1-5-degrees-in-november-we-tipped-over-2-degrees-for-the-first-time-whats-going-on-218228

OpenAI’s board is facing backlash for firing CEO Sam Altman – but it’s good it had the power to

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Gray, Lecturer in Digital Cultures at The University of Sydney, University of Sydney

The sudden removal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday was met with shock and disapproval by the company’s employees. More than 90% signed a letter threatening to leave OpenAI if the board didn’t resign and reinstate Altman – who has since apparently been poached by Microsoft, along with a number of other key former staff.

The OpenAI employees had faith in Altman. They believed in his vision and they did not like that the board could dismiss him so easily.

Is their upset justified? Did the board overstep its bounds? Or did it exercise a necessary check on power?

Silicon Valley’s ‘genius founder’ mythology

The idea of a “genius founder” lies at the heart of Silicon Valley culture.

Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are not known as privileged men who managed to build successful businesses through a combination of hard work, smart decision-making and luck.

Rather, they are celebrated as geniuses, wunderkinds, perhaps even maniacs – but always brilliant. Men who accomplished feats no one else could, because of their innate genius.

A captivating founder narrative has become almost a prerequisite for any tech startup in Silicon Valley. It makes a company easier to sell and also structures power within the organisation.

Throughout human history, founder mythologies have been used to explain, justify and sustain hierarchies of power. From heroes to deities to founding fathers, the founder myth provides a way to understand the current distribution of power and to unite around a figurehead.

What happened this week at OpenAI was a challenge to the natural order of things in Silicon Valley.

What happened to Sam?

It’s quite remarkable a superstar “genius founder” such as Sam Altman wasn’t safeguarded by a company structure that could prevent his ousting. Tech company founders often create intricate structures to entrench themselves in their companies.

For instance, when Google restructured into Alphabet, it created three share classes: one with standard voting rights, another with ten times the voting rights for the founders, and a third class without voting rights, mainly for employees.

This structure ensured founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin would remain in control of the company over the long term, while also providing them the financial benefit of owning shares in a highly profitable, publicly listed company.

OpenAI’s corporate structure, in contrast, made its CEO and co-founder more susceptible to losing control. Initially established as a non-profit, OpenAI has a unique structure. The main corporate entity is OpenAI Inc, a non-profit that is overseen by the board of directors.

To attract investors, OpenAI also has a for-profit subsidiary called OpenAI Global – which Microsoft has famously invested about US$13 billion (A$19.7 billion) into.

Although Altman had a seat on the OpenAI board, he held no equity in OpenAI Global under this structure. As CEO he was also accountable to the other board members. This type of corporate structure is highly unusual for a Silicon Valley venture.

The board voted Altman out from his position as CEO based on an internal investigation which, it claimed, indicated Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board” – causing them to lose trust in his leadership.

We need more accountability, not ‘geniuses’

Whether the board of OpenAI was right to remove Altman remains to be seen. At the time of my writing this, the board hasn’t elaborated on its decision, nor has it released details about its internal investigation.

However, regardless of the specifics and the emotional impact Altman’s ousting has had on OpenAI’s employees, this move could represent a victory for corporate accountability.

For every revered founding genius, there are examples of founders who betrayed the trust of their employees and investors. Take the disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, or former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, or Nikola founder Trevor Milton who was convicted of fraud last year, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the once-lauded FTX founder convicted of fraud more recently.

Silicon Valley urgently needs more accountability, because too many tech entrepreneurs work at an intersection of risk, hype and boundary-pushing.

Meanwhile, the technologies these companies are producing are having profound impacts on our societies. Silicon Valley tech companies control global communication systems, run private marketplaces and are increasingly offering advanced digital systems that seek to transform how we learn, work and socialise.

The power these companies wield has prompted regulator Lina Khan to focus on addressing big tech’s market power during her tenure as chair of the United States Federal Trade Commission.

Khan and others have argued it’s problematic for these companies to have the capacity to globally transform societies with minimal transparency and accountability. Khan’s task is especially urgent since companies such as Microsoft, Meta (previously Facebook) and Amazon have a track record of buying out other innovators who attempt to compete.

We can expect Khan will be paying close attention to the competitive effects of Microsoft potentially poaching some of OpenAI’s main talent.

In an age of AI and big tech, we need for less blind faith in leaders and far more public oversight. From this point of view, one could argue OpenAI’s somewhat odd company structure is something we ought to want more of if our priority is the collective good.

Joanne Gray currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, see DP240102939 and LE230100069, and has previously received funding from companies Meta Platforms and ByteDance for research projects undertaken at The University of Sydney and Queensland University of Technology.

– ref. OpenAI’s board is facing backlash for firing CEO Sam Altman – but it’s good it had the power to – https://theconversation.com/openais-board-is-facing-backlash-for-firing-ceo-sam-altman-but-its-good-it-had-the-power-to-218154

Australia’s secrecy laws include 875 offences. Reforms are welcome, but don’t go far enough for press freedom

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, Macquarie University

In 2019, the New York Times declared that “Australia may well be the world’s most secretive democracy”.

The Times published the piece shortly after the Australian Federal Police raided journalists from two news organisations, searching for evidence of sources for stories that were embarrassing to the government.

Four years on, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus today released a comprehensive review of secrecy laws that acknowledges a woefully complicated mess.

The government’s plan to clean it up is a good first step, but it’s just the tip of a very big iceberg.

Progress on much-needed change

To make its case in 2019, The Times pointed to a bewildering array of legal and political obstacles embedded in Australian law that stand in the way of the transparency considered essential to a fully functioning democracy.

In principle, the government seems to agree.

The review points to 875 secrecy offences covering everything from national security to tax laws, and a dysfunctioning system for protecting whistleblowers.

It also recognises the chilling effect on the ability of journalists to work with sources from inside government, and hold it to account.

To fix the problem, the report comes up with 11 recommendations, including reducing the number of offences to a more manageable (but still excessive) 707.

It establishes a set of guiding principles that will help consolidate the law and make it more consistent.

And it says there should be a narrower range of information defined as “secret”, with clear harm to the public interest in any breach of secrecy before a prosecution can take place.

It also calls for specific defences for public-interest journalism to be inserted into key secrecy laws.

All this is laudable, and it starts to untie the Gordian Knot of legislation that created the culture of secrecy the Times was concerned about, but it is simply not enough.

A patchwork quilt of laws

The enormous number of secrecy offences currently on the books points to the central problem. Whenever lawmakers have spotted a hole in the law, they’ve stuck a patch over it.

That is understandable, particularly in a post-September 11 world when national security has become the overriding concern of governments everywhere.

But it has created a confusing, inconsistent and incoherent mess that the attorney-general appears to be trying to fix with yet more patches.

To be fair, some of them are larger and more coherent than the current ones, but it is still insufficient to deal with the fundamental problem. The Australian government remains dangerously secretive.

Another of the recommendations is a general secrecy offence that says Commonwealth officers can’t can’t disclose anything that would be “prejudicial to the effective working of government”.

A general secrecy offence helps simplify things, but the threshold is worryingly sweeping and runs counter to a recommendation the Australian Law Reform Commission made back in a 2010 report that triggered the review in the first place.

Dangerous plan for journalism

The report also makes much of the need to protect public-interest journalism.

Again, it is laudable that the attorney-general recognises the threats to media freedom embedded in the law, and said he’s prepared to tackle them.

But the answers in the report are more of the same: a set of band aids, rather than a comprehensive cure.

Controversially, that includes a commitment to maintain a ministerial directive from the former Attorney-General Christian Porter.

Porter issued his directive in the wake of the 2019 raids, in an attempt to underline the government’s commitment to press freedom. The directive declared that the director of public prosecutions had to seek the attorney-general’s approval before prosecuting a journalist.

One of the fundamental principles of our democracy is a clear separation between the political and legal systems.

Yet the directive clearly crosses that line.

As we saw with the allegations of sexual assault levelled at Porter, and subsequent legal action against the ABC, the attorney-general is as vulnerable to journalistic investigation as anyone else. Giving him the last word about whether or not to prosecute a journalist is a dangerous, if well-intentioned, step.

Time for a whole new approach

The report also declines to reverse the burden of proof when it comes to publishing government secrets in the public interest.

A number of media organisations (including the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom that I work for) have argued there should be a presumption in favour of publishing, unless the investigators can show a clear harm to the public interest.

In other words, they should have to prove the harm in publishing rather than forcing journalists to show the value in their story. The report released today rejected that idea.

At least when it comes to media freedom, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom has a far simpler and more comprehensive solution.

Rather than patches, we are proposing a Media Freedom Act that would establish a set of overarching principles in law.

First, it would compel parliament to always consider media freedom when passing new legislation.

And second, the courts would be obliged to interpret existing laws, like secrecy and espionage laws, in ways that are consistent with media freedom.

That would include a presumption in favour of protecting a journalist’s sources and in publishing. The police would have to show why the public interest in an investigation is more important than the public interest in the story itself.

That law alone wouldn’t be enough to solve all the problems – there would need to be a lot of amendments to make it work effectively – but it elegantly creates a set of principles and frameworks that protect the underlying objective: to create the kind of transparency necessary for a healthy democracy, without putting national security at risk.

Peter Greste is a professor of journalism at Macquarie University, and the Executive Director of the not-for-profit advocacy group, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

– ref. Australia’s secrecy laws include 875 offences. Reforms are welcome, but don’t go far enough for press freedom – https://theconversation.com/australias-secrecy-laws-include-875-offences-reforms-are-welcome-but-dont-go-far-enough-for-press-freedom-218234

At OzAsia 2023, Australia’s appreciation of multiculturalism and diversity is most evident in food

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tets Kimura, Adjunct Lecturer, Creative Arts, Flinders University

This year’s OzAsia festival took place from October 19 to November 5, at its annual festival venues on the Kaurna land of Adelaide.

In its early years, the Asia-focused festival, which started in 2007, often highlighted work from a different Asian country each year.

Under the leadership of previous artistic director Joseph Mitchell, it became an event showcasing the best contemporary art from across Asia.

Now in her third and final year after the cancellation of the 2020 festival and smaller-scale festivals in the past two years, artistic director Annette Shun Wah has overseen the festival in full swing with invited artists from 13 countries.

As I attended this year’s festival, I had a chance to reflect on how Australia’s appreciation of multiculturalism and diversity is most evident in food.

Asians as others in Australian history

Despite its physical location in the Asia Pacific, Asians are minorities in Australia. One in eight of us were born in Asia, and one in six identify as Asian.

The first notable migration from Asia occurred in the mid-19th century during the gold rush, when Chinese miners came to Australia. By 1861, 3.3% of the Australian population was born in China – the highest percentage until the 1980s.

Working as a team, Chinese workers were more productive than Anglo and European miners, which led to conflict and anti-Chinese sentiments.

There was little social foundation for Australians to enjoy or appreciate artistic performances from Asia in and around the 1870s when performing arts companies from Japan came to Australia with acrobatic and juggling performances.

This was part of an international trend around the appreciation of Japanese culture known as Japonisme. How the Japanese performances were perceived and appreciated in Australia remains a mystery, as there was little review about these shows.

However, considering the monocultural nature of the colonial mindset, they probably did not contribute to Australia’s multiculturalism or diversity. Instead, they were likely seen as foreign performers delivering ethnic-based aesthetics.

Food as a vehicle to experience other cultures

Although observing performances is an obvious way to experience and learn about other cultures, food has acted as the medium through which a larger number of Australians learn about others.

Food has been an entry point to Asia for many Australians. Many words drawn from Asian cuisine – such as masala, tom yum and wasabi – are no longer foreign in Australian English.

Given this history, it makes sense that a hawker-style food market – introduced alongside the 2015 festival – came to be the Lucky Dumpling Market in 2017.

The night market style stalls along the River Torrens now attract a wide range of people to enjoy Asian food, before or after for a night out, or just coming to eat.

At the OzAsia festival’s A Night with Poh Ling Yeow and Sarah Tiong, I listened to Ling Yeow emphasise the diversity of food in Australia. She spoke of how Australians’ love for travel was a major factor leading to Australia’s multicultural food landscape.

Similarly, Tiong observed how Asian chefs are respected in the Australian food industry as they can bring diversity into the kitchen.

The Lucky Dumpling Market was packed during the weekend with food lovers, who enjoyed a variety of dumplings beyond the Chinese styles that have become orthodox in Australia, notably Japanese gyoza and Nepali momo.

In this year’s festival, I also observed two solo performances related to food, Jacob Rajan’s Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream, and Yumi Umiumare’s Buried TeaBowl — OKUNI.

Ice cream and tea in solo performances

Rajan’s Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream is a poetic and metaphysical reflection on the border between life and death. Rajan features as all seven characters, including an ice cream parlour server and chai seller.

The New Zealand actor’s capacity to show us diverse characters is exceptional and inventive. Jumping from Indian to Antipodean accents and back, he is a talented actor able to connect to Asia and Australasia.

Rajan shows us human sentiments are not limited by cultural boundaries.
Adelaide Festival Centre

With illustrations of life, migration and death, the world he conjures is recognisable to many Asian-Australians. Humour – including joking about Harvey Norman, possibly inserted for the Australian audience – is warmly received by the South Australian audience.

Set in India, Rajan shows us human sentiments are not limited by cultural boundaries.

In Buried TeaBowl — OKUNI, Yumi Umiumare, a Melbourne-based artist born and trained in Japan, combines a traditional tea making ceremony and contemporary dance, around a framework referencing the origins of Japan’s noh theatre.

The show highlights Umiumare’s complex relationship with her heritage and culture. She shows the audience how peace can be found through a cup of tea, and how this precious moment can be destroyed by drinking premixed tea from a plastic bottle.

Yumi Umiumare combines a traditional tea making ceremony and contemporary dance.
Vikk Shayen/Adelaide Festival Centre

Unlike Rajan, who performs in English, Umiumare uses her native language without subtitles from time to time. The majority of the show is performed in English, but the unsubtitled Japanese reflects a complex journey of herself as a performer and a migrant.

Without understanding every single word, the audience can still appreciate her overall performance, a mixture of traditional sentiments and contemporary dynamic expressions.

Understanding artistic performances requires more skills and knowledge than appreciating tasty food. Down by the river, many locals are enjoying Asian food – but do as many enjoy Asian art? There is a task ahead of us to extend appreciation of Asian culture beyond food and beyond the festival period.

Tets Kimura 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. At OzAsia 2023, Australia’s appreciation of multiculturalism and diversity is most evident in food – https://theconversation.com/at-ozasia-2023-australias-appreciation-of-multiculturalism-and-diversity-is-most-evident-in-food-218107

Gaza and Ukraine are separate conflicts, but conspiracy theorists are trying to link the two on social media: new research

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Evans, Lecturer in Policing and Emergency Management, University of Tasmania

As the war between Israel and Hamas has intensified in Gaza, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the conflict have been increasingly circulating on social media.

At least that’s what I found in my analysis of some 12,000 comments posted on Telegram channels in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Not surprisingly, I also found language about the war was more likely to be threatening or hateful than language used in comments about other topics.

Many comments on Telegram also linked the Israel-Hamas conflict to dangerous, antisemitic conspiracy theories related to the war between Russia and Ukraine, hundreds of kilometres away on another continent.

For instance, I found the Russian invasion of Ukraine was characterised by these conspiracy theorists as a justified resistance against the “Khazarian Mafia” (so-called “fake Jews”) who supposedly govern Ukraine either as Nazis, or like them.

Commenters on Telegram characterised Hamas’ October 7 attack in similar terms – as an attack against “fake Zionist Ashkenazi Jews” and Nazis.

Both conflicts were also characterised as “new world order” plots. Proponents of these conspiracies believe that powerful elites (often characterised as Jewish) are secretly trying to establish a totalitarian world government or other forms of global oppression.

A comment in one of the channels summarised this view, arguing “these globalists are evil starting a second psyop [psychological operation] front after Ukraine failed”.

Other comments linked the two conflicts by calling Western supporters of Ukraine hypocrites for condemning the actions of Hamas. As one user argued: “The West’s weapons in Ukraine [were] sent to Hamas for the offensive.”

Polycrises and conspiracies

Many of these conspiracies are not new on their own. However, what is unique in this situation is the way people have linked two largely unrelated conflicts through conspiracy theories.

Research has shown that overlapping crises (often referred to as “polycrises”) may accelerate the spread of conspiracies, possibly due to the psychological toll that constantly adapting to rapid change places on people.

When crises overlap, such as wars and global pandemics, it can amplify the effects of conspiracies, too. For example, the amount of prejudice and radicalisation seen online may increase. In extreme cases, individuals may also act on their beliefs.

Although these conspiracies are appearing on the fringes of social media, it’s still important to understand how this type of rhetoric can evolve and how it can be harmful if it seeps into mainstream media or politics.

How I conducted my research

I have been following several public Australian Telegram channels as part of a broader project investigating the intersection of conspiracy theories and security.

For the latest phase of this research, which has yet to be peer reviewed, I analysed 12,000 comments posted to three of these channels between October 8 and October 11.

To analyse so many messages, I used a topic modelling approach. This is a statistical model that can identify frequently occurring themes (or topics) within large amounts of text-based data. Essentially, topic modelling is similar to highlighting sections of a book containing related themes.

There are many approaches to topic modelling. I used BERTopic, which generates topics by “clustering” messages with similar characteristics, like words, sentences and other bits of context. In total, I identified 40 distinct topics in the comments I analysed.

I then split these topics into conflict and non-conflict groupings to analyse the sentiment behind them. I used Google’s Perspective API algorithm to do this, as it can score text on a scale of zero to one for hateful or threatening language. The results show that conflict topics were more likely to involve threatening and hateful speech.

A graph showing the Google Perspective API results.
Author provided

A key reason for this is the antisemitic nature of the most common conflict topic grouping (key words: “Israel”, “Jew”, “Hamas”, “Zionist”, “Palestinian”). One representative comment from this group, for instance, called for the elimination of Israel as a state.

I found Islamophobic messages in this topic grouping, as well. For example, some comments suggested Hamas’ actions were reflective of Islamic beliefs or demonstrated the danger posed by Muslims more generally.

The second-largest topic (key words: “Ukraine”, “Russia”, “Putin”, “war”, “Islam”, “propaganda”) captured discussions linking the Hamas attacks to the Russia-Ukraine war. Messages did this by casting both conflicts as justified on similar grounds (a fight against alleged Nazis and Zionists), or by linking them to global conspiracies.

And I found variations of the “new world order” global conspiracy theory in other topics. For instance, the fourth-largest topic (key words: “video”, “clown”, “fake”, “movie”, “staged”) included comments accusing Israel and other common conspiracy figures of staging the Hamas attacks.

This closely aligns with topics about the Russia-Ukraine war from my broader project. One of the most frequently discussed topics (key words: “Putin”, “war”, “Nazi”, “Ukraine”, “Jewish”) frames Ukraine’s defensive efforts as a sinister conspiracy, usually involving Jewish figures like Ukraine’s president.

How to combat the spread of conspiracy theories

As noted, the conspiracy-friendly nature of social media, in addition to overlapping “polycrises”, may increase people’s levels of prejudice and radicalisation.

Australian security agencies have already warned about this risk in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess warned of “spontaneous violence” arising from “language that inflames tension[s]”.

Research has also shown a strong relationship between conspiracies and antisemitism, which presents clear risks for Jewish people. Indeed, antisemitism reached unprecedented levels in the United States in 2021 and 2022, possibly due to the series of overlapping crises the world was experiencing at the time.

Countering online conspiracy theories is therefore an important, but challenging task.
Effective counter-strategies involve a mix of preventative and responsive approaches targeting both the suppliers and consumers of conspiracies.

This includes increasing our investment in education, reducing social inequality, and carefully debunking conspiracy theories when they appear. Awareness of the dynamics and spread of conspiracy narratives is a necessary first step.

Nicholas Evans is affiliated with the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies (TILES).

– ref. Gaza and Ukraine are separate conflicts, but conspiracy theorists are trying to link the two on social media: new research – https://theconversation.com/gaza-and-ukraine-are-separate-conflicts-but-conspiracy-theorists-are-trying-to-link-the-two-on-social-media-new-research-215803

What are the new COVID booster vaccines? Can I get one? Do they work? Are they safe?

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

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

As the COVID virus continues to evolve, so does our vaccine response. From December 11, Australians will have access to new vaccines that offer better protection.

These “monovalent” booster vaccines are expected to be a better match for currently circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

Pfizer’s monovalent vaccine will be available to eligible people aged five years and older. The Moderna monovalent vaccine can be used for those aged 12 years and older.

Who is eligible for these new boosters? How do they differ from earlier ones? Do they work? Are they safe?

Who’s eligible for the new boosters?

The federal government has accepted the Australian Technical Advisory Group (ATAGI) recommendation to use the new vaccines, after Australia’s regulator approved their use last month. However, vaccine eligibility has remained the same since September.

ATAGI recommends Australians aged over 75 get vaccinated if it has been six months or more since their last dose.

People aged 65 to 74 are recommended to have a 2023 booster if they haven’t already had one.

For people without risk factors.
Health.gov.au

Adults aged 18 to 64 with underlying risk factors that increase their risk of severe COVID are also recommended to have a 2023 booster if they haven’t had one yet. And if they’ve already had a 2023 booster, they can consider an additional dose.

Advice for people with risk factors.
Health.gov.au

For adults aged 18 to 64 without underlying risk factors who have already received a 2023 booster, an additional dose isn’t recommended. But if you’re aged 18 to 64 and haven’t had a booster in 2023, you can consider an additional dose.

Additional doses aren’t recommended for children without underlying conditions that increase their risk of severe COVID. A primary course is not recommended for children aged six months to five years without additional risk factors.

Monovalent, bivalent? What’s the difference?

From monovalent

The initial COVID vaccines were “monovalent”. They had one target – the original viral strain.

But as the virus mutated, we assigned new letters of the Greek alphabet to each variant. This brings us to Omicron. With this significant change, we saw “immune evasion”. The virus had changed so much the original vaccines didn’t provide sufficient immunity.

To bivalent

So vaccines were updated to target an early Omicron subvariant, BA.1, plus the original ancestral strain. With two targets, these were the first of the “bivalent” vaccines, which were approved in Australia in 2022.

Omicron continued to evolve, leading to more “immune escape”, contributing to repeated waves of transmission.

The vaccines were updated again in early 2023. These newer bivalent vaccines target two strains – the ancestral strain plus the subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.

Back to monovalent

Further changes in the virus have meant our boosters needed to be updated again. This takes us to the recent announcement.

This time the booster targets another subvariant of Omicron known as XBB.1.5 (sometimes known as Kraken).

This vaccine is monovalent once more, meaning it has only one target. The target against the original viral strain has been removed.

According to advice given to the World Health Organization in May, this is largely because immunity to this original strain is no longer required (it’s no longer infecting humans). Raising immunity to the original strain may also hamper the immune response to the newer component, but we’re not sure if this is occurring or how important this is.

The United States approved XBB.1.5-specific vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna in mid-September. These updated vaccines have also been approved in places including Europe, Canada, Japan and Singapore.

In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved
them in October.

Do these newer vaccines work?

Evidence for the efficacy of these new monovalent vaccines comes from the results of research Pfizer and Moderna
submitted to the TGA.

Evidence also comes from a preprint (preliminary research available online that has yet to be independently reviewed) and an update Pfizer presented to the US Centers for Disease Control.

Taken together, the available evidence shows the updated vaccines produce good levels of antibodies in laboratory studies, in humans and mice when compared to previous vaccines and when looking at multiple emerging variants, including EG.5 (sometimes known as Eris). This variant is the one causing high numbers of cases around the world currently, including in Australia. It is very similar to the XBB version contained in the updated booster.

The updated vaccines should also cover BA.2.86 or Pirola, according to early results from clinical trials and the US Centers for Disease Control. This variant is responsible for a rapidly increasing proportion of cases, with case numbers growing in Australia.

It’s clear the virus is going to continue to evolve. So performance of these vaccines against new variants will continue to be closely monitored.

Are they safe?

The safety of the updated vaccines has also been shown to be similar to previous versions. Studies comparing them found no significant difference in terms of the adverse events reported.

Given the availability of the updated vaccines, some countries have removed their approval for earlier versions. This is because newer versions are a closer match to currently circulating strains, rather than any safety issue with the older vaccines.

What happens next?

The availability of updated vaccines is a welcome development, however this is not the end of the story. We need to make sure eligible people get vaccinated.

We also need to acknowledge that vaccination should form part of a comprehensive strategy to limit the impact of COVID from now on. That includes measures such as mask wearing, social distancing, focusing on ventilation and air quality, and to a lesser degree hand hygiene. Rapidly accessing antivirals if eligible is also still important, as is keeping away from others if you are infected.

Paul Griffin is a director and scientific advisory board member of the Immunisation Coalition and has previously had roles as an advisory board member for Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax.

– ref. What are the new COVID booster vaccines? Can I get one? Do they work? Are they safe? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-new-covid-booster-vaccines-can-i-get-one-do-they-work-are-they-safe-217804

What are the new COVID vaccine booster vaccines? Can I get one? Do they work? Are they safe?

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

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

As the COVID virus continues to evolve, so does our vaccine response. From December 11, Australians will have access to new vaccines that offer better protection.

These “monovalent” booster vaccines are expected to be a better match for currently circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

Pfizer’s monovalent vaccine will be available to eligible people aged five years and older. The Moderna monovalent vaccine can be used for those aged 12 years and older.

Who is eligible for these new boosters? How do they differ from earlier ones? Do they work? Are they safe?

Who’s eligible for the new boosters?

ATAGI recommends Australians aged over 75 get vaccinated if it has been six months or more since their last dose.

People aged 65 to 74 are recommended to have a 2023 booster if they haven’t already had one.

Monovalent, bivalent? What’s the difference?

From monovalent

The initial COVID vaccines were “monovalent”. They had one target – the original viral strain.

To bivalent

Omicron continued to evolve, leading to more “immune escape”, contributing to repeated waves of transmission.

The vaccines were updated again in early 2023. These newer bivalent vaccines target two strains – the ancestral strain plus the subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.

Back to monovalent

Further changes in the virus have meant our boosters needed to be updated again. This takes us to the recent announcement.

This time the booster targets another subvariant of Omicron known as XBB.1.5 (sometimes known as Kraken).

This vaccine is monovalent once more, meaning it has only one target. The target against the original viral strain has been removed.

The United States approved XBB.1.5-specific vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna in mid-September. These updated vaccines have also been approved in places including Europe, Canada, Japan and Singapore.

In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved
them in October.

Do these newer vaccines work?

Evidence for the efficacy of these new monovalent vaccines comes from the results of research Pfizer and Moderna
submitted to the TGA.

Evidence also comes from a preprint (preliminary research available online that has yet to be independently reviewed) and an update Pfizer presented to the US Centers for Disease Control.

It’s clear the virus is going to continue to evolve. So performance of these vaccines against new variants will continue to be closely monitored.

Are they safe?

The safety of the updated vaccines has also been shown to be similar to previous versions. Studies comparing them found no significant difference in terms of the adverse events reported.

What happens next?

The availability of updated vaccines is a welcome development, however this is not the end of the story. We need to make sure eligible people get vaccinated.

Paul Griffin is a director and scientific advisory board member of the Immunisation Coalition and has previously had roles as an advisory board member for Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax.

– ref. What are the new COVID vaccine booster vaccines? Can I get one? Do they work? Are they safe? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-new-covid-vaccine-booster-vaccines-can-i-get-one-do-they-work-are-they-safe-217804

Graeme Edgeler Analysis – As Long as It Takes, or There are No Hard Deadlines

By Evening Report -

November 21, 2023

Analysis by Graeme Edgeler, courtesy of the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Winston Peters, New Zealand First leader, at Victoria University.

Government-formation negotiations are ongoing between National, Act and New Zealand First. We do not know how long these will take. Neither it seems, do they.

Importantly, there are fundamentally no hard deadlines on government formation negotiations in New Zealand. It will take as long as it takes. I’ll start by saying that some of the hypotheticals I talk about here are ridiculously unlikely. National, Act and New Zealand First will almost certainly either come to an agreement, or realise they cannot, well before we reach the ones I mention at the end. The point I am making is well-established by them however: there really are no hard deadlines. There is no date by which, if negotiations haven’t resolved anything, there must be a fresh election. Unless they’re still going in 2026, of course, when we’ll need an election anyway.

In New Zealand, a decision to hold an early election is one that is made by the Prime Minister. This power – like all other powers the Prime Minister has – is circumscribed by the caretaker convention. If a Prime Minister has the confidence of more MPs than not, they may exercise the power to advise the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and hold an election.

If a Prime Minister is operating in caretaker mode, that is, is governing without the clear support of a majority of MPs, the power to advise the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and hold an election can only be exercised – like all the other powers – if more MPs than not support the exercise of the power.

This means that, no matter how longs things take, there will be no advice from the Prime Minister to the Governor-General to hold a new election unless at least one of the parties involved in negotiations to form a government agrees to the holding of a new election.

There are soft deadlines all the time. There are soft legal deadlines. Saturday 11 November 2023 was one. It was the date negotiations had to be resolved if we wanted to avoid the necessity of having Chris Hipkins reappointed as Prime Minister because the writ wasn’t able be returned within 28 days of the election. But that date passed, and Chris Hipkins was appointed Prime Minister again (to operate within the confines of the caretaker convention).

There are soft political deadlines too. There was a date that things would have needed to be resolved by for Christopher Luxon to be able to attend this year’s APEC leaders meeting by. That didn’t happen.

And there will be others. At some point, if negotiations continue, this becomes the longest-ever negotiation to form a government. But that’s only politically relevant. It wouldn’t mean anything, legally.

And there’s also a date that this would have to be resolved by so that Christopher Luxon can be sworn in as Prime Minister before the first opening of Parliament for the swearing-in of MPs. But this isn’t a hard deadline either. MPs can be sworn in before Ministers. The opening of Parliament and the first sitting of the House after the 1996 general election occurred before the swearing-in of Ministers from the National-New Zealand First coalition (albeit, the negotiations had been resolved).

They don’t have to be though. At some point, it possibly becomes politically difficult for National. And if it keeps going, it possibly becomes politically damaging for National. They may decide that the harm to them being caused by negotiating is worse than the harm that would be done to them by being seen by the public as forcing New Zealanders back to the polls. But that’s just politics. If National, Act and New Zealand First are content to continue discussions, and none of them wants a fresh election, the can go on basically indefinitely.

Legal things will crop up. Like the re-swearing in of the old Government Ministers. Like the first sitting of the House. But they will just happen. The House will sit to swear-in MPs and to elect a speaker whether negotiations have concluded or not. But once those formalities are done, the House can just adjourn until next year and the talking can continue. The expectation is that the Governor-General will attend at the state opening of Parliament and give a speech from the throne. That can probably happen, albeit the content of the speech will be subject to agreement under the caretaker principle. There is no need for the House to adopt a reply to the speech before everyone is ready to. It can just meet every so often, and National, Act, and New Zealand First would have the numbers to adjourn. One really big soft legal deadline is imprest supply. At some point in the middle of next year, the permission that Parliament has given the government to spend money runs out. But Parliament exists, and there will be MPs. If they’re committed to making negotiations work, they’d just make sure it happens.

Politically, do I think this is at all likely? No. They’ll agree something at some point, or realise they cannot. There are even halfway houses. If it’s taking ages to resolve, but National, Act and New Zealand First are still committed to resolving it, they could even agree in the interim, Christopher Luxon could be appointed Prime Minister instead of Chris Hipkins, to operate under the caretaker principle. I don’t think that’s likely either.

But anyone who tells you there’s a legal deadline this all has to be done by is mistaken, unless the deadline they’re talking about is 10 November 2026. At that point, Parliament will have expired.

*******

Graeme Edgeler is a Wellington barrister, with a professional interest in constitutional and electoral law.

Simon Angelo Analysis – The Future of Money: Bitcoin, Banks, BRICS, and CBDCs

By Evening Report -

November 21, 2023

Bitcoin-1 — Bitcoin Fund office, circa 2016. Source: Supplied / Simon Angelo

By Simon Angelo – www.WealthMorning.com

Simon Angelo worked for the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund in 2016. He currently works at a trading desk for Wholesale Investors. His work in offshore finance and global banking gives him some insights on the future of money.

Bitcoin Fund office, circa 2016. Source: Supplied / Simon Angelo

When Bitcoin was a special opportunity

In October 2016, when I started working with the Bitcoin fund, a Bitcoin cost around NZD $900. Today it sits at around NZD $62,000.

Back then, the principals of the fund saw Bitcoin rather like the oil futures they had traded in the 1980s.

These were the early days of deregulation in the oil industry. Oil reserves were depleted. Demand from China was coming on stream. More oil production would be needed. The price could only go up.

It was a market with plenty of volatility, illiquidity, and scant regulation. It was all pretty chaotic. Yet there were global forces at play. These would give rise to an oil and commodity bull market, bursting a dam of money.

In 2016, they saw similar potential for Bitcoin, just as they’d seen for oil back in 1987.

There was a long runway ahead. A destination where the technology becomes widely adopted. And the potential for Bitcoin to change money as we know it.

Were they right?

Yes, there’s been an overall Bitcoin bull market. The price has grown almost 7,000% since 2016 — though there’s been plenty of volatility.

Yet much of the wider mainstream adoption they predicted hasn’t happened. Like other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin remains a mainly speculative instrument.

Does this mean Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies still have a bigger part to play in the future of money? What about the alternatives?

Banking and currency

Modern banking has come a long way.

With the click of a mouse and a confirmation on your phone, you can send funds around the world. This can be to other bank accounts, to brokerage accounts, or even to global smart-card services and digital wallets.

But for those seeking privacy or protection of their wealth, banking alone can fall short.

On the privacy front, okay, the ordinary punter doesn’t typically expect Swiss-style bank secrecy. Though even that is limited these days for requests made under CRS and FATCA rules.

Most alarming was the freezing of accounts for protest groups during the Canadian trucker convoy protests in 2022. This crossed the line from tax-related access to access for political purposes.

To my way of thinking, this tarnished the reputation of both the Canadian dollar and the Canadian banking system.

Increasing and invasive bureaucracy can actually limit trust in the banking system. It risks driving more people into ‘offgrid’ instruments like cryptocurrency.

A robust financial system should retain strong property rights separate from the state. Where access is limited only to tax enforcement via transparent court orders.

Unfortunately, the creep of bureaucracy has been a theme of our time.

What about CBDCs or other digital currencies?

According to a 2021 survey, central bank digital currencies were currently being looked at by 86% of central banks around the world.

60% were experimenting with the technology.

14% were deploying pilot projects.

The RBNZ has embarked on a 4-stage process and is currently at stage 2: ‘exploring high level design options for the CBDC, and their costs and benefits.’

The primary objectives of CBDCs are to help maintain trust in local currency, maintain price stability, and ensure safe and resilient payment systems.

Some analysts have pointed out that CBDCs could actually reduce trust in currencies, since they could be open to more government manipulation.

The Canadian trucker convoy protests saw about 280 bank accounts frozen without court orders under the Emergencies Act.

For people using CBDCs, the question is then what checks and balances would be in place to prevent bureaucrats simply turning them off?

Perhaps, for instance, you’ve been found mobilising a protest they deem political wrongthink. Even dangerous. Could your CBDCs be frozen or penalised at the click of a bureaucrat’s mouse?

Again, we come back to the most crucial aspect of money: It needs to be trusted.

If people have doubts about their government, or their public service, they might be unlikely to trust a CBDC. Willingness to embrace and accept it may be low.

It’s the same situation with the plethora of digital currencies out there. Who backs them? How can you trust them?

That’s the beauty a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin has (as opposed to a digital currency). It is backed by the incontrovertible verification system of the blockchain.

Which brings us to the other essential quality of money…

Will it hold its value?

In Argentina, lack of trust in the government’s fiat currency — the peso — is entwined with another key problem.

Last week, inflation topped 140%. That means much of what you go to buy now costs more than double compared to just a year ago.

People give up buying new things and head to the second-hand or thrift market for items as simple as a pair of jeans.

An Argentinean friend of mine told me about his local hardware store with no pricing on the shelves. ‘You have to take everything up to the cashier to get the latest price.’

Well, trust is so low in the peso it may now face its demise.

The country’s presidential front-runner, former financial analyst Javier Milei, has pledged to scrap the central bank and dollarise the economy.

As we were going to press, it was announced that Milei had won the presidential elections in provisional results.

If he goes ahead with his pledge on the currency, this could be a game changer. No country Argentina’s size has previously shed their currency for the US dollar and conceded their monetary policy to Washington.

A switch to the US dollar would be a radical step, no doubt. Yet already locals try to get their hands on as much USD as they can buy.

Property prices are listed in USD to protect against inflation.

Clearly, if a currency is to be trusted and accepted, it also needs to be stable.

This is the flipside with cryptocurrency. Values are volatile. If you were to settle on a house purchase with Bitcoin — then Bitcoin suddenly drops 10% — you’d find that house now costs 10% more when paying that way.

Which is why these cryptocurrencies have upside for trading and investment, as opposed to being a reliable medium of exchange.

Furthermore, there are thousands of cryptocurrencies. Most need significant processing power and some time to transact. So they have intrinsic limitations when it comes to becoming the real future of money.

Inflation and the future

Today, although interest rates are higher on savings, after tax, the greasy pole of inflation makes it hard to keep pace.

By definition, protecting your wealth means you may want to put longer-term funds into productive assets like stocks or property. The lesson from crises throughout history, including the Second World War, is that quality businesses can still produce, sell, and grow their value over time.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies do not fit into the category of productive assets. This is because their main use today is as a speculative investment and alternative store of value.

That store of value, like gold, is based on limited supply. But unlike gold, the cryptocurrencies themselves could be subject to competition and regulation. Not to mention the inherent volatility.

So, would Bitcoin interest me as much today as it did in 2016?

Well, back then, at $900, a 7,000% return was possible in five years.

But at ~$62,000, it is hard to even see $100,000 over the next five years. Holding coins over this time would also carry risk and, unless lent out, usually no yield.

Meanwhile, trust in fiat currency comes down to its ability to store value and act as a reliable medium of exchange around the world.

This is the reason why the US dollar continues to reign supreme as the world’s reserve currency. Some say it is under threat by a potential BRICS dollar that could be backed by gold.

It is hard to see the reality of this threat. The BRICS countries have divergent interests. The US dollar is backed by the world’s largest single base of taxpayers.

Thus far, the Federal Reserve has been amongst the more successful in tackling inflation. It is currently down to 3.2% in the US, gradually nearing the target of 2%.

Yes, the proportion of US dollar reserves held globally has reduced. The main reason for this appears to be the emergence of another large and reliable currency in the euro.

If our local currency weakened or looked to be threatened by out-of-control inflation, unfair manipulations of a potential CBDC, or a manifestly corrupt government, I would probably be looking for a more reliable currency such as the US dollar or euro to transact and hold wealth.

Further, holding listed assets in these currencies can help investors to diversify.

The future of money comes down to faith and trust. Like so much else does in life.

We cannot prove that our close family members love us absolutely. But we have faith that they do. Spouses promise as much at the wedding altar.

As the US dollar declares: ‘In God We Trust’. Adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956, it denotes that ‘the political and economic prosperity of the nation is in God’s hands.’

Long may that remain, for when too much is placed in the hands of man and bureaucracy, all trust can soon erode.

For now, the real future for money is likely in the expansion of financial products that offer access to quality currencies and quality assets denominated in them.

For example, smart cards that allow you to transact offshore currencies in a cost-effective way. Brokerage accounts that allow you to hold offshore assets for growth and income. And the ability to access various currencies via lending margin on the assets you hold.

Of course, many of these sort of products will be suitable for more sophisticated investors only. Any leverage adds risk. And most people should always have a suitable level of emergency funds available at all times.

Perhaps the future for Bitcoin and oil will intersect again.

Supply of both appears limited. Appetite is strong yet uncertain. But prices are currently high, making it hard to foresee the sort of breakout we saw in 1987 or 2016.

Simon Angelo, Editor, Wealth Morning – www.WealthMorning.com

(This article is the author’s personal opinion and commentary. It is general in nature and should not be construed as any financial or investment advice. Readers should seek independent advice from a licensed Financial Advice Provider for their own situation.)

Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol

Misinformation is debated everywhere and has justifiably sparked concerns. It can polarise the public, reduce health-protective behaviours such as mask wearing and vaccination, and erode trust in science. Much of misinformation is spread not by accident but as part of organised political campaigns, in which case we refer to it as disinformation.

But there is a more fundamental, subversive damage arising from misinformation and disinformation that is discussed less often.

It undermines democracy itself. In a recent paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology, we highlight two important aspects of democracy that disinformation works to erode.

The integrity of elections

The first of the two aspects is confidence in how power is distributed – the integrity of elections in particular.

In the United States, recent polls have shown nearly 70% of Republicans question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. This is a direct result of disinformation from Donald Trump, the loser of that election.

Democracy depends on the people knowing that power will be transferred peacefully if an incumbent loses an election. The “big lie” that the 2020 US election was stolen undermines that confidence.

Depending on reliable information

The second important aspect of democracy is this – it depends on reliable information about the evidence for various policy options.

One reason we trust democracy as a system of governance is the idea that it can deliver “better” decisions and outcomes than autocracy, because the “wisdom of crowds” outperforms any one individual. But the benefits of this wisdom vanish if people are pervasively disinformed.

Disinformation about climate change is a well-documented example. The fossil fuel industry understood the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels at least as early as the 1960s. Yet they spent decades funding organisations that denied the reality of climate change. This disinformation campaign has delayed climate mitigation by several decades – a case of public policy being thwarted by false information.

We’ve seen a similar misinformation trajectory in the COVID-19 pandemic, although it happened in just a few years rather than decades. Misinformation about COVID varied from claims that 5G towers rather than a virus caused the disease, to casting doubt on the effectiveness of lockdowns or the safety of vaccines.

The viral surge of misinformation led to the World Health Organisation introducing a new term – infodemic – to describe the abundance of low-quality information and conspiracy theories.

A common denominator of misinformation

Strikingly, some of the same political operatives involved in denying climate change have also used their rhetorical playbook to promote COVID disinformation. What do these two issues have in common?

One common denominator is suspicion of government solutions to societal problems. Whether it’s setting a price on carbon to mitigate climate change, or social distancing to slow the spread of COVID, contrarians fear the policies they consider to be an attack on personal liberties.

An ecosystem of conservative and free-market think tanks exists to deny any science that, if acted on, has the potential to infringe on “liberty” through regulations.

There is another common attribute that ties together all organised disinformation campaigns – whether about elections, climate change or vaccines. It’s the use of personal attacks to compromise people’s integrity and credibility.

Election workers in the US were falsely accused of committing fraud by those who fraudulently claimed the election had been “stolen” from Trump.

Climate scientists have been subject to harassment campaigns, ranging from hate mail to vexatious complaints and freedom-of-information requests. Public health officials such as Anthony Fauci have been prominent targets of far-right attacks.

The new frontier in attacks on scientists

It is perhaps unsurprising there is now a new frontier in the attacks on scientists and others who seek to uphold the evidence-based integrity of democracy. It involves attacks and allegations of bias against misinformation researchers.

Such attacks are largely driven by Republican politicians, in particular those who have endorsed Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The misinformers are seeking to neutralise research focused on their own conduct by borrowing from the climate denial and anti-vaccination playbook. Their campaign has had a chilling effect on research into misinformation.

How do we move on from here?

Psychological research has contributed to legislative efforts by the European Union, such as the Digital Services Act or Code of Practice, which seek to make democracies more resilient against misinformation and disinformation.

Research has also investigated how to boost the public’s resistance to misinformation. One such method is inoculation, which rests on the idea people can be protected against being misled if they learn about the rhetorical techniques used to mislead them.

In a recent inoculation campaign involving brief educational videos shown to 38 million citizens in Eastern Europe, people’s ability to recognise misleading rhetoric about Ukrainian refugees was frequently improved.

It remains to be seen whether these initiatives and research findings will be put to use in places like the US, where one side of politics appears more threatened by research into misinformation than by the risks to democracy arising from misinformation itself.

We’d like to acknowledge our colleagues Ullrich Ecker, Naomi Oreskes, Jon Roozenbeek and Sander van der Linden who coauthored the journal article on which this article is based.

Stephan Lewandowsky receives financial support from the European Research Council, the Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation and the European Commission. He also receives funding from Jigsaw (a technology incubator created by Google) and from UK Research and Innovation. He also interacts frequently with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in an advisory capacity and through scientific collaborations.

John Cook 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. Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back – https://theconversation.com/disinformation-campaigns-are-undermining-democracy-heres-how-we-can-fight-back-217539

No, antibiotics aren’t always needed. Here’s how GPs can avoid overprescribing

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mina Bakhit, Assistant Professor of Public Health, Bond University

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest global threats to health, food security and development. This month, The Conversation’s experts explore how we got here and the potential solutions.

The growth in antibiotic resistance threatens to return the world to the pre-antibiotic era – with deaths from now-treatable infections, and some elective surgery being restricted because of the risks of infection.

Antibiotic resistance is a major problem worldwide and should be the concern of everyone, including you.

We need to develop new antibiotics that can fight the resistant bacteria or antibiotics that bacteria would not be quickly resistant to. This is like finding new weapons to help the immune system fight the bacteria.

More importantly, we need to use our current antibiotics – our existing weapons against the bacteria – more wisely.

Giving GPs the tools to say no

In 2022, more than one-third of Australians had least one antibiotic prescription, with 88% of antibiotics prescribed by GPs.

Many people mistakenly think antibiotics are necessary for treating any infection and that infections won’t improve unless treated with antibiotics. This misconception is found in studies involving patients with various conditions, including respiratory infections and conjunctivitis.

In reality, not all infections require antibiotics, and this belief drives patients requesting antibiotics from GPs.

Other times, GPs give antibiotics because they think patients want them, even when they might not be necessary. Although, in reality they are after symptom relief.

For GPs, there are ways to target antibiotics for only when they are clearly needed, even with short appointments with patients perceived to want antibiotics. This includes:

using decision guides or tests to decide if antibiotics are really necessary
giving patients information sheets when antibiotics aren’t needed
giving a “delayed prescription” – only to be used after the patient waits to see if they get better on their own.

All these strategies need some training and practice, but they can help GPs prescribe antibiotics more responsibly. GPs can also learn from each other and use tools like posters as reminders.

To help with patients’ expectations, public campaigns have been run periodically to educate people about antibiotics. These campaigns explain why using antibiotics too much can be harmful and when it’s essential to take them.

Giving doctors feedback on their prescribing

National programs and interventions can help GPs use antibiotics more wisely

One successful way they do this is by giving GPs feedback about how they prescribe antibiotics. This works better when it’s provided by organisations that GPs trust, it happens more than once and clear goals are set for improvement.

GP types on laptop — GPs tend to act on feedback about their antibiotic prescribing.
Shutterstock

The NPS (formerly National Prescribing Service) MedicineWise program, for example, had been giving feedback to GPs on how their antibiotic prescriptions compared to others. This reduced the number of antibiotics prescribed.

However, NPS no longer exists.

In 2017, the Australian health department did something similar by sending feedback letters, randomly using different formats, to the GPs who prescribed the most antibiotics, showing them how they were prescribing compared to others.

The most effective letter, which used pictures to show this comparison, reduced the number of antibiotics GPs prescribed by 9% in a year.

Clearer rules and regulations

Rules and regulations are crucial in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Before April 2020, many GPs’ computer systems made it easy to get multiple repeat prescriptions for the same condition, which could encourage their overuse.

However, in April 2020, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) changed the rules to ensure GPs had to think more carefully about whether patients actually needed repeat antibiotics. This meant the amount of medicine prescribed better matched the days it was needed for.

Pharmacist looks at antibiotics — Simple changes can make a difference to antibiotic prescribing and dispensing.
Shutterstock

Other regulations or policy targets could include:

ensuring all GPs have access to antibiotic prescribing guidelines, such as Therapeutic Guidelines, which is well accepted and widely available in Australia
ensuring GPs are only prescribing antibiotics when needed. Many of the conditions antibiotics are currently prescribed for (such as sore throat, cough and middle ear infections) are self-limiting, meaning they will get better without antibiotics
encouraging GP working with antibiotics manufacturers to align pack sizes to the recommended treatment duration. The recommended first-line treatments for uncomplicated urinary tract infections in non-pregnant women, for example, are either three days of trimethoprim 300 mg per night or five days of nitrofurantoin 100 mg every six hours. However, the packs contain enough for seven days. This can mean patients take it for longer or use leftovers later.

Australia lags behind Sweden

Australia has some good strategies for antibiotic prescribing, but we have not had a sustained long-term plan to ensure wise use.

Although Australian GPs have been doing well in reducing antibiotic prescribing since 2015, more could be done.

In the 1990s, Sweden’s antibiotic use was similar to Australia’s, but is now less than half. For more than two decades, Sweden has had a national strategy that reduces antibiotic use by about 7% annually.

It is vital Australia invests in a similar long-term national strategy – to have a centrally funded program, but with regional groups working on the implementation. This could be funded directly by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, or with earmarked funds via another body such as the Australian Centre for Disease Control.

In the meantime, individual GPs can do their part to prescribe antibiotics better, and patients can join the national effort to combat antibiotic resistance by asking their GP: “what would happen if I don’t take an antibiotic?”.

Read the other articles in The Conversation’s series on the dangers of antibiotic resistance here.

Mina Bakhit received funding from Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd (TGL) / Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Foundation Research Grant.

Paul Glasziou receives funding from an National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMCR) Investigator grant.

– ref. No, antibiotics aren’t always needed. Here’s how GPs can avoid overprescribing – https://theconversation.com/no-antibiotics-arent-always-needed-heres-how-gps-can-avoid-overprescribing-213981

Denial is over. Climate change is happening. But why do we still act like it’s not?

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celeste Young, Collaborative Research Fellow, Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC), Victoria University

Climate-fuelled disaster is now front-page news, as record-breaking floods, fires, droughts and storms keep arriving.

The damage done by climate change is systemic and pervasive, resonating through our communities, economies and environments. It manifests in many ways, from empty spaces in supermarket shelves to houses left unlivable after floods, anxious communities, collapsing ecosystems and emergency services stretched to capacity.

Climate researchers initially assumed that if you gave people the right information, we would act on it. Burning fossil fuels comes with severe consequences – so let’s phase out fossil fuels. But they found out very quickly this was not the case.

For many people, it triggered cognitive dissonance, where they knew climate change was happening but acted like it wasn’t. After all, many people still smoke, even though they know it is bad for their health. And many of us still fly to Italy – even though we know how many extra tonnes of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere.

But why is it so easy to understand but not act?

man smoking — Smokers now know full well the damage cigarettes do.
Shutterstock

Change seems hard, doing nothing is easy

It’s because of public and private narratives we have grown up with. Our expectations of life are geared towards wanting comfort and stability.

This means not everyone has developed the ways of thinking needed to deal with the impacts (such as natural hazards) we are now facing. Sudden changes caused by these – such as the loss of a home – are almost invariably shocking and can create a sense of disbelief. How could this be? When do we get back to normal? Surely it won’t happen again?

Our research on systemic risks such as climate change adaptation suggests this disconnect is common. Because we expect and hope for stable normality, we find it hard to truly believe the changes we are seeing will continue.

There’s also a divide between who benefits and who pays. Your family trip to Iceland pays off for you in shared memories and good times. The damage in terms of emissions is spread across the globe. Often the damage done has less impact on the people who have done most to cause it, compounding inequality and eroding the ability of those most at risk to respond.

Adapting to the climate and working to reduce further heating can be an uncomfortable and at times painful process where we have to embrace and acknowledge our grief for the changing world. We’re often taught to avoid potentially dangerous or painful things – especially if they are unfamiliar. But now, doing what we’ve always done is not safe.

Then there are the limitations of individual action. No matter how committed you are to cutting your own climate impact, it makes very little difference if others aren’t doing the same.

Action needs to be collaborative and sustained over the longer term, favouring public good over individual vested interests and short term gains. The politicisation of action in Australia’s climate wars has polarised opinion and eroded trust in the research. It has also left some people feeling that their actions are too small to matter.

All of this means we can find it surprisingly easy to detach our own daily actions – driving to work, holidays in Queensland, watching Netflix – from the broader goals of getting emissions down to zero as soon as possible.

So how can we avoid climate hypocrisy?

Many of us understand the risks of climate change full well, but we do not accept the responsibility. That, in turn, means we may feel okay not to act. Or we may understand and accept the risk, but not have the resources or ability to act.

We know that presenting climate change as a problem without a solution or using fear tactics disengages and demotivates us. It can also feed anxiety, which undermines action.

So the first step to overcoming climate inaction is to identify where you can act directly, such as switching your second car to an e-bike, investing in solar panels, working on local re-vegetation projects or making climate-friendly consumer choices.

family planting tree, silhouette — Action helps make more action.
Shutterstock

Where you have influence, apply this through voting, education or advocacy. Humble actions matter because they accumulate to create change.

This isn’t to say you should give up holidays. It is about making informed choices. Ending the burning of fossil fuels will take time and our choices will change as we transition away from this.

But doing something is always better than nothing. Active responses can help reduce climate anxiety and they are also the panacea for avoiding climate hypocrisy. And while large-scale policy responses are necessary, individual action and pressure can help speed up the shift.

Climate change isn’t just a problem for scientists, engineers and governments. We need both large-scale and small-scale action. As the costs of climate change escalate, we can no longer afford to know about climate change but not act.

Celeste Young has funding from the National Center for Climate Change Adaption Research Facility, The Bush Fire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Center, Victorian Center for Climate Change Adaptation and Department of The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) (formerly DEWLP).

Roger Jones has provided technical advice on fire climate regimes to the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (Formerly the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning).

– ref. Denial is over. Climate change is happening. But why do we still act like it’s not? – https://theconversation.com/denial-is-over-climate-change-is-happening-but-why-do-we-still-act-like-its-not-212531

As homeschooling numbers keep rising in Australia, is more regulation a good idea?

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca English, Senior Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology

The number of families choosing to homeschool in Australia and around the world keeps growing.

New data from Queensland released last week show there has been a 20% increase over the past year, with 10,048 registered homeschoolers up from 8,461. Over the last five years, there has been a 152% growth in primary students and 262% growth in high school students who are home schooled in the state.

At the same time, Queensland is looking at “cracking down” on parents who home school.

There are concerns homeschooling needs more regulation because parents only have to report once a year and are not subjected to testing such as NAPLAN. Is this what we need?

Homeschooling across Australia

In New South Wales 12,359 students were registered for homeschooling in January 2023, a 37% jump on the 2022 figures.

In Victoria, the most recent figures show there were 11,912 homeschooled students as of December 2022, an increase of 36% since 2021.

Across the country, I estimate, based on state and territory data, there are more than 43,000 legally registered homeschooled students. This does not include students whose parents do not register them with their state or territory education departments, even though it is a legal requirement.

Estimates on the numbers who do not register vary. Some home education curriculum providers suggest there are as many unregistered students as there are registered students. Accurate figures are difficult because families are reluctant to admit they are not meeting their legal requirements.

Two young children work at a desk with books and pens. — There are more than 43,000 students registered for homeschool in Australia.
Kampus Production/Pexels, CC BY-SA

Why are numbers growing?

A 2023 Queensland government report shared data from a survey of more 500 parents in the state who homeschooled their children.

It found 45% of families surveyed never intended to homeschool. It also found 61% had a child with a disability or health issue, including ADHD, autism, behavioural issues and mental ill health. Many also had concerns about bullying.

Families also reported their child was not learning at school, and not wanting to go, so homeschooling became the only choice available.

This reflects academic research, which finds most families who choose to homeschool have negative school experiences, withdraw because of bullying or are neurodiverse.

While homeschooling was growing before the pandemic, the school-at-home arrangements during COVID led to a large growth in numbers. For some families, the experience showed them learning at home was possible and enjoyable and they decided not to go back.

What do homeschooling parents need to do?

A young child sits at a desk, typing on a computer. — Most parents who homeschool their kids are not qualified teachers.
Alexander Grey/Pexels, CC BY-SA

Many families who homeschool are not qualified educators. Of those surveyed in the 2023 Queensland report, 20% had a teaching qualification. A further 15% had experience working in a school in a role other than teaching.

According to the state’s Education Act, homeschooling parents have to provide a “high-quality education” tailored to the needs of the child and the child must show progress.

Families need to report annually on the child’s learning and provide a plan for the following year. Parents also provide samples of their child’s learning.

Approaches vary across other states. In New South Wales there is a home visit by a department representative. In Victoria, a family provides a plan and must submit to an audit if they are chosen at random.

Parents do not have to teach to the Australian Curriculum because it sets the goals for what students should learn as they progress through school, not what parents should be doing at home.

To regulate or not to regulate?

The Courier Mail has reported the Queensland government is considering a “crackdown” on homeschooling rules, noting homeschoolers aren’t required to use the Australian Curriculum or do NAPLAN tests.

However, international research suggests homeschooling outcomes are as good as at mainstream schools in terms of academic success. Homeschooling can work because it suits some children better and parents are motivated to help their children learn.

There is a risk too much regulation will lead to more families flying “under the radar” and not registering. Many who do not register now say they do not comply because they are scared of authorities and feel they have been let down by schools in the past.

Australian research suggests onerous compliance requirements lead to families disengaging with authorities and does not lead to better outcomes for students.

How to engage homeschooling families

In Victoria and Tasmania, homeschooling families have been included on boards providing advice to government about regulation.

Surveys by the Home Education Network (a home schooling support network) suggest more than 90% of homeschoolers in the state are registered.

If Queensland wants to increase compliance, it should consider doing more to work with families. For example, by including them in policy making about home education, so families see compliance as a way to support their child’s education, not as a “punishment” for not sending them to a mainstream school.

Governments should also look more closely at why families leave schools. We know families are not homeschooling as an “easy option” – they are doing it because it is a last resort.

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

– ref. As homeschooling numbers keep rising in Australia, is more regulation a good idea? – https://theconversation.com/as-homeschooling-numbers-keep-rising-in-australia-is-more-regulation-a-good-idea-217802

Timeless allure: why Australia is filled to the brim with exhibitions on ancient Egypt

By The Conversation -

November 21, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna M. Kotarba-Morley, Lecturer in Museum and Curatorial Studies, University of Adelaide

Closing last month, this year WA Museum Boola Bardip in Perth was host to a major exhibition Discovering Ancient Egypt.

The Australian Museum’s “once-in-a-lifetime” Ramses & The Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition featuring 181 objects from ancient Egypt opened last week in Sydney.

Just four weeks after that exhibition shuts, the 2024 “winter masterpieces” exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne will be Pharaoh, featuring 500 objects in the largest international loan ever from the British Museum.

Why is there such an intense fascination with a civilisation so far removed from our time and place?

Centuries of Egyptomania

Few historical cultures seem to have such a hold over the minds of the general public.

Awe-inspiring temples, elaborate mummification rituals, beliefs in afterlife, and contributions to science, technology, engineering and medicine left an indelible mark on the course of human progress.

Napoleon in Egypt (Jean-Léon Gérôme),, 1953-78.
Image courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.

“Egyptomania”, a term coined to describe the West’s fascination with Egypt, can be traced back to Napoleon’s expedition in the late 18th century. Scientific discoveries and illustrations from that expedition fuelled worldwide curiosity about the secrets of this ancient land.

A key figure of the Egyptomania was Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823), an Italian explorer and strongman (and con-man) whose daring adventures and discoveries – including removal of colossal Egyptian statues – added fuel to the fire.

This cultural phenomenon influenced fashion and design. Egyptian motifs, such as lotus flowers, scarabs and sphinxes became popular decorative elements in clothing, jewellery and home decor during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Armchair featuring Egyptian-inspired designs, attributed to Pottier and Stymus Manufacturing Company ca. 1870–75.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Agatha Christie (who was married to archaeologist Max Mallowan and spent many years working on excavations in the Middle East) sent her famous detective Hercule Poirot into the world of mummies and pharaohs in Death on the Nile and set Death Comes as the End on the Western Bank of Thebes.

Ancient Egypt’s grip on our collective consciousness manifests throughout popular culture. Films such as The Mummy and Cleopatra, games such as Assassin’s Creed Origins and popular cartoon TV series Tutenstein blend historical facts with creative storytelling, perpetuating the mystique and wonder of this lost civilisation.

Ancient Egypt is a staple in schools. For many Australians, their first introduction to a world beyond their immediate surroundings often comes in the form of ancient Egyptian history in the national curriculum for year 7.

This portal to history and foreign cultures opened in childhood often results in lifelong fascination. You might ask: how much Egypt can Australians take? It seems the answer is “a lot”.

A long line of exhibitions

These latest exhibitions follow a long, near continuous, list of Egyptian exhibitions in Australia.

In 2007, the National Gallery of Australia showcased Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre: Journey to the Afterlife.

Tutankhamen And The Golden Age Of The Pharaohs was at the Melbourne Museum in 2011. The Western Australian Museum hosted Secrets of the Afterlife: Magic, Mummies and Immortality in Ancient Egypt in 2013. Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives was at Sydney’s Powerhouse in 2016.

In 2012, the Queensland Museum hosted items from the British Museum in Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb. The same museum hosted British Museum artefacts again in 2018 in Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives. In between, the Queensland University Museum hosted Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs from 2016–18.

From an impressive gallery in Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney to the small – and in need of a serious update – gallery in the South Australian Museum, each state also proudly displays its own permanent collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts.

Despite this extensive exhibition history, Australia’s interest in ancient Egypt seems to show no signs of waning.

Shifting Egyptology

The new exhibition in Sydney gives a window into the life and accomplishments of Ramses II who ruled Egypt for 67 years.

The National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition will aim to deepen visitors’ understanding of ancient Egyptian culture, allowing them to see beyond the opulence.

This is part of a broader shift in Egyptology, archaeology and history towards emphasising understanding of the lives of everyday people.

Painting from the tomb chapel of Nebamen, 1350BC.
© The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA

For a long time, Egyptology was centred on grand monuments, temples, tombs, pharaohs and the elite. We now recognise that to understand a civilisation we need to also explore the lives, activities and contributions of ordinary people.

But these major exhibitions coincide with rising debates about the provenance and repatriation of artefacts. A Tutankhamen exhibition which toured the world just before the COVID pandemic and which was scheduled to appear in Sydney has, amid some controversy, finally settled back at home, in the Grand Museum in Cairo, Egypt, where it will – hopefully – remain forever.

Repatriation of artefacts is a sensitive issue that has been gaining momentum in recent years and questions are being raised, even more loudly now, whether institutions such as the British Museum should even possess such artefacts.

Zahi Hawass, former minister of antiquities for Egypt, has called for repatriation of stolen heritage and accused western museums of continuing imperialistic practice by purchasing new artefacts and refusing to return them to their country of origin. Some large travelling exhibitions are already moving away from displaying these artefacts towards immersive digital experiences with great examples in Lisbon, Vienna and Cairo.

For now in Australia, though, it is not just artefacts and treasures that will be on display. It is a celebration of human spirit, ingenuity and quest for knowledge. The sands of time have failed to bury our fascination in ancient Egypt.

Anna M. Kotarba-Morley receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. Timeless allure: why Australia is filled to the brim with exhibitions on ancient Egypt – https://theconversation.com/timeless-allure-why-australia-is-filled-to-the-brim-with-exhibitions-on-ancient-egypt-214263

What is a sonar pulse and how can it injure humans under water?

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Erbe, Director, Centre for Marine Science & Technology, Curtin University

Over the weekend, the Australian government revealed that last Tuesday its navy divers had sustained “minor injuries”, likely due to sonar pulses from a Chinese navy vessel.

The divers had been clearing fishing nets from the propellers of HMAS Toowoomba while in international waters off the coast of Japan. According to a statement from deputy prime minister Richard Marles, despite HMAS Toowoomba communicating with internationally recognised signals, the Chinese vessel approached the Australian ship and turned on its sonar, forcing the Australian divers to exit the water.

The incident prompted a response from the Australian government, who labelled the incident “unsafe and unprofessional”. But what exactly is a sonar pulse, and what kinds of injuries can sonar cause to divers?

What is sonar?

Light doesn’t travel well under water – even in clear waters, you can see perhaps some tens of metres. Sound, however, travels very well and far under water. This is because water is much denser than air, and so can respond faster and better to acoustic pressure waves – sound waves.

Because of these properties, ships use sonar to navigate through the ocean and to “see” under water. The word “sonar” stands for sound navigation and ranging.

Sonar equipment sends out short acoustic (sound) pulses or pings, and then analyses the echoes. Depending on the timing, amplitude, phase and direction of the echoes the equipment receives, you can tell what’s under water – the seafloor, canyon walls, coral, fishes, and of course ships and submarines.

Most vessels – from small, private boats to large commercial tankers – use sonar. However, compared to your off-the-shelf sonar used for finding fish, navy sonars are stronger.

A screen labelled 'echo sounder' with a heat map — An echo sounder on a boat uses sound waves to help gauge the depth of the water.
mark_vyz/Shutterstock

What are the effects of sonar on divers?

This is a difficult topic to study, because you don’t want to deliberately expose humans to harmful levels of sound. There are, however, anecdotes from various navies and accidental exposures. There have also been studies on what humans can hear under water, with or without neoprene suits, hoods, or helmets.

We don’t hear well under water – no surprise, since we’ve evolved to live on land. Having said that, you would hear a sonar sound under water (a mid-to-high pitch noise) and would know you’ve been exposed.

When it comes to naval sonars, human divers have rated the sound as “unpleasant to severe” at levels of roughly 150dB re 1 µPa (decibel relative to a reference pressure of one micropascal, the standard reference for underwater sound). This would be perhaps, very roughly, 10km away from a military sonar. Note that we can’t compare sound exposure under water to what we’d receive through the air, because there are too many physical differences between the two.

Human tolerance limits are roughly 180dB re 1 µPa, which would be around 500m from military sonar. At such levels, humans might experience dizziness, disorientation, temporary memory and concentration impacts, or temporary hearing loss. We don’t have information on what levels the Australian divers were exposed to, but their injuries were described as minor.

At higher received levels, closer ranges, or longer exposures, you might see more severe physiological or health impacts. In extreme cases, in particular for impulsive, sudden sound (which sonar is not), sound can cause damage to tissues and organs.

What does sonar do to marine animals?

Some of the information on what noise might do to humans under water comes from studies and observations of animals.

While they typically don’t have outer ears (except for sea lions), marine mammals have inner ears that function similarly to ours. They can receive hearing damage from noise, just like we do. This might be temporary, like the ringing ears or reduced sensitivity you might experience after a loud concert, or it can be permanent.

Marine mammals living in a dark ocean rely on sound and hearing to a greater extent than your average human. They use sound to navigate, hunt, communicate with each other and to find mates. Toothed whales and dolphins have evolved a biological echo sounder or biosonar, which sends out series of clicks and listens for echoes. So, interfering with their sounds or impacting their hearing can disrupt critical behaviours.

Finally, sound may also impact non-mammalian fauna, such as fishes, which rely on acoustics rather than vision for many of their life functions.

Christine Erbe receives funding from offshore oil and gas companies, the US Office of Naval Research, and the Western Australian Marine Science Institution.

– ref. What is a sonar pulse and how can it injure humans under water? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-sonar-pulse-and-how-can-it-injure-humans-under-water-218116

Who is Sam Altman, OpenAI’s wunderkind ex-CEO – and why does it matter that he got sacked?

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI, Research Group Leader, UNSW Sydney

On Friday, OpenAI’s high-flying chief executive Sam Altman was unexpectedly fired by the company’s board. Co-founder and chief technology officer Greg Brockman was also removed as the board president, after which he promptly resigned.

In an unexpected twist, talks began today about potentially reinstating Altman in some capacity following an outpouring of industry and investor support for him and several OpenAI researchers who quit their jobs in solidarity.

Shockingly, however, that too was not to be. As of publication, Bloomberg reporters announced OpenAI’s interim CEO, Mira Murati, had not managed to rehire Altman and Brockman as she had planned.

Instead, the board found a new CEO – Emmett Shear – in record time. Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, will now take over from Murati as interim CEO, as reported by The Information.

It has been an epic backstabbing scene worthy of the HBO drama Succession. While many have speculated about why the board may have forced Altman out, details remain scarce.

What we can say is the decision to fire Altman will likely put a dent in OpenAI’s commercial progress.

An unusual company structure

OpenAI is the hottest company in tech today, having released the ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E image generator onto a largely unsuspecting public.

The company’s mission is simple: to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) – that is, an AI which is as smart or smarter than a human – and to do so for the public good. Many were starting to believe OpenAI could succeed at this goal.

But developing AGI isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s a major management and economic nightmare. How can you ensure the vast power and wealth generated by AGI doesn’t subvert the company’s goal to seek the public good?

Many individuals within OpenAI and the wider tech community worry AI is progressing too fast. A global race in AI development is underway and the commercial pressure to succeed is immense.

Following its launch, ChatGPT quickly became the fastest-growing app in history, and OpenAI is by many measures one of the world’s fastest-growing companies. Its most recent funding round (which may now be scuppered by the recent drama) was set to value the company at around US$90 billion. Silicon Valley has never seen anything like it.

Given its mission, OpenAI was originally set up as a not-for-profit. But developing AGI requires billions of dollars. To raise these billions, Altman pivoted the company towards a unique dual for-profit and not-for-profit structure.

The outcome was a for-profit subsidiary which is controlled by the not-for-profit. But the for-profit subsidiary is itself unusual, as it limits the return for investors (including Microsoft) to 100 times their stake.

Calls to bring back Altman

On top of OpenAI’s odd dual structure sat a board made up of Altman, Brockman, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and three outsiders.

Many saw Altman as central to OpenAI’s success. The candid and boyish tech entrepreneur was previously president of Y Combinator, a legendary Silicon Valley startup accelerator that has launched many household names including Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Stripe and Doordash.

Altman, a Stanford dropout, is a geek with immense social and strategic intelligence. He is also, by all accounts, a genius at building companies and someone who can effortlessly play three-dimensional chess in the cut and thrust of the business world.

In fact, Altman was already a billionaire when Elon Musk brought him on as one of the OpenAI founders in 2015. Musk would later go through his own drama, which led to him leaving the board, and to Altman going back on his original plan of having an open not-for-profit initiative to develop AGI.

OpenAI’s former CTO Brockman was a master at coding, and phenomenally hard working. He is what people in the Valley call a “10x engineer” – someone who has as much productivity as 10 normal coders.

That leaves Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist. He was one of the inventors of AlexNet, a powerful neural network which started the AI deep learning revolution about a decade ago – and also of the GPT language models that started the generative AI revolution. To be responsible for two of the technical innovations that have fuelled the AI frenzy is without precedent.

Sutskever, in particular, seems to be a major key player in the latest drama. According to inside reports, he was worried OpenAI was moving too fast and that Altman was putting money ahead of safety and the company’s original mission. It was Sutskever who persuaded the three outside board members to fire Altman, reports claim.

The shock news of the sacking prompted multiple key staff to either quit or threaten to quit, while investors including Microsoft applied pressure for his return. But it seems this wasn’t enough to bring Altman back.

Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI, had promised about US$10 billion towards OpenAI’s goals. But without a seat on OpenAI’s board, Microsoft was only informed of Altman’s departure moments before the news broke.

The word on the street now is Altman and his followers will likely be branching out with their own AI venture.

What’s next?

The OpenAI board justified its original decision to fire Altman on the basis he was “not consistently candid” with them, without further clarification. Some think this may mean the board, which operates as a not-for-profit board, may have felt that under Altman they weren’t able to carry out the board’s duty of ensuring OpenAI was building AGI for the good of humanity.

In the months leading up to his dismissal, Altman had pitched several ideas for new AI projects to investors, including a plan to develop custom chips to train extremely large AI models, which would let it compete with chip company Nvidia.

The board’s decision will likely have a lasting impact. Sutskever’s position in the company is now likely greatly weakened (I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaves or is pushed out). At the same time, his actions may well have addressed his concerns about OpenAI moving too fast.

As OpenAI emerges from this drama, it will be doubled over from the blow that was this weekend – and will struggle to raise funds in the future as it has in the past.

Toby Walsh receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Google.org, the philantropic arm of Alphabet.

– ref. Who is Sam Altman, OpenAI’s wunderkind ex-CEO – and why does it matter that he got sacked? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-sam-altman-openais-wunderkind-ex-ceo-and-why-does-it-matter-that-he-got-sacked-218111

The Optus chief was right to quit but real change is unlikely at the telco until bigger issues are fixed

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Bird, DIscipline Leader, Corporate Governance & Senior Lecturer, Swinburne Law School, Swinburne University of Technology

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin bowed to the inevitable on Monday and resigned as chief executive of Australia’s second largest telecommunications company.

Why inevitable? Poor communication and a lacklustre response during a major system outage is bad enough. Then things got worse when Bayer Rosmarin and the director of Optus networks admitted at a Senate hearing on Friday they had no disaster management plan for the kind of national outage experienced two weeks earlier.

Someone was always going to have to take the blame. Now, two critical questions emerge. First, will the resignation of the chief executive be sufficient to stem the tide of bad publicity from Optus’ outage debacle? Second, is this yet another instance of a female chief at a prominent Australian company being pushed over the “glass cliff”?

Quitting is only a Band-Aid fix

The resignation of a chief executive following a national fiasco has become something of a ritual for big Australian corporations. This happened at Qantas, too.

Such actions calm public anger, making it appear someone is taking responsibility. Yet, is this truly effective? Not necessarily. This is because problems are deeply ingrained within these corporations, which removing the current leader will not necessarily resolve. Again, the Qantas example illustrates this point.

Optus’ challenges are notably linked to its operational model as a subsidiary of Singtel Ltd, a Singapore-based company. A review of its website shows Optus has a very lean corporate structure in Australia.

Remarkably, Optus doesn’t have a traditional board of directors within Australia to oversee its management. The website lists Paul O’Sullivan as the chairman, but it’s unclear what exactly he chairs. Surprisingly, O’Sullivan maintains a low public profile, despite Optus being Australia’s second-largest telecommunications carrier. At best, it appears he chairs a board of senior executives including the chief executive.

Even within the ranks of the nominated executives, no one is specifically responsible for the company’s risk management. While Optus claims to have such systems in place, the recent national outage points to a significant lapse in disaster planning. This is a major failure of risk management.

The likelihood of such an outage might have appeared remote to Bayer Rosmarin, yet given the potentially severe consequences, comprehensive planning and scenario testing would seem essential for the telco giant. Like the inevitability of cyber hacking, a national outage could be considered a matter of when, not if.

Optus needs robust governance

In a typical scenario, a board of directors would scrutinise the executive team’s oversight and accountability functions as the catastrophe unfolded. With no Australian board, those tasks are apparently the responsibility of Optus’ parent, Singtel.

It is easy to imagine systemic risk concerns at Optus might be too far removed from the Singapore-based board. But that is not much consolation for Australian consumers and agencies who depend on Optus for telecommunication services, including the emergency triple-zero number.

Optus’ lack of strong governance in Australia is and remains a major concern for the company, regardless of who’s in charge. Optus urgently needs a properly constituted local board of directors with clear accountability for its local operations.

This includes a chairperson ready to front the media and share responsibility with the chief executive. It also requires more transparent governance, particularly regarding risk management and remuneration. Optus can handle some of these issues, but the cost overlay will no doubt be a factor in the mode of the remedy.

That is where the federal government, through its regulatory agency, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, must come in and tighten up the governance requirements of companies with a carrier licence.

The short-lived tenure of women at the top

The resignation of Bayer Rosmarin from Optus arguably becomes a classic case of the “glass cliff” phenomenon, where women are installed in leadership roles only to be blamed for failing to fix a crisis. Her stint as chief executive was brief, starting in April 2020 after joining Optus in March 2019. Her time at the helm will likely be remembered for two national scandals: a cyber hack and a national outage.

Studies looking at women in leadership suggest women who take on such roles in turbulent times are likely to endure a shorter tenure than their male counterparts. One scandal might be overlooked, but two? It seems the outcome was inevitable.

Michael Venter, the interim chief executive, may well succeed where Bayer-Rosmarin failed. However, unless Optus takes the time to properly resolve systemic risk issues and bolster its governance arrangements, it should expect more trouble ahead.

Helen Bird 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 Optus chief was right to quit but real change is unlikely at the telco until bigger issues are fixed – https://theconversation.com/the-optus-chief-was-right-to-quit-but-real-change-is-unlikely-at-the-telco-until-bigger-issues-are-fixed-218109

David McBride is facing jailtime for helping reveal alleged war crimes. Will it end whistleblowing in Australia?

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Ananian-Welsh, Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland

The long-awaited trial of former Australian Defence Force lawyer David McBride was short-lived.

He stood accused of putting national security at risk by sharing confidential information with journalists, who then reported on alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.

An unexpected strategic move by the Department of Defence succeeded in withholding key documents from the ACT Supreme Court, all but dismantling McBride’s claim for whistleblower protection.

Having now pleaded guilty to unlawfully sharing classified material, what happens to McBride? And what does it say about the state of whistleblower protection laws in this country?

The end of a winding road

David McBride was charged in 2019 for disclosing secret military information to two ABC journalists.

His concerns had included Australian soldiers being sent to Afghanistan by a government he believed was more concerned with politics than the troops. Interestingly, the court heard last week McBride was also concerned about the “over-investigation” of misconduct by special forces.

Instead, that information revealed allegations of war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and a culture of cover-up in the Defence Force.

The ABC used the information to publish the Afghan Files reports. Many allegations were later supported by the inspector-general of the Australian Defence Force in the Brereton report.

That report, released in November 2020, recommended the chief of the Defence Force refer 36 matters relating to 25 incidents and involving 19 individuals to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.

So far, the only charges to have been laid as a result of these investigations are against McBride himself. A brief of evidence was also prepared against ABC journalist Dan Oakes, though the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute Oakes on public interest grounds.

It took four years for McBride’s case to get to court. Delays due to the pandemic and issues around maintaining the secrecy of classified information in court prolonged this process.

Eventually, the Department of Defence claimed public interest immunity over key information. This allows the government to withhold evidence (such as classified material) from the court on public interest grounds.

It means neither party can rely on the information.

This strategic decision meant McBride faced difficulties establishing key aspects of his whistleblower case. This included whether the information revealed relevant wrongdoing, his attempts to tell the department or police about his concerns, or whether the extent of the disclosure was necessary to establish wrongdoing.

On the other hand, the information McBride disclosed was security classified defence material that journalists were not authorised to receive. It is, therefore, not particularly surprising that he pleaded guilty to disclosure offences.

His only hope had been to avoid prosecution by grasping the shield of whistleblower protections.

What next for McBride?

McBride will now be sentenced for his offences, likely next year.

There is a chance the court will show leniency in sentencing, taking into account the demonstrated public interest in McBride’s disclosures.

This happened in the prosecution of Witness K, who conspired to reveal an alleged spying operation in East Timor during oil and gas treaty negotiations.

They were not covered by whistleblower laws because the legislation does not apply to intelligence information, and also pleaded guilty to secrecy offences.

Alternatively, the judge may not be swayed by the public interest in McBride’s disclosures and McBride could face a lengthy jail term.

The length of any jail term will depend on a number of factors, such as:

the extent of information disclosed
the deliberate nature of the disclosures
a need to deter future disclosures of classified defence information.

What does this mean for whistleblowers?

The punishment of McBride would have tragic impacts on whistleblowing in Australia.

Far from being a crime, research has identified whistleblowing as “the single most important way that wrongdoing or other problems come to light in organisations”.

Whistleblowing led not only to the Brereton report, but the Robodebt inquiry, the Banking royal commission, and Fitzgerald inquiry into police misconduct, to name but a few high profile examples.

The importance of whistleblowing has been recognised in Public Interest Disclosure Acts across Australia, protecting whistleblowers from reprisals, victimisation and prosecution.

The importance of these protections is heightened in recent years by the government’s willingness to prosecute whistleblowers such as Richard Boyle (who accused the Australian Taxation Office of using aggressive tactics to retrieve money), David McBride, and Witness K for calling out government wrongdoing.

Whistleblower protection law is not perfect. Calls for its improvement point to a need for greater consistency across private and public sector protections.

They also call for better protection for intelligence and defence whistleblowers, and supports for press freedom.

The protections are yet to be tested. McBride’s case would have been the first opportunity to see how courts interpret and apply whistleblower law.

But the government’s decision to withhold information from court stopped these laws from being tested.

It’s easy to see how the government’s reaction to McBride’s decision to blow the whistle will deter future whistleblowers, sending a bad message about transparency, accountability and the importance of calling out wrongdoing by those in positions of power.

Rebecca Ananian-Welsh receives UQ Advancement Funding.

– ref. David McBride is facing jailtime for helping reveal alleged war crimes. Will it end whistleblowing in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/david-mcbride-is-facing-jailtime-for-helping-reveal-alleged-war-crimes-will-it-end-whistleblowing-in-australia-218108

With COVID surging, should I wear a mask?

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney

COVID is on the rise again, with a peak likely over the holiday season.

Given this, health authorities in a number of Australian states have recommended people start wearing masks again. In Western Australia, masks have been made mandatory in high-risk areas of public hospitals, while they’ve similarly been reintroduced in health-care settings in other parts of the country.

Hospitals and aged care facilities are definitely the first places where masks need to be reinstated during an epidemic. But authorities are differing in their recommendations currently. Calls to mask up, particularly in the wider community, have not been unanimous.

So amid rising COVID cases, should you be wearing a mask?

COVID is still a threat

Unfortunately, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) has not mutated into just a trivial cold.

As well as causing symptoms in the initial phase – which can be especially serious for people who are vulnerable – the virus can lead to chronic illness in people of any age and health status due to its ability to affect blood vessels, the heart, lungs, brain and immune system.

COVID and its ongoing effects are contributing to substantial disability in society. Loss of productivity due to long COVID is affecting workforce and economies.

While public messaging to “live with COVID” has seemingly encouraged us to move on from the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has other ideas. It has continued to mutate, become more contagious, and to evade the protection offered by vaccines.

COVID is not endemic, but is an epidemic virus like influenza or measles, so we can expect waves to keep coming. With this in mind, it’s definitely worth protecting yourself – particularly when cases are rising.

What can we do to protect ourselves?

We know SARS-CoV-2 transmits through the air we breathe. We also know a lot of the transmission risk is from people without symptoms, so you can’t tell who around you is infectious. This provides a strong rationale for universal masking during periods of high transmission.

The need is highest in hospitals where thousands of unsuspecting patients have caught COVID during the course of the pandemic and hundreds have died as a result in Victoria alone. Aged care facilities are similarly vulnerable.

Masks do work. A Cochrane review suggesting they don’t was flawed and subject to an apology.

Masks work equally by protecting others and protecting you. By visualising human exhalations too tiny to see with the naked eye, my colleagues and I showed how masks prevent outward emissions and how each layer of a mask improves this.

The most protective kind of mask is a respirator or N95, but any mask protects more than no mask.

Wearing a mask when visiting health-care or aged-care facilities is important. Wearing a mask at the shops, on public transport and in other crowded indoor settings will improve your chances of having a COVID-free Christmas.

What about vaccines?

Although the virus’ evolution has challenged vaccines, they remain very important. Boosters will improve protection because vaccine immunity wanes and new mutations make older vaccines less effective.

In May 2023 the World Health Organization outlined why monovalent boosters matched to a single current circulating strain gives better protection than the old bivalent boosters (which target two strains). The XBB boosters are available in the United States, but not yet here.

Testing and treatment will also help. There are effective antivirals for COVID, but you cannot get them without a COVID test, and testing rates are very low. Having some RAT tests on hand means you can quickly isolate and get antivirals if indicated.

Finally, safe indoor air is key. Remember that SARS-CoV-2 spreads silently, mainly by inhaling contaminated air. Opening a window or using an air purifier can significantly reduce your risk, especially in crowded indoor settings like schools. A multi-layered strategy of vaccines, masks, safe indoor air, testing and treatment will help us navigate this COVID wave.

C Raina MacIntyre receives funding from mask manufacturer Detmold for testing of their masks and is on an advisory board for mask manufacturer Ascend. She receives funding from Sanofi for investigator-driven influenza research, and from NHMRC and MRFF. She has been an expert advisor for Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) In the matter of a proceeding under the Labour Relations Act, 1995 between ONA and Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation.

– ref. With COVID surging, should I wear a mask? – https://theconversation.com/with-covid-surging-should-i-wear-a-mask-217902

ABC chief is right: impartiality is paramount when reporting the Israel-Gaza war

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

On November 17, the ABC’s editor-in-chief and managing director, David Anderson, was interviewed on Radio 774, the ABC’s local station in Melbourne, about criticisms of the national broadcaster’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.

The interview followed a well-publicised meeting nine days earlier at which ABC journalists raised a range of concerns about the organisation’s coverage. These included the extent to which the ABC was relying on talking points supplied by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and the alleged unwillingness of the ABC to use terms such as “invasion”, “occupation”, “genocide”, “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” when discussing Israeli government policy.

Concern was also reportedly expressed about what was said to be a blanket ban on the use of the word “Palestine”, with journalists from Muslim and Arab backgrounds saying there was a perception in their communities that the ABC was too pro-Israel.

It was also reported that senior managers acknowledged they had removed a specialist verification team because of the impact that work was having on staff. Instead, they were relying on ad-hoc advice from former Middle East correspondents.

David Anderson addressed many of these concerns in the Radio 774 interview.

In particular, he said while the ABC did include terms such as “genocide” and “apartheid” in reports of statements made by others, it was not prepared to adopt them itself.

Genocide is a claim that’s being made. It’s a serious crime. It’s an allegation of a crime. The IDF and Israel reject that. Same with apartheid. We’ll report other people’s use of that. We won’t use it ourselves.

On the issue of alleged over-reliance on the IDF, Anderson was more equivocal. He said he wasn’t sure that was the case, but pointed out the difficulty of verifying material coming out of the war. “I think we’re trying to verify as much as we can.”

In terms of alienating local communities whose people are involved in the conflict, he said it came with the journalistic territory:

We know that there are some people who will be offended by reporting one perspective or another. It’s our job and what’s enshrined in our charter. We don’t pick sides.

This response has generated a good deal of heat on social media, including an allegation that Anderson is acting out of fear by the stance he has taken on the use of the terms such as genocide and apartheid.

At the heart of this discussion is one of the fundamental tenets of professional journalism: impartiality in news reporting, which includes the separation of news from opinion.

Impartiality is not the product of fear: it is the very reverse. It is the product of courageous efforts to be accurate, fair, balanced, open-minded, and unconflicted by personal interest, especially in the face of unrelenting pressure and highly charged emotions. It takes guts.

It takes guts because when damaging facts or allegations are reported, partisan interests affected negatively will accuse the journalist or the platform of favouring the other side. In no area of journalism is this more insistently demonstrated than in the reporting of the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yet impartiality requires that important facts, once verified, be reported regardless of the anticipated blow-back. The same applies to serious allegations for which there is credible evidence.

Verification is foundational to accuracy. But in today’s world, journalists must navigate a landscape where fakery and misrepresentation have become not just art forms in images and text, but political dynamite. War makes the verification challenge even harder because of the combined effects of secrecy, confusion and the opportunities for propaganda.

In addition to accuracy, impartiality requires that the language used should be calibrated to a fair portrayal of events, and that a story should achieve balance by following the weight of evidence.

The question of evidence brings us to yet another fundamental principle, both of law and of journalistic ethics: the strength of the evidence required to support an allegation must be commensurate with the gravity of the allegation. In law it is called the Briginshaw principle. Getting that kind of evidence in the midst of war is difficult, but the imperatives of impartiality require that those accused should at least have the opportunity to reply.

A third challenge in stories where the nation has taken a clear position, as Australia has in its support for Israel, is that there is always pressure to report in ways that support the official narrative. Sometimes that pressure comes from within a media organisation, sometimes from outside and sometimes from both. It can become insidious, almost subconscious.

To partisans, these might all seem like pussyfooting abstractions. But from a journalist’s perspective they lie at the heart of good professional practice, and Anderson’s approach as outlined in his interview was that of an editor-in-chief striving for impartiality and prepared to endure the backlashes that come with it.

Without independent evidence, the ABC is right not to adopt for itself terms such as “genocide” and “apartheid”, but equally it is right to report others making such allegations. These highly contested and emotive terms are often used for their rhetorical power, which is the province of partisans but not of journalists seeking to be impartial.

Impartiality matters because it provides the bedrock of reliable information people need if they are to make up their own minds free of the manipulation that results when news reporting is tainted by partisanship. That is why it is built into the ABC charter and why Anderson is right in his determination to uphold it.

Denis Muller 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. ABC chief is right: impartiality is paramount when reporting the Israel-Gaza war – https://theconversation.com/abc-chief-is-right-impartiality-is-paramount-when-reporting-the-israel-gaza-war-218100

View from The Hill: Albanese should come clean about what he did or didn’t say to Xi Jinping about sonar incident

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

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

The incident last Tuesday in which Australian sailors suffered minor injuries from sonar pulses from a Chinese destroyer couldn’t have come at a worse time for Anthony Albanese.

He’d just finished a very successful trip to Beijing. He was about to again meet President Xi Jinping at APEC in the United States late in the week. The incident was potentially serious in terms of unsettled a much improved relationship.

The HMAS Toowoomba’s sailors had been undertaking the harmless task of unravelling fishing nets from around the ship’s propellers. The vessel was in international waters inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone on its way to a port. It had been supporting United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

The Chinese destroyer had been warned about the divers, but acted anyway.

There were two issues for Albanese: whether to raise the matter with Xi (assuming the President didn’t bring it up) and whether to indicate publicly he had done so.
We don’t know whether he raised it, because his office and ministerial colleagues won’t answer this question. There has been no opportunity to question him since his return at the weekend.

It seems obvious he should have discussed the matter with Xi. He has repeated endlessly that “we will disagree when we must” with China.

Not to canvass the incident would be a cop-out from this formula. It would carry the message that Australia, having established more positive relations with China – to the great benefit of our trade – was now unwilling to be forthright because it did not want to risk setting things back.

The Australian government was careful not to announce the incident until after Albanese was on his way home. The timing was diplomatic.

Then-Acting Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on Saturday the government had expressed “serious concerns” to the Chinese government, and described the Chinese vessel’s conduct as “unsafe and unprofessional”.

If Albanese did raise the incident, why not say so? Again, only to avoid offending the Chinese and that’s unacceptable.

The government points to Marles’s statement and claims that meant the matter was dealt with at the appropriate level.

This might be convincing if it hadn’t been for the fact Albanese was actually meeting Xi.

The silence is also being defended on the basis of this being a private meeting. This won’t wash either. When the PM and President met in Beijing Albanese gave a very detailed read-out of the encounter, even down to the jokes.

On Monday morning Albanese tweeted a picture showing he was back working with the team. Members of that team appearing in the media have been left intoning the unconvincing talking points.

Albanese should clarify whether he or not he talked about the incident – not just in the name of transparency but to demonstrate that the government’s China policy is as robust as he says. Not to mention that it would be of passing interest to know what the President said, if the matter was in fact one of the topics of their discussion.

Michelle Grattan 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. View from The Hill: Albanese should come clean about what he did or didn’t say to Xi Jinping about sonar incident – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-albanese-should-come-clean-about-what-he-did-or-didnt-say-to-xi-jinping-about-sonar-incident-218115

Concern for the Great Barrier Reef can inspire climate action – but the way we talk about it matters

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yolanda Lee Waters, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

There’s no doubt you’ve heard the Great Barrier Reef is under pressure. The main culprit? Climate change. The main solution? An urgent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a shift away from fossil fuels.

Those who promote action to protect the reef therefore have a difficult task. How do we encourage more people to take action on climate change? Whether it’s reducing reliance on fossil fuels in our personal lives, or asking our government to transition from fossil fuels to renewables, what do people need to know, and how do we say it in a way that makes a difference?

Researchers in climate change communication have been grappling with these questions for decades. But we have something other communicators don’t – the reef itself.

In our new research we used experiments to show what many divers, tourism operators and local communities have known for decades – the wonder of the Great Barrier Reef inspires climate action. But it doesn’t just magically happen. The way we talk about it matters.

Underwater view of a bumpy outcrop of coral higher than the surrounding platform of reef — A ‘coral bommie’ or outcrop of coral rising above its surrounds on the Great Barrier Reef.
Yolanda Waters

What’s happening on the Great Barrier Reef?

Earlier this year the Bureau of Meteorology officially announced an El Niño weather event, which has already begun to bring hotter than average temperatures to much of Australia. But while Australia braces for a scorcher on land this summer, those working on the Great Barrier Reef are preparing for a marine heatwave.

The marine equivalent of bushfires, heat is set to wreak havoc on marine ecosystems all around Australia. For the Great Barrier Reef, this means increased risk of mass coral bleaching.

These events have occurred four times in recent years (2016, 2017, 2020 and 2022). Scientists expect mass coral bleaching will happen every year if we do not urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

But while the science around the Great Barrier Reef is clear, the way we talk about it isn’t.

Different messages about the reef

We are constantly flooded with all kinds of information about the Great Barrier Reef. This can make it tricky for people to understand what is going on and what they can do to help.

Some communicators convey a sense of urgency by emphasising the “reef is dying”. Others warn against the use of apocalyptic-style messages, suggesting fear is an ineffective tool for motivating action. These commentators suggest stories of resilience, restoration and recovery can strengthen motivation and hope. But what really works? How do we talk about the reef in a way that motivates action?

A partially submerged diver on the Great Barrier Reef, holding aloft a yellow sign bearing the words 'Climate Action NOW' — Stronger action on climate change is needed to protect vulnerable and iconic places like the Great Barrier Reef.
Yolanda Waters

Which messages work? An experiment

To find out how best to inspire action, we provided 1,452 Australians with one of eight different messages about climate change and/or the Great Barrier Reef. We then looked at which messages were most likely to increase engagement in a range of climate actions.

We found climate messages focusing on the reef were more effective than generic climate messages, compared to a control that included an unrelated message or no message at all.

This suggests the reef itself is a valuable tool for motivating climate action. This was particularly true when we emphasised our collective potential to protect the reef, using language such as “together we can”, and asked people to take action by using their voice. That is, letting their friends, families and politicians know they support stronger action on climate change.

We also found sadness is a necessary ingredient, and there is no need to shy away from the reality of coral bleaching or fear provoking negative emotions. When exploring why these messages focusing on the reef were more effective, we found the effect was largely due to feelings related to sadness, worry and anxiety.

But here’s the rub. For reef messages to work, we found they must include tangible, specific and relevant calls to action. In other words, highlighting the reef is the hook, but we need to show people what they can do to help.

Infographic comparing different climate messages and calls to action from the research — Reef messages were most effective when they focused on social and political actions.
Yolanda Waters

Preparing for a hot reef summer

We can’t control the heatwaves or the headlines coming this summer, but we can do our best to leverage this opportunity to motivate widespread action for the reef.

Here’s how you can talk about the reef this summer:

highlight the iconic nature of the reef and how it is a part of who we are
emphasise collective and motivational language (such as “together we can”) instead of personal and restrictive language (such as “you can reduce”)
state the problem (including the cause – burning fossil fuels) but don’t focus too much on explaining the threat. It’s time to talk about action
avoid broad policy statements such as “to protect the reef, we need to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees” unless they are followed by more specific calls to action
include very specific calls to action. People want to know exactly what you want them to do. Examples include encouraging people to commit to finding ways to reduce their personal carbon footprint, join a climate action group, or have a conversation about climate change with at least one family member or friend
be careful, too many calls to action can be overwhelming. Aim to give one to three options – a mix of easy and difficult actions tends to work best.

Of course, don’t forget to remind people they don’t need to live near the reef to make a difference – people can demand and support climate action from anywhere.

Yolanda Lee Waters is affiliated with Divers for Climate.

Angela Dean receives funding from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for projects related to monitoring reef stewardship actions.

– ref. Concern for the Great Barrier Reef can inspire climate action – but the way we talk about it matters – https://theconversation.com/concern-for-the-great-barrier-reef-can-inspire-climate-action-but-the-way-we-talk-about-it-matters-216992

The rule of law is fundamental to a free society – so why don’t NZ courts always uphold it?

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allan Beever, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology

Ever since the 17th century, the rule of law has been regarded as one of the fundamental values of a free society. It means you cannot be forced to do something unless there is a law requiring you to do it.

It also means people in power can coerce you only if there is a rule justifying it. This is the opposite of the “rule of persons”, in which the rulers have arbitrary power: they have the authority to force you to do things simply because they think those things should be done.

In free societies, the courts are the chief institution tasked with upholding the rule of law. It is their job to police government and other officials, to make sure they act only in accordance with the law.

But no one polices the courts. If they uphold the rule of law in their own decisions, that’s fine. But increasingly often, they don’t. And this raises important questions about how we want to be governed as a society.

The role of judges

Take, for example, the law of negligence. This is an area of law that allows one person to sue another for injuries that have been carelessly inflicted. To work, the law requires a test that will tell us when a person can sue.

The current approach reads like a set of rules, but basically comes down to two steps: a judge needs to consider everything that relates to the relationship between the parties; and the judge then needs to consider everything else.

In the end, then, the “rule” is to consider everything. It is surely clear that this not really a rule. It is rather an open discretion pretending to be a rule.

Consider also the law of trusts. This is a difficult and technical area of the law, but we can describe what the New Zealand courts have permitted in simple terms.

Imagine you own some property that I am looking after. I then enter into a relationship. My partner helps me look after the property. Eventually, our relationship breaks down and she wants some reward for the work she has done.

She may well be entitled to reward from me, but the courts in this country have dealt with this problem by allowing partners to claim part ownership of the property (as happened in the case of Murrell v Hamilton in 2014, for example).

The problem is this violates fundamental principles of property law. You owned the house from the beginning. How, then, can what went on in my relationship mean my partner came to own what was your property?

The ‘rule of persons’

That this was possible saw one leading legal commentator observe that, “in effect theft was being sanctioned by the courts”.

Why has this happened? Because, although the rules of property law would not permit it, the judges think the outcome is fair. If this is not the “rule of persons”, what is?

There are other examples, but one more will suffice. Imagine I do something horrible to you. If it’s a crime, I can be punished by the criminal law. But the courts have also said that if you sue me, a court may impose a monetary punishment on me that will go to you (effectively a fine).

When will such punishment be justified? Some leading New Zealand judges, including the previous chief justice, have said this punishment is justified not on the basis of some rule, but when a judge finds my behaviour to be sufficiently outrageous. (See, for example, the cases of Bottrill v A from 2001 or Couch v AG from 2010).

In other words, the position is that I can be punished if a judge thinks I behaved badly enough. Could it be any clearer this is the rule of persons and not the rule of law?

Rule by experts

The judges who advanced this view were outvoted by the other judges who presided in those cases. But it would be wrong to conclude all is well. As another recent case showed, the idea remains attractive to judges.

Why does this matter? The rule of law has been under pressure for about a hundred years. As I explain in my recent book, Freedom under the Private Law, society has become increasingly technocratic during this period, and the experts who govern it often prefer to do what seems right to them, rather than follow established rules.

It may not be surprising, then, if judges have come to see themselves similarly. But if the rule of law in our courts goes, where does it leave us? We will be ruled, rather than ruling ourselves, and this fundamental pillar of our liberty will be gone.

Allan Beever 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 rule of law is fundamental to a free society – so why don’t NZ courts always uphold it? – https://theconversation.com/the-rule-of-law-is-fundamental-to-a-free-society-so-why-dont-nz-courts-always-uphold-it-217556

How can you define a ‘drug’? Nobody really knows

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic University

What’s a medical drug? Ask someone on the street and they’re likely to tell you it’s the kind of thing you take when you’re unwell.

This understanding is wrong, as we will see. But after a thorough investigation, my colleagues and I found no other potential definitions are any better.

Despite their centrality to medicine, we have no idea what medical drugs are. We can’t even tell the difference between drugs and food, let alone drugs and so-called “natural” alternatives.

A Goldilocks definition

In a recent article in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, my colleagues (Sara Linton, a pharmacist, and Maureen O’Malley, a philosopher of biology) and I tried to nail down a viable definition of medical drugs.

A viable definition should be broad enough to include everything classified as a drug. To get a sense of this “everything”, we used the drug bank compiled by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, which lists more than 16,000 substances.

A definition should also be narrow enough to exclude substances not typically considered drugs. Take food, for example. Eating a sandwich is usually never thought of as taking a drug.

In short, a viable definition of what drugs are should occupy a “Goldilocks” zone between these two demands: big enough to include all drugs, small enough to exclude everything else.

Based on an initial study of pharmacology textbooks, we found three broad ways to define drugs: in terms of what they are, how they work and what they’re used for.

Unfortunately, none of these options fall within the Goldilocks zone.

Are drugs specific chemicals?

If all drugs were a particular type of chemical, then defining drugs would be easy. But this idea is hopeless: there is nothing, chemically speaking, all drugs have in common.

It is also tempting to think drugs are “artificial” chemicals, made in a lab, whereas “natural” supplements come from nature, and that’s the difference.

But many drugs are “natural” in this sense. Aspirin, for instance, is derived from willow bark.

This has immediate implications for so-called “natural” supplements, such as fish oil.

If “drugs” are chemically indistinguishable from “natural” supplements, supplements should not be considered a “safe” alternative. Supplements are no less, and no more, safe than many drugs.

Do drugs perform a specific function?

Perhaps drugs can be defined in terms of what they do. This idea initially seems promising, as many drugs work by binding to receptor molecules in the body.

Think of a lock and key: the receptor molecule is the lock, and the drug is the key that opens it.

The discovery of receptor molecules is significant. For some, it is the “big idea” of the science of pharmacology.

But this definition of medical drugs is also hopeless. Many drugs don’t bind to receptors. Antacids, for instance, work simply by changing the level of acidity (pH) in a person’s body.

Many placebos also bind to receptors. Placebos are often contrasted with drugs, but defining drugs as “things that bind to receptor molecules” would include many placebos in the definition. So this definition won’t work either.

Is there a way to define placebos that clearly distinguishes them from drugs? This is not obvious, since defining placebos is also quite hard.

For instance, one might think placebos are substances that have no therapeutic effects. But placebos can have therapeutic effects (the so-called placebo effect), so this definition won’t work. A number of other definitions face similar problems.

Our research paves the way toward an explanation of why it is so hard to define placebos. To properly define placebos, we need to differentiate them from drugs, which we can’t do without a definition of what drugs are.

Drugs make me better

This brings us back to wellness. On this view, a medical drug is just any chemical substance used in medical treatment.

This does better: it captures the full range of substances used as drugs in medical contexts.

But now there is absolutely no hope of keeping food and nutrients out.

Consider, for example, total parenteral nutrition. This is a chemical infusion given to people who have trouble absorbing nutrients in the normal way.

Total parenteral nutrition is used in medical treatment. But what it does for your body isn’t really different from what a good sandwich does.

Any treatment-based account of drugs inevitably wipes out the contrast with food.

So what?

In our day-to-day lives, we make choices that rely on an implicit understanding of what drugs are.

For instance, we take paracetamol because it is a drug. Many of us may also take fish oil precisely because we believe it isn’t a drug.

Without an account of what drugs are, we risk making serious mistakes.

We might take substances we think are “inert” (placebos) because they are “natural” (like fish oil) when in fact they are active drugs.

Similarly, all legal regulation of medical drugs assumes we already know what a drug is.

But we don’t: our understanding is clearly evolving. This means regulation must also continually change. Substantial resources must therefore be devoted to reworking legislation as we continue to rethink what medical drugs are, as the recent reclassification of MDMA and psilocybin as medicines in Australia demonstrates.

Then there’s food. Food is not administered or regulated like a drug in a hospital, with the exception of total parenteral nutrition and similar substances.

But if doctors use food like a drug to contribute to patient wellbeing, then perhaps it should be subject to the same standards.

This may require radically rethinking the way meals are provided in a hospital. Perhaps meals should be administered, and regulated, with the same care as drugs.

Hospital lunches might never be the same. But that could be a good thing.

Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. How can you define a ‘drug’? Nobody really knows – https://theconversation.com/how-can-you-define-a-drug-nobody-really-knows-216540

A royal commission won’t help the abuse of Aboriginal kids. Indigenous-led solutions will

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah McGlade, Associate professor, Curtin University

This article mentions violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children. There are also mentions of racial discrimination, sexual abuse, and death.

The Voice referendum was an important rallying cry for recognition of Indigenous rights in 2023. This, and the Uluru Statement from the Heart called for Australians to engage with critical issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that too often are neglected.

Instead, during the Voice campaign we witnessed a revival of racism that has long tarnished our nation.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Senator Nampijinpa Jacinta Price, two main figures who vocally opposed the Voice, have turned their attention to the very serious issue of Aboriginal child sexual abuse. Shortly after the referendum defeat, they attempted to pass a senate motion for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. This has been rejected by parliament.

More than 100 Aboriginal organisations and leaders also rejected the motion, questioning its motives.

They also expressed this motion was fuelling stereotypes about Indigenous peoples that were pushed throughout the referendum campaign.

We are Aboriginal women researchers with decades of experience in advocacy and law reform in violence against women and children. As academics and community members with lived experience we want to raise awareness from an ethical and informed position. Given our experience we agree the federal parliament was right to reject the motion by Senator Price calling for a Royal Commission.

Victims’ experiences are often complex and traumatic, even more so when the victim is a child from a marginalised community. Aboriginal child sexual abuse must be addressed responsibly. This issue should never be weaponised or politicised.

Aboriginal children are at risk

Sexual abuse of Aboriginal children is underlined by wider societal factors. These include racism, violence to women, intergenerational trauma, poverty, inequality, and disadvantage.

The Closing the Gap dashboard shows Indigenous children experience sexual assault at a rate of 2.7 per 1,000 children compared to 0.5 per 1,000 for non-Indigenous children. These numbers are based on reports made to child protective services.

Research indicates children are often sexually assaulted by persons known to them and their families, and offenders may be Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal. There are many barriers for young Aboriginal victims being able to report to authorities, such as fear of repercussion.

Experiences of racism also contribute to a lack of trust in child protection and policing authorities, due to historical and ongoing issues with these bodies.

The harm of racist public debates

The wider failure of the legal system to address sexual assault is now the subject of a national inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission. It aims to strengthen sexual assault laws and the criminal justice response, and examine how to prevent further harm for victims.

The serious failures of the criminal justice system to address sexual abuse against Aboriginal children, and the prevalence of racism in the criminal justice system, are well documented.

Aboriginal children already have to deal with racism and discrimination. This has been even worse with the Voice to Parliament referendum.

We have seen how racist perceptions of Aboriginal people and their communities can lead to harmful policies and practices. We have experienced this with the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention, the over-representation of our kids in out-of-home care and detention, resulting in children’s deaths.

Laws and policies like these are underlined by racist assumptions. They have further diminished Indigenous peoples’ rights, agency, leadership and even ability to protect our own children. Making broad claims that denigrate Aboriginal families and communities as dysfunctional or predatory, is dangerous and harmful to our communities, including children.

The call for a royal commission would not address these issues, what we need is self-determination in Aboriginal child protection.

Indigenous-led solutions are the only way forward

Many inquiries and reports have made important recommendations about how best to address sexual abuse against Aboriginal children. These include the Gordon Inquiry, the Little Children are Sacred inquiry and the Child Sexual Abuse Taskforce.

These recommendations include:

community decision-making in responses to problems, recognising their diversity and needs
responding to harms of violence through meaningful partnerships between Indigenous communities and sectors
consistent and appropriate long-term funding – acknowledging that trauma of violence and its associated social implications can remain long after any physical impacts have healed
strengthening the capacity of workforces to be responsive to the harms of violence against women – recognising that if a victim’s first point of contact is negative, the implications are significant.

Too many of these important recommendations have not been implemented and given effect by governments.

What needs to happen

Aboriginal women have long called for Healing Centres and culturally-informed therapeutic approaches to Aboriginal family and domestic violence for women, children and families, while ensuring their safety. In our research, we have also looked at international examples of Indigenous-led models addressing child sexual abuse.

The first dedicated plan of action to address violence towards Indigenous women and children resulted from Aboriginal women’s collective leadership and advocacy. This was alongside the work of Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar on the Wiyi Yani Yu Thangani project. Wiyu Yani Yu Thangani calls for reforms to increase the protection of Aboriginal children, especially women and girls, and to support community-controlled organisations in doing this.

Aboriginal women also led advocacy for the development of The Stand Alone First Nations Plan. This plan aims to address violence against First Nations women and children. In its creation, it centres the voices of First Nations children at risk of sexual abuse. It is now a commitment of government, with $4.1 million now allocated to its work.

But we must also begin to address the issue of racism in this country. According to a 2022 Human Rights Commission report, 52% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reported at least one incident of prejudiced behaviour in the last six months. This is consistent with other research indicating high levels of racism towards Aboriginal people, such as the finding that three out of four non-Aboriginal Australians hold prejudice towards Aboriginal people.

Racism – even “unconscious” racism against Aboriginal people can reinforce harmful stereotypes that seek to justify dangerous policies against those most vulnerable. Aboriginal children are already dealing with the added pressures of racism and witnessing the negative treatment of their communities.

The Human Rights Commission has undertaken a scoping report to commence the work of an anti-racism framework. There have also recently been moves to speed up the anti-racism strategy, because of rising racism sparked by the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Increasing safety for Aboriginal children requires genuine and respectful relationships between governments and our communities. There needs to be dialogue, sustainable actions, resources and accountability to achieve results.

Australia has a long history of denying and turning a blind eye to racism, despite the harm it brings to Aboriginal children. The political debates and rising racism this year has shown just how far we have to go.

Addressing racism is critical to improving the lives of Aboriginal children. Their lives matter, and weaponising Aboriginal children to promote harmful political agendas must end.

Kyllie Cripps receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Government and State Governments to conduct research and evaluations. Details related to this are on her public profiles.

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

– ref. A royal commission won’t help the abuse of Aboriginal kids. Indigenous-led solutions will – https://theconversation.com/a-royal-commission-wont-help-the-abuse-of-aboriginal-kids-indigenous-led-solutions-will-216526

TikTok has a startling amount of sexual content – and it’s way too easy for children to access

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonja Petrovic, Assistant Lecturer in Media and Communications, The University of Melbourne

Explicit content has long been a feature of the internet and social media, and young people’s exposure to it has been a persistent concern.

This issue has taken centre stage again with the meteoric rise of TikTok. Despite efforts to moderate content, it seems TikTok’s primary focus remains on maximising user engagement and traffic, rather than creating a safe environment for users.

As the top social media app used by teens, the presence of explicit content on TikTok can put young users in harm’s way. And while TikTok and regulators scramble to catch up with moderation needs, it’s ultimately up to parents and users to navigate these harms online.

TikTok’s content moderation maze

TikTok relies on both automated and human moderation to identify and remove content violating its community guidelines. This includes nudity, pornography, sexually explicit content, non-consensual sexual acts, the sharing of non-consensual intimate imagery and sexual solicitation. TikTok’s community guidelines say:

We do not allow seductive performances or allusions to sexual activity by young people, or the use of sexually explicit narratives by anyone.

However, Tiktok’s automated moderation system isn’t always precise. This means beneficial material such as LGBTQ+ content and healthy sex education content may be incorrectly removed while explicit, harmful content slips through the cracks.

Although TikTok has a human review process to compensate for algorithmic shortcomings, this is slow and time-consuming, which causes delays. Young people may be exposed to explicit and harmful content before it is removed.

Content moderation is further complicated by user tactics such as “algospeak”, which is used to avoid triggering algorithmic filters put in place to detect inappropriate content. In this case, algospeak may involve using internet slang, codes, euphemisms or emojis to replace words and phrases commonly associated with explicit content.

Many users also resort to algospeak because they feel TikTok’s algorithmic moderation is biased and unfair to marginalised communities. Users have reported on a double standard, wherein TikTok has suppressed educational content related to the LGBTQ+ community, while allowing harmful content to remain visible.

Harmful content slips through the cracks

TikTok’s guidelines on sexually explicit stories and sexualised posing are ambiguous. And its age-verification process relies on self-reported age, which users can easily bypass.

Many TikTok creators, including creators of pornography, use the platform to promote themselves and their content on other platforms such as PornHub or OnlyFans. For example, creator @jennyxrated posts suggestive and hypersexual content. She calls herself a “daddy’s girl” and presents as younger than she is.

Such content is popular on TikTok. It promotes unhealthy attitudes to sex and consent and perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes, such as suggesting women should be submissive to men.

Young boys struggling with mental health issues and loneliness are particularly vulnerable to “incel” rhetoric and misogynistic views amplified through TikTok. Controversial figures such as Andrew Tate and Russell Hartley continue to be promoted by algorithms, driving traffic and supporting TikTok’s commercial interests.

According to Business Insider, videos featuring Tate had been viewed more than 13 billion times as of August 2022. This content continues to circulate even though Tate has been banned.

Self-proclaimed men’s rights advocates centre their content on anti-feminist discourse, hyper-masculinity and hierarchical gender roles. What may seem like memes and “entertainment” can desensitise young boys to rape culture, domestic violence and toxic masculinity.

TikTok’s promotion of idealistic and sexualised content is also harmful for the self-perception of young women and queer youth. This content portrays unrealistic body standards, which leads to comparison, increased body dissatisfaction and a higher risk of developing eating disorders.

Empowering sex education

Due to its popularity, TikTok offers a unique opportunity to help spread educational content about sex. Doctors and gynaecologists use hashtags such as #obgyn to share content about sexual health, including topics such as consent, contraception and stigmas around sex.

Dr Ali, for instance, educates young women about periods and birth control, and is an advocate for women of colour. Sriha Srinivasan promotes sex education for high-school students and discusses sex myths, consent, STIs, periods and reproductive justice.

Milly Evans is a queer, non-binary, autistic sex-ed content creator who uses TikTok to advocate for inclusive sex education. They cover topics such as domestic abuse, consent in queer relationships, gender and sexual identities, body-safe sex toys and trans and non-binary rights.

These are just some examples of how TikTok can be a space for informative, inclusive and sex-positive content. However, such content may not receive the same engagement as more lewd and attention-grabbing videos since, like most social media apps, TikTok is optimised for engagement.

A bird’s eye view

Social media platforms face significant challenges in moderating harmful content effectively. Relying on platforms to self-regulate isn’t enough, so regulatory bodies need to step in.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has taken an active role by providing guidelines and resources for parents and users, and by pressuring platforms such as TikTok to remove harmful content. They’re also leading the way in addressing AI-generated child sex abuse material on social media.

When it comes to TikTok, our efforts should be poured into equipping young users with media literacy skills that can help keep them safe.

For children under 13, it’s up to parents to decide whether they allow access. It’s worth noting TikTok itself has an age limit of 13 years, and Common Sense Media doesn’t encourage use by children under 15. If parents do decide to allow access for a child under 13, they should actively monitor the child’s activity.

While restricting apps’ use might seem like a quick fix, our research has found social media restrictions can strain parent-child relationships. Parents are better off taking proactive steps such as having open discussions, building trust, and educating themselves and their children about online risk.

The Conversation reached out to TikTok for comment but did not receive a response before the deadline.

Milovan Savic receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sonja Petrovic 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. TikTok has a startling amount of sexual content – and it’s way too easy for children to access – https://theconversation.com/tiktok-has-a-startling-amount-of-sexual-content-and-its-way-too-easy-for-children-to-access-216114

49 women have been killed in Australia so far in 2023 as a result of violence. Are we actually making any progress?

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family & Sexual Violence, RMIT University

As of November 17, 49 women have been killed in Australia this year as a result of violence; 28 were allegedly killed at the hands of a male intimate or ex-intimate partner. That’s according to the activist project Counting Dead Women Australia, which collects these figures based on media-reported crimes.

The Commonwealth government’s recent Outcomes Framework identifies key targets that need to be met if we are to end violence against women in “one generation”, as set out in the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022–2032.

The targets include:

25% annual reductions in women being killed by intimate partners
improved understanding of violence against women and support for gender equality in the community
halving the rate of all forms of domestic/family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children by 2031, as progress towards zero.

Yet, Indigenous women in Australia are eight times more likely than non-Indigenous women to be murdered. Overall, one woman is killed by an intimate partner every two weeks in Australia.

There is no doubt violence against women has gained critical public and policy attention. But sometimes it can feel as though the problem is growing and that nothing we are doing is working to stop it.

So how much progress are we actually making?

What the data show: the good news

Any preventable death is one too many, and zero homicides of any person should be our ultimate goal. Yet data from the National Homicide Monitoring Program show a reduction in intimate partner homicide in particular.

For example, in the most recent report, 25 females were killed by an intimate partner (2020-21). That’s a 31% reduction in one year from 2019-20, when 36 females were killed by an intimate partner. In 2016-17, 40 females were killed by an intimate partner, so the reduction over five years to 2020-21 is about 38%.

While the rates vary year-to-year, the good news is that the overall trend over the past decade shows intimate partner homicide is in steady decline.

Another critical measure of violence against women is the Personal Safety Survey (PSS). This is the most accurate measure of self-reported experiences of all forms of personal violence in Australia.

Conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics since 2005, the fourth wave was released earlier this year. While we often hear the lifetime prevalence rates of violence against women, it is changes in rates of violence experienced during the past 12 months that are most sensitive to current policies and programs. This means they are most useful for monitoring a decrease over time.

The survey shows rates of total partner violence, including both physical and sexual violence, have reduced. Overall, the 12-month partner violence rate decreased significantly, from 2.3% in the 12 months prior to the last survey (in 2016) to 1.5% during 2021-2022. The rate of cohabiting partner violence over the past two years has either decreased or not changed in all states of Australia (NT and ACT not reported).

Rates of sexual harassment in the most recent survey (2021-22) were also the lowest they’ve ever been in every state and territory. And there was a significant reduction in the national 12-month rate of sexual harassment to 12.6% in 2021-22 compared to 17.3% in 2016.

As a community, we are also hearing more about the truth of violence against women. This does seem to be improving our knowledge and attitudes. The Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) survey of Australian community attitudes towards violence against women (NCAS) identified that understanding and rejection of violence against women has been increasing over the past 12 years.

Where do we have the most work to do?

As mentioned, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander women experience violence at higher rates than non-Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander women. Available national data tell us that, despite comprising less than 3% of the population, Indigenous women have consistently experienced higher rates of homicide than non-Indigenous women since 2005–2006. The average rate is eight times higher than for non-Indigenous women.

Professor Kyllie Cripps’ coronial records investigation into 151 Indigenous women killed over the past two decades due to intimate partner violence by Indigenous and non-Indigenous men further found that almost all had sought help from the police but did not receive the support that could have saved their lives.

Alarmingly, national data on unsolved missing persons cases highlight that Indigenous women represent up to 10% of cases. This is significant, as many are presumed dead.

When these data are coupled with statistics highlighting the disproportionate rate at which Indigenous women are hospitalised for assault-related injuries (32 times higher than for non-Indigenous women), there is clearly much work to be done in this area.

Our national datasets do not routinely report on the specific experiences of Indigenous women. This makes it difficult to know if there have been reductions in intimate partner and family violence in recent years.

But statistics alone do not articulate the complexity of these women’s stories and the systemic challenges they have encountered. This requires more in-depth research and engagement with Indigenous communities to appreciate risk, and how that translates into intervention and prevention strategies.

The Senate Inquiry into Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children and the dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan are investments in building evidence to better understand the systemic issues and ultimately end the pervasive family, domestic and sexual violence in communities across the nation.

A further issue raised by the available data is the persistent rate of sexual assault in the Australian community. The 12-month prevalence rate from the last Personal Safety Survey showed no significant change in sexual assault or threatened sexual assault, a trend that has remained steady since 2005.

Further, the most recent national survey of Australian community attitudes towards violence against women (NCAS) identified that overall, four in ten Australians mistrust women’s reports of sexual violence. This suggests we still have a way to go to better educate and inform people about the reality of sexual assault and to support women in reporting it.

There has been a welcome increase in policy and funding to address violence against women across Australia in recent years as well as investments in research.

And while it is difficult to directly attribute reductions in violence against women to specific policy actions, the data to date show there is cause for optimism that our efforts are beginning to have a meaningful impact.

It’s not yet clear if these reductions will continue – we need to analyse the trend over time to make a clear assessment. And we need further investigation on how our prevention and response efforts affect different groups within the Australian population to ensure that all women are safer.

But it is clear that to end violence against women “in one generation” – between 20 and 30 years – we must not lose our focus. It will continue to take a coordinated and evidence-based set of actions across our whole community to address, and ultimately prevent, violence against women in Australia.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.

Anastasia Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Criminology Research Council, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), and Family Safety Victoria. Anastasia is also a director of Our Watch (Australia’s national organisation for the prevention of violence against women), and a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance (NWSA).

Jacqui True receives funding from the Australian Research Council under the Discovery and Centre of Excellence programs.

Kristin Diemer receives funding from the Victorian Government Department of Justice and Community Safety and Family Safety Victoria, as well as Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). She is part of the Technical Advisory Committees for the Australian Personal Safety Survey and the National Community Attitudes Survey towards Violence against Women. She is Chair of the Board for Lucy’s Project supporting animals in the context of domestic and family violence.

– ref. 49 women have been killed in Australia so far in 2023 as a result of violence. Are we actually making any progress? – https://theconversation.com/49-women-have-been-killed-in-australia-so-far-in-2023-as-a-result-of-violence-are-we-actually-making-any-progress-217552

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

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Louise Berry, Honorary Professor, Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Macquarie University

Climate change will affect every aspect of our health and wellbeing. But its potential harms go beyond the body’s ability to handle extreme heat, important as this is.

Extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, storms and wildfires, are becoming more frequent and severe. These affect our mental health in a multitude of ways.

Coping with climate change can be overwhelming. Sometimes, the best someone can do is to seek refuge in alcohol, tobacco, over-the-counter and prescription drugs, or other psychoactive substances. This is understandable, but dangerous, and can have serious consequences.

We outline five ways climate change could increase the risk of harmful substance use.

1. Mental health is harmed

Perhaps the most obvious way climate change can be linked to harmful substance use is by damaging mental health. This increases the risk of new or worsened substance use.

People with a mental disorder are at high risk of also having a substance-use disorder. This often precedes their mental health problems. Climate change-related increases in the number and nature of extreme events, in turn, are escalating risks to mental health.

For example, extreme heat is linked to increased distress across the whole population. In extreme heat, more people go to the emergency department for psychiatric problems, including for alcohol and substance use generally. This is even true for a single very hot day.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and other mental health problems are common at the time of extreme weather events and can persist for months, even years afterwards, especially if people are exposed to multiple events. This can increase the likelihood of using substances as a way to cope.

2. Worry increases

With increasing public awareness of how climate change is endangering wellbeing, people are increasingly worried about what will happen if it remains unchecked.

Worrying isn’t the same as meeting the criteria for a mental disorder. But surveys show climate change generates complex emotional responses, especially in children. As well as feelings of worry, there is anxiety, fear, guilt, anger, grief and helplessness.

Some emotional states, such as sadness, are linked with long-term tobacco use and also make substance use relapse more likely.

3. Physical injuries hurt us in many ways

Physical injuries caused by extreme weather events – such as smoke inhalation, burns and flood-related cuts and infections – increase the risk of harmful substance use. That’s partly because they increase the risk of psychological distress. If injuries cause long-term illness or disability, consequent feelings of hopelessness and depression can dispose some people to self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs.

Substance use itself can also generate long-term physiological harm, disabilities or other chronic health problems. These are linked with higher rates of harmful substance use.

4. Our day-to-day lives change

A single catastrophic event, such as a storm or flood, can devastate lives overnight and change the way we live. So, too, can the more subtle changes in climate and day-to-day weather. Both can disrupt behaviour and routines in ways that risk new or worsened substance use, for example, using stimulants to cope with fatigue.

Take, for example, hotter temperatures, which disrupt sleep, undermine academic performance, reduce physical activity, and promote hostile language and violent behaviour.

5. It destabilises communities

Finally, climate change is destabilising the socioeconomic, natural, built and geopolitical systems on which human wellbeing – indeed survival – depends.

Damaged infrastructure, agricultural losses, school closures, homelessness and displacement are significant sources of psychosocial distress that prompt acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) stress responses.

Stress, in turn, can increase the risk of harmful substance use and make people more likely to relapse.

Why are we so concerned?

Substance-use disorders are economically and socially very costly. Risky substance use that doesn’t meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis can also harm.

Aside from its direct physical harm, harmful substance use disrupts education and employment. It increases the risk of accidents and crime, and it undermines social relationships, intimate partnerships and family functioning.

Politicians take note

As we head towards the COP28 global climate talks in Dubai, climate change is set to hit the headlines once more. Politicians know climate change is undermining human health and wellbeing. It’s well past time to insist they act.

As we have seen for populations as a whole, there are multiple possible ways for climate change to cause a rise in harmful substance use. This means multidimensional prevention strategies are needed. As well as addressing climate change more broadly, we need strategies including:

supporting vulnerable individuals, especially young people, and marginalised commmunities, who are hit hardest by extreme weather-related events
focusing health-related policies more on broadscale health promotion, for example, healthier eating, active transport and community-led mental health support
investing in climate-resilient infrastructure, such as heat-proofing buildings and greening cities, to prevent more of the destabilising effects and stress we know contributes to mental health problems and harmful substance use.

There is now no credible pathway to avoiding dangerous climate change. However, if increasing rates of climate protests are anything to go by, the world may finally be ready for radical change – and perhaps for reduced harmful substance use.

Helen Louise Berry has received funding from various national research funding organisations and other sources. She is a director of management consulting firm, Altitude Consulting, and a member of the Australian Greens political party.

Francis Vergunst 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. 5 reasons why climate change may see more of us turn to alcohol and other drugs – https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-why-climate-change-may-see-more-of-us-turn-to-alcohol-and-other-drugs-217894

AI is now accessible to everyone: 3 things parents should teach their kids

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Mills, Professor of Literacies and Digital Cultures, Australian Catholic University

It is almost a year since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, fuelling great excitement as well as concern about what it might mean for education.

The changes keep coming. Earlier in the year, MyAI was embedded into social media platform Snapchat. This is a chatbot powered by ChatGPT, which encourages teens to ask anything – from gift suggestions for friends to questions about homework.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is rolling out “Copilot” on its systems, billed as an “everyday AI companion” . This follows the introduction of “Bing Chat”, an AI-enhanced assistant to accompany the Bing search tool.

All of a sudden, generative artificial intelligence – which can create new content such as text and images – has become accessible to everyone, including young people.

We are researchers with a background in digital technology and are highly enthusiastic about the potential for AI. However, there are risks as well as benefits. Here are three things parents can keep in mind as they navigate AI technology with their kids.

AI is here to stay

Artificial intelligence itself is not new – chatbots and generative AI have been around since the 1960s.

But over the past year there has been a rapid expansion in the size of AI databases, huge financial investments into these technologies, more innovative code, and enhanced accessibility and usability.

Parents may be naturally hesitant about AI. Many schools have considered banning some AI uses, amid claims it would lead to cheating and undermine academic integrity.

But AI is not going to go away, and will only become more widely used in our lives. The sooner young people learn to use this technology, the more informed they can be about how to use it wisely and productively.

If you are a parent, it is important to learn about and try these technologies for yourself so you can help your child navigate a world with AI. Start by logging in to a free generative AI tool, and experiment together by asking the bot some questions and reflecting on the answers.

2. Be critical

Generative AI can do amazing things – like generate images or write stories – but it does not reflect on what it’s writing. It will string text together in a way that makes sense but not “read between the lines”.

Generative AI cannot evaluate the credibility of sources, nor can it always find authoritative information to back up claims. The generative AI software is also trained on data from a specific time so recent events may not be included.

So children need to learn that although it looks similar to other writing, such as in a book or article, the text has been pieced together by computer code. This means every word, sentence and claim should be treated with scepticism.

You can use this as an opportunity to help your children develop critical thinking skills.

Go to a free AI art generator with your school-age child and put in some searches. Then ask your child questions such as, “What kinds of people are shown? What kinds are missing? Do you see any stereotypes? Can you see any biases?”.

3. Watch out for chatbots

Chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate conversations as if they were another human.

For example, there were more than ten million Replika users as of 2022. Replika is a chatbot billed as a companion who cares. It acts like a friend but relationships with the chatbot can become romantic or sexual.

In many chatbot applications such as this, there may be no moderation or human checks on inappropriate content. So be aware if your child spending a long time with AI “friends”.

If left unaccompanied, these types of applications could feed into a child’s curiosity and potentially manipulate them into unethical and harmful situations, like highly personal conversations with a bot.

Make it clear to your children that generative AI is machine, not a human. It does not share your ideals, beliefs, culture or religion. It presents text and language based on models and algorithms. It is not something to argue with, take lessons from, or be used to reinforce your values.

The code may also be manually edited to inhibit certain viewpoints or stances on topics.

4. Images, videos and audio also matter

With all the focus on text, be sure to remind your children images and video are also part of the generative AI landscape. Children may be careful about what text they enter online but careless with uploading images.

Their photos and facial image become available to AI when uploaded, which makes it harder to protect their identity. For example, ChatGPT now has image capabilities you can include in your conversations with the chatbot. Discuss privacy with your child, and be sure to mention that any data uploaded to the internet can be stored, scanned and processed by AI.

AI can be a powerful learning and engagement tool, and the developments in this field are highly exciting. With open conversations and some oversight, the possibilities of children greatly benefiting from this technology are endless.

Kathy Mills receives funding from the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project FT180100009. The views herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the ARC.

Christian Moro 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. AI is now accessible to everyone: 3 things parents should teach their kids – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-now-accessible-to-everyone-3-things-parents-should-teach-their-kids-217797

Salad Fingers wasn’t just strange, it was art. Here’s how it’s still influencing the ‘weird part of YouTube’ 2 decades on

By The Conversation -

November 20, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University

Screenshot of Salad Fingers and the corpse Kenneth in Episode 7, Shore Leave.

The words “Salad Fingers” may not mean anything to some readers, but for others they will trigger nostalgia, some very discomforting memories – or perhaps a “weird” combination of both.

Salad Fingers and his perturbing love of rusty spoons is an uncanny animated pioneer of viral YouTube videos. This creepy character came into being just before the arrival of YouTube, but went on to become the embodiment of “the weird part of YouTube”.

The character’s influence is enduring – almost two decades after Salad Fingers first saw the light, the eponymous animated web series is still ongoing. The latest episode, Harvest, was released in September 2023.

In the first academic paper to be published on the series, we argue Salad Fingers was a key influence on “weird YouTube’s” countercultural melange of content that escapes the aesthetic, regulatory and moral constraints of mainstream film and television.

Episode one of Salad Fingers: Spoons.

Salad Fingers and the dawn of ‘weird YouTube’

The year was 2004, and the launch of YouTube was still a year away. On Newgrounds, a still-active platform dedicated to user-generated content, a young British artist by the name of David Firth released a web series titled Salad Fingers. The series featured a character with an eerie but gentle and soothing voice who inhabits a mysteriously apocalyptic, desolate landscape.

The first episode, Spoons, shows the protagonist caressing a rusty spoon and reaching a state of sensual extasis. Like most episodes that would follow, it’s punctuated by repetitive, looping music courtesy of experimental electronic duo Boards of Canada that – like the character’s voice – is as calming as it is unsettling.

Salad Fingers is a green anthropomorphic figure coded as male and with lettuce leaves as hands. His blank, simple features are rendered using rough-hewn animation that looks like a child’s drawing. This rudimentary animation was done in Flash, a software that enabled amateur artists to experiment with narrative and visual style. Flash also simplifies content distribution: the software creates vector images, which weigh less and use less bandwidth.

Over the years, the series has come to enjoy a cult following and Firth released 13 new episodes between 2005 and 2023.

Salad Fingers episode ten: Birthday.

While it looks and feels like a children’s show, Salad Fingers does not conform to the norms of children’s television. The series expanded the boundaries of what 21st-century animation can do as an expressive medium.

Today, it’s common to see animations with a subversive, experimental edge destined for adult consumption and dealing with existential crisis (think of Netflix’s Bojack Horseman).

But when Salad Fingers was released, it pushed generic boundaries in shocking ways that harnessed the internet’s freedom from content regulation like ratings systems (such as Australia’s G and PG ratings designating child appropriateness).

Netflix’s BoJack Horseman.

These ambiguous intentions are the combined appeal and horror of the show: the most common Google search phrases around the series are “Is Salad Fingers supposed to be scary?”, “Is Salad Fingers a children’s show?” and “Why is Salad Fingers weird?”

Firth’s series transgressed the norms of animation styles alongside other artists of the period who used web animation in an experimental way (among them, Homestar Runner by The Brothers Chaps, Neurotically Yours by Jonathan Ian Mathers, and the 2003 viral video The End of the World by Jason Windsor).

The End of the World.

Salad Fingers is beyond classification

While Salad Fingers is culturally aligned with boundary-pushing animated TV series popular at the time, such as The Simpsons and South Park, it’s also distinct due to its avant-garde ambiguity.

Firth talks about the influence of beloved kids’ cartoon Rugrats on his series and character, and indeed Salad Fingers behaves in a very childlike, imaginative manner. However, he also commits unhinged acts of violence with no apparent moral compass. He speaks to his finger puppet imaginary friends, but also to corpses, and cooks a child alive in the oven.

When a Canadian primary school teacher was suspended for screening Salad Fingers to his class, Firth tweeted “I fully support Salad Fingers being shown to children. In fact it should be mandatory”.

This subversive play with the boundaries of good taste and child/adult content is at the heart of Salad Fingers, and of YouTube’s “weird part”.

Yet Salad Fingers also highlights how this weird YouTube mode continues avant-garde and surrealist art, film and television traditions.

The barren landscapes in which the character exists have links to the dark portraits of painter Francis Bacon, to the filmography of auteur David Lynch, and to the grim animated characters of cult art-rock opera Pink Floyd: The Wall. The show’s apocalyptic ethos was also indicative of post-Y2K pessimism and rebellion against aesthetic, cultural and political norms.

The series aligns such traditions with the gleefully disruptive generic ambiguity of early 2000s online video sharing cultures – an ambiguity made possible by the web’s freedom from the constraints of the formal production and distribution structures of film and television.

The series would go on to influence a vibrant and globally beloved genre of “weird” YouTube content committed to derailing cultural expectations about the distinctions between children’s and adult content.

A beloved example is Michelle Lyons’ animated web series [Funny Horsie], which emerged in 2011: this dark and absurd series about an ungainly horse, is ironically described as “one of Britain’s most well-loved, yet obscure children’s programmes”

Funny Horsie.

Another progeny of Salad Fingers is cult YouTube puppet-animated hit Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (Joseph Pelling and Rebecca Sloan, 2011-16). This nightmarish parody of puppet-based kids’ shows such as Sesame Street became a BBC Channel 4 television series in 2022, highlighting how the influence of weird YouTube is crossing into mainstream media.

Don’t hug me I’m scared.

Today, “weird” content on YouTube remains indebted to Salad Fingers and other early internet viral animations such as Funny Horsie.

Just this year, a series titled Skibidi Toilet became a viral sensation. The videos show, in rudimentary 3D animation, a series of moving toilets with heads sticking out of them. The singing, fighting toilets have become a sensation, with Business Insider claiming the series “captures the anarchic spirit of the internet”.

Salad Fingers embodies the anarchic weird YouTube spirit that lives on through these singing toilet heads.

Skibidi Toilet.

Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from The Australian Children’s Television Foundation and The City of Melbourne.

César Albarrán-Torres 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. Salad Fingers wasn’t just strange, it was art. Here’s how it’s still influencing the ‘weird part of YouTube’ 2 decades on – https://theconversation.com/salad-fingers-wasnt-just-strange-it-was-art-heres-how-its-still-influencing-the-weird-part-of-youtube-2-decades-on-216911

Federal Labor barely ahead in latest polls; Victorian Labor takes a hit but holds Mulgrave at byelection

By The Conversation -

November 19, 2023

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

There have been three federal polls since my October 13 article on the federal Resolve poll that still had Labor far ahead. These polls show a tie in Morgan and two two-point Labor leads in YouGov and Essential. There has been a clear trend to the Coalition in polls conducted since the October 14 Voice referendum.

YouGov hasn’t conducted Newspoll since mid-July, but is publishing its own polls now. The final YouGov Voice poll was accurate, giving “no” an 18-point lead (actual margin: 20.1 points).

The latest federal YouGov poll, conducted November 10–14 from a sample of 1,582, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, a two-point gain for the Coalition since early October. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (steady), 31% Labor (down two), 13% Greens (down one), 7% One Nation (up one) and 13% for all Others (up two).

Anthony Albanese’s net approval dropped four points to -7, while Peter Dutton’s net approval improved five points to -7. Albanese led Dutton by 48–34 as preferred PM (50–34 previously).

On November 7, the Reserve Bank raised interest rates by 0.25% to 4.35%. This increase appears to have contributed to Labor’s poll slump, with Morgan’s consumer confidence index down 3.5 points to 74.3 last week, its lowest since mid-July and continuing a record run of 41 weeks below 85.

Essential poll: Labor just ahead

A national Essential poll, conducted November 8–12 from a sample of 1,150, gave Labor a 49–47 lead including undecided (48–46 in late October). Primary votes were 34% Coalition (steady), 32% Labor (steady), 12% Greens (up two), 7% One Nation (steady), 2% UAP (down one), 8% for all Others (down one) and 5% undecided (down one).

This is the second Essential poll to be conducted since they changed their methods to include weighting by educational level. The gain for the Greens implies Labor should be further ahead, but received a weak flow of respondent allocated preferences.

Respondents were asked to rate Albanese and Dutton from zero to ten. Ratings of 0–3 were counted as negative, 4–6 as neutral and 7–10 as positive. Albanese had a 35–33 negative rating, reversing a 37–29 positive rating in August. Dutton was at 35–32 negative (35–27 negative in August).

On bushfires, 44% thought this season would be worse than last summer, 10% better and 46% about the same. Asked to compare to the summer of 2019–20, it was 31% worse, 19% better and 50% about the same. By 53–31, voters thought our bushfires are made worse by climate change over having nothing to do with climate change.

On interest rates, 52% (down 11 since June) thought they would continue to rise, 39% (up nine) thought we have reached the peak but they won’t go down for a while and 9% (up two) thought they would start to fall soon. By 49–15, voters thought rising interest rates had had a negative personal impact over a positive one (51–17 in February).

By 46–34, voters thought immigration to Australia was generally positive (50–35 in April 2019).

On the Israel-Gaza conflict, 21% (up eight since October) thought Australia should provide active assistance to Palestine, 17% (down six) assist Israel and 62% (down two) stay out. On tensions between the US and China, 27% said we should support the US, 6% China and 67% stay as neutral as possible.

Morgan poll: 50–50 tie

In last week’s federal weekly Morgan poll, conducted November 6–12 from a sample of 1,397, there was a 50–50 tie between Labor and the Coalition, a two-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 36.5% Coalition, 30% Labor, 13% Greens and 20.5% for all Others.

In a separate national Morgan SMS poll, conducted November 9–12 from a sample of 1,650, 51% said Israel should withdraw their armed forces from Gaza immediately, while 49% said they should not.

By political support, 93% of Greens favoured immediate withdrawal, 64% of Labor voters and 75% of independents. However, 75% of Coalition voters, 78% of One Nation voters and 57% of other parties’ voters opposed immediate withdrawal.

Additional Resolve questions

In additional questions from the Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, by 54–18, voters supported Albanese visiting the US and President Joe Biden. Support for his visit to China and President Xi Jinping was narrower at 38–31.

By 69–14, voters thought Australia should stay out of the Israel-Palestine conflict for now, rather than intervene by calling for a ceasefire. Israel was favoured on questions on which side to provide aid or arms to.

Support for a treaty between the Australian government and Indigenous peoples plunged from 58–27 in October, before the Voice referendum’s heavy defeat, to 37–33 opposed in November.

In another development, after losing preselection for his seat of Monash, Russell Broadbent defected from the Liberals on November 14 and will sit as an independent. Broadbent is 72, and this shows that Australian political parties don’t want very old candidates.

Victorian Labor easily holds Mulgrave at byelection

A Victorian state byelection occurred in Mulgrave on Saturday. This seat was previously held by former Labor premier Daniel Andrews. Primary votes were 40.1% Labor (down 10.1% since the 2022 election), 21.6% Liberals (up 4.4%), 18.9% for independent Ian Cook (up 0.9%), 5.9% Greens (up 0.8%), 3.8% Victorian Socialists (new), 3.1% Family First (up 1.1%) and 2.9% Libertarian (new).

The electoral commission’s election night preference count was between Labor and Cook, who finished second in 2022. Labor defeated Cook by 56.2–43.8, a 4.7% swing to Cook. I hope the commission will re-do this count between Labor and the Liberals.

ABC election analyst Antony Green expects the Liberals to do slightly better than Cook against Labor after preferences. Given the retirement of a high-profile former member and the poor polling for federal Labor, I think this is a decent result for Labor.

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

– ref. Federal Labor barely ahead in latest polls; Victorian Labor takes a hit but holds Mulgrave at byelection – https://theconversation.com/federal-labor-barely-ahead-in-latest-polls-victorian-labor-takes-a-hit-but-holds-mulgrave-at-byelection-217667

Plants are likely to absorb more CO₂ in a changing climate than we thought – here’s why

By The Conversation -

November 18, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jürgen Knauer, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University

The world’s vegetation has a remarkable ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air and store it as biomass. In doing so, plants slow down climate change since the CO₂ they take up does not contribute to global warming.

But what will happen under more advanced climate change? How will vegetation respond to projected changes in atmospheric CO₂, temperatures and rainfall? Our study, published today in Science Advances, shows plants might take up more CO₂ than previously thought.

We found climate modelling that best accounted for the processes that sustain plant life consistently predicted the strongest CO₂ uptake. The most complex model predicted up to 20% more than the simplest version.

Our findings highlight the resilience of plants, and the importance of planting trees and preserving existing vegetation to slow climate change. While this is good news, it doesn’t let us off the hook in the fight against climate change. The rapid increase in atmospheric CO₂ means we must still cut emissions.

A person holds a small sapling ready to be planted in the soli with a spade and trees in the background — Mass tree planting can help slow climate change but won’t on its own keep warming within acceptable limits.
EduardSV/Shutterstock

What happens to the CO₂ plants take up?

Plants take up CO₂ through photosynthesis. This process uses the Sun’s energy to convert – or “fix” – CO₂ from the air into the sugars plants use for growth and metabolic activity.

Plants release around half of that CO₂ back to the atmosphere via respiration relatively quickly. The other half is used for growth and stays in the plant biomass for longer – months to centuries.

That biomass will eventually die and decompose. Part of the carbon will be released again to the atmosphere, but other parts will enter the soil where it can stay for hundreds of years.

So, if plants take up more CO₂, it’s likely more carbon will be stored in vegetation and soils. This “land sink” of carbon has indeed increased over the past few decades as the annual global carbon budget assessment has shown.

What’s more, the increasing land carbon sink has largely been attributed to the beneficial effects of rising atmospheric CO₂ on plant photosynthesis. This is important because that carbon stored in plants and soils slows the increase in atmospheric CO₂ and therefore global warming.

Three line graphs showing the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 and the extent of the land sink and ocean sink — Main components of the global carbon cycle, showing the rate of increase in atmospheric CO₂ and the extent of the land sink and ocean sink.
Global Carbon Project 2022, CC BY

A gap in current climate models

But how do we know how much carbon is taken up and stored on land? Even more challenging, how can we predict what happens in the future?

One attempt to answer these questions is to use so-called terrestrial biosphere models. These models encapsulate our understanding of how plants function and how they respond to changes in climate.

For example, we know from experiments that plants photosynthesise more under higher CO₂ concentrations but less when they don’t have enough water. Models translate all this knowledge into mathematical equations and allow them to interact with each other.

All this knowledge? Well, not really, and that was the motivation for our research. While today’s terrestrial biosphere models include a plethora of processes, they do not necessarily account for all mechanisms and processes that we know exist. There might not be enough data or information available to confidently represent a process across the entire globe, or it might just be difficult – conceptually or technically – to include it in models.

What did the study look at?

We included three of those neglected processes into the well-established Australian terrestrial biosphere model. We accounted for:

how efficiently CO₂ can move inside the leaf
how plants adjust to changes in their surrounding temperature
how they distribute nutrients most economically.

We used the most recent data and research publications to include the processes as realistically as possible. We then confronted the model with a strong climate change scenario and looked at how much CO₂ plants will take up until the end of this century.

We repeated this experiment with eight different versions of the model. The simplest version did not account for any of the three physiological mechanisms. The most complex version accounted for all three.

The results were surprisingly clear: the more complex the model, the higher the predicted CO₂ uptake by plants. Model versions that accounted for at least two mechanisms (those with greater ecological realism) consistently predicted the strongest CO₂ uptake – up to 20% more than the simplest version.

What does this mean for climate action?

For modellers this is important news. It tells us our current models, which are usually at the lower end of this complexity range, likely underestimate future CO₂ uptake by plants.

These results suggest plants could be pretty resilient to even severe climate change.

However, we only looked at this from a plant physiological angle. Other processes in models are still oversimplified, such as the impacts of, and recovery from, fires and droughts. We clearly need to better capture these processes to get a more complete picture of how effectively plants will absorb CO₂ in the future.

And last but not least, because plants help fight climate change, it’s essential to conserve existing plant biomass and restore lost vegetation.

But while plants might even be more industrious helpers than previously assumed, they will never do the heavy lifting for us. It is still up to us humans to fight climate change by drastically cutting fossil fuel emissions. There is no shortcut.

Jürgen Knauer 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. Plants are likely to absorb more CO₂ in a changing climate than we thought – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/plants-are-likely-to-absorb-more-co-in-a-changing-climate-than-we-thought-heres-why-217786

The Crown season six: an overly detailed, unimaginative soap opera – I needed a martini to get through it

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Bastin, Associate Professor of English, Flinders University

The opening scene of season six of The Crown sees a man walking his dog under the light of the Eiffel Tower. It’s 1997 and a Mercedes car speeds past and ends in a horrendous crash in a Paris tunnel. The man’s dog is being recalcitrant and refusing to take its evening wee.

When The Crown debuted in 2016, the quality of the story lines, acting and impressive production standards were so striking that millions of viewers discovered the addiction of bingeing a television program; episodes would be viewed on a loop and toilet breaks would be delayed.

Unlike the dog in the first episode of season six, however, I suspect I won’t be alone in being one of the viewers who found it quite easy to hop up and make cups of tea and trips to the loo throughout the four episodes of The Crown’s final season.

All about Diana

Season six breaks away from The Crown’s formula of royal story lines that depict key moments in the monarchy’s private and public life. Previous seasons followed the same line of representing some aspect of the Windsor’s private upheavals, set alongside the queen’s interactions with her prime minister of the day. Story lines covered decades rather than short time spans; the narrative arc was expansive.

The focus this time round is on Diana’s (Elizabeth Debicki) last summer, a frenzied rush around the south of France and through the streets of Paris with her new paramour, Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla).

The figure of the queen (Imelda Staunton) makes far fewer appearances than in the first five seasons, and by the time we come to 1997, Elizabeth II has all but shrunk into the mist and rain of the Scottish Highlands, outshone by the former daughter-in-law who is living out her last days in the glare of the Mediterranean sun and strobing flashbulbs of the paparazzi press packs.

Prime Minister Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel) makes a brief appearance, imploring his sovereign to give her former daughter-in-law a royal role on the international stage.

And then it’s back to Diana and Dodi.

Occasionally, there are glimpses of Charles and Camilla’s life. Charles (Dominic West) holds a 50th birthday party for Camilla (Olivia Williams) that the queen refuses to attend. Charles and the queen stage an awkward conversation about the queen’s formal acceptance of Camilla as the most important woman in his life.

Princes William (Rufus Kampa) and Harry (Fflyn Edwards) are the pawns in their parents’ post-divorce jostling for media attention.

The family in a boat — Princes William and Harry are the pawns in their parents’ divorce.
Keith Bernstein/Netflix

Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) appears as the only royal to have met some acceptance of her royal lot in life, and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce) appears on the sidelines, merely bewildered by the travelling media circus that is Diana’s post-royal life.

And then it’s back to Diana and Dodi.

A pale comparison

The switch from public/private Windsor story lines to a focus on Diana makes for far less arresting viewing than previous seasons. The irony is that it is screenwriter – and the show’s creator – Peter Morgan himself who has jeopardised this period of The Crown by already having done it better in The Queen (2006) directed by Stephen Frears.

The Queen, starring Helen Mirren as the queen, is set during the week following Diana’s death in Paris and charts the royal family’s faltering navigation of the Windsor “brand” through the seismic shift in public perceptions of the royals during that week.

Morgan’s screenplay was made especially effective by having Diana not appear as a fully fleshed character in the film; instead, she is a pixelated, mediated figure glimpsed on television screens and through the zoom lens of a thousand cameras.

In The Queen, Diana is literally a visual representation: an image so large in the public imagination that her likeness eclipses both the figure of the sovereign and the royal institution itself.

Having already produced in The Queen an original and complex portrayal of how Diana was instrumental in changing the royal house forever, Morgan had backed himself into a corner. Here there seems apparently little option than to tell the story again in the form of an overly detailed, unimaginative soap opera.

Worse, he chooses to tell the story this time around by having Diana appear as a ghost who has conversations with both Charles and the queen about how much they can learn from her legacy.

Diana in a blue swimsuit. — Elizabeth Debicki does the heavy lifting.
Daniel Escale/Netflix

All the actors do their best (Debicki does the heavy lifting) and the costumes are spot on. You just know that the biscuits and tea that the actors are drinking are the real thing, and it’s only the scotch whiskies the characters slug back on luxury yachts and at Balmoral that are substituted by iced tea.

It was, however, by the stage of Diana’s first ghost appearance in the final episode, Aftermath, that my cups of tea had turned into vodka martinis and the trips to the loo were becoming more frequent – even when I didn’t need to go.

The Crown season six, part one, is on Netflix now.

Giselle Bastin 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 Crown season six: an overly detailed, unimaginative soap opera – I needed a martini to get through it – https://theconversation.com/the-crown-season-six-an-overly-detailed-unimaginative-soap-opera-i-needed-a-martini-to-get-through-it-218029

Play School meets Ikea: new Australian play Welcome to Your New Life hilariously captures new motherhood

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Campbell, Lecturer, Performing Arts, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia

Anna Goldsworthy’s hilarious and beautifully honest book Welcome To Your New Life celebrates the joy and roller-coaster ride of first-time parenting.

Now a new play adapted for the stage by Goldsworthy, Welcome To Your New Life takes the audience through the experience of pregnancy, delivery and new parenthood from sleep-deprived birth to toddler years.

Goldsworthy’s lively writing – monologues interspersed with vignettes, songs and small scenes – deftly captures the joy and wilful naivety of a first pregnancy, followed by the overwhelming love and sleep-deprivation-induced anxiety of the first months. As a mother of two I laughed, scoffed, giggled and cried in recognition and remembrance of the bliss and insanity of being a newly minted parent.

Erin James excels as the unnamed mum-to-be/new mum: her delight is infectious, her navigating of what other people expect when you’re expecting is razor-sharp, and her post-natal anxiety spirals heartbreaking in their relentlessness.

A joy

All three actors are a sheer joy to watch.

Family and friends, medical professionals, passers-by, the family dog and assorted new mothers are deftly brought to life by Kathryn Adams and Matt Crook. Crook’s breastfeeding patronising new mum is a highlight, as is Adams’ lactation consultant. Crook and Adams also each take on key roles in the new mum’s life.

A man and a woman ham for the camera. — The cast are a joy to watch.
Matt Byrne/STCSA

The mum’s much-loved grandmother Moggie is given warmth, humour and depth by Adams in a masterful performance. The love and support between the mum and Moggie is one of the relationships we see in detail; her kind comforting of the frazzled mother is part of the human heart of this piece. Through her, we are invited to reflect on the cycle of life and death that is the human condition.

The other detailed relationship is the devoted, then exhausted, husband-and-father Nicholas, played by Crook with superb skill and uncanny accuracy. His scenes with James – welcome moments in the play where the story is told in duologue – are lively and nuanced. A scene where the accumulated lack of sleep while on a blackly funny holiday finally brings them to shouting point is given devastating honesty by Crook.

Adoring and cooing

Beautifully directed by Shannon Rush, the first act centres on the mum-to-be. Rush repeatedly seats James on a circular couch chair in the middle of a circular Mondrian-esque rug, evoking the baby in the womb.

As the audience, in the second act we are positioned as “you”, the much-adored new baby. The performers focus their attention on different audience members as if they are the baby – adoring and cooing, marvelling at the developmental brilliance or bodily functions of this miracle child.

Simon Greer’s set is a child’s playroom on a giant scale, the actors tiny among the huge letter blocks, doors, box shelves and giant hanging mobile. Huge wooden toys serve as stethoscopes and seats, even the ever-present mobile phones are flat blocks of wood: it’s Play School meets Ikea.

The stage. — Simon Greer’s set is a child’s playroom on a giant scale.
Matt Byrne/STCSA

The second act is stripped back, all bleached white scandi surfaces, giant alphabet blocks now lined up neatly along the walls, centre stage starkly empty – perfectly reflecting the too-bright world of post-natal sleep deprivation and its resultant devastating anxiety.

Gavin Norris’ lighting is simple and elegant: the massive contemporary light circle also eerily suggesting the too-bright light above the delivery-room bed.

A play with music

Billed as “a play with music”, composer Alan John’s music is beautifully wrapped around and through the story. Woven through the scenes are classical piano music and John’s songs, evoking and quoting nursery rhymes, or giving voice to key moments. Heartbeats and baby screaming are part of an ebbing and flowing sound design by Andrew Howard.

A large toy piano is a reminder of Goldsworthy’s life as a concert pianist. Key moments play out here: the mum plays music to negotiate the challenges she faces, and the ultimate new project: birthing a baby.

The three performers play toy pianos, glockenspiels, guitar and percussion, and also sing beautifully in harmony.

A woman stands in front of a toilet. — A song about a composting toilet is a particular delight.
Matt Byrne/STCSA

Inevitably there is some unevenness to this new show: some of the monologue songs in act one are less melodic and more difficult to access emotionally for the audience, but James’ clear voice shines, especially in the lush and dramatic piece about the dangers to a baby of a composting toilet.

In her program notes, Goldsworthy reflects on childbirth and parenting, a time when “survival becomes a greater priority than making art”.

Thank goodness for Goldsworthy’s writer’s reflex recording all her pregnancy-birth-post-partum experiences as they happened. Hilarious, insightful, heartfelt and zinging with the ping of recognition for parents and anyone who’s watched others go through this, Welcome To Your New Life is an important and wonderful new arrival.

Welcome to your New Life is at the State Theatre Company South Australia until November 25.

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

– ref. Play School meets Ikea: new Australian play Welcome to Your New Life hilariously captures new motherhood – https://theconversation.com/play-school-meets-ikea-new-australian-play-welcome-to-your-new-life-hilariously-captures-new-motherhood-217561

Big data play a huge role in US presidential elections. Do they have the same impact here?

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Travis N. Ridout, Professor of Government and Public Policy, Washington State University

A key reason Barack Obama won the 2012 US presidential election was his campaign’s use of “big data” to target specific voters. His team created multiple versions of ads aimed at niche audiences, taking care to test every message.

Naturally, some have worried about the potential power of these data-driven campaign techniques to manipulate voters. But have these methods taken over election campaigns in Australia?

In short, not really. Australian campaigns typically rely on much less data-intensive techniques due to a lack of resources, doubts about the data, and ethical and philosophical concerns about the approach.

I am a political scientist who studies political advertising in the United States, and I spent the first six months of 2023 in Australia as a Fulbright scholar. I interviewed campaign staff and political consultants about their use of various campaign techniques in state and federal elections.

My questions focused on political advertising – how it is targeted, the extent to which ads are tailored to specific audiences, and how campaigns test their messages.

So what do advertising campaigns look like?

First, while the expertise exists to do micro-targeting of individual voters based on sophisticated statistical modelling, most campaigns target broad categories of voters defined by their age, gender, where they live or the language they speak.

This kind of targeting, of course, has existed for decades. Campaigns have sent mail to specific addresses or knocked only on certain people’s doors.

Second, while a presidential campaign in the US might create tens of thousands of versions of an online political ad, such tailoring of ads to specific audiences is much more limited in Australia.

Third, ad testing relies heavily on the simple tools provided by Meta (owners of Facebook and Instagram) and focus groups. Large-scale testing done with online panellists is rare.

In short, most Australian campaigns do not resemble the data-intensive campaigns typical of presidential elections in the US. Why?

One reason is that campaigns do not have unlimited money and staff resources. At the end of the day, hiring a data scientist or creative staff to design ads for multiple audiences is a luxury most campaigns cannot afford. In contrast, more than US$6.6 billion (A$10.2 billion) was spent on the 2020 presidential election.

Second, campaign staff expressed some doubts about the data that do exist. While there was a lot of confidence in the voter roll provided by the Australian Electoral Commission, many interviewees reported that audience engagement on Facebook had declined considerably. In addition, it is now much more difficult to pinpoint where people spend their time because of privacy changes to Apple’s operating system.

Moreover, some campaigners, especially from the Greens, had ethical concerns about delivering different messages to different sets of voters.

Finally, there is a real disagreement about the wisdom of conducting a data-intensive campaign in which individual voters are targeted with tailored messages based on their beliefs, behaviours and demographic characteristics. Not only is this type of campaigning costly, but some argued that the key to winning an election is to send one broad message – or a small number of messages – to as many voters as possible. At the end of the day, parties want awareness of their candidates and an understanding of their central message.

So will Australian campaigns soon resemble the data-driven enterprises we see in the US? It seems unlikely.

First, in spite of public funding and few limits on raising money, Australian campaigns remain low-cost affairs compared with their US counterparts.

Second, the doubts about the effectiveness of data-driven microtargeted campaigns – and the data on which they rely – show no sign of abating. Indeed, one person who works for the Labor Party told me the party severely reduced the number of online ads it created between 2019 and 2022. The individual explained:

In 2019, we created 1,000 different variations of digital ads, all informed by online experiments. We identified segments based on demography or geography, and we picked ads that did the best. But I’m not sure what value we got out of that hyper-optimisation – it was technological fetishisation. We didn’t stop to ask if it was a strategically intelligent campaign.

Finally, while registered political parties in Australia are exempt from data privacy laws, that may not be the case forever if Australia follows Europe’s lead. New rules in the European Union restrict the use of sensitive personal data for micro-targeting political ads.

Earlier this year, the Australian Attorney-General’s Department released a review of the Data Privacy Act of 1988. Among the recommendations were limits on advertising targeting.

So worries about the potential of data-driven campaigns to manipulate Australian voters could prove to be more hype than reality.

Travis N. Ridout 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. Big data play a huge role in US presidential elections. Do they have the same impact here? – https://theconversation.com/big-data-play-a-huge-role-in-us-presidential-elections-do-they-have-the-same-impact-here-217672

Urban planning has long ignored women’s experiences. Here are 5 ways we can make our cities safer

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Kalms, Director, XYX Lab, and Associate Professor, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University

Women consistently raise concerns about their safety when moving through their cities and communities. Only on

Women often experience harassment in the street, which can lead them to avoid areas and adjust their lifestyles to feel safe.

Based on our research, here are five ways we can make cities safer for women.

1. Don’t just invest in lighting and surveillance

Underlying the desire for lighting and surveillance is women’s concern about the inappropriate (real or anticipated) behaviour of men and young people in public places.

Yet emerging studies reveal that strategies solely concerned with improved lighting or surveillance are not the only pathways to reducing worry or fear for women.

In fact, the public investment in CCTV with regard to women’s safety may do more harm than good.

The women we surveyed recognised that young people have a right to use public places, but they also said antisocial behaviour from young men, particularly in groups, created significant apprehension, fear and avoidance of places, especially at night.

One participant told us:

I think it’s mainly that drug-affected type of people. And they hang around in a bunch. And people who are affected by alcohol […] they’ll be boisterous.

Two streetlights light up a dark, misty night — Increased street lighting is not the be all and end all for making women feel safer in cities.
Shutterstock

While CCTV can reduce property crime, it does not appear effective in addressing women’s safety or for preventing violence and assault.

It may also further exclude some members of the communtiy – particularly women from diverse backgrounds.

Instead, studies suggest that improving safety for women requires a shift in overall strategy, moving away from short-term hardware fixes such as installing CCTV and more lighting.

2. Consider the role of technology

Women are keen to see digital interventions across both day and night-time.

They see real-time information for public transport as vital for their confidence in public spaces.

When combined with well-designed wayfinding – such as lighting, footpaths, landscaping and signage – women said they would feel safer.

Increasingly, lighting and digital interactivity are being combined in public placemaking to enhance women’s safety.

3. Design spaces with women, for women

Women have been denied a say in their own communities for too long.

A co-design workshop is an approach that aims to engage stakeholders with the people that will benefit from the design outcomes. In this case, it’s women.

Most often a co-design workshop will include high-level decision-makers, planners, designers and various user groups.

If done from the outset, co-design ensures the lived experiences of community members and with the issues faced by communities are factored in.

It’s also an inclusive, collaborative and creative method.

One of our survey participants said:

My favourite experience in the workshop was just being able to meet all the different women who I probably wouldn’t have met without the workshop. I think just having a space like – creating a space like that is one of the first steps so that women can gather and meet.

A woman stands in front of a passing train — Women value live tracking of public transport to make them feel safer.
Shutterstock

4. Use ‘walking interviews’

A walking interview, as opposed to a regular sit-down interview or focus group, can help communities understand what makes women feel safe.

This helps us develop an understanding not only of the physical nature of public places evoking concern, but also of the ways in which different women, and indeed different user groups, engage with each other in a physical place.

The development of place-based strategies – collaborative design to help build a sense of place – can encourage inclusion and safety for women from different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, life stages and abilities.

By accompanying women on foot and discussing specific locations, we get a holistic understanding about how women move through these public places, or avoid them, and why.

5. Survey the right people, with the right questions

Understanding the way women perceive their communities is key to creating safer spaces.

Community safety surveys are particularly useful for understanding the prevalence of attitudes, sentiments and feelings at one point in time. They can then be repeated each year to track changes over time.

If designed well, community safety surveys can be an effective tool to understand perceptions and experiences of safety and inclusion for women from all backgrounds.

But the survey must be diverse and inclusive.

Our research, the Safe Spaces Project, set out to do just that. We surveyed more than 200 women from a variety of backgrounds.

By figuring out the best ways to engage with women in the research process, we can then empower councils and other community organisations to do the same.

We’ve done that in the form of toolkits.

In the past couple of weeks we have had more than 400 registrations at the launch and more than 1000 downloads of the toolkits from across urban, regional and rural councils in Australia, North America, the United Kingdom, Italy and New Zealand.

This research has identified effective ways to engage with a diverse range of women.

To make our cities safer, we just have to listen to them.

This research project was funded by the Department of Justice and Community Safety, Victorian Government.

Rebecca Wickes has received funding from the Australian Research Council, The Department of Justice and Community Safety and Wyndham City Council.

– ref. Urban planning has long ignored women’s experiences. Here are 5 ways we can make our cities safer – https://theconversation.com/urban-planning-has-long-ignored-womens-experiences-here-are-5-ways-we-can-make-our-cities-safer-216531

Belvoir’s The Master and Margarita: astonishingly ambitious, physically demanding and a resounding success

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of Sydney

Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult novel The Master and Margarita has inspired many artists.

Mick Jagger drew on the novel when penning the lyrics for Sympathy for the Devil. Salman Rushdie did something similar when writing The Satanic Verses. Baz Luhrmann bought the film rights for Bulgakov’s book back in 2019. Federico Fellini and Terry Gilliam are two other noted filmmakers who have expressed an interest in adapting the novel.

If and when he does film The Master and Margarita, Luhrmann would do well to refer to Eamon Flack’s riotous new stage interpretation.

Literary legend

A physician by trade, Bulgakov, who was born in Kiev in 1891 and died in Moscow in 1940, turned his hand to writing in the 1910s. During his lifetime, he was best known as a playwright. Bulgakov’s biggest success was the 1925 play The Days of the Turbins, a theatrical adaptation of his novel The White Guard, also published in 1925.

The theme of that play was the bloody and savage Russian Civil War. Despite being highly critical of Lenin and his band of Communists, Bulgakov’s play was much admired by the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin, who reportedly watched it at least 15 times.

Like The Days of the Turbins, The Master and Margarita – best thought of as a supernatural satire – was scathing when it came to the excesses and repressions associated with Soviet Communism.

The fraught and protracted compositional history of the novel is the stuff of literary legend. Written between 1928 and 1940, Bulgakov’s novel was drafted in secret and subject to censorship at the hands of the Soviet state, and was not published in full until 1967.

A woman on stage — The Master and Margarita revolves around a visit by the devil and their entourage to Moscow.
Brett Boardman/Belvoir

The plot of the epic novel, now regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, revolves around a visit by the devil and their entourage to Moscow. The devil (in a nod to Goethe’s Faust) assumes the guise of a certain Professor Woland, and sets about challenging state-sponsored beliefs about religion and personal conduct. Chaos ensues.

In his directorial notes, Flack, who worked on the adaptation with Tom Wright as dramaturg, describes being drawn to the novel’s “magical ability to outwit and outlive dogma, authoritarianism, repression and fear”.

By and large, Flack’s play, which places great emphasis on spectacle (if sometimes at the expense of the original’s satire), is a resounding success. While some of the critiques of contemporary Australian life in the play are at times a touch jarring, the company’s steadfast commitment to theatrical risk-taking and innovation is admirable.

I was particularly taken with the cast and artistic team’s compelling use of stage magic, speaking to the magical realist strands found in Bulgakov’s novel, while generating a series of genuinely beautiful tableaux.

Astonishingly ambitious

When we enter the theatre, the stage is almost completely bare and the walls have been painted black. Three members of the ensemble enter. Matilda Ridgway, excellent as the play’s narrator, picks up a battered paperback copy of Bulgakov’s novel, left in the middle of the otherwise empty stage. The trio then start to read aloud, and the stage begins to turn.

Following this introductory act of incantation, the devil – portrayed with aplomb by Paula Arundell – makes their entrance. So, too, does the devil’s entourage, which includes, memorably, a big black talking cat called Behemoth (played with great comedic brio by Josh Price).

A man reads a book, another man dressed as a cat holds him by the nape of his neck. — Behemoth is played with great comedic brio by Josh Price.
Brett Boardman/Belvoir

We are then introduced to a host of historically and geographically disparate characters, including the Master (Mark Leonard Winter) and his beloved Margarita (a standout performance by Anna Sansom), along with a wandering philosopher by the name of Yeshua (Winter), interrogated at the hands of Pontius Pilate (Marco Chiappi).

From here, we follow our characters through time and space as narratives unfold, supported by remarkable use of the revolving stage by cast and crew.

What we have here is an astonishingly ambitious – and physically demanding – work of adaptation, which runs for almost three hours.

The cast on stage. — The company’s steadfast commitment to theatrical risk-taking and creativity is admirable.
Brett Boardman/Belvoir

Despite its lengthy running time, the play never lags. The uniformly excellent ensemble, who make good use of music and physical comedy, succeed in capturing and then holding our attention. This, to my mind, is a measure of the play’s success. It also demonstrates that there is a real desire for fresh and creative approaches to contemporary theatre.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Flack spoke to precisely this point. Part of Bulgakov’s enduring appeal, for Flack, has to do with the fact that “you can just begin by thinking differently and imagining differently”.

Flack started work on this adaptation during lockdowns, working with actors to devise scenes based on the novel. It was a collaborative process that would stretch out over two years – much longer than the standard development time for a new Australian play.

Flack concedes this “new way of working that we’ve been trying out might bomb badly, but it might break through into something. And that’s what the arts should be.”

Were he alive today, I imagine Mikhail Bulgakov would wholeheartedly approve of this adaptation.

The Master and Margarita is at Belvoir, Sydney, until December 10.

Alexander Howard 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. Belvoir’s The Master and Margarita: astonishingly ambitious, physically demanding and a resounding success – https://theconversation.com/belvoirs-the-master-and-margarita-astonishingly-ambitious-physically-demanding-and-a-resounding-success-217366

What does it mean to be asexual?

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Power, Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University

In recent years, we’ve seen a burgeoning social movement for the acceptance of asexuality. We’ve also seen more asexual characters popping up in shows such as Heartstopper and Sex Education.

Despite this, asexuality remains widely misunderstood. So what does it mean?

Asexuality refers to low or no sexual attraction. However, this does not mean all people who identify as asexual, or the shorthand “ace”, never experience sexual attraction or never have sex.

People who identify as asexual may feel intense romantic attraction to someone, but not sexual attraction. Others may find sex pleasurable but rarely feel attracted to another person.

There are also variations of asexual identity that fit broadly within the ace umbrella. People who identify as demisexual, for example, experience sexual attraction only to people with whom they have a strong emotional bond.

Across the spectrum of ace identities, many people have romantic or sexual relationships. For others, sex is not part of their lives.

Asexual identity also cuts across other sexual or gender identities. Some asexual people identify as queer, transgender or gender diverse.

How many people identify as asexual?

Asexuality, as a sexual identity or orientation, has only recently been included in large-scale surveys. So data is limited.

Analysis of data from a 2004 British population-based survery found 1% of respondents indicated, “I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all”. This measure, however, may not be accurate given many asexual people wouldn’t agree they have “never” felt sexual attraction.

In 2019, a large Australian survey of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) communities, showed 3.2% of the sample identified as asexual.

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network, an international online network, has more than 120,000 members.

When did asexuality become a social movement?

Asexuality has always been part of human sexual diversity. However, the movement to establish asexuality as a sexual identity, and build a community around this, has its roots in the early 2000s.

The rise of internet technologies created a platform for asexual people to connect and organise, following a similar path to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists.

The rainbow LGBTQIA pride flag and the asexual pride flag together, lying in the grass intertwined. — Asexual identity also cuts across other sexual or gender identities.
Shutterstock

Asexuality, as an identity, sits alongside heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality as a description of self that is determined by the shape of one’s desire.

However, the significance of defining asexuality as an “identity” is often misunderstood or critiqued on the basis that many people experience low or no sex drive at some points in their life.

What’s the difference between sexual identity and sex drive?

In his work on the history of sexuality, sociologist Jeffrey Weeks points to the psychoanalytic interrogation of men attracted to men as a milestone in the contemporary Western understanding of sexuality. It was at this point, in the late 1800s, that “homosexuality” came to be seen as core to an individual’s psyche.

Before this, homosexual sex was often considered sinful or degenerate, but sex was seen as just a behaviour not an identity – something a person does, not who they “are”. There was no category of “the homosexual” and heterosexuality was only determined in response to this categorisation of sexuality.

This history means that, today, sexual identity is considered an important part of what defines us as a person. For lesbian, gay or bisexual people, “coming out” is about building a sense of self and belonging in the face of institutional and cultural opposition to homosexuality.

Asexuality has not been subject to legal or moral sanction in the ways that homosexuality has. However, many asexual people similarly do not conform to conventional expectations regarding sex, relationships and marriage. Families and communities often don’t accept or understand asexuality.

Sexual relationships are central to the expectations we place on ourselves and others for a “good” life. Sex and desire (or desirability), not to mention marriage and childbearing, are highly valued. People who are asexual, or who do not desire sex, are often given the message that they are “broken” or inadequate.

This can be reinforced through medical or psychological definitions of low sex drive as a problem that should be fixed. Hypo-active sexual desire disorder is a category within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook mental health professionals use to diagnose mental disorders.

While diagnostic categories are important to support people who experience distress due to low sex drive, they can also mean asexuality is viewed in pathological terms.

Building awareness of asexuality as a legitimate sexual identity is about resisting the view that asexuality is a deficit.

By challenging us to rethink everyday assumptions about human sexual experience, the asexuality movement is far from anti-sex. Rather, affirming and celebrating the legitimacy of asexual identity is very much a sex-positive stance – one that asks us to expand our appreciation of sexual diversity.

Jennifer Power receives funding from the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. What does it mean to be asexual? – https://theconversation.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-asexual-216748