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

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

Bryce Edwards’ Political Analysis – Luxon’s embarrassing coalition negotiations

By Bryce Edwards -

November 17, 2023

Chris_Luxon_portrait_(cropped) — Chris Luxon, leader of the National Party and New Zealand Prime Minister-elect. Image, wikimedia.

Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project .

Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is now being openly mocked and ridiculed by political commentators for his failure to achieve a coalition government. There are certainly signs that Luxon hasn’t managed the process well, and raising questions about competency at this early stage is a poor start to government.

The most savage criticism of Luxon is coming from the political right. Today rightwing political commentator and former National Beehive staffer Matthew Hooton has a scathing column in the Herald giving his account, obviously based on insider leaks, of how the negotiations have unfolded. Hooton paints a picture of National’s negotiations as a failure, caused by Luxon’s arrogance and hubris.

Hooton records Luxon’s criticisms immediately after the election of how previous Prime Ministers have conducted coalition negotiations and his claims that “I’ve done a lot of mergers and acquisitions”. With the exception of the Air New Zealand-Virgin alliance that broke up when he was chief executive, there is little evidence of any other mergers Luxon worked on in his business career.

Despite boasting of his business experience and relationship-building skills, Hooton says the National leader has astounded those involved in the negotiations by his cackhandedness.

After apparently not achieving much of the promised progress in the three-week period before final results came in, Hooton reports that the presumptive PM then entered talks without bothering to take his coalition partners seriously. Hooton reports, “Act, NZ First and National insiders say Luxon is a talker rather than a listener. He never asked how Act or NZ First thought negotiations should proceed, or what they wanted from them.”

Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan has also criticised Luxon’s management of the negotiations, pointing out on Monday that only the 1996 MMP coalition negotiations have taken longer: “That’s embarrassing for Chris Luxon. Because he’s the guy who’s talked up his negotiating skills, given he’s done a lot of mergers and acquisitions. And he’s the guy who set the deadline of wrapping this up in time for him to go to APEC.”

Why is this important? First impressions matter, and du Plessis-Allan suggests that Luxon and National’s reputation is suffering: “The start of a Government is a really important period. It sets up voters’ expectations for the first term, that’s why Governments often write up 100 day plans. Because they want to create a sense of urgency and give the impression they’re changing things fast. Literally the opposite of that is happening right now. There is no sense of urgency, nothing’s changing fast, there’s no momentum.”

Why the rush? Danyl McLauchlan explains today in the Listener that Luxon “promised to introduce a mini-Budget by Christmas and he’s running out of runway to get that done. They want their ministerial offices staffed and running but they can’t hire anyone because they don’t know who has what portfolio. They’re wasting crucial time.”

McLauchlan says the speed of the negotiations “will be driving Luxon wild with frustration” but Winston Peters will be entirely comfortable: “For Peters these negotiations – the tactics, the games, the stalling, the triumphs – are the quintessence of politics.”

He also points out that, although Peters cannot leverage the threat of supporting Labour instead, “he’s demonstrating his power over his larger coalition partners, making them come to him. He is the most important person in the country, the absolute centre of attention. And he will go on like this: he always does.”

Luxon has, according to commentators, failed to grasp the power that NZ First and Act have in the negotiations. He has assumed they are captive negotiators who will essentially have to agree to whatever he offers them. Hence there have been reports of low-ball offers that both Act and NZ First have been dismissive of, if not offended by.

Seymour and Peters have outmanoeuvred Luxon, not only because they have shown they are willing to work together, but because Luxon has failed to realise that the minor parties can walk away from the negotiations, causing a new election or forcing National to form a minority government that would be even more reliant on them.

As Hooton points out today, the pressure is on Luxon to produce a deal: “It is he who must close a deal before Christmas or there will be new elections. Seymour and Peters can quite happily walk away, leaving Luxon to form a minority Government that would need to win their agreement issue-by-issue. If anything, Seymour and Peters would be more powerful if not limited by a coalition agreement and the decaying but still burdensome rules of Cabinet confidentiality and collective responsibility. Seymour and Peters understood this all along. Luxon needs them if his Government is not to be a complete circus, with the clown show of the past five weeks being repeated whenever it wants to do anything contentious. Seymour and Peters don’t need him at all.”

Does this suggest Luxon will prove to be a weak prime minister? Leftwing political commentator Chris Trotter thinks so, arguing that Luxon’s poor negotiating skills only illustrates how little power he has, and essentially Luxon now looks like “an inexperienced numpty”.

Writing for Newstalk ZB today, Trotter suggests Luxon has overplayed his hand: “Placing insultingly meagre first-offers before such men might be survivable if Luxon had come to the table, as Key did in 2008, with 45 per cent of the party vote. Turning up with this election’s 38 per cent is nowhere near so impressive.”

Trotter argues the troubled negotiations should remind the public just how poorly Luxon has performed since becoming National leader, especially compared to the likes of his mentor John Key. On becoming leader Key made audacious raids into Labour constituency and ideologies by first visiting poor parts of Auckland and then helping Sue Bradford get her “anti-smacking bill” passed.

Luxon’s record is derisory by comparison, and in his first big test all that he has achieved is the own-goal of uniting David Seymour and Winston Peters in a negotiating bloc against him. And Trotter agrees that they now hold the winning cards, and Luxon is under pressure to capitulate: “What Luxon and his colleagues have seemingly failed to appreciate is that all the pressure is on them. As the largest party, they come, not with all the cards in their hands, but with a very large clock ticking loudly in their ears. Covid and a cost-of-living crisis have made New Zealanders ill-tempered and impatient. In the minds of many, the wait for a new government has already gone well over time”.

It’s now five weeks since the election. But there is talk today of an agreement being reached, perhaps on Sunday. But it could take much longer – especially if the three parties take the offers back to their respective parties and fail to get their immediate sign-off. We already know that the big policy sticking points have been over tax and a referendum on the Treaty. These will be the big issues to watch out for, to see who has compromised.

Hooton says today that if the minor parties aren’t happy with what Luxon offers on tax and the Treaty, they will be happy to have another election and campaign on those issues – which is likely to only make them more popular.

Then there are the portfolios and baubles. All parties deny these are big issues, but they always are crucial to the minor parties. And they might prove to be a big headache for Luxon. Who does he give Deputy PM to? And Peters is rumoured to have demanded the role of Attorney General, in charge of his old foes the Serious Fraud Office.

Such dilemmas would tax even the best negotiators. And in Luxon’s case, it might well defeat him.

*******

Dr Bryce Edwards is the Political Analyst in Residence at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the director of the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

What is LockBit, the cybercrime gang hacking some of the world’s largest organisations?

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Medbury, Lecturer in Intelligence and Security, Edith Cowan University

While ransomware incidents have been occurring for more than 30 years, only in the last decade has the term “ransomware” appeared regularly in popular media. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that blocks access to computer systems or encrypts files until a ransom is paid.

Cybercriminal gangs have adopted ransomware as a get-rich-quick scheme. Now, in the era of “ransomware as a service”, this has become a prolific and highly profitable tactic. Providing ransomware as a service means groups benefit from affiliate schemes where commission is paid for successful ransom demands.

Although only one of the many gangs operating, LockBit has been increasingly visible, with several high-profile victims recently appearing on the group’s website.

So what is LockBit? Who has fallen victim to them? And how can we protect ourselves from them?

What, or who, is LockBit?

To make things confusing, the term LockBit refers to both the malicious software (malware) and to the group that created it.

LockBit first gained attention in 2019. It’s a form of malware deliberately designed to be secretly deployed inside organisations, to find valuable data and steal it.

But rather than simply stealing the data, LockBit is a form of ransomware. Once the data has been copied, it is encrypted, rendering it inaccessible to the legitimate users. This data is then held to ransom – pay up, or you’ll never see your data again.

To add further incentive for the victim, if the ransom is not paid, they are threatened with publication of the stolen data (often described as double extortion). This threat is reinforced with a countdown timer on LockBit’s blog on the dark web.

Little is known about the LockBit group. Based on their website, the group doesn’t have a specific political allegiance. Unlike some other groups, they also don’t limit the number of affiliates:

We are located in the Netherlands, completely apolitical and only interested in money. We always have an unlimited amount of affiliates, enough space for all professionals. It does not matter what country you live in, what types of language you speak, what age you are, what religion you believe in, anyone on the planet can work with us at any time of the year.

Notably, LockBit have rules for their affiliates. Examples of forbidden targets (victims) include:

critical infrastructure
institutions where damage to the files could lead to death (such as hospitals)
post-Soviet countries such as Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Other ransomware providers have also claimed they won’t target institutions like hospitals – but this doesn’t guarantee victim immunity. Earlier this year a Canadian hospital was a victim of LockBit, triggering the group behind LockBit to post an apology, offer free decryption tools and allegedly expel the affiliate who hacked the hospital.

While rules may be in place, there is always potential for rogue users to target forbidden organisations.

The final rule in the list above is an interesting exception. According to the group, these countries are off limits because a high proportion of the group’s members were “born and grew up in the Soviet Union”, despite now being “located in the Netherlands”.

Who’s been hacked by LockBit?

High-profile victims include the United Kingdom’s Royal Mail and Ministry of Defence, and Japanese cycling component manufacturer Shimano. Data stolen from aerospace company Boeing was leaked just this week after the company refused to pay ransom to LockBit.

LockBit website screenshot showing download links for stolen data — LockBit’s website on the dark web is used to publish stolen data if the ransom is not paid.
Screenshot sourced by authors.

While not yet confirmed, the recent ransomware incident experienced by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has been claimed by LockBit.

Since appearing on the cybercrime scene, LockBit has been linked to almost 2,000 victims in the United States alone.

From the list of victims seen below, LockBit is clearly being used in a scatter-gun approach, with a wide variety of victims. This is not a series of planned, targeted attacks. Instead, it shows LockBit software is being used by a diverse range of criminals in a service model.

LockBit blog screenshot showing victims with countdown timer — LockBit’s blog on the dark web provides a showroom for public shaming of their victims.
Screenshot sourced by authors.

How we can protect ourselves

In recent years, ransomware as a service (RaaS for short) has become popular.

Just as organisations use software-as-a-service providers – such as licensing for office tools like Microsoft 365, or accounting software for payroll – malicious services are providing tools for cybercriminals.

Ransomware as a service enables an inexperienced criminal to deliver a ransomware campaign to multiple targets quickly and efficiently – often at minimal cost and usually on a profit-sharing basis.

The RaaS platform handles the malware management, data extraction, victim negotiation and payment handling, effectively outsourcing criminal activities.

The process is so well developed, such groups even provide guidelines on how to become an affiliate, and what benefits one will gain. With a 20% commission of the ransom being paid to LockBit, this system can generate significant revenue for the group – including the deposit of 1 Bitcoin (approximately A$58,000) required from new users.

While ransomware is a growing concern around the globe, good cybersecurity practices can help. Updating and patching our systems, good password and account management, network monitoring and reacting to unusual activity can all help to minimise the likelihood of any compromise – or at least limit its extent.

For now, whether or not to pay a ransom is a matter of preference and ethics for each organisation. But if we can make it more difficult to get in, criminal groups will simply shift to easier targets.

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

– ref. What is LockBit, the cybercrime gang hacking some of the world’s largest organisations? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-lockbit-the-cybercrime-gang-hacking-some-of-the-worlds-largest-organisations-217679

The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Muhammad Rizwan Azhar, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

We hop in the car to get groceries or drop kids at school. But while the car is convenient, these short trips add up in terms of emissions, pollution and petrol cost.

Close to half (44%) of all Australian commuter trips are by car – and under 10km. Of Perth’s 4.2 million daily car trips, 2.8 are for distances of less than 2km.

This is common in wealthier countries. In the United States, a staggering 60% of all car trips cover less than 10km.

So what’s the best solution? You might think switching to an electric vehicle is the natural step. In fact, for short trips, an electric bike or moped might be better for you – and for the planet. That’s because these forms of transport – collectively known as electric micromobility – are cheaper to buy and run.

But it’s more than that – they are actually displacing four times as much demand for oil as all the world’s electric cars at present, due to their staggering uptake in China and other nations where mopeds are a common form of transport.

family on electric moped in Beijing, China — Electric mopeds have surged in popularity – especially in China.
Shutterstock

How can that be?

On the world’s roads last year, there were over 20 million electric vehicles and 1.3 million commercial EVs such as buses, delivery vans and trucks.

But these numbers of four or more wheel vehicles are wholly eclipsed by two- and three-wheelers. There were over 280 million electric mopeds, scooters, motorcycles and three-wheelers on the road last year. Their sheer popularity is already cutting demand for oil by a million barrels of oil a day – about 1% of the world’s total oil demand, according to estimates by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

What about electric vehicles, you ask? After all, EVs have been heralded as a silver bullet for car emissions and air pollution in cities, as their tailpipe emissions are zero. If charged with renewable power, they get even greener.

But to see them as an inarguable good is an error. They are cleaner cars, but they are still cars, taking up space on the roads and requiring a lot of electricity to power them. Their batteries make them heavier than a traditional car, and draw heavily on the extraction of rare earth elements. While EVs are overall much greener than internal combustion engine cars, battery manufacture can undermine some of the gains.

On the plus side, petrol cars cost about A$0.14 per kilometre in fuel, or about $1,820 in fuel annually for the average car doing 12,000km. Maintenance averages at $910 a year, bringing the total to $2,730 for a petrol car.

By contrast, charging an EV would cost around $480 for that distance. Maintenance of $240 takes annual running costs to $720. So EVs are much cheaper to run. But they are expensive to buy.

What advantages do electric mopeds and bikes have?

The electric transport revolution is a great chance to rethink how we move through our cities – and whether we even need a car at all.

Cars, after all, often have only one occupant. You’re expending a lot of energy to transport yourself.

By contrast, electric mopeds and bikes use a lot less energy to transport one or two people. They’re also a lot cheaper to buy and run than electric cars.

If you commute on an e-bike 20km a day, five days a week, your charging cost would be about $20 – annually.

In Australia, electric bikes are very rapidly going from a hobbyist pursuit to a serious mode of urban transport. Over 100,000 e-bikes were sold here last year.

Of course, you’re unlikely to use electric mopeds or bikes to drive from Sydney to Melbourne. Their real value is in short-hop trips – the school run, the milk and bread run or even the commute – where they take roughly the same time or shorter than a car.

man standing near stacked oil barrels — E-bikes and electric mopeds are cutting oil demand more than electric vehicles.
Shutterstock

Smaller electric options like scooters and skateboards also offer a way to overcome the last kilometre problem which plagues public transport systems. This, in short, is the inconvenient distance between your home and the station or bus stop. Being able to cover this distance fast can be a game-changer for public transport.

If taken up, electric micromobility can cut urban emissions. A study of e-scooter riders in the United Kingdom found these trips produced up to 45% less carbon dioxide than alternatives.

US researchers estimate that if e-bike trips expanded to 11% of all vehicle trips, transport emissions would fall by about 7%.

As petrol prices increase and battery prices fall, the cheaper running costs of electric vehicles and even cheaper running costs of electric mopeds, bikes and scooters will keep eating away at the demand for oil.

Global oil demand is now projected to peak in 2028 at 105.7 million barrels per day – and then begin to fall, according to the International Energy Agency.

Electric vehicles will play a role in cutting oil demand. But it may well be that electric micromobility cuts demand faster, given how fast these cheaper, more plentiful options are being taken up.

What does this mean for me?

If you’re looking to go electric, it’s worth taking a close look at your transport needs. If you live in an outer suburb or regional towns, you may find the longer range and larger capacity of an electric car is better suited.

But for many people, it’s likely you’ll have a range of options. You might have one electric vehicle for longer trips, or group trips, as well as an e-bike for the school run or groceries.

– ref. The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars – https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-bikes-and-mopeds-are-cutting-demand-for-oil-far-more-than-electric-cars-213870

In 5 years, this Australian astrophysics lab reached 50% women. Here’s how they did it

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Ryan-Weber, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D), Swinburne University of Technology

Many organisations, from community sporting groups to the United Nations, have set themselves a target of gender parity: ensuring half of staff or members are women. Gender parity is desirable because training and retaining equal halves of a population’s available talent influences an organisation’s growth, problem-solving capacity and future-readiness.

However, actually achieving gender parity is not always an easy feat. In the astronomy sector, somewhere between 25% and 35% of people identify as women.

At our research centre in Australia (the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions, or ASTRO 3D), we set out in 2017 to reach gender parity.

As some of my colleagues write in a new paper in Nature Astronomy, the centre adopted a strategy based on evidence from the social sciences, and by 2022 we had increased women’s membership from 38% to 50%. This result shows it can be done – and offers some tips other organisations can use.

How we did it

The change was brought about by a broad range of diversity initiatives across recruitment, retention, leadership and workplace culture. The increase in women was at all levels from students to chief investigators, and – in case you were worried – did not come at the expense of men, as the centre’s membership grew over this period.

The centre took a “top-down” approach to gender parity, with five key elements:

setting a diversity target with regular monitoring of progress
selecting a diverse set of team leaders
in-person diversity training for all organisation members
ensuring 50% women on selection committees for hiring postdoctoral researchers
ensuring 50% women on shortlists for postdoctoral positions.

We found that when a “tipping point” of 40% women was reached, we saw more women students choosing to join ASTRO 3D – particularly within research teams led or co-led by women.

One of the most powerful messages to take away from the paper is the importance of monitoring and evaluation. That’s how we know the strategies applied by ASTRO 3D, built from evidence in the social sciences, were effective. Evaluating programs is crucial, and can be done using platforms like the Women in STEM evaluation portal.

Everybody wins

The results underscore the continued need for women role models and leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We know gender parity improves research quality because it reduces the risk of bias and groupthink, which can affect the validity and reliability of scientific findings. Furthermore, diversity can lead to more innovative and creative solutions to scientific problems, as people from different backgrounds bring unique insights to the table.

ASTRO 3D has shown that a multifaceted approach can be used to create a diverse workplace, which is better for everyone.

While astronomy may seem far removed from day-to-day concerns, everyone benefits from fundamental science.

Astronomy is a gateway science and a training ground for our brightest minds. From schoolchildren to the general public, people are fascinated by questions of what’s out there in space, and how the elements fused inside stars end up in the air we inhale with every breath.

When astronomy comes down to Earth

While solving the mysteries of the universe, astronomy students and researchers develop skills in data analysis and problem-solving. Astronomy graduates and researchers are now highly sought in private industry.

Their problem-solving skills are easily transferred from astronomy to sectors from biomedical and climate science, to mining and satellite technology, to energy and finance. Curating and analysing data from stars and galaxies is remarkably similar to predicting bushfires, decoding genomic data and making financial decisions.

Research and development teams in both academia and industry benefit from gender parity. It fosters an environment where everyone can thrive and contribute their best work.

The many astronomy graduates and postdocs who go on to work in industry take both problem-solving skills and lived experience of a positive research culture built on gender-parity goals. ASTRO 3D has shown how it can be done.

Emma Ryan-Weber receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. In 5 years, this Australian astrophysics lab reached 50% women. Here’s how they did it – https://theconversation.com/in-5-years-this-australian-astrophysics-lab-reached-50-women-heres-how-they-did-it-216632

Giant eagles and scavenging vultures shared the skies of ancient Australia

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ellen K. Mather, Adjunct Associate Lecturer in Palaeontology, Flinders University

A flock of vultures (_Cryptogyps lacertosus_) and Australian ravens watch and wait (left), as an adult eagle _Dynatoaetus pachyosteus_ feeds on the carcass of a dead _Diprotodon_ (centre), while a younger bird seeks to join in. In the nearby treetops, a second adult _D. pachyosteus_ feeds its hungry chick (right). John Barrie

Today, Australia is home to 17 species of hawks and eagles. But the fossil record shows some other, rather special raptors were present in the relatively recent past.

Tens of thousands of years ago, Australia was home to species such as Dynatoaetus gaffae, the largest eagle ever to have lived in Australia, and Cryptogyps lacertosus, our only known vulture.

Now, we have discovered another ancient eagle shared the skies with these prehistoric predators. In a new paper in the journal Alcheringa, we describe the formidable Dynatoaetus pachyosteus, based on fossils found in the Naracoorte Caves in South Australia.

A new eagle unearthed

Dynatoaetus pachyosteus (the name means “powerful eagle with thick bones”) lived during the Pleistocene (a time period spanning from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago). It had a wingspan similar to that of a wedge-tailed eagle, but with much more robust and powerful wings and legs. It was slightly smaller than its cousin, the massive Dynatoaetus gaffae.

This formidable predator would most likely have preyed on medium to large marsupials and birds. It may even have attacked juveniles and weakened individuals of huge megafaunal species like the giant flightless bird Genyornis.

An illustration of an eagle feeding a chick, together with photos of four bones. — The large extinct eagle *Dynatoaetus pachyosteus* (left) and comparison of its humerus or upper arm/wing bone (centre) to that of a modern female wedge-tailed eagle (right). Scale bar = 10mm.
John Barrie (reconstruction) / Ellen Mather (photos)

Dynatoaetus pachyosteus shared the Pleistocene landscape with at least two other large eagles, the huge Dynatoaetus gaffae and the wedge-tailed eagle we know today. For these species to coexist, they would have likely needed to have slightly different ecological roles to avoid outright competition.

“Niche separation” typically occurs by exploiting different kinds of food or habitats. These three eagles most likely coexisted by specialising in hunting different prey and nesting in different places.

The occurrence of both species of the Dynatoaetus genus in Australia (and nowhere else) has implications for the evolution of eagles. Dynatoaetus gaffae and D. pachyosteus presumably evolved from a common ancestor in Australia that diverged into two species, a process that typically takes a very long time.

This suggests the ancestor of this genus was already ensconced on our continent millions of years before the two Pleistocene species arose. Dynatoaetus pachyosteus and D. gaffae together form a rare example of a raptor genus diversifying into multiple species entirely on the Australian continent (what scientists call “endemic evolutionary radiation”).

There are only two raptor genera today restricted to Australia, and both consist of only a single species: Hamirostra (the black-breasted buzzard) and Lophoictinia (the square-tailed kite).

Primitive vultures of ancient Australia

Our research has also revealed intriguing new information about another extinct raptor, the vulture Cryptogyps lacertosus.

Fossils from the Green Waterhole (also known as Fossil Cave), in the Tantanoola district near Mt Gambier, give us a more complete picture of this species. We found several paired wing bones, two shoulder bones, a vertebra and a toe bone, all probably from a single individual.

The additional bones of Cryptogyps indicate it was a rather primitive vulture, less adapted for the long periods of soaring flight characteristic of modern vultures.

Thanks to the sediment around the fossils, we also have a very precise date of when Cryptogyps was alive. Many of the Green Waterhole fossils were buried in a deposit of calcite rafts – crystals that form on the surface of still bodies of water in caves.

Photos of several bones and an illustration of a vulture-like bird — Fossil bones from the wing and shoulder of the extinct vulture *Cryptogyps lacertosus*, recovered from Green Waterhole, South Australia. Scale bar = 50mm. Life reconstruction top right.
Ellen Mather (photos) / John Barrie (reconstruction)

Today, most of the cave is submerged because of a high water table, but in the past, it was mostly dry. A pool of water deeper in the cave was where these calcite rafts formed.

The water was likely what attracted animals into the cave in the first place. These animals then died, and their bones sank to the bottom of the pool along with the calcite rafts. Our team dated these calcite rafts – and thus the entombed Cryptogyps fossils – at approximately 60,000 years old.

Mammal extinctions affect birds of prey

When we think of the mass extinction of Australian megafauna, we tend to think about the demise of large mammals, such as the “giant wombat” Diprotodon optatum, the “marsupial lion” Thylacoleo carnifex, and the giant short-faced kangaroo Procoptodon goliah. Some large reptiles are also commonly recognised as victims: the giant goanna (Megalania) Varanus priscus, the constricting snake Wonambi naracoortensis, and even a giant armoured skink Tiliqua frangens.

But as we can see from the case of our large eagles and vultures, other groups of animals were also affected. Birds of prey, especially large and scavenging species, went extinct around the world during the Late Pleistocene, their food supply likely affected by the loss of large mammalian species. Australia appears to have been no exception to the rule.

Two photos of eagles in flight, one with a white belly and the other with dark, patterned wings. — The wedge-tailed eagle (*Aquila audax*) and the white-bellied sea eagle (*Icthyophaga leucogaster*) are the largest birds of prey found in modern Australia.
Michael Lee

The new fossils reveal many of Australia’s large birds of prey did not survive the megafaunal extinction event in the Late Pleistocene, roughly 50,000 years ago. The two largest species that managed to persist to the present are the wedge-tailed eagle, which is a generalist hunter found throughout the continent, and the white-bellied sea eagle, which targets fish and has a coastal distribution.

It is likely our three extinct large raptors – two giant eagles and a vulture – were too specialised as hunters and scavengers of megafauna to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Their extinction likely caused a further cascade of effects through the ecosytem: in Asia, for instance, more recent loss of vultures has led to increased populations of scavenging feral dogs and higher prevalance of diseases such as rabies.

Ellen K. Mather received funding from BirdLife Australia Raptor Group.

Michael Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Flinders University and the Royal Society of South Australia

Trevor H. Worthy has received funding from The Australian Research Council for research on fossil birds. He has previously worked for Flinders University and now has an adjunct status there.

– ref. Giant eagles and scavenging vultures shared the skies of ancient Australia – https://theconversation.com/giant-eagles-and-scavenging-vultures-shared-the-skies-of-ancient-australia-216358

NZ wants more seasonal workers – but Pacific nations no longer want to be the ‘outposts’ that ‘grow’ them

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Apisalome Movono, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Massey University

The three party leaders currently negotiating to form New Zealand’s next government might have their differences, but they seem to agree on one thing: the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme needs to expand.

New Zealand, like Australia, faces critical labour shortages in some sectors, with real implications for future economic performance. The RSE scheme, which has delivered thousands of crucial workers in viticulture and horticulture since it began in 2007, is the logical solution.

Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon has pledged to double the RSE intake from the current 19,500. ACT’s David Seymour wants the cap on these workers lifted completely – emulating the Australian approach. And NZ First is in favour of recruiting more migrant workers in all fields facing shortages.

But while an increase in RSE workers might benefit New Zealand, the impact on the Pacific nations they come from is becoming hard to ignore. In fact, the schemes risk undermining the very communities and economies they supposedly benefit.

Intake doubled after COVID

In the year to June 2023, 48,000 people left the Pacific to participate in New Zealand’s RSE scheme and Australia’s Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme. This represented almost a doubling of visas issued since 2018-19, the last year of recruitment before COVID-19 interrupted things.

Remittance payments from workers in these schemes undoubtedly assisted Pacific countries during the periods of pandemic-related border closures. But the resulting labour shortages in the source countries saw calls for a review of participation in the schemes.

As the table below shows, 20% of the male working-age population in Vanuatu and Tonga were recruited in either the Australian or New Zealand seasonal labour schemes in 2022-23. These are people who will be absent from farms, schools, hospitals, mechanical workshops and other sectors in their home countries for six to nine months of the year.

A recent report from Vanuatu found 60% of enterprises – mostly in trades, retail and restaurants – had been affected by staff losses to RSE and PALM schemes. The tourism sector, in particular, has felt the impact strongly since the PALM scheme expanded to recruit workers beyond the primary sector.

Tourism operators report training staff only to see them leave for more lucrative work on seasonal worker schemes. Taumeasina Island resort in Samoa lost almost 60 workers over the 12 months to February 2023.

Not a win-win policy

The Pacific development policies of both New Zealand and Australia purport to “strengthen resilience” and “grow economies”, devoting millions of dollars to various initiatives.

Arguably, the extraction of increasingly large numbers of skilled and semi-skilled workers from important social and economic sectors is systematically undermining these same initiatives.

The aid money cannot fully compensate for the loss of people from their families, communities, businesses and economic sectors for such extended periods. The Archbishop of Fiji recently spoke about the “dark side of seasonal work”, and it’s clearly no longer tenable to say seasonal labour schemes are the win-win they were originally intended to be.

The balance has tipped in favour of the bigger, richer countries. Earlier this year the OECD reported there is “limited upskilling” of these workers. The anticipated transformative effect on the Pacific private sector has not been seen.

The largest Pacific nation RSE contributors have found this loss of labour is undermining community development as well as the labour market. When workers leave it puts an extra burden on family and communities.

Samoan prime minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has been particularly concerned that Pacific countries are perceived as mere “outposts” which “grow” labourers for Australia and New Zealand.

Her sentiments are echoed in Vanuatu, where labour commissioner Murille Maltenoven has spoken of complaints about the “brain drain” affecting the domestic labour market. And Fiji’s prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka argues the local economy should be prioritised over seasonal labour schemes.

Policy and practice must change

The criticism has led both Australia and New Zealand to review and reform their respective seasonal worker policies. Improvements include more investment in pastoral care and skills training, and greater benefits for employees.

It seems unlikely, however, that this will fully address the growing imbalance between who benefits and who bears the cost of these schemes. Furthermore, with Australia expanding its own residency pathway to match New Zealand’s, even more skilled workers may be enticed to leave their Pacific homelands.

The Samoan government is tackling the problem head on, approving a new labour mobility policy in late September. Among other things, it will prioritise those who have been unemployed for more than six months.

This reflects the OECD position that unskilled workers must be a priority. Otherwise, the schemes will directly undermine human development in Pacific countries.

Other seasoned observers have suggested New Zealand and Australia begin recruiting more workers from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, rather than further deplete Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.

The OECD also urges investment in the private sectors of partner countries to create better job options and wages at home for Pacific workers. This is where Australian and New Zealand development aid policies should now be focused.

Apisalome Movono receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Regina Scheyvens receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Sophie Auckram 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. NZ wants more seasonal workers – but Pacific nations no longer want to be the ‘outposts’ that ‘grow’ them – https://theconversation.com/nz-wants-more-seasonal-workers-but-pacific-nations-no-longer-want-to-be-the-outposts-that-grow-them-217790

5 things we need to see in Australia’s new nature laws

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

Australia’s abysmal rates of extinctions and land clearing since European colonisation are infamous globally. Our national environmental legislation has largely failed to protect biodiversity, including many threatened plants, animals and ecological communities. But change is afoot.

The federal government is reforming our national environmental law. Following a scathing review in 2021, the legislation is being rewritten. While amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) are yet to be tabled in parliament, the government says “rolling consultation” has begun.

About 30 environment, business and industry groups attended “targeted stakeholder workshops” last month. Public consultation begins with two webinars, on November 23 and 28. Government officials are offering to “explain how the proposed changes are designed to work and how they compare to existing laws”. But they are not sharing the draft legislation yet.

How can we assess whether these new laws can prevent further species loss and habitat destruction? Here’s an essential checklist of five things the law must include if we are to avoid calamity and hasten environmental recovery.

1. A climate trigger

The EPBC Act does not explicitly discuss and account for climate change and its impacts. So the federal environment minister is not legally bound to consider – or authorised to refuse – new or expanded coal mines and fossil gas fields based on their future climate impacts.

But climate change clearly threatens biodiversity and special places such as the Great Barrier Reef, as well as human communities and culture.

2. Habitat means homes for wildlife

Protection of sufficient and connected habitat must be central to Australia’s national environmental law. If homes for swift parrots, koalas, greater gliders and other threatened species continue to be destroyed and fragmented, it is all but guaranteed Australia will fail in its stated quest to avoid further extinctions.

Northern Australia is home to exceptional but declining biodiversity that is increasingly threatened by development of pastoral, cotton and fracking industries.

Significant increases in land clearing and water extraction are seldom referred under the EPBC Act, let alone assessed.

Environmental law reform must stem the accelerating loss of biodiversity in this region and elsewhere. Reforms must include expanding the water trigger to apply to shale gas fracking, and ensuring significant land clearing is referred and assessed.

It is also crucial that federal approval powers are not devolved to states and territories, particularly in remote regions where so much damage occurs out of sight and out of mind.

3. Setting clear objectives and measuring outcomes

The new laws must state policy objectives such as no new extinctions and no actions that accelerate climate change.

Decision-makers must be required to address direct, indirect and cumulative threats that undermine these objectives.

The new National Environment Standards (the centrepiece of this law reform) must stipulate red lines not to be crossed, such as no clearing of any critically endangered ecological communities or critical habitat of threatened species.

We should always seek first to avoid harm, then keep harm to a minimum, and only as a last resort, offset remaining impacts – and then only with credible offset plans that fully account for uncertainties in delivering environmental compensation.

4. An independent umpire

We need a well-resourced, independent umpire, operating at arms length from government. This “independent cop on the beat” will need powers to prevent activities and developments deemed too harmful for biodiversity.

The government has vowed to create a national Environmental Protection Agency. The functioning and powers of such an entity risk being severely undermined if the environment minister of the day has the ability to “call-in” projects and make unilateral decisions over whether they can proceed. That would also create concern regarding industry influence and pressure on ministers to approve projects.

It’s essential ministers not only have regard for environmental standards but also follow them to the letter of the law.

5. A Voice for Country and culture

Our national environment laws must make room for genuine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders participation in how matters of cultural and environmental significance are managed.

Our new nature laws must interact with federal cultural heritage laws, which are also under reform. Entities of cultural significance, such as humpback whales and dingoes, must be cared for in a way deemed appropriate by Indigenous Australians. Such a mechanism must be co-designed with Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders.

Policy must continue to be developed in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people. We suggest a Land and Sea Country Commissioner, “a Voice for Country”, could lead this ongoing collaboration. We also need to ensure groups are adequately resourced and supported to Care for Country.

We must do better

The time has come to lift our ambitions and truly protect our nation’s precious environment and biodiversity.

Australians want effective, urgent action from government. For cultural, social, economic and environmental reasons, biodiversity conservation should be treated as a public good and receive bipartisan support. It’s not an optional extra. We simply must invest in nature. We cannot afford not to.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. Euan is a Councillor within the Biodiversity Council, and a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society.

Jack Pascoe is Co-Chief Councillor of the Biodiversity Council and a member on the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australasian Wildlife Management Society. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Kristy Howey is the Executive Director of the Environment Centre NT.

Terry Hughes receives competitive funding from the Australian Research Council.

Yung En Chee receives funding from an Australian Research Council linkage grant. She also receives funding and research contracts from Melbourne Water through the Melbourne Waterway Research-Practice Partnership 2023-28.

– ref. 5 things we need to see in Australia’s new nature laws – https://theconversation.com/5-things-we-need-to-see-in-australias-new-nature-laws-217271

‘I feel like I’ve been able to create more awareness’: what is it like for Indigenous men at top-ranked universities?

By The Conversation -

November 17, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garth Stahl, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland

One of the top priorities of the Universities Accord process it to improve access to university in Australia, particularly for those from underrepresented groups.

This is particularly so for Indigenous men, who are among the least likely groups go to university, let alone an elite one. Elite universities are highly ranked, located in metropolitan areas and tend to have fewer students from disadvantaged backgrounds (as opposed to regional and lower-ranked universities).

As of 2019, about 4.5% of Indigenous men had gone to university. Indigenous women are nearly twice as likely to apply for an undergraduate degree.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pointed out, there is “a greater chance of an Indigenous young male going to jail than university”.

But while politicians talk about how they want to see more Indigenous people attend and graduate from university, we don’t often hear from Indigenous students about their experiences.

Our study

We are a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers studying Indigenous men in higher education. We have interviewed 19 Indigenous current and former students across Australia as part of our research.

Understanding the experiences of those who are making university work for them can help us understand how to make higher education a better option for other young Indigenous men.

Here we focus on four young men – Nullah, Dural, Ricky and Birrani – who were attending an elite Australian university.

Isolation and homesickness

Many Indigenous students grow up in remote areas, which presents a geographical barrier to study. All Australia’s top-ranked universities are in major cities. This means many Indigenous students have to move to go to university.

Nullah studied education, history and maths. He told us he felt homesick during his studies:

I just didn’t know anyone getting down here. And it was pretty hard. I found it a lot easier to form relationships at the [Indigenous Support Unit] – more so than within my degree and in my classes.

Dural, who studied clinical psychology, also spoke of feeling isolated in his studies:

there wasn’t any Aboriginal people around at all. And I was like, yeah I didn’t really sort of know why that was the case or like I said before, felt isolated.

Ignorance and racism

Interviewees also spoke about encountering ignorance and casual racism at university.

Ricky did an education degree, with a focus on drama and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He found the Indigenous course he studied to be “watered down and it was so surface-level that it annoyed me”.

He also spoke about how little his fellow students knew about Indigenous culture. He gave the example of needing to explain to other students why another Indigenous student had not looked them in the eye.

I was like, ‘Well, a lot of Indigenous people believe looking you in the eyes is a form of aggression. And out of respect, they won’t look you in the eyes.’ They were like, ‘Oh, we didn’t know that’ […]

But Ricky told us casual racism was the “hardest thing”:

I found it hard when we did education around Indigenous people and some of the casual racism. That was probably the hardest thing to deal with. And it’s not so much like I think they were trying to be racist, but some of the stuff that they’re saying, I was like, ‘Do you realise what you’re saying right now?’ Like do you understand?

Passion for study and a desire to help

Despite feelings of isolation and racism, our interviewees spoke of their studies with great passion. As Birrani, who did an advanced science degree, explained:

I didn’t really think of going to uni as an investment [in my future career] and all that kind of stuff. I just thought of it as doing what I want to do. I just wanted to do science.

Interviewees spoke about wanting to represent their culture and take their education back to their communities. Dural was highly motivated by what his education would allow him to do:

knowing that when you go to a psychologist, hoping that they’re culturally sensitive and they can sort of understand your experiences as an Aboriginal person as well.

Nullah talked about showing people in his community that higher education was an option for them.

I always, I knew that I was capable of studying at uni. And I kind of wanted to also prove to the people in my own community and mostly I tell my brothers that it can be done.

Change is possible

Despite the issues with their institutions, our interviewees saw the university environment as malleable and something that could be improved. Ricky spoke about representing his culture at university.

Like, really my motivation to go to uni is to make sure that Indigenous people get the right education, but it’s also about educating the educators to be able to educate in this topic.

Nullah similarly talked about helping to “embed” Indigenous perspective in classrooms.

I feel like that’s my passion and that’s my purpose, is having our people and our culture and our history represented more in the education curriculum and also to have that education there.

He added he wanted to influence how Indigenous culture was perceived at his university:

It’s something I’m really passionate about like my background, my culture, and sort of getting that out across into the university.

Dural was he was the only Indigenous male in his psychology course. But he saw this in positive terms as an opportunity for change:

So in my cohort, I guess whenever those issues come up, or whenever anyone’s wants to talk about psychology from more of an Aboriginal perspective, then I’m able to sort of share my knowledge and my experiences. And yeah, I feel like I’ve been able to sort of create more awareness around those issues, I guess.

A lot more to learn

Our research shows how young Indigenous men face significant barriers in their university studies. But it also shows how they approach their education with great passion, optimism and pride.

The interviewees told us how their strong sense of connection to culture and their identity inform how they navigate elite universities. They often encountered experiences where they had to educate their fellow classmates who, according to them, had little familiarity with Indigenous cultures.

Policymakers have a lot to learn from students like Nullah, Dural, Ricky and Birrani, especially if we are going to ensure university is a place that genuinely welcomes and supports Indigenous men to study. Our research highlights the importance of taking culture seriously, and what is possible if Indigenous culture is acknowledged, affirmed and incorporated into higher education spaces and learning.

Garth Stahl has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education.

Braden Hill has previously received funding from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education.

Himanshu Gupta has received funding from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education.

James Smith has received funding from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE); and is a past Equity Fellow and Adjunct Professor with NCSEHE.

Samuel Moore 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. ‘I feel like I’ve been able to create more awareness’: what is it like for Indigenous men at top-ranked universities? – https://theconversation.com/i-feel-like-ive-been-able-to-create-more-awareness-what-is-it-like-for-indigenous-men-at-top-ranked-universities-217186

Grattan on Friday: A government in a big hurry gives opposition some wins on ex-detainees

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

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

It’s not very often we see a bill marched through parliament at such a pace as this week.

After being caught on the hop by the High Court, the government has brought in emergency legislation to strengthen its powers to control more than 80 people, some of them serious criminals, it has been forced to release from immigration detention. The bill was introduced in the lower house on Thursday morning and was set to pass Thursday night.

Those of an irreverent turn of mind might recall Scott Morrison’s Great Strawberry Crisis of September 2018, when a bill was also raced through in a day.

Both the strawberry bill and this one were enacted in the name of “keeping the community safe”.

The strawberry exercise, following the discovery of needles in some fruit, was an obvious political stunt. This week’s legislation goes to a serious matter, although there’s dispute about the threat to community safety, given the risks posed by these people aren’t greater than those presented by local criminals who leave jail. The difference is these are illegal immigrants.

The High Court isn’t usually front and centre in politics. But when it is, it can land sharp punches that throw governments off balance.

The Albanese government always knew the court might rule, as it did last week, that people can’t be held indefinitely in immigration detention. But on the basis of its past record, the odds seemed against it doing so.

The Coalition says the government failed to take into account a hint months ago from one judge. Certainly the government wasn’t as prepared as it should have been when the decision came.

It initially concentrated on putting conditions into people’s visas and making sure security and law enforcement authorities were prepared.

It was quickly obvious, however, that a robust response would be required. Regardless of the logic, the argument that these people pose no more danger than do post-sentence Australians wouldn’t wash. This was especially obvious when media stories appeared about frightened victims.

The government’s situation was complicated by the court’s delay in providing reasons for its decision (on which, incidentally, we don’t know whether the judges were unanimous or split).

The explanation of the court’s action is that this was a habeas corpus case, so the court’s first duty was to the individual at the centre of it. That meant when it decided the man should be released, it had an obligation to say so immediately.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, a junior minister, visibly struggled under the Coalition’s attack in parliament. The optics weren’t helped by the departure of Anthony Albanese late Wednesday for the APEC meeting in the United States. It’s been reported this was a trip the PM would have preferred to miss, but felt obliged to make because Joe Biden expected him to be there.

The High Court decision affected immediately more than 90 people, a number of whom had been convicted of major crimes including murder and rape. More than 80 have been released. The total number potentially involved could run into the hundreds.

The government kept repeating it had no choice but to let the detainees out at once. Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil said, “If I had any legal power to do it, I would keep every one of those people in detention. Some of those people have committed deplorable, disgusting crimes. I am raising three children in this country, and I want a safe Australia.”

The emergency legislation, ticked off by a special caucus meeting, meant the Commonwealth could deploy ankle monitoring bracelets and impose curfews.

There was a catch-22 in the powers the government previously had. If a person breached their visa obligations, they could be sent to immigration detention – but after the court judgement, that penalty was no longer available. This made legislation necessary, so people could be jailed.

The government rushed the bill through the House of Representatives on Thursday morning in about an hour. The opposition was not allowed to move amendments.

The Coalition prepared several amendments, substantially broadening the restrictions, to pursue in the Senate. But, anxious to lower the temperature, speed the bill’s passage, and get the issue off the table, acting Prime Minister Richard Marles approached Opposition leader Peter Dutton. Marles and other ministers met Dutton in Marles’ office, and the government agreed to all the opposition amendments. They included mandatory minimum sentencing for visa breaches – which is inconsistent with Labor’s platform. It’s understood Albanese was kept abreast of things.

The legislation may be stopgap because, without the court’s reasons the government is working, to a degree, in the dark. More legislation could be needed next year.

The Greens have denounced the extra controls. The Greens’ Nick McKim told the Senate. “Make no mistake, this is Prime Minister Albanese’s Tampa moment and history will condemn him for this, just as it condemned Mr Howard and Mr Beazley over 20 years ago”. This was a reference to Coalition legislation for a drastic response to the asylum seekers on the Tampa.

McKim accused Labor of “an abject craven capitulation by a party that has forgotten where it came from, and forgotten what it used to stand for.” He predicted a High Court challenge to the legislation.

David Manne, executive director of Refugee Legal, says a challenge is “absolutely” possible. He says the new law confers “extraordinary powers” that are beyond necessity and proportionality.

Manne says the controls imposed could involve another deprivation of a person’s liberty, when the High Court has just ruled against the deprivation of their liberty.

In crude political terms, Labor knows it is always potentially vulnerable on issues involving asylum seekers and refugees. That vulnerability is on two flanks. The Coalition will exploit any situation to paint Labor as weak. The Greens will cast Labor as heartless.

The government hopes the legislation provides the necessary belt and braces to send the community the message that, despite initial fumbling, it is in control of this unexpected situation.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: A government in a big hurry gives opposition some wins on ex-detainees – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-a-government-in-a-big-hurry-gives-opposition-some-wins-on-ex-detainees-217912

The government just killed 50 infrastructure projects – what matters is whether it will fund them on merit from now on

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jago Dodson, Professor of Urban Policy and Director, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

The federal government has just announced a list of projects to be abandoned as a result of an independent strategic review of its infrastructure investment program.

The review found the cost of the A$120 billion, ten-year program had blown out by $32.8 billion, half of which was in projects not yet under construction.

But the flaws in national infrastructure planning go much deeper than the question of whether or how projects are listed on a spreadsheet, and how much their costs blow out.

A national framework built around Infrastructure Australia was supposed to resolve differences between the states and the federal government on projects before they get approved.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as Australia was recovering from recession, demands for new infrastructure funding grew.

Sydney, which had been “full up” according to then NSW Premier Bob Carr and had economised on spending in the runup to the 2000 Olympics, desperately needed new infrastructure.

With their budgets constrained, states began pitching projects to the federal government, but incoherently and without a national framework.

The Rudd Labor government went to the 2007 election promising to bring coherence and rationality to national infrastructure planning.

Independent advice was meant to fix things…

Rudd and the then infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese established Infrastructure Australia as an independent statutory authority to provide advice on national needs and project priorities. The idea of it being independent came from technocratic bodies such as the Reserve Bank and the Productivity Commission.

Infastructure Australia was diligent in its approach.

It undertook national infrastructure audits to determine key areas of need, prepared uniform criteria by which projects should be assessed, and compiled priority lists of projects assessed on merit against those criteria.

Final decisions on funding would rest with ministers, but they would have the benefit of Infrastructure Australia’s independent advice.

…but big projects are inherently political

But large infrastructure projects addressing public and business needs are unavoidably political.

As desirable as an independent body assessing projects on merit seems, retail politics militate strongly against delegating decisions to technocratic bodies.

But conversely, a minister who is seen to reject official independent advice is politically exposed. This gives both the agency and the minister strong imperatives to preserve each other’s modesty.

From the mid-2010s to the early 2020s, the Australian public service became increasingly politicised, resulting in hollowing out of expertise, loss of independence, and scandals such as robodebt.

‘High priority’ versus mere ‘priority’

Infrastructure Australia, while independent of the core public service in the same way as is the Reserve Bank, became subject to political pressure.

This is exemplified by the case of Victoria’s East-West Link toll road. The Abbott Commonwealth government committed to the project ahead of the 2014 Victorian election, despite the project having a benefit-cost ratio of less than one, meaning that its benefits were less than its costs.

Under the pressure to resolve the contradiction, Infrastructure Australia created a “high priority” list in addition to its existing “priority” list.

The new “high priority” list would include only the projects assessed as having the greatest value to the nation. The existing repurposed “priority” list could house the politically important but less meritorious projects, allowing politicians to claim these projects were “priorities”, even if their absolute merit was doubtful.

East-West Link funded then cancelled

The 2014 Victorian election result rescued some modesty after the newly elected Dan Andrews abandoned the East-West Link, but the interplay between political needs and technical rationality has if anything gotten worse.

Andrews’s $200 billion Suburban Rail Loop was endorsed electorally at the 2018 and 2022 state elections despite not appearing in any formal metropolitan or statutory transport plans.

At the time of the 2022 federal election, it hadn’t been submitted to Infrastructure Australia for assessment. But the federal Labor opposition, now the government, committed $2.2 billion to it.

Victoria has since submitted the Suburban Rail Loop to Infrastructure Australia, but the assessment is unfinished. Yet it appears on the updated federal infrastructure funding list released by the minister today.

Is Infrastructure Australia independent enough to reject the Suburban Rail Loop if it fails its assessment criteria?

‘Not demonstrably merit-based’

The Suburban Rail Loop is not alone as an infrastructure project promoted well in advance of its assessment. In the leadup to the 2019 election, the Morrison government released proposals for car parks at suburban rail stations.

This scheme was never submitted to Infrastructure Australia and was later found by the Commonwealth Auditor General to be “not demonstrably merit-based”, a finding Labor categorised as “sports rorts on steroids”.

The Independent Strategic Review of the national infrastructure program released on Thursday responds in part to these concerns.

It recommends that 86 projects deemed of lower merit be stopped, and supports another 156, with 32 to be determined through further assessment.

The review also offers advice about how to improve infrastructure planning. It recommends each state prepare an annual infrastructure plan identifying priority projects over ten years, and their proposed sequencing.

The federal government would provide an annual overview of infrastructure planning and priorities to inform assessment and decisions. Funding would usually be split 50:50 between the federal government and the states.

These are useful improvements but they still leave infrastructure open to gaming. There’s more that could be done.

The beginning of a way forward

A first option would be to raise the value threshold for individual projects the Commonwealth should even begin to consider, say $1 billion. Others could be funded through a bulk annual grant to each state.

A second option would be to require a higher merit threshold for considering a project. This would involve assessing regulatory, pricing or taxation alternatives before considering an infrastructure solution.

If after this assessment, infrastructure is deemed appropriate, alternative types of projects should be openly considered. Only after that’s done should the preferred project be considered for funding.

If this had applied to the Suburban Rail Loop, the Victorian government could have been told to assess other options, such as the tram and bus put forward by researchers at the University of Melbourne.

For projects worth more than $1 billion, open parliamentary inquiries could be held to transparently assess their merits and allow for expert and public opinion to be aired on the record.

A further option would be to require rigorous carbon emission analysis of all projects and reject those that conflict with national climate goals.

This would make big infrastructure less attractive, given the carbon content of concrete and steel, and in transport would favour rail freight over roads, and public transport, walking and cycling over driving.

Lastly, all projects funded through Infrastructure Australia should be subject to independent public after-the-event analysis to create an accessible database of what worked and what did not.

Infrastructure is costly. Cheap politics and getting it wrong adds to inflation.

RMIT University receives funding from the Australian Housing and Research Institute and AusAid to support Jago Dodson’s research.

– ref. The government just killed 50 infrastructure projects – what matters is whether it will fund them on merit from now on – https://theconversation.com/the-government-just-killed-50-infrastructure-projects-what-matters-is-whether-it-will-fund-them-on-merit-from-now-on-217900

Engineered stone kills tradies. Bunnings and IKEA stopping its sales is a big win for public health

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Carey, Senior Research Fellow, School of Population Health, Curtin University

Major retailers Bunnings and IKEA have announced this week they will discontinue selling engineered stone. While this might mean you have to rethink your plans for your new kitchen benchtops, it’s a positive step that will protect the health of tradespeople exposed to this dangerous product.

Engineered stone contains up to 95% crystalline silica dust. This superfine dust is released into the atmosphere when workers cut, grind or drill engineered stone.

Breathing this dust into the lungs has been linked to serious long-term damage, including breathing difficulties, lung cancer and silicosis (scarring of the lungs).

We got to this point through a concerted campaign backed by strong scientific evidence. Let’s take a look.

Silicosis is preventable

In Australia, nearly one in four engineered-stone workers employed in the industry before 2018 have already developed silicosis or other silica dust-related diseases as a result of their exposure.

Silicosis is caused by breathing in silica dust which becomes embedded in the lungs and causes scarring. This means the person’s lungs can no longer function to their full capacity. Silicosis is a progressive disease, and there’s no cure.

We’ve known about silicosis for many years. Although engineered stone is a particularly potent source of silica dust, it can come from other sources too, such as rock, sand and concrete. It was historically a disease of miners due to their exposure to high dust levels.

Until the past few years, we were seeing a decline in silicosis numbers in Australia and internationally. But we’re now seeing a significant resurgence, due in a large part to the popularity of engineered stone.

My colleagues and I released a report last year which looked at how many Australian workers would develop silicosis and lung cancer as a result of their exposure to silica dust. We also looked at the effect of possible interventions to reduce or eliminate this exposure.

Our analysis found the lives of around 1,000 workers could be saved from silicosis if a ban on engineered stone was implemented. In addition, around 100 lung cancers would also be prevented over the lifetime of these workers.

While some lives could be saved by other measures, such as wearing well-fitted respirators and using water when cutting engineered stone to reduce the dust levels, we calculated that the impact of a ban was much greater. These control measures also rely on compliance to be effective.

How did we get here?

The move – first taken by Bunnings, and soon after by IKEA – follows a concerted effort led by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) over the past few years. The ACTU formed a consortium of organisations all working towards a ban on engineered stone to protect workers’ lives.

These organisations included the Lung Foundation, the Cancer Council, the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists and the Public Health Association of Australia. Our report was used to inform the campaigning by these organisations.

Members of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) staged protests at Bunnings stores earlier this year to encourage them to stop the sale of engineered stone products in their stores. In addition, the CFMEU and the wider union movement have vowed to stop their members from using engineered stone if a wider ban is not instituted.

Alongside this effort, we’ve seen numerous stories of everyday Australians – people who have worked with engineered stone, quarry workers and others – who have been diagnosed with silicosis. In many cases these have been young and otherwise healthy people.

No safe level

Our research added to evidence gathered by the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists that showed there was no practical way this product could be used safely. Based on the weight of this evidence, Safe Work Australia recently recommended a complete ban on engineered stone.

State and territory ministers in the portfolio of work health and safety met late last month to discuss the possibility of a ban. So far, governments in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory have indicated they will move towards a ban on engineered stone in the coming months if the federal government does not. It is thought that several other states would also support it.

There is clear momentum towards a ban on engineered stone, and we urge the federal government to implement this as soon as possible. This will ensure a unified, nationally consistent response. We would also encourage other businesses to follow the lead of Bunnings and IKEA.

While ministers deferred their decision on a ban when they met last month, we hope this issue will be resolved when they next meet in December. Continued use of engineered stone will only result in more illness and death among Australia’s tradies. There’s a real opportunity here to make a big difference to public health.

Our report was commissioned by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

– ref. Engineered stone kills tradies. Bunnings and IKEA stopping its sales is a big win for public health – https://theconversation.com/engineered-stone-kills-tradies-bunnings-and-ikea-stopping-its-sales-is-a-big-win-for-public-health-217791

Keith Rankin Analysis – New Zealand’s coming triple demographic crisis

By Keith Rankin -

November 16, 2023

20201212_KeithRankin — Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Analysis by Keith Rankin.

The three components to the crisis are churn, aging, and the increasing predominance of births into disadvantaged households.

Churn

Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Yesterday the main release from Statistics New Zealand was Record net migration loss of New Zealand citizens. ” There was a record net migration loss of 44,700 New Zealand citizens in the September 2023 year. This net migration loss was made up of 26,400 migrant arrivals and 71,200 migrant departures.”

Today the main release was the National population estimates at 30 September 2023. Radio NZ reported at 1pm today that “New Zealand’s population has grown by almost three percent in the last year. Stats NZ has released its most recent population figures showing there are now 5.27 million people living in Aotearoa. For the year ending September 2023 the population grew by 138,100 people. Of that, the natural increase, the number of births minus deaths was 19,300 people, with the rest being made up of net migration.”

That gain of net migration was 118,800. A quick calculation tells us that the gain of non- New Zealand citizens was 163,500, in one 12-month period. 163,500 is 3.1% of Aotearoa New Zealand’s entire population. (If that continues, New Zealand will have 10 million people before 2050, with Māori plus New Zealand born Pakeha – tangata whenua and tangata tiriti – being as few as one-third of the total.)

New Zealand is perhaps the world’s most significant churn economy/nation, experiencing simultaneous record net emigration and record net immigration!! Multiculturalism will matter most. Though we have spent too much effort in recent years navel-gazing about biculturalism.

Aging

Here I will emphasise the role of historical births. In 2022 the age with the greatest number of deaths was 89. That’s people born in 1933, when births were close to a low for the last 100 years. The lowest three years were 1933 to 1935, with a total of 81,574 people born. From 1943 to 1945 there were 114,255 births From 1952 to 1954 there were 157,789 births. From 1961 to 1963 there were 194,931 births, a 139% increase compared to 1933‑1935. From 1970 to 1972 there were 189,725 births.

The number of people aged 87 to 89, will in fact be closer to three times higher in 2050 than it is in 2023, even if there is no further emigration or immigration. That’s because, in addition to the abovementioned 139% increase in births, New Zealand’s population grew substantially since the 1960s, with a significant amount of that net immigration being people born in that 1961 to 1963 period. (It’s also because of much higher infant mortality in the Depression years of the 1930s.) This coming population peak are people now in their early sixties; people who are already boosting New Zealand’s mortality statistics.

A significant number of the people reaching their late eighties in the 2030s and 2040s will be retired (ie no longer practicing) healthcare doctors, nurses, paramedics, and pharmacists.

It is most likely that there will not in fact be as many people in their late eighties in 2050 as my projections suggest. Many of the “late-boomers” will most likely died prematurely; I confidently predict that there will be a substantial fall in life expectancy over the next 25 years.

Births in disadvantaged households

It is not fashionable today to keep data about socio-economic disadvantage. Instead, we rely on two fashionable proxies for such disadvantage: Māori and Pasifika. A third useful proxy for disadvantage is ex-nuptial births.

Neither being Māori or Pasifika, nor giving birth ex-nuptially, are direct indicators of disadvantage; after all our Prime Minister last year gave birth ex-nuptially in 2018. Yet, all three of these birth measures correlate with disadvantage. And Aotearoa today has pockets of substantial disadvantage, much of it barely acknowledged.

I will note these statistics about 2022 births:

30,009 ex-nuptial births; highest since 2010 (31,236) and up by 1,461 since 2021
28,875 nuptial births; lowest since the 1930s, and down by 1,236 since 2021
12,948 births of Asian ethnicity; down from a peak of 13,188 in 2019
9,609 births of Pasifika ethnicity, highest since 2012 (9,897) and up by 645 since 2021
17,712 births of Māori ethnicity, highest since 2010 (18,459) and up by 570 since 2021

We should note that 2022 is the first year ever in Aotearoa New Zealand that ex-nuptial births exceeded nuptial births.

In 2050, those born in 2022 will be turning 28. Will they have the skills, education and training, and motivation to be providing high quality services to that huge cohort of people who will then be in their late eighties? Will it be acceptable if only the elite-elderly are able to afford an acceptable level of life-sustaining and life-enhancing services?

Maybe we will have 10 million people in 2050, mostly people themselves or with parents or grandparents born in Asia? And maybe those people will continue to provide the high-quality services to which our older people have become accustomed.

Or maybe not? Those young people from Asia, Africa and Latin America – too many of whom are dying these years as boat people or in Mexico, or stuck in immigration-visa-limbo – will be a precious international ‘commodity’ in 2050.

We can address these problems. But not with mainstream policies of dour fiscal probity.

One final matter to note. Thanks to New Zealand’s universal pension system (New Zealand Superannuation), an exceptionally large number of people of ‘retirement age’ are still in employment or running businesses. Universal benefits enable employment. The worst thing any government could do in the next decade would be to create disincentives for older people to work, by moving towards means-tested retirement-income options.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

As school students strike for climate once more, here’s how the movement and its tactics have changed

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eve Mayes, Senior Research Fellow in Education, Deakin University

School Strike 4 Climate/Flickr, CC BY-SA

On Friday, students will once again down textbooks and laptops and go on strike for climate action. Many will give their schools a Climate Doctor’s Certificate signed by three leading climate academics.

These strikes – part of a National Climate Strike – mark five years since school students started walking out of schools to demand greater action on climate change. In 2018, the first students to strike defied calls by then prime minister Scott Morrison for “less activism” and to stay in school.

Last year, Australia voted out the Morrison government, in what was widely seen as a climate election. Teal independents won Liberal heartland seats on climate platforms, while the Greens recorded high votes. Labor came to office promising faster action on climate.

So why are school students still striking? Has the movement changed its focus? We have been researching these questions alongside young people involved in climate action in the ongoing Striking Voices project, as well as through the coauthor’s Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity project.

We found the movement has expanded its demands from climate action to climate justice, stressing the uneven and unfair distribution of climate impacts. The movement itself has also become more diverse.

student strike for climate in Sydney 2022. Students marching with megaphones — Why are students still striking for climate justice? Because the job isn’t anywhere near done. This march was in Warrang (Sydney) in May 2022.
School Strike 4 Climate/Flickr, CC BY

From climate action to climate justice

Across the world, young climate advocates such as those from School Strike 4 Climate are calling for “climate justice” alongside “climate action”.

Why? Because climate change doesn’t impact everyone equally. As the Australian Youth Climate Coalition puts it, it’s “often the most marginalised in our societies who are hit first and worst by climate impacts and carry the burden of polluting industries”.

Mere semantics? No. The idea of climate justice draws attention to existing social and ethical injustices which climate change amplifies. The phrase also points to the need for climate solutions that work for people in a transformative way and help create collective and just societies.

In Australia, calls for climate justice are intimately connected with justice for First Nations people and to protecting, defending and “heal[ing] Country”, as Seed Mob write, with First Nations-led solutions.

Climate justice is central to the messaging of groups such as Pacific Climate Warriors diaspora, and Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity.

In our conversations with young people, climate justice appears highly compelling. High-school student Yehansa Dahanayake explained:

I think I’d always thought of climate change as sort of a 2D thing. I thought about it as the temperature rise, deforestation, and sea caps melting – and while that is definitely true, I think [when] I started to learn about the justice aspects of climate change, [it] made me realise that there are many other factors that tie in, such as the Global North/ Global South difference and how that relates.

High-school student Emma Heyink told us about the importance of what she called a “justice-centred lens”:

You can’t look at climate change without looking at all these other issues. It just becomes so much more interlinked and solutions become so much more obvious.

Diversifying networks and strategies

So who are these young people, and what have they been doing in recent years?

Swedish student Greta Thunberg is frequently credited as sparking the youth-led climate movement.

But the movement is much larger – and more diverse – than one person, and increasingly so in recent years.

As a report by Sapna points out, Australia’s youth-led climate justice networks are more likely to be racially diverse than mainstream climate movements.

Yet climate justice networks are not immune from the oppressive dynamics they protest against. When the coauthor interviewed 12 now-graduated school strikers of South Asian heritage, they reported sometimes feeling sidelined in climate spaces – which are often white-dominated – as well as in media opportunities. As one young person put it, it seemed “hard to tell a brown person’s climate justice story”.

There are signs of positive change. The upheaval of the COVID pandemic saw stronger connections emerge between social movements, and clearer links between intersecting crises and injustices, both globally and in youth-led climate networks.

As recent high-school graduate and school strike organiser Owen Magee explained:

at our strikes, we are platforming First Nations people, rural and regional people who’ve directly been affected by the climate crisis, directly being affected by fossil fuel greed and corporation greed. That in itself is focusing on the intersectional nature of climate justice.

You can see this cross-pollination in the support shown by young advocates across multiple climate justice networks in the Power Up gathering on Gomeroi Country in northwestern New South Wales to show solidarity with Traditional Owners fighting coal and gas projects on their lands.

The targets and tactics of youth-led climate justice networks have shifted and proliferated in recent years – for example, to the banks that finance fossil fuel companies.

Students protesting against fossil fuels — Targets, tactics and strategies have evolved since 2018.
Student Strike 4 Climate/Flickr, CC BY

When school strikers graduate, some move into different modes of climate-related action.

Some have taken part in strategic climate litigation in a bid to create legislation embedding a climate duty of care for young people in government decisions on issues such as fracking approvals.

Others are involved in non-violent direct actions, such as next week’s Rising Tide People’s Blockade of the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle.

Young climate advocates are battling for climate justice on a wide range of fronts. They are calling on politicians to do the same.

We would like to acknowledge and thank the Striking Voices project research associates, Natasha Abhayawickrama, Sophie Chiew, Netta Maiava and Dani Villafaña.

Eve Mayes receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Ruchira Talukdar is co-founder of Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity and receives funding from the Sunrise Project.

– ref. As school students strike for climate once more, here’s how the movement and its tactics have changed – https://theconversation.com/as-school-students-strike-for-climate-once-more-heres-how-the-movement-and-its-tactics-have-changed-217663

Is Jim’s Beauty set to flop like Colgate lasagna or Harley-Davidson perfume – or could it be branding genius?

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edwina Luck, Senior Lecturer QUT Business School, Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology

Jim’s Group – best known for Jim’s Mowing and Jim’s Plumbing – this week announced a surprising brand extension.

It’s Jim’s Beauty, offering “professional beauty treatments in the comfort of your chosen space”.

It’s surprising because Jim’s Group got its start mowing lawns, then extended into related businesses, including dog washing, pest control and roofing.

These services are usually offered in the client’s home, and are provided by franchisees, as will the beauty services – which will include facial, lash and brow and nail treatments, as well as waxing and teeth whitening.

It isn’t a joke, although it has been greeted on social media as one, and was once the plot of a TV comedy sketch.

Brand extensions are nothing new

Brands often try to extend their “halo” to cover other fields, hoping to capitalise on goodwill and stay relevant in a changing world.

Fast food giant McDonald’s is a leader, introducing McCafes in 1993, salads and wraps in the 2000s, and more recently adding plant-based and vegan meals.

Coles and Woolworths have diversified into just about every product there is by selling their own generic home brands.

This has allowed them to undercut other brands and get more margin – a strategy that is paying off as consumers become more stretched, allowing Coles to increase home brand sales 9.4% and Woolworths 7.8% over the past year.

Even their delivery services can be thought of as brand extensions. Away from their physical stores, they are offering telehealth, insurance, mobile phone plans, gift cards, and deliveries at work.

It works where there’s brand alignment

Brand extensions work where there is brand alignment – where the extension is true to the image of the brand and doesn’t devalue it.

Among some of the most infamous failures are
Harley-Davidson perfume, Bic underwear, Cosmopolitan yogurt and Colgate beef lasagna.

Sometimes the extreme strangeness of an extension can create a buzz around a faded company, even if its sales bomb.

Cadbury briefly introduced Vegemite chocolate in 2015, but then said it hadn’t been serious. What it had wanted to do was to “generate talk” about rediscovering favourite flavours.

Jim’s could fill a gap in the beauty market

Industry researcher IBISWorld says Australia’s beauty industry is characterised by “market saturation and the wholehearted acceptance of its products by consumers”, which isn’t a good sign for Jim’s.

But IBISWorld says sales of beauty products are overwhelmingly through physical stores with “new channels” (mainly online) accounting for only 13.8% – which suggests there is room for growth in face-to-face sales aligned with services.

Jim Penman started Jim’s Mowing as a side business in 1982 while studying for a PhD in history. He turned it into a franchise in 1989 and then extended the idea to franchises including Jim’s Cleaning, Jim’s Building Inspections, Jim’s Fencing, Jim’s Antennas, Jim’s Pest Control and Jim’s Dog Wash.

A blog on a Jim’s Group website describes it as a “go-to for a plethora of services”. But they are all associated with the guy who used to have the beard – the tradie.

His success, or failure, in moving into beauty will help answer one of the enduring questions in business strategy: just because you can, does that mean you should?

– ref. Is Jim’s Beauty set to flop like Colgate lasagna or Harley-Davidson perfume – or could it be branding genius? – https://theconversation.com/is-jims-beauty-set-to-flop-like-colgate-lasagna-or-harley-davidson-perfume-or-could-it-be-branding-genius-217777

Biden-Xi meeting at APEC a reminder of the importance of global summits in dangerous times

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Bisley, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University., La Trobe University

For three decades, the leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum have met to advance their shared interests in improving trade and investment across the region.

This year’s meeting in San Francisco has a particular prominence. US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have met for the first time since last year’s G20 summit in Bali, amid efforts by the two great powers to improve their fraught relationship. APEC is normally held alongside the annual ASEAN and East Asia summits, but those jamborees were held a little earlier this year, giving the trans-Pacific grouping some much-needed clear air.

Established in 1989, APEC was intended to drive trade liberalisation in the Asia-Pacific at a time when global efforts had stalled. US President Bill Clinton was the inaugural host of the leaders’ meeting in 1993. In the 1990s, the grouping launched ambitious goals about free trade and took on what now seems like a curious mix of members.

APEC is one of the few international bodies in which Taiwan participates, alongside Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China. The grouping manages this by having member economies, rather than states. It also includes Canada, Mexico, Peru and Chile, but not India. While many countries use the “Indo-Pacific” label to describe the region, APEC is a reminder that not so long ago the region’s future was imagined in rather different terms.

By the early 2000s, political interest in advancing free trade had ebbed and APEC’s influence began to wane. This was exacerbated by ASEAN’s offshoots, such as the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum, appearing better placed to advance a cooperative agenda.

But the grouping remained valuable to its members less for the specific policy benefits it could provide, and more for the annual opportunity to gather and occasionally manage crises.

In 2001, the APEC summit in Shanghai allowed then US President George Bush and Chinese leader Jiang Zemin to meet and reset their relations following an incident in April that year in which a US EP3 reconnaissance aircraft was forced to crash land on Hainan Island. China held 24 crew members and the craft for ten days.

US-China relations were badly damaged, and APEC created the space for a high-level reset. Then, as now, the forum provides a useful pretext for the leaders to meet without either side feeling they were signalling weakness by travelling to the other’s territory.

Two decades later, and US-China relations have been in their most difficult phase since the normalisation of relations in the 1970s. The much-anticipated meeting between Xi and Biden appears to have been a success.

In the lead-up, both sides sought to manage expectations, making clear that neither anticipated any major breakthrough in relations. However, the four-hour discussion seems to have produced several important achievements. Perhaps the most important, at least in terms of managing risk, is the reopening of communication channels between the countries’ militaries, which had been shut down by Beijing in response to the then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August last year.

China has also agreed to crack down on exporters who manufacture chemicals used in fentanyl production, and have agreed to establish a forum to maintain separation between AI and nuclear weapons systems.

Reportedly, the two leaders also discussed the question of Taiwan. The island has long been a regional flashpoint, but in recent years it has become a lighting rod for hawks on both sides of the Pacific. Both would benefit from a less heated environment.

More broadly, Biden and Xi appear to have succeeded in putting a floor under the relationship, and while they’re still some way from an agreed set of “rules of the road” in managing their regional competition, Asia can take some comfort that communication between the two is now better and the trajectory of the relationship is more positive than it has been.

Beijing and Washington have incentives for improving their relations. China’s economy is its worst shape since the reform era began. Biden faces wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and has surprisingly poor domestic political stocks less than a year out from the presidential election.

While the summit has improved things, the expectation bar was set low. The contest between the world’s two biggest economies remains heated, largely without guardrails and of immense risk.

APEC is more than just the US and China bilateral meeting. The group is about economic cooperation, and in the coming days the US will also try to deliver more on the so-far meagre offerings of its “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework”.

While its efforts to advance things like infrastructure standards and supply chain resilience will be appreciated, the real prize – improved access to the US market – remains politically off the table. This will limit what Washington can achieve.

The members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade agreement established after the US withdrew from its predecessor the TPP, will also gather to consider new applicants. Taiwan and China are prominent among these, but it is unlikely either will be allowed to join in the short term.

APEC 2023 is a reminder of how important multilateral gatherings are in times of geopolitical crisis. Without the excuse that the summit provided, there can be no doubt Xi and Biden would have found it much harder to meet and achieve what are, in the context of their parlous relations, some important positive steps to stabilise regional geopolitics.

Yet it is also a salutary reminder of the real limits of multilateralism in the region. The summit normally concludes with an agreed joint statement, but differences in views about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza conflict and myriad other issues mean that even the veneer of concord is unlikely. The old expansive institutions seem not to be well suited to the current period of heightened geopolitical tension.

Nick Bisley has received funding from the Commonwealth government for research on regional multilateralism.

– ref. Biden-Xi meeting at APEC a reminder of the importance of global summits in dangerous times – https://theconversation.com/biden-xi-meeting-at-apec-a-reminder-of-the-importance-of-global-summits-in-dangerous-times-217373

Does screen use really impact our thinking skills? Our analysis suggests it could

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michoel Moshel, PhD/Masters Clinical Neuropsychology Candidate, Macquarie University

Screens have become seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, serving as indispensable tools for work, education and leisure. But while they enrich our lives in countless ways, we often fail to consider the potential impact of screen time on our cognitive abilities.

In a new meta-analysis of dozens of earlier studies, we’ve found a clear link between disordered screen use and lower cognitive functioning.

The findings suggest we should exercise caution before advocating for more screen time, and before introducing screens into even more aspects of daily life.

Young people’s screen time is increasing

In 2020, a UNSW Gonski Institute for Education report noted a concerning statistic: about 84% of Australian educators believe digital technologies are distracting in a learning environment.

And according to the ABC, a recent Beyond Blue survey of Australian teachers identified excessive screen time as the second-most significant challenge for young people, just behind mental health issues.

Despite mounting concerns, more than half of Australian schools have embraced a “bring your own device” policy. Students are spending more time online than ever before and starting at increasingly younger ages. A 2021 report by Common Sense Media estimated tweens spend an average of 5 hours and 33 minutes using screen-based entertainment each day, while teenagers devote a whopping 8 hours and 39 minutes.

A surge in screen use has led to some individuals, including children, adolescents and adults, developing screen-related addictions. One example is gaming disorder, for which 2–3% of people meet the criteria.

What is ‘disordered screen use’?

The impact of screens on our cognitive abilities – that is, our thinking skills such as attention, memory, language and problem-solving – has sparked much debate.

On one hand, some researchers and reporters claim screen use can have negative effects, such as health problems, shortened attention spans and hindered development.

On the other, schools are increasingly adopting technology to boost student engagement. Tech companies are also marketing their products as tools to help you enhance your problem-solving and memory skills.

Our recent study sought to understand the potential cognitive consequences of “disordered screen-related behaviours”. This is a broad category of problematic behaviours that may include screen dependency, and persisting with screen use even when it’s harmful.

We conducted a meta-analysis of 34 studies that explored various forms of screen use (including gaming, internet browsing, smartphone use and social media use) and compared the cognitive performance of individuals with disordered screen use to those without it.

Our findings paint a concerning picture.

Differences in cognitive function

Across these rigorously peer-reviewed studies, individuals with disordered screen use consistently demonstrated significantly poorer cognitive performance compared to others.

The most affected cognitive domain was attention, and specifically sustained attention, which is the ability to maintain focus on an unchanging stimulus for an extended period.

The second-most notable difference was in their “executive functioning” – particularly in impulse control, which is the ability to control one’s automatic responses.

Interestingly, the type of screen activity didn’t make a difference in the results. The trend also wasn’t confined to children, but was observed across all age groups.

Two ways to interpret the results

Why do people with disordered screen-related behaviours have poorer cognitive functioning?

The first explanation is that disordered screen use actually leads to poorer cognitive function, including poorer attention skills (but we’ll need more experimental and longitudinal studies to establish causality).

If this is the case, it may be the result of being constantly bombarded by algorithms and features designed to capture our attention. By diverting our focus outward, screen use may weaken one’s intrinsic ability to concentrate over time.

Crucially, impaired attention also makes it harder to disengage from addictive behaviours, and would therefore make it harder to recognise when screen use has become a problem.

The second explanation is that people who already have poorer cognitive functioning (such as less inhibitory control) are more likely to engage in disordered screen use.

This could be a result of the plethora of addictive cues designed to keep us glued to our screens. Being bombarded by these could make it harder to pull the brakes on screen use.

Although the literature doesn’t seem to favour this explanation – and does seem to suggest that cognitive functioning is impaired as a result of disordered screen use – it’s still a possibility we can’t rule out.

Attention is the bedrock of everyday tasks. People with weakened attention may struggle to keep up in less stimulating environments, such as a static workplace or classroom. They may find themselves turning to a screen as a result.

Similarly, people with less inhibitory control would also find it more challenging to moderate their screen use. This could be what drives them towards problematic screen-related behaviours in the first place.

Who should shoulder the responsibility?

Research indicates people with impaired cognitive functioning usually aren’t as well equipped to moderate their own screen time.

Many users with disordered screen use are young, with mainly males engaging in internet gaming and mainly females engaging in social media use. Neurodiverse people are also at greater risk.

Tech companies are driven by the goal of capturing our attention. For instance, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings acknowledged the company’s most formidable competitor was sleep.

At the same time, researchers find themselves struggling to keep up with the pace of technological innovation. A potential path forward is to encourage open-access data policies from tech companies, so researchers can delve deeper into the study of screen use and its effect on individuals.

Michoel Moshel receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Jennifer Batchelor, Joanne Bennett, and Wayne Warburton do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Does screen use really impact our thinking skills? Our analysis suggests it could – https://theconversation.com/does-screen-use-really-impact-our-thinking-skills-our-analysis-suggests-it-could-216828

Curious kids: what are tummy rumbles?

By The Conversation -

November 16, 2023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Stringer, Associate professor, University of South Australia

What are tummy rumbles? – Anouk, aged 10, Coburg

This is a great question, and one lots of people ask!

There are a few different reasons for “tummy rumbles” or the (sometimes weird) noises your stomach makes.

For the most part, these are part of the normal workings of not only your stomach, but also your intestines. These are parts of your digestive system, which kicks into gear when you eat. It breaks down (digests) food and then the nutrients are absorbed by the body. Whatever is left comes out as poo (also called faeces).

Your entire digestive system (starting at your mouth and ending at the anus, or back opening of your bottom) is one hollow tube. It’s a bit similar to the water pipes in a house, that can be empty, or have water flowing though them. Sometimes your digestive system is empty and the organs are hollow and sometimes there is food moving through it.

When eating really starts

The process of digestion actually starts before you eat anything! When you see or smell or think about food (particularly food you like), your brain activates nerves that stimulate your digestive system, so it can prepare itself for food arriving.

The first step involves increasing saliva in your mouth (that “mouth watering” feeling). This is mixed with food and make it easier to chew and swallow.

Next, the cells in your stomach and intestines produce and release chemicals called enzymes to break down the food when it gets there. Your stomach starts moving in “waves” to mix all of those chemicals together.

This is where you might hear some noises. Air in your stomach can get trapped against the wall. When a wave comes through it can sound like a bubble popping, or make a gurgling or rumbling sound that you can hear and sometimes feel. The medical name for these is borborygmi (pronounced BOR-BUH-RIG-MAI).

child holds paper model of stomach and digestion — Picture your digestive system like a long tube from your mouth to your bottom.
Shutterstock

An empty stomach can be a noisier stomach

When your stomach is pretty empty and then liquid arrives from swallowed saliva, acid and enzymes, you can imagine it’s going to slosh around and create some noise that can echo in there.

When you are hungry (and thinking about food) your stomach might “growl”. While your stomach is waiting for food it’s moving liquid around to get ready for it and creating pockets of air that get squashed, creating noises.

Further down your digestive tract, in the intestine, muscular waves push everything down the tube, making sure there is space for new food to arrive. This can also create noises.

Then you eat something (hopefully) delicious

The food you eat moves through your stomach and slowly into the intestine, where similar mixing movements happen break it down in the body. Air (also called gas) in the intestine makes noise when it moves, like it did in the stomach.

Even though this noise can sometimes be annoying or embarrassing, and you would like it to go away, the mixing that happens in the intestine is important. It’s how you get all of the nutrients (things like carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals and more) from food.

girl looks hungrily at hamburger — Just thinking about eating can trigger waves of anticipation in our stomach.
Shutterstock

The mixing (and the noises) mean food is mixing with the chemicals and breaking everything you’ve eaten down into small units, called molecules. Once these are small enough, the cells that line your intestine can take them in, a process called absorption.

Once the nutrients get into your blood stream, organs like your heart, lungs, brains and kidneys can use them to do their jobs in the body from pumping blood to breathing in air to telling the body what to do next.

Should you worry about tummy noises?

These are the most common causes of tummy rumbles, but they can happen after you swallow air when you talk, drink or eat and it travels into your stomach or intestines.

The noises made by your digestive system are important – they mean it is working properly. However, if the noises come with any pain or diarrhoea it could be a sign of a food intolerance or other digestive issue and you should get it checked out.

Andrea Stringer receives funding from a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Ideas Grant.

– ref. Curious kids: what are tummy rumbles? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-are-tummy-rumbles-216163