Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Vasantkumar, Lecturer in Anthropology, Macquarie University

A simple software upgrade went wrong. Across the country economic life ground to a halt. Groceries were abandoned at supermarket checkouts. Commerce was paralysed as the nation waited for its payment system to be brought back on line.

The Optus outage lingers fresh in our minds yet the scene described here is not Melbourne or Sydney in November 2023, but Zimbabwe four years ago when the southern African nation suffered a 72-hour outage of the mobile money service known as Ecocash.

At a time when up to 96% of the country’s transactions were cashless, EcoCash, owned by the privately held telco, EcoNet, boasted more than three times the number of registered users than there are Zimbabweans who hold traditional bank accounts, and a near monopoly on mobile money payments.

Read more:
Optus has revealed the cause of the major outage. Could it happen again?

Occurring soon after a deeply unpopular move towards a cashless economy, this outage, along with a shorter one due to rolling blackouts earlier that same year, exacerbated concerns about the reliability of non-cash payments.

Abandoning the cashless experiment

Four years on, Zimbabwe has retreated from cashlessness, with the pandemic facilitating a return to cash in US dollars as the preferred means of payment. While the 2019 outage was not the only reason Zimbabwe returned to a cash economy, increasing frustration with mobile phone transactions contributed to it.

When I talk informally to Australians about these events and their possible implications for our own economic behaviours, I commonly hear some variant of the reply “but Australia isn’t Zimbabwe!”

But the Zimbabwean case holds some important lessons for us about the undesirability of eliminating cash in the aftermath of the latest Optus outage.

First, these outages highlight a key advantage of physical cash – it never goes down. We can rely on it to be there when we need it in contrast to cashless payment systems such as EFTPOS which suffered disruptions during the 2020 fires in NSW and Victoria.

We’re using less cash but we still won’t let go

Many Australians might argue for the need to keep cash as a fall back in the event of future natural and technical disruptions but the main reason they want to hang onto it has nothing to do with using it to buy and sell.

Read more:
Optus said it didn’t have the ‘soundbite’ to explain the crisis. We should expect better

Indeed its use in buying and selling has been in decline for 20 years and continued to decline during the pandemic. The total percentage of economic transactions cash accounted for dropped from 69% in 2007 to 13% in late 2022 according to the Reserve Bank’s June Bulletin on Consumer Payment Behaviour in Australia.

By contrast, much of the continuing demand for cash can be attributed to its use as a store of value — something you hold onto rather than spend. During the pandemic there was more cash being kept under metaphorical mattresses as a source of security and comfort, than was being spent.

A March 2021 RBA report found from March 2020 to February 2021, the value of banknotes in circulation rose 17.1% to A$97.3 billion because people were holding onto money at home? Moreover, even as its most recent report on cash usage highlights decreased reliance on cash across all demographics, the percentage of respondents stating they would “experience a ‘major inconvenience’ or ‘genuine hardship’ if cash was hard to access or use” has remained unchanged since 2019 at just over a quarter.

Read more:
Going cashless isn’t straightforward. Ask Sweden, or Zimbabwe

This desire to access cash even as its circulation declines highlights the degree to which doing away with it might be ill-advised and potentially destabilising. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in Zimbabwe — the country went cashless very quickly and without buy-in from most people.

Other reasons to keep cash, apart from dodgy technology

Other concerns about going cashless include the lack of privacy in the electronic payment system plus it being more difficult to control spending.

Even as some Australian banks move away from handling cash, other countries, Sweden most famously, have been forced to walk back such measures to respond to the needs of communities left behind by the shift to cashless payments.

These include the elderly, people in regional and remote areas, migrants and people who don’t have a bank account? While these groups are decreasing in size we ignore people who don’t have the knowledge the confidence or reliable access to cashless payment systems at our peril.

The financial transaction process needs to be inclusive. Standard, state-issued currency has historically been a public good that is accessible to all and ideally not a source of profit.

Read more:
Depending on who you are, the benefits of a cashless society are overrated

Going cashless is a form of privatising money. It moves transactions into a world where you must rely on banking institutions to buy and sell things while someone is making money off your financial dealings through fees. We wouldn’t usually think about this as similar to selling off the power grid but in some ways it is.

And as we saw all too vividly with the Optus debacle, a transition to privatised payment infrastructures opens up new kinds of vulnerability to go along with their convenience.

This article draws on research funded in part by a Macquarie University New Staff Grant and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

– ref. Cash may no longer be king, but the Optus debacle shows it is still necessary – https://theconversation.com/cash-may-no-longer-be-king-but-the-optus-debacle-shows-it-is-still-necessary-217520

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tashi Dema, PhD Candidate in Language and Politics, University of New England

Dechen, 40, grew up in Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan. Her native language was Mangdip, also known as Nyenkha, as her parents are originally from central Bhutan. She went to schools in the city, where the curriculum was predominantly taught in Dzongkha, the national language, and English.

In Dechen’s house, everyone spoke Dzongkha. She only spoke her mother tongue when she had guests from her village, who could not understand Dzongkha and during her occasional visits to her village nestled in the mountains. Her mother tongue knowledge was limited.

However, things have now changed.

With 90% of Bhutanese people using social media and social media penetrating all remotes areas in Bhutan, Dechen’s relatives in remote villages are connected on WeChat.

She is in three WeChat groups where people usually communicate through voice messages in their native language. Most WeChat users in rural parts of the country communicate in their oral native language.

“I learn many words. I learnt how to say a lot of things in my own language,” the mother of two now living in Western Australia told me.

Dechen’s story is not isolated. Social media is giving a new lifeline to Bhutan’s native languages, which do not have written script and lack proper documentation. By communicating through voice messages, social media is giving Bhutanese people in both urban and rural areas a new opportunity to use their local language.

Read more:
What can the kingdom of Bhutan teach us about fighting corruption

Losing Bhutan’s languages

Bhutan is a tiny Himalayan nation with a population of under 800,000 people. Internet and television was introduced only in 1999 and mobile phones in 2004.

The country has more than 20 local languages, but only Dzongkha has written text and is promoted as the national language.

The country struggles to promote the national language and its usage against English. Today most urban residents, especially the elites, speak English as their primary language.

Many languages – especially minority languages – are vanishing or becoming endangered as younger generations switch to Dzongkha and English.

The medium of instruction in schools is mostly in English; Dzongkha is taught only as grammar and literature. Students are shamed and often punished for using their local languages.

The preservation and promotion of local languages, therefore, depends on the speakers. A language faces extinction when its speakers die out or switch to another language.

Linguist Pema Wangdi has researched languages in Bhutan, and he told me many people are losing their native language.

“When we lose our language, we lose a piece of our national identity,” he told me.

Wangdi has identified there are no longer any speakers of Olekha, an indigenous dialect of Rukha in Wangdu Phodrang.

“The loss of a single language is a loss of a piece of our national linguistic heritage and identity,” he said. “When a language is lost, cultural traditions which are tied to that language such as songs, myths and poetry will be lost forever.”

Other Bhutanese languages – including Tshophu language of Doyaps in Samtse, Monpa language of central Bhutan, and Gongdukha of Mongar – are endangered and at the brink of extinction.

Preservation of local languages

The future of the minority languages are at threat. The Constitution of Bhutan mandates the preservation and promotion of local languages, but there are no official efforts to preserve native languages.

But encouraging people to speak their native languages can have far reaching benefits in preserving and promoting Bhutan’s rich culture and tradition. Language embodies identity, ethnicity and cultural values: a thriving local language would help transfer this intangible wealth to the younger generation.

Social media could be an invaluable tool in this preservation.

Bhutan could save its languages from becoming extinct with promotion of social media usages and language education could be done on the social media platforms. With both young and old people glued to social media, encouraging more people to use local languages in social media could generate interest among the youth to learn their local languages.

It could also help in documenting the endangered local languages as the older generation can record their voices on WeChat.

Many elder citizens feel strongly about their language and emphasise teaching their mother tongue to the younger generation and their grandchildren. Social media – joining the younger generation on platforms where they feel at home – could be the way forward.

Read more:
Thinking of taking up WeChat? Here’s what you need to know

Tashi Dema 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. How social media is breathing new life into Bhutan’s unwritten local languages – https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-breathing-new-life-into-bhutans-unwritten-local-languages-210280

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

The Albanese government is about to have to make a really important decision.

It’s going to have to decide what’s more important: supporting Australians who are financially under water, or keeping an election promise.

And it’ll have to do it soon. It’s already working on its May budget, now just six months away.

That choice will affect almost every Australian, and it could shape whether you’re thousands of dollars a year better off – or not – from July next year.

Household budgets are shrinking

When Labor took office in May 2022, Australians were doing well. Consumer spending and economic growth were on the up and up, and mortgage rates and rents were only starting to climb.

A promise to keep the proposed multi-billion dollar Stage 3 tax cuts – announced but not implemented by the Coalition back in 2018 – seemed worth making to clear away any reasons any voters might have not to vote Labor.

Since May 2022, just about everything has got worse for “ordinary” Australians – those on typical incomes, which are about $85,000 for full-time workers and $43,000 for adult part-time workers.

The best measure of the buying power of after-tax incomes is real household disposable income per capita. During the past year, it shrank 5.3%, which is more than it shrank in either the early 1990s recession or the global financial crisis.

On my calculations, it’s the worst collapse in 40 years.

From those incomes have to be taken rents and mortgage payments.

The Reserve Bank says scheduled mortgage payments are now taking up a larger share of household disposable income than at any time in history – 10% when averaged over all households, including those that don’t have mortgages, and many times that for those that do.

This means when you go to the supermarket and find you can’t afford what you used to, you’re not imagining it. It hasn’t been like this in decades, and it’s about to get worse.

The Christmas bonus is missing

In the lead up to each of the past four Christmases, ordinary earners have received a bonus from the tax office – the so-called low and middle income earner tax offset, initially worth $1,080 and increased to $1,500 in 2022.

This year, it’s gone. It means middle-earners’ pre-Christmas tax refunds will be up to $1,500 smaller or replaced with bills. Taxpayers who normally have a tax bill will get a bill up to $1,500 bigger.

An estimated 10.5 million Australians submitted their tax forms by October 31.

Most of them – most of those earning up to $90,000 and previously eligible for the full $1,500 offset – are about to find themselves a good deal worse off.

Read more:
Why do I suddenly owe tax this year? It could be because the Low and Middle Income Tax offset is gone, forever

Average earners will lose, while the rich get thousands

The very expensive Stage 3 tax cuts (costing $20 billion in their first year, and $313 billion over ten years) were meant to come to the rescue. They begin next July.

Speaking notes prepared for Treasurer Jim Chalmers and released under freedom of information laws say they will provide relief to low and middle earners and kick in at $45,000.

But someone on that income will get no relief. That person will lose an offset of $1,275 in return for a tax cut of zero. Someone on a higher wage of $50,000 will lose $1,500 in order to gain $125, and someone earning the typical full-time wage of $85,000 will have to lose $1,500 to gain just $1,000.

That’s right, a typical full-time worker will get relief of $1,000 from the Stage 3 tax cuts in return for losing the axed tax offset of $1,500.

Much higher earners will do much, much better. An Australian earning twice as much as is typical – $190,000 – will get $7,500. An Australian earning a bit more than that again – $200,000 – will get $9,000.

Labor has been handed an opportunity

Handing $9,000 to a high earner but only $1,000 to an ordinary full-time earner is
an indulgence that might have seemed okay when it looked as if ordinary earners were doing alright, or wouldn’t notice.

But it’s about to happen, and it’s about to cost $20 billion in its first year. That’s as much as the government plans to spend on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme in that year and almost twice what it plans to spend on higher education.

What if it kept the tax cuts, but reoriented them to Australians who actually needed them – to the more than 80% of Australians who earn less than $120,000 a year – while still providing generous cuts to those who earned more than $120,000?

That’s a task Matt Grudnoff and Greg Jericho set themselves at the Australia Institute, coming up with four options. Each of those four would cost less than Stage 3 cuts; deliver more to Australians on less than $120,000 – and even fund a $250 per fortnight increase in the JobSeeker unemployment benefit.

Jericho’s punchline, delivered to the revenue summit at Parliament House last month: “I actually wish it was harder than it was”.

Option 4 costs $70 billion less over ten years but leaves every taxpayer earning up to $132,000 better off.

It doubles the tax cut Stage 3 gives to a typical full-time earner on $85,000, and still gives high earners $2,197 a year each.

Stage 3 vs Australia Institute Option 4, tax cut as percent of taxable income

His point wasn’t that this is the best option. It was that there are options, many of which give the bulk of Australians – the stressed ordinary voters Labor and the Coalition will need in the next election – much more than Stage 3.

What’s wrong with making 80% of the electorate better off at a time when they desperately need it, and cutting future budget deficits by $70 billion?

Only that it would break a promise, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese likes keeping promises.

But when asked in an Australia Institute survey what was more important – keeping a promise or reacting to changing economic circumstances – 61% picked reacting to changing circumstances.

Even among Coalition voters, 56% supported reacting to changing circumstances.

It puts the Stage 3 tax cuts in play. There’s still time, and plenty of electoral and economic reasons to rejig them.

Peter Martin is Economics Editor of The Conversation.

– ref. We could make most Australians richer and still save billions – it’s not too late to fix the Stage 3 tax cuts – https://theconversation.com/we-could-make-most-australians-richer-and-still-save-billions-its-not-too-late-to-fix-the-stage-3-tax-cuts-217560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University

Dual outbreaks of gastro and COVID on the Grand Princess cruise ship that docked in Adelaide on Monday have now been declared over by the doctor on board.

A spokesperson for Princess Cruises, which operates the ship, said a number of passengers had presented with symptoms on a previous voyage. But the ship has since been disinfected and the number of people who were ill when the ship arrived into Adelaide was said to be in single digits.

While this is positive news, reports of infectious outbreaks on cruise ships evoke a sense of deja vu. We probably all remember the high-profile COVID outbreaks that occurred on cruise ships in 2020.

So what is it about cruise ships that can make them such hotspots for infection?

First, what causes these outbreaks?

Respiratory infectious outbreaks on cruise ships may be caused by a range of pathogens including SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) and influenza viruses. These can be spread by respiratory droplets and aerosols released when people breathe, talk, laugh, cough and sneeze.

Historically, troop transport ships also helped to spread the lethal 1918 flu virus between continents.

Gastro outbreaks on cruise ships are similarly well documented. More than 90% of cruise ship gastro outbreaks are caused by norovirus, which is spread from person to person, and through contaminated objects or contaminated food or water.

Gastro can also be caused by other pathogens such as bacteria in contaminated food or water.

Read more:
Cruise ships can be floating petri dishes of gastro bugs. 6 ways to stay healthy at sea this summer

What is the risk?

In 2020, around 19% of Diamond Princess passengers and crew docked in Japan tested positive to COVID. Ultimately, nearly one in four Ruby Princess passengers and crew docked in Sydney tested positive.

However, COVID generally presents a lesser risk nowadays, with most people having some level of immunity from vaccination or previous infection. The outbreak on the Grand Princess appears to have been much smaller in scale.

A three-year study before COVID of influenza-like illness (which includes fever), acute respiratory illness (which doesn’t require fever to be present) and gastro on cruise ships found these were diagnosed in 32.7%, 15.9% and 17% of ill passengers, and 10.9%, 80% and 0.2% of ill crew, respectively.

An analysis of data from 252 cruise ships entering American ports showed the overall incidence of acute gastro halved between 2006 and 2019. Passenger cases decreased from 32.5 per 100,000 travel days to 16.9, and crew cases from 13.5 per 100,000 travel days to 5.2. This decline may be due to a combination of improved hygiene and sanitation standards.

The risk of getting sick with gastro was significantly higher on bigger ships and longer voyages. This is because the longer you are in close contact with others, the greater the chance of exposure to an infectious dose of viruses or bacteria.

Why are cruise ships infection hotspots?

On cruise ships, people tend to crowd together in confined spaces for extended periods. These include dining halls, and during social activities in casinos, bars and theatres.

The risk goes up when the environment is noisy, as more droplets and aerosols are shed when people are laughing, shouting or talking loudly.

Passengers may come from multiple countries, potentially bringing variants from different parts of the world. Influenza, which is usually seasonal (late autumn to early spring) onshore, can occur at any time on a cruise ship if it has international passengers or is calling at international ports.

Human behaviour also contributes to the risk. Some passengers surveyed following cruise ship gastro outbreaks indicated they were ill when they boarded the ship, or they became ill but didn’t disclose this because they didn’t want to pay for a doctor or be made to isolate, or they thought it wasn’t serious.

Those who became ill were more likely than those who did not to think that hand hygiene and isolation were not effective in preventing infection transmission, and were less likely to wash their hands after using the toilet. Given faecal contamination is a major source of norovirus transmission, this is concerning.

Read more:
Cruise ships are back and carrying COVID. No, it’s not 2020. But here’s what needs to happen next

While there are usually a la carte dining options on board, many people will choose a buffet option. From personal experience, food tongs are handled by multiple people, some of whom may not have cleaned their hands.

What can help?

The Department of Health and Aged Care recommends cruise companies encourage crew and passengers to be up-to-date with flu and COVID vaccinations, and encourage anyone who becomes ill to stay in their cabin, or at least avoid crowded spaces and wear a mask in public.

They also recommend cruise ships have a plan to identify and contain any outbreaks, including testing and treatment capacity, and communicate to passengers and crew how they can reduce their transmission risk.

All passengers and crew should report any signs of infectious illness, and practice good hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette, such as covering their mouth if coughing or sneezing, disposing of used tissues, and washing or sanitising hands after touching their mouth or nose.

Read more:
Fleas to flu to coronavirus: how ‘death ships’ spread disease through the ages

South Australia’s chief health officer has commended the Grand Princess crew for their infection protection and control practices, and for getting the outbreak under control.

Thea van de Mortel teaches into the Master of Infection Prevention and Control program at Griffith University.

– ref. From COVID to gastro, why are cruise ships such hotbeds of infection? – https://theconversation.com/from-covid-to-gastro-why-are-cruise-ships-such-hotbeds-of-infection-217534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Ellis, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Newcastle, University of Newcastle

The New South Wales Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes has held its final public sitting in Sydney today.

The special commission investigated unsolved suspected hate crime deaths of LGBTIQ people (or people who were presumed to be LGBTIQ) in NSW between 1970 and 2010.

In his closing remarks, Justice John Sackar reiterated that the objective was “to provide some recognition of the truth” for LGBTIQ victims in cases where “the response of the community, of society, [and] of its institutions to these deaths was sadly lacking”.

The inquiry has revealed new leads in decades-old cold cases, and importantly, been dogged in its pursuit of justice for victims and their families.

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Months of hearings, piles of evidence

Launched by the NSW government in April 2022, the special commission had extensive powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and to compel the production of more than 150,000 documents.

The deaths of 32 people have been examined in 17 public, and 48 private hearings.

The special commission was driven by a need to clarify aspects of previous investigations by the NSW Police Force, including Strike Forces Parrabell, Macnamir, and Neiwand.

This was recommended by a NSW parliamentary inquiry into gay and transgender hate crimes between 1970 and 2010.

Research published by ACON, a community health organisation, was integral in the inquiry.

Breakthroughs in decades-old cases

The special commission has uncovered a range of issues with some of the initial investigations. These included lack of investigation, forensic testing issues, and problems with the Strike Force inquiries undertaken by NSW Police Force.

But it has also made several breakthroughs. Justice Sackar noted two of these in his closing remarks.

One is in relation to the death of Crispin Dye, who died on Christmas Day in 1993 after being assaulted two days earlier.

In the 30 years since 1993, almost none of the exhibits collected by the NSW Police Force at that time had been subjected to forensic testing. This included his bloodstained clothing.

The special commission arranged for such testing to occur, and which led to two major developments.

It unearthed a match to a DNA profile taken from a 2002 crime scene. This resulted in the identification of an unknown (but now deceased) man and revealed possible avenues of inquiry into him and his associates.

The second case mentioned was that of Ernest Head, who was murdered in his home in Summer Hill in 1976. His body was found naked, having been stabbed 35 times.

The Special Commission arranged for re-analysis of palmprints and certain other exhibits in relation to Head’s case, which resulted in the identification of a known (but now deceased) man, thought to be involved in Head’s death.

The man in question had never previously been identified as a possible person of interest in relation to this unsolved homicide.

Read more:
The Chinese government claims LGBTQ+ people are protected from discrimination. Our interviews with 26 activists tell another story

Victims front and centre

The special commission received and reviewed information provided by more than 130 members of the public and has clarified ambiguities over unsolved suspected hate crime deaths of LGBTIQ people in NSW.

In addition to the cases noted above, it has generated new leads in cold cases that may provide comfort to family and friends who continue to seek answers about what happened to their loved ones.

In shining a light on everything that is known or could be found out about what happened in these cases, Justice Sackar stated in his closing remarks:

Many voiceless people have been given a voice. Recommendations will be made. Improvements in processes and procedures should follow. There is scope for people of goodwill – of whom there are many in this arena – to come together, if they so choose, and work towards a better future.

As such, the special commission has emphasised the importance of the pursuit of justice, even decades after crimes have been committed.

Read more:
‘Don’t say anything about it’: why so many LGBTQIA+ Buddhists feel pressure to hide their identities

State commission, national significance

At a time when LGBTIQ individuals and communities in Australia and globally are experiencing a resurgence of online and in-person hate, the Commission’s findings are likely to have national ramifications.

Given the indifference towards violence and hostility directed at LGBTIQ people in NSW over the 40 year period examined by the special commission, it is timely that other Australian jurisdictions consider whether they also need to address these issues.

The special commission is a timely reminder of the necessity for LGBTIQ individuals and communities to remain vigilant, for police to better respond and listen to victims’ and witnesses’ experiences, and for governments to actively prioritise inclusion.

The final report from the special commission will be handed to the NSW Governor by 15 December 2023.

Nicole L. Asquith was contracted by and received funding from the Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ Hate Crimes to provide expert testimony. Nicole is the Convenor of the Australian Hate Crime Network.

Justin Ellis 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. Shining a light on injustice: how an inquiry fought for LGBTIQ recognition – https://theconversation.com/shining-a-light-on-injustice-how-an-inquiry-fought-for-lgbtiq-recognition-217537

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anya Schiffrin, Senior Lecturer in Discipline of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

In a time of war and populism, the world needs quality information and credible news outlets. Local news is a part of this healthy ecology.

But news publishers have struggled to find ways to make money in recent years – especially as referral traffic and ad revenue from social media sites continue to fall.

The monopoly power of large platforms, and the control they exert over news distribution, was one reason Australia’s competition authorities introduced the News Media Bargaining Code in 2021.

This code has prompted Google and Meta to strike deals with a number of Australian media organisations, addressing the longstanding conundrum of how to get platforms to pay for news. It has even become a template for other countries looking to compensate their own media businesses.

But what exactly is fair compensation in this case? Our new report suggests the amounts of money Google and Meta should be paying news publishers are far greater than anyone imagined, and far more than the tech companies themselves claim.

When Australia’s bargaining code went global

Australia broke new ground when it passed the News Media Bargaining Code, successfully pushing Google and Meta to reach voluntary commercial agreements with a number of media organisations.

It was a world-first piece of legislation, as La Trobe University Professor Andrea Carson put it.

Read more:
Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code led the world. It’s time to finish what we started

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, payments made under the code total about A$200 million each year. It’s no surprise other governments are looking at Australia’s law to find ways to get payments for their news too.

Indonesia, New Zealand, South Africa and Switzerland have all considered similar laws. Japan conducted a study on the online distribution of news content, and in September warned tech platforms low payments to publishers could violate antimonopoly laws.

In Brazil, attempts to introduce platform remuneration legislation were scuppered in May after significant pressure from Google, but are currently being revived.

In the United States, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would allow collective bargaining by news publishers, was introduced by Democratic Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar in March.

Then, in June, the California State Assembly passed the California Journalism Preservation Act, which would require large tech companies to share their advertising revenue with news outlets. However, the bill has been put on hold until 2024.

Whether or not the laws pass, Google and Facebook are coming out against them, threatening to drop news from their platforms in several countries. Facebook dropped news in Canada in August, and in Australia in February 2021 (before bringing it back a short while later).

Read more:
Stuff-up or conspiracy? Whistleblowers claim Facebook deliberately let important non-news pages go down in news blackout

Google and Meta suggest news isn’t core to their business and can be dropped or de-emphasised. At the same time, reports say they’re continuing to give small amounts of money to publishers.

In fact, interviews we conducted over the past couple of months with people working for different outlets suggest Google has recently been raising payments made to publishers worldwide, in what we think is an attempt to forestall legislation.

Globally, publishers have estimated what they believe they’re owed under platform remuneration acts similar to Australia’s. But these amounts are covered under non-disclosure agreements when publishers make direct deals with Google and Meta.

Our working paper is the first to estimate what Google and Meta owe US publishers. We have made our methodology public so it can be checked and replicated.

We found that in the US, Google and Meta owe news publishers between US$11 billion and US$14 billion per year. This is much more than the sums being paid out, which we know about through interviews and specific cases in which amounts have been made public.

Sharing surplus value fairly

At the core of our study and its conclusions is what economists call “surplus” – the additional value created when two sides enter into a mutually beneficial interaction. Importantly, the value generated from the interaction is larger than if the two sides were to operate in isolation.

Digital platforms benefit from having varied, credible and timely news content provided by publishers. This enhances user engagement and makes their platform more attractive to advertisers. News publishers benefit by finding an avenue through which they can distribute their content, thereby reaching more readers.

Our methodology found this additional surplus value generated from the platform-publisher interaction, and then used insights from the economics of bargaining, and from historical benchmarks, to calculate a “fair” payment owed to news publishers.

Our methodology is transparent and replicable, and offers the flexibility to change underlying assumptions based on the market and geography being analysed. With this report, we hope to broaden the discussion over the payments that large digital platforms such as Google and Facebook owe news publishers.

It’s more important than ever that deals between platforms and media businesses are fair and transparent, and that publishers stick together as they negotiate. More value is created when bargaining is collective.

The Conversation reached out to Google for comment but did not receive a response before the deadline.

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. Why Google and Meta owe news publishers much more than you think – and billions more than they’d like to admit – https://theconversation.com/why-google-and-meta-owe-news-publishers-much-more-than-you-think-and-billions-more-than-theyd-like-to-admit-216818

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Parmeter, Research Scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University

More than five weeks into Israel’s war with Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not outlined his future vision for Gaza.

He has said many times the war will continue until Hamas is eradicated. But his battle plan for achieving that objective is far from clear.

As calls grow louder around the world for a ceasefire, Israel is finding itself under increasing pressure to respond. This is placing more scrutiny on Netanyahu’s overall strategy for prosecuting the war – and what could happen after it’s over.

Constantly in the background of Israel’s military campaign is the fate of more than 200 hostages – Israelis and other nationals – held by Hamas. Netanyahu has said there will be no ceasefire until all the hostages are released. Hamas has responded that no hostages will be released in advance of a ceasefire.

Neither side shows signs of budging and Hamas has now suspended negotiations over hostage releases because of Israel’s siege of Al Shifa hospital, Gaza City’s main medical centre. Israel says a Hamas complex is hidden in tunnels underneath the hospital – a claim Hamas denies.

Most of Gaza’s population is now crowded into the southern part of the strip. Some of Hamas’ key leaders are likely hiding there, raising another pertinent question as the war drags on. How will the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) succeed in their mission of eradicating Hamas if its operatives are hiding among civilians in such a crowded area? Netanyahu has given no public indication.

Read more:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership is questioned even as Israelis rally round the flag

Growing US-Israeli frictions

With so many key questions left unanswered, there is a growing disconnect between Netanyahu and the Biden administration in the United States.

President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have both said Israel should not reoccupy Gaza after the war. They have also indicated a preference for the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, to extend its authority to Gaza after Hamas’ removal.

By contrast, Netanyahu has said Israel will need to retain control over security in Gaza after the war.

Moreover, he has rejected the Palestinian Authority as a successor administration to Hamas for various reasons, including the fact it has not issued an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Netanyahu’s balancing act

Netanyahu’s planning seems to be edging towards a demilitarised Gaza with IDF forces based outside the strip, ready to re-enter the enclave when any security threat to Israel is detected.

But he does not seem to be addressing the risk that a power vacuum following Hamas’ removal might be filled by another militant group, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which would certainly not be to Israel’s liking.

Nor has he addressed the probability that disarming those Palestinians who are already radicalised will only be a partially effective exercise.

The problem with understanding Netanyahu’s thought process is that he is dealing with several imperatives simultaneously:

1) Appeasing hard-line members of his government

The coalition government he leads is the most right-wing in Israel’s history. Though the influence of extremists has been diluted by the addition of the centrist Benny Gantz to the war cabinet, Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu still suggested Israel might use a nuclear weapon against Gaza. He was repudiated by Netanyahu, but the comment was indicative of hardline sentiment that remains in the government.

After the war, Netanyahu doubtless hopes to resume governing with this coalition, so he must take their interests into account when it comes to formulating a post-war plan for Gaza.

2) Assuaging the anger of hostages’ families

The families are demanding Netanyahu prioritise negotiations to free their loved ones over the military campaign. Netanyahu claims he is prioritising both. But that claim has lost some cogency since reports emerged that Netanyahu rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire early in the war in return for release of some of the hostages.

3) Securing his own political future

Netanyahu will be acutely aware that the only other Israeli political leader to have presided over a security and intelligence failure of the magnitude of Hamas’ October 7 attack was Golda Meir at the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And she resigned soon after the Egyptian and Syrian forces were defeated.

The longer the current war continues, the greater the chance Netanyahu can severely diminish Hamas’ leadership structure. And this would allow him to burnish his tarnished credentials as Israel’s security guarantor.

He will also have noted former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s comment that Israel probably has only weeks left to eliminate Hamas before international public opinion completely turns against Israel. This adds urgency to Netanyahu’s need for an outcome he can describe as a victory.

4) Dealing with pressures from the White House

The Biden administration is also letting it be known through media leaks that it has concerns over Israel’s conduct of the war, particularly the high number of civilian casualties and apparent lack of an exit strategy. The US is also warning Israel more explicitly that international support for its military operation is waning.

This is of growing concern to the Biden administration because its strong support for Israel comes with increasing risks. First, American diplomats have said anger in the Arab world is so intense over continued US support for Israel, it is “losing us Arab publics for a generation”.

And there is also the risk Biden’s embrace of Israel could hurt him during next year’s presidential election. Many of the anti-war demonstrators in the US are young, college-educated progressives who helped elect Biden in 2020. If these voters fail to turn out for him next year, the likely Republican candidate, Donald Trump, could prevail.

Reaching an acceptable – and achievable – endgame

Biden and Netanyahu are thus on a collision course. Netanyahu wants a long war in order to maximise his chances of eliminating Hamas – and to delay the inevitable post-war reckoning over the Israeli security failure that led to so much carnage on October 7.

Biden agrees Hamas has to be destroyed, but he needs the war to be as short as possible in order to limit the blow-back against US interests internationally, as well as against him domestically.

There is also uncertainty about the amount of purchase Biden might have if he attempts to rein in Netanyahu. That uncertainty is compounded by the question of what might be an acceptable – and achievable – endgame in Gaza for both.

Read more:
‘We remain afraid of the future’ – how Palestinian children’s optimism was fading even before this crisis

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

– ref. As calls grow louder for a Gaza ceasefire, Netanyahu is providing few clues about his strategy or post-war plans – https://theconversation.com/as-calls-grow-louder-for-a-gaza-ceasefire-netanyahu-is-providing-few-clues-about-his-strategy-or-post-war-plans-217653

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark A Gregory, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, RMIT University

Around 4.05am on Wednesday November 8 2023, Optus suffered a nationwide network outage lasting well into the evening, more than 12 hours later.

Now, Optus has released some information on what happened, stating “we now know what the cause was and have taken steps to ensure it will not happen again”.

As a telecommunications expert, I believe we should have no confidence in this statement, because the poorly worded explanation leaves many questions unanswered.

Could a similar outage happen again? We don’t know – but there are ways to make it less likely.

Read more:
Optus blackout explained: what is a ‘deep network’ outage and what may have caused it?

How did the outage unfold?

The Optus outage caused all services to go offline. Landlines, mobile phones, home internet, small business and enterprise, and cloud connections all dropped out.

The most serious impact of the outage was that Optus landlines couldn’t dial 000 and Optus mobile phones were unable to connect to the 000 emergency call service unless the connection occurred through Telstra or Vodafone infrastructure.

More than 10 million Optus customers were affected by the outage that brought Melbourne’s trains to a halt and left Optus’s small business customers unable to carry out EFTPOS transactions.

So, what went wrong with Optus?

Optus has revealed that a “routine software upgrade” triggered a cascading failure in the Optus internet protocol (IP) core network – the central backbone of their network that authorises device access and provides customer management.

Optus has provided a brief answer on why the entire network went offline:

“These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers which could not handle these. This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves.”

Routing information is used to find a path from one location on the internet to another – a router is a device that manages the traffic flows.

The explanation provided by Optus points to human error. This confirms what industry experts suspected had happened. The resulting flood of “routing information changes” overwhelmed key routers in the core network causing them to disconnect, thereby bringing the entire network to a halt.

Read more:
Explainer: what is the ‘core network’ that was crucial to the Optus outage?

Should the outage have been preventable?

Outages of this kind are not uncommon – human error has led to major companies going offline in the past.

But an entire telecommunications network going offline is unusual. The network should be designed in such a way that redundancy (backups) and resiliency are built in from the outset.

Before a software upgrade occurs, there should be modelling, testing and several layers of sign-off.

In case something goes wrong, there should be infrastructure and system redundancy. An automated or manual procedure should exist to ensure the redundant systems become operational within a few minutes.

In 2021, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram disappeared from the internet for roughly six hours due to an incorrect routing configuration.

Meta’s lengthy and informative statement at the time provides an example of the level of detail that we should expect Optus to provide.

With the Optus outage and similar incidents at other companies that have led to major outages, in nearly every case the outage was preventable and highlighted deficiencies in the organisation.

Read more:
In a crisis, Optus appears to be ignoring Communications 101

What should Optus do now?

The national outage means the Optus network is not fit for purpose.

It can be assumed Optus has a number of deficiencies, such as problems with engineering capability, testing, procedures, network redundancy and resilience.

Optus states they are “committed to learning from what has occurred” and will continue to work to “increase the resilience” of their network.

For this to lead to an effective outcome, Optus will need to carry out a review and put in place new processes, infrastructure and systems to prevent a similar outage in the future.

How do we know a similar outage won’t happen again?

We don’t.

We need enhanced government regulation of the Australian telecommunications network operators to provide improved visibility of the redundancy and resilience of their networks. The Senate has commenced an inquiry into the Optus outage.

Telecommunications is an essential service. Australians should be able to connect to the 000 emergency call service at all times. Reliable access to medical services, EFTPOS and the internet are vital.

If necessary, penalties should be introduced into the Telecommunications Act 1997 to ensure telecommunications network operators implement and maintain “best practice” related to network operation, redundancy and resilience.

Mark A Gregory 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. Optus has revealed the cause of the major outage. Could it happen again? – https://theconversation.com/optus-has-revealed-the-cause-of-the-major-outage-could-it-happen-again-217564

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hutchinson, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

On November 1, Pakistan began a nationwide operation to deport over 1.7 million Afghans it says are living in the country illegally. There are now an estimated 10,000 people returning to Afghanistan each day.

Pakistan has indicated the deportations are designed to reduce cross-border incursions from Taliban fighters based in Afghanistan. But it is more likely the interim military government is succumbing to populist politics around inflation, housing shortages and cost of living pressures in the country.

There were already over a million Afghans living in Pakistan before the Taliban came back into power in Afghanistan in August 2021. But the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been unable to process all of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 Afghans who have fled to Pakistan since then. It is estimated only about a third of Afghan refugees in Pakistan are registered with the refugee agency.

The level of documentation that Afghans in Pakistan have varies extensively. Some entered the country without visas and passports. Some entered on visas and have been waiting indefinitely for renewal, others are on expired visas.

The UNHCR has subcontracted much of the registration of refugees to other organisations in Pakistan. Often, payment to a local broker is the only way refugees are able to get an appointment. This is entirely unreasonable when countries like Australia require UNHCR registration of refugees to facilitate priority processing.

Many refugees experience lengthy waiting periods to be registered, formally recognised as refugees and then issued an ID card, let alone referred for onward resettlement. Shelter, food and medical assistance are not even considered.

Refugee identity documents are not even enough to protect people from deportation. There have been reports of police detaining and threatening people with valid Pakistani visas. Activists told me of incidents in which police have torn up valid visas and Afghan passports.

Many Afghans have applied for resettlement in countries that were members of the NATO-led force that maintained security in Afghanistan, such as the US, Canada, Australia and countries in the European Union. But as the world has turned its eye to other conflicts, those countries have fallen drastically short of their promises to Afghan refugees. It is estimated only 200,000 Afghans have been resettled globally since August 2021.

Read more:
‘I feel suffocated’: Afghans are increasingly hopeless, but there’s still a chance to preserve some rights

A trickle of visas approved for Afghans

Human Rights Watch has also highlighted the unreasonably slow processing times for Afghan refugees in resettlement countries, such as the US, UK, Germany, Australia and other EU countries. This is particularly true for women and girls, the organisation says:

Afghan women and girls have often faced greater barriers to obtaining asylum, as destination countries have often prioritised assisting Afghans – overwhelmingly men – who contributed to their military efforts.

Since the Taliban returned to power, only 12,200 Afghan applicants have received a humanitarian visa to enter Australia. During the 2022 federal election campaign, Labor promised to increase the total refugee and humanitarian intake to 27,000 people annually. But this hasn’t happened.

Australia has promised just 26,500 humanitarian and 5,000 family places for Afghans from 2021-26.

Yet, there are more than 147,000 Afghan applicants still in the queue waiting to be processed from the 189,000 applications received since August 2021. And earlier this year, the Department of Home Affairs quietly removed human rights defenders from its list of groups to receive priority visa processing from Afghanistan.

A dire situation for women and girls

Former US President George W. Bush said in the early 2000s that the US went to Afghanistan to liberate the country’s women, but those women have been forgotten now.

Today, Afghanistan remains in one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises.

The United Nations has described a system of gender apartheid under Taliban rule, in which women are prevented from participating in any public life, education or economic activity outside the home.

Infant and maternal mortality rates have skyrocketed because women are not allowed to travel to seek medical attention, female doctors are not allowed to work and male doctors are not allowed to treat female patients.

Leaders of NGOs that work on women’s education and other women’s rights continue to be disappeared. Women who are brave enough to protest on the street are beaten. Journalists are routinely detained for covering such issues.

Last year, the UN Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund launched a new program dedicated to supporting women’s human rights defenders around the world. However, I’ve been told this program is now facing a US$14 million (A$22 million) funding shortfall.

This fund provides small grants to a number of Afghan women’s human rights defenders to fund their ongoing advocacy work and relocate them or help them flee when their lives are in danger. Often, these women need this money to pay exorbitant prices for visa extensions to stay in Pakistan, or for exit permits to leave the country if they are given a resettlement place elsewhere.

If countries like Australia and the US help make up this shortfall, more women will have access to these grants and be able to escape extreme security risks.

What now for Afghans living in limbo?

Western countries must keep their promises to process refugee visa applications for Afghans in a timely fashion.

Australia refuses to grant refugee visas to people currently in Afghanistan. Yet, the government is still taking years to process the claims of incredibly high risk individuals outside the country who meet several priority processing criteria. Those people fled to countries like Pakistan and Iran and are now being deported because the process has taken so long.

Read more:
As the Taliban returns, 20 years of progress for women looks set to disappear overnight

Similarly, Afghans who are eligible for special immigrant visas to the US can also wait for years. Even if they get an appointment with the US embassy in Islamabad, there is no guarantee of a timeline when they will be sent to the US.

These timelines have to change. Globally, poorer countries shoulder the burden as the hosts of the overwhelming majority of refugees. Pakistan is now deporting Afghans. Iran, host to more than three million Afghan refugees, will likely follow soon.

Susan Hutchinson is executive director of Azadi-e Zan, an NGO dedicated to helping Afghan women’s human rights defenders. This is an unpaid role. She is also a member of the Australian Civil Society Coalition for Women, Peace and Security.

– ref. Why Western countries share the blame for the plight of 1.7 million Afghans being deported from Pakistan – https://theconversation.com/why-western-countries-share-the-blame-for-the-plight-of-1-7-million-afghans-being-deported-from-pakistan-217532

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stacey Pizzino, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

When armed conflict breaks out, we first focus on the people affected. But the suffering from war doesn’t stop when the fighting does. War trashes the environment. Artillery strikes, rockets and landmines release pollutants, wipe out forests and can make farmland unusable.

One in six people around the world have been exposed to conflict this year, from civil war in Sudan to Russia’s war in Ukraine to the Israel-Hamas war.

War has returned. Conflicts are at their highest point since the second world war. Deaths are at a 28-year high. As we grapple with the immediate plight of people, we must not lose sight of what war leaves behind – the silent casualty of the environment.

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The environmental impact of Russia’s invasion goes beyond Ukraine – how do we deal with ‘problems without passports’?

What damage does war do?

Armed conflict leaves a long trail of environmental damage, which in turn can worsen our health and that of other species.

Chemical weapons and pollution from weapons stay in the environment as a toxic legacy. Explosives release pollutants such as depleted uranium into soil, while landscapes can be destroyed by troop movement and the breakdown of infrastructure.

The damage can last far longer than you’d think. The bloody second world war Battle of Verdun in France left the once-fertile farmland contaminated. Over a century later, no one can live in the Red Zone due to the threat from unexploded bombs.

As the Russia-Ukraine war wears on, severe air pollution, deforestation and soil degradation have mounted.

Conflict also causes habitat loss and decreased biodiversity. Between 1946 and 2010, wildlife noticeably declined in African nations affected by armed conflict.

Landmines are particularly bad, as they are designed to remain in place until stepped on. Long after a war ends, they can still kill people or animals. Landmines also cause degradation and limit access to safe land, which can then become over-exploited. Landmines have been unearthed by flood waters in Libya, Ukraine, Lebanon and Bosnia Herzegovina.

Many explosive weapons are designed to withstand short periods of intense heat. But when high temperatures linger, unexploded bombs can detonate. As the world heats up, we may see more explosions – not just from remnant bombs, but from munitions dumps.

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The war on Tigray wiped out decades of environmental progress: how to start again

In the fast-heating Middle East, this is already happening. In Iraq, six arms depots exploded during intense heatwaves between 2018 and 2019. In Jordan, heatwaves have been blamed for a similar arms dump explosion in 2020.

At war’s end, weapons are often dumped in the ocean. From the first world war until the 1970s, out of date munitions and chemical weapons in the United Kingdom were dumped into the sea. It may have seemed like an easy solution, but the bombs haven’t gone away. Over 1 million tonnes of munitions litter the floor of a natural ocean trench between Northern Ireland and Scotland. These sometimes detonate underwater, while chemical weapons have washed up on beaches.

During the second world war, intense fighting took place on the Solomon Islands. Even today, people die or are wounded every year when uncovered bombs go off. Fishers have to be wary of underwater bombs.

Environmental exploitation such as illegal logging or diamond mining can accelerate during wartime, with profits used to buy weapons to fuel more fighting. At least 40% of civil war and internal conflicts between 1946–2006 were tied to natural resources such as teak and gold, according to the United Nations.

Sometimes, natural resources can become targets, as in the deliberate firing of oil wells in Kuwait or destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam. These scorched-earth tactics do untold damage to the environment.

How do war and climate change interact?

The long-running war in Sudan’s Darfur region has been dubbed the world’s first climate change war due to its origins in drought and ecological crisis. While it’s difficult to clearly draw a link between the changing climate and an armed conflict, climate change is at minimum an indirect driver of armed conflict and can exacerbate existing social, economical and environmental factors. In turn, conflict worsens the damage done by climate change as it limits people’s ability to respond or cope with climate shocks.

Wars and extreme weather can both force people from their homes. At the end of last year, the number of people forced to seek refuge elsewhere in their own country was at an all time high. When people are forced to move, the disruption can add extra environmental damage through plastic and other types of waste.

When wars are raging, they take priority for governments. That, in turn, can limit efforts to reduce emissions or adapt to climate change.

That can make disasters worse. Colombia’s deadly 2017 landslide killed over 300 people. Why was it so deadly? In part, because many people had fled to the affected town, Mocoa, to avoid war and had built makeshift houses with no protection against disasters. We also know deaths from disasters increase in nations riven by armed conflict.

The world’s military forces are intense users of fossil fuels, accounting for 5.5% of global emissions. If we took the world’s military forces as one country, they would be the fourth highest emitter, after China, America and India.

We can no longer ignore the devastating coupling between war and environmental damage, including climate change. Wars make our ability to adapt to climate change worse, and environmental damage from conflict will exacerbate climate change.

À lire aussi :
War leaves a toxic legacy that lasts long after the guns go quiet. Can we stop it?

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

– ref. Conflict pollution, washed-up landmines and military emissions – here’s how war trashes the environment – https://theconversation.com/conflict-pollution-washed-up-landmines-and-military-emissions-heres-how-war-trashes-the-environment-216987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritesh Shah, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Auckland

In October alone, more children were reported to have died in Gaza than the total number of children killed annually in all other conflicts since 2019. The awful statistic led to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres calling Gaza a “graveyard for children”.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the humanitarian catastrophe has been unprecedented in scale and scope. While not as acute in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the impact on young people in those territories has also been severe.

Scores of schools have been shut due to security concerns, and movement between towns is significantly limited. Violence between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian population has increased, with little apparent intervention by the Israeli military or government.

According to a UNICEF briefing to the UN Security Council, the recent escalation could lead to “trauma which could last a lifetime” for children in both Palestine and Israel. Even before this crisis, however, the toll of the protracted conflict on Palestinian children has been clear.

Over the four years between 2019 and 2022, I led a study exploring children’s wellbeing in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Conducted in partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council, we surveyed approximately 800 children and their teachers. The trends we observed were cause for grave concern – even before events of the past month.

‘Insecure all the time’

The children we surveyed in Gaza had lived through at least three large-scale Israeli military operations in their lifetimes. Due to Israel’s longstanding blockade of the territory, they have grown up with food insecurity and unreliable supplies of electricity and drinking water.

With most of their caregivers unemployed, many children are vulnerable to poor living conditions, as well as violence within the home.

Read more:
What is the rule of proportionality, and is it being observed in the Israeli siege of Gaza?

Despite this, the children of Gaza we surveyed in 2019 showed tremendous resilience: 80% felt things would be better in the future. For many, attending and succeeding in school offered the hope of finding a way out of their circumstances.

By 2022, however, the situation had changed markedly. COVID-19 lockdowns, followed by a major escalation in violence in the spring of 2021 just as students returned to school full time, saw only 20% positive about their future.

Such circumstances had deflated their capacity to aspire, hope and dream of a better tomorrow. As one group of boys described in a story they wrote together:

We remain afraid of the future, and not trusting it will bring us any more hope. We can’t forget the events we have been through and feel insecure all the time.

Pandemic respite

Our research suggests the same is true for children in parts of the West Bank which face the ongoing presence of Israeli settlers and military in their communities.

Children surveyed in the part of Hebron under Israeli military control (Hebron H2), and in East Jerusalem, face daily restrictions as they travel to and from school. Many need to pass through military checkpoints where they face delays and harassment.

For these children, the pandemic offered a kind of respite from having to make these daily journeys. One group of girls living in Hebron H2 wrote:

The streets were calm and quiet, and there was not the usual conflict between us and the soldiers.

Read more:
Israel-Hamas conflict: what Gaza might look like ‘the day after’ the war

Schools reopened after the pandemic at the same time as tension and violence mounted across the West Bank over the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements on seized Palestinian land. Attacks in and around schools increased, as did Palestinian casualties.

For the most acutely affected areas, our survey recorded significant declines in children’s wellbeing, particularly in their ability to calm themselves when scared, and to think of solutions to daily challenges they faced. One group of girls at a school outside Jerusalem wrote:

Whenever there are incidences, we have strikes which close our school again and return us to learning from home which we don’t like. We are frustrated, depressed, and [made] angry by the situation.

Read more:
International reaction to Gaza siege has exposed the growing rift between the West and the Global South

Frustration and escalation

Pressure is now mounting for a ceasefire to end this latest cycle of violence. If and when this happens, humanitarian organisations and donors will flood back in to restore, repair and attempt to remediate the physical and psychological damage.

But if the root causes and drivers of the Israel-Palestine conflict remain unaddressed, and if there is no greater international resolve to change the status quo once and for all, it seems inevitable we will witness more bloodshed and suffering.

Children on both sides of the conflict deserve a durable and lasting solution. Our survey suggests their resilience was already seriously declining before the current emergency. Without hope, this will deteriorate even further. As one school principal told me:

We feel trapped by the situation we are in, and the violence just escalates out of frustration.

Ritesh Shah received funding from the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations for this research.

– ref. ‘We remain afraid of the future’ – how Palestinian children’s optimism was fading even before this crisis – https://theconversation.com/we-remain-afraid-of-the-future-how-palestinian-childrens-optimism-was-fading-even-before-this-crisis-217535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kiri Joy Wallace, Research Fellow in Restoration Ecology, University of Waikato

Biodiversity continues to decline globally, but nowhere is the loss more pronounced than in Aotearoa New Zealand, which has the highest proportion of threatened indigenous species in the world.

We hope our Eco-index initiative, which today launches an online ecosystem restoration map for New Zealand, will help change the story for nature.

Planning large-scale biodiversity restoration projects – whether they’re run by NGOs, governments or Indigenous groups – requires high-quality data.

Despite the rising demand, however, accessible biodiversity data have not been collected regularly or consistently. There are also challenges around the standardisation, storage and sharing of such data.

This means it has been difficult to quantify native ecosystems and biodiversity at scale. Cost-benefit analyses often have information gaps, meaning prioritising the various options for restoration projects can become guesswork.

Read more:
Despite its green image, NZ has world’s highest proportion of species at risk

Better data with help from new technologies

Without accurate information, improving biodiversity becomes harder. But emerging technologies – such as remote sensing and artificial intelligence – are making it easier to gather better data.

The Eco-index Ecosystem Restoration Map provides New Zealand’s first public, open-access digital tool in this area. It aims to address information gaps in biodiversity restoration, and to show users which native ecosystems are appropriate to reconstruct in any given catchment area.

It also shows where the highest restoration priorities are – such as in areas with very low native ecosystem cover. And it allows anyone to view the restoration targets for each native ecosystem in any catchment.

The map was developed with input from Indigenous leaders, rural professionals, community group leaders, government and industry bodies. Our goal is to share science-based information to support national discussion, policy and planning for ecosystem restoration.

It will be most useful when used alongside local information based on regional council guidance and local restoration expertise.

Ecological, economic, social and data science underpin the map’s development, as well as mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge). The map will continue to be refined with data from new technologies and user feedback.

Read more:
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Biodiversity in policy and business

Internationally, there is growing interest in more strategic biodiversity support, including improved policy frameworks and sustainable finance.

New Zealand is addressing some national biodiversity issues through policy, such as the release of a national biodiversity strategy. The strategy encompasses three pillars, with objectives to improve systems that influence biodiversity, empower residents to take action, and protect or restore native biodiversity.

New Zealand’s National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity requires regional councils to safeguard native biodiversity and to “set a target of at least 10% Indigenous vegetation cover”.

The Eco-index has a minimum goal of 15% native ecosystem cover. It recommends land managers tackle ecosystem restoration from wherever they are now. This may mean aiming for 10% cover in the next ten years, followed by 15% in 15 years, and 30% in two decades.

The rationale behind the 15% goal is that large tracts of native ecosystems support more native species than small, fragmented patches. Once an area drops below 10-20% of its original land cover, the number of species it can support declines suddenly.

Read more:
Without a better plan, New Zealand risks sleepwalking into a biodiversity extinction crisis

Aotearoa New Zealand is also a signatory to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework against which biodiversity strategy outcomes will be assessed and reported internationally.

Beyond this, global discussions focus on the development of biodiversity credit frameworks and include considerations such as the United Nations-supported Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures. The potential of these separate but aligned initiatives to create cumulative, positive impacts for nature is substantial.

Read more:
Slow solutions to fast-moving ecological crises won’t work – changing basic human behaviours must come first

Creating change

The success of these policies and frameworks hinges on the availability of high-quality data to understand the current state and trends in biodiversity, and to monitor outcomes.

Initiated in 2020, the Eco-index group focuses on biodiversity in Aotearoa New Zealand being protected, restored and connected by 2121. This long term vision aligns with inter-generational land-management thinking. It acknowledges that it takes time to fully realise these native biodiversity ambitions.

Eco-index also claims the status of being the first digital public good in New Zealand. The interactive public map is the first publicly available tool, with other digital tools in development for release next year.

The wider toolkit aims to empower large-scale restoration planning with a range of customised spatial and economic tools. These can help identify the best locations for planting, inform costings, and provide valuations of ecosystem services.

They can also detect native ecosystems remotely, using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence.

If successful, the toolkit can be expanded for global use. It could also include specialised tools for natural hazard mitigation, such as the restoration of urban wetlands for flood control.

These tools are developed from the best information available, including Planet satellite imagery and data from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research and Rongowai Science Payloads Operations Centre in partnership with the Geospatial Research Institute.

Kiri Wallace receives funding from the New Zealand Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. Fonterra and Environment Canterbury have also provided funding for some aspects of Eco-index work.

John Reid receives funding from the New Zealand Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. Fonterra and Environment Canterbury have also provided funding for some aspects of Eco-index work.

Penny Payne receives funding from the New Zealand Biological Heritage National Science Challenge. Fonterra and Environment Canterbury have also provided funding for some aspects of Eco-index work.

– ref. Restoring ecosystems to boost biodiversity is an urgent priority – our ‘Eco-index’ can guide the way – https://theconversation.com/restoring-ecosystems-to-boost-biodiversity-is-an-urgent-priority-our-eco-index-can-guide-the-way-217092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Dawel, Clinical psychologist and Lecturer, Research School of Psychology, Australian National University

Does ChatGPT ever give you the eerie sense you’re interacting with another human being?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached an astounding level of realism, to the point that some tools can even fool people into thinking they are interacting with another human.

The eeriness doesn’t stop there. In a study published today in Psychological Science, we’ve discovered images of white faces generated by the popular StyleGAN2 algorithm look more “human” than actual people’s faces.

AI creates hyperrealistic faces

For our research, we showed 124 participants pictures of many different white faces and asked them to decide whether each face was real or generated by AI.

Half the pictures were of real faces, while half were AI-generated. If the participants had guessed randomly, we would expect them to be correct about half the time – akin to flipping a coin and getting tails half the time.

Instead, participants were systematically wrong, and were more likely to say AI-generated faces were real. On average, people labelled about 2 out of 3 of the AI-generated faces as human.

These results suggest AI-generated faces look more real than actual faces; we call this effect “hyperrealism”. They also suggest people, on average, aren’t very good at detecting AI-generated faces. You can compare for yourself the portraits of real people at the top of the page with the ones embedded below.

But perhaps people are aware of their own limitations, and therefore aren’t likely to fall prey to AI-generated faces online?

To find out, we asked participants how confident they felt about their decisions. Paradoxically, the people who were the worst at identifying AI impostors were the most confident in their guesses.

In other words, the people who were most susceptible to being tricked by AI weren’t even aware they were being deceived.

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Scams, deepfake porn and romance bots: advanced AI is exciting, but incredibly dangerous in criminals’ hands

Biased training data deliver biased outputs

The fourth industrial revolution – which includes technologies such as AI, robotics and advanced computing – has profoundly changed the kinds of “faces” we see online.

AI-generated faces are readily available, and their use comes with both risks and benefits. Although they have been used to help find missing children, they have also been used in identity fraud, catfishing and cyber warfare.

People’s misplaced confidence in their ability to detect AI faces could make them more susceptible to deceptive practices. They may, for instance, readily hand over sensitive information to cybercriminals masquerading behind hyperrealistic AI identities.

Another worrying aspect of AI hyperrealism is that it’s racially biased. Using data from another study which also tested Asian and Black faces, we found only white AI-generated faces looked hyperreal.

When asked to decide whether faces of colour were human or AI-generated, participants guessed correctly about half the time – akin to guessing randomly.

This means white AI-generated faces look more real than AI-generated faces of colour, as well as white human faces.

Implications of bias and hyperrealistic AI

This racial bias likely stems from the fact that AI algorithms, including the one we tested, are often trained on images of mostly white faces.

Racial bias in algorithmic training can have serious implications. One recent study found self-driving cars are less likely to detect Black people, placing them at greater risk than white people. Both the companies producing AI, and the governments overseeing them, have a responsibility to ensure diverse representation and mitigate bias in AI.

The realism of AI-generated content also raises questions about our ability to accurately detect it and protect ourselves.

In our research, we identified several features that make white AI faces look hyperreal. For instance, they often have proportionate and familiar features, and they lack distinctive characteristics that make them stand out as “odd” from other faces. Participants misinterpreted these features as signs of “humanness”, leading to the hyperrealism effect.

At the same time, AI technology is advancing so rapidly it will be interesting to see how long these findings apply. There’s also no guarantee AI faces generated by other algorithms will differ from human faces in the same ways as those we tested.

Since our study was published, we have also tested the ability of AI detection technology to identify our AI faces. Although this technology claims to identify the particular type of AI faces we used with a high accuracy, it performed as poorly as our human participants.

Similarly, software for detecting AI writing has also had high rates of falsely accusing people of cheating – especially people whose native language is not English.

Managing the risks of AI

So how can people protect themselves from misidentifying AI-generated content as real?

One way is to simply be aware of how poorly people perform when tasked with separating AI-generated faces from real ones. If we are more wary of our own limitations on this front, we may be less easily influenced by what we see online – and can take additional steps to verify information when it matters.

Public policy also plays an important role. One option is to require the use of AI to be declared. However, this might not help, or may inadvertently provide a false sense of security when AI is used for deceptive purposes – in which case it is almost impossible to police.

Another approach is to focus on authenticating trusted sources. Similar to the “Made in Australia” or “European CE tag”, applying a trusted source badge – which can be verified and has to be earned through rigorous checks – could help users select reliable media.

À lire aussi :
AI image generation is advancing at astronomical speeds. Can we still tell if a picture is fake?

Amy Dawel receives funding from the Australian Research Council. The funder had no role in the design and execution of this study, analyses, interpretation of the data, or decision to submit results.

Ben Albert Steward receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program. The funder had no role in the design and execution of this study, analyses, interpretation of the data, or decision to submit results.

Clare Sutherland receives funding from the Australian Research Council. The funder had no role in the design and execution of this study, analyses, interpretation of the data, or decision to submit results.

Eva Krumhuber et Zachary Witkower ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.

– ref. Can you spot the AI impostors? We found AI faces can look more real than actual humans – https://theconversation.com/can-you-spot-the-ai-impostors-we-found-ai-faces-can-look-more-real-than-actual-humans-215160

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynley Wallis, Professor, Griffith University

First Nations people please be advised this article speaks of racially discriminating moments in history, including the distress and death of First Nations people.

A pillar of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is truth-telling. This is easy to say, but not easy to do. Truth-telling involves the practice of revealing things that are uncomfortable, long hidden or forgotten. Truth-telling practices across the country (and globally, such as in Canada) are bringing attention to histories and societal inequities that are often contentious and difficult to hear.

The Native Mounted Police is one such difficult story in Queensland’s truth-telling process.

The Native Mounted Police operated in Queensland for 80 years, starting in 1849. It consisted of small groups of between six and 15 Aboriginal troopers under the command of white officers. The troopers were typically recruited from areas far from where they were sent to serve.

Detachments of troopers were regularly sent out on patrol, covering large areas along the frontier of the colony in pursuit of Indigenous people who were considered to be “problematic”. Their main job was to protect civilian settlers, the lands they had taken up, and their livelihoods – by whatever means necessary.

While on patrol, the Native Mounted Police are known to have engaged in violence against Aboriginal people, including killings of men, women and children, kidnappings, rape, and the forcible removal of children.

Truth-telling will mean coming to terms with this violence. Their actions radically altered the makeup of First Nations groups, diminished their populations, and changed where and how survivors could live.

With respect to this history, renowned Badtjala artist and scholar Dr Fiona Foley has said

I believe this country carries deep wounds from the trauma of these frontier wars. We carry it inside our souls whether we are conscious of them or not.

What we’ve found in our research

For seven years, we have been reconstructing the activities of the Native Mounted Police in order to help Queenslanders begin to understand this history.

In our research, we combed through archaeological work on Native Mounted Police camps and artefacts, examined historical documents (newspapers, colonial government documents, private diaries, hospital records and maps) from public archives and libraries, and conducted oral histories with a range of people, including descendants of Native Mounted Police officers and troopers, and descendants of massacre survivors.

We have organised all of our findings – nearly 20,000 documents in total – in an online database to shed light on the lives of the 450 officers and over 1,000 Aboriginal troopers who made up the Native Mounted Police, and the violence they administered.

Some people question why Aboriginal boys and men would enlist in a force whose job was to hunt down and kill other Aboriginal people. As we discuss at length in a research article, the reasons are varied and many. Some were directly or indirectly coerced through threats of violence or reduced prison sentences, but many seemingly “volunteered”. Many recruits may have had few, if any, other viable options – in essence, they were faced with a “choiceless choice”.

Like other native policing forces used by the British in Africa and India, the Queensland Native Mounted Police also deliberately exploited the fact that Indigenous people from one part of the country often regarded those from another as strangers, if not enemies.

The extent of frontier conflict

Other researchers have mapped massacre events in Australia in which more than six people were killed. Not all frontier conflict resulted in the deaths of large numbers of people, however. Large massacres were typically preceded by a series of smaller events and followed by others afterwards. These often included attacks on livestock or property rather than people, or the killings of individual people on both sides.

Our aim was to reconstruct as comprehensively as possible the scale and nature of all frontier conflict events, including violence that took place before the Native Mounted Police were officially established. All of this conflict would have set the scene for Indigenous people in their subsequent interactions with settler-colonists.

We divided conflict into four categories: attacks on stock or property, attacks on non-Indigenous people, attacks on Indigenous people and attacks on the Native Mounted Police themselves.

All together, we mapped more than 2,500 of these conflict events across colonial Queensland from 1623 until 1911. Our findings show violence occurred everywhere, but was especially common along the east coast and on Cape York Peninsula.

Violence commenced in Queensland in 1623, with the voyage of the Dutch vessel Pera, captained by Janszoon Carstensz. After settler colonists arrived in the early 1800s, we found violent incidents taking place in every decade from the 1820s onwards, peaking in 1866.

Because historical documents are biased in their focus on violence towards settlers, the most common form of conflict recorded was the killing of livestock, such as sheep, cattle and horses.

Pastoralists, agriculturalists, farmers and selectors had often invested their life savings in buying livestock and taking up land. They could little afford to lose their animals to Aboriginal spears. When they did, they often called in the Native Mounted Police, whose presence began a series of retaliatory events.

Read more:
Friday essay: ‘killed by Natives’. The stories – and violent reprisals – behind some of Australia’s settler memorials

Potentially higher death rates from conflict

Of the 165 Native Mount Police camps we have identified in our research, 150 have relatively secure beginning and end dates, with an average duration of 13 years per camp. This suggests that, generally, it took just over a decade to curb Aboriginal resistance in any given region.

In some areas, though, it took much longer. In the Cook Pastoral District (which covers most of Cape York Peninsula), for example, a staggering 54 Native Mounted Police camps operated from 1868 until 1929.

When the areal extent of different historic pastoral districts is taken into account, however, some had an even greater density of Native Mounted Police camps than Cook. Even though the Wide Bay District in southeast Queensland had only six camps between 1850 and 1864, its small size meant the Native Mounted Police presence here was quite intense.

Our data also suggests the death rates of frontier Aboriginal peoples was considerably higher than previous estimates.

Historians Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen have estimated some 41,000 Aboriginal people could have been killed at the hands of the Native Mounted Police between 1859 and 1897. Their estimate was based on reasonable and minimal assumptions drawn from historical documents and an average seven-year lifespan per camp.

Extending the duration of a camp to 13 years, in line with our newly identified data, increases the total deaths to potentially over 60,000.

Read more:
‘Why didn’t we know?’ is no excuse. Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people

Ripples in Australia today

The government policies that allowed this decimation of Indigenous lives continue to have very real implications in Australian society today.

Australia’s colonial history has been built on policies designed to secure and maintain possession of Indigenous lands. Historically, colonial powers employed forces like the Native Mounted Police to enact widespread violence on the Indigenous people who stood in the way of this.

We can see the repercussions of historical actions to displace Aboriginal communities in processes such as native title claims. These processes force Aboriginal people to prove generational connections to land from which they were, at best, marginalised, and at worst, excluded.

Many Aboriginal groups can trace their families back to only a handful of ancestors because so many people were killed outright, died from starvation and disease, or were removed through measures such as the Stolen Generations.

The resounding defeat of the recent Voice to Parliament referendum is another case in point. It reveals a lack of understanding of the historical nature of violence against Indigenous people, the racist foundations of settler Australia, and how these continue to impact communities today.

Lynley Wallis receives funding from the Australia Research Council. She is affiliated with the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists Inc. and Wallis Heritage Consulting.

Heather Burke receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Troy Meston receives unrelated funding from Education QLD, NIAA, UNESCO, Griffith University.

– ref. Our mapping project shows how extensive frontier violence was in Queensland. This is why truth-telling matters – https://theconversation.com/our-mapping-project-shows-how-extensive-frontier-violence-was-in-queensland-this-is-why-truth-telling-matters-216726

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sacha Pidot, Molecular microbiologist; laboratory head, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

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

Imagine a world where simple infections could become life-threatening, where a small cut could spell disaster, and where doctors couldn’t treat diseases effectively anymore. This isn’t the plot of a science fiction movie – it’s a real concern.

For decades, antibiotics have been used successfully to fight a wide range of bacterial infections. However, overuse of these medicines has led to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, known as “superbugs”.

Scientists are now in a race against time to discover new antibiotics that can defeat these bacteria. While this has been a difficult task, the recently discovered antibiotic clovibactin has renewed hope that we can fight our way out of this antibiotic resistance crisis.

So is clovibactin the saviour we’ve been hoping for? Or is it another in a long list of antibiotics that will remain only useful for research? The results so far are mixed.

Read more:
The rise and fall of antibiotics. What would a post-antibiotic world look like?

Remind me, how do antibiotics work?

Antibiotics work by either directly killing bacteria or preventing them from growing and dividing. They do this by targeting parts of the bacterial cell that are not present in human cells.

Bacteria are surrounded by a cell wall. It might be helpful to imagine the cell walls around bacteria as the walls of a fortress, which helps them survive in the environment.

Antibiotics are like a group of knights trying to breach the walls and take down the enemy inside. Traditional antibiotics, like penicillin, act to weaken these walls. They kill the bacteria and make it easier for our immune system to finish the job.

However, bacteria have evolved to resist these attacks, meaning that antibiotics in some cases no longer have any effect.

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

What about clovibactin?

Clovibactin works differently. It targets bacteria from the inside out, taking away the bricks that are used to build the wall in the first place.

Bacteria have very limited options when choosing bricks to build their walls, so this approach means that resistance is much less likely to develop.

This mechanism of action is unique and offers hope that we can use clovibactin as a model to develop other antibiotics that act in a similar way.

But significant challenges still lie ahead.

Why do most antibiotics fail?

The field of antibiotic discovery is littered with drugs that have failed to progress beyond the early stages of research.

Antibiotic testing usually progresses from the laboratory bench to animal trials and, eventually, to human trials. While some antibiotics are very effective at killing bacteria in the lab, they are not always used to treat patients.

There are many reasons why this happens that cannot be predicted when an antibiotic is first discovered. An unfortunate, yet common, example is that antibiotics that appear safe in animals may turn out to be toxic at the higher doses required to treat humans.

Such unforeseen complications during the development phase are one part of the reason why more than 98.5% of newly discovered antibiotics never make it out of the lab.

Even for those with a perfect development pathway, the average time to market is nine years at a cost of greater than US$1 billion.

For clovibactin, the early signs look promising. No toxicity in human cells was detected and it successfully cured mice infected with golden staph.

However, there are still risks and market forces that may also be against clovibactin.

Pharmaceutical companies want a return on their investment

Antibiotics are not particularly profitable drugs and for a drug company to recoup their investment, an antibiotic must kill as many different bacteria as possible.

Health bodies such as the World Health Organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control have compiled lists of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to humans and for which we have limited treatments. Although clovibactin can kill some of the drug-resistant bacteria on these lists, it is not effective against the most troublesome and damaging bacteria.

Even for those it can kill, it does not appear to be superior to already available drugs, such as vancomycin.

Such shortcomings may prevent clovibactin from gaining future United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

Although, scientists may be able to overcome these issues by chemically “tweaking” clovibactin to give it the desired traits.

Read more:
Will we still have antibiotics in 50 years? We asked 7 global experts

Even if it works, we’ll still need other antibiotics

Although clovibactin offers hope, one new compound alone cannot solve our current antibiotic resistance crisis. In fact, even the 64 antibiotics currently in clinical trials will be insufficient, particularly as 80% of these will likely hit development hurdles.

The good news is that more than one-third of these 64 antibiotics target infections for which we desperately need new treatments, including tuberculosis and gut infections caused by Clostridium difficile.

As we eagerly await the day new antibiotics become part of our standard medical treatments, it’s crucial for all of us as individuals to continue practising good hygiene and following prescribed antibiotic regimens.

Continuing support for research to combat antibiotic resistance is also needed, not just from governments and non-profits, but also through policies that incentivise private sector investment.

In doing so, we can maintain these effective weapons in the fight against bacterial infections for as long as possible.

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

Sacha Pidot receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council for research on antibiotics.

– ref. Could new antibiotic clovibactin beat superbugs? Or will it join the long list of failed drugs? – https://theconversation.com/could-new-antibiotic-clovibactin-beat-superbugs-or-will-it-join-the-long-list-of-failed-drugs-212774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Levy, Principal Scientist/Environment and Climate Research Leader, GNS Science

Projecting when and how fast the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will lose mass due to current and future global ocean warming – and the likely impact on sea level rise and coastal communities – is a priority for climate science.

We know deep water flowing towards and around Antarctica is warming, and the fringes of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) are increasingly vulnerable to ocean-driven melting.

Submerged continental shelves along large portions of West Antarctica, including offshore Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in the Amundsen Sea, are already bathed by upwelling arms of this relatively warm water.

Ice shelves in this region – massive floating slabs of ice that flow out from the coast – are already losing mass. Because ice shelves float, their melting doesn’t affect sea levels. But they hold back land-based ice, which does.

Recent research suggests increasing flow of warm deep water in this area will speed up the melting of the WAIS over the coming decades, regardless of future anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

This would mean global net-zero emissions targets cannot limit the amount of future sea-level rise caused by the melting of the WAIS. This poses significant challenges for coastal communities in low-lying regions as they plan for and adapt to unavoidable change.

Our project, an ambitious international collaboration known as the “Sensitivity of the WAIS to 2°C” (SWAIS2C), aims to retrieve sediments from the seafloor beneath the Ross Ice Shelf to explore how West Antarctica responded to warmer periods in Earth’s past – and what might happen in a warming future.

Read more:
Increasing melting of West Antarctic ice shelves may be unavoidable – new research

We may have (some) time

While it may appear too late to slow or stop the retreat of the WAIS in areas where the ocean cavities beneath ice shelves are already “warm”, the inevitable demise of the entire WAIS is not so certain. There are also regions where ice shelf cavities are currently “cold”.

The Ross and Ronne-Filchner are Earth’s largest ice shelves and currently buttress and stabilise large regions of ice in the West Antarctic interior. The ocean cavity that lies beneath the Ross Ice Shelf is cold, generally characterised by temperatures at or below minus 1.8°C.

A recent ice sheet modelling study shows these large ice shelves and the WAIS will remain largely intact under low-emissions pathways which aim to keep warming close to or below 2°C above pre-industrial values.

Read more:
Widespread collapse of West Antarctica’s ice sheet is avoidable if we keep global warming below 2℃

Modelling experiments indicate an emissions pathway in line with the goals of the Paris agreement can still limit the total contribution to sea level rise coming from the Antarctic ice sheet to 0.12–0.44  metres by 2100 (0.45–1.57  metres by 2300).

Importantly, these experiments also show that spatial patterns of ice thinning and retreat in the Amundsen Sea region are similar for 2100 compared to 2015 (see figure below) under both low and high emissions.

The clearest contrasts between the scenarios occur in the Ross Sea sector, where the grounding line of the ice shelf advances in low-emissions (“sustainable”) scenarios but the shelf ice thins or even collapses in high-emissions (“fossil fuel intensive”) scenarios.

Observation gaps from key Antarctic regions

Global surface temperature is likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial values by the early 2030s. It may warm by as much as 4.4°C by the end of this century.

Our current global policy and action trajectory will yield 2.7°C of warming by the end of century, but more ambitious pledges and targets could keep global warming to 2.0°C. We need to know how sensitive the large, cold-cavity ice shelves are to these increases in global temperature.

Ice sheet modelling suggests rapid cuts in emissions can still limit WAIS melt, but we lack direct observations to support these findings. Collecting new data from locations around the WAIS margin will offer insights into present-day changes and a possible future response to warming.

Significant effort to address data gaps has been made in the Amundsen Sea around the Thwaites Glacier region, but observations beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, especially near the point where the WAIS begins to float, are limited. The SWAIS2C project aims to address this knowledge gap.

Tapping the geological record

SWAIS2C is an international collaboration involving scientists, drillers, engineers and science communicators. Our team will travel to the Siple coast, close to the centre of West Antarctica, to melt holes through the ice shelf at two sites.

Oceanographic measurements and geophysical observations at each site will improve our understanding of current ocean mechanics and ice sheet dynamics. But to understand the potential future contribution to sea-level rise from melting of the WAIS, we will need to turn to the geological record.

Seafloor sediments from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf represent an archive of climate information from warmer periods in Earth’s history and offer a means to “see” how the ice shelf and ice sheet responded to past warmth.

We will drill up to 200 metres below the seafloor to recover a geological record of changing rock types that reflect environmental conditions at the time they formed.

These data will allow us to identify previous episodes when the ice shelf thinned and disintegrated, driving retreat of the WAIS interior. Environmental data from these intervals will identify the regional climatic conditions that drove this retreat and help determine the sensitivity of the system to increases in global mean temperature.

SWAIS2C builds on other successful international scientific drilling programmes in the Ross Sea region, including ANDRILL and IODP and is supported by ICDP.

Richard Levy receives funding from the Antarctic Science Platform supported by the New Zealand Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment.

Dan Lowry receives funding from the Antarctic Science Platform supported by the New Zealand Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment.

Huw Horgan receives funding from the Antarctic Science Platform supported by the New Zealand Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment.

Tina van de Flierdt receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom.

Denise Kulhanek, Gavin Dunbar, Molly Patterson, and Nick Golledge do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We can still prevent the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet – if we act fast to keep future warming in check – https://theconversation.com/we-can-still-prevent-the-collapse-of-the-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-if-we-act-fast-to-keep-future-warming-in-check-215878

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

A third of the world’s forests are cut for timber. This generates US$1.5 trillion annually. But
wildfire threatens industries such as timber milling and paper manufacturing, and the threat is far greater than most people realise.

Our research, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows that between 2001 and 2021, severe wildfires worldwide destroyed timber-producing forests equivalent to an area the size of Great Britain. Severe fires reach the tree tops and consume the forest canopy.

The amount of timber-producing forest burning each year in severe wildfires has increased significantly in the past decade. The western United States, Canada, Siberia, Brazil and Australia have been most affected.

Timber demand is expected to almost triple by 2050. Supplying demand is clearly going to be challenging. Our research highlights the need to urgently adopt new management strategies and emerging technologies to combat the increasing threat of wildfires.

Read more:
Our planet is burning in unexpected ways – here’s how we can protect people and nature

What we found

We combined global maps of logging activity and severe wildfires to determine how much timber-producing forest was lost to wildfire this century. Between 2001 and 2021, up to 25 million hectares of timber-producing forest was severely burned. The extent of fire has jumped markedly in the past decade, from an average of less than one million hectares a year up to 2015 to triple that since then.

At a national scale, the three countries with the largest absolute wildfire-induced losses of timber-producing forest were Russia, the US and Canada. When it comes to proportion of their forestry land lost, the nations with the highest percentages burnt were Portugal, followed by Australia.

Why are more forests burning?

Climate change is a major driver of fire weather and fire behaviour. The increased risk of high-severity wildfire is an entirely expected outcome of warmer temperatures and, in some places, reduced rainfall.

However, it remains unclear why so much wood-production forest is being lost, and why the increase in burnt area has been so marked in the past decade.

One possible reason is logging makes forests more flammable. This has been documented in parts of southeastern Australia, where intact forest always burnt at lower severity than harvested forest across the entire footprint of the Black Summer fires. Forests that have been subject to thinning also are at risk of high-severity wildfire.

What does this mean for us?

Whatever the reason, it is clear these fires in wood-production forests will have profound impacts on global timber supplies and all the industries associated with them. This is a huge problem for society and the environment, because timber demand is expected to triple by 2050, in part to facilitate the transition away from carbon-intensive cement in construction.

In many parts of the world, it typically takes 80–100 years or even longer to grow a tree to a size at which it can be a sawlog for products like furniture and floorboards. So the increased frequency of high-severity wildfire means fewer areas of forest will escape fire for long enough to reach timber harvesting age.

This is especially problematic where logging makes forests more prone to burning in a high-severity wildfire.

Furthermore, given the long-term nature of timber production, typically on cutting cycles ranging from 40 years to more than a century, future timber crops will face a very different climate as they mature.

Read more:
Why Tasmania and Victoria dominate the list of Australia’s largest trees – and why these majestic giants are under threat

Responding to the challenge

If wood production from forests becomes increasing costly and timber is increasingly hard to source, there may be more pressure from industry and government to log other places, such as tropical forests, with high biodiversity and conservation value.

One way to tackle the problem is to grow more timber in plantations. Plantations already produce a third of the main forms of wood-producing timber – called industrial roundwood. They do this from just 3% of the area of natural forests.

Well managed plantations can grow a successful timber crop within a couple of decades. This is a lot shorter than the many decades and sometimes even centuries required to grow sawlogs in native forests. Having a shorter growing time in plantations increases the chances of harvesting trees before they are destroyed in a wildfire.

But plantations, like some logged and regenerated native forests, can be highly flammable. Fire risks need to be carefully managed. That includes planning, to avoid putting neighbouring areas and human communities at greater risk of being burnt.

Another key strategy to better protect timber resources will be to adopt new technologies to more quickly detect and then rapidly suppress ignitions such as those originating from lightning strikes.

Big fires start as small fires. The best time to suppress fires is when they are small, and as soon as ignition occurs. We have been involved in the development of drone fleets and unmanned aerial water and fire suppressant dispensing craft to more quickly detect and extinguish wildfires.

New technologies, as well as more, better planned and managed plantations will be crucial in not only protecting forests, but also safeguarding the flow of marketable timber and the industries dependent upon them.

Read more:
Yes, climate change is bringing bushfires more often. But some ecosystems in Australia are suffering the most

David Lindenmayer receives funding from the Australian Government and the Victorian Government. He is a Councillor in the Biodiversity Council.

Chris Bousfield received funding for this research from the Natural Environment Research Council, UK.

David Edwards 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. Fire is consuming more than ever of the world’s forests, threatening supplies of wood and paper – https://theconversation.com/fire-is-consuming-more-than-ever-of-the-worlds-forests-threatening-supplies-of-wood-and-paper-216643

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Taren Sanders, Research Fellow, Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University

Ask any parent and it’s likely they’ll tell you they’re worried about their kids’ screen time. A 2021 poll found it was Australian parents’ number one health concern for their kids – ahead of cyberbullying and unhealthy diets. But how worried should parents be?

The information that’s out there can be confusing. Some psychologists have compared it to smoking (amid concerns about “secondhand screen time”), while others are telling us not to worry too much about kids and screens.

Academics are also confused. As The Lancet noted in 2019, researchers’ understanding of the benefits, risks and harms of the digital landscape is “sorely lacking”.

In our new research, we wanted to give parents, policymakers and researchers a comprehensive summary of the best evidence on the influence of screens on children’s physical and psychological health, education and development.

What we did

Meta-analyses are one of the best forms of evidence because they summarise the findings of lots of research all at once.

This can give us a much better view of what is happening than just looking at a single study of one group of people. So we gathered all meta-analyses conducted in English on any form of screen time in children, regardless of the outcome.

We found 217 meta-analyses, with almost half published in just the last two years. These meta-analyses represent the findings from 2,451 individual studies and have a combined sample size of more than 1.9 million children and adolescents up to 18 years. The individual studies were done between 1954 and 2021 and the meta-analyses were done between 1982 and 2022.

The good news

We found some things that should reassure parents.

The overall size of the influence of screens across the outcomes (for example, depression, body weight, literacy and sleep) in children were small.

Almost all of the results had correlations less than 0.2, which is about the same as the correlation between height and intelligence. That doesn’t mean the effect for an individual child will always be that small, just that on average, the relationship is small.

How kids use screens matters

We also found it’s not the screen itself that really matters but what’s on it and the way kids use it.

Television is a form of screen time that has worried parents for more than half a century. We did find general television viewing was associated with poorer academic performance and literacy skills. Our study did not give us time limits, but found a linear relationship. That is, the more TV a child watched, the poorer their literacy skills were.

But if the program was educational or if the child was watching with a parent, we found there was a benefit to their literacy. This is probably because it gives parents an opportunity to talk about things in the show (“I think Bluey is feeling dissapointed”) or ask questions (“what is Bingo drawing?”) which develops language skills.

Read more:
More Bluey, less PAW Patrol: why Australian parents want locally made TV for their kids

The not so good news

We did find some forms of screen time are consistently associated with harm and had no evidence of benefits.

Chief among these was social media, which was associated with depression, anxiety and risk taking. Again, our research found a relationship between the more time a child spent on social media, the more likely they were to have a mental health issue.

This is similar to the advice released this year from the US Surgeon General. This noted while social media could provide community and connections for young people (particularly from marginalised groups), it could also harm their mental health.

Read more:
Excessive screen time can affect young people’s emotional development

What does it mean?

As other education experts have noted, “screen time” is a bit of a useless term.

Nobody thinks facetiming Nanna and scrolling TikTok are equivalent, but both would fall into the category of “recreational screen time” in the Australian guidelines.

So, a key message from our study is to focus less on an unachievable time limit, and instead focus on what kids are actually doing on screens. Try to steer them towards educational apps, TV programs and video games.

But it can’t be education all the time – kids also need time for recreation. And if you watch with your child, it can also have benefits.

Read more:
If your kid is home sick from school, is unlimited screen time OK?

Don’t forget to be active

Regardless of what screen-based activities you choose to allow, remember most screen time is sedentary. Long periods of sitting aren’t great for kids (or adults!), so breaking up these periods with movement is still important.

Ultimately, the most important factor for child development is quality parenting. Being present, spending quality time and creating a caring environment are what really make a difference for children. You matter more to your child’s mental and physical health than the screen.

Taren Sanders receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Education, and Sport Australia.

Chris Lonsdale receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Education, and Sport Australia.

Michael Noetel receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, Sport Australia, and the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a director of Effective Altruism Australia.

Philip D Parker receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Northern Territory Department of Education, and Catholic School NSW.

– ref. TV can be educational but social media likely harms mental health: what 70 years of research tells us about children and screens – https://theconversation.com/tv-can-be-educational-but-social-media-likely-harms-mental-health-what-70-years-of-research-tells-us-about-children-and-screens-216638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matilda Hatcher, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

At 20, Peter Weir’s 2003 masterpiece Master and Commander remains a captivating historical drama – and an emblem of wholesome masculinity.

A deeply detailed film set in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, Master and Commander follows Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his men aboard HMS Surprise. Accompanied by the eccentric amateur naturalist Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), the crew are hunting the French ship Acheron through the Pacific Ocean.

Its depiction of life at sea is gritty and brutal: intense battle scenes; Maturin performing surgery on himself; Hollom’s suicide. And yet Master and Commander delivers a nostalgic, idealised lifestyle that still has many men dreaming of ditching their office jobs and sailing the high seas.

But it is not necessarily the masculine, nautical adventures that appeal to men so much as the film’s healthy and loving male relationships.

Gentle, subtle and lifelike

Jack Aubrey is a classic masculine hero. In the face of apparently impossible odds, he simply remarks: “well then, there’s not a moment to lose.”

Fighting against the tyranny and oppression of the French, his is the classic underdog tale. Acheron has twice the guns and twice the men. Taking it on is a test of nerve, discipline and courage.

The performances of the protagonists are gentle, subtle and lifelike. Crowe gives a rugged and charismatic performance as the tradition-loving Aubrey. Bettany as the charmingly lubberly Maturin is the perfect complement to Aubrey, even as he differs from his book counterpart, his role as an intelligence agent being conspicuously absent from the script.

The portrayals of these two men and their friendship – their abiding love for each other overcoming differences of politics and personality – carry the film. At times, Weir’s film seems to be a pure character study; the Acheron’s chase and capture matter much less than the development of this key male friendship.

Director Taika Waititi has called it his comfort film as well as his favourite romance movie, saying their relationship is “palpable”.

It is this aspect of the film, among a surplus of amputation, hard tack, hierarchy and public flogging, that has great appeal to men.

The dangers of the manosphere

Men are increasingly facing issues of loneliness, mental ill health and disenfranchisement.

The online “manosphere” can seem like an opportunity for some men to deal with their very real issues of hopelessness and isolation. These online communities say they are looking to combat feminism and restore the role of traditional male dominance in society, offering men a space of connection and comradeship.

Read more:
The draw of the ‘manosphere’: understanding Andrew Tate’s appeal to lost men

But this online masculine ideal is rigid and conservative, emphasising toughness, hypersexuality, aggression, control and self-sufficiency.

Rather than offering a positive community, these online spaces have been increasingly associated with toxic masculinity characterised by violence, hostility to women and emotional repression. These ideals create harm towards men themselves and those around them.

Read more:
‘Toxic masculinity’: what does it mean, where did it come from – and is the term useful or harmful?

The HMS Surprise offers an alternative picture of male camaraderie. On board Surprise, the masculine environment is a supportive one. It allows men to feel their differences while still inspiring and caring for each other. From gentle, scientific sorts to burly able seamen, all take pride in their community on board their “little wooden world”.

Online, 20 years after the film’s release, many men are finding comfort and inspiration in this contrasting picture of what masculinity can look like.

Wholesome masculinity

Master and Commander’s intimate study of male friendship makes the film a touchstone of wholesome masculinity. Memes abound attesting to audiences’ yearning for a life of honest work and male companionship.

One meme captions a heroic picture of Jack Aubrey standing against the sea asking: “is the cure to male loneliness sailing the high seas with your bros?”

A tweet announces the “hot new bachelor party activity” is historic gunnery exercises, with the “boys hooting and hollering as they drink grog firing three broadsides in two minutes”.

One Reddit commenter, explaining its popularity, describes it as a “wholesome bromance, which is the ultimate catnip for straight dudes”.

This admiration of the Surprise’s masculine community, where different kinds of men are celebrated, serves as a positive counter model to the angst and toxicity of the manosphere.

At sea, men like Jack Aubrey enact traditional masculine values without the fear of losing power and without restrictive gender norms: they share joy, grieve together, and play music together.

Despite epic battles and award-winning cinematography, by far the most iconic scenes in Master and Commander are quiet examples of our protagonists’ friendship: Jack and Stephen playing a duet, or doubly delighting and exasperating each other with various puns.

By the closing frame, the HMS Surprise and her men are no closer to capturing their prize than when they started out. And yet, as Jack and Stephen strum their instruments companionably, the Surprise’s endless drift into the future is a promise of an unending life of adventure, community and companionship.

It is this promise that keeps men returning, two decades later, to Master and Commander. Much like Stephen’s flightless bird, it’s not going anywhere.

Read more:
Building healthy relationship skills supports men’s mental health

Matilda Hatcher receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

– ref. Master and Commander at 20: how a film about men fighting at sea is actually a safe harbour of positive masculinity – https://theconversation.com/master-and-commander-at-20-how-a-film-about-men-fighting-at-sea-is-actually-a-safe-harbour-of-positive-masculinity-215593

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flavio Macau, Associate Dean – School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University

Australians getting ready for Christmas this week had reason to believe even the best of preparations were not enough after a cyberattack hit all its major ports.

DP World, which operates container ports in Australia and the region, first detected problems last Friday so unplugged its systems to minimise the impact while it examined what had happened.

While operations resumed at the ports yesterday, the cause is still unclear and the incident continues to be investigated.

With responsibility for about 40% of freight movement at Australian ports, and a significant 10% of global trade through its international operations, the attack disrupted the flow of goods coming from ports DP World operates.

Deliveries of import items such as videogames, air-conditioners, furniture and pharmaceuticals were held up.

As well, Australian exports of goods including processed meat, dairy products and fruits, all with limited shelf life, were delayed.

Why this cyber attack is significant

While DP World seems to be recovering, the incident highlights the potential vulnerability of global networks.

Supply chains rely on fully integrated solutions, from sellers overseas to buyers in Australia, to work efficiently. Information technology is embedded into them through equipment automation and data processing. Product visibility, customs clearance and checks for biosecurity risks rely on cargo information detailing where goods come from, who is responsible for them and their trading value.

With sensitive data linked to the movement of containers, it is no wonder logistics professionals recognise cybersecurity as a major threat to operations – not to mention their obligations under the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act.

If there is still no certainty of the specific nature of the incident with DP World, there are few likely causes.

Ransomware has been on the rise, with incidents aligned to prolific cyber-criminal gangs including REVil and more recently LockBit.

In an attack, data is usually extracted from an organisation and then rendered inaccessible to users – typically using encryption. The organisation will usually receive a ransom demand to “unlock” the data, often payable using a crypto-currency.

In recent years the trend of double-extortion has become common, where the criminals incentivise their victims to pay by threatening to release the data publicly if they refuse.

While refusal is a possibility, the nature of the disruption could mean a loss of access to critical systems and information. If data is inaccessible, operations would need to be halted, leading to even greater losses.

Recovering systems would require restoration from backups and a thorough inspection for any traces of the original infection or compromise. Finally, checks would be needed to ensure no data had been lost and to identify any missing consignment data after the previous backup had taken place.

Read more:
Major cyberattack on Australian ports suggests sabotage by a ‘foreign state actor’

If the incident is a direct cyber-attack that infiltrated systems and stole or modified data, this would also require a complete system shutdown. Without the integrity of systems, consignment data cannot be trusted and the Australian Border Force would be unable to verify the content of shipments. There would also be issues with the collection of duties, taxes and fees.

Disconnecting DP World from networks allowed the investigating team to inspect systems to look for impacted systems and to evaluate the depth of any infection. This process also needs to consider the original infection mechanism – you don’t want the systems re-infected.

The timing could have been worse

The cyberattack caused the ports operated by DP World to start filling up with containers, but it had not yet become critical.

While Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas are an extra busy time for retailers, there is usually a marginal increase in movement compared to other times of the year, typically less than 10%. With around 1.4 million containers to be moved in the last three months of the year, the impact of losing a few days should be minimal.

Read more:
Is Australia a sitting duck for ransomware attacks? Yes, and the danger has been growing for 30 years

Big retailers typically start making orders for Christmas in August, with deliveries starting as early as October. While they keep inventory in check, it is unlikely that operations work in just-in-time mode.

Especially in Australia, where the distance from major global flows, the lack of alternatives such as railroad imports and lessons learned from COVID has bred risk averse businesses that are extra cautious to avoid empty shelves.

Also, ports can quickly recover. When container volumes go up, extra labour and equipment can be organised to increase the output of a terminal. In the last three years the number of time slots used by trucks has seldom reached 90% of total availability.

DP World should quickly be able to resolve any backlogs arising from this incident.

The hidden problem behind this attack

A problem for Australia is the potential effect of the cyberattack on its reputation as a shipping destination. When port facilities fill up with containers to the point where ships are delayed, costs quickly escalate to millions of dollars.

And numbers haven’t been shiny lately.

The Maritime Waterline 69 report shows ship turnaround time increased from 35 hours early in 2020 to more than 50 hours in 2022. Port congestion went from a little over 10% of ships waiting for more than two hours to over 22%. And average waiting time at anchorage went up from 17.3 hours before COVID to 126.5 hours in mid-2022.

Add the risk of cyberattacks to this and Australian ports may lose their competitiveness, with fewer companies interested in sending their ships down here – or requiring a premium price to do so.

While the DP World cyberattack is unlikely to upset Christmas, the aggregated impact such attacks could have on Australia’s reputation as an important shipping hub, must be taken seriously.

Flavio Macau receives funding from the Planning and Transport Research Centre – PATREC. He is currently involved in the Last Mile Delivery (LMD) project which looks at parcel distribution to the end consumer. This article, and the ports impacted in this incident, are not connected with the LMD project or the funding provided by PATREC.

Paul Haskell-Dowland receives funding from the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre. He is currently involved in the Augmenting Cyber Defence Capability (ACDC) project which looks at cyber security in Maritime Ports. This article, and the ports impacted in this incident, are not connected with the ACDC project or the funding provided by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.

– ref. Has the cyberattack on DP World put Australia’s trade at risk? Probably not … this time – https://theconversation.com/has-the-cyberattack-on-dp-world-put-australias-trade-at-risk-probably-not-this-time-217533

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Clair, Lecturer, Australian Centre for Housing Research, University of Adelaide, and Research Associate, ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change, University of Essex

People’s experiences of private rental housing are linked to faster biological ageing, our recent research finds.

While chronological ageing happens at the same speed for everyone, biological ageing varies greatly. It depends on the lives we lead and the risks we’re exposed to. Biological age reflects the gradually accumulating damage to cells and tissues in the body.

Our research explored associations between pace of ageing and many aspects of housing and other social determinants of health. Our strongest finding about housing was that people living in a privately rented home tended to age faster than those who owned their home outright. Every year of private renting was associated with an extra 2.4 weeks of ageing on average.

Our findings also suggest being a private renter has a greater effect on biological age than being unemployed (adding about 1.4 weeks of ageing per year), obesity (about 1 week), or being a former smoker (about 1.1 weeks).

The insecurity of private renting appears to be the key factor in its biological ageing effect. The good news is that policies that improve housing security can redress this.

Read more:
The insecurity of private renters – how do they manage it?

How do we measure biological age?

Faster ageing is associated with poorer health. Outcomes include poorer physical and cognitive function and a higher risk of chronic illness and even early death.

To measure ageing, we use an indicator of DNA methylation. This is an epigenetic process – a way in which the environment can affect how our genes are expressed. By analysing the locations of DNA methylation across a person’s DNA, we can estimate their pace of biological ageing.

Read more:
Difficult childhood experiences could make us age prematurely – new research

It’s hard to get the data for this sort of analysis. We needed blood samples that have gone through complex processing to estimate biological ageing, as well as survey data on many aspects of people’s lives. We controlled for income and health behaviours, among other things.

The data we used describe the British population, but our findings are directly transferable to Australians. Given the increasing numbers of renters in Australia, many in insecure housing, our findings are directly relevant to our current housing debate.

Read more:
More rented, more mortgaged, less owned: what the census tells us about housing

The experiences of private renting are similar in Britain and Australia. Short tenancy agreements (12 months on average in Australia) mean insecurity is a feature of private renting in both nations.

No-fault/no-grounds/no-cause evictions in some states further undermine renters’ security. Even renters who do everything right can be evicted at short notice.

Insecure housing is bad for your health

We found no negative effects for people renting social housing. In both Britain and Australia, social renters have far greater security of tenure than private renters. This suggests it is not renting itself that is related to faster ageing, but specifically the insecurity of private renting.

These findings are important for Australian housing policy. The social housing sector – managed by state or community providers – has shrunk. Today less than 4% of households are in social housing.

Governments have edged away from publicly provided social housing. They prefer to subsidise renters in the private sector.

The role of private rental housing has also changed in both countries. Rather than being a form of housing in which a relatively small number of people live in for a short time while studying or starting their career, more people are living in privately rented homes for longer. As access to both social housing and home ownership becomes harder, many will probably rent for life.

This means more people are exposed to housing insecurity and the negative health impacts for longer.

Read more:
Stability and security: the keys to closing the mental health gap between renters and home owners

What does this mean for policy?

Public debate and health messaging often focus on individual behaviours and characteristics such as smoking and obesity. Our research emphasises how important housing is for people’s health. It’s also an area where policy changes can make a big difference.

The insecurity of private renting in Australia and Britain is not inherent to private renting itself. It’s a result of policy choices that:

• emphasise housing as an asset
• minimise the state’s role in providing or regulating housing
• do little to protect renters.

This approach can change, and the appetite for change appears to be increasing. There are efforts to end no-fault/no-grounds evictions in both Australia and Britain.

State governments have talked about ending no-grounds evictions. New South Wales has yet to do anything about it. Despite reforms in other states, they still permit no-grounds evictions when fixed-term leases end.

Scotland has adopted a new model of tenancy that does not permit no-fault evictions with few exceptions – to allow landlords to sell the property, for example. The UK government has been talking about ending such evictions since 2019, but progress has been slow.

However, there are glimmers of hope. The Australian government is paying more attention to renters’ needs. South Australia is working to end no-grounds evictions for both fixed and periodic tenancies. In NSW, the new government has promised to end such evictions.

In the UK, the Renters (Reform) Bill finally had its second reading on October 23.

Private renting can work better for tenants, but shouldn’t be the only option for people who don’t own their homes. Our finding that renting social housing was no different to outright ownership lends weight to calls for greater support for social housing. Housing should be good for everyone’s health, whether or not they own their home.

Emma Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. She holds a voluntary board position with Habitat for Humanity.

Meena Kumari receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/T014083/1; ES/S012486/1).

Amy Clair 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. Insecure renting ages you faster than owning a home, unemployment or obesity. Better housing policy can change this – https://theconversation.com/insecure-renting-ages-you-faster-than-owning-a-home-unemployment-or-obesity-better-housing-policy-can-change-this-216364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Avril Horne, Research fellow, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne

When it was clear the Murray-Darling Basin Plan could not be completed on time, Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek announced a new agreement (without Victoria) to deliver in full the plan’s aim of restoring the health of this vast river system.

The new agreement required changes to the Water Act to allow more water for the environment to be purchased from irrigators (water buybacks). Concerns about these changes prompted a Senate inquiry.

The report from that inquiry, released on Friday, supports buybacks but also makes key recommendations to remove “constraints” to water delivery. These are physical constraints or limits to the movement of water through the river system. Managers can only deliver so much water before it spills out of the river onto private land.

The report goes so far as to ask whether constraints should be removed before more water is recovered. This is a question we have been asking in our research. And our results suggest the answer is yes.

Currently, we cannot physically deliver all of the water recovered from other uses for the environment (known as environmental water) to where it’s needed without flooding private property along the way. And the government is not prepared to do that.

Read more:
Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be extended under a new agreement, without Victoria – but an uphill battle lies ahead

Basin health is improving but challenges remain

Under the Basin Plan, about 20% of water used for irrigation a decade ago is now used for environmental purposes. This has improved river health, encouraging fish to spawn and plants to grow, and reduced salt levels in the Lower Lakes and Coorong.

These benefits rely on the river’s flow regime, not just the annual volume. Higher flows inundate wetlands, move sediment down the river, and provide natural triggers for various species to breed or migrate.

But raising water levels in the river channel isn’t enough to get environmental water everywhere it’s needed. Sometimes larger flows are required. Unfortunately, sending more water down the river runs the risk of inundating private property or damaging infrastructure such as low-lying pumps on floodplains.

Restoring the river’s health requires not only recovering water but also completing projects that allow more of this water to flow despite physical constraints such as a narrow stretch of river. These projects might involve modifying or improving infrastructure such as low-lying roads and bridges, as well as working with communities to limit damage and compensate for flooding of private property.

The Senate inquiry report highlights the challenges for these projects. It also supports improving the approach to delivering these projects across the southern basin.

Challenges, priorities and solutions may differ

Our research on the Goulburn River in Victoria’s part of the Murray-Darling Basin shows recovery of additional water for the environment does not guarantee environmental outcomes.

This is because the amount of water that can be sent down the river is constrained. So having more environmental water at your disposal does not help, because it is physically impossible to get all the water to where it is needed, when it is needed, without risking inundation of private property.

Current river system operations, including rules and physical constraints, prevent the full volume of environmental water held in Goulburn River being delivered at the right time and in the right way to achieve the best environmental outcomes.

Narrow sections of the river and adjacent private development limit releases from Lake Eildon. River managers are not allowed to deliberately inundate the floodplain if it risks private property.

So the volume of environmental water available in the Goulburn River is not the issue – delivering this water is the challenge. In this regard, Victoria’s refusal to sign up to the new basin deal is understandable, because more water buybacks would potentially cause more pain to the local community than gain to the local environment.

However, neither Victoria nor New South Wales has addressed these capacity constraint issues, significantly limiting the ability to get better environmental outcomes with less water. So the challenge is much more complex than simply redistributing entitlements and buying back environmental water.

Read more:
Water buybacks are back on the table in the Murray-Darling Basin. Here’s a refresher on how they work

The elephant in the room: climate change

Temperature, rainfall and streamflow have already changed in parts of the Murray-Darling Basin. Over the coming decade these changes will become more pronounced, widespread and entrenched, causing more frequent floods and droughts.

While the precise consequences for water availability remain to be seen, the impact on the basin will be immense.

But climate change simply adds to the need to have difficult conversations around the future of communities along the Murray-Darling. Focusing on whether buyback targets have been achieved does not resolve this. In many regions, there will not be enough water, with or without buybacks, to achieve current management objectives.

Buybacks should be placed in the context of this imminent threat. In rivers like the Goulburn, addressing capacity constraints provides the single best climate adaptation option to improve environmental outcomes in the short and medium term.

Removing these constraints would allow more water onto the lower Goulburn River floodplain, with due care for land and infrastructure that could be affected. For example, projects may offer landholders options to avoid or compensate for any water damage and associated costs.

This is because removing constraints gives river managers more flexibility, which can increase the resilience of the environment to a wider range of future climates. More water from buybacks provides very limited additional benefit because it doesn’t change how environmental water can be delivered.

The senate report emphasises the need to embed consideration of climate change in the Water Act and Basin Plan. The decisions we are making now on water recovery and constraints relaxation will have big impacts on communities.

Our work shows considering climate change is essential to ensuring lasting benefits and resilient outcomes for the rivers and communities that rely on them.

The first basin plan took a big step towards sustainable management of the vast Murray-Darling river system. But it was always meant to be the first step in an adaptive policy process. Priorities and solutions will look different across the basin. We need a holistic approach where buybacks may very well be part of the solution, but are not the whole solution. We also need to ensure we can deliver this water where and when the environment needs it.

Read more:
Victoria’s plans for engineered wetlands on the Murray are environmentally dubious. Here’s a better option

Avril Horne receives funding from the Victorian Government Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action.
Avril has recently been appointed as a member of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority Advisory Committee on Social Economic and Environmental Sciences.

Andrew John receives funding from the Victorian Government Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action.

– ref. Murray-Darling water buybacks won’t be enough if we can’t get water to where it’s needed – https://theconversation.com/murray-darling-water-buybacks-wont-be-enough-if-we-cant-get-water-to-where-its-needed-203142

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University

A serious cyberattack has disrupted operations at several of Australia’s largest ports, causing delays and congestion. Late on Friday, port operator DP World detected an IT breach that affected critical systems used to coordinate shipping activity.

DP World is one of Australia’s largest port operators, handling approximately 40% of the nation’s container trade across terminals in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle.

DP World reacted quickly to contain the breach, including shutting down access to their port networks on land, to prevent further unauthorised access. This means they essentially “pulled the plug” on their internet connection to limit possible further harm.

DP World senior director Blake Tierney said it is still possible to unload containers from ships, but the trucks that transport the containers cannot drive in or out of the terminals. This is a precaution when the full extent of a data breach is not known.

The latest media reports suggest cargo could be stranded at the ports for several days.

Australian Federal Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre are investigating the source and nature of the attack, deemed a “nationally significant incident” by federal cybersecurity coordinator Darren Goldie.

Is there evidence of this being a malicious attack?

The timing, scale and impact of the disruption do suggest this was a targeted attack.

It occurred on a Friday night, when most staff were off duty and less likely to notice or respond to the incident. The target was a major port operator that handles a significant share of Australia’s trade and commerce. Such an attack can have serious consequences for Australia’s economy, security and sovereignty.

The identity and motive of the attackers are not yet known, but the skills needed to mount such an attack suggest a foreign state actor trying to undermine Australia’s national security or economic interests.

In recent years, cyberattacks on ports and shipping have become more common. For instance, in February 2022, several European ports were hit by a cyberattack that disrupted oil terminals. In another incident early this year, a ransomware attack on maritime software impacted more than 1,000 ships. Also in January 2023, the Port of Lisbon was targeted by a ransomware attack which threatened the release of port data.

These incidents highlight the vulnerability of the maritime industry to cyber threats and the need for increased cybersecurity measures.

How might the attack have happened?

So far, the details have not been disclosed. But based on what we know about similar cases, it is possible the attack took advantage of vulnerabilities in DP World’s system. These vulnerabilities are normally closed by applying a “patch” in the same way your browser needs updating every week or two to keep it safe from being hacked.

Once hackers gained access, the breach likely pivoted to infiltrate the operational systems that directly manage port activities. Failing to isolate and secure these control networks allowed the incident to impact operations.

It is also possible access was gained via a phishing email or a malicious link. Such an attack may have tricked an employee or a contractor into opening an attachment or clicking on a link that installed malware or ransomware on the network.

Read more:
Don’t click that link! How criminals access your digital devices and what happens when they do

Now what?

DP World is working urgently to rebuild affected systems from backups. However, resetting port management networks is a complicated process that could take days or weeks. Until the operator’s core systems are securely restored, cargo flows may face ongoing delays.

The Australian government is closely involved in managing the situation, providing support and advice to DP World and other affected parties through the Critical Infrastructure Centre and the Trusted Information Sharing Network. These government agencies are equipped to provide timely support in times of crisis.

How can we prevent future attacks?

The DP World cyberattack is a clear warning of the risks to the essential transportation services that power Australia’s trade and commerce.

Ports are difficult targets. To cause such a disruption, the attackers would have to be highly skilled and plan ahead. The fact ports have been successfully hacked more than once in recent times suggests threats from cybercriminals are steadily increasing.

For companies such as DP World, it’s important to continuously monitor networks in real time, promptly install security updates and keep critical systems separated from each other.

Dedicated, well-resourced cybersecurity personnel, employee training and incident response plans are key to improving preparedness.

Ports should closely coordinate with government counterparts and industry partners on intelligence sharing and cybersecurity best practices. Cyberthreats evolve so quickly, always being prepared for the latest one is a significant challenge.

For a seamless flow of goods, we need to be constantly vigilant of potential threats to our supply chain infrastructure. This latest attack is an urgent reminder that cyber resilience must be a top priority.

Read more:
How to make fragile global supply chains stronger and more sustainable

David Tuffley 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. Major cyberattack on Australian ports suggests sabotage by a ‘foreign state actor’ – https://theconversation.com/major-cyberattack-on-australian-ports-suggests-sabotage-by-a-foreign-state-actor-217530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shannon Davis, Lecturer in Landscape Planning, Lincoln University, New Zealand

Auckland Council recently voted to decrease the amount of city fringe land available for development, citing flood risks and infrastructure costs.

Meanwhile in Christchurch, plans for an 850-home development north of the city have been rejected because of the area’s “existing rural nature and the lack of public transport and local jobs”.

Cities around the world face a similar dilemma: population growth and housing shortages mean urban expansion often encroaches on rural productive land.

Fertile soil is one of the reasons why many cites were originally set up in certain sites, but now the loss of these food-producing landscapes to urban growth is widely recognised as a concern to local food security.

The edges of cities – the “peri-urban” zone – are critically important for urban resilience. Apart from food, they supply ecosystem services such as flood and stormwater mitigation, cooling and climate regulation, carbon storage, waste treatment and recreation.

It could be said that the conversion of peri-urban agricultural land for urban expansion unwittingly undermines the very life support on which city dwellers depend.

Our research explores possible solutions that allow food production and housing to co-exist within peri-urban zones.

Read more:
How sustainable, liveable and resilient housing can help us adapt to a changing future

The housing-agriculture conundrum

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the competition for land for either housing or food production within the peri-urban zone is intense. Local and regional councils
have to attempt to mediate between two recently gazetted national policy statements that seem at odds.

The 2020 National Policy Statement for Urban Development requires councils to remove barriers to urban expansion, both up and out. The 2022 National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land requires councils to avoid urban encroachment and protect highly productive land for agriculture.

A recent Ministry for the Environment report states:

The area of highly productive land that was unavailable for agriculture (because it had a house on it) increased by 54% from 2002 to 2019.

Urban resilience and food production

Peri-urban zones have an important role in supplying locally produced food. This helps reduce transport emissions to meet New Zealand’s emissions reduction targets. But there is a growing disconnect between where New Zealand’s food is produced and where the majority of New Zealanders live.

The dominant approach to urban growth is through greenfield development (building on undeveloped land), and this ultimately compromises the productive land belt around many cities and settlements. This can result in the irreversible loss of some of our most fertile soils.

Read more:
National’s housing u-turn promotes urban sprawl – cities and ratepayers will pick up the bill

Multiple factors affect where food can be produced within the peri-urban zone. This includes policy, land value, soil versatility, natural resources such as water and, increasingly, the level of “reverse sensitivity” – a term used to describe, in this instance, the impacts of newer land uses (such as housing) on prior activities (agriculture) in mixed-use areas.

Planning policy often fails to keep up with changes in housing markets, agricultural practice and lifestyle choices. This then results in reactive planning approaches, putting high-value soil and other land suitable for food production at continued risk of development and fragmentation.

This is compounded by public and political pressures that can lead to tensions between food producers and their residential neighbours.

Combined land use

Our team has surveyed households and food producers living and operating within the peri-urban zone of Ōtautahi Christchurch to better understand the issues. We also wanted to explore opportunities arising from food production and housing co-existing within peri-urban zones.

Based on the views of surveyed participants, we developed five land-use design concepts, which were then evaluated by participants during a public workshop.

Of these five options, a multi-functional green belt (below) was most favoured. This green belt is a publicly accessible buffer between urban areas and conventional farms, including public open spaces, community gardens, sports fields, walking tracks, native plantings, stormwater management zones and playgrounds.

Other scenarios included different options of either separating or integrating urban and rural land uses.

What did peri-urban residents and food producers say?

Our research reveals that residents like having food-producing landscapes close to where they live. More than 60% of respondents felt “extremely positive” and 32% “mostly positive” towards these landscapes.

One of our key findings suggests residents were mostly happy to accept the day-to-day nuisances of farm operations, but they wanted their household to benefit by being able to access food produced locally.

Food producers expressed more neutral feelings towards operating in the peri-urban zone. For them, being close to their potential customers, as well as benefiting from urban infrastructure such as high-speed internet, was important.

But our survey also highlights that peri-urban residents are concerned about possible negative impacts of nearby intensive farming, and producers fear facing complaints from their urban neighbours. Both groups called for greater agricultural literacy for urban New Zealanders.

Read more:
Building on the greenbelt is central to solving the housing crisis – just look at how the edges of cities have changed

Integrating people and production

How should we prioritise peri-urban food production alongside strategic urban expansion?

The loss of agricultural land to urban development, the disconnect between local farms and their urban markets, and the recent drive to create more sustainable infrastructure within and around cities, have all engendered planning and urban design programmes that aim to protect and reconnect cities with their food.

Redesigning peri-urban land-use patterns to integrate housing with productive land uses has the potential to connect New Zealanders with the land while mitigating the current rural-urban dichotomy approach to planning.

Embedding mana whenua values of connectedness with the environment offers significant opportunities to nourish both the land and communities that reside within. The reintegration of mahinga kai (food-gathering sites) and māra kai (food gardens) principles would support the health and resilience of both people and the land connected to cities.

Accessible local food production is an essential component of long-term urban resilience. To achieve this, we argue that we need a new approach to peri-urban land-use planning for Aotearoa New Zealand in which landscapes for both people and production are integrated and mutually beneficial.

We are grateful for the significant contribution to this research made by Guanyu Hanley Chen and Naomi Darvill from Lincoln University, and John Blyth, Sara Hodgson and Lydia Shirely from BECA.

This research was funded by the National Science Challenge: Our Land and Water. Shannon is a member of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects.

– ref. Growing NZ cities eat up fertile land – but housing and food production can co-exist – https://theconversation.com/growing-nz-cities-eat-up-fertile-land-but-housing-and-food-production-can-co-exist-215706

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Handsley, Adjunct Professor of Law, Western Sydney University

In the era of proliferating streaming platforms, choosing what to watch on family movie night can be hard.

Parents have a greater need than ever for good advice to help them narrow down the options, and they should be able to turn to the government’s classification system.

When they do, they will usually trust that if something is rated G or PG, it’s suitable for young children.

You might be surprised to learn, then, the current media classification system has no basis in evidence about children’s developmental needs.

Read more:
Episode – Choose Your Story: the inappropriate game your kids have probably played

Where did classifications come from?

Australia’s National Classification Scheme for films, games and publications was established in 1995. The Commonwealth and the states and territories agreed to replace what was then known as the “censorship” system.

The scheme classifies media content based on the perceived impact (very mild, mild, moderate, and so on) of elements such as violence, sex, and themes related to social issues including crime, racism and suicide.

The ratings aim to give effect to four principles listed in the National Classification Code. One of those is that “minors should be protected from material likely to harm or disturb them”.

Initially there was no R18+ classification for games.

After intense debate in the late 2000s, the adults-only classification was introduced in 2013.

Flawed attempts at reform

The Commonwealth referred classification law to the Australian Law Reform Commission for review in 2011.

The 2012 report revealed little about the efficacy of the scheme for families.

The review led to very few changes. None were of any real significance for consumers.

Recommendations from the latest review of the scheme were submitted to the Morrison government in 2020.

Read more:
There are no age restrictions for gambling in video games, despite potential risks to children

There was no action on those until the Albanese government, in April 2023, announced a couple of fairly significant changes, such as mandatory minimum classifications for gambling-related content.

Unfortunately, however, useful information for families is still hard to come by.

Vague terms not based in fact

The current system is based entirely on “impact”, which is undefined.

The efficacy of the system in protecting children from harm or disturbance is diminished because it’s not based on evidence of children’s developmental needs.

For example, there is strong evidence that scary content poses risks for children’s mental wellbeing.

But unless it’s actually violent (which it isn’t always), you have to hope it will be picked up under the “themes”.

If we had an evidence-based system, scariness would be established as a separate criterion during the classification process.

Regarding violent content, there is evidence as to which kinds pose greater risks than others.

But a study of the Classification Review Board’s thought processes around violence shows these are often at odds with the evidence.

For example, they tend to downplay “superhero violence”.

However, research shows appealing perpetrators whose violence is justified are more likely to foster an attitude in viewers that violence is an appropriate way to resolve conflict.

The most recent review of the scheme recognised the need for an evidence-based system, but stopped short of recommending it.

Overhaul needed to better guide parents

Parents need reliable information to judge the suitability of content for children of different ages.

The G and PG ratings, for example, effectively lump everyone under 15 into a single age group. This means they don’t provide any guidance about whether or not content is suitable for any particular age group under that threshold.

The 2020 review suggested an additional category (PG13) could be appropriate.

This may help address the vast range of content lumped in the current PG category, but only if it was based on evidence about the developmental needs of children under 13.

And even if PG13 was introduced, the system would still fail to address the differing developmental stages of children aged 1 to 12 years.

An overhaul of the system is needed, including a move away from “impact” to a test based on children’s developmental needs.

This could help support parents to make well-informed decisions for their children. The Commonwealth is obliged to do this under article 18 of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Policy-makers should also be seeking the thoughts of parents, who ultimately interact with the system most.

Previous government research hasn’t focused on parents enough.

A 2022 report found 74% broad agreement with the statement “classification categories do not need to change”. But participants, only 30% of whom were parents or carers, were not given an alternative model for comparison.

We cannot know what participants would have said if they had been asked to consider other options, such as an age-based set of categories.

Research we are currently undertaking fills this gap.

Our survey informs parents and carers about the current Australian system and asks them to rate content using an evidence-informed framework.

It will provide important information about the usability of the scheme. Then, we can propose a model of classification that better reflects the needs of its primary users – one that is actually based on evidence.

Elizabeth Handsley is President of Children and Media Australia, the national peak non-profit organisation representing children’s rights and interests as media users. In this capacity she made submissions and representations to the Stevens review of the National Classification Scheme.

Fae Heaselgrave is conducting research with Children and Media Australia about the usability of the Australian Classifications Scheme for parents and carers.

– ref. Australia’s media classification system is no help to parents and carers. It needs a grounding in evidence – https://theconversation.com/australias-media-classification-system-is-no-help-to-parents-and-carers-it-needs-a-grounding-in-evidence-216004

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denghua Zhang, Research fellow, Australian National University

China has been steadily increasing its footprint in the Pacific in recent years as it attempts to deepen its influence and challenge the traditionally strong relationships many countries have with the US and Australia.

But what do people in the Pacific think of China’s expanding interest and engagement in the region?

To find out, we conducted surveys with local residents in two countries where China has focused its outreach in recent years – Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Both countries have embraced a foreign policy professing to be a “friend to all and enemy to none”.

With the Pacific Islands Forum holding its annual summit last week, we asked experts on the Pacific to examine the great power competition in the region. How are countries like the US, Australia, China and others attempting to wield power and influence in the Pacific? And how effective has it been? You can read the rest of the series here.

PNG is China’s principal diplomatic and trading partner in the region. Prime Minister James Marape just concluded a visit to Beijing where he and Chinese leaders discussed deepening their economic and security ties, including possibly establishing a common currency trading arrangement.

Solomon Islands’ relationship with China, meanwhile, has boomed since it abandoned its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in September 2019. China has made huge efforts to promote cooperation with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s government on aid, trade, agriculture, health, fisheries and policing cooperation.

Beijing intends to develop this partnership to serve as a role model for other Pacific Island nations that still recognise Taiwan.

While the PNG and Solomon Islands governments welcome China’s growing engagement with their countries, however, our research found this wasn’t always the case with the local populations.

Read more:
Both the US and Australia are adamant the Pacific “matters”. But only one is really moving the dial

Overwhelming concern of environmental pollution

Our first survey sought to gauge the corporate social responsibilities of the China-owned Ramu NiCo project in Papua New Guinea through the eyes of those who are currently living or have lived in Madang Province, where it’s located.

We collected 100 responses in total, mainly from current and former Divine Word University students and staff.

In 2019, the nickel mine operator had to apologise for accidentally spilling some 200,000 litres of toxic slurry into a bay in the province.

The vast majority (98%) of our respondents said they were concerned about environmental pollution, while nearly 60% thought the mine project has not benefited PNG.

In response to the question, “Looking back, do you support the [previous] government’s approval of the China-owned Ramu NiCo project”, nearly 70% said “no”.

However, those living in the area of the mining lease tended to have a more positive view of the venture because of the direct financial benefit they receive in the form of royalties or ancillary businesses.

And 72% of our participants said they support the PNG government developing a closer relationship with China.

Scholarships improve impressions of China

Our second survey asked 78 PNG students who had received Chinese government scholarships for their perceptions on the program and Chinese soft power, more generally.

A large majority of respondents (87%) said they would recommend the program to their friends. Studying in China also appeared to change their impressions of the country itself.

Before these students went to China, they were asked to score the Chinese political system on a scale of one to five (from a very low impression to very high), as compared to political systems in Western countries.

The students gave China’s system an average score of 3.45 out of five before their study abroad. After they started the program and lived in China for some time, this average score increased to 4.01.

The scholarship program also changed their views about China’s environmental sustainability from an average score of 3.17 before they went to China to 3.73 after they arrived. Similarly, the students’ average score for China’s foreign policy was boosted from 3.47 to 3.80.

Read more:
What does China want in the Pacific? Diplomatic allies and strategic footholds

‘Very helpful in building our roads’

For our third survey, we canvassed 93 students from Solomon Islands National University on their views of China and more traditional Pacific partners like the US and Australia.

Two-thirds of our respondents were supportive of a closer bilateral relationship between China and Solomon Islands, but support for a closer relationship with the US was even higher (76%).

Nearly four-fifths of these students also supported China’s Belt and Road projects in Solomon Islands. One participant wrote, “they are very helpful in building and upgrading our roads”.

The other fifth, however, had a more negative view. For example, one student said, “their purpose is to create a debt risk for our government and that leads the Chinese to control the whole of our resources”.

Another student commented, “for a country like Solomon Islands with a weak economy, this Belt and Road project will be a debt trap”.

NGOs more wary of Belt and Road

While some of the students we surveyed in PNG and the Solomon Islands think positively of China, the views of non-governmental organisations in the Pacific can be less rosy.

For example, another survey of 57 NGOs in PNG, Fiji and Tonga conducted in 2021 by Denghua Zhang (one of the authors) found that a majority in each country disapproved of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Their concerns included human rights violations, bad governance, debt risks, environmental pollution and an influx of small Chinese businesses and low-quality goods into their countries. For example, one Fijian NGO representative said, “feels that Fiji can go down the same path as Sri Lanka with their port example.”

Our new surveys paint a more mixed picture of local feelings in the Pacific about China. Our participants did not simply “love China” or “hate China”, but had far more complicated, nuanced perceptions of the country.

This is many times not represented in media reports on China’s influence in the region, but is important for policymakers in the US and Australia to understand as they seek to counter moves by China to deepen its relationships here.

The authors would like to thank Lincy Pendeverana and Jeffers Teargun Heptol for their contributions to some of our research projects.

Bernard Yegiora is affiliated with the Lowy Institute as part of its PNG-Australia emerging leaders network.

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

– ref. What do people in the Pacific really think of China? It’s more nuanced than you may imagine – https://theconversation.com/what-do-people-in-the-pacific-really-think-of-china-its-more-nuanced-than-you-may-imagine-212781

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sapha Shibeeb, Senior lecturer in Laboratory Medicine , RMIT University

Blood tests are a common medical procedure, offering valuable insights into a person’s health. Whether you’re getting a routine check-up, diagnosing a medical condition or monitoring treatment progress, understanding the process can make the experience more comfortable and effective.

For the majority of patients, blood collections are a minor inconvenience. Others may feel uneasy and anxious.

Preparation strategies can help get you through the procedure.

How blood is collected

During venipuncture (blood draw), the phlebotomist (blood collector) inserts a needle through the skin into a vein and a small amount of blood is collected and transferred into a test tube.

Tubes are sent to a laboratory, where the blood is analysed. A laboratory technician may count or examine cells and measure the levels of minerals/salts, enzymes, proteins or other substances in the sample. For some tests, blood plasma is separated out by spinning (centrifuging) the sample. Others pass a light beam through the sample to determine the amount of a chemical present.

For collection, the phlebotomist usually selects a vein in the crook of your elbow, where veins are readily accessible. Blood can also be drawn from veins in the wrists, fingers or heels. A tourniquet may be applied to restrict blood flow and make the chosen vein puff out.

Read more:
Why do I bruise so easily? Could it be something serious?

Different tests require different preparation

Before a blood test, the GP or health-care provider will give you specific instructions.

These may include fasting for up to 12 hours or temporarily discontinuing certain medications.

It is crucial to follow these guidelines meticulously as they can significantly impact the accuracy of your test results. For example, fasting is required before glucose (blood sugar) and lipids (blood fats) testing because blood sugar and cholesterol levels typically increase after a meal.

If the blood test requires fasting, you will be asked not to eat or drink (no tea, coffee, juice or alcohol) for about eight to 12 hours. Water is allowed but smoking should be avoided because it can increase blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

Generally, you will be asked to fast overnight and have the blood collection done in the morning. Fasting for longer than 15 hours could impact your results, too, by causing dehydration or the release of certain chemicals in the blood.

If you have diabetes, you must consult your doctor prior to fasting because it can increase the risk of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) in people with type 1 diabetes. Most type 2 diabetics can safely fast before a blood test but there are some exceptions, such as people who are taking certain medications including insulin.

5 tips for a better blood test

To improve your blood collection experience, consider these tips:

1. Hydrate

Drink plenty of water right up to 30 minutes before your appointment. Adequate hydration improves blood flow, making your veins more accessible. Avoid strenuous exercise before your blood test, which can increase some blood parameters (such as liver function) while decreasing others (such as sodium).

2. Loose clothing

Wear clothing that allows easy access to your arms to ensure a less stressful procedure.

3. Manage anxiety

If the sight of blood or the procedure makes you anxious, look away while the needle is inserted and try to keep breathing normally. Distraction can help – virtual reality has been trialled to reduce needle anxiety in children. You could try bringing something to read or music to listen to.

4. Know your risk of fainting

If you’re prone to fainting, make sure to inform the phlebotomist when you arrive. You can have your blood drawn while lying down to minimise the risk of passing out and injury. Hydration helps maintain blood pressure and can also reduce the risk of fainting.

5. Discuss difficult veins

Some people have smaller or scarred veins, often due to repeated punctures, chemotherapy or blood thinner use. In such cases, venipuncture may require multiple attempts. It is important to talk to the phlebotomist if you feel discomfort or significant pain. A finger prick can be performed as an alternative for some tests, such as blood glucose levels. But other comprehensive tests require larger blood volume.

Read more:
What can go wrong in the blood? A brief overview of bleeding, clotting and cancer

Blood draws after lymph node removal

Historically, there were concerns about drawing blood from an arm that had undergone lymph node removal. This was due to the risk of lymphedema, a condition marked by fluid build-up in the affected arm. Lymph nodes may have been removed (lymphadenectomy) for cancer diagnosis or treatment.

However, a 2016 study showed people who’ve had lymph nodes removed are not at a higher risk of developing lymphedema following blood draws, even when drawing blood from the affected arm.

Read more:
What are lymph nodes? And can a massage really improve lymphatic drainage?

After your blood test

The whole blood test procedure usually lasts no more than a few minutes. Afterwards, you may be asked to apply gentle pressure over a clean dressing to aid clotting and reduce swelling.

If you do experience swelling, bruising or pain after a test, follow general first aid procedures to alleviate discomfort. These include applying ice to the site, resting the affected arm and, if needed, taking a pain killer.

It is usually recommended you do not do heavy lifting for a few hours after a blood draw. This is to prevent surges in blood flow that could prevent clotting where the blood was taken.

Sapha Shibeeb 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. Worried about getting a blood test? 5 tips to make them easier (and still accurate) – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-getting-a-blood-test-5-tips-to-make-them-easier-and-still-accurate-216073

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

A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted November 1–5 from a sample of 1,602, gave Labor 35% of the primary vote (down two since October), the Coalition 30% (down one), the Greens 13% (up one), One Nation 7% (steady), the UAP 2% (steady), independents 9% (steady) and others 4% (up two).

Resolve does not give a two party estimate until close to elections, but an estimate based on applying 2022 election preference flows gives Labor a 57–43 lead, unchanged since October. While this poll was published today, it was taken over a week ago, before the November 7 interest rate rise.

Resolve’s polls since the 2022 election have been far better for Labor than other polls. Other recent federal polls have been last week’s Newspoll and Redbridge poll that gave Labor respectively a 52–48 and a 53.5–46.5 lead, a 52–48 Labor lead in Morgan and a 48–46 Labor lead in a late October Essential poll including undecided voters.

While Resolve’s voting intentions are much better for Labor than other recent polls, their leaders’ ratings are not. On Anthony Albanese, 46% thought he was doing a poor job and 39% a good job, for a net approval of -6, down seven points since October. Albanese’s net approval was +27 after the May budget.

Dutton’s net approval improved 11 points since October to -4, his best net approval since the election and the first time in any poll Dutton has had a better net approval than Albanese. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 40–27, a narrowing from 47–25 previously.

The Liberals extended their lead over Labor on economic management from 35–33 to 34–27. On keeping the cost of living low, the Liberals reversed a 31–27 Labor lead in October to take a 29–24 lead. These are the Liberals’ best results on these issues since the election. With 52% naming cost of living as the highest priority for their vote, this issue matters.

Voters are pessimistic about the economic outlook. In the next three months, 50% expect the economy to get worse and just 8% improve. In the next year, it’s 41% get worse and 23% improve.

By 60–19, voters said their income had not kept up with inflation over the past year. By 64–8, they expected inflation to get worse in the near future. By 65–9, they did not think interest rate rises are coming to an end.

Morgan poll and additional questions from other polls

In last week’s Morgan federal poll, conducted October 30 to November 5 from a sample of 1,371, Labor led by 52–48, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 35% Coalition, 31.5% Labor, 13.5% Greens and 20% for all Others.

Voters in last week’s Newspoll were also asked whether they approved or disapproved of five measures to help with cost of living.

Subsidising energy bills was most supported at 84% approve, followed by subsidising fuel prices (81%), cutting government spending (77%), giving tax cuts to individuals (73%) and giving cash payments to low-income families (56%).

In additional questions from Redbridge, by 50–36 voters thought the Albanese government was not focused on the right priorities. By 50–30, they thought the Coalition was not ready for government.

Essential had questions on the Melbourne Cup that were released on Cup Day November 7 in The Guardian from the previous national Essential poll in late October.

On interest in the Cup, 11% said they had high interest (down four since 2022), 24% moderate interest (down seven), 27% low interest (up three) and 35% no interest (up seven). On betting, 13% regularly bet on horses and the Cup (down five) and 26% rarely bet on horses but make an exception for the Cup (down three).

On attitudes to the Melbourne Cup, 65% said it is a unique part of Australia’s national identity (down seven), 48% said it promotes unhealthy gambling behaviour (up three) and 36% said it normalises animal cruelty (up two).

US off-year elections

While the United States presidential election is in November 2024, there were some state elections on November 7. I covered the results for The Poll Bludger. Democrats performed well in the headline races, holding the Kentucky governorship and gaining control of the Virginia legislature, while Ohio passed two referendums supported by Democrats.

However, the legislative elections were mediocre for Democrats, as they did worse than Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. US polls show Biden struggling against Donald Trump, and these elections should not change our opinion of 2024.

NSW Resolve poll: drop for both major parties’ primary votes

A New South Wales state Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted with the federal October and November Resolve polls from a sample of 1,100, gave Labor 36% of the primary vote (down two since September), the Coalition 32% (down four), the Greens 13% (up four), independents 12% (down one) and others 7% (up three).

No two-party estimate was provided, but The Poll Bludger estimated a 56.5–43.5 Labor lead, a 2.5-point gain for Labor since September. Labor Premier Chris Minns held a 35–13 lead over the Liberals’ Mark Speakman as preferred premier (41–14 in September).

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. Labor still far ahead in Resolve poll, in contrast to other recent polls – https://theconversation.com/labor-still-far-ahead-in-resolve-poll-in-contrast-to-other-recent-polls-217187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University

When you went out today, did you see any birds? A galah perhaps, or a crow?

If you did, there’s a decent chance the bird you saw lives nowhere but Australia. Out of about 850 species found in Australia, 45% are “endemic”, which means they’re unique to Australia. The only other country with more endemic species is Indonesia.

Thanks to their wings, birds are the world’s greatest travellers. So why is it that such a high proportion of Australian birds aren’t found anywhere else?

Climate rules

The story starts more than 45 million years ago, when Australia first split from Antarctica and started to head north. It was the events that occurred during this trip – particularly in relation to our climate – that led to the diversity in Australia’s birds today.

When it first set out, Australia was covered in lush rainforest. As it drifted, however, the climate became much drier. Our distinctive flora of grasslands and eucalypt woodlands started to spread across the continent.

But this drying trend wasn’t consistent. Particularly in the last million years, dry periods associated with the ice ages alternated with wetter times, such as the Holocene epoch – which is what we’ve had for the past 10,000 or so years.

But the climate didn’t just vary over thousands of years. It also varied, as we know too well, from year to year. Australia has long been the land of long droughts, sometimes lasting decades, interspersed with flooding rains.

What’s climate got to do with birds?

The diversity in Australia’s birds arose partly because of the list of passengers aboard the good ship of Australia. This included ancient parrots and the ancestors of what were to become the world’s first songbirds: the lyrebirds and scrub-birds. Both groups are highly adaptable and have bigger brains than other birds relative to their size.

However, it was ultimately the climate that gave us so many endemic species. Every time the climate dried, birds that preferred forests were pushed to the damper margins of the continent, where they evolved into separate species. In wetter times, some forests spread and reconnected – but now there were two or more species, not just one.

The same was true for the arid land birds, which got divided when it became extra dry. One ancient group called grasswrens has different species in almost all the isolated blocks of arid habitat across the country.

The parrots and cockatoos also diversified into a huge range of species, from tiny budgerigars to huge black cockatoos.

One-way traffic

But that’s only part of the story. You might have heard of the original supercontinent, Pangaea, which split into Gondwana and Laurasia about 200 million years ago. When Gondwana eventually split, some of the continents moved north and shared their faunas with the regions they ran into in the Northern Hemisphere.

As Africa and India collided with Asia and Europe, the species from the old supercontinents of Gondwana and Laurasia mixed. North and South America also exchanged plants and animals when their land masses joined. Australia was different. And once again, it came down to the climate.

As Australia pushed north, the shifting tectonic plates threw up islands that acted as stepping stones to Asia. These allowed Australian songbirds to head out into the wider world, where they did exceptionally well. In fact, researchers think all the world’s 5,000 or songbird species came from Australia.

The question is, why was this traffic one way? Why didn’t Asian and American birds such as woodpeckers hop on over to Australia? One reason could be that by that time Australia was already full of tough birds that had evolved to cope with a pretty mean climate.

In contrast, the birds from Asia had evolved in fertile rainforests. Any that did disperse south along the chain of islands leading to Australia would have been ill-equipped to cope with its aridity. They would also have had to compete with parrots and songbirds that already knew how to take full advantage of the resources available.

A few did make it, including a lovely set of finches, but they are an exception proving the rule.

Budgies are the best

It’s probably no coincidence the world’s most popular cage birds come from Australia. Cage living isn’t for every bird; most birds are delicate creatures that need constant care if bred in captivity.

In contrast, budgerigars, cockatiels and zebra finches from Australia’s fickle arid zone know they must do what it takes while the going’s good, because the next El Niño may start next week. And it helps if you can cope with temperatures that vary from -10°C to more than 40°C.

Australia also shares many bird species with New Guinea. This isn’t surprising, given we’re on the same continental plate.

The Torres Strait is so shallow that drops in sea levels during an ice age would form a land bridge that even a cassowary could walk across (which is why cassowaries are shared with New Guinea).

For most other Australian birds found elsewhere, such as shorebirds and seabirds, water is no barrier.

But most of our birds are ours alone. Ours to enjoy and ours to care for – because they have no other home.

Read more:
Listen to the Albert’s lyrebird: the best performer you’ve never heard of

Stephen Garnett receives funding from the Australian Research Council. I am an active member of BirdLife Australia.

– ref. Australia has more native bird species than almost anywhere else. What led to this explosion of diversity? – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-more-native-bird-species-than-almost-anywhere-else-what-led-to-this-explosion-of-diversity-215809

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

Halfway through the 47th federal parliament, we can begin cautiously to gauge the potential historical significance of the “teal” independents.

Contemporaneous analysis, of course, can be problematic but it can also direct attention to emergent dynamics in the way politics operates in Australia. This includes how well voters are represented, politico-cultural shifts and the influence on how laws are made.

The next election will tell us if the 2022 infusion of these independents marked an electoral realignment of longer-term substance or merely a short-term reaction to circumstances. In other words, was it a movement or a moment?

There are three key issues that will help answer this question.

First, many or all of the new crossbench MPs could be defeated, casting their 2022 victories as an aberration driven largely by the unpopularity of the Morrison government rather than by something deep and structural.

Alternatively, they may all be returned, consolidating their respective support locally.

A third outcome builds on the second and would see their ranks swell in 2025, confirming a trend of voter disillusionment with the major parties.

In the second option, Australia would have been politically transformed. In the third, that transformation could be regarded as highly significant, heralding an era of minority governments becoming the most common election result.

The pre-conditions of such a change are already there. The crossbench in the House of Representatives now stands at 16 – a record since the two-party era settled in after the first dozen years of the federation.

Read more:
Is this the end of the two-party system in Australia? The Greens, teals and others shock the major parties

Given how finely balanced the political contest appears halfway into this term, a hung parliament looms as more than a mere possibility. Outside of a huge government scandal, a parliamentary majority for the Coalition seems unattainable – that is, without unseating the teals and making other gains. More on that in a moment.

Labor is in a stronger position as the incumbent government, but is hardly ascendant. It confronts a serious cost-of-living crisis that has the potential to cause serious voter unhappiness. While the most recent Newspoll reported a two-party-preferred result of 52-48 in favour of the Albanese government, there is some suggestion the government’s post-election popularity may have topped out and could decline from here.

With a record-low 32.6% primary vote delivering a slender two-seat majority, (a third was gained at the Aston byelection) Labor has little ground to give. The “majors” appear to be managing their prospects in a climate of declining brand loyalty.

For the independents, the opposite may be true. This stark reality is what made the federal election in May 2022 feel like a watershed.

In 2022, teals picked up six seats (Curtin, Goldstein, Kooyong, Mackellar, North Sydney, and Wentworth), adding to two formerly safe Liberal seats (Indi and Warringah)that community independents gained in 2019 and successfully defended in 2022.

It is now plausible to conceive of the “teals” as a loose grouping of eight centrist independents occupying once-safe Liberal seats. Important to that conception also is that all are female and that, on any issue, not all eight automatically align.

Election 2022 was also a watershed because the Australian Greens quadrupled their lower house holdings with three upset wins in Queensland, a state where no “teals” were running.

The future of these Greens seats is an important factor to add into considerations.
As independents, the teals cannot ensure legislative change or drive through private members’ bills to a final vote. However, they have proved influential in raising issues, improving legislation and, in some cases, in stiffening government resolve.

This was the case with the government’s emissions reduction legislation. The Greens’ public pressure succeeded in convincing Labor to make its 2030 emissions reduction target of 43% a floor rather than a ceiling. This was a significant change given Labor’s timidity around the electoral politics of emissions.

The government’s National Anti-Corruption Commission – which eventually passed with Coalition support – was also a product in part of the moral leadership from Indi independent Helen Haines. Her private member’s bill ultimately provided the basis of the government’s formula.

Perhaps the biggest macro-political change wrought by the teals has been in the conduct of politics and parliamentary behaviour. This can be difficult to measure, but most observers I’ve spoken to concede the overall tone of parliament has improved in this term, due in no small part to the presence and the articulate advocacy of female MPs, primarily the teals.

Government ministers treat their questions in the House with more respect and civility than was the standard response to crossbenchers under previous governments, most pointedly during the former Morrison period.

Another strength of the teal MPs is their combination of active local representation and clear leadership. This was evident in the referendum. Australia may have rejected the proposed Voice to Parliament by 60% to 40%, but in the 2022 teal seats, where the majority of constituents had been life-long Liberal voters until recently, the Voice registered majority support.

Read more:
Voice to Parliament referendum has been heavily defeated nationally and in all states

For these voters, it appears it was the campaigning of the new MP that was persuasive, rather than the Liberal-National Coalition’s bellicose opposition to the proposal.

Among the enlarged group of eight, it was only in the “pre-teal” seat of Indi, held by Haines, that the proposal was rejected. This result is probably explained by the electorate’s status as “rural” according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

Beyond the voter rejection of populist and divisive politics in these inner-urban electorates, the immediate significance of the “yes” vote points to another hurdle for the Liberal Party if it is to reclaim them.

Take the example of Goldstein in Victoria, where independent MP Zoe Daniel ran a vigorous local campaign involving 600 volunteers, 285 Voice-related local events and the specific strategic targeting of some 10,000 homes for doorknocking.

Organised, engaged, locally driven but professional campaigning such as this is beyond even the major parties these days. Along with socio-economic factors, this may be a key reason the teals did better for the Voice than many pro-Voice Labor MPs, whose constituents went decidedly the other way.

More worrying for the Liberals is that the teals have had the benefit now of running a mid-term electorate-wide local campaign in which they could hone their organisational capabilities, connect meaningfully with their constituents outside of an election context, and energise their supporters.

With a well-resourced ground game like that, based on the kind of responsive local representation the established parties more often talk about than actively deliver, the teals may prove supremely hard to dislodge.

Mark Kenny 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. Halfway through their term, the ‘teal’ MPs look here to stay – and may present a huge challenge in 2025 – https://theconversation.com/halfway-through-their-term-the-teal-mps-look-here-to-stay-and-may-present-a-huge-challenge-in-2025-216528

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Lacy-Nichols, Research fellow, The University of Melbourne

Alcohol, tobacco, food and gambling industries are among those that lobby government ministers and their advisors to help shape public policy.

But when we looked for details of who’s lobbying whom in Australia, we found government lobbyist registers largely left us in the dark.

In our recently published research, we found these registers were time-consuming to navigate and not detailed enough. The registers couldn’t give us a comprehensive picture of who’s lobbying whom, and how often. Most registers weren’t set up to do so.

We’re concerned about this lack of transparency and the potential for business interests to have undue influence over health policies. This has the potential to diminish trust in government, a risk to democracy.

Read more:
It’s not just tax. How PwC, KPMG and other consultants risk influencing public health too

Why are we concerned about lobbying?

In Australia, anyone can lobby governments and has a right to represent their views. It’s an important part of the democratic process. Yet not everyone has fair access to decision makers.

Some individuals and businesses have outsized and undue influence on government decision making. Lobbying is one form of such influence.

For instance, in the past ten years or so, the alcohol industry has lobbied to delay implementation of pregnancy warning labels.

The gambling industry, which has funnelled millions of dollars into both major political parties, has lobbied to weaken gambling regulations.

The tobacco industry sued the Australian government for its plain packaging laws, after concerted lobbying had failed to derail plans to introduce them. While the lawsuit was unsuccessful, this has deterred other governments from implementing similar laws.

Read more:
Why businesses want the ear of government and are willing to pay for it

A deep dive into lobbyist registers

Understanding who is seeing which government ministers or their advisors and what they are meeting about is the first step towards protecting against undue political influence and fostering political integrity.

So we decided to look at lobbyist registers to see what they tell us. These registers are like digital phone books, with information about lobbyists. The aim of these registers is to guard against undue or unethical political influence.

Last year, we systematically extracted information from all lobbyist registers in Australia. All jurisdictions, except for the Northern Territory, have one. We:

• compared the disclosure requirements of Australian with international registers

• mapped the population of lobby firms, lobbyists and clients that were active in each jurisdiction

• identified which lobby firms represented tobacco, alcohol, gambling and ultra-processed food organisations.

Here’s what we found

Compared to international lobbying registers, Australian registers provided little information. In the United States, for instance, companies must disclose how much money they spend on lobbying.

Only four jurisdictions (federal, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Queensland) provided information about whether a lobbyist had previously worked in government. We need to know this to gauge whether there are any conflicts of interest.

Of the registers that provided this information, few provided enough detail to identify the specific position or the exact date a lobbyist left government. Of particular concern, 96 lobbyists said they both had and had not worked in government, raising questions about oversight of these registers.

Read more:
Politicians who become lobbyists can be bad for Australians’ health

Which industry hired the most lobby firms?

Of the four industries we explored, gambling organisations hired the most lobby firms, followed by food, alcohol and tobacco.

Tobacco companies hired lobby firms in six jurisdictions, potentially contravening Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which warns against the tobacco industry lobbying governments.

Most registers are a directory of lobbyists rather than their activities. So, as most registers did not require disclosure of lobbying activities, it is unclear what service the firms provided for the tobacco industry.

Read more:
We worked out how many tobacco lobbyists end up in government, and vice versa. It’s a lot

What’s missing?

Registers only provide information about “third party” lobbyists that work for professional lobby firms. This excludes many lobbyists working in Australia, such as those working directly for tobacco or alcohol companies or industry associations. In practice, this means a great deal of lobbying is hidden from the public.

Except for Queensland, registers did not provide a record of lobbyist meetings or contact with government officials. This information is important to understand who meets whom, and why.

The lobbyist registers hold no information about how much money is spent on, or received for, lobbying activities.

Lastly, we cannot see which individual lobbyists worked for which client. For firms that represent organisations with different interests, this raises questions about potential conflicts of interest.

Greater transparency and oversight needed

In the past year, Australia has created the National Anti-Corruption Commission and recommendations about reforming political donations. Lobbying reform is the next logical step to ensure an integrated and coherent approach to political integrity.

The Australian government, like others, has a lobbying code of conduct with rules about ethical behaviour. It also stipulates that former members of government are not allowed to work as lobbyists for a “cooling off period” of 12 or 18 months (depending on where someone worked in government).

However, in the lobbying code, “lobbyist” is only understood as those working for third-party firms (such as the ones we analysed). It places no restrictions on ministers or government officials taking jobs with companies they used to regulate, or the consulting sector. Expanding the definition to include all forms of lobbying would help close this loophole.

We also need better enforcement of the rules around lobbying with sanctions and fines imposed to improve compliance.

Read more:
The revolving door: why politicians become lobbyists, and lobbyists become politicians

Jennifer Lacy-Nichols receives funding from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation. She is a member of the People’s Health Movement, Healthy Food Systems Australia and the expert advisory group on commercial determinants of health for the World Health Organization. The findings of the research reported in this article, and the views expressed, are hers alone and not necessarily those of the above organisations.

Katherine Cullerton receives funding from the NHMRC and the Children’s Health Foundation. She is on the executive of the Food and Nutrition Special Interest Group for the Public Health Association of Australia.

– ref. Who’s lobbying whom? When it comes to alcohol, tobacco, food and gambling firms, we’re in the dark – https://theconversation.com/whos-lobbying-whom-when-it-comes-to-alcohol-tobacco-food-and-gambling-firms-were-in-the-dark-216835

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lau, Ending Plastic Waste Mission Director, CSIRO

After years of discussion, international negotiations on a global plastics treaty resume this week in Nairobi, Kenya, at the UN Environment Programme headquarters.

The third session of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution will take place from today until Sunday November 19.

The committee’s goal is to develop a legally binding agreement, finalised in 2024, to address the full life cycle of plastics – including their production, design and disposal.

Involving 175 nations, the treaty aims to transform plastic waste management, paving the way for new technologies and industries.

The problem of plastic pollution is too big for any one nation to handle. That’s why we need a global approach. It’s worked before with the ozone layer and acid rain and it can work again with plastic.

Read more:
Plastic waste treaty: expert Q&A on the promise of a global agreement to reduce pollution

How we repaired the ozone layer

At CSIRO I lead the Ending Plastic Waste Mission, which aims to change the way we make, use, recycle and dispose of plastic. Our work aligns with the aims of the proposed UN plastic treaty, so I have been following the negotiations closely.

Multilateral agreements have helped create significant change in the past. The Montreal Protocol shaped environmental and industrial landscapes globally. Enacted in 1987, the protocol’s objective was to phase out substances causing ozone depletion.

The protocol is widely recognised for its global ratification – everyone got on board. And countries continued to adhere to the changes. This ongoing work has not only contributed to the tangible recovery of the ozone layer, but also prevented millions of potential cases of skin cancers and cataracts.

The protocol also sparked chemical industry innovation. Industries had to transition away from ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs to more environmentally friendly alternatives.

The earliest replacements – hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs – were quickly recognised as a potent greenhouse gas, resulting in the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the protocol to phase them out too and use climate-friendly alternatives. As a result of this global process, we now have safer chemicals for refrigeration and air conditioning.

Read more:
Saving the ozone layer: why the Montreal Protocol worked

Global legislation can deliver real change

Clean air legislation is another example. Acid rain became a prominent environmental concern in the latter half of the 20th century. It happens when sulphur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides are released into the atmosphere, typically from industrial processes and the burning of fossil fuels.

Once in the atmosphere, these pollutants react with water vapour to form sulphuric acid and nitric acid. As they fall to the ground mixed with rain or snow, the high acidity harms aquatic ecosystems, forests and even human-made structures.

In response, various countries enacted clean air legislation. For instance, the United States Clean Air Act of 1963, amended several times in the following decades, motivated change in industrial and automotive sectors.

The laws forced industries to transition to cleaner technologies and invest in advanced pollution-control equipment. This paved the way for a widespread adoption of catalytic converters and more fuel-efficient engines.

Read more:
Air pollution: your exposure and health risk could depend on your class, ethnicity or gender

How multilateral agreements can force change

Regulatory tools such as multilateral agreements introduce restrictions. Instead of doing business as usual, these restrictions then foster cleaner, more sustainable practices. They blend environmental responsibility with business imperatives. As a result, the regulatory changes open up new market opportunities.

Additionally, global collaborations driven by these agreements often encourage the transfer of technologies across borders. This speeds up the adoption of cleaner technologies.

Multilateral environmental agreements can drive technological progress and industrial innovation. By establishing high standards and fostering global collaboration, these agreements blend environmental stewardship with industrial evolution.

Read more:
Container deposit schemes reduce rubbish on our beaches. Here’s how we proved it

Now for the UN plastic treaty

The global plastic treaty will address the pervasive challenge of plastic pollution, which affects our oceans, marine life and carbon footprint. It is expected to usher in transformative regulations on waste management, reduce the use of single-use plastics and advocate for the circular economy principles of eliminating waste and keeping materials circulating in use.

We are already seeing a shift in plastics manufacturing towards more sustainable, biodegradable, or recyclable plastics. Industries are developing more circular business models that emphasise the reuse and recycling of products and reducing waste.

To reduce single-use plastics, the packaging industry is transitioning towards reduction, reuse and recyclability. Advanced recycling technologies and better bio-derived plastics are expected to emerge as industry standards.

The multilateral treaty and its implementation will help to reduce problematic and unnecessary plastics. It will also speed up the removal of harmful chemicals from product supply chains.

The UN plastic treaty is set to be finalised in 2024. If we can get a global agreement on this, we have a real opportunity to significantly reduce plastic waste for a sustainable future.

Read more:
Here’s how the new global treaty on plastic pollution can help solve this crisis

CSIRO’s Ending Plastic Waste Mission is funded through contributions by CSIRO, industry, government, university, and other organisations to develop cutting-edge science and innovation to tackle plastic waste.

– ref. We need a global treaty to solve plastic pollution – acid rain and ozone depletion show us why – https://theconversation.com/we-need-a-global-treaty-to-solve-plastic-pollution-acid-rain-and-ozone-depletion-show-us-why-207622

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

Parents may be familiar with this scenario: a child is well behaved at school and polite to their teachers but has a meltdown at home in the afternoon.

Or they say please and thank you at a friend’s house but are rude with their family. They follow the rules if they visit a neighbour but have to be constantly reminded about not slamming doors and raiding the pantry at home.

Why is this so? And is there anything you can do about it?

Children learn early their behaviour matters

Even well behaved children misbehave from time to time.

When young children get tired, such as after a play date or a long day at daycare or school, they can become irritable and disruptive. Children are also naturally curious and may misbehave sometimes just to see what happens.

However, some children seem to behave consistently worse at home than with other people. To understand this phenomenon, it’s necessary to understand why children behave the way they do.

From the very beginning, a child’s behaviour produces results or outcomes. For example, babies soon learn crying is a very effective way of signalling they are in distress. Parents quickly learn to change a wet nappy or feed their infant when they cry. A smile often results in an adult smiling back, cooing or cuddling the baby.

So children quickly realise their behaviour can be an effective way of controlling the actions of others.

The bad behaviour pay-off

Children’s behaviour, whether desirable or undesirable, is influenced by the consequences it produces.

Sometimes, the reactions of parents or siblings can accidentally reward misbehaviour, and children learn undesirable behaviour has a payoff.

For example, children may learn that when they don’t do as they’re told, they get extra attention from their parents. This attention may be reasoning, discussing, arguing, nagging or repeating instructions over and over. It may not be seen as a “reward” to adults, but children are getting more attention from mum or dad.

Children may also learn when they whine and complain for an electronic device they are more likely to get it.

Unfortunately, in this scenario, the child is rewarded for whining and the parent is rewarded for giving them the iPad because it stops a highly irritating noise (at least in the short term). As both the child and the parent are rewarded, this interaction is likely to occur again.

Read more:
What the *#@%?! How to respond when your child swears

Why are kids better at school?

When children are with less familiar people, they do not know how others will respond or what behaviour will result in a payoff. In these circumstances it is common for there to be less undesirable behaviour, at least temporarily.

Children can also behave better at school than at home because teachers have very good systems in place. Children are kept busy with a variety of engaging activities, expectations of children’s behaviour are clear, and the payoff for desirable behaviour is reliable. Teachers are well practised at recognising and rewarding desirable behaviour through attention, praise and sometimes token reward systems.

Children also tend to imitate their peers’ behaviour, particularly if they see it gets results, such as attention from the teacher or access to prized activities.

How can parents help kids to behave better at home?

The good news is if children behave well in one setting, we know they are capable of doing the same at home.

Parents can value children’s need to relax at home while still expecting them to be polite and follow rules. By making some small changes, it’s usually possible to see much improved behaviour.

Here are some practical things parents can do:

• establish routines. Have a routine for when your child gets home from school or outings. This might include allowing your child to unwind and relax, giving them a healthy snack, and then setting them up with an engaging activity. Routines make it easier for everyone to transition from one setting to another. It is even better if the routine includes activities – such as colouring-in or a run around outside – that are calming or burn off energy.

• set simple house rules. Have a few simple rules that clearly communicate to your child how you expect them to behave. For example: “use an inside voice” or “keep the toys on the floor”.

• notice good behaviour. Let your child know when they have done the right thing. Do this by describing what you are pleased with (“you two are sharing the toy so nicely”). This will make it more likely the behaviour will occur again.

• spend small amounts of time with your child regularly. This is especially important when your child approaches you for help or attention. It shows you’re there for them and they do not need to become louder or act out to get your attention. Spending small amounts of time – as little as one or two minutes – often throughout the day is a powerful way of strengthening your relationship with your child and preventing problem behaviour.

• have realistic expectations. Change is easier if you focus on one or two goals at a time. Also, when striving to improve behaviour, expect occasional setbacks. No child (or parent) is perfect!

Read more:
Parents make mistakes. So what does ‘good enough parenting’ look like?

Trevor Mazzucchelli is a co-author of Stepping Stones Triple P – Positive Parenting Program and a consultant to Triple P International. The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by UniQuest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. He has no share or ownership of TPI, but has received and may in the future receive royalties and/or consultancy fees from TPI. TPI had no involvement in writing of this article.

– ref. Why are my kids good around other people and then badly behaved with me? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-my-kids-good-around-other-people-and-then-badly-behaved-with-me-217279

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gilberto Roque, Lecturer, Filmmaker and Cinematographer, School of Creative Arts, University of Southern Queensland

How does one successfully navigate obstacles such as extreme weather, a tight deadline and a spontaneous shot list in a foreign country as a solo cinematographer on a 360 project?

In December 2019 I was in a group of Griffith Film School master’s degree students who travelled to Hungary and Latvia to create an immersive short documentary film using 360 virtual reality (VR) technology.

Sorella’s Story, written and directed by Peter Hegedus, associate professor and filmmaker at Griffith University, showcases re-enactments based on photos of atrocities committed against Jewish people during the Holocaust in Latvia.

The shot schedule was ambitious. We had five exterior scenes to be shot in only a few hours because of the limited daylight. We had a crew of about ten people.

I was director of photography and the only cameraperson. A daunting task in any filmmaking situation, it was made tenfold more challenging by being a 360 project that no one on the crew had experience working with.

Read more:
The air we breathe: how I have been observing atmospheric change through art and science

New technology brings new challenges

Viewed through virtual reality lenses, 360-degree films offer the viewer an opportunity to watch a video from all angles.

Unlike traditional cameras with a single lens, our 360 camera looks like a soccer ball, with six small lenses placed throughout the body.

It was a new technology for me and I was curious to see how it was going to change our approach. For example, the six lenses film simultaneously, so the operator and crew need to ensure we have a safe spot to hide to avoid being caught in the frame.

The distance actors appear from the lens is especially important in 360 filming. This is because the images are “stitched” together in post-production. If the subjects are too close to the lenses, the images can’t be combined to create the appearance of a single shot.

After our test shoots, we gave actors marks to hit in and out of frames and the maximum and minimum distances they could be from the camera. These modifications enabled us to capture the action from all 360 angles.

We needed precise blocking and rehearsed co-ordination between actors and crew to capture the entire scene. Every time a scene was recorded, the director would call action, and the sound and camera crew would have a few seconds to run and hide out of frame. Only then would the actors begin to move.

360 inherently brings with it technical challenges, but Sorella’s Story had the compounding issues of weather, a remote location and myself as a cinematographer without a crew and limited time to learn the technology.

Shooting plan

Prior to filming a conventional project, directors and cinematographers break down the script into a shot list – a written breakdown of every shot that will be undertaken – and storyboard, visually symbolising those shots through illustrations or sketches.

Both tools help the filmmaking process and ensure the creative vision is realised on set.

Storyboards are less important in 360: you aren’t considering how different angles will be used in a shoot, and there is much more spontaneity in the actors’ movement. There is so much action to capture at once storyboards would just confuse the issue.

Instead, a shot list and script were followed in some moments, but were used as only a guide.

Obstacles and problem-solving

December is one of the coldest months of the year in Budapest, Hungary, with average temperatures of no more than 1°C. At this time of year the days are short, the nights are long, and icy weather conditions are expected. Those conditions brought another challenge: the battery life of electronic devices.

I quickly learned cold weather drains the battery. I tried to reduce cold exposure on the camera by covering the camera with my beanie, with limited success. Battery life that was usually two hours was down to 20 minutes.

Because of the limited budget, we had only two batteries for each device. Ideally, we would have one battery in the camera and the other plugged into the charger.

However, we had no power supply on set. Every time a battery ran out it would be 10 minutes to the nearest power supply, plus at least 30 minutes to recharge.

Shooting in this cold climate, ensuring I was invisible on set and maintaining the delicate balance of the distance of actors from the camera demanded a complete re-evaluation of my filmmaking approach. It forced me to be agile in my workflow and engage in real-time problem-solving.

Despite the inherent challenges, working on this project provided me with invaluable experience in this cutting-edge technology. With the current interest in immersive experiences, 360 cinematography has a part to play in cinema’s future.

Read more:
Google Earth is an illusion: how I am using art to explore the problematic nature of western maps and the myth of ‘terra nullius’

Gilberto Roque was a master’s student at Griffith Film School when working on Sorella’s Story.

– ref. A 360 camera, 1℃ weather and an ambitious VR documentary: what I learnt as cinematographer on Sorella’s Story – https://theconversation.com/a-360-camera-1-weather-and-an-ambitious-vr-documentary-what-i-learnt-as-cinematographer-on-sorellas-story-212699

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trish Keeper, Associate professor in Commercial Law, School of Accounting and Commercial Law, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

When independent supermarket startup Supie went bust last month, the company’s 120 employees were told they wouldn’t be paid for their last two weeks of work, or receive any of their owed annual leave pay.

The subsequent appointment of voluntary administrators again highlighted New Zealand’s limited protection for employees when their employer becomes insolvent.

Supie’s employees are not the first, nor will they be the last, to lose out when their employer goes under. In 2019, staff at restaurant chain Wagamama were owed NZ$50,000 when the company went into liquidation.

In both cases, the wages were eventually paid out by someone outside the company. In the case of Wagamama, by the franchise head office in the United Kingdom. Supie staff received their wages from an anonymous donor.

While the loss of money for any creditor is difficult, the double impact of losing wages as well as a job is particularly hard for employees.

So, what is it in New Zealand’s current legislation that puts employees in this difficult situation? And what can be done to protect staff when businesses fail?

The current pecking order

In terms of corporate insolvencies, there are three options: voluntary administration, receivership and liquidation.

Liquidations are the most common form of corporate insolvency process. When this happens, the company ceases to trade and a liquidator is appointed.

Under the Companies Act 1993, the liquidator’s role is to sell the company assets to repay unsecured creditors. In practice, only those assets not under a prior legal claim by one or more of the company’s creditors (for example, collateral used to secure a bank loan) are available to the liquidator to sell.

Read more:
Failed NZ businesses leave a trail of destruction. Here are 3 things Inland Revenue could do to minimise damage

Once a liquidator has sold the company’s remaining assets, the Companies Act sets the order in which the debts are to be paid.

Preferential claims are to be paid before the claims of other unsecured creditors. Employees are considered preferential creditors.

There are five classes of preferential creditors in the Companies Act. Costs relating to the liquidation, including the liquidators’ fees, are ranked first, followed by the payment of unpaid wages and specified other amounts owed to employees.

Accordingly, amounts owed to employees are paid out after liquidation costs have been sorted – and only if there is any money left from the failed business. There is also a cap on what each employee can claim – currently set at $25,480 –regardless of what they are owed.

In practice, this means there is no guarantee employees will receive their unpaid wages when a business fails.

It all depends on whether there is enough money after secured creditors have accessed the assets used as collateral and the liquidator has paid their own fees. And this is often not the case.

Liquidators can take company directors to court for breaching their duties, such as recklessly trading. But this sort of action takes time, and there is no guarantee it will increase the amount of money available to unpaid staff. It took a decade for liquidators to secure a final judgement against the four directors of failed construction company Mainzeal.

Law changes could protect workers

New Zealand’s approach to protecting workers compares badly to other countries, where government schemes bolster the protections for unpaid employee debts. Such schemes operate alongside the preferential creditor rules in corporate law.

For example, in the Australian Corporations Act 2001, unpaid wages, superannuation contributions and certain other payments owed to employees are classed as preferential debts.

However, there is also a nationally-funded scheme that operates as a safety net for employees, which allows them to claim up to 13 weeks of unpaid wages, annual leave and other entitlements.

After the scheme makes a payment to employees, it then takes the employees’ place as a preferential creditor in the liquidation. A similar scheme operates in the UK.

Read more:
Why is New Zealand’s Labour government trying to push through a two-tier benefit system?

Other options adopted in some countries include granting employee claims (capped or uncapped) “super-priority” status, which means they are paid before secured and other unsecured debts.

The previous New Zealand government, with support from Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions, proposed introducing a social insurance scheme.

This would have paid up to seven months of wages at 80% of salary for most workers, funded through employee and employer contributions. But Labour eventually put the policy on ice, and the National Party has opposed such a scheme.

Because the government doesn’t collect the data, it is hard to say how many employees receive all or part of the amounts owing to them as preferential creditors when the company they work for fails.

But what is clear is that the current approach of labelling New Zealand workers privileged creditors does not guarantee they will see any money if their employers go into liquidation. The situation would be improved if New Zealand followed the best overseas examples.

Trish Keeper 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 workers have few protections if their employer goes bust – fixing the Companies Act would help – https://theconversation.com/nz-workers-have-few-protections-if-their-employer-goes-bust-fixing-the-companies-act-would-help-216811

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

Jewish organisations have criticised Foreign Minister Penny Wong over her latest comments on the Israel-Gaza conflict, while Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has said Jewish Australians “have never felt less safe”.

As pro-Palestinian demonstrations continued in the major Australian cities at the weekend, Wong on Sunday called on Israel to “cease the attacking of hospitals” in Gaza.

She said steps towards a ceasefire were needed but it could not be one-sided. “We know that Hamas is still holding hostages and we know that a ceasefire must be agreed between the parties,” she told the ABC.

“But we can also say that Israel should do everything it can to observe international humanitarian law. We have seen a harrowing number of civilians, including children, killed. This has to end. We are particularly concerned with what is happening with medical facilities.

“International humanitarian law does require the protection of hospitals, of patients and of medical staff. We do call on Israel to cease the attacking of hospitals,” Wong said.

“We understand the argument that Hamas has burrowed into civilian infrastructure, but […] the international community, looking at what’s occurring at hospitals, would say to Israel, these are facilities protected under international law and we want you to do so.”

Wong’s remarks follow mounting international pressure for a ceasefire and a strong call from French President Macron for Israel to stop bombing Gaza.

But in a joint statement late Sunday the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said they were “highly concerned” at Wong’s comments.

“The Foreign Minister stated that ‘we all want to take the next steps towards a ceasefire’, while noting that no ceasefire could be ‘one-sided’. But unless and until Hamas is removed from power, a ceasefire will inevitably further endanger Israel,” the statement said.

In relation to her call for hospital attacks to cease, the statement said under the Geneva Convention hospitals lost their protection if used for military purposes – as Hamas did.

“The libel that any Israeli attack on Gazan hospitals from which Hamas operates would amount to war crimes only serve to demonise the state of Israel and its supporters. These libels are central to Hamas’
objectives […] and are reverberating across the world in a new wave of antisemitism,”the statement said.

It said the Australian government “should not be lending any credibility to this false and harmful narrative.”

Amid rising fears about the division in Austrlaia the conflict is inflaming, Marles condemned Friday’s demonstration in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield.

He told Sky the demonstration “on behalf of Palestine in the heart of the Jewish community was unacceptable.”

Late Friday, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel supporters clashed, and a nearby synagogue was evacuated.

The incident followed a fire at a burger shop owned by a man of Palestinian heritage, although police did not believe the fire was related to the man’s attendance at an earlier pro-Palestinian rally. Organisers, Free Palestine Melbourne, apologised for using an area near the synagogue.

Marles told Sky:“I think it’s fair to say that right now Jewish Australians have never felt less safe, and that is a real problem and we need to be moving to fix that. Clearly, anti-Semitism doesn’t have a place in our country and it’s very important that we are able, no matter what is happening elsewhere in the world, to maintain social cohesion here in Australia.

“Clearly people have a right to protest what’s happening in the Middle East. What’s happening in the Middle East is an unfolding tragedy. And people have the right to put pressure on their country’s government, on us, but there shouldn’t be demonstrations which are aimed at other members of the community. And Jewish Australians, as all Australians, clearly have a right to feel safe within their country.”

Australia has voted for a UNESCO resolution, drafted by Arab countries, that invites the governing bodies of relevant UNESCO conventions and programs “to assess the deteriorating situation in Gaza and develop measures to address its repercussions across UNESCO fields of competence”.

But Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO, Megan Anderson, recorded that despite its support, Australia believed the resolution incomplete because it did not make reference to the Hamas October 7 attack.

The motion passed 96 to 8 with 33 abstentions, with the United States voting against.

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

– ref. Jewish groups ‘highly concerned’ at Wong’s Middle East comments, as Marles says Australian Jews don’t feel safe – https://theconversation.com/jewish-groups-highly-concerned-at-wongs-middle-east-comments-as-marles-says-australian-jews-dont-feel-safe-217522

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney

For many years, I have been calling for the Australian government – along with other governments – to play its part in assisting Pacific communities affected by the adverse impacts of climate change and disasters.

Our region is already experiencing some of the most drastic effects of climate change. Pacific communities are showing enormous innovation and resilience in the face of these challenges, but as a matter of international solidarity and climate justice, additional support and cooperation is needed.

One way of providing assistance is by creating migration pathways for people who wish to move. Australia’s recent Pacific Engagement Visa is one such example – enabling up to 3,000 workers and their families from the Pacific and Timor-Leste to migrate permanently to Australia each year.

In addition, the new announcement this week of a Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union Treaty is groundbreaking. Under this deal, Australia will provide migration pathways for people from Tuvalu facing the existential threat of climate change. It is the world’s first bilateral agreement on climate mobility.

How the new visa program will work

Based on the principles of “neighbourliness, care and mutual respect”, the treaty is a result of a request by Tuvalu for Australia to support and assist its efforts on climate change, security and human mobility.

According to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, “developed nations have a responsibility to provide assistance” to countries like Tuvalu that are deeply impacted by climate change.

Under the treaty, Australia will implement a special visa arrangement to allow Tuvaluans to work, study and live in Australia. This is not a refugee visa, but rather will allow up to 280 Tuvaluans (from a population of around 11,200) to migrate to Australia each year – presumably on a permanent basis.

They will be able to access Australian education, health care, and income and family support on arrival. This is a welcome development that will provide people with both legal and psychological security. Despite longstanding “promises” that Australia would not sit by as disasters continue to affect the Pacific, this program provides the long-awaited security that many have wanted.

Historically, most Pacific visa programs in Australia (and the region) have been tied to labour mobility. And none has specifically referenced climate change as a driving rationale. In contrast, the measures announced this week are deliberately framed in the context of climate change and – furthermore – are not tied purely to work.

Read more:
Both the US and Australia are adamant the Pacific “matters”. But only one is really moving the dial

Indeed, it remains to be seen just how far the special visas may extend. Beyond “work” and “study”, the treaty says Tuvaluans can also come to Australia to “live”. This implies the visa may potentially provide a humanitarian pathway for people who want – or need – to move. This would include older people, who would not qualify for existing Pacific labour migration programs.

Despite the threats posed by climate change, however, most Pacific peoples do not want to leave their homes. Being dislocated from home is one of the greatest forms of cultural, social and economic loss people can suffer. It can often lead to inter-generational trauma.

The treaty itself recognises Tuvaluans’ “deep, ancestral connections to land and sea”, and pledges Australia will work with Tuvalu to help people “stay in their homes with safety and dignity”. At the same time, people want to know they have safe options to move if they need to – with dignity and choice.

How novel is the new treaty?

While there are other programs in the Pacific that facilitate mobility, this is the first to do so specifically in the context of climate change. It also operates differently from arrangements implemented by New Zealand and the United States.

As part of the “realm” of New Zealand, for instance, people from the countries of Niue, Tokelau and Cook Islands are considered New Zealand citizens, so they have the right to move there if they wish.

New Zealand has also long had its “Pacific Access” visa category and the Samoa quota resident visa, which together enable around 2,400 people to move from the Pacific to New Zealand on a permanent basis each year.

The United States, meanwhile, has compacts of free association with the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, which enable eligible citizens to enter the US visa-free and live and work there indefinitely. However, those migrants do not have access to many government benefits and can easily fall through the cracks.

Last year, Argentina announced a special humanitarian visa program for people displaced from 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean due to disasters. Unlike the Australia–Tuvalu treaty, which allows for migration in anticipation of climate-related disasters, access to the Argentinian program is only available after displacement has occurred. As yet, no one has used the scheme.

For at least two decades, Pacific governments have made perennial requests for special visa pathways or relocation to Australia for their citizens.

In 2019, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed that Australia accept people from Tuvalu and other Pacific countries on account of projected climate impacts – but in exchange for “their territorial seas, their vast exclusive economic zones, including the preservation of their precious fisheries reserves”.

He was shot down by the then-prime minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, who labelled it “imperial thinking”.

What could come next?

Last week, Pacific Leaders endorsed a world-first Pacific framework on climate mobility, which has gone relatively unnoticed, despite the Australia–Tuvalu announcement.

I had the privilege of working and consulting with Pacific governments and communities to draft the early versions of the framework. It will hopefully inspire the creation of further visa arrangements and other concrete mobility mechanisms to ensure Pacific peoples have dignified pathways to move when they wish, as well as support and assistance to remain in place when possible.

Read more:
Australia has long viewed the Pacific as a place of threats that must be contained. It’s time for this mindset to change

Earlier this year, Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa suggested the Pacific could create a European Union-like entity, “based on cooperation and integration”, that would enable free movement across the region.

If enacted, it would follow a similar agreement signed by leaders in eastern Africa that specifically allows people in that region to cross borders in anticipation of or in response to disasters.

Though this is still a long way off in the Pacific, the agreement between Australia and Tuvalu could help pave the way for similar mobility pathways across the region and – ultimately – a broader regional scheme. If, and when, that time comes, the choice, agency and dignity of affected communities must be front and centre.

Jane McAdam receives funding from the Australian Research Council. In 2022, she was commissioned to lead the drafting of the world’s first regional framework on climate mobility for Pacific governments. In 2018, she co-led the drafting of the International Law Association’s Sydney Declaration of Principles on the Protection of Persons Displaced in the context of Sea Level Rise.

– ref. Australia’s offer of climate migration to Tuvalu residents is groundbreaking – and could be a lifeline across the Pacific – https://theconversation.com/australias-offer-of-climate-migration-to-tuvalu-residents-is-groundbreaking-and-could-be-a-lifeline-across-the-pacific-217514

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Anne Kenny, Associate Professor, School of Law, Murdoch University

This week, the High Court of Australia ordered the release of a Rohingya man from immigration detention where he had been for the last five and a half years.

Commentators and human rights groups have been celebrating this decision, which indicates the court will overturn a 20-year-old precedent.

The court has stated it will release its decision at a later time. It is important to wait for that judgement to determine the full implications of the decision and how it may limit the government’s power to detain non-citizens.

But here’s a brief rundown on the background of the case and some considerations of what could happen next.

Read more:
‘I have no rights’: what happens to stateless people in Australia after the High Court’s ruling?

What laws did the case focus on?

The laws in question are in the Migration Act, which states a non-citizen who does not hold a visa must be detained.

Currently people in immigration detention do not have the right to have a court determine whether their detention is necessary, reasonable, and/or proportionate. These assessments are undertaken by departmental officials and the minister.

The law considers detention mandatory, irrespective of the individual’s circumstances.

In the case of Al-Kateb v Godwin, the chief justice of the High Court described the need for detention:

A person […] might be young or old, dangerous or harmless, likely or unlikely to abscond, recently in detention or someone who has been there for years, healthy or unhealthy, badly affected by incarceration or relatively unaffected. The considerations that might bear upon the reasonableness of a discretionary decision to detain such a person do not operate.

The detained person must remain so until granted a visa or is removed.

Removal, if it’s needed, must occur as soon as “reasonably practicable”.

Over the years, many cases have tested these laws, and until now, the High Court has upheld them.

The lack of time limits on detention, and the inability to challenge it, have made Australia an outlier internationally.

The laws have also been heavily criticised, both domestically and globally.

Such has been the egregious nature of the system that the High Court allowed the UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and the Human Rights Law Centre to argue the international human rights dimensions of the case.

Despite this, the policy has had bipartisan political support for decades.

Read more:
‘Futile and cruel’: plan to charge fees for immigration detention has no redeeming features

Who was at the centre of the case?

The Rohingya refugee at the centre of the case is referred to as “NZYQ”. He’s around 30 years old.

As a Rohingya, he had not been able to obtain citizenship of Myanmar and was stateless.

He had arrived in Australia by boat in 2012. He had been granted a temporary visa, but this was cancelled in 2015 after he committed a criminal offence and was sentenced to a term in prison.

Still unable to get a visa, he was transferred to immigration detention once he’d served his sentence.

Australia accepted the man could not be sent to Myanmar, and instead tried unsuccessfully to have a number of other countries take him via their refugee or humanitarian programs.

Having found there was no country he could be removed to in the “reasonably foreseeable future” and his visa refused, the man was facing the prospect of remaining in detention indefinitely.

In light of this, the High Court found his ongoing detention was unlawful and they ordered his immediate release from detention.

Law that comes with a cost

There is an increasing number of people in detention who remain there for long periods of time. Some are stateless, and others who can’t be returned to their home countries due to risk of persecution.

Over the past five years, the average length of detention has increased from 445 days to 708 days. Some people have been detained for more than 10 years.

One of the many criticisms levelled at this system is that it’s extremely expensive.

Between 2020 and 2021, the average cost to the Australian taxpayer for one person in an immigration detention facility was $428,542.

That’s not to mention the significant physical and mental health toll on people.

There have been close to 3,000 incidents of self-harm, real and threatened, in detention over the past five years.

So what happens in the short term?

As a first step, the government may be facing the prospect of releasing a number of people who have been detained for several years.

It is estimated there may be 92 people impacted by the judgement.

The government has stated the Rohingya man in the case has been released on “strict conditions”, but we don’t know what sort of visa he might be on.

It is not clear what those conditions are, but legally, a person can be released from detention on a temporary “bridging visa”.

The Department of Home Affairs can impose conditions on a bridging visa which could include:

• where the person lives

• reporting regularly to the Department of Home Affairs

• that the person “not engage in criminal conduct”

• that they comply with a specific “Code of Behaviour”.

This, of course, should be accompanied by a range of psychological and social support services, which are currently very limited.

There will need to be consideration for better pathways to more visa certainty and permanent residency, especially for stateless people.

Legislative reform on the cards

We need to wait for the judgement to determine what, if any, legislative reform may be needed, but the government will be considering a number of options.

We should use this opportunity to ensure our laws comply with our human rights obligations.

International standards specify that a person detained for immigration purposes must be brought before a judicial authority “promptly” and that their detention must be subject to “regular periodic reviews”.

Read more:
New immigration detention bill could give Australia a fresh chance to comply with international law

There is a substantial body of evidence demonstrating that hasn’t been the case for far too long.

A key legislative reform should be to make detention discretionary instead of mandatory. People should also have access to independent review of their detention.

There has been a wealth of inquiries, submissions and examples from overseas which the government could look to, for a start.

More will be revealed about this case in the coming weeks and months, but there are many things the government can start doing immediately to better balance this unfair and punitive system.

Mary Anne Kenny has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and sitting fees from the Department of Home Affairs

– ref. The High Court has decided indefinite detention is unlawful. What happens now? – https://theconversation.com/the-high-court-has-decided-indefinite-detention-is-unlawful-what-happens-now-217438

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eileen O’Brien, Professor of Law, Discipline of Law, Justice and Society, University of South Australia

Each year, many older Australians experience abuse, neglect or financial exploitation, usually at the hands of their adult children or other close relatives.

A recent national prevalence study revealed one in six older Australians living at home experiences elder abuse. This may encompass various forms of abuse, such as emotional, financial, social, physical and sexual abuse, or neglect.

Despite elder abuse being such a common problem, older people often don’t get the help they need. With the right responses, we can make it easier for those working with older people, and the wider community, to support them.

Our new research reveals the key reasons older people experiencing harm do not receive the support they so desperately need.

Our study included a survey of nearly 700 service providers throughout Western Australia. Respondents worked in diverse fields including healthcare, law, aged care, financial services and law enforcement. We found four key obstacles to people getting help with elder abuse.

Read more:
Explainer: what is elder abuse and why do we need a national inquiry into it?

1. Older people are too scared to report abuse.

Older people are often afraid to report abuse because they fear repercussions both for themselves and for the perpetrator, usually an adult child or other close relative.

These concerns can mean an older person endures abuse for a long time. They may only seek help when the situation escalates to an extreme level or when someone else notices the ongoing mistreatment.

Equally important, they may fear other negative outcomes of reporting abuse. They may fear having to leave their home and enter residential care. They may fear increased isolation and loneliness, or that the abuse will get worse.

All these fears combined create a formidable barrier to older people promptly reporting abuse and getting the help they need.

2. Older people don’t know where to turn for help

Elder abuse cases are often complex, involving long family histories and complicated relationships. Older people trying to improve their situation may need support from multiple service providers. The challenge of accessing the right services and acting on their advice can be daunting.

Addressing complicated matters may require intensive support and advocacy for an extended time. In the words of one experienced advocate,

People don’t need to know the next ten steps. They need to know one step, maybe two, and then see where they are at.

Helping older people feel empowered to seek help requires simple, accessible channels of assistance, promoted through multiple formats and outreach efforts.

3. Government-funded responses to family violence are more focused on intimate partner violence and child protection, leaving elder abuse out of the picture

Most programs targeting family violence prioritise intimate partner violence and child protection, inadvertently sidelining elder abuse. Services such as shelters and perpetrator programs are not always compatible with the distinct characteristics of elder abuse.

Additionally, the gendered nature of family violence responses fails to address the diverse demographics of elder abuse, which includes older men. As a result, older people, regardless of gender, may struggle to access supports suited to their needs.

A refuge manager explained:

When a bed becomes available we have this awful job of deciding who’s more high-risk and who gets the bed. If an older person needs the bed, as opposed to a single mum with a newborn, unfortunately we would go with the mum. That really presents a barrier where there isn’t refuge accommodation specifically for older people.

There is a pressing need for a shift in focus to better recognise elder abuse as a significant issue and tailor responses to meet the specific needs of older people. This includes creating safe and accessible refuge options and providing specialised support services to address the multifaceted nature of elder abuse.

4. There’s low public awareness about what elder abuse looks like or how to respond

Awareness of elder abuse remains surprisingly low, hindering effective responses. Changing this requires clear public information campaigns and community-wide conversations about abuse. This includes greater awareness of the challenge for well-meaning adult children who might limit the choices of their older relatives, thinking they know best. This can result in unintended social isolation or even neglect.

A society that speaks openly about elder abuse, without stigma, is better equipped to support victims and intervene. By building public knowledge and promoting a culture where such issues can be freely discussed, we lay the groundwork for reducing its incidence.

We are living longer lives than ever before, meaning we can expect to spend more years in older age than previous generations. This is good news, but also means we need to do more work to support people to age well. Positive steps we can all take include tackling ageism when we see it and normalising conversations about abuse so older people can feel confident to seek help when it’s needed.

Catriona Stevens has received funding as an initiative of the WA Strategy to Respond to the Abuse of Older People (Elder Abuse) 2019-2029.

Professor Loretta Baldassar has received funding as an initiative of the WA Strategy to Respond to the Abuse of Older People (Elder Abuse) 2019-2029.

Eileen O’Brien 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. About 1 in 6 older Australians experiences elder abuse. Here are the reasons they don’t get help – https://theconversation.com/about-1-in-6-older-australians-experiences-elder-abuse-here-are-the-reasons-they-dont-get-help-216827