This week’s Optus outage affected 10 million people and hundreds of businesses. One of the early reasons given for the failure was a fault in the “core network”. The latest statement from the company points to “a network event” that caused the “cascading failure”.
The internet is complex, so most carriers, including Optus, use the concept of the “three layer network architecture” to explain it. This abstraction splits the entire network into layers.
This architecture is just one of many different ways of modeling complex networks. CC BY-SA
The access layer
This layer consists of the devices you use to connect to the internet. They include the customer equipment, National Broadband Network firewalls, routers, mobile towers, and the wall sockets you plug into.
The access layer is what people interact with most often. CC BY-SA
This layer generally isn’t interconnected, meaning each device sits at the end of the network. If you want to call a friend, for example, the signal would have to travel deeper into the network before coming back out to your friend’s phone.
An outage in the access layer might only affect you and your local neighbourhood.
The distribution layer
This layer interconnects the access layer with the core network (more on that later). Remember that the access layer regions aren’t connected to each other directly, so the distribution layer is the interconnecting layer.
Another term for the interconnection cables is “backhaul.”
It is a bit more abstract but generally includes large switches in local exchange buildings, and the cabling that joins them together and to the core network.
An exchange building in Bendigo, Victoria. Google maps, CC BY-SA
The main purpose of the distribution layer is to route data efficiently between access points. An outage in this layer could affect whole suburbs or geographic regions.
The core layer
The core layer is the most abstract. It is the central backbone of the entire network and connects the distribution layers together and connects telecommunication carrier networks with the global network.
While physically similar to the distribution layer, with switches and cables, it is much faster, contains more redundancy and is the location on the carrier’s network where device and customer management systems reside. The carrier’s operational and business systems are responsible for access, authentication, traffic management, service provision and billing.
The core layer is abstract but includes fibre optic cables and datacentres. Pexels, Lukas Coch/AAP, CC BY-SA
The core layer’s primary function is volume and speed. It connects data-centres, servers and the world wide web into the network using large fibre optic cables.
An outage in the core layer affects the entire country, as occurred with the Optus outage.
Why three layers?
A big problem with networking is how to keep everyone connected as the network expands.
In a small network it may be possible to link everyone together but as a network grows this would be unwieldy, so the network is divided into layers based on function.
The three layer model provides a functional description of a typical carrier network. In practice, networks are more complex, but we use the three layer model to assist with the understanding of where equipment and systems are found in the network, e.g., mobile towers are in the access layer.
A network of nine people would have 36 connections to link them to each other. The Conversation/Pexels, CC BY-SA
The core layer is designed to ensure that access layer traffic coming from and going to the Internet or data-centres is processed and distributed quickly and efficiently. Today many terabytes of data moves through a typical carrier core network daily.
Now a network of 20 people only needs 20 connections to a deeper layer. The Conversation/Pexels, CC BY-SA
Now you can see why a core layer failure could affect so many people.
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.
Asked on Wednesday to explain why Optus broadband and mobile services had been simultaneously knocked out for five hours, its chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarino blamed a “technical network fault”, and then added:
There is no soundbite that is going to do it justice, so we want to really bottom-out the root cause, and when we have that very clear and in a digestible form, we will be forthcoming.
There are a couple of ways to interpret this statement. Either she didn’t want to indicate what her engineers really thought had happened, or she believed Optus users wouldn’t be able to understand the truth.
Or she might not have been thinking about Optus users.
Her reference to a “soundbite” seems to suggest Optus regards its key audience as the media rather than its customers.
Optus is baked into too much of what we do
With more than 10 million mobile customers alone, accounting for more than one-third of Australia’s population, the Singapore-owned Optus has become integrated into almost everything Australia does, from the operation of railways to automatic teller machines, to hospitals to emergency services.
Its customers, both corporate and personal, have become increasingly familiar with technical terms and technical explanations.
Those customers not only know more than they did – understanding many of the terms that apply to both software and hardware – but they expect more from technology, knowing that even some of their own jobs can potentially be replaced by artificially intelligent algorithms.
Many of those customers would be not only be asking “how did this happen”, but also “how could this be allowed to happen, given what technology is capable of”.
The golden hour
Crisis communicators have long spoken of the need to respond within the so-called “golden hour”, a concept taken from the emergency services where it is important to get to the injured party promptly.
In an increasingly automated world, that’s what Optus ought to have been able to do. Its core business is using technology for communications.
If it couldn’t use its mobile network, it ought to have been ready to use something else, even email.
Technology firms have built-in intensifiers
Crisis communications expert Timothy Coombs argues that the damage done to reputations during a crisis can be worsened by “intensifiers”, such as the organisation’s past history of crises, its track record, and sometimes the severity of damage caused.
Significantly, he finds no “halo effect” from having handled things well in the past, only a “Velcro effect” from having handled things badly.
To that I would add that a further intensifier is the extent to which an organisation suffering from a technology failure is itself a technology organisation.
It’s hard to argue you are a victim of something you have put yourself forward as a master of.
Sharing what it knows, on the assumption that at least some of its users will understand it, would be one way of indicating that Optus trusts its customers and is worthy of their trust.
Peter Roberts 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kayleen Manwaring, Senior Research Fellow, Allens Hub for Technology, Law & Innovation, and Senior Lecturer, School of Private & Commercial Law, UNSW Sydney
Shutterstock
In the United States, 41 states have filed lawsuits against Meta for allegedly driving social media addiction in its young users (under the age of 18), amid growing concerns about the negative effects of platforms.
The lawsuits allege Meta has been harvesting young users’ data, deploying features to promote compulsive use of both Facebook and Instagram, and misleading the public about the negative effects of these features.
What might we expect to happen next? And are there potential consequences for Australia?
Leveraging whistleblower revelations
The most significant suit, filed in a federal court in California, involves 33 states. The claim is based on breaches of state consumer protection statutes and common law principles regarding deceptive, unfair or unconscionable conduct, and federal privacy statutory provisions and regulations (collectively “COPPA”) which specifically protect children.
This co-ordinated action is reminiscent of other class actions in the US and United Kingdom by Rohingya refugees against Facebook for its role in enabling hate speech against their community in Myanmar.
These cases rely in part on revelations made by former Meta employee Frances Haugen in 2021 about the role Facebook’s algorithms play in facilitating harms on the platform. Haugen’s testimony suggests algorithms deployed across Facebook and Instagram were designed to increase content sharing, and therefore profits, using data harvested from users over many years.
These algorithms play a crucial role in determining what kind of content viewers are exposed to, how long they engage with it, and the likelihood of them sharing it.
According to Haugen, Meta made changes to its algorithms in 2018 to prioritise meaningful social interactions. These changes, she said, impacted how content was viewed on the news feed, leading to increased sharing of negative content such as hate speech.
The California case is notable for the specific allegations around strategies used to keep young people interacting with Facebook and Instagram. For instance, the plaintiffs have elaborated on the impact of the “infinite scroll” feature introduced in 2016.
This feature prevents users from viewing a single post in isolation. Instead it provides a continuous stream of content without a natural endpoint. Haugen described this as being similar to giving users small dopamine hits. It leaves them wanting more and less likely to exercise self-control.
The plaintiffs in the California case claim this feature encourages users, and especially young users, to compulsively use the platforms – negatively affecting their wellbeing and mental health.
They say the recommendation algorithms used by Meta periodically present users with harmful materials. These include “content related to eating disorders, violent content, content encouraging negative self-perception and body image issues, [and] bullying content”.
They also allege features such as “variable reward schedules” are implemented to encourage compulsive use by young people. This causes further physical and mental harm (such as from a lack of sleep).
Consequences for Australia
In the US, federal laws substantially restrict liability of online intermediaries such as Meta for content shared by users.
The Federal Court can impose significant penalties for violations of the Online Safety Act. But this doesn’t cover all the harmful content on social media, such as some linked to eating disorders and negative self-image.
Addressing young users’ compulsive social media use is a different challenge altogether. Some measures against this are possible. For example, if the US deception allegations are proven, any evidence that this extends to Australian users may ground an action against Meta for misleading or deceptive conduct (or false or misleading representations) under the Australian Consumer Law.
Penalties under the Australian Consumer Law have increased since the Google case, likely due to the deep pockets of platforms. Options for courts awarding penalties include 30% of a platform’s turnover, or three times the value of the benefit to the offending entity.
However, platforms are in a stronger position where conduct isn’t misleading, false or deceptive, but is merely “manipulative” or “unfair”. For instance, the infinite scroll feature is unlikely to be considered misleading or deceptive under Australian law.
Australia also has no legislative equivalent to COPPA. Australia’s law of unconscionable conduct requires such a high level of harsh or oppressive conduct that it’s extremely difficult to prove.
One recent unconscionable conduct case brought by a problem gambler based on the addictive design of electronic poker machines failed in the Federal Court.
Shortcomings in the current law have, in part, led to calls for a new prohibition on unfair trading practices. Pressure is also mounting to reform the ineffective and under-enforced Privacy Act.
We need collaboration and innovation
There are still many gaps in Australian law required to protect consumers, especially children, against harms posed by social media platforms. But domestic law can only go so far in protecting people using a medium that operates (mostly) seamlessly across borders.
As such, international law scholars have suggested more creative approaches in the context of online hate speech. One suggestion has been to make platforms accountable for their actions under the laws of the country where they are headquartered, for enabling crimes that have taken place in other jurisdictions.
In 2021, the world welcomed a US district court’s order for Facebook to disclose various materials to The Gambia relating to hate speech against the Rohingya community in Myanmar.
In doing so, the court strengthened The Gambia’s claims in a pending action before the International Court of Justice. This action claims the Myanmar government had, through its genocidal actions against the Rohingya people, breached its obligations under the Genocide Convention – and that hate speech amplified on Facebook enabled the violence.
As society grapples with the implications of mass data collection and profit-maximising algorithms, protecting individuals will require international co-operation and a re-evaluation of legal frameworks.
Kayleen Manwaring receives funding from the UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation and the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the Consumer Policy Research Centre (Vic) and is Deputy Chair and NSW Coordinator for an Australian chapter of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology.
Siddharth Narrain 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.
PODCAST: How the Hamas-Israel War is a Catalyst of Global Order Change - Buchanan and Manning
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A View from Afar, by Dr Paul G. Buchanan and Selwyn Manning.
In this the eleventh episode of A View from Afar for 2023, political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and journalist Selwyn Manning examine how the post-World War II liberal internationalist system is being challenged by a fluid constellation of global and regional powers to influence the shape of an emerging new world order.
And Paul and Selwyn also assess how this massive shift in geopolitic demarcations is forming, relatively quickly, into a world of bipolarity where on one side we have a multipolar constellation of states, and on the other the traditional western liberal democracies.
The catalyst behind this rapidly forming bipolarity is conflict.
And, most recently, it is clear, that the Israel-Hamas war – and the atrocities committed initially by Hamas and more lately by Israel forces – is driving the world toward a transitional moment.
It appears, that what is emerging from the current multipolar system – and think here the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court among many other global bodies – is a situation that is not merely new-and-old Great Powers competing as nation-states.
But rather, what we see are groupings of fluid constellations of powers competing as blocs to influence the shape of what is to come.
In this episode Paul and Selwyn discuss and describe what is now evident, and sketch out what will likely emerge.
Of course, as mentioned, the Israel-Hamas war lays bare any claims of morality and exposes the hypocrisies of all sides in conflicts.
In particular the Hamas-Israel war exposes the west – led by the United States of America, the United Kingdom and various European states – to an argument that the west is morally moribund as it continues its colonial/post colonial attitudes of support of Israel as the latter commits an apparent disproportionate-defence offensive against Palestine’s peoples.
The argument appears to carry weight, especially as this western axis sustains its support for Israel’s war machine even while, on international humanitarian law grounds, the atrocities being committed against Palestine’s civilian population are morally indefensible and potentially legally enforceable as war crimes.
For example; retribution for the atrocities and despicable crimes committed by Hamas against defenceless Israeli citizens does not remove culpability for the State of Israel as it delivers on an apparent intention to annihilate Hamas and all people – children, the elderly, all innocents – who may surround Israel’s targets.
IHL shows how duty of care is not excused even if civilians are used as “human shields”, and at this juncture, it is not clear, whether that cited flawed-justification is founded on truth.
This is the position of what was once an authoritarian axis.
But what has formed is a multipolar-constellation that supports the Palestinian cause on postcolonial, Global South, and solidarity grounds.
The Questions:
So if all of this carnage is the catalyst for a new world order, what comes next?
Will we see the emergence of a parallel global institutional structure that develops as a counter-balance to the west’s post-WWII world order?
Has the west’s leading power lost its moral authority through its support for a war machine that has caused the deaths of over 10,000 people of innocent disposition, while itself refuses to be a signatory member state to the International Criminal Court and its principles of global justice?
And as such, has the west ceded persuasive moral authority to the rising constellation of once authoritarian-states that dominate the opposing bloc?
And does the west, as a consequence, find itself powerless to counter the migration of moderate independent states that are repelled by the immorality of the west’s arguments, laid bare by the Hamas-Israel war?
INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:
Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.
To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
The idea of helping drivers to avoid speeding is more than 100 years old. But early speed-limiting technologies proposed a top speed limit (similar to the way e-scooters are regulated in Australia), rather than allowing motorists the option to break the speed limit.
If we don’t do intelligent speed assist, what’s the alternative? Currently, we must constantly monitor speed limits and adjust our speed accordingly to avoid speeding. That means looking often at our speedometers.
There is some research to suggest continually taking our eyes off the road to review our speedometer could be dangerous.
Given how often speed limits can change on a route, and that we all make mistakes, it’s no wonder speeding is so common.
Will it work?
Installing intelligent speed assist in all cars could prevent at least 8% and up to 19% of all crashes Australia-wide. This represents up to 200 lives saved per year.
A NSW Centre for Road Safety trial found advisory intelligent speed systems reduced speeding in 89% of vehicles, across more than 1.9 million kilometres of testing.
Intelligent speed assist is not yet a perfect system. Hurdles to overcome include:
different speed sign coverage and designs from state to state
maintaining an accurate map of speed limits across Australia for GPS
potential over-reliance on the feature in varying driving conditions, such as wet weather, corners and so on.
But shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to overcome these hurdles, to make such a life-saving, child-saving technology work as well as it can?
What’s already been done?
Legislation in 2022 has made intelligent speed assist technology mandatory for all new cars sold in the European Union.
In Australia, if you drive a relatively new car, you may already have the option of intelligent speed assist. For example, if you drive a new Ford, you can activate its Intelligent Speed Limiter.
Cars have an average age of 10.4 years. So retrofitting older cars with intelligent speed assist technology has been trialled. Despite the European legislation, there’s no expectation of a wide-scale retro-fitting program.
It is common, though, to retrofit fleet cars such as government and company vehicles with intelligent speed assist. This improves fleet safety and distributes new technologies when these vehicles are sold on the second-hand market.
‘But I only speed a little bit’
Research shows most people think they’re better-than-average drivers. More than one in four Australians think it’s ok to speed if driving “safely”.
But you can’t speed and drive safely. For every 1km/h increase in speed, there is a 4% increase in fatal crashes. If everyone was to increase their speed by just 1km/h, we could expect an extra 48 deaths a year.
Road deaths remain the number one killer of children in Australia and speed is the most common factor in a crash.
Current measures to reduce speeding haven’t gone far enough. Despite two in three Australian drivers admitting to speeding every week, only one in ten got a speeding fine last year.
If you are worried about the government losing out on revenue, don’t. Road traffic crashes cost the Australian economy A$27 billion a year. Speed camera fines generate just $1.5 billion a year.
3 actions to get started
Intelligent speed assist is not a silver bullet. But it is one of five crucial actions that can make zero road deaths possible. More than 200 cities around the world have already achieved this goal at least five times for a calendar year since 2009.
Here are three actions to get started:
install intelligent speed assist in all all public buses and government fleet cars – the NSW government fleet, for example, has 25,000 cars
require intelligent speed assist for a 5-star ANCAP safety rating
adopt the EU legislation in Australia to require intelligent speed assist in all new cars.
We have an urgent problem, we have the technology, we have the evidence it works, so what’s stopping us using it to save lives on our roads?
The authors have provided footage online of intelligent speed assist in action, for free reuse.
Matthew ‘Tepi’ Mclaughlin receives research funding from the Australian government’s Medical Research Future Fund and the government of Western Australia’s Healthway. He also receives salary support through the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. He is a member of the Asia-Pacific Society for Physical Activity and a member of the Active Transport Advisory Group of Westcycle.
Courtney Babb receives funding from the Government of Western Australia, via the Department of Transport, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). He is a member of the WA Greens.
Paul Roberts receives funding from: 1. the government of Western Australia via the Road Safety Commission of Western Australia funding of the Western Australian Centre for Road Safety; 2. the Australian Office of Road Safety.
Surrogacy offers the chance of parenthood for those who can’t carry a pregnancy for medical or social reasons.
In a surrogacy arrangement, a surrogate gives birth to a baby for the intended parents to raise. Most intended parents are heterosexual or gay couples, but single people can also use surrogacy to have a child.
In the 2021–2022 financial year, 213 Australian babies were born through international surrogacy – an arrangement between Australian intended parents and a foreign surrogate. Just 100 surrogacy births were reported by Australian and New Zealand fertility clinics in 2021.
Australian surrogacy laws and ethical guidelines aim to protect the interest of everyone involved with surrogacy. They also recognise the most important consideration of all is the welfare of the children born.
However, children born through international surrogacy aren’t protected by Australian laws because they’re born overseas. Our new research shows this can increase the physical and psychological risks to the child.
Making surrogacy easier to access in Australia could protect future children born through surrogacy.
We surveyed more than 300 Australians who were parents through surrogacy, or were planning on having a child via surrogacy. We asked if they had picked international or domestic surrogacy and why, and we asked about the fertility treatment they and their surrogate received.
Respondents who had a child through international surrogacy commonly reported using two fertility treatments currently banned in Australia: multiple embryo transfer and anonymous egg donation.
Surrogates sometimes supply their own egg, but mostly the egg is supplied from one of the intended parents or a donor. Once the egg has been fertilised, the resulting embryo is then transferred to the surrogate.
In Australia, only one embryo can be transferred to surrogates at a time. This is because multiple embryo transfer increases the risk of twin, or even triplet, pregnancies. These pregnancies are linked to higher rates of complications for the pregnant woman and the baby, including preterm birth. Preterm birth is when a baby is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy and is the main cause of death in children below the age of five.
Of the survey respondents who had completed international surrogacy, 37% reported multiple embryos had been transferred to their surrogate. Some 27% of parents through international surrogacy had a preterm baby and 11% had twins or triplets. In contrast, just 11% of parents through surrogacy in Australia had a preterm baby and none had twins or triplets.
If a donor egg is used in Australia, the donor-conceived person can access information about their donor once they turn 18. Anonymous donation is not allowed because research shows many people born through egg or sperm donation want to know the identity of their donor.
Of the respondents who used donor eggs in international surrogacy, 47% said the identity of the donor was anonymous. Australians born through international surrogacy with anonymous egg donors may never know who their genetic mother is.
The most popular reasons for picking international surrogacy were that surrogacy in Australia is long and complicated and it is difficult to find an Australian surrogate.
Most Australian surrogacy arrangements occur between friends and family members. If this is not possible, intended parents can join online communities to meet potential surrogates. However, the number of intended parents in these communities far outweighs the number of surrogates.
For those lucky to find an Australian surrogate, they must complete a series of legal requirements as part of the arrangement. These requirements protect the interests of surrogacy participants and include legal advice, counselling and a court order to transfer parentage from the surrogate to the intended parents.
With international surrogacy, commercial agencies or brokers can match intended parents to a surrogate and the various Australian legal requirements may not be needed.
In some countries, you don’t have to go to court for legal parentage of babies born via surrogacy. Unsplash/Omurden Cengiz
How can the risks of international surrogacy be reduced?
Intended parents considering international surrogacy should choose single embryo transfers and, if required, a known donor.
However, intended parents may not always be equipped with the information or resources to make this choice. Known donors may not always be available overseas and some of our respondents said they transferred multiple embryos because they were following the advice of their doctor.
Most respondents said they would prefer to complete surrogacy in Australia if it were possible. This means if surrogacy was more accessible in Australia, fewer people might go overseas and more babies might be born in Australia where regulations protect the child’s physical and psychological health.
To make surrogacy more accessible, surrogacy laws should be reviewed by an inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs recommended such an inquiry in 2016. This was never undertaken, but we don’t know why.
The Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission recently published recommendations for surrogacy law reform in the United Kingdom. One recommendation removes the need for a court to grant intended parents legal recognition. This is a welcome step forward.
However, the recommendations have also been criticised for not allowing surrogate compensation, which could discourage some people from becoming surrogates. Compensation is financial acknowledgement of the time and effort involved with the surrogacy pregnancy and is currently not allowed in Australia.
Law reform in Australia must address all barriers for domestic surrogacy, including the shortage of surrogates, to protect the welfare of children born through surrogacy.
Ezra Kneebone receives funding from the Australian Government Department of Education.
Karin Hammarberg works for the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority.
Kiri Beilby 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Knight, Adjunct Lecturer in Terrorism and Assymetric Conflict and Senior Researcher in Urban Warfare (UNSW), Charles Sturt University
With Israeli Defence Forces now reportedly surrounding Gaza City, the most densely packed part of the Gaza Strip, their fight against Hamas has entered a new phase focused primarily on urban warfare – some of it underground.
Sappers are the soldiers who clear paths through obstacles with machines and explosives, enabling other troops to overwhelm the enemy. They also create such obstructions and lay traps and mines when trying to defend a position.
Tunnels are a sapper’s job, too. Indeed, this is where the word comes from: the ancient technique of “sapping” beneath the surface to approach an enemy position protected from their arrows, bullets or shells.
As part of their plan for defence, Hamas sappers have excavated a huge series of tactical tunnels. Some are interlinked, some isolated. Some have been dug far below where bombs can reach, some are near the surface to allow access.
Tunnels and “mouseholes” in walls also allow for undetected movement between buildings. Hamas fighters expect they can emerge from these holes to attack Israeli soldiers before disappearing again.
In addition, Hamas sappers have likely prepared many improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – some hidden in walls to detonate when armoured vehicles pass by and other, larger explosives buried under roads.
Some tunnels may also be set as traps to entice Israeli soldiers to enter as they search for hostages.
Urban warfare is excruciatingly slow
As the war enters a new phase, it is pitting a grimly determined Israeli Defence Force (IDF), with the world’s best capabilities for urban warfare, against a force ready for martyrdom that has prepared for this fight for years. It will also be happening on terrain that analysts argue greatly favours the defender.
Though fighting in Gaza presents its own unique challenges, there are some lessons to be learned from the operations to eliminate Islamist fighters from the Iraqi city of Mosul and the southern Philippines city of Marawi in 2016-17.
In Mosul, a US-supported Iraqi force of about 100,000 took nine months to destroy an ISIS force of thousands in a thoroughly fortified city. The coalition lost 8,000 troops and many tanks and bulldozers to massive IEDs.
Progress was equally slow in Marawi, where it took five months for Filipino forces to defeat ISIS-Maute fighters. Troops could sometimes secure only one building per day because of the constant threat of ambush from tunnels and IEDs hidden in entrances, windows and stairwells.
Three layers of challenges
Urban war presents armies with compounding challenges.
The first layer is perceptual. There is a cognitive dissonance between a liberal society’s beliefs around the need for restraint in conflict and the primordial demands of urban war with its high costs in blood, destruction and legitimacy. Armies are averse to preparing for such horror.
Second, there are tactical challenges with fighting among buildings:
the threat of remote attack by drones or IEDs
the uncertainty created by hidden adversaries
the extreme exposure of forces as they advance
the dilution of combat power as forces are channelled, isolated and dispersed among buildings, with very restricted views
the degrading of sensors and communications systems.
Third, and critically, the presence of civilians in urban war zones imposes moral and ethical challenges. They suffer disproportionately and catastrophically, both as immediate casualties and from displacement and disease following the destruction of cities.
Military commanders also face a proportionality dilemma when it comes to interpreting international humanitarian law. They need to balance the necessity of their actions and the survival of soldiers against causing unintended but foreseeable civilian harm.
Further complexities include:
the obligation of forces to provide security and logistical support to noncombatants
the security threat from phone and social media usage by civilians
civilians who are hostile, obstructive or offer unarmed resistance
the psychological and political burden on commanders that may distort their decision-making.
How Israel has been preparing for this moment
The IDF has previously experienced these challenges in Gaza. After Israeli occupation ended in 2005, militant attacks prompted major incursions by the army in 2008 and 2014. That fighting taught the IDF key lessons.
From a political standpoint, Israel realised the importance of winning the contest of international and domestic public opinion. From a military and operational standpoint, the IDF learned that precision air power alone could not eliminate the threat from Hamas. Well-protected armoured vehicles were essential, and new capabilities were needed to counter the increasing use of tunnels by Hamas.
As a result, the IDF is uniquely well-equipped for urban operations, with the world’s best-protected tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
It also has world-leading armoured engineering vehicles, such as the D9 armoured “Doobi” bulldozer. With the D9, houses can be demolished instead of entered, reducing the risk of ambush and IEDs. However, these bulldozers have been controversially associated with destroying homes as punishment.
The D9 will be used in the war to create safe paths through terrain that may be mined, push alternative routes through buildings and build protective berms around “secured areas” to consolidate the IDF’s progress. Some of these bulldozers can even be operated by remote control.
The IDF’s Caterpillar D9R armoured bulldozer. Zachi Evenor/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Other armoured engineering vehicles include the Puma minefield breacher, with the Carpet mine and IED clearing system that can detonate or disrupt hidden munitions with blasts from
fuel-air explosive rockets. Engineer vehicles also carry equipment that can jam IED circuits or transmissions. Some may also have the THOR system, which uses lasers to explode IEDs.
Soldiers are also trained to find, operate in and destroy tunnels. They include elements of the Sarayet Yahalom, a special forces unit that uses specialised demolition charges, subterranean drones and robots.
The Israelis lead the world in highly classified subterranean sensing research, including the use of geospatial, acoustic, seismic, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and ground-penetrating radar technologies. The IDF’s public statements suggest tunnels within 20 metres of the surface can be mapped.
The IDF tunnel sappers also have niche armoured fighting vehicles. Some are fitted with the technologies mentioned above, others with drilling equipment that can bore down into tunnels to deliver devices, materials or explosives. One, the Nakpilon, uniquely has a door at the front to deploy soldiers straight into tunnel entrances.
The IDF has generally preferred to destroy tunnels from the surface rather than entering, but some Yahalom and other reconnaissance special forces train to fight below ground, alongside the Oketz dog unit, with specialised vision, breathing and communications equipment.
Given the scale of the tunnel network and the task of recovering hostages, some human reconnaissance seems unavoidable. History suggests this will be done by pairs or individuals, perhaps the Mista’arvim elite undercover units, who may operate by disguising themselves as Hamas fighters.
Given the Hamas advantage of home terrain and the advanced technology deployed by Israel, both sides will likely inflict bloody surprises on one another. The IDF has the military capability to prevail, but the human cost of the ground war and the outcome of the crucial geopolitical war of narratives remain unclear.
Charles Knight 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan St John, Honorary Associate Professor, Economic Policy Centre, Auckland Business School, University of Auckland
With a National-led coalition government taking shape (how long it takes is another matter), the nation’s “squeezed middle” awaits the financial relief promised during the election campaign.
As the lead party, National’s policies should be central to negotiations. For those without children, its proposed payment of the full Independent Earner Tax Credit for incomes between NZ$24,000 and $66,000 would kick in from April 1 next year.
This would help some 380,000 people in low and modestly paid work with an extra $10 a week. It’s not a lot, but better than nothing. For those with children, National has promised an extra $25 a week from the In Work Tax Credit – providing neither parent receives any part of a core welfare benefit.
At an annual cost of about $200 million, around 160,000 low-income “working families” would gain enough each week to buy a large block of cheese.
But for those roughly 180,000 families where parents are without work and who need welfare to survive, National’s election promises will deliver nothing.
This raises real questions about incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon’s promise to stick to the targets outlined in the Child Poverty Reduction Act and halve child poverty by 2028.
With a willingness to re-examine what is on the table, however, New Zealand’s worst-off children can be helped in a meaningful way. At the same time, the work effort of low-income parents can be better rewarded.
How the poverty trap works
The various tax credits available through Working for Families (WFF) are fiendishly complicated but utterly critical for the negotiating coalition parties to understand.
When a family’s joint gross income exceeds the (very low) fixed $42,700 threshold, every extra dollar earned denies them 27 cents of WFF assistance. To help explain this, it’s useful to imagine a typical family in those circumstances.
Let’s say this family has two children at school, with one parent in full-time employment and the other half-time, both on the minimum wage. That gives them a total annual gross income of $70,824, or $63,984 after tax.
WFF currently provides a maximum of $320 per week, made up of $248 from the Family Tax Credit (FTC) and $72 from the In Work Tax Credit (IWTC). But the parents’ joint income is over the fixed threshold, meaning they lose entitlement to $146 of WFF. This leaves just $174 a week for the needs of their children.
With rent or a mortgage taking maybe half of their net income, their budget just doesn’t add up. The weekly deficit must be covered by food parcels from foodbanks, special assistance from Work and Income, defaults on payments, high-interest borrowing or selling assets.
The parents are already stretched, but let’s say the mother decides to go back to full-time paid work. Her additional gross income would see Inland Revenue reduce her WFF entitlement by $116 a week – or demand repayment of any overpaid entitlements.
If she has a student loan, as many do, she could be liable for another repayment of $51 a week. Her extra income of $454 for 20 hours’ work leaves her better off by just $207.
Letting people work and earn more
To alleviate this kind of poverty trap, National proposes to increase the WFF threshold from $42,700 to $50,000. But this does not happen until 2026, just in time for the next election. In the meantime, rising costs will erode the family’s extra weekly $25 from the IWTC.
To increase the threshold to $50,000 immediately would cost about $250 million according to National’s own calculations. Delaying the change only decreases the incentive to work, with flow-on effects for productivity.
Rather than increasing the IWTC by $25, bringing forward the higher income threshold would be a more effective way to help squeezed middle-income “working” families by loosening the vice of that poverty trap.
It would deliver an extra $38 a week of WFF on joint incomes between $50,000 and, $100,000 or more, depending on the number of children. This would also address child poverty, as about half of the country’s poor children are in families in low-paid work.
But what of the other poor children in families that get nothing from National’s election promises? If their parents are so poor they need a benefit, or part of a benefit, they do not receive the IWTC and would gain nothing from the threshold increase.
These families live on budgets that fall far short of a liveable income. Many slip further into debt every week, waste precious time arguing for means-tested top-ups from Work and Income, or need food parcels from stretched and underfunded foodbanks.
A simple solution
For child poverty targets to have even a remote chance of being met, these worst-off children must be helped. This would best be achieved by an immediate increase to the Family Tax Credit, over and above the required inflation adjustment.
Here is a counter-intuitive but serious suggestion: reduce the In Work Tax Credit by $25 a week and increase the Family Tax Credit by the same amount.
This would mean the poorest families are better off. The working poor would see no difference, as their IWTC goes down while their FTC goes up. But they would still be helped greatly by the increase in the income abatement threshold, because any extra earnings would not be quite so badly penalised.
Much more could be done to reduce the poverty trap, including a reduction of the 27% abatement rate, indexation of the threshold for inflation, and a review of the penal student loan arrangements.
But this basic suggestion could still be a win-win for National’s key objectives at roughly the same eventual annual cost. It should be only a beginning, but it would provide a better path for future adjustments.
Susan St John is affiliated with the Child Poverty Action Group.
Penicillins are the most prescribed class of antibiotics in Australia. Originally derived from a fungus, penicillin antibiotics such as amoxicillin are used to treat common infections, including chest, sinus, ear, urinary tract and skin infections.
Penicillins are effective against a wide range of bacteria that cause common infections. But their activity is not so broad as to impact on good bacteria in our gut like other antibiotic classes do. They’re also cheap and readily accessible.
Up to 20% of Australians admitted in hospital say they have a penicillin allergy.
But not everyone who thinks they’re allergic to penicillin actually is. Research from our team and others suggests that if we assess all these patients, up to 90% are not allergic to it.
People who mistakenly think they’re allergic to penicillin may not get the most effective or safest antibiotics to treat their infection.
They are also at greater risk of developing multidrug-resistant infections or “superbugs”. This is because the antibiotic will kill off the bacteria that are susceptible to it, but the resistant bacteria are left behind to proliferate and cause further infection.
People who receive second-line antibiotics are more likely to have complications, such as antibiotic-induced gut infections. Second-line antibiotics tend to have a wider range of activity, killing both the bacteria causing infection, and the good bacteria required to keep our gut in balance. This allows bugs like Clostridium difficile, which normally lives in our gut but is controlled by other bacteria, to overgrow and cause inflammation.
For the health system, using second-line antibiotics means longer, more complicated hospital stays. Hospital stays for patients with penicillin allergies cost up to 63% more more than those without. It also results in greater costs for medications and greater resources required to treat the patient.
Why do people think they’re allergic?
People incorrectly believe they are allergic to penicillin for a number of reasons.
They may have experienced side effects from penicillin, such as nausea or diarrhoea. But though unpleasant, this doesn’t mean an allergy.
Others had a rash as a child, but this could have been due to the illness itself or an interaction between the virus and the antibiotic. An Epstein-Barr viral infection treated with amoxicillin, for example, causes a fine, red rash.
It’s important to know your true allergy status when you go to hospital. Shutterstock
Some believe a family history of reactions to penicillin means they cannot take them. But there is no evidence penicillin allergy is inherited.
If some time has passed between exposure, people can lose the allergic response. This is typically seen in adults who had a mild allergy as a child, but lose the response with time, so are said to have “grown out” of their allergy.
Then there are people who have had a genuine and serious reaction to penicillin. This includes anaphylaxis, with profound swelling, breathing difficulties and low blood pressure, and severe life-threatening reactions such as Steven-Johnson’s syndrome, which causes widespread blisters and wounds that resemble burns.
Testing for penicillin
When someone says they have a penicillin allergy, we first get them to explain what happened with the reaction, including to what antibiotic, in what context and how severe it was.
Then we perform skin tests to further assess the person’s risk of reaction. If skin tests are negative, we can then give the patient the penicillin in question under supervision (a “challenge”) to see if they react.
Skin tests assess a patient’s reaction to the allergen. Shutterstock
Some people can skip the skin tests altogether and go straight to the challenge if the history tells us they are at low risk of reacting.
Our study followed 195 patients who reported a penicillin allergy across six Sydney hospitals. In the first phase, we assessed 85 people and found 82% weren’t allergic to penicillin.
In the second phase, we assessed 110 people, of whom 69% weren’t allergic.
This is slightly lower than research on the population as a whole, because we only looked at people who were referred for an allergy assessment. Many more patients carry an allergy label than those referred for testing.
In our study, eight weeks after their test, just 54% of participants in phase one correctly knew their penicillin allergy status. Some allergic people believed they were not allergic, and many non-allergic people believed they were allergic.
For phase two, we ensured people received a standardised letter outlining their results in addition to having a doctor or nurse explain them. This time, 92% were correct in their understanding when contacted eight weeks later.
Ruling out allergies among people who think they can’t have penicillin is time- and labour-intensive. The wait time from someone first being referred to an allergy clinic to having testing can be up to two years. And it’s usually not available outside major metropolitan hospitals.
We need to improve access to testing and also look at when people can access allergy services. When a person is sick in hospital with a serious infection, it’s not the right time for testing.
We also need to ensure the results of allergy tests translate to the real world so people know their true allergy status. The fragmentation of our medical records are a barrier to clear and effective communication of a patient’s true allergy status, and urgently need to be improved.
Read the other articles in The Conversation’s series on the dangers of antibiotic resistance here.
Winnie Tong has received funding from Maridulu Budyari Gumal, the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE), Triple I Clinical Academic Group seed grant 2017, and the Balnaves Foundation. The authors would like to acknowledge Professor Andrew Carr, their collaborators and participants on this project.
Jacqueline Loprete 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.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the impacts of air quality on high-rise living. However, apartments face a range of atmospheric challenges. These include air and noise pollution, temperature and weather extremes, bushfire smoke and insects.
Our newly published research shows how apartment residents struggle with the impacts of unhealthy homes. It’s a result of decades of urban planning based on fossil fuel use and high-rise building standards poorly adapted to the Australian environment.
Residents in our study preferred centrally located apartments to detached, car-dependent houses. However, our interviews revealed apartments were hot in summer, cold in winter and prone to mould, condensation, noise and air pollution. The lower people’s socioeconomic status, the more likely they are to be exposed to such problems.
At the same time, residents’ experiences pointed to low-cost, low-tech solutions. Sustainable, climate-adapted apartment designs would allow for better natural airflow, shading and screening.
Ayasha’s experience in a two-bedroom apartment, built in 2017, highlighted the health costs of flawed design and a lack of insulation. She told us:
[…] at night-time it gets really cold because of the fog, like the interior glass gets wet and the room is always wet even when the heater is on […] Both of my daughter and me are having this cough thing because of the continuous heater […] For the last three weeks continuously she has this runny nose, like teary eyes and cough. She’s not recovering at all.
For Naomi, dampness in the 2016 two-bedroom apartment she and her husband bought caused concern about mould:
We’re conscious of the mould and we’re trying to keep the house aerated but it is very hard. In the bathroom, there’s a vent but it’s not strong and you don’t really want the window open for too long when it’s cold, so it does get a real build-up of moisture […] You’ll wake up and you can see a layer of wet all up the windows and on the ledge and it’s really hard to dry everything out.
Sarah’s 2018 apartment lacked flyscreens and ceiling fans to allow natural airflow through all the rooms. She said air conditioning became essential for coping with summer heat and avoiding unwanted insects.
We did open the doors a couple of times, the mosquitoes would get in and they would attack the baby. Like one time, she had 20 bites on her head one night […] and that was when we realised, no, we’re just gonna have to put the air con on.
Recent research on how to deliver sustainable apartment housing underscores the limitations of the National Construction Code, building materials and minimum regulations. This 2023 study called for better regulations targeting project design, compliance with standards, property valuation and transparent information about properties’ sustainability features.
As with all complex reforms, there are concerns the development industry will resist. Thus, some have suggested expanding the build-to-rent sector to achieve more sustainable apartment design.
Typically, diversified construction, finance and superannuation firms support this model of developing housing specifically to be rented. They have deeper pockets and a longer-term interest in the energy performance of buildings.
Yet studies show the build-to-rent sector is concentrated in higher-value locations. Costly subsidies and incentives would be needed to move it to areas where better, affordable housing is most needed.
Low-cost, low-tech solutions
Residents’ experiences reveal a range of low-cost, low-tech solutions that could easily be mandated for all apartment housing. These solutions include flyscreens, ceiling fans, external shading and adequate insulation.
Reminiscent of pre-air-conditioning building design, these solutions allow for flexibility in building facades, enabling both airflow and screening.
The same principles characterised early 20th-century, high-rise architecture. These buildings featured terraces, mesh balustrades, exhaust flues, cross-ventilation, sunrooms, external shading, louvres and screens “as a strategy of climate adaptability”.
The rise of air conditioning in the 20th century cemented apartments as enclosed environments. Models that depend on shutting the doors and windows and turning on the air conditioner are no longer viable in a climate crisis. Increasing living costs also mean many households can’t afford to use air conditioning.
Ceiling fans, louvres and cross-ventilation are a proven, low-cost way to create comfortable and healthy conditions. Shutterstock
Time to champion an Australian high-rise architecture
Australian governments, including the NSW government, have committed to delivering more affordable housing. But high-rise developments are often sited in polluted, noisy, freezing and sweltering environments. They get clustered around freeways and other busy roads to avoid political backlash from residents opposed to such developments.
Planning that optimises building orientation – to best access sunlight and ventilation – and apartment design standards adapted to the Australian environment are urgently needed. Otherwise households will be locked into unsustainable, single-access apartments devoid of cross-ventilation, screens or shading.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tina Daniel, Researcher and Lecturer, Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, Australian Catholic University
Learning to read is one of the most important parts of early schooling. But there is ongoing and arguably increasing concern too many Australian children are falling behind in reading.
This year’s NAPLAN results alarmingly show almost one in three Australian children don’t meet the expected standard in Year 3.
What are the expectations around when children learn to read and how should their progress be monitored?
When do children start to learn to read?
In Australia, school is where formal reading instruction begins. So most children start to learn to read at age five or six.
In some countries children won’t begin to learn to read until seven because they start school later, while in other countries they might start at age four.
But once school begins, children should be taught about the sounds that letters typically make (for example, the letter t makes the “t” sound). After a few months of continuous instruction, they should be able to use the letter sounds they’ve been taught to read simple words that use these same letter sounds.
This doesn’t mean your child should be reading fluently by the end of their first year, but they should be able to remember and use what they have practised at school to read some simple words and text.
What should I do before they start school?
Parents can help prepare their child to learn to read before they reach school age.
One of the most reliable predictors of learning to read well is a strong spoken vocabulary, so explaining what words mean and discussing a range of topics with your child is an excellent start.
Reading with your child is another way to boost their vocabulary. Learning to read relies on a foundation of children learning the connections between letters and sounds. So when parents teach children to pay attention to letters and sounds in words, it helps them to learn to break the code.
Having books available to children to explore on their own (and with your help) may also increase their interest in learning to read.
Even if you have lots of books at home and read together, there is natural variation in how quickly children learn to read. Some children learn the connections between letters and sounds quickly and form memories of written words after only a few attempts at reading them.
But many children take longer to learn and require more practise and support.
The reasons some children don’t learn to read as well as others are often complex.
For example, one child may need more practice making the connections between letters and sounds than others. Another may have limited spoken language skills and need additional support to improve their sensitivity to the sounds of language or develop their understanding of what words mean.
It is important for parents to know that having difficulty with learning to read does not say anything about their child’s intelligence. Reading difficulties can impact children with a wide range of intellectual abilities and intelligence is not a criterion for diagnosing a reading difficulty.
Schools and teachers should routinely monitor children’s reading progress. This is particularly important during the first three years of school but should continue throughout the primary school years.
If a consistent gap is identified within the first year at school, a child should be offered additional help and opportunities for practise both at school and at home. It’s important to note gaps in reading achievement should be filled when the gap is small, rather than taking a “wait and see” approach that allows the gap to widen and for the child to fall further behind.
If you are concerned your child is finding it difficult to learn to read even after several months of intensive additional support, an expert assessment by a reading clinician is an important step.
Parents can find professional help for learning difficulties in Australia by visiting AUSPELD, which supports children and adults with learning difficulties.
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.
Alcohol and other drug use is a major problem in Australian workplaces costing more than A$4 billion a year. Of this, $3.6 billion is due to absenteeism.
While testing is legal to ensure the health and safety of workers, companies must have explicit policies telling employees their objectives and the consequences of being drug affected at work.
Many workplaces, particularly in safety sensitive industries like building and construction, manufacturing, mining, transport and aviation, test regularly for alcohol and other drugs. Workers can be fired for refusing to take part.
Both the Broderick report into bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct at the parliament of NSW in 2022 and the Jenkins report into Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces in 2021 identified alcohol as a significant psychosocial risk in the workplace.
How should testing be conducted?
While workplace health and safety laws are largely uniform across the country, there are no specific provisions regarding how and in what way alcohol and other drug testing should be conducted.
Most workplaces that test do it either at random intervals and with no notice as workers enter high risk worksites if there is a suspicion of use, or if a safety incident occurs.
Testing usually involves breath tests for alcohol, similar to police roadside testing of drivers, or urine or saliva tests for other drugs. Currentstandards require positive tests to undergo further testing in a laboratory to confirm the result.
A workplace must inform its employees if has an alcohol and other drugs testing policy. Shutterstock
Alcohol testing is an effective way to detect someone who is unfit for work because they are intoxicated. The test involves measuring alcohol in the blood stream and correlating this with impairment.
Even workplace testing is not foolproof
The problem with testing for illicit and pharmaceutical drugs is that these tests don’t necessarily indicate intoxication.
Both urine and saliva tests have long detection windows, so drugs can be detected hours, days or even months after the effects have worn off.
THC (Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive component of cannabis, can be detected up to 30 hours after consumption in a saliva test and nearly a month after consumption in a urine test.
The Victorian parliament is currently holding an inquiry into the laws governing workplace drug testing, with a particular focus on whether current laws discriminate against medicinal cannabis users.
Under its terms of reference, the inquiry is considering whether testing may be improved to ensure due process and natural justice occurs in workplaces with these users.
Is there evidence to support workplace drug testing?
Drug testing is considered quite invasive so it needs strong evidence to justify its use. But there is very limited research of good quality available.
The highest quality evidence shows testing doesn’t reduce overall alcohol or other drug use. One study found of 11 evaluations only two showed tests cut alcohol or other drug use rates.
What makes good alcohol and other drug policy?
So testing may be helpful for workplace safety in industries where there is a high risk of injury, but it’s not enough on its own to improve the health of the majority of the workforce.
For that to occur, testing needs to be part of a comprehensive workplace strategy. Fatigue, stress, and mental health problems can all impact on health and safety in similar ways to alcohol and other drugs.
So there needs to be a broader consideration of “fitness for work” than just alcohol and other drug intoxication.
Also, much of the negative impact of alcohol and other drugs in the workplace is not in safety but in productivity and absenteeism rates.
A good alcohol and other drug policy reduces the damaging effect of usage, fatigue, stress and mental health issues by creating a healthy workplace culture where:
wellbeing is valued and supported
workers receive early education and support
managers and team leaders are trained to identify workers at risk
clear referral options such as an identified employee assistance program (EAP) provider are available
there are return to work options for workers who have been impaired
there are clear expectations about what is and what is not acceptable to ensure fitness for work.
Workplaces with effective drug and alcohol policies have happier, healthier and more productive staff and reduced absenteeism.
If you are worried about your own or someone else’s alcohol or other drug use, contact the National Alcohol and other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015 for free, confidential advice.
Nicole Lee is CEO at Hello Sunday Morning and also works as a consultant in the alcohol and other drug sector and a psychologist in private practice. She has previously been awarded funding by Australian and state governments, NHMRC and other bodies for evaluation and research into alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment.
Jarryd Bartle 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.
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin at midday Thurs November 9, 2023 (NZST) and Wednesday November 8, 6pm (USEDST).
Today, In this the eleventh episode of A View from Afar for 2023, political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and journalist Selwyn Manning will examine how the post-World War II liberal internationalist system is being challenged by a fluid constellation of global and regional powers to influence the shape of an emerging new world order.
And Paul and Selwyn will also assess how this massive shift in geopolitic demarcations is forming, relatively quickly, into a world of bipolarity where on one side we have a multipolar constellation of states, and on the other the traditional western liberal democracies.
The catalyst behind this rapidly forming bipolarity is conflict.
And, most recently, it is clear, that the Israel-Hamas war – and the atrocities committed initially by Hamas and more lately by Israel forces – is driving the world toward a transitional moment.
It appears, that what is emerging from the current multipolar system –and think here the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court among many other global bodies – is a situation that is not merely new-and-old Great Powers competing as nation-states.
But rather, what we see are groupings of fluid constellations of powers competing as blocs to influence the shape of what is to come.
In this episode Paul and Selwyn will discuss and describe what is now evident, and sketch out what will likely emerge.
Of course, as mentioned, the Israel-Hamas war lays bare any claims of morality and exposes the hypocrisies of all sides in conflicts.
In particular the Hamas-Israel war exposes the west – led by the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Europe – to an argument that the west is morally moribund as it continues its colonial/post colonial attitudes of support of Israel as the latter commits an apparent disproportionate-defence offensive against Palestine’s peoples.
The argument appears to carry weight, especially as this western axis sustains its support for Israel’s war machine even while, on international humanitarian law grounds, the atrocities being committed against Palestine’s civilian population are morally indefensible and potentially legally enforceable as war crimes.
For example; retribution for the atrocities and despicable crimes committed by Hamas against defenceless Israeli citizens does not remove culpability for the State of Israel as it delivers on an apparent intention to annihilate Hamas and all people – children, the elderly, all innocents – who may surround them.
Duty of care is not excused even if civilians are used as “human shields”, and at this juncture, it is not clear, whether that cited justification is founded on truth.
This is the position of what was once an authoritarian axis.
But what has formed is a multipolar-constellation that supports the Palestinian cause on postcolonial, Global South, and solidarity grounds.
The Questions:
So if all of this carnage is the catalyst for a new world order, what comes next?
Will we see the emergence of a parallel global institutional structure that develops as a counter-balance to the west’s post-WWII world order?
Has the west’s leading power lost its moral authority through its support for a war machine that has caused the deaths of over 10,000 people of innocent disposition, while itself refuses to be a signatory member state to the International Criminal Court and its principles of global justice?
And as such, has the west ceded persuasive moral authority to the rising constellation of once authoritarian-states that dominate the opposing bloc?
And does the west, as a consequence, find itself powerless to counter the migration of moderate independent states that are repelled by the immorality of the west’s arguments, laid bare by the Hamas-Israel war?
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INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:
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As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese concluded his four-day visit to China, both countries agreed it was important to keep up the momentum in their steadily warming relations, while also expanding their areas of cooperation.
Both sides emphasised the complementary nature of their economic ties and sounded optimistic about exploring new areas of cooperation in climate change, renewable energy and agriculture. They also committed to maintaining their recently resumed high-level dialogues. These include annual prime minister meetings and other diplomatic, strategic and economic talks.
While Australian media coverage focused on the historic nature of the trip, as well as the importance from a trade perspective, what mattered most to China? And how was the visit covered by the media there?
Beijing certainly views the visit as a major milestone in bilateral relations. Official media coverage emphasised that the two countries have no historical issues with one another, and have previously demonstrated how a stable bilateral relationship can be mutually beneficial.
President Xi Jinping praised Albanese’s efforts in getting their relations back to this level, calling the visit “a new starting point”.
The Chinese media and some of China’s Australia watchers also noted Albanese’s attendance at the China International Import Exhibition in Shanghai as symbolising the importance of the Chinese market for Australia. They saw this as an indication Australia “will not comply with US attempts to decouple from China”.
The main takeaways from the Chinese side
There are several important takeaways from Albanese’s trip on the Chinese side.
Overall, China saw the visit as an opportunity to re-engage Australia, a key US ally in the region and an important economic partner.
Recognising its economic coercion against the Morrison government did not achieve its objectives – and facing ongoing US-led efforts to constrain its rise – Beijing has been making foreign policy adjustments.
It has been reaching out to some US allies and partners, including key European Union member states, and inviting them to multi-pronged diplomatic initiatives organised by China. It has also been holding bilateral talks on important economic and political issues with high-ranking officials from these countries.
Chinese leaders recognised the Australian Labor Party’s traditional approach to foreign policy emphasises cooperation with international organisations, such as the United Nations and regional institutions. As such, they focused on the shared interests between China and Australia (commerce, climate change), as well as their shared identities (Asia-Pacific countries).
At the same time, they also subtly (or bluntly, depending which side you look at it) reminded Canberra that its alliance commitments with the US and membership in security arrangements like AUKUS and the Quad should not be at the expense of Australia-China relations – and certainly not Chinese interests.
The Global Times made no secret of the fact Australia can set an example for other US allies in an opinion piece:
Australia is the first US ally to make a clear change in its attitude toward China after a fierce conflict with China since the US defined China as its No. 1 strategic competitor. […] Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and even US allies in Europe will think about themselves given the ups and downs of China-Australia relations.
The economic agenda was equally important to Beijing, given the difficulties China is currently facing.
Given the nature of Australia-China trade, there is a limit to the punitive measures China can impose on Australia. In fact, despite the tensions that existed with Australia under the Morrison government, overall bilateral trade has continued to grow, reaching nearly $300 billion in 2022. This shows how complementary the two economies actually are, as well as the resilience of these economic ties.
This is what Chinese leaders and the media emphasised during Albanese’s visit and why they were highly critical of the idea of “decoupling” or “de-risking” from China’s economy.
They characterised “decoupling” as going against free trade and protectionism, but in reality, Beijing is deeply concerned over any specific measures that restrict trade in the high-tech sector, such as with semiconductors. The US and its allies have been increasingly adopting such restrictions in recent years.
The importance of what wasn’t said
What wasn’t discussed much in the Chinese media was the gap between what Beijing presented as a successful visit and what was actually achieved.
One could argue both sides talked about the obvious – for example, that bilateral relations have more or less stabilised, compared to how they were 18 months ago. As China expert Richard McGregor astutely observed, Albanese was “pushing on an open door”.
This is not to belittle the progress made so far. The intentions of both governments to resume and strengthen the many dialogues between officials from their countries is important – even critical – in “resetting” the relationship. These channels of communication are incredibly important during times of crisis as a way of managing disputes and avoiding conflicts from spiralling out of control.
Though resetting the relationship was a definite aim in the long term, there were also significant takeaways in the short term. This can be seen in how the state media coverage downplayed AUKUS and conflicts in the South Pacific, where China’s influence has raised alarm bells in Canberra and Washington.
China has signalled its displeasure over AUKUS and continues to consider it a major impediment to further improvement of bilateral relations. But Xi told Albanese they could work together on regional security challenges.
Where there are efforts to cause disturbances in the Asia-Pacific region, we must firstly stay vigilant, and secondly oppose them.
And in the Pacific, the Chinese side is seeing an opportunity for the two countries in terms of regional economic development – how Australia and China can both contribute.
Jingdong Yuan 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.
The above exchange occurred during the seven-week trial leading to Kathleen Folbigg’s conviction for the deaths of her four infant children (Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura) between 1989 and 1999. During the trial, the word “asphyxia” in its various forms (-ate; -ation; -ating) was used 208 times; “smother” (-ing; -ed) 221 times; and “consistent with” 233 times.
The pathologists and doctors concurred that the absence of external injuries was “consistent with” Caleb dying of a “catastrophic asphyxiating event”. This was repeated for each of the four children by each of the doctors, with strangling or smothering likely to be uppermost in the minds of the jurors.
Of course, Folbigg’s wrongful conviction had numerous factors. We have no way of knowing why the jury decided as it did.
But there are good reasons for forensic medicine practitioners and advocates to rethink their understanding – and use – of these words.
“Asphyxia” first appeared in print in 1699 defined as “without any Pulse, or sign of Life”. Predictably, this meaning “stoppage of pulse” then sprouted the meaning “stoppage of respiration” – a lack of breath is a salient sign of lifelessness.
Subsequently, the path has been rocky, and it is now understood variously by forensic doctors around the world. What is agreed, however, is that “asphyxia” is not a diagnosis; it is not a condition that can be pointed at or diagnosed.
As far as lay understandings go, things get murkier. Modern dictionaries list many senses but privilege “respiratory failure”, with “suffocation” usually given as a synonym; this in turn is defined as the interruption of breathing, including some means by which it’s brought about (for example, smothering, throttling).
The Urban Dictionary’s definition for “asphyxiation” is “death by strangulation; ergo blockage in air passage”. This dictionary has its problems, but like other collaboratively constructed dictionaries, it is useful for tracking contemporary social meanings of expressions not yet in more mainstream dictionaries.
More murkiness
In the trial, confused senses of “asphyxia” were combined with the misleading phrase “consistent with”. As used by experts, this is synonymous with “may or may not mean”.
Research shows, however, that people without expert knowledge hear the phrase as strong confirmation of the proposed connection.
In the 1998 Canadian inquiry into the (wrongful) conviction of Canadian man Guy Paul Morin, Commissioner Kaufman was scathing in his criticism of the use of “consistent with”. He regarded it as demonstrably misleading language, variably being used to mean:
‘could have come, or cannot be excluded as coming, from the accused’; ‘not inconsistent with’; ‘more than a possibility but less than a probability’; ‘perfect or near identity of two items’.
The historical thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary suggests this last sense “perfect or near identity of two items” has been around since the 1600s. Clearly, we can’t assume people today would automatically understand “consistent with” as simply a way of saying what is proposed is possible.
Bad meanings drive out good
The meanings we carry around in our heads seem so natural we fail to realise other people can have quite different understandings.
As linguist Nick Enfield describes, we hypothesise what others mean by the words they use. And the more unusual a word is, the more its meanings will vary because we aren’t given the same opportunities to refine our hypotheses.
For example, what part of the foot do you understand as the “instep” – the upper surface between toes and ankle, the underneath part, or perhaps both the top and underneath? All three meanings are out there, and different dictionaries favour different ones.
Does this really matter? In a highly circumstantial murder trial, it does.
Words are far more likely to take on negative overtones than favourable ones. The linguistic evidence is compelling – negative senses come to dominate and eventually quash all other senses. This transformation has a name: Gresham’s Law of Semantic Change.
It comes as no surprise that crowdsourced online dictionaries show the homicidal senses of “asphyxia” (and its derived forms) as winning out.
Asphyxia permeated Kathleen Folbigg’s trial
Importantly, it was agreed by all involved none of the babies showed any injuries. (Two pinpoint scratches on Sarah’s lower lip were agreed to be of no significance).
As the prosecutor said:
All they [the doctors] can say is that there was some form of obstruction that caused oxygen not to be able to get into the lungs and that’s what caused these babies to die […] all they can say is that it was induced asphyxiation from an external cause […]“ (Transcript p. 66)_
It was repeatedly asserted the presence of no injuries in any of the Folbigg children “was consistent with the occurrence of an acute catastrophic asphyxiating event” or “smothering”. This was probably heard by the jury as indicating no injuries meant an “asphyxial event” had occurred – in other words, the children had been strangled or smothered.
There was also repeated reference to the absence of natural explanations for four sudden and unexplained deaths in one family – with the unstated inference that the only reasonable explanation was homicide. Known as Meadows Law, this inference stalked Kathleen Folbigg’s trial and her subsequent appeals relentlessly. Meadows Law falls at the first hurdle: how likely is it there would be four murders – where there are no injuries – masquerading as natural deaths?
No (expert) witness was prepared to say that the signs pointed only to smothering but the medical evidence generally was that the result of each event was consistent with having been caused by acute asphyxiation. The jury accepted that evidence.
That summary encompasses the following linguistic storm: the doctors might say they thought the prosecutor was talking about asphyxia as meaning hypoxia/anoxia (low oxygen levels) due to any one of a myriad of causes.
The prosecutor believed he was asking whether, and the doctors were telling him that, the babies died from induced airways obstruction from external causes. And the jury thought they were being told the babies were smothered, or even strangled.
All of this is medically incoherent and incapable of establishing anything of significance – but probably had a powerful effect on the jury.
‘The wisdom of the crowd’
Since its first appearance in English in the 1600s, the term “asphyxia” has caused confusion.
In forensic pathology, it encompasses a number of concepts and is used variously by pathologists – and these uses are out of alignment with common lay usage. Combined with different understandings of “consistent with”, this confusion was very much to Folbigg’s disadvantage.
The jury system relies on “the wisdom of the crowd”. Forensic doctors, advocates and judges must recognise that, despite what they think and dictionaries say, the crowd can understand words very differently, and this can have consequences.
Professor Cordner was an expert witness at both Commissions of Inquiry into the convictions of Kathleen Folbigg.
Kate Burridge 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.
As climate minister in the former Labor government, Greg Combet has endured the rigours of the “climate wars”. He oversaw the highly contentious move to put a price on carbon, which ultimately came to grief under the Abbott government.
Fast forward a decade: now Combet has been appointed by Anthony Albanese to chair the government’s new Net-Zero Economy Agency. This agency, due later to become a statutory authority, is described on its website as:
responsible for promoting orderly and positive economic transformation across Australia as the world decarbonises, to ensure Australia, its regions and workers realise and share the benefits of the net zero economy.
Combet joins The Conversation to discuss the enormous challenges of Australia’s transition to renewable energy, its complications, and what is necessary to achieve our 2030 and 2050 commitments.
Combet has previously referred to Australia’s transition to renewable energy as “akin to post-war reconstruction”. He says:
It’s massive. […] So just for example, the total value of coal and liquefied natural gas exports in financial year ‘22 alone was almost $200 billion. And it’s not just a significance to the Australian economy and the many regions that depend upon that extraction and export and utilisation of fossil fuels.
Combet admits the government has “some pretty significant challenges” to achieve its 2030 target of having 82% of electricity generated by renewables:
It’s being limited by our capacity to deliver on the extensions of the transmission grid. There are social licence considerations, and that is basically taking the community along with this type of change.
We’re really going to have to, I think, collaborate and knuckle down in order to be able to achieve that 82% target and bring in the level of investment that’s necessary both in renewable generation and the poles and wires that are needed.
As Australia pursues its 2030 and 2050 commitments, Combet is very aware government policy is having an impact on job security.
He has advanced the idea of “special measures” for those losing jobs as a resuklt of the energy transition.
I think governments and the community more generally have a responsibility to workers impacted in that way, to ensure that their opportunity to find alternative employment or to retire with dignity, if that’s what an individual might prefer, or to gain the skills to do something new and different.
You rightly point out my trade union past, I was 25 years a trade union official, and I’ve dealt with many industry restructurings and I think I can figure what additional measures government might be able to bring to the table, to help people better than we’ve done in the past.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fan Yang, Research fellow at Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society., The University of Melbourne
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a label that can cover a huge range of activities related to machines undertaking tasks with or without human intervention. Our understanding of AI technologies is largely shaped by where we encounter them, from facial recognition tools and chatbots to photo editing software and self-driving cars.
If you think of AI you might think of tech companies, from existing giants such as Google, Meta, Alibaba and Baidu, to new players such as OpenAI, Anthropic and others. Less visible are the world’s governments, which are shaping the landscape of rules in which AI systems will operate.
Since 2016, tech-savvy regions and nations across Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America have been establishing regulations targeting AI technologies. (Australia is lagging behind, still currently investigating the possibility of such rules.)
Currently, there are more than 1,600 AI policies and strategies globally. The European Union, China, the United States and the United Kingdom have emerged as pivotal figures in shaping the development and governance of AI in the global landscape.
Ramping up AI regulations
AI regulation efforts began to accelerate in April 2021, when the EU proposed an initial framework for regulations called the AI Act. These rules aim to set obligations for providers and users, based on various risks associated with different AI technologies.
As the EU AI Act was pending, China moved forward with proposing its own AI regulations. In Chinese media, policymakers have discussed a desire to be first movers and offer global leadership in both AI development and governance.
Where the EU has taken a comprehensive approach, China has been regulating specific aspects of AI one after another. These have ranged from algorithmic recommendations, to deep synthesis or “deepfake” technology and generative AI.
China’s full framework for AI governance will be made up of these policies and others yet to come. The iterative process lets regulators build up their bureaucratic know-how and regulatory capacity, and leaves flexibility to implement new legislation in the face of emerging risks.
A ‘wake-up call’
China’s AI regulation may have been a wake-up call to the US. In April, influential lawmaker Chuck Shumer said his country should “not permit China to lead on innovation or write the rules of the road” for AI.
On October 30 2023, the White House issued an executive order on safe, secure and trustworthy AI. The order attempts to address broader issues of equity and civil rights, while also concentrating on specific applications of technology.
Alongside the dominant actors, countries with growing IT sectors including Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Italy, Sri Lanka and India have also sought to implement defensive strategies to mitigate potential risks associated with the pervasive integration of AI.
AI regulations worldwide reflect a race against foreign influence. At the geopolitical scale, the US competes with China economically and militarily. The EU emphasises establishing its own digital sovereignty and striving for independence from the US.
On a domestic level, these regulations can be seen as favouring large incumbent tech companies over emerging challengers. This is because it is often expensive to comply with legislation, requiring resources smaller companies may lack.
Alphabet, Meta and Tesla have supported calls for AI regulation. At the same time, the Alphabet-owned Google has joined Amazon in investing billions in OpenAI’s competitor Anthropic, and Tesla boss Elon Musk’s xAI has just launched its first product, a chatbot called Grok.
Shared vision
The EU’s AI Act, China’s AI regulations, and the White House executive order show shared interests between the nations involved. Together, they set the stage for last week’s “Bletchley declaration”, in which 28 countries including the US, UK, China, Australia and several EU members pledged cooperation on AI safety.
Countries or regions see AI as a contributor to their economic development, national security, and international leadership. Despite the recognised risks, all jurisdictions are trying to support AI development and innovation.
By 2026, worldwide spending on AI-centric systems may pass US$300 billion by one estimate. By 2032, according to a Bloomberg report, the generative AI market alone may be worth US$1.3 trillion.
Numbers like these, and talk of perceived benefits from tech companies, national governments, and consultancy firms, tend to dominate media coverage of AI. Critical voices are often sidelined.
Competing interests
Beyond economic benefits, countries also look to AI systems for defence, cybersecurity, and military applications.
At the UK’s AI safety summit, international tensions were apparent. While China agreed with the Bletchley declaration made on the summit’s first day, it was excluded from public events on the second day.
One point of disagreement is China’s social credit system, which operates with little transparency. The EU’s AI Act regards social scoring systems of this sort as creating unacceptable risk.
These tensions are likely to hinder global collaboration on binding AI regulations.
The limitations of current rules
Existing AI regulations also have significant limitations. For instance, there is no clear, common set of definitions of different kinds of AI technology in current regulations across jurisdictions.
Current legal definitions of AI tend to be very broad, raising concern over how practical they are. This broad scope means regulations cover a wide range of systems which present different risks and may deserve different treatments. Many regulations lack clear definitions for risk, safety, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination, posing challenges for ensuring precise legal compliance.
We are also seeing local jurisdictions launch their own regulations within the national frameworks. These may address specific concerns and help to balance AI regulation and development.
California has introduced two bills to regulate AI in employment. Shanghai has proposed a system for grading, management and supervision of AI development at the municipal level.
However, defining AI technologies narrowly, as China has done, poses a risk that companies will find ways to work around the rules.
Moving forward
Sets of “best practices” for AI governance are emerging from local and national jurisdictions and transnational organisations, with oversight from groups such as the UN’s AI advisory board and the US’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. The existing AI governance frameworks from the UK, the US, the EU, and – to a limited extent – China are likely to be seen as guidance.
Global collaboration will be underpinned by both ethical consensus and more importantly national and geopolitical interests.
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.
Optus customers woke up this morning to find they were unable to get their social media fix, and they weren’t happy. Around 4am AEDT, customers started to report an inability to access both mobile and home internet services.
Optus advised it was investigating the issue, with reports emerging around midday of some services coming back online.
Around 12.30pm, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told radio 2GB the path to restoration had been found, nearly nine hours after the blackout began.
The outage, one of the largest in Australia’s history, sent alarm bells ringing across the country. With a number of smaller mobile network providers reselling the Optus network, including Aussie Broadband, Amaysim, CatchConnect, Coles Mobile, Dodo, Moose Mobile and more, the impact was felt far and wide.
As the morning progressed, the impact grew. Health and emergency services were unable to communicate, trains in Melbourne were brought to a halt and small businesses across the nation were unable to use Optus EFTPOS.
Fortunately, Optus users could still use roaming to call 000 if they were within the coverage of other telecommunication service providers.
What is a ‘deep network’ problem?
Earlier today Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland described the incident as a “deep network” problem.
Telecommunications networks include three components: the core, transit and access networks. You can think of the core network as the systems that allow customers’ devices to connect to and access phone and internet services.
The transit network connects the core to the access networks using optical fibre cables. The access networks include the local infrastructure found in suburbs – including the mobile phone towers.
Core network outages can occur when equipment or cables fail, when there is a software fault, or when a cyberattack occurs.
The most common reason for a software fault is when a patch or update is applied and it has an unintended outcome, such as causing one or more of the core network systems to fail.
The mobile network distributed via cell towers provides both phone calls and data to customers. Daria Nipot/Shutterstock
What could have caused this?
Although Optus hasn’t give any indications as to the exact cause of the outage, Bayer Rosmarin said it was unlikely a cyberattack was the cause:
There is no indication that it is anything to do with spyware at this stage.
At the same time, experts have noted mobile cell towers are working, and there seems to be no damage to the underlying fibre optic network. This means we can probably rule out an issue in the transit or access networks.
The scale and speed with which the impact hit (and the somewhat specific timing) indicates the culprit was likely a problem in the core network.
It’s very possible a software or system update was responsible. Such updates or changes often happen out of business hours to have minimal impact. They typically involve a short period of downtime – a “scheduled outage” – which goes unnoticed by customers.
It could be, as some reports have speculated, the Optus outage was an unplanned consequence of a planned system change, such as a planned update or outage. When these processes go wrong, they can go spectacularly wrong!
As for how such a fault may happen, it is likely due to human error (especially since 4am is a time you might expect engineers to be carrying out patch work). However, it could also be a result of other factors, such as a hardware fault that then causes a software failure.
Another possibility is a fault in an accounting or user management system, such as no longer being able to attribute costs or verify users’ identities properly. Issues in back-end billing and management systems can generate a cascade of failures throughout the rest of a network. In such cases, a simple bug in the system can impact everyone connected to the network.
How will this be fixed?
Optus engineers will be actively investigating the cause of the outage. You might be imagining someone scurrying around with wires in their hands trying to find the one that isn’t plugged in – but in reality this will be a lengthy process that involves examining various systems and software configurations to find the culprit.
For Optus, the hard work will continue after the fix is in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And perhaps an even more difficult challenge will be convincing the public this was an isolated incident – one that has once again highlighted how vulnerable our massively connected systems are to (even single) points of failure.
We are looking at what we can do to say thank you to our customers for their patience.
Optus is likely to pay compensation to customers. For residential customers this may be in the form of a reduced bill.
For business customers, the compensation would be linked with their service-level agreements. In other words, the specific penalties for Optus will be based on individual agreements it has made with various parties using or sharing its services.
Beyond this, it’s highly likely today’s events have dealt a massive blow to Optus’s reputation – especially when considered alongside last year’s Optus data breach.
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.
Millions of Optus customers are in the wilderness of a nationwide network outage that began at 4am.
The initial response from Optus delivered by an unnamed company spokesperson on Facebook and X at 6.47am AEDT told Australians little they didn’t already know, that the network was down, and that the company didn’t yet know what had happened.
Later, at 10.30am, the ABC got through to Optus Chief Executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarino via WhatsApp and asked
What do you know? What’s happened?
Bayer Rosmarino replied:
Well I mean we do know how important connectivity is to all of our customers, so we are really, really apologetic and sorry that our connections have gone down today. The teams are working with huge effort to try and restore services as a priority, and will keep working on that until everybody’s back in action.
For the second time in a little over a year, the country’s second-largest telecommunications provider lost control of its story.
In September last year when the data of up to 9.8 million of its present and former customers was compromised, it failed to contact those affected for days and communicated via media statements, believing that was the “quickest and most effective way to alert as many current and former customers as possible”.
Golden rules for crises
Every company should have a crisis communications plan – a “living document” that it regularly updates, so that when a crisis emerges there is a strategy ready to be implemented.
There are several golden rules to executing an effective crisis communications response. They are based on transparency, honesty and empathy, and are well documented by theorists such as Timothy Coombs and William Benoit.
1. Learn from past mistakes
Last year Optus was castigated after its appalling public response (or lack thereof) to one of Australia’s largest data breaches. Optus took days to tell 9.8 million present and former customers that their data had been compromised.
For a company in the communications business, that’s an epic failure.
To make matters worse, once alerted to the breach, its customers were unable to get through. In a crisis, customers don’t want a recorded message that tells them their “call is important” only to be left on hold.
At that moment customers need information and assurance their trust in the company has not been misplaced. If the company doesn’t have capacity it should be ready to mobilise a temporary workforce to respond to its customers.
2. Prepare to deal with the media
Another mistake Optus appeared to make last year was not to give Bayer Rosmarin sufficient media training. She didn’t front the media for two days.
Corporate heads and executives should regularly undergo media training during which they learn how to respond to difficult and hostile questioning.
This time Bayer Rosmarin fronted the media within hours rather than days, although too late for the morning news programs that told Australians what was going on.
The best advice is to get out in front of the story. By the time Bayer Rosmarin spoke up at 10.30 this morning, it was difficult to alter an established narrative.
Once a story becomes publicly established, it becomes difficult to influence.
And tit is best to speak to more than one media outlet. This is particularly important for a company with a broad customer base like Optus.
4. Apologise and accept blame
Last year Optus painted itself as the victim of the hack (which it was) but then failed to also address its responsibility for keeping its customers’ data safe, and apologise for failing to do so.
Mortification (confessing and asking for forgiveness) is recommended by both Coombs and Benoit, and the sooner the better.
Companies that apologise late are seen as disingenuous.
5. Be empathetic
Companies that have let down their customers should put themselves in their customers’ place.
Part of doing this is to avoid corporate speak and connect at a human level.
Customers want to know the company accepts its actions have caused harm and is as concerned about it as they are, if not more so.
This means sharing information as soon as it is to hand so that customers can make decisions. These might involve leaving for a competitor, or sticking with the company that is sticking by them.
6. Be honest
If a company in crisis doesn’t know the answer to a question it should say so, but then promise to provide regular updates and be true to its word.
A company that leaves a communication vacuum (as Optus did this morning) will allow others to fill it, almost certainly to its detriment.
7. Bolster your company
Bolstering is reminding customers of the good things a company has done in the past, and can work when deployed alongside empathy, honesty and mortification.
It’s an approach that will prove difficult for Optus, given its performance the last time it was in this sort of crisis.
Alison Stieven-Taylor 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.
Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a pioneer of abstract art. His work and theories on art profoundly influenced the School of Paris, the American Abstract Expressionists, as well as the expressionist painters working in Australia.
Drawing on the extensive holdings of the the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, this new exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is the largest Kandinsky exhibition to be held in Australia.
In about 50 works, it covers the full range of the artist’s vision: the early “folky” works carrying the impact of the Jugendstil (German art nouveau) and Impressionism; the groundbreaking abstracts with their impressions, improvisations and compositions; and finally the wonderful, refined late geometric and biomorphic paintings.
This is a precious gem of a show that celebrates the transformative power of art – its ability to transcend the material realm and to nourish us spiritually.
Russian imagery, spiritual realm and colour auras
Kandinsky was Russian, born in Moscow in 1866. He never lost links with Russian art and culture. He expressed a profound belief in Russian Orthodoxy as the sole true faith.
Circumstances of history meant he divided his life between living and travelling in Russia and working in Germany and finally living in France, where he died.
Nevertheless, even when living in the heart of industrial Munich, he still painted Russian horse-drawn troikas, churches with their cupolas and the great saints of Russia.
Building on the heritage of spiritualism inherent in Russian Orthodox icons and the inventive whimsical narratives in Russian folk art, Kandinsky also explored the spiritual realm and colour auras integral to theosophy.
He was one of the most influential teachers at the German Bauhaus, before the Nazis closed it. He wrote the single most influential essay in 20th-century art, On the spiritual in art, in 1911.
What strikes me about this exhibition is Kandinsky has lost none of his timeless magic.
Frequently when visiting an exhibition of an early modern – for example, Picasso’s cubism – you may be impressed by the work and its avant-garde properties that were so amazing in their day, but they appear of their time and somewhat dated.
Kandinsky’s paintings have not aged and appear contemporary and relevant to us now.
In Kandinsky’s early paintings, for example, Blue Mountain (1908-09) and Landscape with factory chimney (1910), the figurative element is still strong. Kandinsky invites the viewer to take a walk in the painting and explore an enchanted landscape.
Together with the theosophists, Kandinsky had a mistrust of science. At one stage he remarked:
The disintegration of the atom was to me like the disintegration of the whole world […] I should not have been surprised if a stone had melted in the air and become invisible before my eyes.
A mistrust of science was linked to a mistrust of the physical world observed through the senses and the desire to explore a spiritual reality that bypasses empirical observation and speaks directly to the soul.
Some of the great Kandinsky paintings, including Improvisation 28, second version (1912), Landscape with rain (1913) and the wonderful Painting with white border (May 1913), break free of the figurative realm and create their own reality.
Increasingly Kandinsky questioned the importance of the object as a necessary element in a painting and demonstrated a preparedness to embrace the power, fantasy and enchantment of the palette.
Colour for Kandinsky was a symbolic spiritual experience, with colours linked with spiritual states.
In Kandinsky’s work the physiological effect of colour is sensory and short-lived; warm colours like vermilion attract the eye; the bright yellow of a lemon is painful.
A psychological resonance is produced when the sensory impression causes an emotional vibration directly or through association: red is flame and blood, black a painful silence, the appeal of orange is like the sound of a church bell.
At that time, I tried, by lines and by distributing of patches of colour, to express the musical spirit of Russia.
One may see in the painting in the top-left-hand corner three black lines that relate to the horses of the Russian troika. In the centre is the lance of the Russian St George slaying the dragon that threatened his homeland with the impending war. Each element in the painting was the subject of a separate study and these studies inform us about the individual elements in the painting.
In a famous passage in On the spiritual in art, Kandinsky observed:
Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano of many strings […] [harmony rests] on the principle of innermost necessity.
Many of Kandinsky’s paintings in the 1920s and 1930s, including Blue segment (1921), Blue painting (January 1924) and Dominant curve (April 1936), refine some of the earlier more organic forms through geometric discipline to create great explorations of intuitive spiritual forms ambiguously suspended in space.
Kandinsky was a great innovator, a profound thinker and a superb painter and graphic artist. His vision changed the way we think about art. This outstanding landmark exhibition, for the first time, redefines his place in art for an Australian audience.
Kandinsky is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until March 10 2024.
Sasha Grishin 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yaqoot Fatima, Associate Professor, UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, The University of Queensland
Obstructive sleep apnoea is about twice as common in First Nations people compared with non-Indigenous Australians.
But the truth is, this sleep-related respiratory disorder is significantly under-reported in First Nations communities.
A Let’s Yarn About Sleep program in Queensland hopes to change that, by acknowledging the importance of sleep not just to physical and mental health, but to spiritual health. The program uses traditional knowledge as a key part of its culturally responsive model of care.
In obstructive sleep apnoea the upper airway is repeatedly wholly or partially blocked during sleep, resulting in lower blood oxygen levels. The sudden drop in blood oxygen levels, and the body’s frequent waking to restart breathing, affects sleep. These also strain the heart and blood vessels.
People with sleep apnoea often wake up feeling unrefreshed and experience significant daytime sleepiness. Sleep apnoea also increases the risk of obesity, heart disease, cognitive problems, poor mental health, productivity loss and driving accidents.
We suspect there are significantly more cases in First Nations communities than currently reported. That’s partly because the proportion of First Nations people over 50 has grown in recent years and obesity is more common in this population. Both obesity and increased age are risk factors for sleep apnoea.
Another reason why we suspect sleep apnoea is under-reported is the lack of specialist sleep services in rural and remote areas. Long wait times, plus logistical and financial challenges in accessing services not available locally, means people are not being assessed, diagnosed and treated.
So community members have advocated for expanding the existing Let’s Yarn About Sleep program – which was originally set up to manage sleep problems in First Nations teenagers – to cater for people with sleep apnoea.
This builds on insights from community yarns about the impact of poor sleep. These highlighted that dreaming in First Nations culture is considered an important opportunity to connect with ancestors, Country and cultural knowledge. So, poor sleep, through its impact on dreaming, also affects spiritual health.
Let’s Yarn About Sleep project coordinator and Kalkadoon woman Roslyn Von Senden says:
Dreams are an important part of our life, a medium to connect with our ancestors to be guided, foresee things, connect with others, and get inspiration and ideas to express our artistic talent. Sleep loss deprives us of opportunities to connect with our culture, our ancestors and who we are as traditional custodians of the world’s oldest surviving culture. That leads to poor emotional and mental health, affects our wellbeing and results in chronic conditions.
The program’s yarn with community members also highlighted the lack of culturally secure services, low awareness of sleep apnoea treatment options and stigma in accessing services as the key contributors to high rates of undiagnosed/untreated sleep apnoea in First Nations communities.
Uncle Neil Dunne, a Pitta Pitta man, who has sleep apnoea and was a member of the program’s community steering group, says:
Sleep apnoea is very common in our community, but many of our mob don’t get tested. There is still shame in talking about sleep apnoea. Not many people know what it means and how it affects our health. I was tested for sleep apnoea, and the doctor told me I stopped breathing 13 times [per hour] in my sleep. This is scary. It is important to educate our community on how we can get help and why it is important to get help for sleep apnoea.
The idea was to design a culturally responsive model for local diagnosis and management of, and education about, obstructive sleep apnoea in First Nations communities.
This has involved consultation with 12 First Nations communities, and training Aboriginal health workers and nurses to deliver the program.
The Aboriginal health workers will educate community members about symptoms of sleep apnoea, its health impacts and pathways to seek clinical care. They’ll also screen for sleep apnoea in the community and start the referral process so people can be treated by GPs and nurses via their local community health service or Aboriginal medical service.
The program uses standard treatments for sleep apnoea, such as continuous positive airway pressure therapy, known as a CPAP machine. This includes a mask you wear at night to help open up your airway and help you breathe while sleeping.
But community Elders also guide the team to integrate cultural practices.
For example, the team will include didgeridoo sessions for men as part of the program. This Aboriginal musical instrument is not only an important part of cultural ceremonies, playing the didgeridoo reduces the severity of sleep apnoea. It strengthens the muscles of the throat and the back of the tongue (key muscles associated with sleep apnoea).
Cultural protocols don’t support offering didgeridoo sessions for women. So we will seek guidance from community members to decide which other wind instruments can be used for women.
It’s early days for us to see any results from the program. But it shows we can develop locally led and culturally responsive models of care.
By co-designing with community members, integrating cultural knowledge into how we manage sleep apnoea, and building the First Nations sleep health workforce, the program aims to transform diagnosis and management for First Nations peoples.
Timothy Skinner, Professor of Health Psychology, La Trobe University, co-authored this article.
Yaqoot Fatima is a member of the Australasian Sleep Association and is associated with the Sleep Health Foundation.
Yaqoot Fatima is supported by funding from the NHMRC Partnership Grant, MRFF Indigenous Health Research Grant, MRFF-EMCR grant, Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre grant and Beyond Blue for sleep health research.
Daniel Sullivan is a member of the Australasian Sleep Association and the Australian Psychological Society. Daniel Sullivan receives funding from a Medical Research Future Fund Early-Mid Career Researchers grant.
Romola Bucks is a member of the Australasian Sleep Association, and the Sleep Health Foundation. Romola has received funding or currently receives funding from sources including the NHMRC, the Tropical Australian Academic Health Centre Seed Funding Scheme, and Indigenous Health Research Fund: MRFF.
Shannon Edmed receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) 2021 Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Early to Mid-Career Researchers Grant.
Shannon Edmed’s research is supported partially by the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Project ID CE200100025).
She has also previously received funding from Government departments such as the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care and the Commonwealth Defence Science and Technology Group.
Roslyn Von Senden 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.
Even before the pandemic, it was clear that despite more resources for mental health services in New Zealand and Australia, the prevalence of mental health problems was on the rise.
Mental health care in the current format is not meeting the needs of people living in the community, and there’s an ongoing shortage of mental health providers and relevant therapies.
In an unequal world, the rising burden of mental illness is often made worse by lack of access to quality evidence-based care. We need a new approach and it should focus on communities, scalability and equity.
Many think of mental health care as involving a visit to a GP, psychologist or psychiatrist, a prescription for medicines and perhaps individual “talk therapy”.
But we wanted to examine the value of “psychosocial” care – a broader approach that meets individual needs but also considers social factors such as housing, income or relationships.
Group interventions might typically mean weekly or monthly meetings with a regular group experiencing mental distress. These would be facilitated by peers or community members who have been through similar difficulties.
Our study focuses on communities with fewer resources in South Asia, including Nepal, India and Bangladesh. It takes a regional approach because we know context matters in mental health, and one size doesn’t fit all.
We considered group interventions that shared a cultural context to see if they better engaged people on a local level. As such, our findings are also relevant for addressing the mental health care gap in Aotearoa New Zealand. The value of relationships and whānau care is already well recognised for Māori.
There are also promising recent studies showing the value of group interventions for mental health among young people, and the contribution of kaimahi (non-regulated health workers) to improve outcomes for people with chronic conditions.
Group interventions have been shown to improve mental health outcomes in both community trials and systematic reviews. A recent meta-analysis of 81 studies showed talk therapy is the best initial treatment for depression.
A group of women in a northern Indian community build new friendships in a psychosocial support group. Gunjan Prasad/Burans/Herbertpur Christian Hospital, CC BY-SA
It can be used for a wide range of mental health problems and is more cost-effective than one-to-one individual therapy. In communities that have a more collective approach to health and wellbeing, such as Indigenous groups, mental health care delivered in groups can better reflect these values. This in turn may increase accessibility and uptake.
How group therapies work
Most quantitative health studies only ask whether a particular intervention works. But we used an approach that looks for how interventions work by examining the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes.
As well as examining effectiveness, a “realist” evaluation seeks to provide an explanatory analysis of how and why complex social interventions lead to improved health outcomes. This helped us assess what works, for whom and in what circumstances.
In this review of 42 peer-reviewed research publications, we identified five key mechanisms that groups offer to improve mental health:
They increase opportunity to be part of trusted relationships, which is a key social determinant of health. Group members described new friendships that continue after the intervention was over.
They trigger a sense of social inclusion and support, meaning people access resources and services more easily. Social inclusion is an important factor that determines mental health. Studies gave examples of how group members supported each other emotionally and with child care, agricultural and home responsibilities.
Groups can strengthen people’s ability to manage mental distress because they provide an opportunity to rehearse and use mental health skills and knowledge in a safe social space. This is key to building communication skills and self esteem.
They trigger a sense of belonging, and members can manage emotions better. This enabled behaviour changes. For example, widows in northeast India described how they were able to identify and control feelings of anger because of their sense of connection with the group.
Groups provide a sense of collective strength and can act collaboratively for their own wellbeing. Group interventions are particularly beneficial for minorities, such as non-binary and transgender people, who experience higher rates of mental distress as well as social exclusion. A group can offer social support and affirmation, which have also been identified as key mental health determinants.
These mechanisms are relevant in Aotearoa New Zealand as well as across the wider South Asian region we studied. The recent government inquiry into mental health and addiction, He Ara Oranga, underlined the value of non-biomedical and local solutions for mental health, including therapeutic groups. It called for a move from “big psychiatry” to “big community”.
Group therapy fits well with a community approach as it can meet mental health needs without medicines, hospitals or expensive professionals. Psychosocial group therapies do not seek to replace formal mental health care. They complement it by providing accessible, cost-effective care in communities and among people who have unmet mental health needs.
Kaaren Mathias consults for Burans, a non-profit community mental health initiative of Herbertpur Christian Hospital based in North India. She received a grant from UK Research and Innovation.
Hot on the heels of trips to Washington and Beijing, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is now in the Cook Islands for the Pacific Island Forum. There, he will aim to strengthen relations with Pacific countries and reaffirm Australia’s place as a security partner of choice.
But to do that, he’ll have to repair a historic split from when former prime minister John Howard met with Pacific leaders on the same island, Aitutaki, a quarter of a century ago to defend his choice to expand Australia’s fossil fuel industries.
Pacific leaders see climate change as by far their greatest security threat. Sea level rise, stronger cyclones, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification pose existential threats. They will ask Albanese to support a regional declaration for a phaseout of fossil fuels.
What will happen on the atoll? We could see history repeat – Pacific outrage, Australian intransigence. Or we could see a better outcome, if Albanese signals Australia is at last ready to move away from fossil fuels.
When a scientific consensus on global warming emerged in the mid-1980s, Australia’s initial response was aligned with Pacific nations. In fact, they called for industrialised countries to immediately cut greenhouse gas emissions in a joint statement in 1990.
Pacific island nations suggested Australia’s national target – to cut emissions by 20% by 2005 – should be binding for all developed countries.
At the first Conference of Parties (COP1) to the UN climate convention in 1995, Australia’s negotiators argued for a weaker emissions target because our economy was more fossil fuel dependent than comparable nations. This positioning in the UN climate talks was further entrenched when Howard came to power in 1996.
One issue, two prime ministers on the same island, 26 years apart. Shutterstock
Differences with island nations came to a head at the 1997 South Pacific Forum, when island leaders tried to persuade Howard to support their calls for globally binding emissions cuts ahead of Kyoto Protocol negotiations later that year. Discussions in Aitutaki turned bitter and ran into overtime in the airport lounge.
Howard was not moved. At the Kyoto negotiations, Australia sought and won its own clause, allowing it to actually increase emissions, and expand its fossil fuel industries.
Afterwards, the Cook Islands prime minister Geoffrey Henry described Australia’s approach as a “self-serving” attempt to protect coal and energy intensive industries. Tuvalu prime minister Bikenibau Paeniu told regional media that “Australia dominates us so much in this region, for once we would have liked to have got some respect”.
For his part, Howard dismissed concerns that climate change and sea-level rise could threaten island states as “exaggerated” and “apocalyptic”.
Australia’s decision has rankled ever since.
Could we see Australia repair the rift?
For his part, Albanese has said he wants to repair the climate rift. At last year’s forum, he joined island leaders to declare a Pacific climate emergency. Australia is bidding to host the UN climate talks in 2026 in partnership with Pacific island countries, a move island leaders have formally welcomed. But it’s also clear Pacific countries want him to support a regional declaration to phase out fossil fuels.
Pacific governments have not been sitting still. This year, a group of Pacific governments called for a fossil-fuel-free Pacific. Island countries want to establish a new Pacific Energy Commissioner to oversee the region’s energy transition.
Pacific countries are also campaigning for a global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty which would oversee the end of fossil fuel expansion. These goals will be put to leaders again this week – including Albanese.
When Pacific ministers met in Vanuatu’s Port Vila in March, they emerged with calls for a fossil-fuel-free Pacific. Voyager Pacific Studios, CC BY-ND
There are signs Albanese will arrive with new climate finance in hand, including A$50 million for the global Green Climate Fund and funds for a regional Pacific Resilience Facility. Support to tackle rising climate adaptation costs will be welcomed, but it won’t be enough for Pacific leaders. What they want to see is their regionally powerful neighbour actually stop adding fuel to the fire.
Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu says Pacific nations need genuine allies who will make substantive commitments to move away from coal, oil and gas.
No stopping the global energy transition
It’s not just Pacific nations calling on Australia to commit to a fossil fuel phase-out. Germany’s international climate envoy Jennifer Morgan is headed to this week’s forum to call on Australia to support the European Union push for a phase-out at next month’s UN COP28 climate talks in Dubai.
we have to not only phase out fossil fuels, we need to stop building new infrastructure for fossil fuels, because they will become stranded assets. We need to be working on a just transition for workers and building up new industries.
She has a point. The International Energy Agency last week released its annual World Energy Outlook, which found global deployment of renewable energy technologies is rapidly overtaking fossil fuel projects, and demand for fossil fuels is likely to peak before 2030.
Australia’s economic interests are shifting as the world economy heads toward net zero emissions. Gas and coal aren’t the only valuable things underneath Australian dirt – we’ve got a wealth of critical minerals vital to the clean energy transition.
Governments have no choice but to plan for the inevitable decline of fossil fuels and smooth the transition to clean energy industries such as battery manufacturing and green hydrogen and ammonia.
The sooner Australia gets on with the transition away from fossil fuels, the sooner we will be embraced by the rest of the Pacific family.
As artificial intelligence (AI) reaches the peak of its popularity, researchers have warned the industry might be running out of training data – the fuel that runs powerful AI systems. This could slow down the growth of AI models, especially large language models, and may even alter the trajectory of the AI revolution.
But why is a potential lack of data an issue, considering how much there are on the web? And is there a way to address the risk?
We need a lot of data to train powerful, accurate and high-quality AI algorithms. For instance, ChatGPT was trained on 570 gigabytes of text data, or about 300 billion words.
Similarly, the stable diffusion algorithm (which is behind many AI image-generating apps such as DALL-E, Lensa and Midjourney) was trained on the LIAON-5B dataset comprising of 5.8 billion image-text pairs. If an algorithm is trained on an insufficient amount of data, it will produce inaccurate or low-quality outputs.
The quality of the training data is also important. Low-quality data such as social media posts or blurry photographs are easy to source, but aren’t sufficient to train high-performing AI models.
Text taken from social media platforms might be biased or prejudiced, or may include disinformation or illegal content which could be replicated by the model. For example, when Microsoft tried to train its AI bot using Twitter content, it learned to produce racist and misogynistic outputs.
This is why AI developers seek out high-quality content such as text from books, online articles, scientific papers, Wikipedia, and certain filtered web content. The Google Assistant was trained on 11,000 romance novels taken from self-publishing site Smashwords to make it more conversational.
Do we have enough data?
The AI industry has been training AI systems on ever-larger datasets, which is why we now have high-performing models such as ChatGPT or DALL-E 3. At the same time, research shows online data stocks are growing much slower than datasets used to train AI.
In a paper published last year, a group of researchers predicted we will run out of high-quality text data before 2026 if the current AI training trends continue. They also estimated low-quality language data will be exhausted sometime between 2030 and 2050, and low-quality image data between 2030 and 2060.
AI could contribute up to US$15.7 trillion (A$24.1 trillion) to the world economy by 2030, according to accounting and consulting group PwC. But running out of usable data could slow down its development.
Should we be worried?
While the above points might alarm some AI fans, the situation may not be as bad as it seems. There are many unknowns about how AI models will develop in the future, as well as a few ways to address the risk of data shortages.
One opportunity is for AI developers to improve algorithms so they use the data they already have more efficiently.
It’s likely in the coming years they will be able to train high-performing AI systems using less data, and possibly less computational power. This would also help reduce AI’s carbon footprint.
Another option is to use AI to create synthetic data to train systems. In other words, developers can simply generate the data they need, curated to suit their particular AI model.
Several projects are already using synthetic content, often sourced from data-generating services such as Mostly AI. This will become more common in the future.
Developers are also searching for content outside the free online space, such as that held by large publishers and offline repositories. Think about the millions of texts published before the internet. Made available digitally, they could provide a new source of data for AI projects.
News Corp, one of the world’s largest news content owners (which has much of its content behind a paywall) recently said it was negotiating content deals with AI developers. Such deals would force AI companies to pay for training data – whereas they have mostly scraped it off the internet for free so far.
Content creators have protested against the unauthorised use of their content to train AI models, with some suing companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI and Stability AI. Being remunerated for their work may help restore some of the power imbalance that exists between creatives and AI companies.
Presented to recipients by the governor-general, this award is named after the movement’s founder, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, fondly known as B-P.
For millions, Baden-Powell remains a hero. For others, his role in creating the largest youth movement in history is overshadowed by allegations of colonial war crimes.
Like Macquarie University, the City of Sydney, and other institutions, Scouts is caught in an awkward gap between tradition and modernity, as society grapples with colonial figures who were heroes to some, but not others.
The movement began in 1907 after Baden-Powell coordinated a camp on Brownsea Island, England. Baden-Powell’s Scouting philosophy emphasised social responsibility and outdoor skills. The movement became a global sensation, arriving in Australia in 1908.
Notwithstanding its positive influence in fostering youth life skills, the early Scouting movement arguably sometimes operated as an agent of British colonialism. In the early 20th century, it spread across distant outposts of the British Empire, where it encouraged imperial loyalty.
Scouting has endured for over a century, in part because of its willingness to adapt to changing social values.
Now, a Scout can decide between swearing to “do their duty” to their king or queen, or their community and world, and can pledge to their “spiritual beliefs” or “their God”.
In part, this has been prompted by overseas events. In 2020, amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a statue of Baden-Powell in England appeared on a “Topple the Racists” hit list.
Controversy around Baden-Powell stems from allegations he held antisemitic and racist attitudes.
In 2010, declassified M15 files showed Baden-Powell had been invited to meet Adolf Hitler to build closer ties between Scouts and Hitler’s youth organisation.
Historians have since argued Baden-Powell has been incorrectly framed as a Nazi sympathiser. The meeting never eventuated, and Scouting was banned in Germany, with Baden-Powell being placed on a Nazi death list.
Before Scouts, Baden-Powell was already a hero of the British Empire for his efforts during the South African War.
This conflict claimed the lives of thousands of Black Africans. As an army officer, Baden-Powell famously defended the town of Mafeking, becoming an overnight hero to the British.
Yet, Baden-Powell has since been accused of war crimes against local Africans, including unlawful executions and contributing to starvation. Historians contest the extent to which Baden-Powell ought to be blamed.
Regardless, as an agent of empire, Baden-Powell cannot be extricated from the legacy of British colonialism in Africa. Globally, Scouts has recognised this, with the Chief Scout of the UK, Bear Grylls, admitting Baden-Powell’s “failings”.
An extended process of public reckoning
Scouts is just one of many organisations forced to reckon with their colonial baggage.
Often, colonial origin stories are commemorated through the names of places or institutions.
Anyone driving across Australia today will still see reminders of our colonial past in racist naming practices that glorify certain legacies over others, or spread a distorted version of history. The case to replace obviously racist place names can be uncontroversial, provided consultation takes place with Traditional Owners.
Examples include the many entities that derive their name from Lachlan Macquarie, who served as New South Wales governor from 1810 to 1821. He has been celebrated as a humanitarian, yet Macquarie terrorised local Indigenous peoples.
A statue commemorating Governor Lachlan Macquarie stands in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Shutterstock
In Hyde Park, a plaque beneath a statue of Macquarie describes him as “a perfect gentleman”.
Yet the City of Sydney has recently announced a review of 25 colonial statues, with an aim to include new signage that presents a fuller picture of history.
This is likely to be the start of an extended process of public reckoning. This may extend from relatively unknown statues, or place names, to big businesses and institutions with connections to questionable legacies.
These days, we don’t think much about being able to access a course of antibiotics to head off an infection. But that wasn’t always the case – antibiotics have been available for less than a century.
Before that, patients would die of relatively trivial infections that became more serious. Some serious infections, such as those involving the heart valves, were inevitably fatal.
Other serious infections, such as tuberculosis, weren’t always fatal. Up to a half of people died within a year with the most severe forms, but some people recovered without treatment and the remainder had ongoing chronic infection that slowly ate away at the body over many years.
Once we had antibiotics, the outcomes for these infections were much better.
Life (and death) before antibiotics
You’ve probably heard of Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin, when fungal spores landed on a plate with bacteria left over a long weekend in 1928.
But the first patient to receive penicillin was an instructive example of the impact of treatment.
In 1941, Constable Albert Alexander had an infected scratch on his face that had become infected.
He was hospitalised but despite various treatments, the infection progressed to involve his head. This required removing one of his eyes.
In 1941, Albert Alexander was hospitalised with a severe infection. Jonathan Borba/Pexels
Howard Florey, the Australian pharmacologist then working in Oxford, was concerned penicillin could be toxic in humans. Therefore, he felt it was only ethical to give this new drug to a patient in a desperate condition.
Constable Alexander was given the available dose of penicillin. Within the first day, his condition had started to improve.
But back then, penicillin was difficult to produce. One way of extending the limited supply was to “recycle” penicillin that was excreted in the patient’s urine. Despite this, supplies ran out by the fifth day of Alexander’s treatment.
Without further treatment, the infection again took hold. Constable Alexander eventually died a month later.
We now face a world where we are potentially running out of antibiotics – not because of difficulties manufacturing them, but because they’re losing their effectiveness.
We currently use antibiotics in humans and animals for a variety of reasons. Antibiotics reduce the duration of illness and the chance of death from infection. They also prevent infections in people who are at high risk, such as patients undergoing surgery and those with weakened immune systems.
But antibiotics aren’t always used appropriately. Studies consistently show a dose or two will adequately prevent infections after surgery, but antibiotics are often continued for several days unnecessarily. And sometimes we use the wrong type of antibiotic.
Surveys have found 22% of antimicrobial use in hospitals is inappropriate.
In some situations, this is understandable. Infections in different body sites are usually due to different types of bacteria. When the diagnosis isn’t certain, we often err on the side of caution by giving broad spectrum antibiotics to make sure we have active treatments for all possible infections, until further information becomes available.
In other situations, there is a degree of inertia. If the patient is improving, doctors tend to simply continue the same treatment, rather than change to more appropriate choice.
In general practice, the issue of diagnostic uncertainty and therapeutic inertia are often magnified. Patients who recover after starting antibiotics don’t usually require tests or come back for review, so there is no easy way of knowing if the antibiotic was actually required.
Antibiotic prescribing can be more complex again if patients are expecting “a pill for every ill”. While doctors are generally good at educating patients when antibiotics are not likely to work (for example, for viral infections), without confirmatory tests there can always be a lingering doubt in the minds of both doctors and patients. Or sometimes the patient goes elsewhere to find a prescription.
For other infections, resistance can develop if treatments aren’t given for long enough. This is particularly the case for tuberculosis, caused by a slow growing bacterium that requires a particularly long course of antibiotics to cure.
As in humans, antibiotics are also used to prevent and treat infections in animals. However, a proportion of antibiotics are used for growth promotion. In Australia, an estimated 60% of antibiotics were used in animals between 2005-2010, despite growth-promotion being phased out.
Why is overuse a problem?
Bacteria become resistant to the effect of antibiotics through natural selection – those that survive exposure to antibiotics are the strains that have a mechanism to evade their effects.
For example, antibiotics are sometimes given to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections, but a consequence, any infection that does develop tends to be with resistant bacteria.
When resistance to the commonly used first-line antibiotics occurs, we often need to reach deeper into the bag to find other effective treatments.
Some of these last-line antibiotics are those that had been superseded because they had serious side effects or couldn’t be given conveniently as tablets.
New drugs for some bacteria have been developed, but many are much more expensive than older ones.
Treating antibiotics as a valuable resource
The concept of antibiotics as a valuable resource has led to the concept of “antimicrobial stewardship”, with programs to promote the responsible use of antibiotics. It’s a similar concept to environmental stewardship to prevent climate change and environmental degradation.
Antibiotics are a rare class of medication where treatment of one patient can potentially affect the outcome of other patients, through the transmission of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Therefore, like efforts to combat climate change, antibiotic stewardship relies on changing individual actions to benefit the broader community.
Antimicrobial stewardship relies on individuals making decisions for the greater good. SJ Objio/Unsplash
Like climate change, antibiotic resistance is a complex problem when seen in a broader context. Studies have linked resistance to the values and priorities of governments such as corruption and infrastructure, including the availability of electricity and public services. This highlights that there are broader “causes of the causes”, such as public spending on sanitation and health care.
Other studies have suggested individuals need to be considered within the broader social and institutional influences on prescribing behaviour. Like all human behaviour, antibiotic prescribing is complicated, and factors like what doctors feel is “normal” prescribing, whether junior staff feel they can challenge senior doctors, and even their political views may be important.
There are also issues with the economic model for developing new antibiotics. When a new antibiotic is first approved for use, the first reaction for prescribers is not to use it, whether to ensure it retains its effectiveness or because it is often very expensive.
However, this doesn’t really encourage the development of new antibiotics, particularly when pharma research and development budgets can easily be diverted to developing drugs for conditions patients take for years, rather than a few days.
If we fail to act, we are looking at an almost unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer work and we are cast back into the dark ages of medicine
– David Cameron, former UK Prime Minister
Antibiotic resistance is already a problem. Almost all infectious diseases physicians have had the dreaded call about patients with infections that were essentially untreatable, or where they had to scramble to find supplies of long-forgotten last-line antibiotics.
There are already hospitals in some parts of the world that have had to carefully consider whether it’s still viable to treat cancers, because of the high risk of infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
A global study estimated that in 2019, almost 5 million deaths occurred with an infection involving antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Some 1.3 million would not have occurred if the bacteria were not resistant.
The UK’s 2014 O’Neill report predicted deaths from antimicrobial resistance could rise to 10 million deaths each year, and cost 2-3.5% of global GDP, by 2050 based on trends at that time.
What can we do about it?
There is a lot we can do to prevent antibiotic resistance. We can:
raiseawareness that many infections will get better by themselves, and don’t necessarily need antibiotics
use the antibiotics we have more appropriately and for as short a time as possible, supported by co-ordinated clinical and public policy, and nationaloversight
monitor for infections due to resistant bacterial to inform control policies
reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics in animals, such as growth promotion
reduce cross-transmission of resistant organisms in hospitals and in the community
prevent infections by other means, such as clean water, sanitation, hygiene and vaccines
continue developing new antibiotics and alternatives to antibiotics and ensure the right incentives are in place to encourage a continuous pipeline of new drugs.
Read the other articles in The Conversation’s series on the dangers of antibiotic resistance here.
Allen Cheng receives funding from the Australian Government and the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is affiliated with the Centre to Impact Antimicrobial Resistance at Monash University.
Contrary to a common belief, antibiotic resistance is not about your body becoming resistant to antibiotics.
Resistance arises when bacteria are exposed to levels of antibiotics that don’t immediately kill them. They develop defences that prevent the same antibiotic from harming them in the future, even at higher doses.
How bacteria adapt
The ability for bacteria to adapt lies in part with their astonishing rate of reproduction. Some species, such as Escherichia coli, can replicate as quickly as every 20 minutes, depending on the environment. One bacterium can become more than 68 billion bacteria in 12 hours.
However, bacteria don’t faithfully reproduce their genetic code, and mutations can slip in every generation.
While most changes are bad, sometimes they can help the bacteria grow in the presence of an antibiotic. This “new and improved” population quickly takes over.
Additional mutations enable survival at even higher antibiotic concentrations.
This evolution of resistance can be seen by growing bacteria on a large agar plate (a nutrient support that bacteria like to grow on) with zones of increasing antibiotic levels.
Watch how bacteria develop resistance to extremely high concentrations of antibiotics (Harvard Medical School).
Growth is halted when they first encounter the next zone, but once they have developed resistance they quickly expand until they reach the next region with more antibiotic.
Bacteria in your body can easily develop resistance in a similar manner during the typical seven- to ten-day course of antibiotic treatment.
In addition to the main chunk of DNA that encodes the bacterial genome, bacteria can host circular DNA snippets called plasmids. These plasmids are readily exchanged between bacteria, including different species.
Plasmid exchange usually occurs by direct physical contact between bacteria. Bacteria are promiscuous, so this can happen a lot! Once inside a bacteria, plasmids can be passed down to the next generation.
Unfortunately, plasmids are particularly good at encoding multiple resistance genes.
Bacteria develop resistance to antibiotic treatment using four main methods:
1) Keep the antibiotic out. Bacteria are good at keeping unwanted molecules from getting inside.
Gram-positive bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus have a thick cell wall enclosing a lipid membrane. Gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli, are more difficult to kill as they have an additional outer membrane that acts as an extra barrier.
Bacteria are able to bring in the things they need to survive through these cell surfaces. Antibiotics can hijack these entry routes, but bacteria can modify the cell wall, cell membrane and entry proteins to block antibiotic penetration.
For example, bacteria increase the thickness of the cell wall to resist antibiotics like vancomycin.
3) Alter the antibiotic target. Antibiotics, like most other drugs, generally work by blocking the function of important enzymes within the bacteria. They specifically bind to the target like a key in a lock.
If bacteria alter the target shape by changing the DNA/protein sequence, the antibiotic (key) can no longer bind to its target (lock).
Resistance to a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones (which includes ciprofloxacin) often occurs due to mutations of the enzyme targets.
4) Destroy or modify the antibiotic. Bacteria developed resistance to the original antibiotic, penicillin, by producing a protein that breaks apart the penicillin warhead.
These enzymes have evolved to keep pace with even the most recent new and improved penicillin-like antibiotics.
In response, drug developers have created molecules that specifically stop the enzyme from working, and dose these in combination with the antibiotic.
Another example of antibiotic modification is shown by resistance to a class of antibiotics called aminoglycosides. In this case, different types of enzymes chemically modify the structure of the aminoglycoside, such as the antibiotic tobramycin. Now, the key has been filed so that it no longer fits the lock.
While bacteria have developed mechanisms to resist antibiotics, these adaptations can come at a “fitness” cost. Bacteria may grow more slowly, or can be killed more easily by another antibiotic.
This has led to the concept of “collateral sensitivity” to prevent or overcome resistance when treating patients, by using pairs of antibiotics. Resistance to the first antibiotic increases susceptibility to the second, and vice versa.
In some cases, the “fitness costs” (energy and materials expended to maintain resistance) mean that resistance genes can be present, but they are not activated until exposed to an antibiotic. This makes it difficult to predict bacterial resistance by just looking at their genetic makeup.
Bacteria may get “stronger,” but they are not yet invincible. We need to take action before antibiotic resistance returns us to a pre-antibiotic era.
Read the other articles in The Conversation’s series on the dangers of antibiotic resistance here.
Mark Blaskovich receives funding from a range of government, not-for-profit and commercial organisations for research into antibiotic discovery and development. He is affiliated with AAMRNet (Australian Antimicrobial Resistance Network), an organisation promoting improved care and development of antibiotics and antibiotic alternatives.
Our planet has warmed by about 1.2°C since 1850. But this warming is not uniform. Warming at the poles, especially the Arctic, has been three to four times faster than the rest of the globe. It’s a phenomenon known as “polar amplification”.
Climate models simulate this effect, but when tested against the past 40 years of warming, these models fall short. The situation is even worse when it comes to modelling past climates with very high levels of greenhouse gases.
This is a problem because these are the same models used to project into the future and forecast how the climate will change. They are likely to underestimate what will happen later this century, including risks such as ice sheet melting or permafrost thawing.
In our new research published today in Nature Geoscience we used a high-resolution model of the atmosphere that includes the stratosphere. We found a special type of cloud appears over polar regions when greenhouse gas concentrations are very high. The role of this type of cloud has been overlooked so far. This is one of the reasons why our models are too cold at the poles.
Polar Stratospheric Clouds over Norway (Night Lights Films – Adrien Mauduit)
Looking into past climates can give us glimpses of possible futures for a range of extreme conditions. For us, this means we can use Earth’s history to find out how well our climate models perform. We can test our models by simulating episodes in the past when Earth was much warmer. The advantage of this is that we have temperature reconstructions for these episodes to evaluate the models, as opposed to the future, for which measurements are not available.
If we go back 50 million years or so, our planet was very hot. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations ranged between 900 and 1,900 parts per million (ppm), compared with 415 ppm today. Methane (CH₄) concentrations were likely also much higher.
Canada’s arctic archipelago was covered in lush rainforests inhabited by alligators, turtles, lizards and mammals.
For these plants and animals to survive, conditions must have been warm and ice-free year-round. Indeed, surface ocean temperatures exceeded 20°C near the north pole (at about 87°N) and 25°C in the Southern Ocean (at about 67°S).
This period called the early Eocene is a perfect test bed for our models, because it was globally very warm, and the poles were even warmer, meaning it was a climate with extreme polar amplification. In addition, the Eocene is recent enough for temperature reconstructions to be available.
But as it turns out, the models fail again. They are much too cold at high latitudes. What are our models missing?
Alligators, turtles, lizards and mammals lived in the Arctic about 50 million years ago, when it was much warmer than today. Bradley GT, Shutterstock
Polar stratospheric clouds
In 1992 American paleoclimatologist Lisa Sloan suggested polar stratospheric clouds might have caused extreme warming at high latitudes in the past.
These clouds are a rare and beautiful sight today. They are also called nacreous or mother-of-pearl clouds for their vivid and sometimes luminous colours.
They form at very high altitudes (in the stratosphere) and at very low temperatures (over the poles). In the present day climate, they appear mainly over Antarctica, but have also been observed during winter months over Scotland, Scandinavia and Alaska, at times when the stratosphere was particularly cold.
Just like greenhouse gases, they absorb infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and re-emit a portion of this energy back to the surface. This suggests polar stratospheric clouds could be one of the missing puzzle pieces.
They warm the surface. And their effect could be significant, especially in winter, when the sun does not rise. But they are difficult to simulate in a climate model, so most models ignore them. This omission could explain why climate models miss some of the polar warming, because they miss a process that warms the poles.
Three decades after Sloan’s paper, a few atmosphere models are finally complex enough to allow us to test her hypothesis. In our research we use one of them and find that under certain conditions, the additional warming due to these polar stratospheric clouds exceeds 7°C during the winter months. This significantly reduces the gap between climate models and temperature evidence from the early Eocene. Sloan was right.
Implications for future projections
Our research explains why climate models don’t work so well for past climates when greenhouse gas levels were much higher than they are today. But what about the future? Should we be concerned?
There is some good news. While polar stratospheric clouds do warm the poles, they won’t be as common in the future as they were in the distant past, even if both CO₂ and CH₄ reach very high levels.
This is due to another difference between the Eocene and today: the position of continents and mountains, which were different back then and which also influence the formation of polar stratospheric clouds. So even if we hit early Eocene levels of CH₄ and CO₂ in the future, we would expect less polar stratospheric cloud to be formed. This suggests the standard climate models are better at predicting the future than the past.
It’s therefore unlikely the Arctic and Antarctica will be covered by these beautiful clouds anytime soon. But our research shows evidence from past climates can reveal processes that only become important when greenhouse gas concentrations are high. Some of these processes are not included in our models because models are tested against present day observations and other processes simply seemed more important to include. Looking into the past is a way of broadening our horizon and learning for the future.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Atherton, Program Lead, Business, Economy and Governance at the Institute for Sustainable Futures., University of Technology Sydney
This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.
Just north of Jamestown in South Australia, 70 kilometres east of the Spencer Gulf and next to a wind farm of nearly 100 turbines, stands the world’s first big battery.
Built in partnership with Tesla and financed and operated by Neoen, a French multinational renewable energy developer, the Hornsdale Power Reserve and other big battery projects could stimulate a homegrown battery industry, contributing many billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the Australian economy. But for that industry to rise, it will need money.
Australia aspires not only to transition its economy to net zero emissions, but to become a green energy superpower. That means building a host of solar and wind farms, batteries, electric vehicle charging stations, upgrades to the grid and to all kinds of buildings, as well as investments in new technology.
These investments and big infrastructure projects don’t come cheap. Getting to net zero emissions by 2050 requires investment in renewable energy of A$754 billion in power generation alone, according to research by the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures and funded by Future Super.
The size of the green finance challenge
By 2030, the world will have to invest an estimated US$4.3 trillion a year – roughly the GDP of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy – in climate finance. These financial flows need to grow by 21% a year, on average. Without this enormous increase, the economic transition will not happen in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
The scale of financing means that superannuation funds and other big institutional investors must be involved. They need to know where their money is going, and whether investments are genuine or a case of “greenwashing”. They need certainty that companies in which they invest have solid plans to reduce their climate risk, and the ability to ask the companies questions when they don’t.
But current financial regulation is not set up to support such best practice. To give just one example, default superannuation funds lack the benchmarks – measures of performance assessed by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority – they need to invest in start-up businesses that are developing clean energy technologies.
Successive Australian governments have been slow to grasp this reality, and we are now playing catch-up with many other countries.
The strategy is arranged around three core pillars. The first focuses on creating access to information that is credible, accurate and of practical value. It seeks to ensure markets operate efficiently and money flows to where it is most needed.
From July 1 2024, large Australian companies and financial institutions will have to disclose information about the impacts of climate on their business, the risks climate change poses to their operations, and how they plan to decarbonise.
The disclosure requirements will be based on internationally accepted standards, to ensure Australian and overseas investors can compare data across companies and countries.
The government is also supporting the development of an Australian sustainable finance taxonomy – a set of criteria that enables investors to evaluate whether and to what extent an investment supports sustainability goals.
A taxonomy spells out which investments result in real decarbonisation, and reduces the likelihood of false claims about the sustainability of projects and investments. A government agency will manage the taxonomy, which will start as a voluntary code but may eventually become mandatory.
Large companies will also be required to disclose their net zero transition plan, if they have one. With companies representing 80% of the market capitalisation of ASX 200 companies pledging to achieve net zero emissions, the government wants to ensure their plans are credible. It wants the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), to set out its expectations of the plans – a welcome step.
The second pillar focuses on building the capabilities of Australia’s financial system regulators to manage risk and to clamp down on greenwashing – the practice of making misleading or deceptive claims about the environmental benefits of activities or assets.
Fighting greenwashing
ASIC Deputy Chair Karen Chester believes the economic cost and loss of investor confidence caused by greenwashing “cannot be overstated”. Her organisation has set out guidelines to help financial institutions identify it. This year ASIC launched its first three legal actions, including one against the local arm of US investment giant Vanguard, and another against Active Super, which allegedly falsely claimed it had eliminated investments, such as coal mining, that posed too great a risk to the environment and the community.
The third pillar concerns government leadership and engagement. Such a large and rapid increase in the scale of private sector finance requires growth in a range of financial assets, including shares, bonds and other kinds of debt.
The government is supporting the development of a green bond market by issuing Australia’s first green sovereign bond in June. These bonds are designed to establish standards for lending and borrowing for all green finance; they will also help the government to fund projects such as electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Finally, the strategy recognises the importance of collaboration across the Asia-Pacific. If Australia achieves its goal of becoming a regional sustainable finance hub it would not only benefit our national interest but help Pacific Island nations to raise the finance to decarbonise.
What’s missing from the strategy?
The strategy does not focus on green finance skills and competencies. Yet these capabilities, ranging from a basic understanding of what business activities are unsustainable to specialist expertise in the use of scenario analysis to assess climate risk, are essential to the net zero transition.
LinkedIn’s recent Green Skills Report shows that, globally, the finance sector is lagging behind other sectors in building green skills. And Australia ranks only 30th in a list of countries on its share of talent for green finance.
Australia’s financial system must urgently transform itself to meet the climate challenge. If the financing of the transition were a bicycle race, Australia has now caught up to the global peloton. The next step is to take the lead.
Alison Atherton is a member of the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute’s Capability Reference Group
Gordon Noble 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Kabatek, Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne
In January 2021, the Morrison government changed the way university fees are set with the Job-ready Graduates scheme.
The idea was to steer students into courses that would lead to “the jobs of the future”. So the scheme made some fields (such as history and journalism) more expensive and some (such as nursing, teaching, computer programming and engineering) less expensive.
Fees rose by as much as 117% for some fields and dropped by as much as 59% for others. The government believed this would affect student choices.
Education experts have been very critical of scheme. They argue it is not only unfair, it would not work. But to date there have been few studies looking at the evidence.
Our research with our former student Maxwell Yong shows the impact of the Job-ready Graduates scheme was modest at best.
Our research
Our study looked at student’s preferences when applying for degrees and final enrolments (what they ended up studying).
We used data from the Universities Admissions Centre, which handles applications for degrees in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
We looked at more than 725,000 undergraduates applying between 2014 and 2022. This means we had seven years of data before the Job-ready Graduates scheme was introduced, and two years afterwards.
Using various statistical models, we analysed whether students increased their preferences for fields that became cheaper and reduced preferences for fields that became more expensive.
Our findings
Overall we found the Job-ready Graduates scheme only had a minor impact on course choices.
Just 1.52% of university applicants in our study chose fields they would have not chosen had it not been for the scheme, moving from humanities, arts, law and business to STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and teaching.
Maths and statistics had the largest drop of student fees (59%) of any field. But only one out of every 2,000 students responded by changing their preference to maths.
Communications, journalism and media studies had the largest increase in fees (117%). But only one out of every 350 students chose not to preference these fields in response.
This is perhaps not surprising. Under HECS-HELP, students do not have to pay university fees up-front. Many students also choose courses based on their passions and interests rather than the amount of the deferred fees.
While we found only modest responses to these large fee changes, this does not mean students are not affected. Because of the reforms, many will accumulate much larger HECS-HELP debts.
For a three-year bachelors degree in journalism, the debt grows from around A$20,000 to A$43,500. For a mathematics degree, the debt falls from around $28,600 to $11,850. The new difference in debts ($31,650) is more than triple the old difference ($8,600).
Higher debts mean more years of making repayments. Longer repayment times may mean delayed home purchases and starting families.
These reforms overturned 25 years of university fees reflecting the earning prospects of graduates. Those likely to earn more post-graduation (lawyers, doctors, financiers) paid a bit more. Those likely to earn less (arts, nursing, teaching) paid a bit less.
The Universities Accord
The Albanese government is in the middle of a broad review of the higher education system, including university fees. The Universities Accord review panel is due to hand in a final report in December.
An interim report was highly critical of the Job-ready Graduates scheme, saying it risks “causing long-term and entrenched damage to Australian higher education”.
As a new model is considered, it is important policymakers understand increasing HECS-HELP debts for some and reducing them for others is not going to prompt students into areas the government deems a “priority”.
Jan Kabatek receives funding from Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course
Michael Coelli has received funding in the past from the Australian Research Council and from the Department of Education. He has also completed some analysis work for the AI Group.
Throughout the Western world – with perhaps Australia as the only exception – financial markets have been assuming central banks were done with increasing rates and would soon start pushing them down.
Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock’s statement accompanying Tuesday’s hike in Australia’s cash rate makes it look as if we’re about to join that club. It makes it look as if this hike from 4.1% to 4.35% – a 12-year high – will be the last.
And with good reason. Inflation has been falling almost everywhere, and – notwithstanding the recent uptick associated with higher oil prices – is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to keep falling.
The RBA has taken our insurance
So why did Australia’s Reserve Bank push up rates at all, at a time when none of its global peers were?
The statement makes it look as if it wanted to take out insurance.
While the bank still expects inflation to continue to fall, it says progress now looks “slower than earlier expected”.
Its revised set of forecasts, to be released on Friday, still have inflation falling, but to around 3.5% by the end of next year, instead of 3.3%, then to around 3% by the end of 2025 instead of 2.8%.
The bank is particularly worried that the prices of services – things such as service in a cafe, done by hard-to-find workers – are “continuing to rise briskly”.
And it mentions “uncertainties” four times in eight paragraphs. It isn’t that it thinks inflation won’t keep coming down; it’s that it wants to be sure it is.
Australian hikes hit harder than in the US
One argument the bank hasn’t used – and nor should it – is catch-up. The US, the UK, the EU, Canada and New Zealand all have higher official rates than Australia.
But they are all are different to Australia, in an important way.
When the US Federal Reserve pushes up its Federal Funds Rate, nothing much happens to US home borrowers. Here’s why: almost all US home borrowers are on fixed rates, meaning their required mortgage payments don’t increase.
In Australia, only about one-third of home loans are fixed.
In the US, mortgage rates are fixed for up to the life of the loan. Shutterstock
And US fixed rates are nothing like Australian fixed rates. The typical term in the US is 30 years, rather than the two to three years common in Australia.
This means that, as long as borrowers in the US don’t refinance or move homes, their payments are fixed for the entire term of their loans. Americans never have to pay more just because the US Fed jacks up rates.
At least when it comes to homebuyers, the US Fed has to do a good deal more than Australia’s Reserve Bank to have the same effect.
It means the US official rate of 5.25% has less immediate effect on ordinary Americans than Australia’s new rate of 4.35% will have on us.
That’s what the consumer spending figures show.
After a year of high US rates, American consumers are buying 2.9% more goods and services than they were a year ago.
After a year of less-high Australian rates, Australian consumers are buying 1.7% less.
This means that, as relatively lightweight as our previous 4.1% cash rate had seemed, it might have been packing more punch than the higher 5.25% rate in the US; and also the higher rates in the UK, Canada and New Zealand, where most of the mortgages are also fixed.
‘Painful squeeze’
In her statement, Governor Bullock acknowledged many households were experiencing “a painful squeeze on their finances”. She also noted others were benefiting from rising housing prices, substantial savings buffers and higher interest income.
Bank calculations suggest one in 20 variable-rate borrowers are now going backwards – paying more for essential expenses and housing than they earn.
Among borrowers with big loans relative to their incomes, it’s one in four.
There’s nothing in the governor’s statement to suggest she is thinking of pushing up rates again. After today’s hike, the futures market assigned only a 30% probability to another hike.
The best guess of people who bet on this for a living is that Australia is about to join the rest of the world and leave rates where they are for quite some time.
A frugal Christmas, before possible rate drops in 2024
Alternatively, rates could even begin coming down within 12 months.
The detail of the inflation figures shows monthly inflation surged to 0.8% for one month only, in August, when petrol and diesel prices jumped 9.1%, then fell back to 0.3% in September, which is where it was before petrol prices jumped.
It is also looking like prices scarcely increased at all last month.
The Melbourne Institute inflation gauge, which comes out ahead of the Bureau of Statistics gauge and broadly tracks it, fell 0.1% in October. This suggests that, when taken together, price falls (slightly more than) outweighed price increases.
It’s what you would expect if we were tightening our belts, as we are.
At Big W discount department stories across Australia, sales are down 5.5% on where they were a year ago.
Big W says shoppers have moved away from buying big-ticket items and are instead buying a remarkable number of small gifts, such as Hot Wheels toy cars.
They sell for $2 each, or five for $9.
It’s pointing to a frugal Christmas in which retailers are going to have to discount if they want to move goods, taking further pressure off inflation.
Should that happen, rates could turn down even sooner than traders expect, perhaps by the middle of next year.
Reports and complaints show Australia is also failing in this basic standard of care.
Both Australia and New Zealand need to urgently adopt national policies that ban the practice. All new hospital builds should have single-occupancy rooms as the standard of care.
Being and feeling safe
All people have a basic human right to personal security. This is especially important for hospital patients, who are rendered more vulnerable due to illness and being away from the security of their home.
Mixed-gender rooms compromise both physical and psychological safety, particularly for women. Health system reviews, patient complaints and nursing surveys all document that women feel unsafe and uncomfortable when placed in rooms with male patients.
We need more research from medical and surgical wards, but evidence from mixed Australian mental health wards shows 67% of women experienced sexual harassment and almost half had experienced assault.
In the UK, an official information request revealed that two-thirds of sexual assaults by patients in hospital occurred in mixed-gender rooms.
Mixed-gender rooms can compromise physical and psychological safety for patients. Shutterstock/inomasa
The following quotes are taken directly from patient feedback we received when our research came out. Names have been withheld to preserve confidentiality.
A family member told us:
I was reluctant to leave my mother unattended at all due to being exposed to these men, in a deteriorating and distressed state. I think all three men were ambulatory. I wondered if I left her, would the creep take that opportunity to come over to her bed.
Globally, one in three women are subjected to sexual or physical violence in their lifetime. Women bring their prior experience with them when admitted to hospital.
Being forced into a mixed-gender room when unwell and vulnerable – often separated only by a curtain – may be traumatising to women even when the threat of physical or sexual violence is not realised.
Another family member said:
I don’t want to go into this further, other than to say, my mother had some awful experiences in her life at the hands of men and then to be placed in this situation when she was so incredibly ill […] it was just shocking. She was so vulnerable and powerless.
Maintaining dignity
Mixed-gender rooms don’t just violate women’s right to physical, sexual and psychological security. They also violate the fundamental right to dignity for all patients.
New Zealand’s Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights entitles patients to services delivered in a manner that respects their dignity and takes account of the needs, values and beliefs of different social groups. Respecting dignity requires providers to respect a patient’s values and avoid transgressing their own standards of decency.
Male and female patients have both expressed a preference for single-gender rooms. While for women this preference is commonly associated with fear, for male patients it is driven by standards of decorum and discomfort around the exposure of their bodies or bodily functions to women.
One male patient said:
I was an in-patient in [name of hospital withheld] earlier this year. A female was wheeled into the ward. She immediately displayed huge amounts of stress as soon as she had seen me. I am not sure who was more upset.
The wife of another patient recalled:
My elderly husband has just been in hospital for six days in a mixed ward. He was embarrassed for the women. It is not right.
An aging population
The risks of physical, sexual or psychological harm are exacerbated by the ageing population.
Delirium is a confused state that reduces awareness, impairs judgement and alters behaviour. This condition is present in about 25% of people admitted to hospital.
Similarly, dementia can impair judgement and insight. Dementia patients can suffer behavioural changes, especially when in unfamiliar environments. This can result in agitation and intrusive or inappropriate, even violent, behaviour.
These older adults are not predatory or criminal. They are unwell. However, there is a massive shortage of psychiatric beds for mental health patients, including older adults. This results in even the most severely affected patients being regularly admitted to general medical wards that simply lack the resources to manage this type of behaviour.
Around 70,000 New Zealanders already live with dementia. This is projected to more than double by 2050, which means the proportion of hospital in-patients with this condition will also rise.
We need policies to prevent the harm arising from mixed-gender rooms in hospitals as well as long-term planning that takes into consideration the needs of an ageing population.
A family member told us:
My mother age 93 was recently in a ward at [name withheld] hospital with three men […] one of the others was an aggressive dementia patient who was very loud and quite scary. I can’t understand why they have mixed wards when it would be easy to swap a bed around – surely?
What about gender minorities?
Protecting the safety of women and the dignity of all patients does not conflict with the rights of gender minorities. Transgender patients should have their identity respected along with all other patients and their admission should be aligned with their gender identity.
For those who identify as non-binary or gender diverse, admission would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. But given that gender minorities suffer significant victimisation and harassment, they should be high priority for single rooms.
Our research calls for single-occupancy rooms as the standard of care; it is the only way to comply with the Code of Rights for all patients.
To protect the safety and dignity of vulnerable patients, we need to ban mixed-gender rooms in hospitals across Aotearoa New Zealand. We also need to dramatically increase the number of single rooms in our hospitals.
Our already overcrowded hospitals, ageing population and increasing rates of dementia and disability should make this a high priority for any incoming government.
Dr Cindy Towns is a consultant general physician and geriatrician at Wellington Hospital, the current chair of the ethics committee for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the clinical ethics advisor for Te Whatu Ora Wellington and the Hutt Valley, and a previous member of the national ethics advisory committee.
Angela Ballantyne 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Coghill, Financial Markets Foundation Chair of Developmental Mental Health, The University of Melbourne
Around 800,00 Australians live with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is the most common mental health condition in children aged four to 17, and around half of those with childhood ADHD continue to have significant difficulties as adults.
Without appropriate support, ADHD often has lifelong negative impacts on education and employment. The current cost of ADHD to Australia is estimated at more than A$20 billion every year.
Until recently, ADHD was very much under-recognised and under-treated in Australia. However, public awareness and acceptance of ADHD has led to a sharp increase in people seeking assessment and support and receiving treatment. This has highlighted the significant barriers faced by those trying to access services, and there are now long wait times, rising costs and concerns about the quality of services on offer.
In response to these concerns, a Greens-chaired Senate inquiry looked at how people access ADHD diagnosis and get support afterwards, the international evidence base, as well as practitioner training and cost. Yesterday, after more than 700 submissions and evidence from 79 witnesses at three public hearings, the inquiry delivered its findings.
The report makes 15 recommendations, all of which should be welcomed by Australians with ADHD and those involved in supporting them. The committee emphasises that ADHD is not just a mental health issue but a public health concern.
The committee members agreed there is a need for a government-funded national framework for ADHD, developed in consultation with people with lived experience. They supported the broad implementation of the Australian ADHD Professionals Association’s guideline – an evidence-based roadmap for ADHD clinical practice, research and policy.
A national framework should include shared and collaborative models of care, the committee said. This would increase the range of healthcare professionals, particularly GPs and nurse practitioners, who can contribute to assessment and support services for people with ADHD.
They also found funding models should be reviewed to reduce the financial burden of ADHD highlighted by many of the lived-experience submissions.
The committee said Medicare and bulk-billing incentives should be considered to reduce out-of-pocket expenses for diagnosis and management for people on low incomes and families who have multiple members with ADHD.
On top of this, this inquiry recommended more telehealth and better access to care in rural, regional and remote areas. The government should “review the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to improve the safe and quality use of medications by people with ADHD”, the recommendations said.
While the committee clarified that National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) supports can currently be accessed with ADHD as a “primary or secondary disability”, they highlighted people with ADHD find the process of making an NDIS application difficult. They recommended the NDIS improve the accessibility and quality of information around the eligibility of ADHD as a condition under NDIS.
The inquiry looked at the costs and access barriers for ADHD diagnosis. Shutterstock
The focus on improving lived experience is particularly welcome. Trying to navigate pathways to care, even as an expert in ADHD, can be challenging and at times painful in my experience.
While public awareness of ADHD has improved greatly in recent years there are still those spreading misinformation and increasing the stigma of people living with ADHD.
The committee said the Australian government should implement a neurodiversity-affirming public health campaign. This could shift social attitudes and reduce the stigma felt so acutely by those with ADHD.
Also welcome is the committee’s recognition we have a long way to go in addressing the gender bias experienced by girls, women, and gender-diverse people with ADHD. Our understanding of ADHD in the context of First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse communities was also acknowledged as lacking. The committee said this could lead to misdiagnosis or inappropriate treatment.
ADHD impacts on the whole of peoples’ lives. The committee recommended improving training across settings from workplaces to schools and universities and institutional settings including out-of-home care and correctional facilities – both places where people with ADHD are over-represented.
all levels of government consider investing in the implementation of the Australian ADHD Professionals Association’s Australian evidence-based clinical practice guideline for ADHD.
Further investment will be needed to ensure the guideline is used properly to promote more holistic care with broader access to key supports. The committee’s final recommendations call for better funding for ADHD disability and advocacy organisations to provide advice and support helplines, legal aid, financial counselling and assistance. Finally, the committee recommends funds for further research to better understand the neurodevelopmental condition, how it affects brain function and the stigma it can carry.
The inquiry’s recommendations will now be tabled in federal parliament, with government to respond within three months.
Making this work is going to be a big job but one that will payback in increased productivity, educational outcomes and a better quality of life for all Australians living with ADHD.
David Coghill receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Futures Fund. He is the President of the Australian ADHD Professionals Association and a director of the European ADHD Guidelines Network both not for profit organizations working in the field of ADHD. He has received research funding and/or honoraria from Takeda, Medice, Novartis and Servier.
The relationships between tenants and landlords are often fraught, but it’s fair to expect a house to meet basic standards, like having a back door.
That wasn’t the case for an Aboriginal woman in a remote community, who was part of a successful class action to sue the landlord for failing to provide a habitable house.
Last week, the High Court ruled residents of the community of Santa Teresa (Ltyentye Apurte) could be compensated for the “distress and disappointment” caused by the poor state of their government-managed houses.
So how can such housing be better managed? And what needs to be done to ensure houses in remote communities do not just meet the legal standard, but exceed it?
Seventy public housing residents in Santa Teresa commenced the legal action against their landlord, the NT government, in 2016.
By the time the High Court decision was handed down in 2023, both lead applicants had died. Just as remote housing tenants must wait prolonged periods for repairs, the lengthy delay for housing justice outlasted them.
Elsewhere in the NT, residents of Laramba have also been pursuing compensation for the landlord’s failure to undertake housing repairs, and arguing for a right to safe drinking water in their homes.
In October this year, the NT Supreme Court found the landlord, the NT government, is responsible for ensuring safe drinking water at those premises.
The Santa Teresa High Court decision is potentially significant for tenants across the country.
However, a right to seek compensation for distress and disappointment is not a silver bullet for housing justice.
The challenge is to maintain housing and essential services at such standards that render these types of lawsuits unnecessary.
When your landlord is the government
The NT government has not always been responsible for remote community housing.
Through the NT Intervention, the Commonwealth government compulsorily acquired five-year leases over entire communities.
A policy of “secure tenure” made subsequent housing and infrastructure investment contingent on long-term remote community leases to governments.
Indigenous Community Housing Organisations were effectively dismantled, and the introduction of “mainstream” tenancy arrangements under a public housing system followed.
In response to the cases at Santa Teresa and Laramba, the NT government has sought to reform its remote housing maintenance program.
In 2021, the NT government introduced its Healthy Homes program. It aims to prioritise cyclical and preventive maintenance to improve the quality of houses as well as health outcomes for tenants.
The reforms reflect many reviews that have recommended such measures.
If implemented effectively, Healthy Homes can improve housing hardware and increase the lifespan of existing housing.
While seemingly significant, this is much less than is spent by Housing SA on housing on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in northwest South Australia, where expenditure in 2021 exceeded $10,000 per house.
The key mechanism that underpins the NT’s Healthy Homes is a yearly condition assessment requirement, generating maintenance work without relying on tenant reporting.
The evaluation found that from July 2021 to February 2023, only 1,315 such inspections had been undertaken across a total of 5,498 houses included in Healthy Homes.
This is equivalent to an inspection of only 23.9% of houses.
The Santa Teresa case also laid bare significant issues with the NT government’s record-keeping, which don’t appear to have been fixed.
The evaluation found:
NT government datasets cannot distinguish between preventive and responsive maintenance
reporting requirements mean maintenance data is unreliable for determining how quickly repairs were undertaken
a significant proportion of maintenance work is coded miscellaneous, meaning it is not possible to determine the proportion of works by trade type.
The combination of these factors makes it very hard to assess whether and how approaches to remote community maintenance might be improving.
Bringing remote housing up to scratch
So a High Court case has reaffirmed the rights of Santa Teresa tenants and the current remote housing maintenance program is inadequate. What happens to NT remote housing now?
Commonwealth funding was extended for another year. A new agreement is currently being negotiated.
To meet the needs of remote communities, this agreement must be tripartite. The peak body Aboriginal Housing NT and Northern Territory land councils require rights to determine funding allocations and policy directions, as well as the territory and federal governments.
This is necessary for the meaningful participation and empowerment of those Aboriginal organisations in key decision-making under the agreement, and to enshrine their place as equal partners in the ongoing governance of remote housing in the NT.
Federal funding of remote housing is required into the long term. A ten-year funding agreement should support all of remote communities, town camps and homelands.
Because of historical underfunding and neglect, this funding also needs to increase and the Commonwealth Government must remain on the hook.
The Santa Teresa case has shown the ongoing legacy of underinvestment and neglect.
Aboriginal residents of remote communities and their representative organisations must be supported to play a central role in determining the future of the places they call home.
Liam Grealy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, and the NT Department of Territory Families, Housing and Communities. He is affiliated with Menzies School of Health Research and the University of Sydney. Details related to specific projects are available on his public profiles.
Kyllie Cripps receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Government and State Governments to conduct research and evaluations. Details related to this are on her public profiles.
Winston Peters, New Zealand First leader, at Victoria University.
Analysis by Geoffrey Miller.
New Zealand’s new Government will need to hit the ground running on foreign affairs.
Geoffrey Miller.
Determining New Zealand’s full response to the war in Gaza and the fallout in the wider Middle East will be the first major test for whoever takes the foreign minister’s role.
New Zealand has been run by a Labour caretaker administration since elections were held on October 14. But the final results are now in – and once coalition negotiations are out of the way, a new right-leaning government will take office.
During the transition period, caretaker Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and outgoing foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta have respected the convention of saying as little as possible while waiting for their successors.
When Labour has spoken out on foreign affairs, it has been after consultation with the National Party leader and soon-to-be Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon.
Luxon has characterised the new war in the Middle East as ‘sad and tragic on both sides’ – a phrasing that reflects New Zealand’s overall balanced position towards the conflict so far.
One possible exception to the low-key approach was New Zealand’s decision to cast a vote in favour of a resolution in the UN General Assembly that called for a ‘humanitarian truce’ in Gaza.
Many of New Zealand’s closest Pacific and Western partners either abstained on the resolution (e.g. Australia, Canada and the UK) or opposed it altogether (such as the United States, Tonga and Fiji).
It seems likely that New Zealand’s own vote in favour was decided by a narrow margin.
Carolyn Schwalger, New Zealand’s ambassador to the UN, said New Zealand’s support came despite Wellington being ‘deeply disappointed’ by the resolution’s failure to directly condemn Hamas.
Luxon later largely echoed Schwalger in a media interview, stressing the need to ‘prioritise the protection of civilians’, but condemning Hamas and emphasising Israel’s right to defend itself.
Still, New Zealand’s vote in favour suggests there is still life to the country’s ‘independent foreign policy’, even as Wellington creeps closer to Washington at a broader level.
It will now be up to the new Government to decide what happens next.
To command a majority in Parliament, Christopher Luxon’s National Party will need a deal with two other parties. These are the Act Party, led by David Seymour, and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First.
Of the two smaller parties, New Zealand First is likely to play a particularly crucial role in determining the shape of New Zealand’s international relations.
Winston Peters has served as foreign minister twice before – but only under Labour-led governments. He held the role under Helen Clark from 2005-2008 and again under Jacinda Ardern from 2017-2020.
Peters is said to want the foreign minister’s job again – which would come as little surprise.
Of course, the rumours could still prove to be incorrect.
Now aged 78, Peters may not want the burden of travel himself.
Other options include Judith Collins, a former National leader, and Gerry Brownlee.
However, Brownlee is a likely candidate for Speaker. For her part, Collins easily has the experience for foreign affairs, having been in Parliament since 2002.
If Collins is not chosen, the defence portfolio would be a worthy alternative option, especially as New Zealand looks to make some major decisions on military spending.
Surprisingly, no woman has ever served as New Zealand’s defence minister. A role model for Collins could be Ursula von der Leyen, a centre-right politician who served as Germany’s first-ever female defence minister from 2013-19 and went on to become a high-profile president of the European Commission.
Yet another option could be for Peters to claim the foreign minister job for his New Zealand First deputy, Shane Jones, who served as a roving ‘Ambassador for Pacific Economic Development’ in the foreign ministry from 2014-2017.
The position was somewhat controversially created for Jones by the then National-led government after Jones quit as a Labour MP, before he later reemerged as a key figure in New Zealand First.
Even if it passes up on the foreign affairs portfolio, New Zealand First is likely to be influential and outspoken on international relations issues.
An ‘agree to disagree’ clause in New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with Labour in 2017 prevented New Zealand First from being muzzled under usual collective Cabinet responsibility provisions.
Peters’ past speeches provide some clues as to how he might respond to current developments.
During his first term as foreign minister, Peters observed at the UN shortly after Israel’s 32-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 that conflicts in the Middle East had largely been left to fester, resulting in ‘an unstable environment where extremism, injustice and despair flourish’.
Peters told the UN General Assembly that peacekeeping efforts – such as the strengthening of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) following the 2006 war – were only a stopgap solution and would be ‘doomed to failure unless the underlying political and security issues are addressed’.
More recently, as tensions between the US and Iran mounted, Peters observed in a speech to the Otago Foreign Policy School in 2019 that it was in New Zealand’s interest to stop ‘flashpoints escalating’ and commended Washington for avoiding ‘retaliatory strikes’. The speech built on an earlier statement in which Peters called for ‘caution, restraint and commonsense’ from all involved.
A 2023 election campaign speech by Peters that was dedicated to foreign affairs provides some wider insights into New Zealand First’s foreign affairs and defence priorities.
These include picking up on New Zealand First’s efforts from 2017-2020 to boost New Zealand’s foreign aid and defence budgets. At the time, Peters secured an additional $NZ714m in funding for foreign aid – largely targeted at the Pacific as part of his ‘Pacific Reset’ policy. Meanwhile, military spending was boosted by around $NZ4 billion over the same three-year period.
Peters also gained funding for 50 more diplomats – a feat he seems keen to build on.
Contrasting New Zealand with two other small states – Singapore and Ireland – Peters argued New Zealand needed ‘highly active diplomacy’ which in his view had been ‘shockingly not pursed with vigour’ since 2020.
This was probably partly a jibe at the outgoing foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, who came under pressure during her tenure for a perceived reluctance to travel frequently.
Peters’ contrast with Singapore and Ireland also surfaced in a campaign interview, with some eviscerating criticism: ‘Ireland has two-and-a-half-times more diplomats offshore, so does Singapore – maybe they know something about exporting and trade that we should be practising, rather than this eternal idiotic statement that New Zealand is ‘punching above its weight’’.
As foreign minister, Peter oversaw the opening of new diplomatic posts in Cairo (2007), Dublin (2018), Stockholm (2008 and 2018 – the latter a reopening). But not all of these were his idea.
On the substance, Ireland already has around 100 diplomatic missions globally – twice the number maintained by New Zealand – and is currently expanding its diplomatic footprint even further under an initiative dubbed ‘Global Ireland 2025’.
It remains to be seen whether Peters will be in a position to replicate the ‘Global Ireland 2025’ plan in New Zealand – and what exactly he would seek to achieve with more diplomatic resources.
Opening up more missions in the Middle East would help to give New Zealand the eyes and ears it needs to understand and respond more effectively to events in the region. As the current war shows, these frequently have a global impact.
Another focus might be to boost diplomats’ access to foreign language training, which has been dealt a blow by recent cuts to languages by New Zealand universities.
Nevertheless, stepping up engagement in the Pacific is probably going to be the bigger long-term priority for New Zealand First.
In a 2006 speech, Winston Peters remarked that the Pacific’s ‘strategic significance presents opportunity and challenge’ and the threats included ‘chequebook diplomacy’ – probably an early veiled barb at China.
Fast-forward to 2023, and the New Zealand First leader seems keen to pick up on the ‘Pacific Reset’ policy he launched in March 2018.
In his September campaign speech, Peters recapitulated how as foreign minister he had sought to work more closely with Pacific countries themselves, as well as boosting engagement with the US and Japan – on top of the foreign aid and defence budget boosts.
But Peters warned he was ‘seriously concerned that the momentum we started has fallen by the wayside since 2020’.
After a successful election campaign, the New Zealand First leader is now in a position to change that.
Christopher Luxon needs Winston Peters to form a government.
And a shakeup of New Zealand’s international relations seems likely.
*******
Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.
This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)
Just before the second summit between the US and the Pacific Islands Forum at the White House in September, the US hosts took Pacific leaders to an American football game. One, however, was conspicuously absent: Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.
This led many to question whether Sogavare’s absence was evidence that in another kind of competition – the rivalry between the US and China for influence in Oceania – Beijing had taken the lead.
Sogavare has made no secret of his increasing cosiness with China. His government decided in 2019 to “switch” diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China, for instance, and signed a controversial security agreement with Beijing three years later.
The US, however, has not stood idly by. After last year’s inaugural US-Pacific summit, Washington announced a new Pacific Partnership Strategy, with shared goals and priorities on climate change mitigation, nuclear nonproliferation, maritime security and post-pandemic economic recovery.
As the Pacific Islands Forum is holding its annual summit this week, we’ve 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.
The US also made a pledge of US$810 million (A$1.275 billion) to the Pacific. Some US$600 million (A$945 million) of this was earmarked for the Pacific Fisheries Agency to contain illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
The US has also gotten its allies involved. Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom joined forces with the US last year to form a group called Partners in the Blue Pacific to co-ordinate their outreach to the region.
With this engagement, the US has been seen as finally taking the region seriously and – more to the point – China’s growing footprint as a threat to its interests. Oceania now appears to matter.
As the Pacific Islands Forum holds its annual summit in the Cook Islands this week, it’s a good time to reflect on this increased interest from outside powers, such as the US, China and Australia, and what it all means – especially to the people of the region.
For the US, interest in the Pacific Islands seemingly centres on China and tuna. But these interests alone don’t place the region above others in order of strategic importance.
On China, the Biden administration’s February 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy serves as a useful guide. It says China’s “coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific”.
However, despite the speculation around Chinese bases, airstrips and wharves in the Pacific, the extent of Chinese military presence in the region has been muted.
Indeed, the US is the predominant military power in the Pacific. It has:
bases in Australia, Guam, Hawai’i, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines
exclusive military access to the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau.
US supremacy in the north Pacific also means these states are more likely to adopt Washington’s positions in global affairs, making Sogavare’s stance on China more of an anomaly.
And on the US support for the fisheries agency, it’s worth looking at the numbers and motivation. Not only is the $600 million commitment spread over ten years, it is only three-quarters of the total funding promised in 2022.
This pledge also serves as yet another form of regional deterrence against Beijing, since China’s highly subsidised fleets are the ones primarily accused of illegal fishing.
By comparison, the US doesn’t seem as interested in establishing scholarships, construction, investment and trade in the Pacific – all areas where China thrives.
Australia charts a different path
In Australia, however, there seems to be movement of the dial. In October, for instance, the Pacific Engagement Visa finally passed in parliament. This will allow up to 3,000 Pacific islanders to permanently settle in Australia every year.
The significance of the visa lies in its potential to transform Australia into a nation that looks more like the Pacific.
For Pacific Islanders, reams of research show access to permanent migration is more effective than development assistance. The gains to Pacific families are almost immediate, too.
From a national interest perspective, there’s the side benefit that welcoming Pacific migrants is something China will not do. As Fiji’s deputy prime minister argued, “this is part of a broader strategy to integrate the region in the long term”.
The Australian government faces a similar bind to the US, however. Military concerns can be acted upon much more quickly than economic or developmental needs.
And Australia’s military spend in the Pacific – whether or not it’s in response to a clear threat from China – reinforces the longstanding perception Canberra is more interested in securing the region’s territory than the wellbeing of its people.
Unlike China, Australia’s government can’t direct companies to invest in the region, even though this is what Pacific leaders are keen on. (Telstra’s purchase of Digicel Pacific is the lonely exception.)
While much ink has been spilled on China’s debt trap diplomacy, its true hold over Pacific leaders is the promise of future projects, the pipeline of investments.
China’s special envoy to the Pacific, Qian Bo, is known to regale his Pacific counterparts with derisory observations about Australia’s economy and its inability to meet the Pacific’s needs, either as a destination for Pacific exports or a source of investment.
Greatly lifting Australia’s Pacific aid spend is also politically tricky, even though public sentiment has been shifting in recent years.
Significantly, Australia’s minister for international development recently took aim at “transactional” development projects designed to help heads of mission solve “short-term” problems. This trend is particularly evident in the Pacific, where Australia’s aid is least effective.
While China’s Pacific aid has plateaued since 2016, there’s little danger of domestic push-back on scholarships for the children of political elites, massive stadiums and sleek government buildings. And China’s infrastructure spend has prompted Australia to move from grant-based aid to providing development infrastructure financing itself.
Becoming a true Pacific nation
The material impact of all of this foreign interest is what matters in the region.
The US has long faced accusations of quickly losing interest in the Pacific, even if President Joe Biden says it will be different this time.
However, if “strategic denial” of China is the only area where the US is willing to commit to on-the-ground change, this doesn’t place the Pacific islands high on the list of American priorities around the world. And it barely scratches the concerns about climate change and economic development voiced across region.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping asked Biden why America was working so strongly with Australia, he apparently replied, “because we’re a Pacific nation”. Yet, if former President Donald Trump is re-elected, the Pacific could face an administration that mocks climate change and has little interest in the region beyond China and tuna.
In contrast, with the Pacific Engagement Visa, Australia has taken an important step towards becoming an actual Pacific nation. And even though the opposition is led by a man who once joked about rising sea levels, there is bipartisan conviction the Pacific matters.
The question of why it matters is something for all Australians to reflect on. Because the why part matters a lot to the Pacific.
No conflicts of interest to disclose
Graeme Smith 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.
However, retaining existing staff is a paramount strategy.
The pandemic accelerated the exploration of more flexible work arrangements, while the idea of a four-day work week is continually gaining traction. Could this be a solution to improve the retention of burnt out staff in the health-care sector?
The strain of balancing demanding work schedules, including long hours and shift work, with family responsibilities, can lead to work-family conflicts. Also, the nature of the profession means staff are often exposed to traumatic situations such as patient deaths, further elevating stress levels. COVID has intensified the issue of burnout in health care.
A four-day work week is based on the so-called 100-80-100 arrangement, where 100% of productivity is achieved in 80% of the time with 100% of pay. So that might mean working Monday to Thursday, but getting paid a full wage, and with an expectation that you’ll produce as much in four days as you did in five.
In a pilot study by Cambridge University and 4 Day Week Global, 71% of participants reported feeling less burnt out, while there was a 57% fall in staff resignations. These outcomes are similar to results from trials in Belgium, Spain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
But the execution of a four-day work week in health care comes with unique challenges. The model has primarily been trialled in office and corporate environments, where a five-day work week, totalling 35-40 hours, is conventional.
For many health-care workers, especially nurses, longer hours and shift work are the norm. Nurses are often expected to work on public holidays, and may have to work for six or seven consecutive days before having a few days off, instead of the standard five days on, two days off.
Also, many health-care services, such as hospitals and aged care facilities, require staffing seven days a week. It’s imperative any restructured work arrangements are designed to ensure continuous, adequate staffing.
Consequently, a direct transition from a five-day to a four-day work week might not be immediately logical or applicable.
Instead, this model should be conceptualised more broadly for health care, focusing on reducing and optimising working hours, and addressing the specifics of rostering and workforce planning in the industry.
Applying this model to health care
The focus should be on achieving greater productivity through reducing stress and burnout. Although shifting to a four-day work week won’t necessarily be practical, there should be an emphasis on shorter hours, guided by the 100-80-100 model.
The application of this model within health care would vary. For example, specialist physicians work 50 hours a week on average, so applying the model would reduce their work week to 40 hours.
Shift design, particularly for nurses, should focus on ways to reduce fatigue and in turn burnout. This might include scheduling shifts at a consistent time of day for individual staff members, implementing shorter shifts, and rostering reasonable consecutive working days (instead of seven or more days in a row before getting a day off).
Trials of a four-day work week have shown positive results in corporate settings. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock
The benefits
Reducing the hours worked and optimising shift rostering could help to alleviate stress, burnout and work-family conflict for health-care workers. All this is likely to improve staff retention.
Any reduction in staff turnaround would save on direct costs associated with hiring new staff. The cost to replace a highly specialised health-care professional can reach up to 200% of their annual salary.
Also, implementing shorter shifts – for example shifts lasting four or eight hours instead of 12 – may increase the uptake of shift times that are usually hard to fill. Measures like shorter shifts could also appeal to part-time workers or those who have retired.
Finally, reducing burnout and absenteeism will improve productivity among staff. This will indirectly lower costs and benefit public health.
As it can take a few months to a few years to recover from burnout, once any changes are implemented, the benefits would take time to be seen.
And reducing working hours as well as other changes to rostering will initially be difficult given current staff shortages in the sector.
Hopefully, measures such as migration incentives and subsidised training for health-care professionals will bolster the workforce and make bridging this gap a little easier.
Although the implementation is not straightforward, changes to working arrangements in the health-care sector could have an even greater positive impact than in other industries.
Nataliya Ilyushina receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence.
Women coastal scientists face multiple barriers to getting into the field for research. These include negative perceptions of their physical capabilities, not being included in trips, caring responsibilities at home and a lack of field facilities for women. Even if women clear these barriers, the experience can be challenging.
This is a problem because fieldwork is crucial for gathering data, inspiring emerging scientists, developing skills, expanding networks and participating in collaborative research.
Our collective experience of more than 70 years as active coastal scientists suggests women face ongoing problems when they go to the field. Against a global backdrop of the #MeToo movement, the Picture a Scientist documentary and media coverage about incidents of sexual harassment in the field, conversations between fieldworkers and research managers about behaviour and policy change are needed.
Disrupting the narrative: Women fieldworkers operating equipment, carrying gear and fixing engines. Women in Coastal Geosciences and Engineering network
In 2016, we surveyed both male and female scientists about their experiences of gender equality in coastal sciences during an international symposium in Sydney and afterwards online.
From 314 responses, 113 respondents (36%) provided examples of gender inequality they had either directly experienced or observed while working in coastal sciences. About half of these were related to fieldwork.
Our recent paper in the journal Coastal Futures revisits the survey results to further unpack fieldwork issues that continue to surface among the younger generation of female coastal scientists whom we supervise in our jobs. Many of those younger women don’t know how to address these issues.
The paper includes direct quotes from 18 survey respondents describing their experiences. One woman, a mid-career university researcher, said:
As I fill in this survey, the corridor of the building I work in is lined with empty offices. My colleagues are out on boats doing fieldwork. I have a passion for coastal science. That’s why I’m working in a university. But I have a disproportionately large share of administrative, pastoral and governance duties that keep me from engaging in my passion. I’m about to go to a committee meeting of women, doing women’s work (reviewing teaching offerings). Inequality is alive and well in my workplace!
Collectively, the responses highlight barriers to fieldwork participation and challenges in the field, such as sexual harassment and abuse.
A pressing issue, on and off campus
Universities have recently been criticised for failing to respond to sexual violence on campus. But women employed by universities working off campus – at field sites – can be even more vulnerable.
The social boundaries that characterise day-to-day working life in the office and the laboratory are reconfigured on boats or in field camps. Personal space is reduced. Fieldworkers can be required to sleep in close proximity to one another, potentially putting women in vulnerable situations.
As this female early-career university researcher wrote:
Sometimes women are ‘advised’ to avoid fieldwork for security reasons. Or [we] are considered weak, or we are threatened by rape for being with a lot of men.
Women working on boats commonly face inadequate facilities at sea for toileting, menstruation and managing lactation. Some women said they were “not allowed to join research vessels” or “prevented from [joining] research in the field because of gender”.
Just reading the survey responses was difficult for us. Tales of exclusion and discrimination were particularly confronting because they resonated with our own personal experiences. As one of us, Sarah Hamylton, recalls:
I remember spending a hot day in my early 20s on a small boat taking measurements over a reef. I was the only female. When one of the four guys asked about needing the toilet, he was told to stand and relieve himself off the stern. I had to hold on, so I was desperate when we returned to the main ship in the afternoon.
But that wasn’t the only challenge Hamylton encountered on that trip:
We got back into port and the night before we departed to go home, I was woken by the drunken second officer banging on my cabin door asking for sex. The following year women were banned from attending this annual expedition because someone else had complained about sexual assault.
Gender stereotypes and discrimination
Coastal fieldwork demands diverse physical skills such as boating, four-wheel driving, towing trailers, working with hand and power tools, moving heavy equipment, SCUBA diving and being comfortable swimming in the surf, in currents or underwater.
But our survey revealed roles on field trips – and therefore opportunities to learn and gain crucial field skills – are typically handed to men rather than women. Several respondents observed female students and staff being left out of field work for “not being strong enough” and “too weak to pick stuff up”.
Body exposure can also be an issue for women in the field. Close-fitting wetsuits and swimsuits can increase the likelihood of womens’ bodies being objectified by colleagues. Undertaking coastal fieldwork while menstruating can also be a concern.
Another of us, Ana Vila-Concejo, notes:
Some scientific presentations show women in bikinis as a ‘beach modelling’ joke. Beyond self-consciousness, I have felt vulnerable wearing swimmers and exerting myself during fieldwork. Women students and volunteers have declined to participate in field experiments for this reason, particularly while menstruating.
The issue of body exposure also sheds light on the interconnections between race, religion, class and sexuality, which can create overlapping and intersectional disadvantages for women. Vila-Concejo adds:
I am old enough now that I don’t care anymore. I can afford a wetsuit, but many students and volunteers don’t have one. For some women, it isn’t socially or culturally acceptable to wear swimmers, or even to do fieldwork.
Five suggestions for improvement
To improve the fieldwork experience for women in coastal sciences, our research found the following behavioural and policy changes are needed:
publicise field role models and trailblazers to reshape public views of coastal scientists, increasing the visibility of female fieldworkers
improve opportunities and capacity for women to undertake fieldwork to diversify field teams by identifying and addressing the intersecting disadvantages experienced by women
establish field codes of conduct that outline acceptable standards of behaviour on field trips, what constitutes misconduct, sexual harassment and assault, how to make an anonymous complaint and disciplinary measures
acknowledge the challenges women face in the field and provide support where possible in fieldwork briefings and address practical challenges for women in remote locations, including toileting and menstruation
foster an enjoyable and supportive fieldwork culture that emphasises mutual respect, safety, inclusivity, and collegiality on every trip.
These five simple steps will improve the experience of fieldwork for all concerned and ultimately benefit the advancement of science.
Sarah Hamylton receives funding from The Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Women in Coastal Geosciences and Engineering Network.
Ana Vila Concejo receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other sources unrelated to the subject of this article. She is a founding member and former co-chair of the Women in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering Network.
Hannah Power receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the NSW State Government State Emergency Management Program, the Queensland Resilience and Risk Reduction Fund, the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment Endeavour Fund, and ship time from Australia’s Marine National Facility. She is a member of the NSW Coastal Council and is affiliated with the Women in Coastal Geosciences and Engineering Network.
Shari L Gallop works for Pattle Delamore Partners (PDP). She has an honorary lectureship with the University of Waikato. She is a founding member and former co-chair of the Women in Coastal Geoscience and Engineering Network.
Last year the federal government replaced the jobactive employment support program with what was expected to be a more flexible and improved support system for jobseekers, Workforce Australia.
Yet, in the 16 months the contracted-out system has been running, almost 2 million income support payments have been suspended, affecting 70% of participants.
Under the new system, participants must meet a points target to receive payments.
For example, if the default points target is 100 per month, this can be met by a minimum of four job applications (worth 5 points each) and a mix of other activities. Points targets are adjusted to 60 per month for parents and people with disabilities.
Why are payments suspended?
Payment suspensions are supposed to get people to comply with requirements such as attending job interviews and undertaking training, education classes or other activities to reach their points target.
When these criteria are not met, participants are given a two-day grace period to resolve the problem, after which payments are automatically suspended. The suspension remains until the target is met or the suspension is lifted by a job service provider. The average suspension period is four days.
The figure of almost 2 million payment suspensions, cited at a Senate Estimates committee meeting last month, showed they have been occurring at an alarming rate since Workforce Australia started.
Workforce Australia participants might be required to attend a certain number of job interviews to reach their points target. Shutterstock
Committee member and Greens senator Janet Rice highlighted concern about the high suspension rate and representatives from the Department of Employment, which runs the program, agreed it was an issue.
If 70% of participants have been suspended, that makes it very likely some people have lost payments multiple times. These people might be long-term unemployed due to health, disability or discrimination in the workplace.
Suspending payments to these already disadvantaged groups has a devastating impact because income support payments are grossly inadequate. The single person rate of JobSeeker payment is only $749.20 per fortnight, and the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance is $101.07, adding up to $860.27 a fortnight.
Meanwhile an average share house rent in a capital city like Melbourne is $446 per fortnight – with single renters often paying double – and this leaves people without much room for delays to their income support payments.
The damage caused by suspending payments
Research into the impact of payment suspensions on people’s mental health shows the consequences are dire.
This is especially so during the current cost-of-living crisis when people have enough to worry about just paying rent, buying food or keeping a car on the road.
I coded the frequency of words relating to poor psychological wellbeing as represented in the table. Of the 69 submissions reviewed, 52 identified how payment suspensions caused high levels of stress and affected trust of the job service provider.
The word-frequency results show threats to payments have a devastating effect on the mental health of people receiving unemployment payments. Many felt bullied by their job services providers.
The impact of suspensions is reflected in this quote from one of the submissions. As one 53-year-old woman said in her submission:
I would ask you to consider and recognise that those of us who are reliant on this system are deprived of any means to control our circumstances. A system failure, a missed phone call, a misunderstanding or a simple lack of communication can lead to a suspension of payments.
The stress associated with being constantly under threat by the whims of a particular person, system faults or even a missed phone call is immeasurable. That I might be unable to eat, go to the doctor, pay for medication, buy petrol, pay bills on time (so as not to incur further costs), pay for internet/phone … is considerable and has a massive impact for those of us who are living under these unfortunate circumstances.
It effects our physical and emotional health, our ability to participate in our communities, our sense of future and diminishes our sense of self-worth and our accomplishments – reducing them to meaninglessness while keeping us in poverty.
Why is the suspension rate so high?
The suspension rate is high because the criteria people must meet to receive payments are unrealistic, and because job service providers make mistakes.
Some people can’t meet targets or report points under the points model on time, or don’t attend appointments because they’ve been given insufficient notice or the appointments have been scheduled at times they are already working or in training.
In a speech last month, Labor MP Julian Hill, who heads the parliamentary inquiry into Workforce Australia, told a conference the powers of the system’s providers to make decisions affecting payments was a “major false economy”.
This “false economy” of payment suspensions has been a fixture of job services requirements for nearly two decades.
Workforce Australia was meant to have addressed this with the points model. Instead, the points reporting is onerous and there is no evidence it improves the employment prospects of people who have been struggling to find work.
The next steps
When the parliamentary inquiry into Workforce Australia submits its report this month, it is likely to recommend big changes including returning and payment suspension decisions to the government’s former Human Services department, Services Australia.
If that happens, it will be vital to move swiftly.
As was the case with the former government’s highly discredited and unlawful automated debt assessment and recovery system, Robodebt, the widespread use of payment suspensions is unfair and causes acute distress to people already surviving on inadequate income support.
Simone Casey commenced employment with Economic Justice Australia, a peak organisation for community legal centres providing specialist advice to people on their social security issues and rights, after completing the research for this article.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cathrynne Henshall, Lecturer, School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University
When racing season arrives, everyone becomes an expert on the horses that are the stars of the spectacle.
TV personalities, professional pundits and form guides talk confidently about the favourite’s “will to win”. In close races, the equine contestants “battle it out”, demonstrating “heart”, “grit” and “determination”.
But do horses even know they are in a race, let alone have a desire to win it? Do they understand what it means when their nose is the first one to pass the post?
Based on decades of experience and everything we know about horse behaviour, I think the most plausible answer is “no”.
From the horse’s perspective
From a horse’s perspective, there are few intrinsic rewards for winning a race.
Reaching the end might mean relief from the pressure to keep galloping at high speed and hits from the jockey’s whip, but the same is true for all the horses once they pass the finishing post. If the race is close, the horse that eventually wins might even be whipped more often in the final stages than horses further back in the field.
So while being first to reach the winning post can be crucially important to the horse’s human connections, there is very little direct, intrinsic benefit to the horse that would motivate it to voluntarily gallop faster to achieve this outcome.
So does a horse even know it’s in a race? Again, the answer is likely “no”.
Running (cantering or galloping) is a quintessential horse behaviour and horses voluntarily run together in groups when given the opportunity – even in races without jockeys. However, there are a number of reasons to think horses have not evolved a desire to “win” during a group gallop.
Horses are social animals. In the wild, to minimise their individual exposure to predators, they synchronise their movement with other horses in their group.
This synchronisation includes maintaining similar speeds to other group members (to keep the group together), being alert to the positions of their own body and their neighbours’ to avoid collisions, and adapting their speed to the terrain and environmental cues that indicate upcoming danger or obstacles. In the wild, “winning” – that is, arriving first, long before other group members – could even be a negative, exposing the “winner” to an increased risk of predation.
This collective behaviour is the opposite of what owners, trainers and punters want from horses during a race.
The horse’s preferences (and how riders override them)
Horse races depend on two horse-related factors: the horse’s innate tendency to synchronise with other horses, and its ability to be trained to ignore these tendencies in response to cues from the jockey during a race.
Trainers and jockeys also harness the preferences of individual horses. Some horses are averse to bunching up with others during the race, so jockeys let them move to the front of the field (these are “front runners”). Other horses seek the security of the group, so jockeys let them remain in the bunch until closer to the winning post (these are “come-from-behind” winners).
Jockeys use several different interventions to override the horse’s innate tendency to synchronise. These might include:
directing the horses to travel much closer to the other horses (risking the sometimes fatal injuries we sometimes see at the track)
travelling at speeds not of the horse’s choosing (usually at far higher speeds and for longer durations, and often maintained by use of the whip)
preventing the horse from changing course to adapt its position relative to other horses in the field (directing its path via pressure on the mouth from the bit or taps from the whip).
During the early stages of a race, jockeys rely on horses’ innate desire to remain with the group to ensure they maintain the physical effort required to keep in touch with the front runners. This tendency may then be overruled so the horse will act independently of the group, leave it behind and come to the front to hopefully win.
No concept of being in a race
So horses most likely have no concept of being in a “race”, where the goal of their galloping is to get to a certain location on the track before any of the other horses. However, they undoubtedly know what it’s like to be in a race. That is, they learn through prior experience and training what is likely to happen and what to do during a race.
And with jockeys and trainers who understand the individual preferences of their horses to maximise their chances during the race, there will always be one horse that reaches that part of the track designated the winning post before the other horses in the group.
But as for winning horses understanding they are there to “win”? It’s far more likely it is the combination of natural ability, physical fitness and jockey skill that accounts for which horse wins, rather than any innate desire by that horse to get to the winning post before the other horses.
Cathrynne Henshall receives post-doctoral research funding from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Welfare Foundation
