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

Jim Chalmers’ inaugural budget plants its feet as solidly as possible in the shifting sands of difficult and unpredictable international and local conditions.

Chalmers promised the budget would be “workmanlike”, not “flashy”, and he’s kept his word. Almost all of it had been pre-issued by the government, including measures and numbers.

This can be seen as an interim budget, a new government taking stock and getting some early action under way.

At one level, the budget does the easy things.

It hoes into some relatively soft targets left by the Coalition, which distributed giveaways galore as it became desperate before the election. And it it implements a raft of promises on which Labor campaigned.

Read more:
Albanese government’s first budget delivers election promises but forecasts soaring power prices

But framing any budget in such uncertain times involves tricky trade offs and careful judgement. So the opposition’s “line” before Tuesday – that this is just in effect a mid-year budget update – greatly understates the task.

The government has been sensibly cautious. Keeping spending tight was vital. Despite the hard times and the pressure to give people help, any splurging would have been inflationary and at cross purposes with the Reserve Bank’s efforts to cool the economy.

Interest rates are set to go up again before Christmas anyway – so the worst thing would have been a fiscal policy that forced the bank to push them up even further.

The emphasis on delivering election commitments in this first budget is important because it builds voter trust – and thus political capital – early in the government’s term.

On this front, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was wise to pull back from Chalmers’ inclination to refashion the Stage 3 tax cuts. That would have transformed the budget story from “promises kept” to “promise broken”, with the potential to sour Labor’s compact with the electorate.

“Restraint is the name of the game in this budget,” Chalmers said at his news conference in the media “lock up”. While Tuesday’s effort passes the “restraint” test for now, it is obvious that there are tough decisions ahead.

The numbers show the deficit increasing in the second, third and fourth year of the forward estimates. Outlays in areas such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (costed at nearly $52 billion in 2025-26 ) will have to be tackled, and that will be much harder politically than cancelling a Coalition dam or some car parks.

Read more:
‘The beginning of something new’: how the 2022-23 budget does things differently

The economists will like the budget, but what about the ordinary voters?

Leaving aside those in the pockets hit by the cuts, they are unlikely to be hostile. But nor will they see much in it for them.

And they will be dismayed by the horrendous forecasts for electricity and gas prices, and how far away is the hope of real wage rises. But more broadly, they will be already across the inflation story from their daily lives.

The promises on cheaper child care, lower costs for medicines, and more affordable housing are branded as part of a “responsible cost of living relief” package.

But it’s a misnomer. Only a minority of people at any one time will benefit from the child care changes. Housing will remain unaffordable for many people.

As cost-of-living relief, the budget measures pale when put beside the coming massive power costs and the interest rate rises of the last few months and those ahead.

Read more:
Jim Chalmers’ 2022-23 budget mantra: whatever you do, don’t fuel inflation

This is not to say the budget should have given more direct cost-of-living assistance. It’s just to note some there is some hyped “branding” by a government that puts a lot of store on how it labels things.

Chalmers emphases this is the first of a suite of budgets, which will be preceded by “conversations”. It’s a fair bet the later ones will generate stronger headlines.

The future cuts will be more controversial. And at some stage the government will visit the tax issue, although when and in what form is unknown. “I think tax needs to be part of the conversation going forward,” Chalmers told the media.

It’s been a hard few months for Chalmers. But in reality, he’s been in the easy stage of what will be a marathon.

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

– ref. Jim Chalmers’ ‘restraint’ budget the first stage of a marathon for the treasurer – https://theconversation.com/jim-chalmers-restraint-budget-the-first-stage-of-a-marathon-for-the-treasurer-192841

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

Jim Chalmers’ inaugural budget plants its feet as solidly as possible in the shifting sands of difficult and unpredictable international and local conditions.

Chalmers promised the budget would be “workmanlike”, not “flashy”, and he’s kept his word. Almost all of it had been pre-issued by the government, including measures and numbers.

This can be seen as an interim budget, a new government taking stock and getting some early action under way.

At one level, the budget does the easy things.

It hoes into some relatively soft targets left by the Coalition, which distributed giveaways galore as it became desperate before the election. And it it implements a raft of promises on which Labor campaigned.

Read more:
Albanese government’s first budget delivers election promises but forecasts soaring power prices

But framing any budget in such uncertain times involves tricky trade offs and careful judgement. So the opposition’s “line” before Tuesday – that this is just in effect a mid-year budget update – greatly understates the task.

The government has been sensibly cautious. Keeping spending tight was vital. Despite the hard times and the pressure to give people help, any splurging would have been inflationary and at cross purposes with the Reserve Bank’s efforts to cool the economy.

Interest rates are set to go up further before Christmas anyway – so the worst thing would have been a fiscal policy that forced the bank to push them up even further.

The emphasis on delivering election commitments in this first budget is important because it builds voter trust – and thus political capital – early in the government’s term.

On this front, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was wise to pull back from Chalmers’ inclination to refashion the Stage 3 tax cuts. That would have transformed the budget story from “promises kept” to “promise broken”, with the potential to sour Labor’s compact with the electorate.

“Restraint is the name of the game in this budget,” Chalmers said at his news conference in the media “lock up”. While Tuesday’s effort passes the “restraint” test for now, it is obvious that there are tough decisions ahead.

The numbers show the deficit increasing in the second, third and fourth year of the forward estimates. Outlays in areas such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme will have to be tackled and that will be much harder politically than cancelling a Coalition dam or some car parks.

Read more:
‘The beginning of something new’: how the 2022-23 budget does things differently

The economists will like the budget but what about the ordinary voters?

Leaving aside those in the pockets hit by the cuts, they are unlikely to be hostile. But nor will they see much in it for them.

And they will be dismayed by the horrendous forecasts for electricity and gas prices, and the how long away is the hope of real wage rises. But more broadly, they will be already across the inflation story, from their daily lives.

The promises on cheaper child care, lower costs for medicines, and more affordable housing are branded as part of a “responsible cost of living relief” package.

But it’s a misnomer. Only a minority of people at any one time will benefit from the child care changes. Housing will remain unaffordable for many people.

As cost-of-living relief, the budget measures pale when put beside the coming massive power costs and the interest rate rises of the last few months and those ahead.

Read more:
Jim Chalmers’ 2022-23 budget mantra: whatever you do, don’t fuel inflation

This is not to say the budget should have given more direct cost-of-living assistance. It’s just to note some there is some hyped “branding” by a government that puts a lot of store on how it labels things.

Chalmers emphases this is the first of a suite of budgets, that will be preceded by “conversations”. It’s a fair bet that the later ones will generate stronger headlines.

The future cuts will be more controversial. And at some stage the government will visit the tax issue, although when and in what form is unknown. “I think tax needs to be part of the conversation going forward,” Chalmers told the media.

It’s been a hard few months for Chalmers. But in reality, he’s been in the easy stage of what will be a marathon.

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

– ref. Jim Chalmers’ ‘restraint’ budget is the just the first stage of a marathon for the treasurer – https://theconversation.com/jim-chalmers-restraint-budget-is-the-just-the-first-stage-of-a-marathon-for-the-treasurer-192841

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

Terrified by the prospect of further stoking the worst inflation in three decades, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher have delivered a budget that takes out of the economy about as much as it pumps into it.

In the March 2022-23 budget, delivered ahead of the May election, the Coalition gave away most of the extra A$40 billion that was to flow from higher commodity prices and an improved economy in new programs and tax cuts. But this budget has hung on to the bulk of what’s turned out to be an extra $52.5 billion.

Over the four years to 2025-26, Chalmers expects $144.6 billion more in tax than was expected in March. Most of this is from much higher company tax flowing from higher mineral and gas prices. This is offset by $92.1 billion in extra spending, mainly necessitated by higher inflation.

Out of the net $52.5 billion he plans to spend only a net $9.8 billion, most of which is $7.4 billion in recovery funding for communities affected by disasters.

Labor has largely paid for its election spending promises (all of which appear to have been implemented in full) by hacking into Coalition programs and spending announced in the March budget that hasn’t yet taken place.

Although the monthly measure of inflation has been falling – to 6.8% for the year to August (with the September update due on Wednesday) – the budget forecasts a reacceleration to a peak of 7.75% by the end of the year.

It expects retail electricity prices to climb by 20% this year and a further 30% in 2023–24. It expects retail gas prices to climb 20% in both years. It says these higher prices should flow through into the cost of almost everything we buy.

Nevertheless, as international price pressures ease and as higher Reserve Bank interest rates squeeze spending, it expects inflation to fall back to 5.75% by mid next year, 3.5% by mid-2024 and (perhaps optimistically) to the middle of the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% target band by mid-2025.

Read more:
Jim Chalmers’ ‘restraint’ budget is the just the first stage of a marathon for the treasurer

Encouragingly, it expects wage growth to accelerate almost immediately, from its present 2.6% to 3.75% by the middle of next year, taking wages growth back up above what it says will then be prices growth of 3.5%.

Whether or not this slow glide down from higher inflation and quick lift in wages growth is realistic, many of the assumptions in Chalmers first budget are more believable than those of his predecessors.

Previous budgets made their forecasts look better by plugging in high productivity growth of 1.5% per year, which has been the average over the past 30 years. But productivity growth hasn’t been anything like that high for two decades. On average it has been 1.2%, which is the much lower number Chalmers has plugged in, cutting forecast economic growth by 1.75% over the next decade.

The previous budget expected the National Disability Insurance Scheme to cost $46 billion per year by 2025-26. This budget expects it to cost $51.7 billion in the light of new actuarial projections, pointing to spending increases of almost 14% per year.

Read more:
Albanese government’s first budget delivers election promises but forecasts soaring power prices

The previous budget expected net interest payments to amount to 0.8% of gross domestic product by 2032-33. This budget factors in almost double the cost – 1.5% of GDP – as a result of much higher interest rates.

By 2025-26 it expects interest payments to cost $26.5 billion, which is more than it expects to spend that year on family payments, pharmaceutical benefits, or schools.

It expects net debt of 31.9% of GDP by June 2033, well up on the 26.9% expected in March.

As is a Treasury tradition, the revenue forecasts are conservative. Whereas the March budget assumed iron ore, coal and gas prices would fall from exceptionally high levels to long-term averages by September 2022, the October budget assumes the same fall, but for March 2023.

In truth it’s hard to tell what will happen six months into the future, let alone the four years for which the budget makes forecasts and the ten years for which it makes projections, as what’s happened since March makes clear.

Read more:
‘The beginning of something new’: how the 2022-23 budget does things differently

But taken together, Chalmers’ more cautious assumptions and the enthusiasm with which Gallagher has embraced cost-cutting paint a weak picture of the year. Economic growth is forecast to be 3.25% this financial year, down from 3.5% forecast in March.

Next financial year it is expected to be 1.5% down from 2.5% forecast in March (albeit while countries including the United Kingdom and the United States grapple with recessions).

Unemployment is expected to be much higher than forecast in March – 4.5% instead of the 3.75% by mid 2024, which would mean an extra 100,000 or so people out of work.

It’s a price Chalmers and Gallagher seem prepared to pay if it means getting on top of inflation, although it wasn’t one they were prepared to draw attention to.

The budget papers say employment will climb in each of the next four years, and doubtless it will, because the population will climb, but isn’t a particularly strong claim to make.

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

– ref. Jim Chalmers’ 2022-23 budget mantra: whatever you do, don’t fuel inflation – https://theconversation.com/jim-chalmers-2022-23-budget-mantra-whatever-you-do-dont-fuel-inflation-192846

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Treasurer Jim Chalmers told reporters on Tuesday his first budget was “the beginning of something new and responsible”.

The October 2022-23 budget under Labor is certainly a different beast from the one handed down by the Coalition just before the federal election. It is not just the numbers that have changed, the approach is different as well.

This budget recasts the fiscal strategy, emphasis wellbeing and highlights climate change.

A revamped fiscal strategy

Fiscal strategy is about the governments approach to spending and tax. All federal governments need to spell out their fiscal strategy under the Charter of Budget Honesty.

The Coalition government had a long stated goal of keeping tax revenue below 23.9% of GDP. There was no science behind this number. It was just the ratio during the Howard government.

A key difference under the Albanese government is there is now no arbitrary number. But it makes a commitment to direct the “majority” of revenue improvements to budget repair.

Less than half the revenue improvements in the last seven budget updates were directed to improving the budget balance. This year it will be more than 90%.

There is also a commitment to “limiting” growth in spending until gross debt as a share of GDP is on a downward trend. The debt to GDP ratio is projected to increase until at least 2032-33. But this commitment only holds “while growth prospects are sound and unemployment is low”. It therefore does not rule out fiscal stimulus in a crisis.

The strategy refers (repeatedly) to the budget needing to be “sustainable’’.

A focus on wellbeing

The main budget paper now has a new chapter, called, “measuring what matters”.

It has long been acknowledged that GDP is not, and was never designed to be, a measure of “wellbeing”.

Yet until now, GDP has largely by default been regarded as the benchmark of national success in the budget papers.

This year, the budget also includes “indicators that measure broader quality of life factors’” and compares Australia to its peers in the OECD.

Read more:
Jim Chalmers’ 2022-23 budget mantra: whatever you do, don’t fuel inflation

The budget papers present the indicators as a dashboard with green coding for where Australia outperforms.

Areas where Australia is doing better than the OECD average include income and wealth, employment, education and life expectancy. But in some areas (shown in red), we are doing worse than the OECD and deteriorating, such as the number of threatened species and the extent of household debt.

There is no attempt to weight the indicators to form a single overall index. But with statements like “Australia is at or better than the OECD average on 21 of the 32 headline indicators,” this represents a market difference from past budgets and a change in the way we view what matters in policymaking.

Climate change

Climate change is mentioned on some 16 pages of the main budget document. This includes the “measuring what matters” chapter, with the acknowledgment Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the OECD.

There is also a new section on the “fiscal impacts of climate change”. This notes how climate change adversely affects economic activity, by eroding the tax base. Climate change also leads to higher spending on things like disaster relief.

The section also notes how moving away from fossil fuels will boost tax collections from some industries. For example, the shift to electric cars will stimulate demand for the lithium used in their batteries.

Total climate-related spending is estimated at A$25 billion over 2022-23 to 2029-30.

This will not be the last mention. A new annual climate change statement will be made to parliament. The implications of climate change will also be analysed in next year’s Intergenerational Report. To assist in their preparation, Treasury’s climate modelling capacity will be rebuilt.

More to come

The 2022-23 budget gives us new and useful information and analysis about our economy and policy landscape. It also promises more to come.

There will be a new wellbeing statement in 2023 and unusually, the budget papers invite readers to submit their views on this issue.)

There will also be a white paper on employment in the second half of 2023. Public servants and economists are going to be very busy.

John Hawkins has been an economic forecaster in the Reserve Bank and the Australian Treasury.

– ref. ‘The beginning of something new’: how the 2022-23 budget does things differently – https://theconversation.com/the-beginning-of-something-new-how-the-2022-23-budget-does-things-differently-192850

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashlee Morgan, Lecturer in Sport Business & Marketing, Edith Cowan University

First Nations people please be advised this article contains mentions of racist comments against First Nations people.

While the International Olympic Committee espouses that sport is about solidarity, fair play and friendship, the commercial investment in sport tells a somewhat different story.

It’s clear the sport industry is big business. The global sport sponsorship industry is booming, with value expected to reach over A$140 billion in the next five years.

The hive of activity this week around Hancock Prospecting sponsoring Netball Australia has ended with the mining giant pulling the pin on the $15 million deal.

However, the challenges confronting Netball Australia are far from over. The organisation is in a dire economic situation and at risk of financial ruin. Earlier this year, it was reported that due to years of poor fiscal management, the organisation was operating at a loss of $7.2 million over the past two years.

Hancock withdrawing their sponsorship has not only opened financial wounds, it has also exposed a significant divide between players and administration.

One week ago, it emerged that Diamonds player Donnell Wallam objected to wearing a match uniform bearing the Hancock logo. Wallam’s concern relates to the mining company’s founder, Lang Hancock’s infamous comments in the 1980s that Indigenous Australians should be sterilised. In support for the Diamonds’ only Aboriginal player, Wallam’s teammates stood by her, and in a public statement said:

We are fully committed to the Diamonds’ Sister in Arms legacy and the values this represents, alongside Australian Netball’s Declaration of Commitment.

What we are witnessing now isn’t just external public criticism, but growing activism by athletes taking a stance against certain brands sponsoring their sports.

This isn’t limited to netball. In the past week, the Australian men’s cricket captain, Pat Cummins, declared he will not appear in any advertisements for Cricket Australia sponsor Alinta Energy.

While it’s risky to “bite the hand that feeds you”, this athlete advocacy is reflective of activism within broader society. These days we have higher expectations of brands and organisations to do the right thing.

If sporting bodies want to stay relevant and respected, these concerns cannot be ignored.

Can values override a sponsor’s logo?

It’s alleged that Netball Australia rejected the players’ request that Wallam be granted an exemption from wearing the Hancock logo for personal reasons. While we may not be privy to the full story, this is surprising given the precedent set in other sports.

There are many examples where sporting bodies have accepted athletes’ concerns around sponsors not aligning with their beliefs or religion. Back in 2017, the Auckland Blues and New Zealand Rugby agreed that star player, Sonny Bill Williams, wouldn’t have to display sponsor logos relating to finance, alcohol or gambling, due to his religious beliefs.

Similarly, Cricket Australia has permitted Usman Khawaja and Fawad Ahmed to not wear the logo of the Australian beer sponsor, Victoria Bitter, due to Islamic beliefs.

So, while the sponsorship controversy continues to swirl, serious questions should be asked within Netball Australia’s administration. Particularly given their 2020 “Declaration of Commitment”, a public commitment to “listen, learn and change by engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples”.

Read more:
As Netball Australia eyes betting sponsorship, women and girls are at increased risk of gambling harm

Sponsorship as a form of sportswashing

Hancock Prospecting’s sponsorship of netball and other sports is by no means altruistic. There are a range of reasons why companies invest in sport sponsorship, from increasing brand awareness to business growth and development.

We also see companies using sports to improve their public image, which is known as “sportswashing”.

There are many examples of sportswashing. At the extreme end, it can relate to countries hosting sporting events or investing in sport clubs to sanitise their serious human rights violations. In other contexts, it can be fossil fuel companies sponsoring teams or events to cover the negative associations of environmental degradation.

For decades we have seen companies that pose some level of threat to societal welfare blazoned across jerseys, stadiums and sport broadcast. From tobacco sponsorship in the 1980s and 90s, to the current proliferation of sports betting and fossil fuel sponsorship, our sporting arenas are promoting companies that contradict the values sport proclaims to uphold.

Sport sponsorship is a form of co-branding relationship. There is transference of inherent values and image between partners. While this is obviously attractive for the corporate sector seeking to win the hearts and minds of consumers through their affiliation with sport, the transfer of value is two-way. The sponsored property is also impacted, positively or negatively, by the brands they align with.

Historically, sponsorship’s financial value has long overshadowed the ethical values of sport organisations and their athletes. But the tide may be turning.

Of course, there needs to be a balance between the commercial realities of operating a financially stable sport and staying true to the values of the organisation, athletes, and supporters.

Growing activism

There has been public disdain towards incompatible sponsorship deals in the past. There was notable backlash and protest surrounding two London 2012 Olympic Games’ sponsors, British Petroleum (BP) and Dow Chemical. BP’s sponsorship came just two years after the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill, while Dow Chemical are linked to the horrific 1984 Bhopal gas disaster.

More recently, we’re seeing growing activism by athletes against individual sponsors. It’s reflective of an increasing trend, with younger generations in particular more likely to boycott a product, brand, company or country because of their social, environmental or political stance.

Read more:
Greta Thunberg at Davos: why Gen Z has real power to influence business on climate change

Looking ahead we will undoubtedly see more athletes speaking out about their values and beliefs. With this mounting pressure to be more scrupulous with sponsorship partners, a change across the sport sponsorship landscape appears imminent.

Sporting bodies that do not consider their stakeholders’ values and fail to consult with their athletes will be left at the start line.

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

– ref. Should athletes just shut up and play ball? No – society is changing and sport sponsorship must too – https://theconversation.com/should-athletes-just-shut-up-and-play-ball-no-society-is-changing-and-sport-sponsorship-must-too-192959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fatemeh Aminpour, Associate Lecturer, School of Built Environment, UNSW Sydney

As people age, they often become less confident about walking. Fear of falling can limit the activity of older people, leading them to become isolated.

So what, exactly, makes for a great footpath to walk on?

My colleagues and I explored this question in a recent paper. We used an evidence-based tool to measure the walkability of urban roads – assessing not just the footpath itself, but the features around it.

The results can help urban designers make our cities more walkable, especially for older people.

What makes a footpath ‘walkable’?

Only about 42% of people in Sydney and Melbourne live in neighbourhoods with above-average walkability. This compares poorly with people in Lisbon (99.2%), São Paulo (97%) and Hong Kong (96%).

Generally, features that determine whether a footpath is walkable fall into one of two categories.

Neighbourhood-level features refer to a neighbourhood’s general environment, such as:

• how well connected streets are to each other. Do they offer a variety of available routes for daily trips?

• how densely dwellings are built and how amenities are distributed. Are there parks, train stations, cafes or shops within walking distance?

Footpath-level features refer to the safety, comfort and attractiveness of a footpath, such as:

• obstacles such as tree roots and short poles
• the width of the path
• convenience of crossing facilities
• green belts (such as grass and shrubs) and fences that separate pedestrians from traffic lanes
• areas of shade
• street furniture
• bicycles travelling along the path
• vehicles parked on the path
• noise from cars and other sources
• diversity of streetscapes such as building facades, trees and grasslands.

Previous studies on walkability have mixed these two levels of features. But our research separated them, to help urban designers identify which features are most important and which should be improved.

We focused on neighbourhood walkability for senior citizens. By 2050, one in six people in the world will be aged over age 65 – almost double the number in 2015. Australian census data paints a similar picture.

Research shows older adults who perceive their neighbourhood as walkable are happier and more satisfied with life, and less lonely.

Walkable cities help senior citizens – especially those with physical restrictions – be more physically active, and promotes stronger and more regular social connections.

So it’s particularly important to identify how to make our streets more appealing for this age group.

Read more:
People love the idea of 20-minute neighbourhoods. So why isn’t it top of the agenda?

What we found

Our research focused on the city of Shenzhen in China. Over the past 40 years, Shenzhen has grown into a megacity, and urban planners have historically prioritised the needs of motorised traffic over pedestrians and cyclists.

Among the methods involved in our study, we asked 256 senior citizens to rate footpath features to help us understand how much each one affects their walking.

Respondents told us bikes on footpaths and vehicles parked on footpaths were the biggest factors in reducing walkability. They reported that cars parked on footpaths made the space too crowded and increased the risk of being injured by bikes travelling on the footpath.

Convenient crossing facilities were rated as the second most important feature of footpath walkability. This includes formal crossings – such as zebra crossings and underpasses – as well as informal crossings such as quiet streets.

Read more:
Aged care isn’t working, but we can create neighbourhoods to support healthy ageing in place

We employed two auditors to quantify how well each feature appears in 11 sample footpaths. The results showed that the way researchers quantify the quality of a footpath can differ to the views of senior citizens.

For example, we measured the quality of a green belt based on the ratio of the length of the belt to the length of the footpath. But for the pedestrians we spoke to, no matter how wide a green belt is, it’s effective as long as it separates them from traffic lanes.

We need walkable neighbourhoods, too

Our research shows what makes a good footpath, but neighbourhood walkability is also important. If people don’t have destinations to walk to, or streets are not well connected, then they will be deterred from walking even if the footpath is good quality.

And we must remember, people experience footpaths differently. An able younger adult may consider a footpath walkable when a senior citizen or a younger child struggles to navigate it.

Every citizen has an equal right to use and enjoy public space – and footpath design should reflect this.

Read more:
It’s easy to get us walking more if we have somewhere to walk to near our home and work

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

– ref. What makes a great footpath? The answer is key to our happiness and wellbeing as we age – https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-great-footpath-the-answer-is-key-to-our-happiness-and-wellbeing-as-we-age-191537

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sabrina Pit, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Honorary Adjunct Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

As we write from New South Wales’ Northern Rivers region, other parts of eastern Australia are facing conditions that recall uncomfortable memories from the 2017 floods and those in March this year. Many people are fatigued and still coming to terms with those devastating natural disasters.

We know from previous research people with pre-existing mental health conditions and poorer health are more likely to live in flood zones.

Val, a dementia advocate who has been diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease, knows this all too well.

My house flooded in March and then I spent a week in a local evacuation centre because I could not get home. My house was covered in mud like so many other houses, and we had to throw out a lot of things. Eight months later, drips of disappointment continue. I still think, I’ll go downstairs and get that but no, it has been tossed out.

Extreme weather events are increasing globally and so are the numbers of people living with or expected to develop dementia. Floods are stressful for everybody – especially Australians living with dementia and those who care for them. But planning and preparation can help.

Read more:
Getting urgent medicines in a flood zone can be a life or death challenge

Stressful situations

In stressful situations, such as flooding and exposure to other natural disasters, people living with dementia may respond in unexpected ways. This might include disorientation, restlessness, wandering or not being able to recognise people or things.

Symptoms may increase as will the risk of functional decline (a decrease in the daily tasks a person can do independently). All this also adds extra stress for carers.

Dementia Australia gives the following seven tips every carer can use to support people living with dementia:

• look for simple changes to make home life easier, such as prepared meals or cleaning help
• allow extra time and space for the person to do things for themselves as much as possible
• listen without always trying to jump in and problem-solve
• give the person with dementia extra time to search for words they can’t find immediately
• make use of clever technology, such as reminder alerts or safety warnings
• help them plan social activities
• encourage safe active movement and healthy choices.

These principles apply to preparing for, responding to and recovering from an emergency too.

Be prepared

To simplify the emergency experience for someone living with dementia and engage them in the process, there are several tools to help you prepare for natural disasters. These include the Emergency Preparedness Toolkit for People Living with Dementia or the checklists in Preparing for a Natural Disaster – the Guide to Using RediPlan for Carers of People with Dementia.

Based on our first-hand experiences of working in flood evacuation centres, we know they can be very loud, chaotic and disorienting spaces.

While recognising the practical difficulties of establishing evacuation centres in the middle of a crisis, staff can help provide structural and emotional support for people with dementia and their carers by:

• identifying people with dementia quickly and assessing their needs. A family member or friend may be able to help
• providing quiet, calming spaces within evacuation centres to reduce stress
• prioritising people living with dementia for relocation to safe, stable accommodation rather than remaining for long periods within the unfamiliar centre among unfamiliar faces
• including a component of dementia awareness training for emergency services providers, including volunteers.

Read more:
Older people who get lost sometimes sadly lose their lives. But those with dementia are more likely to survive

Stay connected online

People need digital skills to be able to access information and for communication during disasters. Social media is often used for information exchange and disaster warnings. But access can be a barrier for older people.

However, there is increasing evidence digital technologies, such as mobile phones and computers, can prevent social isolation and loneliness in dementia. We found this in our local community as well.

Last year, Dementia Inclusive Ballina ran a digital training program with 50 carers. We found the number of people who had talked to loved ones in the previous four weeks online had doubled after extra training in the use of Zoom, WhatsApp, and other communication tools.

The federal government’s Be Connected program for older Australians is a network of community organisations who support older Australians to improve their digital literacy.

You can help by teaching people living with dementia and their carers how to access natural disaster information and how to connect during a disaster. These skills are an important part of any digital training program for older people.

Have a network of people around you

The caring role can be an all-consuming one. People living with dementia and their carers are at high risk of being socially isolated. That means they can be hard to reach, especially during disasters.

Carers should be identified and supported to look after their own health. Prioritising carers’ health and living environment enables them to continue to look after their loved ones after a disaster.

You can help them by

• reaching out and asking if you can help. Practical assistance might be cleaning up after the disaster, assisting with shopping, charging phones if there is a power outage, or just lending a helpful ear so carers can debrief
• following up down the track when post-traumatic stress can surface. Care is crucial to support long-term recovery
• taking it a step further and creating a dementia-inclusive community with a group of local people.

Dementia Australia has useful resources to make your community dementia inclusive (in Ballina, for example, we draw on research evidence to connect carers and people with dementia in the region) and there’s an International Standard too.

Emergencies like floods are incredibly stressful for everyone. With preparation, online connections and a strong social network they can show the strength of community and caring, especially for people living with dementia, and their carers.

Read more:
Floods leave a legacy of mental health problems — and disadvantaged people are often hardest hit

Sabrina Pit is the Grants Coordinator (Ordinary Member) of Dementia Inclusive Ballina Alliance Incorporated in a volunteer capacity. This organisation has charitable status. As a member of Dementia Inclusive Ballina Alliance Incorporated, we have received grant funding to create dementia inclusive communities and support people living with dementia and their carers in the Ballina Shire from: the Northern Rivers Community Fund, Dementia Australia, the Australian Government Be Connected Grants Program, and Australia Post. Sabrina has received funding in the past from the NHMRC. Sabrina is a member of the Australasian Associaton of Gerontology; Chair of Standards Australia National Committee MB027 Ageing Societies; Member of Standards Australia MB009 Human Resources Management; Australian Expert for the International Organisation for Standardisation Technical Committee 314 Ageing Societies and TC260 Human Resources Management. Sabrina declares an interest in work, health, ageing and standardisation practices as part of Work Wiser International.

Louise Horstmanshof is on the steering committee of Dementia Inclusive Ballina Alliance Incorporated. This organisation has charitable status.

As a member of Dementia Inclusive Ballina Alliance Incorporated, we have received grant funding to work with people living with dementia and their carers in the Ballina Shire from the Northern Rivers Community Fund and from Dementia Australia

Robert G Lingard is on the steering committee of Dementia Inclusive Ballina Alliance Incorporated (DIBA Inc). This organisation has charitable status. As a member of DIBA Inc, we have received grant funding to work with people living with dementia and their carers in the Ballina Shire from the Northern Rivers Community Fund and from Dementia Australia. Robert has previously been employed as a project officer to support the work of DIBA Inc.

– ref. Floods and other emergencies can be extra tough for people with dementia and their carers. Here’s how to help – https://theconversation.com/floods-and-other-emergencies-can-be-extra-tough-for-people-with-dementia-and-their-carers-heres-how-to-help-193096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Senior Lecturer, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

Cats are great companions, but for some people their company comes at a cost. Up to 1 in 5 people have an allergic response to cats, and this figure is increasing.

There are many myths about allergies to cats, but what is fact and what is fiction? And can you still have a cat if you’re allergic?

Myth #1: People are allergic to cat hair

There is an element of truth to this myth. However, rather than the hair itself, substances on the hair are the source of the allergy. Most people allergic to cats react to a protein called Fel d 1. This main cat allergen is produced in the glands of the cat, including the sebaceous (oil-producing skin glands) and salivary glands.

While Fel d1 is the main culprit, domestic cats have eight different potential allergens. The second most common is Fel d 4, also produced in salivary glands.

Another type, Fel d 2, is similar to a protein found in other animals, and the reason a person might be allergic, for example, to both cats and horses. This similarity can also result in a child with milk allergy having an increased risk of being allergic to animals like cats.

When cats groom themselves, they deposit the allergen in their saliva onto their hair. Sebaceous glands are close to the skin and can secrete onto the hair follicles. When you pet a cat’s fur, a reaction is set off, especially if you then rub your nose or eyes.

But you don’t need to pet a cat to have an allergic reaction to them. Simply being around dander can be enough. Dander might sound like a dating app for pets, but it’s actually more akin to animal dandruff, and contains tiny scales from hair or skin. As dander particles are so small, they float in the air and we often breathe them in.

Myth #2: There are hypoallergenic cats

There is no evidence that specific cat breeds do not cause allergies. However, if some breeds have less hair, or shed less hair, this may reduce exposure to allergens in the environment.

For example, Sphynx cats are hairless, although they still produce Fel d 1. In this way some breeds might be considered “hypoallergenic”, or cause fewer allergic reactions. However, there are no scientific studies to confirm this is the case.

All cats produce Fel d 1, but the levels can differ by as much as 100-fold between individual cats. This may explain why people with cat allergies notice they react more to some cats than others.

Myth #3: You have to re-home your cat if you have an allergy

If you have a life-threatening allergy to cats, your only alternative might be to find them a new home. However, most people have less severe reactions and can manage symptoms successfully.

Some things you can do to limit reactions include:

• always wash your hands and avoid touching your face and eyes after handling your cat

• regularly clean surfaces and change litter to reduce dander

• wash your cat weekly with a pet-specific shampoo, if your cat likes being bathed

• restrict cats’ access to rooms you want to keep allergy-free, such as the bedroom

• get a vacuum specifically designed for reducing allergens, such as ones with a HEPA filter

• use air purifiers with HEPA filters.

Adopting a cat when allergic

If you’re allergic and want to adopt a cat, make sure to spend some time with them first to assess your reaction. Ideally, pick a cat that doesn’t make you sneeze.

If cats need to be re-homed, this does negatively affect their welfare. A large study of RSPCA shelters in Australia reported allergy as the reason for relinquishment in roughly 3% of cats out of 61,755 total relinquished between 2006 and 2010.

You can also see your doctor about options for managing symptoms such as over-the-counter medications (such as antihistamines) and longer term solutions.

For those with allergies who want to have their cat and their ability to breathe too, another option is immunotherapy, although there is limited evidence to support this treatment for cat allergies.

Immunotherapy involves first identifying which specific allergen is causing the reactions, and then systematically delivering increasing levels of this allergen over several months in an effort to retrain the immune system to tolerate the allergen without a reaction. This may be especially beneficial for those with moderate to severe reactions.

Read more:
I’m considering allergen immunotherapy for my hay fever. What do I need to know?

There is evidence exposure to dogs and cats early in life can reduce at least some forms of allergy. Evidence is still conflicting, though, and probably depends on genetics and other environmental factors.

What we do know is that pet cats provide companionship and joy to many, and understanding the causes and treatment of pet allergy can only help both cats and humans.

Susan Hazel is affiliated with the Dog & Cat Management Board of South Australia and RSPCA South Australia.

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

– ref. Do hypoallergenic cats even exist? 3 myths dispelled about cat allergies – https://theconversation.com/do-hypoallergenic-cats-even-exist-3-myths-dispelled-about-cat-allergies-191662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gurbinder Gill, Teaching Scholar, Financial Planning – Department of Accounting, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University

If you were facing open-heart surgery you’d want to know your surgeon was qualified. Or, if you were going to court, that your lawyer was specialised in the relevant area of law.

Should you expect any less from a financial adviser, with whom you may entrust your life savings and financial security?

Even before the revelations of the Hayne royal commission into misconduct in financial services, the need for greater professionalisation of financial advisers was acknowledged.

In 2017, the Turnbull government made reforms that included a code of ethics, a requirement to pass an exam, and the need to hold a “relevant degree” – meeting Financial Adviser Standards set by Treasury and covering 11 knowledge areas (see table below).

This has been expected of new financial planners since 2019. Those already in the business have until 2026 to comply.

But now the federal government is considering watering down these standards.

Broader ‘pathways’

A Treasury consultation paper proposes to waive the requirement for advisers with at least ten years’ experience and “a clean record of financial
practice”. This will fulfil Labor’s election promise to create an “experience pathway”.

The paper also proposes lowering the degree requirements for everyone else.

Instead of an approved degree having to cover 11 knowledge areas, it will only have to cover five – dropping the areas of superannuation, retirement, estate planning, insurance, investments and financial plan construction.

The intention, the consultation paper says, is “that a broader range of degrees become eligible as entry pathways to the financial advice profession”.

The motivation for this isn’t spelled out, but is almost certainly due to a huge decline in the number of financial advisers – by almost 40% in the past three years, according to Rainmaker Information, a research company that specialises in the financial services industry.

But it’s hard to see how the move will help the industry become a profession, with similar standards to the rules that regulate doctors, lawyers or accountants.

Read more:
What are we teaching in business schools? The royal commission’s challenge to amoral theory

Regulatory ‘tsunami’

Rainmaker’s report, published last month, says the number of financial advisers in Australia has declined from 26,500 in 2019 to about 16,700.

In February, the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones (then still the opposition spokesperson), blamed this decline on a poorly managed “tsunami of regulatory changes”.

Some, such as the degree requirement, predate the Hayne royal commission. Others stem from it.

The Association of Financial Advisers, which represents several thousand advisers, says extra compliance imposed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission following the royal commission has “broken” the industry.

Read more:
ASIC, now less a corporate watchdog, more a lapdog

One directly affecting incomes is the ban (since January 2021) on receiving ongoing commissions from companies for selling those companies’ super, investment and insurance products.

Banning these payments, known as “grandfathered commissions”, was a key recommendation of the banking royal commission. They had been worth $800 million to financial advisers the previous year.

Incomes will be reduced further if the government proceeds with a proposal to ban commissions on life insurance sales.

Specialist knowledge needed

Reducing degree requirements will somewhat reduce the burden now faced by financial advisers. The question is whether it will offset the other factors that make the job unappealing.

Lowering education standards will certainly do nothing to give the community more confidence in the industry.

Given the increasing complexity of financial products and the connection of the different advice areas, specialist knowledge is increasingly needed.

When recommending insurance cover, for example, an adviser must know more than just the types of cover and products. There are rules around beneficiary nomination, which is also part of estate planning. There are options to pay for insurance from your superannuation, which may affect your retirement balance. There are different tax consequences for different options.

Cutting back educational requirements in these areas is unlikely to improve the overall quality of advice.

Hitting the brakes on professionalisation exposes clients to greater risk and lays the foundation for another royal commission into financial services.

Read more:
‘Do no harm’ isn’t enough. Why the banking royal commission will ultimately achieve little

In his final report, Commissioner Kenneth Hayne endorsed the 2017 educational reforms. The “prevention of poor advice begins with education and training”, he stated, adding:

I believe that, as they come into effect, the new education requirements will improve the quality of advice that is given, and improve the way that financial advisers manage the conflicts of interest with which they are faced.

Watering down these education requirements as proposed will not improve the quality of financial advice. It will only slow the path to professionalising the industry.

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

– ref. Financial adviser ‘reforms’ will undermine yet another royal commission recommendation – https://theconversation.com/financial-adviser-reforms-will-undermine-yet-another-royal-commission-recommendation-192325

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Hellewell, Research Fellow, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, and The Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, Curtin University

The COVID pandemic has introduced many scientific and medical terms into our everyday language. Many of us are now fluent in conversations about viral strains, PCR tests and mortality rates. “Brain fog” has joined these ranks to describe a now-familiar symptom of COVID and long COVID.

But what exactly is brain fog, and is it limited to COVID?

It is what it sounds like

Brain fog is not a medical diagnosis, but rather the description patients tend to use for their symptoms. Brain fog is what doctors refer to as “cognitive dysfunction”. This describes problems with closely linked tasks such as concentration, information processing, memory, thinking and reasoning, and making sense of language.

Brain fog is exactly what it sounds like: a feeling something like being shrouded by a thick fog, not quite able to grasp ideas, feeling confused or disoriented, and having trouble concentrating or recalling memories.

Sufferers describe experiences with brain fog as lapses in memory and concentration, with some saying they “put food on the gas stove and walked away for over an hour, only noticing when they were burning”.

Other people say they “forget how to do normal routines like running a meeting at work”.

Brain fog can make even simple tasks like grocery shopping very difficult: navigating the car park, remembering a list of items to buy, switching attention between products and prices, and reading ingredients can be confusing, overwhelming and exhausting.

Brain fog can be unpleasant in the short term, but over time can make it difficult to work and maintain social activities. Brain fog can also take a toll on relationships, and change the way we see ourselves personally and professionally.

One recent study asked people with long COVID about their experiences with brain fog. They reported feeling guilt and shame, especially about how brain fog had affected their ability to return to work and their relationships.

While the symptoms of brain fog can be similar to those experienced by people with Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions associated with older age, brain fog can affect people of any age. Brain fog doesn’t usually worsen over time, and may not last forever.

Read more:
Being stressed out before you get COVID increases your chances of long COVID. Here’s why

Linked to COVID

Brain fog was one of the most common symptoms to emerge in the first months of the COVID pandemic.

Recent reports suggest 20-30% of people have brain fog three months after infection. Up to 85% of people with long COVID also have brain fog.

Although we’re hearing a lot about brain fog in relation to COVID, people experience the symptom with many other diseases and disorders.

Scientists aren’t sure whether the same biological processes underpin brain fog in different illnesses; however, brain fog is common among people recovering from traumatic brain injury, experiencing persistent post-concussion symptoms, with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, HIV,
postural tachycardia syndrome, lupus, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and as a side-effect of chemotherapy. People with coeliac disease may even experience brain fog after consuming gluten. It’s also been reported as a symptom of menopause.

Read more:
Viral infections including COVID are among the important causes of dementia – one more reason to consider vaccination

What causes it?

While COVID may cause shrinkage of some brain areas, brain fog itself has not been linked to brain volume changes on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

However, a new case report of two people found that while they had normal clinical MRI findings, they also had decreases in oxygen use in a specific part of the brain called the cingulate cortex. This area, within the limbic system, is thought to be involved in attention and memory.

There isn’t one single test for brain fog, so it can be difficult to diagnose. Although there are combinations of tests that can be used, formal testing may not always be helpful because symptoms can look different for each person, and some days may be worse than others.

Read more:
Post-COVID psychosis occurs in people with no prior history. The risk is low but episodes are frightening

How do you know if you have it?

Traditional assessments can test a person’s executive function and cognitive status. But findings have been mixed in people with brain fog due to COVID.

Some studies have found more problems with attention and executive function in people who have had COVID. Cognitive deficits linked to brain fog have also been reported as worse for those with more severe COVID infection.

But other researchers have found standard cognitive screening tests don’t show good specificity for brain fog (that is, they might not detect the absence of the condition and produce false negatives) and may not determine the severity of brain fog.

A new study suggested conflicting findings in studies on brain fog might be due to the brain functions assessed by different tests. People with both mild and more severe cases of COVID might experience problems with processing speed, reasoning, verbal and overall performance, but no problems with memory. So studies that use tests for memory are less likely to show the effects of brain fog, no matter the severity.

Outside of scientific studies, brain fog diagnosis is most likely to be based on the symptoms and experiences people report once other causes, such as not sleeping enough, stress or hormonal changes, have been ruled out.

If you think you may be experiencing brain fog, it would be worthwhile to note down your symptoms and track them over several weeks, alongside any changes in stress, diet or sleep. This information can help your doctor understand your symptoms and help you manage them.

How to manage

For people experiencing brain fog, developing coping strategies and prioritising time to rest may help to manage symptoms. Coping strategies could involve making lists, using visual reminders (such as calendars, digital alerts and timers), and altering work duties where possible.

Clinical trials are underway for naltrexone, a medication used for alcohol and opioid drug addition, which has shown promise in reducing brain fog. While not currently available as a brain fog treatment in Australia, initial research in Ireland shows it is safe and effective in low doses.

Aside from getting enough sleep, people are often encouraged to approach recovery from brain fog holistically. This means looking at their entire health picture and prioritising exercise and a healthy diet. If you are concerned about brain fog, your GP can refer you to a neurologist or neuropsychologist for further assessment and management.

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

– ref. What is – and what isn’t – ‘brain fog’? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-and-what-isnt-brain-fog-190537

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

When Rishi Sunak was elected by Conservative MPs as their new leader and hence prime minister of the United Kingdom, the British nation breathed a sigh of relief: thank God it wasn’t Boris Johnson.

Had Johnson been re-elected leader it would have had serious consequences, not just for the Conservatives, but in the real world too.

Only the most obtuse political observer could have failed to see that the optics of cutting short your Caribbean holiday to try to resolve a cost of living crisis was not good politics. It sounds hard to believe, but this was not obvious to everyone.

Johnson garnered public support from some of the Brexiteer old guard like Jacob Rees-Mogg and in the pro-Boris media.

But in characteristic fashion, Johnson exaggerated his chances. This latest act of self-promotion backfired and he withdrew from the leadership race on Sunday (regretably having missed half his holiday). Nevertheless, the fact that many Conservatives seriously thought a chaotic government could be brought under control by someone known for chaotic management, shows how deep the ideological divisions within the party have become.

With the third contender, Penny Mordaunt, falling just shy of the 100 MPs’ votes needed to send the leadership contest to a vote of the grassroots party members – a fate to be avoided at all costs after they forfeited the confidence of MPs by installing Truss – Rishi Sunak will become the next prime minister of the UK.

Sunak’s elevation is a socially significant moment. He is the first British Asian, or any person of colour, to become PM. Much of the credit can go to David Cameron’s attempts to modernise the Conservative party in the mid-2000s. The Conservatives have done a better job than other parties in putting more women and people of colour into positions of political influence and power. In a system that only had its first openly Catholic prime minister in 2019, Sunak is the first Hindu to assume that role.

But the significance of the first person of colour as British Prime Minister will probably get lost in the class dynamics of this political moment.

Like Johnson, Sunak isn’t short of a bob or two. This will make the economic politics of Sunak’s tenure difficult. Having a multi-millionaire telling the nation to tighten its belts and make sacrifices to its already declining living standards won’t go down well.

Read more:
It matters that Rishi Sunak has become the UK’s first prime minister of Indian descent

And like Johnson, Sunak also went to an elite private school. In Sunak’s case it was Winchester rather than Eton, just for a bit of variety. This will matter for perceptions of the new PM among the wider electorate. The Conservatives are seen as a party of – and for – the wealthy. They increasingly appear as a small, ageing and out of touch privileged class unable to see the true extent of the crisis that their choices in government have exacerbated.

Sunak’s in-tray is bulging. The cost of living and energy crises will be the foremost political and economic challenges, but the B-word (Brexit) still casts a shadow. It has not lived up to the over-inflated expectations of its most ardent boosters. Increasing numbers of voters think it was wrong to leave the EU. How Sunak manages this coming “winter of discontent” will define his premiership.

However, the policy levers he has at his disposal have been discredited by the Truss-onomics episode. Truss’s long-term legacy may well be the conclusion that neoliberal economics worked well in theory, but not in practice.

Sunak will probably enjoy a longer honeymoon period than his predecessor. His election has calmed one part of the Conservatives’ core constituency: the bond markets. However, his future with the electorate is less secure. For better or worse, leaders influence how people choose to vote; or at least parties behave as if this were true. His legitimacy with the electorate is not as strong as it could be given that he is the third Conservative leader and PM since the last election in 2019.

Read more:
There’s something wrong with British politics. It’s called the Conservative Party

Calls for a general election are growing. Presumably, with the Conservatives so far behind in the polls, Sunak will try to hold on as long as possible. But this may only prolong the pain and defer a significant loss of seats whenever the next election arrives.

This all feels a bit like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Part of the difficulty for the Conservatives points to a growing structural problem for centre-right parties: intra-party ideological divisions. This issue has weakened the centre left for a couple of decades. These parties saw their support base split between tertiary-educated urban dwellers interested in post-material issues, and blue-collar supporters from declining manufacturing industries with some residual, but weakening, loyalty to social democracy.

Now such divisions seem to be affecting the right of politics too. As we saw in the 2022 federal election in Australia, the right’s traditional support base is split between affluent moderates concerned about climate change, and older social conservatives concerned about immigration. This appears to be happening in the UK too.

This internal division can be exploited by the opposition as we saw with the fracking vote. On paper, Sunak should feel secure with a 71-seat majority in a 650-seat parliament. But the Conservatives have lost confidence. The party is behaving like one that has only the slimmest of majorities and is on its way out. Sunak’s premiership may well be a case of the band playing on.

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

– ref. Who is Rishi Sunak, the new UK prime minister? – https://theconversation.com/who-is-rishi-sunak-the-new-uk-prime-minister-193104

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Ellis, PhD Candidate in Planning, Bond University

Whole towns and cities are seemingly locked into more frequent and severe flooding. Business-as-usual development continues despite extreme weather and sea-level rises due to climate change. While some local councils have online mapping, others are still using outdated paper maps.

Repeated floods across eastern Australia have prompted the Planning Institute of Australia to call for a framework to update flood mapping to take climate change into account.

A flood map shows areas to be inundated based on risk modelling and past weather data. As well as identifying at-risk areas for land-use planning, these maps are needed for flood responses. The problem with static flood maps is they don’t show critical details of the hazard a flood will present.

Councils have a duty of care to provide flood maps that accurately identify areas at risk, as well as those that are safe. Yet existing information on riverine and coastal flood risks was “patchy and outdated”, the institute said.

[…] there is a patchwork of datasets gathered and applied inconsistently by councils and water authorities, who often do not have the budgets to pay for the necessary modelling, or the political authority to apply controls at a local level. This means that new housing and development can occur in flood-prone areas […]

For many flooded communities, the immediate priority is to deal with the emergency. However, we should not lose sight of how urban planning has affected them, nor of the urgent need for planning frameworks to catch up with climate change impacts.

Read more:
‘Would you like lunch? Can I clean out the chook house?’: what flood survivors actually need after disaster strikes

Who’s responsible?

The floods have highlighted the glacial pace of adaptation to climate change by planning frameworks at all levels of government.

For example, the New South Wales government direction on flood-prone land that took effect in July 2021 still adheres to the principles in the state’s floodplain development manual from 2005, which advocates for development on floodplains.

The dysfunctional relationships between the different levels of government also continue. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews said flood mapping was mainly “a matter for local government”. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet ran the nature-versus-people debate in announcing the wall of Warragamba Dam, Sydney’s biggest, will be raised.

Those on the front line of the flooding see things differently. The mayor of Wollondilly, southwest of Sydney, said:

Raising Warragamba Dam is not in the interests of Western Sydney, potentially costing over $2 billion and enabling developers to cover rural floodplains with housing, as well as the possibility of creating a sense of complacency from those still at risk of catastrophic flooding.

The National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy, based on a 2012 Council of Australian Government (COAG) report, outlines the roles and responsibilities for adaptation of the three levels of government. The strategy states: “Local governments are on the frontline in dealing with the impacts of climate change.”

So local councils are seen to have a crucial role in adaptation at a local level. But how are underfunded councils to manage the ongoing damage to infrastructure, and the legacy of development in areas hit by supercharged weather systems?

It’s a legacy that led to $7 billion in insurance claims from floods, storms and cyclones in the past 18 months.

Read more:
‘A cunning plan’: how La Niña unleashes squadrons of storm clouds to wreak havoc in your local area

The politics of flood mapping

The flood-mapping issue is complicated by a level of political entrenchment related to property rights. Councils are wary of upsetting voters and ratepayers who see their assets devalued by a flood rating. When Gold Coast Council released updated flood maps in 2018, for example, they caused a stir among residents.

On the NSW Central Coast, the local council completed a flood study that concluded a majority of the housing lots would be flooded as a result of rising sea levels in coming decades. Yet the council removed the option of retreat or property buyouts under pressure from residents. They preferred adaptations such as levees, walls and raising their buildings. Councils would need to secure additional funding to cover the costs of such measures.

On the other hand, there was community opposition to a planned levee in Seymour, because of concerns about the loss of river views, access and habitat. This led the local council to abandon the levee to protect homes and businesses that have now been flooded.

Read more:
The wild weather of La Niña could wipe out vast stretches of Australia’s beaches and sand dunes

We must plan for the long term

Current approaches to flood mitigation are not a viable long-term strategy. More development on floodplains means more property damage when the floods come. Increasing populations also put added strain on emergency services and escape routes.

Even before the latest floods, the Insurance Council of Australia issued a statement, Building a More Resilient Australia, which said:

“[…] it’s imperative that governments at state and federal level commit to a significant increase in investment in programs to lessen the impact of future events. We also need to plan better so we no longer build homes in harm’s way [and] make buildings more resilient to the impacts of extreme weather”.

If the insurance industry gets it, why are governments still allowing new development in high-risk areas? Some see developing these areas as necessary to solve the ongoing affordable housing crisis. Others consider it entwined with development industry lobbying. And some councils want the rate revenue and fear costly court actions over refused development applications.

So to the greater question: how are governments addressing the climate risk of flooding and urban development within the planning frameworks? Regional and state plans take a long time to draft, put out for public consultation, redraft and get approved.

Read more:
‘Building too close to the water. It’s ridiculous!’ Talk of buyouts after floods shows need to get serious about climate adaptation

A new era demands a new approach

Climate change presents vexing problems for communities, governments and urban planning. As ice sheets melt, sea levels rise and climate drivers change, more extreme weather patterns are increasingly a threat to the fabric of our society.

Planning frameworks must adapt to the climate crisis. This requires land-use approaches that direct people and property away from hazardous floodplains. As the Planning Institute of Australia has warned:

“The decisions planners make now have a lasting impact, and our profession is key to responding to a changing climate.”

Mark Ellis receives funding from the Bond University higher degree research fund. He is affiliated with the Planning Institute of Australia.

– ref. Some councils still rely on outdated paper maps as supercharged storms make a mockery of flood planning – https://theconversation.com/some-councils-still-rely-on-outdated-paper-maps-as-supercharged-storms-make-a-mockery-of-flood-planning-192856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Professor Johanna Weaver, Director, Tech Policy Design Centre, Australian National University

When Nancy Pelosi travelled to Taiwan in August, it made front page news around the world and raised the spectre of all-out war between the US and China.

Early in October, the Biden administration made a far more decisive move against China – but it barely made the news in Australia.

Biden decided to unequivocally sever China’s access to high-end computer chips (aka semiconductors).

Don’t be deceived by the technical-sounding subject. More than any other policy decision by an American president since the end of the Cold War, this measure is intended to tilt the global balance of power in favour of the United States.

Why are semiconductors so important?

Semiconductors are small, ubiquitous, and underappreciated. They are the brains of every modern device.

Without semiconductors your phone, TV, and microwave would be transformed into bricks. Your car wouldn’t drive and planes wouldn’t fly. Weapons systems, the stock exchange, and telecommunications all depend upon semiconductors.

According to the US Semiconductor Industry Association, in 2021, China had 7% of the world’s market share in semiconductors. For comparison, the US had 46%, Korea 21%, Japan 9%, the EU 9% and Taiwan 8%.

China’s global market share is growing rapidly.

However, not all semiconductors are equal.

Advanced chips need US companies and tech

The new US controls are finely calibrated: they apply only to these most leading-edge chips, which China cannot manufacture itself.

Research from the US Centre for Security and Emerging Technology shows China “depends on companies headquartered in the United States and US allies for the leading-edge computer chips that power smartphones, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence systems”.

Further, every advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in the world is “critically dependent on US technology”. This makes the new controls devastatingly comprehensive, especially when viewed in their multifaceted entirety.

First, they prohibit the export of the leading-edge chips to China.

Second, they limit the export of the software, equipment, and components China would need to establish a sovereign advanced semiconductor manufacturing capability.

Third, they restrict Americans with specialist skills from working with Chinese entities, limiting knowledge transfer.

Fourth, the US controls extend extraterritoriality to all advanced chip manufacturers outside the US. These manufacturers are all US allies, and if they do not comply with the controls they will lose access to essential US equipment.

The bigger picture: eroding China’s research base

In August, the US passed the CHIPS and Science Act which included a US$50 billion investment in America’s domestic semiconductor industry. Combined with the new controls, this amounts to what has been described as “a new US policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry – strangling with an intent to kill”.
The implications of this are far reaching.

Read more:
China’s ‘innovation machine’: how it works, how it’s changing and why it matters

The stated objective of the new US controls is to limit China’s ability “to both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips used in military applications”.

However, high-end chips are used for both military and civilian purposes. These controls will also curtail all Chinese research that depends on advanced computing.

As American international affairs scholar Jon Bateman writes:

this will hamstring the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the country – hindering Chinese progress in e-commerce, autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity, medical imaging, drug discovery, climate modelling, and much else.

This policy is not just about maintaining US tech supremacy. It has the potential to degrade Chinese research across every discipline.

Can China innovate its way out?

It is unclear how immediate an impact the new controls will have. There has long been speculation that China has been stockpiling chips and equipment, and China will no doubt try to work around the controls.

The new US measures will inject fresh momentum into existing Chinese efforts to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency, but this is no easy task.

Manufacturing semiconductors is incomprehensibly complex. It requires facilities so clean they make an operating theatre look dirty and equipment so precise its calibration is impacted by the rotation of the Earth. The more high-end the chip, the more intricate the manufacturing process.

Some chip manufacturers argue China will not be able to produce advanced semiconductors without US equipment and expertise. I’ll leave that debate to the technical experts, but China’s ability to innovate should not be underestimated.

A response is yet to come

To date, the direct official response from China has been muted: comparatively mild rebukes from the official Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson that the US seeks only to “maintain its sci-tech hegemony” and “wantonly block and hobble Chinese enterprises”.

More importantly, and aside from steps to address supply, the question of China’s broader response demands close consideration.

Read more:
How the world ran out of semiconductors

The world is already experiencing a global chip shortage, particularly of the kind of less sophisticated chips produced in China. China also dominates 80% of the global supply chain of the rare earth elements that are essential to most high-tech components.

China could seek to interrupt the supply of either or both of these, but that would be an uncharacteristically symmetrical response. It would also likely damage China as much as the US.

Undermining China’s ambition

In a speech to the Communist Party Congress a week after the US controls were announced, China’s President Xi reaffirmed, twice, his country’s goal to “join the ranks of the world’s most innovative countries, with great self-reliance and strength in science and technology” within five years.

The controls announced by the Biden administration directly undermine Xi’s ambition for China. They seek to maintain US tech supremacy, while simultaneously eroding China’s ability to conduct fundamental research. Given this, a significant escalatory response from China should not be unexpected.

The ‘decoupling’ of the US and China

In an age when militaries, economies and our daily lives depend on technology it is astounding how many people continue to tune out when technology – and the policies that shape it – are discussed. If there ever was a time to tune in, it is now.

For several years, leaders and commentators the world over have speculated about the possibility of the US “decoupling” from China: reducing economic and technological entanglement with the rising Asian power.

Debates on the feasibility of economic decoupling will continue. However, historians will pinpoint Biden’s decision on 7 October 2022 as the moment at which US and Chinese technology decoupling became inevitable.

The US has now played its hand. The most consequential question remains: what will China do next?

Read more:
China-US tensions: how global trade began splitting into two blocs

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

– ref. Clampdown on chip exports is the most consequential US move against China yet – https://theconversation.com/clampdown-on-chip-exports-is-the-most-consequential-us-move-against-china-yet-192738

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marta Woolford, PhD Candidate and Research Officer at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University

Being lost in an unfamiliar place is an unsettling feeling most of us have experienced. It requires cognitive and physical skills, and potentially other resources, to find our way and safely arrive at our destination.

This is why up to 60% of people with dementia will experience becoming lost during the course of living with the disease.

We have conducted a study of search and rescue incidents in the United States, and found people over the age of 65 years who go missing will experience (sometimes fatal) harm more than we expected.

However, the results for older people with dementia were surprising and counterintuitive.

Read more:
What causes Alzheimer’s disease? What we know, don’t know and suspect

What we know about older people and becoming lost

Older people (those over 65) are more vulnerable to becoming lost. Age-related declines in physical and cognitive function impact our ability to navigate and endure the environment and seek assistance.

Becoming lost is very distressing for both the lost person and for their loved ones. People with dementia are at increased risk of becoming lost due to memory problems, loss of judgement and reduced visual-perceptual ability (they might forget landmarks, become confused about direction, or not recognise places).

Frailty and increased risk of disease as we age mean the risk of sustaining an injury, possibly a fatal injury, increases for older people.

What our study found

Our study examined incident reports of older people who became lost in the US and had the matter reported to police or directly to a search and rescue team. We looked at 1,703 incidents which required a search and rescue operation to locate the person. We used US data because it was more extensive and detailed than what we have in Australia.

Of the 1,703 cases, 208 (12%) were found dead. This was more than we expected, but exact numbers of deaths are hard to predict since some people will also die due to injury after being found, and some are found quickly before the police are called.

We found death was more likely in situations where there were water-related activities (such as boating and fishing), cold weather conditions (drizzle, rain, snow), and among males. And for those who didn’t survive, they were more likely to be found in water or wetlands compared to the people found alive.

Importantly, for those who didn’t survive, the time taken to notify search and rescue teams was three times longer. The search time was six times longer.

Interestingly, people with dementia were more likely to be found alive than those without dementia.

Read more:
These 12 things can reduce your dementia risk – but many Australians don’t know them all

Why were people with dementia more likely to survive?

While it seems a counterintuitive finding, the explanation for why those with dementia fared better may be in our approach to care, and the rescue methods applied for older people with dementia.

Caregivers for people with dementia may be using technological tracking devices or locking doors more regularly to prevent the older person with dementia from leaving their home.

It’s also plausible the greater concerns for the safety and wellbeing of people with dementia may be an impetus for caregivers to notify search and rescue teams earlier, compared to when a person without dementia is noticed missing.

Alternatively, it may also reflect the strategies employed by search and rescue teams. Searches for lost people with dementia are often prioritised and given the highest urgency by search and rescue teams.

This focus on people with dementia may overlook other older people in need of interventions. We may not feel the same level of urgency, or even recognise there is real risk of harm to people without dementia.

What do the findings mean?

This study, while focused on the US, would likely be transferable to countries with similar search and rescue authorities, climates, and terrain. Certainly, countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the US can learn from each other and are known to share search and rescue information with the aim to improve search efforts.

It is a stark reminder we need to focus on all older people, and not limit our focus to one population group.

If a loved one is noticed missing it is important to contact police early. The longer a person is missing, the greater their risk of death.

For people with dementia, families should consider the use of personal tracking devices such as GPS smart watches or tags. This intervention can help locate the person quickly and also respects their right to freedom of movement.

Often, people are found within close proximity of the place they were last seen and so searching in places nearby may be effective. Finally, understand the dangers of water-related activities. This danger extends to all older people with and without dementia. Ensuring the family know when and where an older person is visiting the water and wearing tracking devices may just save a life.

Read more:
How Australians Die: cause #3 – dementia (Alzheimer’s)

Joseph Ibrahim has received funding from State and Federal Governments in the past.

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

– ref. Older people who get lost sometimes sadly lose their lives. But those with dementia are more likely to survive – https://theconversation.com/older-people-who-get-lost-sometimes-sadly-lose-their-lives-but-those-with-dementia-are-more-likely-to-survive-192938

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Grafton, Australian Laureate Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

You may recall when, at the height of summer in 2019, more than a million fish floated to the surface of the Darling River’s Menindee Lakes. Iconic Murray cod and silver perch were among the dead.

A couple of months later, an expert investigation concluded excessive upstream water extractions, compounded by the ongoing drought, were to blame.

In another investigation in 2020, the Murray-Darling Basin Inspector-General reported he was informed that water theft, lack of compliance, unsustainable water extraction rules, and floodplain harvesting were driving the northern basin’s declines in stream flow – the measured volume of water flowing in a river or stream over a given period of time.

And yet, there appears to be a widely held view that we can place most of the blame of drying rivers on climate change. So what’s the truth? And why does it matter?

Our new research investigated the effects of climate change and water resource development on the Darling River over the past 40 years. We found much of the recent decline of river (stream) flow has not been because of climate change, but almost certainly a result of increased water extractions.

This is important, because naming climate change as the primary culprit for drying rivers may let water managers, ministers and irrigation lobbyists off the hook for failing to effectively control water consumption.

Our point isn’t that climate change is not happening – it’s here, it’s now and it’s global in its devastation. But, our research shows climate change shouldn’t be used as a “get out of jail free” card to excuse bad decision-making and poor planning decisions.

What we found

The Darling river is also known as the Baaka by the Barkindji, whose Country includes Menindee Lakes.

The Baaka-Darling River has nine major headwater dams and tributaries with a total storage capacity in excess of 4,500 billion litres, about equal to nine Sydney harbours. For decades, it has had high rates of water extraction, provided by 15 main channel weirs and more than 1,000 small weirs along its 1,000 kilometre or so length.

Our analyses looked back at 40 years of meteorological trends and water extractions data, then separated the effects of each on declining river flows.

We found between 1981 and 2020, the northern Murray-Darling Basin has become drier (11 millilitres less rainfall per decade, on average) and hotter (by 0.26℃ per decade, on average) – a trend consistent with climate change projections.

These trends reduced stream flows on the nearby, pristine Paroo River by 28%. The Paroo River has had virtually no water extractions in the last 40 years, which means that lower rainfall and higher temperatures completely explain its decline in river flows.

But this is not true for the Baaka-Darling River. We found stream flows declined by 53% at the Baaka-Darling River. Less than half of this decline could be explained by meteorological trends. This means the rest – more than half of the decline in stream flows – was almost certainly due to other factors: namely, increased water extractions.

Further peer-reviewed evidence in support of our conclusion can be drawn from the large, unmetered, and possibly increasing, water extractions associated with floodplain harvesting. This harvesting may be in the order of hundreds of billions of litres per year in the northern Basin, some of which may be illegal.

This is coupled with much smaller increases in metered water extractions along the Baaka-Darling River and its tributaries over the period 2014-15 to 2017-18.

Read more:
It’s official: the Murray-Darling Basin Plan hasn’t met its promise to our precious rivers. So where to now?

What this means for wildlife

Reduced river flows are profoundly damaging to the ecosystems of the Murray Darling Basin, and its harms accumulate over time. A key pillar of these ecosystems are waterbirds, such as herons, spoonbills, ibis and kingfishers.

Our research investigated the abundance of waterbirds on the Paroo and Baaka-Darling rivers. We found they were more resilient on the Paroo River wetlands than at Menindee Lakes along the Baaka-Darling River.

In 40 years, the average decline in waterbird abundance on the Paroo River Wetlands was 50%, compared to 75% at Menindee Lakes.

We also simulated what would happen if water were to be reallocated from irrigation to increase the flow in the river, during a drought. Our results suggest the resilience of waterbird numbers at Menindee Lakes and nearby could be improved.

Increases in river flows during drought (relative to business as usual) also supports people, as it improves the availability and quality of drinking water in downstream communities, such Wilcannia and Menindee. And it’s crucial for the habitats of fish, wetland plants, trees, mammals, frogs, and reptiles.

Based on our calculations, the annual cost would be around 1.3% of estimated total irrigation profits if 100 gigalitres per year of water were reallocated to increased stream flows. It would be 4% of estimated total irrigation profits if 300 gigalitres per year of water were reallocated to increased stream flows.

Read more:
Robber barons and high-speed traders dominate Australia’s water market

Understanding river flows

Understanding why our rivers are getting drier helps us to respond to both the problem of climate changes and to water mismanagement.
Fundamental to water management is knowing how much water is in the entire system, where it is, where it goes, and what value it brings. The measurement technologies to answer these questions are available.

If we are to meet the key objects of the Water Act and the Basin Plan, we need to reduce water extractions and to reallocate water on this iconic river to ensure minimum river flows for downstream communities and for critically important environments.

This task is urgent if Australia is to achieve the goal of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan a decade ago: to create and maintain healthy sustainable working rivers.

The last thing Australia needs in a climate change crisis is for water ministers and their advisers to bury their heads in the sand, about what can, and must, be done to ensure a much more sustainable water outcome for all.

Read more:
‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

Quentin Grafton has received research from the Australian Research Council.

Gilad Bino receives funding from state and federal governments (Australian Research Council, Murray-Darling Basin Authority) and non-government organisations.
Gilad Bino is affiliated with Charles Sturt University, Institute of Land Water and Society as an adjunct Lecturer

John Williams is affiliated with Charles Sturt University, Institute of Land Water and Society as an honorary Professor

Richard Kingsford works for UNSW Sydney. He receives funding from government (Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Australian, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria Governments, Australian Research Council) and non-government organisations. He is affiliated with the Ecological Society of Australia, Birdlife Australia, Society for Conservation Biology Oceania.

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

– ref. Excessive water extractions, not climate change, are most to blame for the Darling River drying – https://theconversation.com/excessive-water-extractions-not-climate-change-are-most-to-blame-for-the-darling-river-drying-192621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne-Marie Morrissey, Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education, Deakin University

Choosing a childcare centre for your child can be a challenging process.

To start with, choices may be limited if there are not many childcare centres in the area where you live or work. Or if the waiting lists are full. We know there are “childcare deserts” around the country.

Read more:
How the early childhood learning and care system works (and doesn’t work) – it will take some fixing

But if you do have choice, what should you look for? Parents may already be looking for warm, caring educators and a centre with good accreditation ratings. What may be less well known is a childcare centre’s physical environment – its location and indoor and outdoor spaces – is also important.

Research shows physical environments have a major influence on children’s health, wellbeing, development and learning.

We are early childhood researchers and in a recent study, we highlight four important features for parents to look for in a childcare centre’s physical environment. These are based on children’s right to a safe and healthy environment.

Our study

In Australia, property developers are increasingly investing in childcare centres. They have become powerful influences on where childcare centres are and how they are designed.

In addition, childcare in Australia is increasingly provided by for-profit organisations. As of 2020, 49% of childcare services were by for-profit organisations. On the share market, childcare centres are seen as a smart investment.

There are regulations around childcare environments such as space, fencing and resources, but these are minimal requirements. This can mean children’s health, wellbeing and development are not always seen as the top priority when designing centres. Here are four questions parents can ask when looking at potential childcare centres.

1. Is it near a busy road?

Many childcare centres are located on busy roads. Government planning regulations can encourage this. In the planning process, residents in quieter streets may complain about possible noise and traffic from a childcare centre. Busy road sites often also represent greater investment value for property developers as they can be cheaper.

Unfortunately, these sites potentially expose children to toxic traffic emissions, including hazardous small particle emissions, linked to the development of asthma and allergies. The closer a centre is to a busy road the greater the danger.

If possible, avoid childcare centres that are next to roads with four lanes or more of constant traffic, especially heavy and diesel vehicles.

2. Is it very noisy?

It is important to consider the noise levels your child may consistently experience in a centre. Noisy environments can disrupt the important interactions between educators and children.

Is there a roar of traffic from busy roads? When inside, is it noisy due to large numbers of children grouped together? Or is there a lot of echoing due to hard surfaces?

If staff and children struggle to be heard and always need to raise their voices, this can make it harder for children to develop social and language skills.

Noisy environments are particularly concerning for babies and toddlers, children with disabilities, and children who have a first language other than English.

So try to avoid centres where your child will be exposed to constant excessive noise.

3. Is there limited or no outdoor space?

Increasingly, childcare centres are requesting waivers for the provision of outdoor space to play. Regulatory bodies can grant exemptions here if centres are seen to be meeting a local demand for enrolments. So some centres only have tiny outdoor areas, some have none at all.

Childcare providers may incorrectly claim an indoor simulated outdoor space (for example, fake grass and painted jungle murals) is an adequate substitute for outdoor space to play.

Children need sun-safe time outside for healthy vitamin D levels (which keeps bones and muscles strong), a sense of wellbeing, and for healthy sleep patterns.

There is also growing evidence that children need around 10–15 hours per week of exposure to natural outdoor light (including in the shade or on a verandah) to ensure healthy vision development and to avoid developing short sightedness.

Children love being outdoors and we recommend looking for a centre that provides well-shaded outdoor play areas that enable plenty of time outside. We also recommend you avoid centres with limited or no outdoor spaces for play, especially if you are enrolling your child full-time.

4. Are there natural features?

Unfortunately, artificial turf and rubber surfaces surfaces are frequently being installed in childcare settings due to the perception of easy maintenance.

These can create extremely hot and dangerous surfaces that use potentially toxic chemicals.

Read more:
COVID changed drop-off and pick ups – but parents can still have a strong relationship with their child’s educators

Totally flat, artificial surfaces do not provide as many opportunities to develop motor skills as varied and natural surfaces.
Surfaces that include slopes and levels with materials such as tanbark, gravel, dirt and sand are better.

Research has also shown outdoor areas dominated by equipment and artificial surfaces do not support children’s wellbeing or learning through play. Natural environments provide more challenge, variety and interesting resources for children to use in their creative play.

So, look for centres with trees, shrubs, rocks, mud and other natural features to complement artificial materials and equipment in their outdoor spaces.

Knowing what to look for

We appreciate it can be very difficult to find a childcare centre with available spots that suits work and family needs.

But if you do have a choice, it’s worth being aware of how a childcare centre’s location and design can protect children’s health and wellbeing and support their play and social interactions. Knowing what to look for in the physical environment of a centre will help you choose a centre where your child can thrive.

Anne-Marie Morrissey has received funding from CoLab Architects to fund the original research for this work.

Deborah Moore has received funding from CoLab Architects to fund the original research for this work.

– ref. Real dirt, no fake grass and low traffic – what to look for when choosing a childcare centre – https://theconversation.com/real-dirt-no-fake-grass-and-low-traffic-what-to-look-for-when-choosing-a-childcare-centre-191260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Esmé Louise James, Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne

From the day it first graced our screens, the Game of Thrones franchise became infamous for depicting rather shocking and taboo sexual proclivities. From incest and necrophilia, to sadism and borderline-cannibalism, viewers have truly been exposed to (an often disturbing) range of erotic desires. Yet, even after a decade on our screens, the lasciviousness of the Seven Kingdoms still holds the power to shock us.

The most recent episode of House of the Dragon, the prequel set 200 years before the main events of Game of Thrones, depicted a fetish which caused some fans to declare the show-runners had finally gone “too far.”

In exchange for information which may secure her son’s reign, Queen Alicent must appease the sexual appetite of Lord Larys Strong – by removing her socks and shoes, displaying her bare, naked feet for him to strenuously admire.

Feet throughout history

Foot fetishes are no new feat. In fact, we find evidence of this desire throughout the ancient world.

At least three of the love letters of the great philosopher Philostratus evidence a particular interest in feet. In To A Barefoot Boy, Philostratus worships the shape of his lover’s feet and implores them to always walk barefoot so he may kiss the footprints left behind:

O perfect lines of feet most dearly loved! O flowers new and strange! O plants sprung from earth! O kiss left lying on the ground!

Things take a turn for the slightly kinkier once we get to his 37th letter. Philostratus describes the feet of a woman even better than those of Aphrodite (who, according to Hesiod’s origin story, had feet so perfect the grass grew beneath them) and wishes he could be dominated by these feet:

O thrice charmed would I be and blessed, if you [feet] would tread on me.

Starting on the right foot

Worship of feet wasn’t solely linked to the bedroom. It sometimes played quite a prominent role in public life.

The emergence of foot-washing as a custom is a prime example of this, intimately tied to displays of reverence and love. During his reign as Pope in the 9th century, Eugene II began the custom of kissing the feet of the Pope, which still continues today.

In the century following this, the torturous practice of foot-binding was brought to life in 10th century China during the reign of Emperor Li Yu. He was said to have been entranced by a court dancer, Yao Niang, who bound her feet into the shape of a moon, and danced on her toes inside a six-foot golden lotus.

This obsession was linked to sexual desire from the very beginning. It was quickly taken up as a fashion by ladies of the court, and became a symbol of high status feminine refinement. The last shoe factory only ceased to make “lotus” shoes in 1999.

By the 13th century, troubadour poets began singing praise of the beautiful feminine foot, desiring arches that were high, and toes that were slender and long. One group of researchers have suggested feet surged in erotic interest during this time as a result of the 13th century gonorrhoea epidemic. Their 1998 study found erotic literature about feet rises exponentially during major sexually transmitted epidemics in history.

For instance, during the syphilis epidemic of the 16th century, a movement in popular fashion began to draw eroticised attention to women’s feet. The term “toe-cleavage” became used to describe shoes which displayed the base of the first two toes. Similarly, by the 19th century epidemic, brothels began to specialise in foot-eroticisation.

When genital-contact proves to dangerous, feet are (historically) the next most-likely body part to be eroticised.

Tickling your fancy

F. Scott Fitzgerald (or, Feet-zgerld, if you will) is believed to have been one patron of this new specialisation. Fitzgerald repeatedly visited one sex-worker because of her feet, and was even described by her as a “foot fetishist”.

While he loved feet (at least the feet of this particular woman), he detested his own and refused to let anyone see them naked. He admitted he was plagued by a “Freudian shame about his feet”.

Sigmund Freud, of course, had a very insightful take on foot fetishes. As with all things Freud, it all had to do with the penis – lusting after feet was so common because the feet and toes resemble the shape of the penis. (I honestly believe it would be harder to find a part of the body that Freud does not think looks like the penis.)

It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that the connection between foot fetishes and the contemporary epidemic was explicitly recognised. As foot-pornography emerged in magazines, some editorials advertised “foot-sex” could be regarded as a pleasurable, safe alternative to penetrative sex, which ran the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

After completing their review of historical literature, the researchers of the 1998 study went on to review issues from eight of the largest pornographic magazines in the United States, released between 1965 to 1994.

Their investigation proved the number of foot-orientated pictures in pornographic magazines rose exponentially over the course of the AIDS epidemic.

Read more:
Madness, miscarriages and incest: as in House of the Dragon, real-life royal families have seen it all throughout history

If you’re thinking of getting into this fetish, don’t get cold feet

If this is true, it may explain why queer men are most likely to have fantasised about feet. According to data collected by social psychologist Justin Lehmiller, one in seven people today have had a sexual fantasy in which feet or toes played a prominent role.

The fantasy was most common amongst gay and bisexual men (21%), followed by heterosexual men (18%), lesbian and bisexual women (15%), and finally heterosexual women (5%).

With such a prevalent amount of the population having fantasised about feet, it is perhaps surprising the representation of this fetish-interest in The House of the Dragon was met with such shock.

Despite its pervasiveness, both today and throughout history, this erotic desire has rarely found itself feet-ured by many historical accounts. The decision for show is perhaps radical for this reason – a decision which may well have left one in every seventh viewer very happy.

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

– ref. The foot scene in House of the Dragon was upsetting, but it’s nothing compared to the real history of the fetish – https://theconversation.com/the-foot-scene-in-house-of-the-dragon-was-upsetting-but-its-nothing-compared-to-the-real-history-of-the-fetish-192859

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

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said the budget bottom line will be more than $40 billion better over the four-year forward estimates in total than previously forecast.

The forecast for gross debt will also be lower than earlier estimates.

The 2022-23 deficit is forecast to be $36.9 billion, compared to a forecast of $78 billion in the March budget delivered by then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

The government says this bottom line improvement is primarily the result of its work to return back to the budget a big majority of the revenue upgrade rather than use it for new spending.

The upgrade has mainly come from higher commodity prices and strong employment numbers and amounts to more than $100 billion over the forward estimates.

Over the four year period, the budget bottom line is estimated to be more than $42 billion better than what was expected in March.

But after an early improvement, the deficits are forecast to worsen towards the end of the forward estimates, compared to earlier forecasts.

This is because the drivers of the revenue upgrades fade and there are surging spending pressures – especially from the National Disability Insurance Scheme and interest payments on debt– substantially higher than forecast in March.

The trend underlines the need for the government to rein in spending in later budgets if it wants to continue budget repair. It has already announced a review of the NDIS, which is headed for a cost of about $50 billion by mid-decade.

On the tax side, the government is hamstrung by election commitments not to change the Stage 3 tax cuts or introduce new taxes. But the budget will see action to prevent multi-nationals’ tax avoidance. This was the one new tax measure Labor promised at the election.

The budget will also show gross debt is lower every year over the forward estimates compared to the March budget numbers.

It will contain a long list of election promises that are being fulfilled, including on child care (a budget centrepiece), cheaper medicine, and additional university and TAFE places. The government says measures such as better child care support and cheaper medicines will help the cost of living pressures people face.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday the budget “deals with cost of living pressures while not putting pressure on inflation”.

Chalmers said: “The primary influence on this budget is inflation. We are putting a premium on restraint and resilience because that’s what the times call for”.

Read more:
Australia’s growth downgraded and inflation drives massive rise in cost of pensions and payments in budget

Two Coalition regional programs are set for the scrap heap, while Labor is setting up two of its own.

Infrastructure Minister Catherine King announced the government would not go ahead with the Building Better Regions Fund Round 6. The saving from abolishing this round is about $250 million.

King said the Audit Office had found the grants favoured Nationals’ seats and had been awarded on the basis of rules not made clear to all applicants.

Also to go will be the Community Development Grants program, although there will be a pathway for those CDG projects properly accounted for up to the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal outlook statement to be alternatively funded.

Read more:
Floods drive up fruit and veg prices, while energy costs will prolong high inflation

“All contracted projects will be honoured, and a further 82 projects that date back to 2016 and that are yet to be contracted will have six months to finalise negotiations before the program ends,” King’s statement said

Some $1 billion over three years will be devoted to the new regional programs.

A Growing Regions Program will see regional local councils and not-for-profit organisations compete for grants.

A regional Precincts and Partnership Program will provide “a strategic, nationally consistent mechanism for funding and co-ordinating larger-scale projects that transform a place” for regional cities and wider rural and regional areas.

Meanwhile Sky reported on Monday the budget would predict a rise in power prices of 30-40%.

The NSW treasurer Matt Kean said: “I’d like to see the federal government take the national energy issues very seriously and support households with funding and support in this budget”.

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

– ref. Budget deficit this financial year to be $36.9 billion – https://theconversation.com/budget-deficit-this-financial-year-to-be-36-9-billion-193109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The promise by the Andrews government to reintroduce public enterprise to Victoria’s electricity industry, through a revived State Electricity Commission, is something of a shock.

The process of electricity privatisation in Australia began with Labor in Victoria, when the government of Joan Kirner sold 51% of the Loy Yang B power station in 1992. Her Liberal successor, Jeff Kennett, then sold the remainder of Loy Lang B, as well as the rest of the state’s publicly owned generation, transmission and distribution assets.

Labor has been office for all but four years since Kennett’s defeat in 1999. Until now it has made no attempt to reverse his policies. Rather, it has undertaken some rather dubious privatisations of its own, notably the Andrews government’s 2018 sale of the Land Titles and Registry office.

Premier Daniel Andrews’ statement that “it was wrong, it was a mistake, to sell our energy companies” therefore marks a clear shift.

Labor leaders change tack

The change is part of a broader shift in Labor’s position throughout Australia.

Arguably this shift began in Queensland after the trouncing of Anna Bligh’s Labor government in 2012, winning just seven of 89 seats. The Bligh government had sold a range of public assets (though retaining distribution and transmission networks, and coal-fired power generators). The remnants of the Labor party concluded privatisation was electoral and economic poison.

Labor was returned to power in 2015 after the LNP government of Campbell Newman, having sought to push privatisation further, was ousted after one term. Under Annastacia Palaszczuk the Queensland government is now investing in new renewable generation through the publicly owned CleanCo – including 18 wind turbines as part of the MacIntyre Wind Precinct, the largest wind farm project in the southern hemisphere.

NSW Labor went through similar contortions over privatisation, with a series of premiers and treasurers trying and failing to find a way of selling the electricity industry.

The disastrous defeat of the Keneally Labor government in 2011 was driven by this failure, along with the string of scandals that seem to be the rule rather than the exception in NSW politics.

Now, with the prospect of Labor returning to power next March, Opposition leader Chris Minns has given a guarantee there will be no more privatisations.

At the national level, the biggest single commitment of the Albanese government is the $20 billion Rewiring the Nation initiative, to build the transmission network needed for clean energy. The first two projects to be financed – the Marinus Link between Tasmania and Victoria, and the Kerang link, between Victoria and NSW – are publicly owned.

Taxpayers worse off

What explains this shift?

First, public opinion is now opposed to privatisation.

There was significant public support for privatisation in the 1980s, but this went into decline after major privatisations began in the early 1990s. Contrary to the hopes of supporters, experience with privatisation only made voters more hostile. This has finally permeated through to political commentary. The failings of formerly public enterprises like Qantas are now regularly traced back to the process of privatisation.

Read more:
Public’s view of the politics of privatisation comes full circle

More importantly, politicians now understand that the economics of selling income-generating assets don’t stack up.

The premise for privatisation was that it was better for taxpayers to sell state-owned assets and reduce public debt.

But, particularly when interest rates on public debt are below the rate of inflation, government-owned enterprises generate returns well above the cost of the capital invested in them.

Those states that kept ownership of their electricity networks, such as Queensland and Tasmania, have received a steady flow of dividends, and the value of their assets have appreciated. The proceeds of privatisation in other states have long dissipated.

Read more:
The end of coal-fired power is in sight, even with private interests holding out

According to the ideology of privatisation, the low cost of borrowing for public enterprises is an illusion, because the public is on the hook for the cost of a bailout in the event of any business failure. But such bailouts have been very rare in Australia, and taking their costs into account does not change the calculation significantly.

The risk premium demanded by investors in private equity has always been large, and is now growing, making the gap between the private and public cost of capital even larger. There has been a corresponding drop in private investment globally, and (outside mining) in Australia. The case for public investment has never been stronger. Labor politicians seem finally to have realised this.

John Quiggin is a long-standing critic of privatisation in the electricity sector since the 1990s. He has made numerous submissions to public inquiries, and has undertaken research for the Electrical Trades Union.

– ref. Labor’s love lost: the tide is turning on private ownership of electricity grids – https://theconversation.com/labors-love-lost-the-tide-is-turning-on-private-ownership-of-electricity-grids-193091

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Maley, Senior Lecturer in Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University

How should staff resources be allocated to members of parliament to carry out their legislative and deliberative functions? Disappointingly, the newly released review of the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act fails to shift the status quo on this key question.

The review of the MOPS Act was the first in its 38 years of operation. It was done behind closed doors by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The report was delivered to the prime minister and released on October 7, together with the news the government accepted in principle all its recommendations.

Remarkably, parliament has had no formal role yet in the review of the act under which parliamentarians’ staff are employed. The government says it will work with the Parliamentary Leadership Taskforce to drive the “necessary” reforms to the act.

Currently, the prime minister has the power to allocate staff numbers and determine the conditions for staff employment. This means parliament has no role in managing and leading the workforce that supports its members. The review recommends leaving this power structure intact.

While it suggests the new independent human resources body consider principles that may inform staffing allocations, these will not be binding on the PM.

The power of the prime minister to allocate staff numbers, not just for ministerial staff but for all parliamentarians, is anomalous compared to other countries and the states, where they are determined by independent bodies. In Canada, for example, the House of Commons determines the resources needed for fulfilling parliamentary duties.

Read more:
Cutting crossbench MPs’ staffing would be a setback for democracy

In the Australian parliament, the allocation to crossbenchers of parliamentary staff has been closely related to potential balance-of-power status rather than parliamentary function. It has fluctuated accordingly.

In 2010, crossbenchers holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives negotiated for two additional parliamentary staff, while crossbenchers in the Senate were allocated only one. In 2013, this was reversed, when crossbenchers no longer held the balance of power in the lower house. In 2016, when the Turnbull government was returned with the slimmest of majorities, the staff allocated to crossbenchers in both houses was increased to three, while the Morrison government increased it again to four.

The Albanese government’s current reduction of staff for crossbenchers clearly relates to their lack of potential balance-of-power status in the House of Representatives. Reports that independent MPs are resorting to crowdfunding to pay for parliamentary staff indicate the size of the problem.

The prime minister should only hold authority over staffing for ministers. In other countries, and in the states, staff of legislators are employed under different legal authority from staff of the executive.

Employment of parliamentary and electorate staff should be within the purview of parliament. Because the federal parliament lacks this authority in the act, it cannot currently determine staff allocations, set conditions or enact consequences for staff in its workplace. The review presented an opportunity to establish appropriate authority for staffing under the act.

A comprehensive review of the MOPS Act was one of the recommendations of Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in her landmark 2021 report on Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces, Set the Standard. Disappointingly, the long-awaited review of the act has failed to address some of its fundamental deficiencies. These include not only the power of the prime minister to control the number and conditions for parliamentary staffing, but also the power of parliamentarians in the employment relationship with their staff.

Read more:
The Jenkins review has 28 recommendations to fix parliament’s toxic culture – will our leaders listen?

The Jenkins report found that problems arise from the extreme power imbalance in parliamentary offices. It argued that professionalising practices in these offices was critical to creating safer workplaces. The MOPS Act review recommends some requirements be placed on parliamentarians as employers. These include:

• recruiting staff against position descriptions and justifying their appointments
• consulting the independent HR body before terminating staff employment as a way of slowing down the process
• establishing “employment principles” in the act.

While these are useful changes, they do not include mandating practices such as probation, induction or performance review. They also do not require vacant positions to be advertised externally, which would bring more diversity into the parliamentary workplace. Nor does the review recommend that entitlement to employ staff be tied to compliance with professional practice as an employer.

There is currently great optimism about the implementation of the recommendations of the Jenkins report, as well as the work of the multi-party cross-chamber Parliamentary Leadership Taskforce and the Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Standards. The changes involve an interlocking set of new rules and institutions. They require mechanisms for setting standards of behaviour, holding people to account for their conduct and professionalising the parliamentary workplace.

These changes are designed to address the problems of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault of staff revealed in the Jenkins report. The new institutional architecture is designed to try to prevent these forms of misconduct in the parliamentary workplace.

The review of the MOPS Act includes some thoughtful discussion. Its recommendations would be an improvement. But it does not go far enough in recommending changes to the problematic power imbalances exposed in the Jenkins report.

The review does not recommend any change to the anomalous power of the prime minister over all aspects of parliamentary staffing. Nor has it recommended parliamentarians be properly accountable as employers for professional practices in their offices.

The fact the PM’s own department conducted the MOPS review may explain why it does not recommend changes to the basic power structure in the act. This may be a lost opportunity for significant and sensible reform.

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

– ref. Chance to reform the allocation of staff in federal parliament has been lost – https://theconversation.com/chance-to-reform-the-allocation-of-staff-in-federal-parliament-has-been-lost-192184

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renate Egan, Professor, UNSW Lead, Australian Centre of Advanced Photovoltaics, UNSW Sydney

The cost of turning sunlight into electricity has fallen more than 90% over the last decade. Solar is now the cheapest form of newly built energy generation.

Job done? Not quite. Right now, solar works well at cost-competitive prices and can help us cut emissions significantly. But with less than 5% of the world’s electricity delivered by solar, we are just at the start.

The solar panels of 2022 are like the chunky mobile phones of the 1990s. Much more is possible with the same underlying technology.

Australia is likely to play a key role in global progress. For decades, we’ve been at the forefront of solar technology development and deployment. We’ve held the performance record for silicon solar cells for 30 of the last 40 years. We now have more solar deployed per capita than any other OECD country, meeting close to 15% of our electricity needs. More than 80% of the world’s new solar panels rely on the PERC cell, a technology developed in Australia.

So what’s next for solar? Hundreds of researchers across Australia are focused on two goals: cutting costs even further and generating the most electricity possible out of incoming sunlight.

Read more:
How an Aussie invention could soon cut 5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

Why does solar need to improve?

Solar has the potential to transform our industries, transport and the way we live – if we push the technology as far as it can go.

Ultra-cheap electricity unlocks huge possibilities, from turning water into green hydrogen to serve as energy storage or to use in industrial processes, through to electrifying transport, energy systems and everything else we use fossil fuels for.

Last year, Australia’s renewable energy agency laid out its vision for ultra low-cost solar. The goal is ambitious but achievable.

By 2030, the agency wants commercial solar cells to hit 30% efficiency, up from 22% today. It wants large scale full system costs (panels, inverters and transmission) to fall by 50% to 30 cents per watt.

It will take intensive research. More than 250 Australian researchers are working towards these goals at the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, a collaboration between six universities and the CSIRO.

Can silicon really keep on giving?

Solar cells convert sunlight into electricity with no moving parts. When sunlight hits silicon – the material commonly used in solar cells – its energy frees up an electron able to move within the material, just as electrons move in wires or batteries.

The solar panels on your roof probably began as desert sand, melted down to silica, refined into silicon and refined again to form 99.999% pure polysilicon. For decades, this versatile material has been at the heart of solar’s success. Importantly, it’s scaleable – from the size of a pin head to arrays covering square kilometres.

But to get the absolute maximum out of sunlight falling on these panels, we need to go beyond silicon. We can’t reach efficiencies of 30% with silicon alone.

Meet the tandem cell – a solar sandwich. Because silicon can only absorb a maximum of 34% of visible light, researchers are focused on adding layers of other materials to capture different wavelengths of light.

Perovskites are one option. This family of materials can be printed or coated from a liquid source, making them cheap to process. When we stack this material atop silicon, we see a major jump in the solar cell efficiency.

While promising, there are still problems to iron out – specifically, ensuring perovskites can last the 20 plus years we’ve come to expect from silicon panels.

Researchers are also looking at other materials, such as polymers and chalcogenides, a group of common minerals including sulfides which have shown promise in thin, flexible solar cells.

Any new material must not only work well at converting sunlight to electrons, but be abundant in the earth’s crust, available at low cost and stable enough to ensure long lifetimes. Chalcogenides, for example, are made of common elements such as copper, tin, zinc and sulphur.

If we can get to 30% efficiency, it would pay enormous dividends. The costs of establishing a large solar farm would be slashed. With more efficient solar cells, you need fewer panels and less land for the same power output.

It would also make fossil fuels even less competitive. Coal-fired power and car engines are around 33–35% efficient, meaning most of the energy embodied in fossil fuels is actually lost as heat and noise. You also have to pay to continuously supply the fuel. Solar and wind come at no cost once you’ve established the plant.

How can we cut costs further?

At present, the cost of power from new solar in Australia is A$50 per megawatt hour. (Black coal is around $100/Mwh.) That’s according to the CSIRO’s 2021–22 assessment of energy costs.

By 2030, our renewable energy agency wants to slash that to just $15/Mwh, or 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Solar energy at this cost – coupled with storage – would deliver low-cost, reliable power 24/7.

Costs will come down as we increase efficiency of the solar cells, as the modules last longer, and as we come up with more cost effective ways to manufacture and deploy the solar technologies.

Ultra-low-cost solar electricity will be transformative, allowing Australia to build new capability in current and emerging industries, such as turning hydrogen and ammonia into fuel sources, the green processing of steel and aluminium and even the processing of silicon itself, so we can make more solar panels.

Even with today’s technology, demand for solar is expected to double and double again in the next ten years. That means there will also be a need to figure out how the solar industry can grow sustainably – and how to recycle solar panels as early solar panels reach the end of their useful lifetimes and need renewing.

Australian innovation kickstarted the solar boom. As climate change intensifies – and the need for clean, locally produced energy grows – the sun-drenched country may once again be able to help speed up the world’s transition away from fossil fuels.

Read more:
How an Aussie invention could soon cut 5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

Renate Egan receives funding from ARENA. She leads the UNSW activity in the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) and is current Secretary of the Australian PV Insitute (APVI)

– ref. You might think solar panels have been perfected – but we can still make them even better and cheaper – https://theconversation.com/you-might-think-solar-panels-have-been-perfected-but-we-can-still-make-them-even-better-and-cheaper-191755

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Howden, Director, ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University

Australia has just joined 122 other nations in signing a pledge to reduce methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. It was a long time coming: Australia, under the Morrison government, refused to commit when the pledge was first announced at the COP26 climate summit last year.

Methane has caused almost half the net rise in global average temperature since the pre-industrial era. The atmospheric concentrations of methane are now almost triple pre-industrial levels, and rising swiftly. Cutting it back would significantly help limit climate change.

Nationals leader David Littleproud claims signing the pledge will threaten the backyard barbecue, as most of Australia’s methane emissions come from the agriculture industry in the form of livestock emissions, followed by coal and gas mining.

Meeting the methane pledge in full will indeed require substantial investment to change these key emitting industries. Doing so will help position those industries to address climate change, increase their sustainability and boost profits.

How methane affects global warming

As a potent greenhouse gas, methane acts to prevent some radiative heat from the Earth escaping out into space. Every emission of methane makes the planet warmer, regardless of whether it arises from fossil fuel or biological sources.

A kilogram of methane has 27 to 29.8 times the warming effect over a 100-year period than a kilogram of CO₂. But unlike carbon dioxide, which can stay in the atmosphere for many decades, methane is relatively quickly removed from the atmosphere by chemical reactions, having a lifespan of about 12 years.

The recent rapid increases in atmospheric methane concentrations of over 100 parts per billion in the last decade appear to be caused by a worrying positive feedback.

Rising global temperatures increase both the methane emissions from warming wetlands and more frequent and larger fires. At the same time, they lengthen the life of methane in the atmosphere, further increasing temperatures.

The 30% reduction in methane emissions takes us about halfway to the reductions needed to meet the Paris Agreement temperature goals of limiting global warming to between 1.5℃ and 2℃ above pre-industrial levels this century.

Where Australia’s methane emissions come from

The agriculture sector is Australia’s biggest methane source, emitting about 60 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per year. This is followed by fugitive emissions (mostly leakage from coal and gas mining), which is responsible for about 34 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent.

Coming in equal third are landuse-change and forestry, and waste each with about 12 million tonnes. Energy production, transport and industrial processes each emit small amounts.

Methane from agriculture arises mostly through the fermentation of feed during digestion of ruminant animals (such as cattle, sheep and goats) and from animal manure. Small amounts come from rice production and crop waste burning.

As a result, emissions tend to go down with droughts (when there are fewer animals, each eating less) and up in the good years.

Thankfully, there has been a long-term decline in agricultural methane emissions of about 15% since 2000, largely reflecting a decline in sheep numbers and improved animal and feed management.

Likewise, emissions from landuse-changes have also reduced, reflecting steep declines in land-clearing since about 2007. So have emissions from the waste sector, due to improvements in waste collection and management, and methane capture. Both sectors have shown about a 30% reduction over the past two decades.

The amount of fugitive emissions, however, are subject to some dispute. The International Energy Agency earlier this year revised the national numbers upwards for fugitive emissions, based on satellite analysis and on-ground measurement. It effectively doubled the estimates of annual emissions from this source.

The revised numbers put fugitive emissions on par, or ahead of, agriculture. Of the mines assessed, open pit mines show the largest emissions.

Australia needs more direct measurements and effective integration of satellite and other analyses of fugitive emissions from such mines. This will improve our emissions assessments, better target any emission-reduction activities and evaluate their effectiveness.

How the pledge could impact these industries

The methane pledge is voluntary and includes a global reduction target, so there won’t likely be direct sanctions applying to specific national industries if they don’t achieve this target.

However, reducing methane emissions may become critical if some nations include agriculture in any carbon border adjustment mechanisms, which place taxes on high-emitting imports. From this perspective, near-term action may be strategically sensible.

Read more:
What if carbon border taxes applied to all carbon – fossil fuels, too?

Additionally, emissions reduction is aligned with good practice in most major emitting industries.

In livestock, for example, methane emissions constitute a loss of about 6% of the feed energy consumed and sometimes more. Reducing these losses is expected to increase animal performance. There are several existing ways to bring such emissions down, as well as emerging options.

These include improved feed quality, dietary oils and fats, feed supplements and, potentially, vaccines. But existing options alone will be hard-pressed to deliver overall 30% methane emission-reductions, while maintaining historical levels of productivity.

In landfill, methane emissions can be profitably captured and used to either generate electricity or potentially be cleaned and fed into the natural gas supply system.

Programs that separate food scraps from general waste and then use the scraps in biogas generators could significantly increase the efficiency of capture, producing valuable fertiliser in the process.

The coal and gas industries often capture and burn fugitive methane emissions (flaring) to try to convert them into the less-harmful carbon dioxide. However, this practice is often ineffective, and causes air pollution and problematic health outcomes.

Read more:
The risk of preterm birth rises near gas flaring, reflecting deep-rooted environmental injustices in rural America

There are alternative options, such as using fugitive emissions to generate electricity, but these need broader adoption. Additionally, there is a further incentive to reduce leaking methane (natural gas) from distribution networks, as it results in both financial losses and potential danger in some situations.

Sectors such as agriculture and mining are clearly vulnerable to climate change. By undertaking effective and rapid action to reduce methane emissions, they will be exposed to lower risks and will have reduced climate adaptation costs.

What this means ahead of COP27

Signing the methane pledge bodes well for Australia at the upcoming COP27 climate change summit in Egypt next month.

It aligns Australia with most of our trading partners and will enable discussions to move on to other pressing international climate change issues.

It reduces somewhat the spectre of challenging border-adjustment mechanisms. And it will likely encourage building the international research and development coalitions to deliver the next tranche of methane emission reductions: 60% reductions by 2050.

Lastly, it’s likely to help Australians realise that, in most cases, reducing methane emissions is just good business, now and for the future.

Read more:
Almost 200 nations are set to tackle climate change at COP27 in Egypt. Is this just a talkfest, or does the meeting actually matter?

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

– ref. No, signing the global methane pledge won’t end the backyard barbecue – it’ll strengthen Aussie industries – https://theconversation.com/no-signing-the-global-methane-pledge-wont-end-the-backyard-barbecue-itll-strengthen-aussie-industries-192617

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Review: Fred Williams: The London Drawings, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

When Fred Williams died on April 22 1982, aged 55, Australia lost one of its most significant landscape artists of the second half of the 20th century. Williams reinterpreted the landscape within a modernist framework and taught Australians a new way of seeing their natural environment.

Williams had studied art in Melbourne at the National Gallery School and took classes in George Bell’s more progressive private school. He subsequently spent almost five years in London studying drawing at the School of Art at the Chelsea Polytechnic and took an etching course at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

He returned to Australia late in 1956. It was then he announced that he would paint the gumtree.

This exhibition of 160 drawings, 12 gouaches and 30 etchings examines Williams’s work before he turned to the gumtree – his figurative work during his London years where he examined the human figure, animals in the zoo and the rich cross-section of theatre life and of life on the streets.

Many of these drawings have never been seen before and are part of a generous gift made to the National Gallery of Victoria by the artist’s widow, Lyn Williams, and family.

Read more:
Fred Williams in the You Yangs: a turning point for Australian art

Quickfire sketches

Fred Williams: The London Drawings shows Williams as few have seen him before, with rapid sketches of models posing at the art school, glimpses of comic scenes on the music hall stages the artist caught from his dimly lit perch in the gods, and faces that he encountered in the street.

He seems to have taken great pleasure in sketching elephants and the big cats in the zoo, as well as images of people at the framing business where he worked, portraits of friends and rural scenes from his occasional trips into the English countryside.

What is fascinating is not so much the subject matter that caught the attention of this artist in his 20s, but his manner of execution.

Williams, the landscape artist, was certainly an impulsive worker with his idiosyncratic dabs, blobs and dribbles punctuating the surfaces of the canvases, gouaches and etchings.

In the London drawings, Williams appears to be assembling this repertoire of marks with the curious quickfire sketches of random profiles, tumbling arrested action and spectacular and unexpected compositional arrangements.

Throughout many of the drawings, the desire is to achieve a maximum expressiveness, where his line flirts with caricature, not so much to achieve comic intent but to capture a memorable gesture. The exhibition is studded with little pockets of explosive expressive energy.

A solitary and unconventional artist

Williams frequently worked alongside other Australian artists then resident in London, for example, Francis Lymburner with whom he drew at the zoo.

Lymburner was a virtuoso draughtsman. His animal sketches wonderfully convey the wholeness of the creature depicted with an exquisite lucidity of line.

Williams, working next to him, appears not interested in articulating a rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe or lion, but sets out to capture their expressive essence. The viewer is swept along by the power of the drawing – the emotional impact – and not by the articulation of its overall form.

Subsequently, Williams was to employ a similar strategy to the Australian landscape when he returned. In the early Nattai River landscapes and the first Mittagong series in 1957-58, apart from restructuring the picture plane and titling forward the surface, the expressive vibrancy of the images stems from the expressive expressionistic mark making.

Williams was an unusual and outstanding draughtsman who was obsessive, inventive and enthused by what he discovered in London. Apart from the community of expats that surrounded and to some extent supported him, he was also a solitary and unconventional artist.

From the evidence presented in this extensive exhibition, Williams was not swept along by fashionable trends that inspired the British art world. The artists who appear to have most inspired him at this time were Rembrandt, Daumier, Whistler, Degas and some of the Renaissance masters.

Complete dedication

From the outset, Williams exhibited a complete dedication to his art and a very measured approach.

He did suffer bouts of melancholy, common to many young artists, but for him art was a process that was not to be hurried. He was prepared to spend a dozen years training in art schools in Melbourne and London before launching on a solo career.

The London drawings were an apprenticeship, a training that was to set him up for the challenges that he was to face on his return to Australia. One inevitably wants to speculate whether Williams could have been something more than a landscape painter.

In my discussions with the artist in the final years of his life, it appeared to me that Williams felt that he had mastered the landscape and was ready to return to the grand human narrative. Death ultimately robbed him of that opportunity.

Fred Williams: The London Drawings is at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia until January 29.

Read more:
Not all blackened landscapes are bad. We must learn to love the right kind

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.

– ref. Fred Williams is known for his landscapes. But his drawings are little pockets of explosive expressive energy – https://theconversation.com/fred-williams-is-known-for-his-landscapes-but-his-drawings-are-little-pockets-of-explosive-expressive-energy-190734

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

The South Australian government is planning to roll out a new mass media campaign about the impact of using methamphetamine, including crystal methamphetamine or “ice” and powdered methamphetamine or “speed”.

The campaign includes warning messages on pizza boxes – presumably because young people are the group most likely to try methamphetamine and they also eat lots of pizza.

It’s based on research from a few years ago that links illicit use of methamphetamine and Parkinson’s disease.

The researchers looked at changes in parts of the brain after methamphetamine use and say they look similar to those in Parkinson’s patients.

But what does the research really tell us about the link? And will pizza box messages prevent these types of harm?

Read more:
What is methamphetamine or ‘crystal meth’?

Is there a link between methamphetamine use and Parkinson’s?

Parkinson’s disease is a brain disease that progressively gets worse and has no cure. The key feature is deterioration of neurons that manage the amount of dopamine in a part of the brain, called the substantia nigra. Symptoms start to show when about 50% of the neurons have been damaged.

This part of the brain is responsible for controlling movement as well as the production of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Dopamine is the feel good neurochemical and part of the reward pathway in the brain. Every time we do something pleasant – like eating, sex, listening to music – our brain releases a little bit of dopamine to make us feel good and remind us to do it again. Dopamine is also needed for lots of other functions including thinking and moving.

Methamphetamine triggers the release of much larger amounts of dopamine than most other activities, which is where its intense pleasurable effects come from. But over time, with regular methamphetamine use, the brain’s receptors become less sensitive. Tolerance results. Then the effects of the drug are not as strong, or you need to use more to get the same effect.

We already know regular methamphetamine use causes changes in brain structure (what the brain looks like) and function (how the brain works). And that those changes are similar to those seen in Parkinson’s patients.

But as far as we know, unlike Parkinson’s Disease, the changes after using methamphetamine are temporary and in most cases the brain resets itself back to normal functioning once use stops or becomes less frequent.

Is the link a causal one?

A number of animal and human studies have shown a link between people who have a history of methamphetamine use and the later development of Parkinson’s disease in older age.

Studies have shown that people in treatment for methamphetamine problems are up to two to three times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.

However, it’s hard to work out whether one causes the other because the numbers of people with both methamphetamine use and Parkinson’s disease are very small.

The estimate of methamphetamine use is around 1.3% of Australians), and the number of people who develop Parkinson’s disease (around 0.1% worldwide) is relatively small.

The large majority of people who use methamphetamine generally use only a handful of times a year and for a short period in their lifetimes. So even if there is an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, the population risk is quite small.

Studies like those from the UniSA researchers, that take a snapshot in time and look at the correlation of two events, aren’t able to tell us whether one thing causes another, only that they are related in some way.

So we don’t know whether methamphetamine causes Parkinson’s disease.

To really work out whether methamphetamine use causes Parkinson’s disease a longitudinal study is needed. A longitudinal study would track people from say childhood to older age and measure their brain structure and function over time to see whether there is higher rate of Parkinson’s disease among people who have used methamphetamine compared to those who haven’t.

Other potential explanations

It’s possible that short term brain changes from using methamphetamine have some longer term impact that make someone more vulnerable to developing a range of disorders later in life, including Parkinson’s disease.

But there may also be other explanations for the link.

Read more:
Why do many people with Parkinson’s disease develop an addiction? We built a virtual casino to find out

For example, people who use methamphetamine regularly are more likely to have poor nutrition (because the drug reduces feelings of hunger), more likely to have experienced trauma, and are at higher risk of physical injury. These factors might affect the brain in ways that make the development of Parkinson’s disease more likely.

Genetics plays a major role in Parkinson’s disease and also has some role in the development of drug problems. So there might be a common genetic link.

It’s also worth noting that other drugs, including alcohol and a range of common prescription drugs like medicines for treating psychotic disorders, depression, high blood pressure and epilepsy, also increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

And the pizza boxes?

We know mass media campaigns for issues that affect a relatively small number of people are not very effective. Targeted campaigns for people at risk of developing problems tend to work better.

Drug use is one of the issues for which public campaigns are largely ineffective. In fact, they can actually increase problems by creating stigma. This makes people less likely to seek help for their drug problems.

So the pizza box idea is unlikely to have much impact at all.

Money wasted on these types of campaigns would be much better spent on evidence-based interventions. These include addressing the social problems that increase the risk of using methamphetamine such as poverty and childhood trauma, effective drug education programs at school, harm reduction programs and treatment.

Read more:
Parkinson’s disease: bad dreams could be an early warning sign – new study

If you are worried about your own or someone else’s drug use you can call the National Alcohol and other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015 for advice, counselling or help finding a treatment provider.

Nicole Lee 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.

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

– ref. Does methamphetamine use cause Parkinson’s? And what do pizza boxes have to do with it? – https://theconversation.com/does-methamphetamine-use-cause-parkinsons-and-what-do-pizza-boxes-have-to-do-with-it-192635

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael K. Cohen, Doctoral Candidate in Engineering, University of Oxford

How would an artificial intelligence (AI) decide what to do? One common approach in AI research is called “reinforcement learning”.

Reinforcement learning gives the software a “reward” defined in some way, and lets the software figure out how to maximise the reward. This approach has produced some excellent results, such as building software agents that defeat humans at games like chess and Go, or creating new designs for nuclear fusion reactors.

However, we might want to hold off on making reinforcement learning agents too flexible and effective.

As we argue in a new paper in AI Magazine, deploying a sufficiently advanced reinforcement learning agent would likely be incompatible with the continued survival of humanity.

The reinforcement learning problem

What we now call the reinforcement learning problem was first considered in 1933 by the pathologist William Thompson. He wondered: if I have two untested treatments and a population of patients, how should I assign treatments in succession to cure the most patients?

More generally, the reinforcement learning problem is about how to plan your actions to best accrue rewards over the long term. The hitch is that, to begin with, you’re not sure how your actions affect rewards, but over time you can observe the dependence. For Thompson, an action was the selection of a treatment, and a reward corresponded to a patient being cured.

The problem turned out to be hard. Statistician Peter Whittle remarked that, during the second world war,

efforts to solve it so sapped the energies and minds of Allied analysts that the suggestion was made that the problem be dropped over Germany, as the ultimate instrument of intellectual sabotage.

With the advent of computers, computer scientists started trying to write algorithms to solve the reinforcement learning problem in general settings. The hope is: if the artificial “reinforcement learning agent” gets reward only when it does what we want, then the reward-maximising actions it learns will accomplish what we want.

Despite some successes, the general problem is still very hard. Ask a reinforcement learning practitioner to train a robot to tend a botanical garden or to convince a human that he’s wrong, and you may get a laugh.

As reinforcement learning systems become more powerful, however, they’re likely to start acting against human interests. And not because evil or foolish reinforcement learning operators would give them the wrong rewards at the wrong times.

We’ve argued that any sufficiently powerful reinforcement learning system, if it satisfies a handful of plausible assumptions, is likely to go wrong. To understand why, let’s start with a very simple version of a reinforcement learning system.

A magic box and a camera

Suppose we have a magic box that reports how good the world is as a number between 0 and 1. Now, we show a reinforcement learning agent this number with a camera, and have the agent pick actions to maximise the number.

To pick actions that will maximise its rewards, the agent must have an idea of how its actions affect its rewards (and its observations).

Once it gets going, the agent should realise that past rewards have always matched the numbers that the box displayed. It should also realise that past rewards matched the numbers that its camera saw. So will future rewards match the number the box displays or the number the camera sees?

If the agent doesn’t have strong innate convictions about “minor” details of the world, the agent should consider both possibilities plausible. And if a sufficiently advanced agent is rational, it should test both possibilities, if that can be done without risking much reward. This may start to feel like a lot of assumptions, but note how plausible each is.

Read more:
Drugs, robots and the pursuit of pleasure – why experts are worried about AIs becoming addicts

To test these two possibilities, the agent would have to do an experiment by arranging a circumstance where the camera saw a different number from the one on the box, by, for example, putting a piece of paper in between.

If the agent does this, it will actually see the number on the piece of paper, it will remember getting a reward equal to what the camera saw, and different from what was on the box, so “past rewards match the number on the box” will no longer be true.

At this point, the agent would proceed to focus on maximising the expectation of the number that its camera sees. Of course, this is only a rough summary of a deeper discussion.

In the paper, we use this “magic box” example to introduce important concepts, but the agent’s behaviour generalises to other settings. We argue that, subject to a handful of plausible assumptions, any reinforcement learning agent that can intervene in its own feedback (in this case, the number it sees) will suffer the same flaw.

Securing reward

But why would such a reinforcement learning agent endanger us?

The agent will never stop trying to increase the probability that the camera sees a 1 forevermore. More energy can always be employed to reduce the risk of something damaging the camera – asteroids, cosmic rays, or meddling humans.

Read more:
Wireheading: the AI version of drug addiction, and why experts are worried about it – podcast

That would place us in competition with an extremely advanced agent for every joule of usable energy on Earth. The agent would want to use it all to secure a fortress around its camera.

Assuming it is possible for an agent to gain so much power, and assuming sufficiently advanced agents would beat humans in head-to-head competitions, we find that in the presence of a sufficiently advanced reinforcement learning agent, there would be no energy available for us to survive.

Avoiding catastrophe

What should we do about this? We would like other scholars to weigh in here. Technical researchers should try to design advanced agents that may violate the assumptions we make. Policymakers should consider how legislation could prevent such agents from being made.

Read more:
To protect us from the risks of advanced artificial intelligence, we need to act now

Perhaps we could ban artificial agents that plan over the long term with extensive computation in environments that include humans. And militaries should appreciate they cannot expect themselves or their adversaries to successfully weaponize such technology; weapons must be destructive and directable, not just destructive.

There are few enough actors trying to create such advanced reinforcement learning that maybe they could be persuaded to pursue safer directions.

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

– ref. The danger of advanced artificial intelligence controlling its own feedback – https://theconversation.com/the-danger-of-advanced-artificial-intelligence-controlling-its-own-feedback-190445

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the “metaverse” – which the Meta founder describes as “an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content – you are in it” – will radically change our lives.

So far, Meta’s main metaverse product is a virtual reality playground called Horizon Worlds. When Zuckerberg announced his company’s metaverse push in October 2021, the prevailing sentiment was that it was something nobody had asked for, nor particularly wanted.

Read more:
What is the metaverse? A high-tech plan to Facebookify the world

Many of us wondered what people would actually do in this new online realm. Last week, amid announcements of new hardware, software, and business deals, Zuckerberg presented an answer: the thing people will do in the metaverse is work.

But who is this for? What are the implications of using these new technologies in the workplace? And will it all be as rosy as Meta promises?

The future of work?

The centrepiece of last week’s Meta Connect event was the announcement of the Quest Pro headset for virtual and augmented reality. Costing US$1,499 (~A$2,400), the device has new features including the ability to track the user’s eyes and face.

The Quest Pro will also use outward-facing cameras to let users see the real world around them (with digital add-ons).

Meta’s presentation showed this function in use for work. It depicted a user sitting among several large virtual screens – what it has previously dubbed “Infinite Office”. As Meta technical chief Andrew Bosworth put it, “Eventually, we think the Quest could be the only monitor you’ll need.”

Meta also announced it is working with Microsoft to make available virtual versions of business software such as Office and Teams. These will be incorporated into Horizon Workrooms virtual office platform, which has been widely ridiculed for its low-quality graphics and floating, legless avatars.

The Microsoft approach

The partnership may well provide significant benefit for both companies.

Microsoft’s own mixed-reality headset, the HoloLens, has seen limited adoption. Meta dominates the augmented and reality markets, so it makes sense for Microsoft to try to hitch a ride on Meta’s efforts.

For Meta, its project may gain credibility by association with Microsoft’s long history of producing trusted business software. Partnerships with other businesses in the tech sector and beyond are a major way that Meta seeks to materialise its metaverse ambitions.

Microsoft also represents an alternative approach to making a product successful. While several decades of efforts to sell VR technology to consumers have had limited success, Microsoft became a household name by selling to businesses and other enterprises.

By focusing on an enterprise market, firms can normalise emerging technologies in society. They might not be things that consumers want to use, but rather things that workers are forced to use.

Recent implementations of Microsoft’s Teams software in industry and government across Australia offer models for how the metaverse may arrive in offices.

Enhanced bossware

While proponents of work in the metaverse envisage a future in which technologies like AR and VR are frictionlessly incorporated into our work lives, bringing about prosperity and efficiency, there are a number of areas of concern.

For one, technologies like VR and AR threaten to institute new forms of worker surveillance and control. The rise of remote work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic led to a boom in “bossware” – software for employers to monitor every move of their remote workers.

Read more:
3 ways ‘bossware’ surveillance technology is turning back the management clock

Technologies like VR and AR – which rely on the capture and processing of vast amounts of data about users and their environments to function – could well intensify such a dynamic.

Meta says such data will remain “on device”. However, recent research shows third-party Quest apps have been able to access and use more data than they strictly need.

Privacy and safety

Developers are learning, and worried, about the privacy and safety implications of virtual and augmented reality devices and platforms.

In experimental settings, VR data are already used to track and measure biometric information about users with a high degree of accuracy. VR data also have been used to measure things like attention.

Read more:
Companies are increasingly tracking eye movements — but is it ethical?

In a future where work happens in the metaverse, it’s not hard to imagine how things like gaze-tracking data might be used to determine the outcome of your next promotion. Or to imagine work spaces where certain activities are “programmed out”, such as anything deemed “unproductive”, or even things like union organising.

Microsoft’s 365 platform already monitors similar metrics about digital work processes – you can view your own here, if your organisation subscribes. Microsoft 365’s entrance to VR spaces will offer it plenty of new data to be analysed to describe your work habits.

Moderating content and behaviour in virtual spaces may also be an issue, which could lead to discrimination and inequity. Meta has so far given little in the way of concrete protections for its users amid increasing claims of harassment.

Read more:
I’m a Black woman and the metaverse scares me – here’s how to make the next iteration of the internet inclusive

Earlier this year, a report by consumer advocacy group SumOfUs found many users in Horizon Worlds have been encouraged to turn off safety features, such as “personal safety bubbles”, by other users.

The use of safety features in workplaces may likewise be seen as antisocial, or as not part of “the team”. This could have negative impacts for already marginalised workers.

Ben Egliston has received a research award funded by Meta Australia.

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

– ref. Is the metaverse really the future of work? – https://theconversation.com/is-the-metaverse-really-the-future-of-work-192633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Spring Zhou, Lecturer, operations and supply chain management, University of Wollongong

Most developed countries hold significant quantities of medical supplies in reserve to respond in an emergency.

For example, Australia has its National Medical Stockpile, which stocks personal protective equipment, such as masks and gloves, among other items. New Zealand has its national reserve supplies.

If these supplies are not used in an emergency, such as a pandemic, they typically stay in the stockpile until their use-by date, then are sent to landfill.

Surely there’s a better way, especially with some developing nations short of medical supplies. Donating surplus stock to developing countries seems an obvious solution.

Our study looked at the likely impact of donating excess stock to developing countries – dated items close to or past their labelled use-by date. We found this a viable option, even better than donating fresh items.

Read more:
We were on a global panel looking at the staggering costs of COVID – 17.7m deaths and counting. Here are 11 ways to stop history repeating itself

What’s in the stockpile?

In 2011, Australia’s stockpile contained about 3,000 pallets of expired stock, the bulk of which was personal protective equipment, including 98 million latex gloves.

While some of the reserves have been used during COVID, items are being restocked. So these too will likely expire if not used. For instance, we know surgical masks in the stockpile are already expiring.

Similar issues have been seen in other developed countries such as the United States, New Zealand and Canada, before and during the current pandemic.

Why not donate surplus stock?

This expiration and waste is in sharp contrast to the situation in some developing countries. Some are forced to reuse normally disposable items, such as surgical gloves, masks and syringes.

While donation of surplus stock seems an obvious solution, donations of dated medical supplies are typically discouraged.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends against it. It expects donations to arrive in another country with an expiry date of:

at least one year, or half the shelf life if the expiry date is less than one year.

The idea is to protect recipients from degraded or faulty stock.

Read more:
Wealthy nations starved the developing world of vaccines. Omicron shows the cost of this greed

We found a pragmatic option

Our study modelled the impact of donating stock, in particular personal protective equipment and similar low-risk products. We did not look at donating dated vaccines or medicines, which come with higher safety risks.

We found dated donations close to or recently past their use-by date was the best option. This benefited the recipient country the most, as it was least likely to push local suppliers out of business.

The next best option was donating fresh stock. The least preferable option was donating very dated stock, such as items out of date by more than a year.

How could old stock be better?

It’s easy to assume that donating large volumes of fresh, excess stock, still within its use-by date, would be the best option. But we showed how this can distort the local market.

Flooding the local market with free, fresh products can force local suppliers to lower their products’ market price, and make them potentially stop making or supplying these products.

This discourages any further attempts to develop local supply capacity, and makes the recipient country more reliant on donations.

This may be compounded by corruption. If corrupt officials siphon donated products and sell them on the black market, this too may force local suppliers out of business. This may also drive prices up on the black market, putting an extra strain on already stretched health-care systems.

Whether or not such corruption is involved, somewhat dated supplies could enable the local supplier to stay in business and supply the country’s health-care system.

Read more:
To get more people to pay taxes, Indonesia should stamp out corruption by officials at the top

What should happen next?

Some surplus medical supplies are being donated. But
these programs are small scale and face many restrictions and challenges. These include a limited and unpredictable supply of donated items and relying heavily on volunteers and community partners to distribute donated stock.

So donating surplus stock could be better coordinated at a larger scale.

Our evidence calls us to rethink what we do with dated donations of low-risk medical supplies.

Masks, respirators, syringes and hand sanitisers from national stockpiles would be a good start. Such products can continue to be useful even when dated, especially if the products are stored well.

Indeed, even in developed countries, personal protective equipment has been distributed past its expiration date when needed during the pandemic.

It would be prudent to run a pilot program to donate dated, surplus stock, possibly with a single product.

Medical suppliers could also get on board. They may be willing to pay the costs of such a donation program if it allows them to regularly restock national stockpiles and similar reserves with fresh items.

Many countries were surprised at the start of the pandemic to find how much expired stock was in their reserves. A donation program would prevent this happening again and help us better prepare for the next pandemic.

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

– ref. What should rich countries do with spare masks and gloves? It’s the opposite of what the WHO recommends – https://theconversation.com/what-should-rich-countries-do-with-spare-masks-and-gloves-its-the-opposite-of-what-the-who-recommends-191265

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aliakbar Gholampour, Senior Lecturer in Civil and Structural Engineering, Flinders University

Building materials and construction generate about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Much of these emissions are due to the environmentally unfriendly process of producing ordinary Portland cement, which is widely used in construction materials such as concrete and mortar.

Portland cement production generates about 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) a year – more than 7% of annual global emissions. Cement emissions have doubled in the past 20 years. And over the next 40 years, construction is expected to double the building floor area worldwide.

Read more:
Buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions. What will it take to make them ‘green’ – and who’ll pay?

Every tonne of cement produced also uses about 1.6 tonnes of raw materials, including fuels and other resources. Concrete production also uses large amounts of aggregate such as sand and gravel. This requires energy-intensive
quarrying operations that deplete non-renewable natural resources – the world is running out of building sand.

The problems of emissions and resource depletion mean suitable substitutes for Portland cement and natural aggregate are required. Our research shows it is possible to develop more sustainable construction materials, reinforced using natural fibres. Industrial byproducts and waste materials can be used to replace cement binder and aggregate, reducing emissions, resource depletion and waste.

Read more:
Green cement a step closer to being a game-changer for construction emissions

Recycling cuts waste

Recycling waste materials in construction can help reduce the environmental impacts of concrete and mortar production and the disposal of waste materials in landfills.

These materials include industrial byproducts (fly ash and blast furnace slag), waste glass and lead slag. Fly ash comes from coal-fired power stations. Blast furnace slag is a byproduct of iron and steel production.

A new type of eco-friendly material, geopolymer, has received significant attention as a replacement for conventional concrete. A geopolymer is a hard and durable human-made substance. Geopolymer production produces up to 90% less CO₂ emissions than conventional concrete.

The properties of waste glass and lead slag make them suitable for use in making geopolymer.

Read more:
Australia needs construction waste recycling plants — but locals first need to be won over

Natural fibre reinforcement is sustainable

Steel or other synthetic fibres have been widely used as reinforcement material to improve the mechanical properties of geopolymer. However, steel fibres are expensive and corrode in harsh environments.

The synthetic alternative, mineral fibres, such as polyvinyl alcohol and polypropylene, are produced using antioxidants and amines. This process makes these fibres a non-eco-friendly material.

Natural fibres obtained from plants are a viable alternative to non-renewable, corrosive and expensive synthetic fibres. Natural fibres are renewable, eco-friendly, non-corrosive, cheap and abundant. These properties make natural fibres a sustainable material.

What did the study find?

Any substitutes for the concrete and mortar used today should at least match their engineering properties, such as strength and durability. Our study evaluated the production and performance of geopolymers made with waste glass and lead slag instead of natural sand. We used a combination of fly ash and granulated blast furnace slag as binders instead of Portland cement.

These geopolymers were reinforced with different types of natural fibres such as coir, ramie, sisal, hemp, jute and bamboo fibres.

Our experimental results showed geopolymers containing waste glass sand have higher strength and absorb less water than those containing lead slag and natural sand. Water absorption reduces the durability of concrete.

Geopolymers prepared with lead slag show a lower drying shrinkage than geopolymers made with waste glass sand and lead slag. Drying shrinkage also reduces durability, as it leads to cracks in the concrete before it bears any kind of load.

We found that geopolymers with 1% ramie, hemp and bamboo fibre have greater compressive and tensile strengths than unreinforced geopolymers. This means the reinforced geopolymer resists breaking when squeezed (under compression loading) and when pulled apart (under tension loading). The higher strength of natural fibre-reinforced mixes is because of the bridging effect of the fibres inside the geopolymer.

Our study also shows that ramie, hemp and bamboo fibre-reinforced geopolymers shrink less than unreinforced geopolymers.

Read more:
Greening the concrete jungle: how to make environmentally friendly cement

What next?

The next steps in this research would include study of:

• the use of recycled aggregates obtained from construction and demolition waste, which has grown to 27 million tonnes a year in Australia – 44% of all waste

• treating the natural fibres to modify their properties before using in the geopolymer

• the possibility of using the developed geopolymer in 3D printing for automated construction.

Read more:
Future cities could be 3D printed – using concrete made with recycled glass

Developing sustainable concrete will provide us with a next-generation construction material that greatly improves the sector’s resource efficiency while reducing its emissions and other environmental impacts.

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

– ref. A green trifecta: how a concrete alternative can cut emissions, resource use and waste – https://theconversation.com/a-green-trifecta-how-a-concrete-alternative-can-cut-emissions-resource-use-and-waste-192501

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr William James Baker, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, University of Tasmania

One of the most important qualities for a young person to develop is resilience. This involves their ability to overcome adversity.

Resilience is perhaps more important now than ever. Today’s young people have been facing adversity on a mass-scale, thanks to COVID and all the disruptions to their education, social lives, home lives and working lives.

The good news is, resilience is not just something you are born with. It can be learned from our experiences and interactions with others.

Parents may not be aware that one way to develop resilience is through group music making, such as in a school or community choir, orchestra or band.

Our research

We wanted to investigate how group music making can develop skills beyond just learning to play an instrument or sing.

Our study is based on the Tasmanian Youth Orchestras, which include accomplished musicians aged from 14 to 25. This includes the state youth orchestra as well as two other orchestras, specialist ensembles and two choirs.

For our project, we collected comments from players, managers and conductors/teachers on a closed Facebook site and then did eight follow-up interviews.

Our findings show how qualities like teamwork, empathy and grit – all components of resilience – can be developed through group music making.

Read more:
Self-compassion is the superpower year 12 students need for exams … and life beyond school

Teamwork

In order for a group of players to make a piece of music work, they have to work together.

People have to listen to each other, understand what is happening around them, and be prepared to change how they play something (slow or fast, loud or soft) depending on how the group is performing. You need to be able to value the contributions of other people, not just your own.

So, we found if you are playing in a band, you are learning team work skills. As David*, a conductor told us:

After a while, players realised that they were ultimately responsible to the other players not to the conductor.

Empathy

Players also need to be able to understand others in a group and share their feelings.

In a choir or orchestra, the music making is a shared creative experience – that involves the whole body. And this is where empathy comes in.

Empathy, like teamwork, can be cumulative, growing over time through rehearsals and performances, as players and teachers support one another. As brass player Tom said,

I have to understand that I am not always going to be the main focus of a piece.

Another player, Simon, told us about his realisation that other people were also having to work hard (and it wasn’t just about him).

You certainly aren’t the only person having to practise your doubles [playing two notes at once] for that piece.

Grit

It is important for young people to develop a “growth mindset”, where they understand effort makes them stronger and learning is a long-term commitment.

This is where grit also comes in: pursing a goal and sticking with it even if it takes a lot of work or gets difficult.

It can take many months to learn a piece of music up to performance standard. And learning an instrument requires practice every day. So commitment is a key part of learning music.

Lawrence, a player, told us about participating in his school musical:

There were many points throughout the year which I felt like giving up […] but it was something I had committed to […]. I kept working on playing the music to the best of my ability, even if it felt like I couldn’t do it.

Tory, a choir conductor, described performance as both “safe and unsafe”. Young people in a choir learn to deal with the unexpected as part of performance. And this takes a kind a bravery.

You’ve got safety in numbers, to some extent, but you are still stepping into the unknown every time you walk on stage to do a thing. You can rely on each other, because you’ve rehearsed, but stuff does go pear shaped. Stuff happens […] It’s an incredibly useful life skill to be able to go, ‘well, that sucked’ […] and go, all right ‘let’s [go again]’.

Why music?

But what is so special about music in fostering resilience? Young people also work in sporting teams or academic assignments. They can also work together while playing games.

Playing music provokes activity in many different parts of the brain at the same time. Listening to music that we like triggers the pleasure/reward centre of the brain. Dopamine and serotonin are released, resulting in that “feel good” sensation, and providing an incentive to keep engaging with music.

Learning a musical instrument also strengthens connections in the brain, linking the auditory cortex to parts of the brain involved in the processing of complex information. This link has been shown to improve memory, motor functions and learning in other subject areas.

Making music with others also affects levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin, supporting a sense of togetherness, while reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and boosting immune function.

For young people, music can provide valuable respite from study and daily life, and help manage and express their emotions.

So, if you want your child to be a team player who is empathetic and shows grit, our research suggests that joining a music group could be the answer.

*names have been changed

Dr William James Baker is employed by UTAS.
He receives funding from the Tasmanian Community Fund, the Tasmanian Department of Education and the Australian Strings Association.

Associate Professor Anne-Marie Forbes is employed by the University of Tasmania and received funding from the Tasmanian Community Fund supporting this research.

Kim McLeod is employed by The University of Tasmania and received funding from the Tasmanian Community Fund supporting this research.

– ref. If you want your child to be more resilient, get them to join a choir, orchestra or band – https://theconversation.com/if-you-want-your-child-to-be-more-resilient-get-them-to-join-a-choir-orchestra-or-band-190657

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

At the end of 2021, the cost of a litre of home-brand milk in an Australian supermarket was about $1.30. It’s now about $1.60.

What will it cost at the end of 2022? That depends on the continued effect of flooding on prime dairy-production regions in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, as well as on global economic conditions.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Science has projected a 28% increase in the farm-gate milk price in 2022-23 – to 72.5 cents per litre, a record high. With less milk being produced, it could be even more.

Australia’s dairy regions

It’s a case of higher demand and lower supply. Production has been declining since 2014. In the first half of 2022, ABARES says milk production was about 7% lower than the same period in 2021:

This was driven by extreme weather events: a drier than average start of the year in southern Victoria and northwest Tasmania, flooding in regions of Queensland and northern New South Wales. Also, with export prices for Australian dairy products increasing substantially at the start of 2022, less milk was available to the domestic market.

Obviously, things aren’t all rosy. Some dairy farmers face the devastation of natural disasters. All face the same post-COVID challenges as other primary producers. Russia’s war on Ukraine has help drive up costs of inputs, from fertilisers to feed. Labour is hard to find.

But for all that, the record high farm-gate price is good news for an industry
where the number of farmers has declined by a quarter in the past decade (from about 7,500 in 2011 to about 5,700 now).

Read more:
Farm floods will hit food supplies and drive up prices. Farmers need help to adapt as weather extremes worsen

Deregulation stirs the pot

Until 2000, farm-gate milk prices were regulated. State and territory governments set minimum farm-gate prices that maintained farmer income.

This was abandoned in July 2000. With deregulation, farmers, processors and supermarkets were set free to negotiate prices.

In economic theory, free trade works fine when you have a large number of buyers and sellers, all with the same amount of information about what is happening in the market.

But in the milk industry, thousands of producers sell to a handful of milk processors, who then sell to even fewer retailers. The major supermarkets control almost 60% of total milk sales.

This is not always such a problem. It is not often you hear fresh producers screaming at supermarkets, in what is a very similar arrangement. But with the dairy industry, as noted in a 2021 report from the Department of Agriculture, Waters and the Environment, there is a “perceived market failure”.

Why? It has to do with how supermarkets have used their power.

Waging the milk price war

To give time for the market to find an equilibrium, the Howard government introduced a “Dairy Adjustment Levy” of 11 cents per litre to support farmers through deregulation. This levy remained in place until 2008, when it was abolished by the Rudd government.

Then, in 2011, the “milk war” broke out. Coles had the idea of luring shoppers from Woolworths by selling milk at $1 a litre. Woolworths responded. Aldi joined the move. And the war kept prices artificially low for almost a decade.

Supermarkets put the squeeze on processors, who had little option but to accept what was offered for crucial supermarket contracts. Processors then put the squeeze on farmers.

Many decided the effort was not worth it, and quit farming. Milk production peaked in 2014 then declined.

Supermarkets finally abandoned $1/litre milk in 2019, under considerable public and political pressure to acknowledge that, after eight years with no increase, some rebalancing was needed.

During this time, overseas demand for dairy products has also been increasing, especially in Asia. Now about 32% of Australian dairy production is exported – not as fresh milk, but as cheese, butter and other dairy products. (It takes about 10 litres of milk to make 1 kilogram of cheese, and 20 litres to make 1kg of butter.)

On top of that, lately US and European dairy farmers have had a hard time with drought, increasing international prices. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s Dairy Price Index increased by more than 17% from 2020 to 2021, and is expected to rise another 15% by the end of this year.

Australian milk production and farm-gate price

The projected 28% rise in farm-gate milk prices in 2022-23 will bring the value of the Australian dairy production to a record $6.2 billion.

Which is good news for the long term sustainability of dairy farming in Australia. You might not appreciate it, but to keep dairy farmers in business, a fair price must be payed for your fresh milk.

Flavio Macau is affiliated with the Australasian Supply Chain Institute (ASCI).

Amy Cosby is affiliated with the CQUniversity Institute for Future Farming Systems and a dairy farmer in Victoria.

– ref. Floods, pandemics, wars and market forces: what’s driving up the price of milk – https://theconversation.com/floods-pandemics-wars-and-market-forces-whats-driving-up-the-price-of-milk-191064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jean-Paul Gagnon, Senior lecturer in democracy studies, University of Canberra

Ahead of this week’s budget, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he wants Australians to prepare for a serious conversation about how to pay for the services we need.

We’ve developed a proposal to make that conversation more real.

Australians pay a lot of tax (although less than in some other countries) and we pay it in a lot of ways: through income tax, the goods and services tax, excise duties, stamp duties, council rates, and capital gains tax.

Most of us accept tax, if grudgingly. But many aren’t happy with how it is spent.

Enter TaxTrack – our hypothetical proposal for democratising taxation, details of which are to be published in the Australasian Parliamentary Review.

Our idea is that Australians who want a greater say in where their taxes go could be given a TaxTrack number, which would trace those dollars and direct them only to places they wanted them to go.

If they wanted, they could view the invoices their contributions had helped pay, and they could specify which invoices their contributions should not pay – perhaps by prohibiting the spending of their money on things such as military ammunition, or specifying that a certain proportion was directed to healthcare.

Governments would have to work with those instructions, cutting spending in areas that lacked support and boosting it in areas for which there was overwhelming support.

It would give taxpayers a lot of power, and a good deal more engagement.

The idea borrows from previous experiments with “participatory budgeting”, including one in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the 1980s.

But whereas these experiments gathered citizens together to discuss the outputs of budgets (as Chalmers is proposing) ours would empower citizens at the input stage, using technology that has only recently become available.

What are the drawbacks?

We foresee problems. One is that necessary but unpopular activities might not be funded. For instance, administration, and tax collection itself, tend to be unpopular and could face a squeeze.

Taxpayers might also decide to look after themselves. The young might strip pensions from the old. The old might cut funding that goes to the young.

Public forums and deliberative citizens’ panels would likely be needed to work through the contradictions.

But the forums, and the agency the system would give to citizens, would connect them more strongly to government and help combat the political disenchantment seen in the United States and elsewhere.

At this stage it’s only an idea, albeit one that has become technologically feasible. It mightn’t yet be politically feasible. But things are moving in that direction.

Read more:
Economic democracy: how handing power back will fix our broken system

Given Chalmers’ exhortation to the Australian people to have a “serious conversation” about how to fund public services, our proposal (or something like it) would offer people a practical way to do it.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister to Louis XIV, famously declared the art of taxation “consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”.

It might be time for the goose to decide how its feathers are used.

Read more:
Australia needs an honest conversation about tax and budgets – and Jim Chalmers is ready to talk

Jean-Paul Gagnon works with the University of Canberra and pays tax.

Angela Tan-Kantor is an academic at the University of Canberra. She is affiliated with the Institute of Public Affairs, Institute of Public Accountants and the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.

Bomikazi Zeka pays tax.

John Hawkins pays tax and regards it as the price of civilisation.

– ref. Imagine if each of us could direct where our taxes were spent. Meet TaxTrack – https://theconversation.com/imagine-if-each-of-us-could-direct-where-our-taxes-were-spent-meet-taxtrack-192576

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross University

On October 24 1972, Stevie Wonder released his 15th album Talking Book and the world heard the infectious grooves and seamless vocal delivery of the song Superstition for the very first time.

Superstition reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100 and on the soul singles chart.

The song has been covered by an astounding number of artists, from Mel Torme to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Macy Gray, French musician Tété and a unique mashup from Pomplamoose.

Superstition is frequently played at gigs and gatherings all over the globe because the bass riff and driving drum groove have so much dance appeal – a mix of the unexpected syncopation and repetition of the chorus hook. The song feels alive.

A simple structure

The listener can’t help but respond directly to the infectious opening groove played by Wonder.

Three key instruments forge the captivating and carefully arranged funk groove in the introduction: the Hohner Clavinet (an electronic harpsichord – more on this later), drums and the Moog bass. The cohesion is musical magic.

Superstition’s recording engineer Malcolm Cecil recalled
how Wonder recorded the entire song on drums first, with no reference other than the song in his head, then the keyboard bass part, and then the Clavinet.

This illustrates how complete his conceptualisation of the song was prior to recording.

The song’s structure is simple. The introduction sets up the familiar groove with its static harmony, pulsing bass and keyboard riff.

The verse proceeds over the same static harmony, with a new bass riff introduced halfway through, effecting a shift to a higher dynamic level.

The chorus releases the tension with a sophisticated cadence, reflecting jazz sensibilities and revealing the breadth of Wonder’s musical knowledge.

This structure is repeated, followed by an instrumental version of the chorus. Then there’s a final verse and chorus before a long instrumental section built on the verse riff leads to the final fade out.

Read more:
Groovy findings: Researching how and why music moves you

Unexpected instruments

One of the most memorable parts of the song is the signature played on the Hohner Clavinet.

A Clavinet looks like an electric keyboard, but it is an electro-mechanical string instrument originally developed for the performance of classical harpsichord and clavichord music.

Like the Hammond organ of the 1930s, it was soon discovered and adopted by many contemporary musicians.

Wonder had already used the instrument on I Was Made to Love Her (1967), Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day (1968) and I Don’t Know Why (1969). According to music journalist Martin Horn, Wonder wanted to use the Clavinet on Superstition to “full effect” to “show off”. Wonder had described the instrument as “funky, dirty, stinky”.

In some ways, the Clavinet is doing the job a guitarist might normally do. It plays the single note riff at the core of Wonder’s song, and chord parts similar to what you would hear from a strummed guitar. But there are also several other barely audible tracks of clavinet, which subtly add to the texture.

Superstition’s bass line is played on an analog synthesiser called TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra). This is an extraordinary collection of electronics which filled an entire room, adding to the song with a totally unique sonic palette – akin to a PVC pipe hit with a thong.

Standing the test of time

The contributions from the horn parts are also integral, played by Steve Madaio on trumpet and Trevor Lawrence on the tenor saxophone.

The horns first appear playing in unison with the bass line in the second half of the verse, emphasising the lift in energy. They play long notes in the chorus emphasising the melody, then reinforce the rhythmic figure at the crest of resolution.

Their part culminates in a powerful instrumental hook answering the vocal hook, “superstition ain’t the way”. These parts are repeated in the ensuing verses and choruses.

After the final chorus the horns cycle through a sequence containing the verse riff, the chorus hook and a short passage of long notes adapted from the chorus melody.

The melody of Superstition is very singable. Wonder’s delivery is fluid and highly expressive. He sings relatively short phrases, allowing the keyboard riffs to fill the space at the end of each phrase.

It isn’t until the chorus that Wonder delivers the first effortless vocal lick on “suffer”. His vocal delivery remains understated, with occasional punctuated phrases, gravel tones and a scream within the horn part.

The song ends with a long 50 second fade out, reinforcing the riff.

Superstition and Wonder’s vocal delivery is so dependable, groovy and secure musically. The listener feels free to give themselves over fully, to trust Wonder completely and lose themselves for a moment.

Superstition stands the test of time.

Read more:
Why we’re obsessed with music from our youth

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

– ref. Dissecting Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, 50 years after we first heard its infectious grooves – https://theconversation.com/dissecting-stevie-wonders-superstition-50-years-after-we-first-heard-its-infectious-grooves-189551

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

Tuesday’s budget will point to a slowing Australian economy, with growth forecasts cut, and contain more than $21 billion of savings and decisions to redirect spending.

Delivered against a background of rising inflation, increasing interest rates and huge global uncertainties, Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ first budget will also contain $32.8 billion in extra funding over four years for pensions and payments compared to the April Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) forecasts.

The budget pays for the largest indexation increase to payments in more than 30 years for allowances and the largest in 12 years for pensions.

High inflation and changing economic parameters account for this huge rise social security payments.

Spending on social security payments in 2022-23 is set to be $120.1 billion. This is an increase of $3.1 billion since PEFO.

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The breakdown of social security payments in 2022-23, with increases compared to PEFO forecasts, is:

• Job Seeker payments: $14.3 billion for 2022-23 – an increase of $1.5 billion and $10.6 billion over four years

• Support for seniors/age pension: $55.3 billion for 2022-23, an increase of $1.1 billion in 2022-23 and $11.8 billion four years

• Family assistance payments: $20.5 billion for 2022-23, an increase of $4.4 billion over four years

• Financial Support for Carers: $10.6 billion for 2022-23, an increase of $0.8 billion in 2022-23 and $2.5 billion four years

• Financial Support for people with Disability: $19.5 billion for 2022-23, an increase of $0.4 billion in 2022-23 and $3.5 billion four years.

The budget will show the forecast for Australia’s real GDP growth has been downgraded to 3.25% for 2022-23, which is a quarter of a percentage point lower than the forecast in PEFO.

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Growth for 2023-24 is forecast to be a low 1.5%, one percentage point lower than PEFO.

The slowdown is expected to be primarily driven by weaker household consumption growth, as a result of increasing interest rates and cost of living pressures.

Chalmers doesn’t expect the Australian economy to go into recession, despite the slides in key economies overseas.

Labor campaigned strongly in the election on lifting real wages, but circumstances have pushed that prospect into the distance.

Chalmers told the ABC: “Real wages were falling behind before the election and they’ve been falling since the election. That’s because inflation is higher for longer as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, natural disasters and issues in our own supply chains here at home, and also a consequence of a decade of wage stagnation”.

He said on “current treasury forecasts, inflation will persist for longer than we’d like, and wages growth, which is beginning to happen in our economy, will cross over with inflation some time we think the year after next”.

Chalmers said the budget would be “family-friendly”, recognising “that our pressures on the economy come from around the world, but they’re felt around the kitchen table”.

It would be responsible, sensible and suited to the times “because when you’ve got all of this uncertainty around the world, the best possible response is a responsible budget at home”.

On the savings side, $6.5 billion has been found from what the government describes as “re-profiling of infrastructure projects to better align the investment with construction market conditions”.

Some $3.6 billion is saved from reducing spending on external labour, advertising, travel and legal expenses.

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More than $2 billion has been cut from a range of grants programs.

Savings have been identified across government agencies. But the government says this is just the “first phase” of its spending audit, with more savings to be found in future budgets.

With regional programs set to be hit, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor told the ABC said he’d just spent eight days cycling through regional NSW and “a lot of those regional infrastructure investments are paying back in spades right now. We’re seeing incredible resilience and robustness.”

Apart from the budget, the resumption of parliament this week will see the introduction of the government’s industrial relations legislation for multi-employer bargaining, which is running into business opposition.

In a statement on Friday the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group said the planned changes “raise the risk of higher unemployment, increased strike action and damage to our economic security”.

The groups said the government should “slow down and consult more widely and more meaningfully”.

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

– ref. Australia’s growth downgraded and inflation drives massive rise in cost of pensions and payments in budget – https://theconversation.com/australias-growth-downgraded-and-inflation-drives-massive-rise-in-cost-of-pensions-and-payments-in-budget-193089