Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University

One key change to universities under the Morrison government was the Job-ready Graduates program. Starting in 2021, this significantly increased student fees for humanities degrees, slashed them for nursing and teaching, and moved many other courses up and down.

University enrolment figures suggest it has not achieved its goal: to steer students into certain fields of study and away from others.

So, a new system of student fees is likely to be part of Labor’s promised Universities Accord, which aims to reset the relationship between the federal government and university sector.

Its terms of reference will be announced next month.

Ideas about setting student fees

Australia has had several student fee systems before. In a new paper, I look at the five different rationales used for setting HECS, later called student contributions, since 1989. These include: public benefits, increasing resources per student place, incentivising course choices, private benefits and course costs.

In the past month, two new reports have also looked at possible student contribution systems, adding to or varying those used previously.

In its October report on improving education outcomes, the Productivity Commission set out two main options.

In the first, courses with greater expected private financial benefits (or future income) would get lower public subsidies and require higher student contributions. Courses with the potential to earn low, medium and high incomes would have correspondingly low, medium and high student contributions.

In a second option, government subsidies would be a flat dollar amount or percentage of course teaching costs. Either way, students in courses with high teaching costs would pay the most, as student contributions make up the difference between the public subsidy and the course cost.

A new report from the Innovative Research Universities lobby group also suggests different options. Under one, most students would pay a flat student contribution rate, with public subsidies making up the difference between the flat rate and course costs.

For a budget-neutral transition from Job-ready Graduates, the flat rate would be about A$10,000 a year. The report says that this would offer “simplicity and predictability”.

These ideas have a history

It is important to remember these ideas have histories, with lessons today’s policymakers should not forget.

In 1997 the Howard government replaced the original flat HECS rate (where all students paid the same fee, regardless of their course) with three different HECS rates. Cabinet documents from the time show support for a “course costs” approach, so students in more expensive courses paid more.

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However, the Howard government also recognised what my paper calls the “nurses and lawyers problem”. Nursing costs more to teach than law, so under a course costs student contribution policy, nursing students would pay more than law students. That is a hard idea to sell.

Introducing a “private benefits” rationale solved this problem. On average lawyers earn more than nurses, and since 1997 law students have always paid higher student contributions than nursing students.

Despite the nurses and lawyers problem, the idea that course costs could be used to set student contributions has persisted. It led to two detailed government-commissioned reports in the 2010s, and is being suggested again now by the Productivity Commission.

Politics, income and policy

The education ministers who received those 2010s reports – Chris Evans from Labor and Simon Birmingham from the Liberals – did not implement their cost-sharing ideas. Student contribution levels are political as well as policy decisions, which need to be explained to the parliament, voters and students.

Read more:
The inequity of Job-ready Graduates for students must be brought to a quick end. Here’s how

Any rigid course cost model that ignores the politics of student contributions for areas like nursing and teaching isn’t politically viable. Public opinion will not support students training for these careers paying more for their education than law and business students.

The private financial benefits approach fits with Australia’s tax and social support system, under which we increase charges and reduce benefits with income.
But we also have to be careful about just relying on potential earnings to set course fees. On average, law graduates earn a lot, but a top commercial law barrister and a legal aid lawyer have very different incomes.

A flat-price student contribution would avoid some anomalies of the course cost and private benefit systems. But the transition back would be politically difficult – nursing and teaching student contributions would increase significantly unless overall public funding increased.

Real-life consequences

Although student contributions have little effect on course choices, my paper argues they do have practical consequences policymakers should take into account.

The doubling of humanities student contributions under the Job-ready Graduates scheme, combined with the relatively low incomes of humanities graduates, means their HELP student loan repayment times will be longer, with an increased proportion never fully repaying their debt.

While the HELP repayment system lets graduates repay over decades if necessary, this is to assist people with low or irregular incomes, not to penalise people for their course choices. Under the current student contribution system, two graduates on the same income could have significantly different repayment times.

Repayment delays are bad for the government too. Repaying the $74 billion in outstanding HELP more quickly would reduce the government’s interest bill and the risk of debt never being repaid.

To combat these issues, we need to consider how much graduates can potentially earn when setting university fees.

What does this mean for universities?

Student contributions affect universities as well as students. As the Productivity Commission points out, universities need to pay their bills now and must pay attention to revenue per student.

For universities, the key financial figure is the total funding rate. This is the public subsidy plus the student contribution. But each university has a cap on public funding. Once they reach it, additional students are funded on student contributions only.

For classroom-based courses such as arts or business, adding more students to subjects already being taught usually does not cost much. A low student contribution could cover it. But for courses with clinical components such as nursing, which requires expensive equipment and close supervision, the costs of more students are higher.

We know clinical training costs, combined with very low student contributions for nursing, are an obstacle to increasing enrolments despite high demand.

So, for universities’ purposes, we cannot forget what courses actually cost to run when setting student contributions.

Pragmatic student fees

Some student contribution systems, such as incentives to steer students into particular courses, should be ruled out. But when looking at university fees, the new federal government can adopt more than one rationale, pragmatically reflecting a mix of policy and political goals.

An enduring student contribution system will ensure that most graduates can repay their HELP debt in a reasonable amount of time, that students in nursing and teaching courses don’t pay more than other students, and that universities have the right incentives to meet student demand.

Andrew Norton was on an expert panel advising then education minister Simon Birmingham on higher education funding in 2016 and 2017.

– ref. University fees are poised to change – a new system needs to consider how much courses cost and what graduates can earn – https://theconversation.com/university-fees-are-poised-to-change-a-new-system-needs-to-consider-how-much-courses-cost-and-what-graduates-can-earn-192023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Cas, Professor emeritus, Monash University

In the blockbuster fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, one of the principal antagonists, the wicked Adar, diverted a river into the labyrinth of tunnels under a dormant Mount Doom to trigger an explosive volcanic eruption. This transformed the surrounding landscape into the bleak lands of Mordor – setting up the blighted kingdom of the orcs that features heavily in the Lord of the Rings movies.

The dramatic, and devastating scheme has led to many viewers wondering whether there’s any real science behind this fantasy terraforming plot. Can explosive volcanic eruptions actually be “engineered”?

What exactly is a volcanic eruption?

Volcanoes erupt molten rock, called magma, at temperatures between 700 and 1,300℃. Volcanic eruptions can be effusive, forming lava flows, or explosive, ejecting large fragments of magma and rock, fine ash and volcanic gas into the atmosphere. Mount Doom – or Orodruin – in The Rings of Power, is depicted as spectacularly doing the latter.

Some explosive eruptions are caused by high abundances of volcanic gases in magma. Others, called hydrovolcanic explosive eruptions occur when magma comes in contact with external water – such as groundwater, oceans, lakes, rivers, and glaciers or ice sheets – and superheats it to steam.

The heat energy of the magma is transformed into explosive mechanical energy in the steam as it expands in a process called thermal detonation.

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Can a volcano create Mordor?

Many hydrovolcanic explosive eruptions have been witnessed, such as the 1963-1964 Surtsey volcanoin Iceland, the fatal 2019 eruption of Whakaari White Island volcano, New Zealand, and the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga.

Experimental simulations of this have been undertaken at the laboratory scale, using small volumes of remelted lava and similar materials.

The theory of hydrovolcanic explosions is based on our understanding of how water acts as a coolant fluid in nuclear and other power stations. In nuclear reactors the radioactive fuel, often uranium, generates heat as it undergoes radioactive decay in the core of the reactor.

This core is surrounded by a water reservoir which is heated by the fuel and converted to steam that drives turbines, generating electricity. If the core overheats, because the coolant water has escaped (potentially due to damage to the containment reservoir), the residual water may become superheated and explode. This happened during the 1986 Chernobyl power station disaster in Ukraine, and the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.

To generate maximum explosive intensity during such a fuel-coolant interaction, the ratio of water to fuel (or magma) has to be just right. Research into nuclear explosions indicates the optimum ratio of water to fuel is in the range of 2 to 5, whereas in volcanology it is about 0.1 to 0.3.

If there is too little or too much water, steam is generated but explosions are local and small, and the magma will cool, fracture and solidify.

So, could we really make our own Mordor?

Triggering a hydrovolcanic explosive eruption is not easy. Getting enough water into the magma reservoir of dormant or active volcanoes many kilometres beneath Earth’s surface is impossible because there are no Mount Doom-like tunnels, just highly compressed dense rock.

Volcanoes with an active lava lake in the crater won’t have a river feeding into them because the craters will be perched at the elevated summit of the volcano. And even pouring water onto a lava lake surface would produce a lot of steam, but not necessarily strong explosive eruptions because the water will cause a cooled solid crust to form on the lava surface.

The only substantial hydrovolcanic explosive eruptions have occurred where significant volumes of magma have erupted rapidly up through a body of water such as groundwater, a lake or ocean, and vigorously mixed with it triggering explosive interaction (e.g. Surtsey, Iceland; Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, Tonga).

To trigger such a hydrovolcanic explosion, we would need to move a large amount of magma from a reservoir deep within Earth’s crust to the surface, by propagating a huge network of fractures many kilometres deep. This is nigh impossible at the scale required, even using nuclear explosions. So, unfortunately, The Rings of Power’s proposition is just a fantasy.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why do volcanoes erupt?

What would happen to Earth if we did engineer a volcanic eruption?

Even if we could engineer a volcanic eruption, we probably wouldn’t want to. Global climate is affected by the volcanic gases and fine ash released into the stratosphere during large scale volcanic eruptions.

The gases can form sulphuric acid droplets, creating a haze that reflects incoming solar radiation, causing global atmospheric cooling. In addition, huge volumes of fine ash suspended in the stratosphere would also reflect solar radiation back to space.

Moderate size historical eruptions have had only a minor impact on global temperature. Only huge, explosive super-eruptions could potentially cause global atmospheric cooling for many years, triggering a major global cooling event.

There are huge problems with such human-made (or orc-made) geoengineering proposals to try to control climate. First as outlined above, it is physically impossible to trigger eruptions of large volumes of magma. Even if we could, we couldn’t control the amount of cooling caused by a super-eruption. Do we really want continental ice sheets engulfing Europe, Asia, North America, and the consequent flood of cold climate refugees?

The global blanketing of the landscape by fine ash would cause crop failure, famine and poisoning of water reservoirs. The fine ash would also infiltrate machinery, including power plants, causing them to fail.

What we would be left with could be similar to Mordor in terms of habitability and horror – not suitable for Middle-earth or Earth.

Ray Cas receives funding from Monash University.

– ref. One does not simply detonate a volcano into Mordor: a scientist explains the problems with that Rings of Power episode – https://theconversation.com/one-does-not-simply-detonate-a-volcano-into-mordor-a-scientist-explains-the-problems-with-that-rings-of-power-episode-192328

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Van Bergen, Professor in Educational Psychology, University of Wollongong

What are your core memories from childhood? Can you lock in a core memory by choice? What do your core memories say about you?

The notion of “core memories” has become well known in popular culture. First seen in the 2015 movie Inside Out, core memories are thought to be your five or so most important memories. The idea is that some specific events are so important, experiencing them instantly shapes your personality, behaviours and sense of self.

Thousands of TikTok users have made “core memory” posts about salient memories (often from childhood), with more than 880 million views worldwide. Typically these posts have a strong element of nostalgia and focus on small moments: watching Saturday morning cartoons, holding hands with a schoolyard crush, or splashing through the rain.

So, do core memories actually exist? While we do use memories to construct a sense of self, and these memories support our psychological wellbeing, memory science suggests the notion of a “core memory” is faulty in five key ways.

1: We don’t have just five core memories

Autobiographical memories (memories about our selves and our lives) are kept in our long-term memory. This is an enormous memory store with no known limits on size or capacity.

For this reason, we are not limited to just five (or 50) important life memories. And different memories might be relevant to us in different contexts, meaning we might bring to mind a different set of self-defining memories on different occasions.

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2: Core memories don’t drive our personality

While our memory is critically important to us, individual memories do not drive our personality.

Psychologists and cognitive scientists often talk about autobiographical memory as having (at least) three key functions.
According to the self function, we know who we are because of our past experiences. According to the social function, telling memory stories helps us to socialise and bond with others. Finally, according to the directive function, our memories help us learn lessons from the past and solve problems into the future.

Read more:
Explainer: what is memory?

Some salient memories may be particularly important for our identity. For example, winning the state volleyball championship may be critical for how we view ourselves as an athlete. Underlying personality traits, however, are relatively stable.

3: Our childhood memories are not always our strongest

Contrary to popular media portrayals, our most salient autobiographical memories are not always from our childhoods. Indeed, we tend to have relatively poor memories from our early years. Although our earliest memories often date from three or four years of age, the number of events we remember remains low across the primary school years.

In contrast, most of our salient and important memories tend to cluster in our early adulthood. This phenomenon is known as a “reminiscence bump”.

One explanation for this finding is that our earliest childhood memories are often mundane. What interested us as a child may not be as interesting as an adult, and vice versa. Instead, our most formative experiences happen in late adolescence and early adulthood as our sense of self stabilises.

Of course, we do often develop nostalgia for our earlier lives: a bittersweet longing for the past. The core memory trend likely picks up on this nostalgia.

4: We can’t predict what will become a core memory

Across social media, “new core memory” has become shorthand for highlighting an exciting new experience as soon as it occurs. These experiences include snowfights, hugs, holidays, and more.

Although we do remember emotional events more easily than neutral events, we don’t get to choose our memories. This means it isn’t possible to predict what events we will recall later and what we will forget – our memories can take us by surprise!

The events that become important to us over the long term might be ones that seemed entirely ordinary at the time, and different memories may come to have different meaning at different stages of our lives.

Even for highly salient events, we are likely to forget many of the details we thought important at the time.

5: Core memories are no more accurate than others

Core memories are sometimes portrayed as literal snapshots of the past, like pressing play on a camcorder and watching the event unfold.

Similar arguments have previously been made about so-called “flashbulb memories”. These are the highly vivid memories that form when learning about dramatic events for the first time (such as the September 11 attacks or the death of Princess Diana).

In reality, every memory we have is prone to change, forgetting, and errors in minor details – even when it refers to an important event.

Read more:
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This capacity for error is because of the way memory works. When we encode a memory, we typically recall the broad gist of the event and some detail.

When we retrieve the event, we reconstruct it. This means piecing back together the gist and the fragments of detail as best we can, and filling in the gaps for any detail we might have forgotten.

Every time we recall the event, we have the potential to change details, introduce new emotion and reinterpret an event’s meaning. Consider the joyful memory one might have after becoming engaged to a beloved partner. If that relationship were to fail, the reconstructive memory process allows new negative emotions to be introduced into the memory itself.

What core memories get right

While “core memory” is a made-up term, the core memory trend is helpful in showing how valuable our memories are.

Memory allows us a window to our former lives: rich with emotion and tied to identity. By reminiscing about our experiences with others, we also share parts of ourselves.

Penny Van Bergen has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Celia Harris received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Are ‘core memories’ real? The science behind 5 common myths – https://theconversation.com/are-core-memories-real-the-science-behind-5-common-myths-191942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

Bariatric surgery is weight-loss surgery to treat obesity or reduce weight-related health complications. These surgeries alter the structure of the digestive tract, which helps reduce hunger.

As dietitians and a bariatric medicine doctor, we often get asked when an adult might consider surgery for weight management.

The short answer is people may be eligible for surgery if they have a body mass index (BMI) over 40 (defined as severe obesity), or if their BMI is less than 40 but they have medical complications such as diabetes.

But bariatric surgery is not suitable for everyone with obesity. Here are some factors to consider if you’re thinking about it.

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How is your weight impacting your health?

The Edmonton Obesity Staging System is used to classify the physical, medical and wellbeing impairment of people with obesity. Stage zero means no impairment, while stage four – the highest category – indicates severe impairment.

People in stages three and four commonly have major health issues, higher medication and health service use, need longer periods of treatment to achieve their weight-related goals and are at greater risk of complications following surgery.

People eligible for bariatric surgery will typically be in stage three or four.

How does bariatric surgery work?

Bariatric surgery procedures reduce stomach volume. Most are keyhole procedures, where small cuts are made in the abdomen and tiny cameras inserted to guide the operation.

Bariatric surgery makes people feel fuller. Combined with changes in dietary intake, it typically leads to long-term weight reduction of 20% to 40% of the person’s starting weight.

This weight loss can help improve high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnoea and fatty liver disease.

However, there are risks from surgery which also need to be considered, including vomiting, constipation, increased bowel movements, as well as longer-term risks such as reflux, hernia, malnutrition and small bowel obstruction.

Alternative approaches to weight management

Before considering surgery it’s important to talk to a GP or obesity specialist about all suitable evidence-based approaches to improve your weight-related health, including very low energy diets.

Specific medications approved for weight management in Australia are available but can be costly. Medication can help achieve a 5-10% weight reduction, although results and side-effects vary, so regular review is needed.

While people with moderate obesity may lose enough weight to improve their health through diet alone, for severe obesity, diet may not be enough.

Weight management is a lifelong journey, so over time, a person might try numerous approaches and review their progress towards their goals at each stage. This includes interventions to improve nutrition, physical activity, fitness, mental health, and/or medications for health risk factors, appetite and complications from carrying excess body weight.

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A word about stigma

Weight stigma and bias are negative attitudes, beliefs or discrimination based on a person’s weight. This can occur in both public and private health settings and prevent people getting the medical care and support to improve their weight-related health.

It’s important for people to find a doctor they can work with to develop a comprehensive management strategy for them. That plan may, or may not, include bariatric surgery.

Weight stigma can also prompt people to discontinue health care after surgery because they feel bad, or are made to feel bad, about their weight or surgical results.

When should bariatric surgery be considered?

Access to bariatric surgery through public hospitals in Australia is currently very limited, unless you have private health insurance that covers bariatric procedures.

Other considerations are:

1) What weight-related outcomes are you hoping for?

From improved health to fewer medications, remission of type 2 diabetes or better physical mobility, having a clear understanding of potential positive post-surgery impacts helps with monitoring progress.

It also helps decide whether other approaches could be tried first, such as medications.

2) What are advantages and disadvantages of bariatric surgery?

Bariatric surgery has both positive and negative implications. While body dysmorphia (negative feelings about your body) can improve post-surgery, it might not.

Other common concerns which you should be prepared for include difficulty eating out with friends, potential hair loss, excess skin, bone and muscle loss. Special considerations may be needed for those planning future pregnancy to ensure they’re getting enough nutrients.

3) Can the person considering surgery give fully informed consent?

A “yes” means the person has had all their questions answered, fully understands that permanent weight loss is not guaranteed and that lifelong follow-up is needed to optimise their health.

While most people do lose substantial amounts of weight, weight can rebound depending on the type of and time since surgery, presence of emotional or disordered eating, and consumption of larger food portions.

4) Can you access adequate post-operative support?

The first year after surgery requires more intensive follow-up involving surgeons, GPs, obesity specialists and allied health providers. Ongoing follow-up helps to monitor health improvements, nutritional status, mental health and any weight regain.

Bariatric surgery may be the right choice for people with obesity where the benefits are clear, the time is right, and to optimise their health and wellbeing. But preparation and long-term support are important. The best place to start is to talk to your GP.

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Clare Collins is a Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, NSW and a Director of the Food and Nutrition Research Program, Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI). She is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, HMRI, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute, Dietitians Australia and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.

Kathryn Williams is an Endocrinologist, the Head of Department of Endocrinology at Nepean Hospital and the Clinical Lead and Manager of the Nepean Blue Mountains Family Metabolic Health Service, a tertiary lifespan obesity service, in Greater Western Sydney. She is also a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at The University of Sydney. She has previously received funding from NovoNordisk, Pfizer and Lilly for clinical trials, development of educational materials and expert opinion.

Tracy Burrows is a Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at The University of Newcastle. She currently receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council from the Emerging leader investigator grant scheme (EL2), The National Heart Foundation and NIB Foundation.

– ref. Thinking about bariatric surgery for weight loss? Here’s what to consider – https://theconversation.com/thinking-about-bariatric-surgery-for-weight-loss-heres-what-to-consider-184153

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marta Hernandez-Jover, Professor in Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health, Charles Sturt University

Viral TikTok star Emmanuel – an emu who gained a vast online following thanks to videos shared by his owner at Knuckle Bump Farms in Florida – has reportedly fallen sick with avian influenza.

Farm owner Taylor Blake wrote on Twitter that wild geese brought avian influenza to the farm, with many birds having since died.

As a large outbreak sweeps poultry farms across the US and the UK, many people are now asking: what exactly is avian influenza, and what do I need to know?

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What is avian influenza?

Avian influenza is a disease caused by an influenza A virus, affecting birds across many species.

It can have significant consequences for the poultry industry, due to its potential impact on bird health, production and even international trade.

Although avian influenza does not usually infect people, it is considered a zoonotic virus. That means it can be transmitted to humans through contact with infected birds, and sporadic cases have been seen when outbreaks happen in poultry.

Some avian influenza viruses are more pathogenic than others. Pathogenic means disease-causing, so if highly pathogenic avian influenza gets into a poultry farm, it can cause sudden and significant mortality.

It has been reported the outbreak underway on the farm where Emmanuel lives is a highly pathogenic strain, which has been affecting poultry and wild birds in the US since January 2022.

Even low pathogenic strains can make birds unwell and cause them to lay fewer eggs.

Avian influenza infections in humans can cause a range of clinical symptoms, from mild upper respiratory symptoms to severe pneumonia.

Some strains of avian influenza, such as highly pathogenic H5N1 and H7N9, can cause significant disease in humans, and in some instances even death.

Recommended standard treatment for humans is with antiviral drugs, and will depend on individual circumstances and severity of the symptoms.

In domestic birds, the most likely path of infection is through contact with infected wild birds. This could be direct contact or contact through water contaminated with wild bird droppings.

Generally, an outbreak of avian influenza on a poultry farm means many birds have to be culled in an effort to stop the spread.

Is there any avian flu in Australia?

Australia is classed by the World Organisation for Animal Health as free of avian influenza in the domestic bird population. However, we do currently have a low-level circulation of low pathogenic influenza viruses among wild birds.

We have had several low and highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks in domestic poultry in Australia before, with the most recent one affecting farms in Victoria. Many birds were culled to eradicate the disease and in all cases eradication was successful.

None of the viruses causing these outbreaks in Australia have caused disease in humans. However, it is important that we use hygienic practices and biosecurity when working with poultry.

We currently do not have H5N1 in Australia; waterfowl, the bird species most likely to carry this virus, do not migrate to Australia. In addition, Australia has very strict biosecurity measures to prevent disease introduction through imports. Therefore, the risk of introduction of this strain into the country is very low.

Most measures aimed at reducing the risk of avian influenza outbreaks in poultry in Australia have focused on reducing contact between wild birds and farmed birds.

That means limiting the access wild birds can get to farms, as well as protecting and treating water sources.

In the past decade, we have seen an increase in the number of domestic outbreaks in Australia. Previous research suggests this increase could be associated with an increase in free range poultry over the last 30 years.

A paper I coauthored in 2019 modelled how intervention strategies could reduce risk, noting that:

a shift of 25% of conventional indoor farms to free-range farming practices would result in a 6–7% increase in the risk of a highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak. Current practices to treat water are highly effective, reducing the risk of outbreaks by 25–28% compared to no water treatment.

Halving wild bird presence in feed storage areas could reduce risk by 16–19% while halving wild bird access of potential bridge-species to sheds could reduce outbreak risk by 23–25%.

A large outbreak in Australia would be enormously costly to industry, cause a vast number of birds to die and could potentially pose a health risk to humans.

Although vaccines for avian influenza for poultry are available, these would only be considered if an outbreak became widespread.

Following appropriate biosecurity practices on poultry farms continues to be the most important prevention tool we have to avoid outbreaks.

Marta Hernandez-Jover receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australia’s Rural Research and Development Corporations.

– ref. What is avian flu, the disease afflicting viral TikTok emu Emmanuel? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-avian-flu-the-disease-afflicting-viral-tiktok-emu-emmanuel-192600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jahkarli Romanis, PhD Candidate, Monash University

Within western society, maps are often perceived as scientific, neutral and objective tools. Map making has always been shaped by our social and cultural relationships to the land. In the last 20 years, approaches to map creation have become much more reliant on photographic and digital technologies, including Google Earth.

However, these technologies carry a rarely acknowledged subjective and colonial agenda towards representing place.

My artistic exploration of western maps began during my honours year in 2020 and has since become a key part of my PhD research. Due to the pandemic, travel to Pitta Pitta Country was prohibited, therefore making it impossible for me to create photographs of Country for my project.

Pitta Pitta is located in western Queensland, 300 kilometres south of Mount Isa. My maternal great-grandmother Dolly Creed was stolen from Country as a young child and my family has been dislocated since. My understanding of this landscape is informed by oral history, and my relationship to it is shaped by my distance from it.

I grew up on Wadawurrung Country, an hour south from Naarm (Melbourne), and have lived in Victoria my whole life. Like many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, my understanding of self is scarred by the atrocities my family have experienced due to colonisation.

These experiences heavily inform my practice and research.

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Relationships with Country

In response to COVID travel restrictions, I decided to go to Pitta Pitta “virtually” via Google Earth. While looking around Pitta Pitta via the street view function, I began noticing the inaccuracy of the technology. The images hadn’t been updated since 2007, the technology glitched a lot and, most importantly, there was no acknowledgement of Indigenous Custodianship.

I went looking for places I recognised on Country within Google Earth to see what had been photographed.

On the outskirts of Boulia, a small town on Country, a Waddi tree sits. Waddi trees are rare species of Acacia endemic to central parts of Australia. This particular tree was a significant gathering place for my people.

Within Google Earth it had been reduced to a blob of pixels, a dark shadow smeared on a reddish landscape. I was angered that Google decided this tree was unimportant, but also began to wonder why.

Responding to Google’s representation of the tree, Waddi Tree from my series (Dis)connected to Country aims to demonstrate where Google Earth has erased topographical information and Indigenous Knowledges of place.

My research addresses this gap. Waddi Tree layers a photograph I made of the tree during my last visit to Country in 2019 onto a screenshot from its location within Google Earth.

Through the omission of Indigenous Knowledges of place, western maps of Australia continue the false colonial narrative of terra nullius – land belonging to no one.

The photographic technologies used within Google Earth don’t allow, nor represent, the significant relationships Indigenous peoples have with Country. Photographic and digital images have also become intertwined with mapping in Google Earth. This changes how we relate to place, normalising a flattened and very limited view.

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Glitches in time

Indigenous Knowledges of place are rooted in relationships which recognise that all forms of life have agency and are interconnected.

Put very simply, Country, all that it encompasses, and self are intertwined and valued equally.

Other images from the series seek to identify where the technology dysfunctions and breaks down within itself. I like to think of these “glitches” as tears in the technological fabric of Google Earth, and therefore the narratives the technology enforces. Pitta Pitta (Google’s Earth) and Pitta Pitta (Published Without Permission) are freeze-frames from transitions between the aerial and street view functions which emphasise this glitch.

My research and arts practice are informed by my family history and my positionality as a Pitta Pitta woman.

I acknowledge my Ancestors and my great-grandmother Dolly whose story has shaped my family in unimaginable ways. Additionally, I extend my respects to the ongoing Custodians of the Kulin Nations where I work and live.

Sovereignty has never been ceded and it always was, and forever will be, Aboriginal land.

I’ll finish with a quote from Indigenous scholar Aunty Mary Graham:

There is no Aboriginal equivalent to the Cartesian notion of ‘I think therefore I am’ but, if there were, it would be – I am located therefore I am. Place, being, belonging and connectedness all arise out of a locality in Land.

Read more:
The air we breathe: how I have been observing atmospheric change through art and science

Jahkarli Romanis 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. Google Earth is an illusion: how I am using art to explore the problematic nature of western maps and the myth of ‘terra nullius’ – https://theconversation.com/google-earth-is-an-illusion-how-i-am-using-art-to-explore-the-problematic-nature-of-western-maps-and-the-myth-of-terra-nullius-187921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meg Good, Honorary Adjunct Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Bond University. Adjunct Lecturer, School of Law, University of Tasmania, University of Tasmania

The United Nations recently declared that access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a universal human right.

The declaration was the result of a hard-fought global campaign, coming hot on the heels of the UN Human Rights Council’s recognition of the right last year. It’s been a long road to get here, as the right was first recognised 50 years ago in the landmark Stockholm Declaration.

You might hear this news and wonder what it will mean. After all, UN member states don’t have to comply with the resolution. But in fact, it’s better news than it sounds.

When the UN passed a resolution in 2010 recognising the human right to water, countries around the world set to work changing their constitutions and introducing new programs to improve water management.

So will Australia join the rest of the world and introduce the right?

These resolutions are catalysts

As David Boyd, the UN’s independent expert on human rights and the environment explains: “These resolutions may seem abstract, but they are a catalyst for action, and they empower ordinary people to hold their governments accountable in a way that is very powerful.”

While most countries have already recognised the right to a healthy environment under law, Australia is one of the last 37 holdouts.

Although Australia did vote in favour of the declaration, the government hasn’t yet released an official statement in response or included mention of the right under the new Climate Change Act 2022.

If Australia refuses to implement the right under domestic law, it will become even more of a global outlier.

It will also cast into the international spotlight, yet again, the government’s failure to create a federal human rights act –and leave the government with the awkward task of reporting to the international community on its lack of progress.

Australia’s record on environmental and human rights protection is already the subject of global scrutiny, thanks to the UN human rights committee’s recent finding that Australia failed to protect Torres Strait Islanders against the impacts of climate change and violated their human rights.

With the UN now backing the right to a healthy environment, it will be much harder for the government to justify excluding it, especially in light of ever-more-visible climate change impacts and the latest damning State of the Environment report.

Read more:
Should Australia recognise the human right to a healthy environment?

What would it take to legally recognise the right?

While the federal government could try to embed the right in the Constitution, it would be extremely unlikely to pass at referendum. That’s because constitutional change is very difficult. It’s succeeded only eight times since 1901, and no new express human rights have ever been introduced.

As recognition at the federal level would be challenging in the absence of a national charter of rights, the best bet is through state and territory human rights legislation.

At present, the Australian Capital Territory is consulting on whether to add the right to its human rights act. Queensland missed the opportunity to include the right under its legislation a few years ago, so the ACT stands to become the first Australian jurisdiction to do so.

Recognition would mean the right would have to be considered as part of government decision-making in the ACT. It would give people a legal avenue to challenge public authorities for failing to properly consider or act consistently with the right. And it would give courts the power to declare laws “incompatible” with the right.

Not only that, but all new legislation would have to include accompanying detail addressing impacts on the right. For instance, if the ACT government tried to push through laws which would result in more water pollution or greater greenhouse gas emissions, it would have to formally justify those impacts.

Of course this wouldn’t stop the parliament passing legislation which breached the right, but it would ensure legislators turned their minds to the issue before a bill became law.

As others have noted, the ACT and Victorian rights charters make it more likely human rights concerns are raised and fixed before a law is passed.

Read more:
How the new human right to a healthy environment could accelerate New Zealand’s action on climate change

Giving environmental protection teeth

Clearly, this is not a silver bullet for Australia’s environmental woes.

But legal recognition will help. Across Latin America, Europe and Asia, the right has helped to strengthen environmental protection laws and policies, and encouraged stronger legislation. Importantly, the right has also prevented governments from rolling back effective laws introduced by their predecessors.

Legal recognition in Australia could open up new avenues to improve environmental protection and challenge questionable environmental decision-making.

Depending on how the right is recognised, it could also help climate change litigation. Right now, advocates seeking to launch rights-based climate change legal action have to rely on other rights.

That includes the ground-breaking case challenging a proposed Queensland coal mine on human rights grounds. With the right to a healthy environment unavailable, objectors have used a range of other rights – such as the right to life – to ground their climate change argument.

Other climate litigation has been forced to turn to other areas of law entirely. For instance, the federal court’s recent high-profile climate case relied on torts law, which deals with civil wrongs.

The court found the Australian government did not, in fact, owe a duty of care to Australian children to protect them from climate change. If the right to a healthy environment had been available, it’s possible the outcome could have been very different.

The time has clearly come for Australia to join the rest of the world and recognise this fundamental human right under the law.

Dr Meg Good is the Head of Programs and Legal Counsel at the Australian Alliance for Animals, and volunteers her time with various animal law initiatives. All views are her own.

– ref. The UN says access to a healthy environment is a human right. Here’s what it means for Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-un-says-access-to-a-healthy-environment-is-a-human-right-heres-what-it-means-for-australia-188218

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Hallwright, Deputy Director, Centre for Humanitarian Leadership , Deakin University

More than a quarter of a million people died of hunger in Somalia in 2011 – half of them children younger than five. The situation in Somalia in the coming months could be a great deal worse, despite global commitments to never let the 2011 famine happen again.

The United Nations predicts more than 300,000 people in Somalia will be in famine by December.

Somalia is home to 16 million people and has a rich history reaching back to before the Roman Empire. Somali people were producing beautiful rock art in the third millennium BC, trading with Ancient Egypt and establishing important masjids and mosques in Mogadishu from the 7th and 13th Centuries onwards.

More recently, however, the people of Somalia have endured wars, locust plagues, flash flooding, pandemics and, now, extreme drought. Today, crisis on top of crisis means 7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance – two million more than just three months ago.

Despite historic levels of drought and hunger, Somali civil society continues to find ways to support people at risk of starvation. But additional help is needed. To date, the international community has largely failed the Somali population. In 2022, the risk of famine should not exist.

Defining ‘famine’

There is a well established and globally recognised system of categorising how close to famine people are. “Famine” is the worst of five levels.

For an area to be declared in a “famine”, there must be hard evidence of very high levels of child malnutrition (over 30%), very high levels of death (for every 10,000 people, more than two people dying every day), and extreme levels of hunger (more than one in five households going without food).

In 2022, no-one should suffer from a lack of food, let alone extreme starvation: the world is producing more food than ever before. And in 2011, humanitarian aid agencies and civil society organisations launched the Charter to End Extreme Hunger at the UN in New York, clearly outlining five steps to take to avoid famine.

Since then, it has been endorsed by the UN, world leaders, and dozens of humanitarian organisations.

So, why is this happening again?

The past four rainy seasons in Somalia have failed to materialise and the fifth is very likely to underperform as well.

Crops can’t grow to their full potential, if at all in some areas. The camel, goat and cattle herds of Somali pastoralists don’t have enough vegetation to eat nor enough accessible water to drink – already, millions of livestock have perished in the current drought.

Climate change underpins this continued lack of rainfall. Somalia is ranked second-most vulnerable (after Niger) to the adverse impacts of climate change, which will likely cause Somalia to experience more drought, affecting more land area, with fewer regular rainy seasons.

Read more:
A year of hunger: how the Russia-Ukraine war is worsening climate-linked food shortages

The extreme difficulties of prolonged drought are hard for anyone to cope with, especially if there is little to no safety net to catch people during hard times. Indeed, food prices are higher now than during the 2011 famine.

Somalia does have a nascent social safety net called Baxnaano. It aims to build a bridge beyond the humanitarian approach, addressing immediate food security and nutrition issues, while also laying the foundations for a stronger workforce. But it is still at the pilot stage.

The country is divided in three: south-central Somalia, the self-declared independent region of Somaliland, and the autonomous state of Puntland in the north. The various governments are not able to reach some parts of the country or provide adequate safety nets for Somalis experiencing the harsh challenges of a changing climate.

That said, some lessons have been learned by Somali governments from previous disasters. In 2021, the National Desert Locust Monitoring and Control Centre was established, along with the Drought Operations Coordination Center in Puntland, which predicts upcoming droughts and climate extremes.

This centre and many others warned Somalis and the world of the seriousness of the predicted drought back in early 2020. They have continued to repeat these warnings as the situation deteriorated.

Read more:
Somalia on the brink of famine: aid efforts risk failing marginalised communities yet again

These warnings fell on largely deaf ears until only very recently. The coordinated plan to respond to the Somali crisis had received only US$56 million in March, but needs US$1.5 billion to be properly implemented.

While the international community’s efforts have ramped up in recent months, the plan to provide life-saving support is still missing US$409 million.

What needs to change?

Between October and December, the drought is expected to force 6.7 million people across Somalia into acute food insecurity, a technical term meaning people are close to starving.

International assistance needed to be provided at scale when the first warnings were shared. This was clearly stated back in 2011.

This includes supporting preventative and resilience-building initiatives, such as rehabilitating water points and establishing mini greenhouses. Such initiatives will enable Somalis to help others prepare for difficult times and get through the worst impacts of the changing climate.

And, perhaps most importantly, wealthy countries should compensate Somalis for the catastrophic impacts climate change is having on their lives.

This compensation – known as “loss and damage financing” in UN circles – will be a central topic at the upcoming international climate change summit COP27, held in Egypt in November.

Loss and damage refers to climate change harms that can’t be prevented, mitigated, or sometimes even prepared for. Think rising sea levels destroying entire ways of life, or disasters that are happening so often, so severely, that even insurance companies refuse to insure people against them.

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?

Somalis produce a tiny, tiny amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the high-income countries of the world. Yet, they are experiencing some of the worst impacts of climate change, as the current drought and hunger crisis so clearly demonstrates.

COP27 should lead to Somalis, and the many millions more around the world hit hard by climate change, being financially compensated by the countries and corporations most responsible for changing the climate.

How can I help?

The crisis in Somalia will only worsen in the coming weeks. If you are in a position to donate, consider the following charities:

• Bulsho Kaab: a Somali donation-based crowdfunding platform that supports communities and youth initiatives across Somali regions.

• Oxfam

• Médecins Sans Frontières

Joshua Hallwright 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. Famine should not exist in 2022, yet Somalia faces its worst yet. Wealthy countries, pay your dues – https://theconversation.com/famine-should-not-exist-in-2022-yet-somalia-faces-its-worst-yet-wealthy-countries-pay-your-dues-191952

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Associate Professor, Criminology and Justice Studies, RMIT University

The federal Labor government made delivering on its promises a core platform of the 2022 election campaign. On Monday, one key national policy was delivered – with the official launch of the next ten-year National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children (2022 to 2023).

The national plan is an important policy that sets the priorities for continued action and investment to address gender-based violence. It represents a shared commitment across all levels of government to issues such as prevention, early intervention, responses to victim-survivors and perpetrators, as well as recovery and healing.

Read more:
Blueprint to tackle violence against women unveiled but detailed Indigenous plan still to come

Important strengths

There are several important areas of improvement in this second ten-year national plan.

Among its key principles are “advancing gender equality” and “closing the gap”. There is a welcome acknowledgement of the role that deeply embedded problems – such as women’s inequality and the ongoing impacts of colonisation – have in shaping violence in our society. There is also a commitment to a specific set of actions addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s experiences of violence under a separate action plan.

A further key principle is “centring victim-survivors”, and ensuring responses are “trauma informed”. This is a significant development for national policy addressing gender-based violence. Listening to the experiences of victim-survivors is vital – as is ensuring our laws, institutions and support services do not add to the harm already done.

Both prevention, and the important role of working with men and boys, receive a much needed greater emphasis in the new plan. It takes clear direction from our national framework for preventing violence against women, and highlights the role we all have – including men – in addressing gender inequality and gender-based violence.

This plan also includes much greater emphasis on intersectionality. This refers to recognising and addressing the multiple inequalities that individuals face such as by gender, race, Aboriginality, sexuality, gender diversity, and ability. There is an important and welcome inclusion of trans women in the national plan, and an acknowledgement that both cisgenderism and heteronormativity are related to sexism, and reinforce violence against people of all genders and sexualities.

There is a vital emphasis on multi-sector approaches and workforce development to support the work of the national plan. These include engaging across government and the community with business, sporting organisations, educational institutions media and others over the next ten years. Building capacity across the community to better respond to, and prevent, violence against women is key to the success of the plan.

Key weaknesses

While the national plan aims for an Australia free of “gender-based violence” – much of the plan actually focuses on domestic, family and sexual violence. Other forms of violence that are disproportionately directed at women and girls receive little attention – such as online forms of harassment and abuse, labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, and abuse of children.

The plan makes little mention of the challenges faced in the Federal Court and family law in responding to domestic, family and sexual violence in the context of deciding on parenting matters. There are well documented injustices occurring in this setting – and it would be a lost opportunity if the national plan did not seek to correct these.

There are commitments made under the new plan to evaluate and measure its outcomes. But the details are vague, including the scope given to the incoming family, domestic and sexual violence commissioner to report on these measures.

There is a lot of work for governments to do under this plan – it will be important to ensure a rigorous, transparent and independent approach to monitoring progress.

Funding is always a key issue in policy – it remains unclear whether funding commitments made during the election campaign and under the previous government will be confirmed in the forthcoming federal budget. The plan will also need to be backed by proper funding if it is to end violence against women “in one generation”.

The plan commits to three more specific “action” plans. Two of these are separate five-year action plans that will outline specific activities under the national plan. The first of these is due to be released in 2023. A third is a dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan. It is in the implementation of these action plans that there will be opportunity to ensure some of the potential gaps are filled in.

Read more:
Half of Australians will experience technology-facilitated abuse in their lifetimes: new research

Where to next?

Our national statistics show that since the age of 15,

• 1 in 2 Australian women have experienced sexual harassment
• 1 in 4 women have experienced emotional abuse from a partner
• 1 in 6 have experienced physical partner abuse
• 1 in 5 have experienced sexual violence.

The next National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children is vital for setting the stage. But its real impact will be seen through its implementation across the three action plans that are yet to lay out the details of activity under the plan.

Addressing and ultimately preventing violence against women and children must continue to be a national policy priority. We have to ensure all Australian governments are held to account for funding and delivery of actions under the national plan if we are truly to see this violence end in one generation.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.

Anastasia Powell receives funding from the Criminology Research Council, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), and Family Safety Victoria. Anastasia is also a director of Our Watch (Australia’s national organisation for the prevention of violence against women), and a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance (NWSA).

– ref. A new national plan aims to end violence against women and children ‘in one generation’. Can it succeed? – https://theconversation.com/a-new-national-plan-aims-to-end-violence-against-women-and-children-in-one-generation-can-it-succeed-192497

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah K. Lamar, PhD Candidate & Teaching Fellow, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Following the settlement of Aotearoa New Zealand, many native species were wiped from the mainland. It’s a familiar story – one that has affected species like the iconic flightless kākāpō and the tuatara, a reptile in a category all its own.

As the New Zealand government moves towards the goal of Predator Free 2050, the reintroduction of native species back into predator-free areas on the mainland is becoming increasingly common.

However, these reintroductions from offshore islands to the mainland can have unexpected outcomes.

A recent study led by researchers at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington raises questions about the impact habitat differences will have when we are reintroducing taonga species of special cultural significance to Māori.

The study focused on tuatara, which have undergone extensive recovery efforts. But the process of reintroducing these reptiles back onto the mainland may not be as straightforward as previously thought.

An icon of Oceania

Tuatara are reptiles so unique they are the sole surviving species in Rhynchocephalia – one of the four reptile orders.

Long-lived, slow to reproduce, and laying their eggs in the ground, tuatara are vulnerable to predators like stoats and rats. Natural populations of tuatara remain only on predator-free offshore islands.

However, tuatara have been settled back onto the mainland inside several fenced ecosanctuaries, a trend that’s likely continue as the impact of invasive mammals is reduced across the country.

Read more:
Tuatara are ancient, slow and endangered. But their super speedy sperm could boost conservation efforts

New research on the diets of tuatara living on Takapourewa/Stephens Island reveals that larger individuals are eating a surprising amount of seabirds – or at least seabird matter.

Using carbon signatures to assess diet, we found that as much as 40% of the dietary carbon in sampled tuatara had marine origins – explaining the headless seabird carcasses often encountered across the island.

For a tuatara with a mouth large enough to fit around a seabird, and a territory in the burrow-pocked forest floor, this might mean one fledgling head a week.

The seabird situation

Seabirds represent a crucial food source on offshore islands, providing the opportunity for animals that can consume seabird eggs, fledglings or adults with a boon of nutrients like polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs).

These fatty acids are important for egg hatchability, embryo development and juvenile growth in other reptile species.

However, seabird colonies like the ones found on the Takapourewa are absent from mainland New Zealand, which poses a couple of questions: what are populations of tuatara reintroduced to the mainland eating, and are there physiological implications from this dietary lack of seabirds?

Read more:
Not a lizard nor a dinosaur, tuatara is the sole survivor of a once-widespread reptile group

We currently don’t know how much of a benefit to growth and development the large role of seabirds in the tuatara diet provides or what the lack of these nutrients may mean for tuatara living on the mainland.

In ecosanctuaries, where biodiversity is high, skinks, geckos and ground-nesting native birds may provide some supplementation of PUFAs. However, PUFAs trend higher in marine environments than terrestrial systems.

Dietary disparity

This new research sheds light on an important facet of reintroducing native species to the mainland.

The biological communities on offshore islands are often very different from those on the mainland and the species living there are part of a complicated, interwoven web of predator and prey interactions.

While New Zealand is the undisputed seabird capital of the world, the mainland is very different from the time when tuatara were widespread. Once covered in either seabird colonies or the guano from seabird colonies, the mainland is now a patchwork of bush, agriculture and urban areas.

Read more:
Reptiles: why one in five species face extinction

This research supports the need for a holistic view of restoration and a measured approach to reintroductions.

For many mainland ecosanctuaries, the resources to restore seabird populations are extremely limited. Located near cities with large amounts of light pollution, and with poor or missing records of which seabirds historically inhabited the space, the possibility of large-scale seabird restoration to the mainland is difficult.

What will the lack of seabirds, which make up a significant portion of the diet of large tuatara on offshore islands, mean for mainland populations? And will we see physiological effects of this disparity at our ecosanctuaries?

With lifespans of well over 100 years, setting up tuatara restorations is aiming for success well beyond our lifetimes. While we don’t yet know how this dietary disparity is affecting the viability of tuatara populations, the sheer number of seabirds being consumed by large tuatara offshore makes it a pressing question for restoration – and raises questions about how we approach translocations in Oceania.

Sarah K. Lamar receives funding from the American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology and Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.

Diane Karen Ormsby works for Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington

Nicola Jane Nelson works for Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.

– ref. Tuatara are returning to the mainland – but feeding the hungry reptiles could be more difficult than expected – https://theconversation.com/tuatara-are-returning-to-the-mainland-but-feeding-the-hungry-reptiles-could-be-more-difficult-than-expected-191164

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

You might suppose Hollywood is good at predicting the future. Indeed, Robert Wallace, head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service and the US equivalent of MI6’s fictional Q, has recounted how Russian spies would watch the latest Bond movie to see what technologies might be coming their way.

Hollywood’s continuing obsession with killer robots might therefore be of significant concern. The newest such movie is Apple TV’s forthcoming sex robot courtroom drama Dolly.

I never thought I’d write the phrase “sex robot courtroom drama”, but there you go. Based on a 2011 short story by Elizabeth Bear, the plot concerns a billionaire killed by a sex robot that then asks for a lawyer to defend its murderous actions.

The real killer robots

Dolly is the latest in a long line of movies featuring killer robots – including HAL in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 robot in the Terminator series. Indeed, conflict between robots and humans was at the centre of the very first feature-length science fiction film, Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis.

But almost all these movies get it wrong. Killer robots won’t be sentient humanoid robots with evil intent. This might make for a dramatic storyline and a box office success, but such technologies are many decades, if not centuries, away.

Indeed, contrary to recent fears, robots may never be sentient.

It’s much simpler technologies we should be worrying about. And these technologies are starting to turn up on the battlefield today in places like Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Read more:
Drones over Ukraine: fears of Russian ‘killer robots’ have failed to materialise

A war transformed

Movies that feature much simpler armed drones, like Angel has Fallen (2019) and Eye in the Sky (2015), paint perhaps the most accurate picture of the real future of killer robots.

On the nightly TV news, we see how modern warfare is being transformed by ever-more autonomous drones, tanks, ships and submarines. These robots are only a little more sophisticated than those you can buy in your local hobby store.

And increasingly, the decisions to identify, track and destroy targets are being handed over to their algorithms.

This is taking the world to a dangerous place, with a host of moral, legal and technical problems. Such weapons will, for example, further upset our troubled geopolitical situation. We already see Turkey emerging as a major drone power.

And such weapons cross a moral red line into a terrible and terrifying world where unaccountable machines decide who lives and who dies.

Robot manufacturers are, however, starting to push back against this future.

A pledge not to weaponise

Last week, six leading robotics companies pledged they would never weaponise their robot platforms. The companies include Boston Dynamics, which makes the Atlas humanoid robot, which can perform an impressive backflip, and the Spot robot dog, which looks like it’s straight out of the Black Mirror TV series.

This isn’t the first time robotics companies have spoken out about this worrying future. Five years ago, I organised an open letter signed by Elon Musk and more than 100 founders of other AI and robot companies calling for the United Nations to regulate the use of killer robots. The letter even knocked the Pope into third place for a global disarmament award.

However, the fact that leading robotics companies are pledging not to weaponise their robot platforms is more virtue signalling than anything else.

We have, for example, already seen third parties mount guns on clones of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dog. And such modified robots have proven effective in action. Iran’s top nuclear scientist was assassinated by Israeli agents using a robot machine gun in 2020.

Read more:
Lethal autonomous weapons and World War III: it’s not too late to stop the rise of ‘killer robots’

Collective action to safeguard our future

The only way we can safeguard against this terrifying future is if nations collectively take action, as they have with chemical weapons, biological weapons and even nuclear weapons.

Such regulation won’t be perfect, just as the regulation of chemical weapons isn’t perfect. But it will prevent arms companies from openly selling such weapons and thus their proliferation.

Therefore, it’s even more important than a pledge from robotics companies to see the UN Human Rights council has recently unanimously decided to explore the human rights implications of new and emerging technologies like autonomous weapons.

Several dozen nations have already called for the UN to regulate killer robots. The European Parliament, the African Union, the UN Secretary General, Nobel peace laureates, church leaders, politicians and thousands of AI and robotics researchers like myself have all called for regulation.

Australian is not a country that has, so far, supported these calls. But if you want to avoid this Hollywood future, you may want to take it up with your political representative next time you see them.

Read more:
New Zealand could take a global lead in controlling the development of ‘killer robots’ — so why isn’t it?

Toby Walsh 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. ‘Killer robots’ will be nothing like the movies show – here’s where the real threats lie – https://theconversation.com/killer-robots-will-be-nothing-like-the-movies-show-heres-where-the-real-threats-lie-192170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

One of Vladimir Putin’s oft-quoted maxims is that “sometimes it is necessary to be lonely to prove you are right”. As his ill-fated invasion of Ukraine drags on, he seems to be heeding his own advice.

Putin looks increasingly isolated, not just on the world stage, but inside Russia as well. The longer the war goes on, the harder it will be for him to extricate himself with any credibility, either at home or abroad.

So where does he go from here?

Dwindling allies

In a recent United Nations General Assembly vote condemning Russia’s sham “referendums” annexing chunks of Ukraine, Putin was on the end of a thumping censure, with 143 votes in favour, 35 abstentions and five against (including Russia itself).

If the vote was any indication, Russia has precisely four friends: North Korea, Syria, Belarus and Nicaragua. As the “anti-colonial movement” Putin announced Russia would lead in his bizarre annexation speech of September 30, it hardly inspires confidence.

And among those who abstained from the vote, powerful actors with influence in Moscow – including China and India – have publicly signalled their disquiet about Putin’s war.

In the Middle East, where Moscow has tried building diplomatic clout around its highly questionable support for non-interference, both Qatar and Kuwait – two energy giants – have called for Ukraine’s territory to be respected.

Closer to home, all the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States abstained, with the exception of Georgia and Moldova voting in favour of condemning Russia, and Belarus that voted with Moscow.

Domestic ructions

On the home front, the picture is of a disconnected leader finding it difficult to keep rival factions in check. Recent criticisms of Russia’s top military leadership have targeted Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

The chief malcontents appear to be Yevgeniy Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group (allegedly a “private” military company, but in reality a military arm of the state) and Ramzan Kadyrov, currently the head of Russia’s Chechen Republic.

Aside from their opportunism and naked ambition, such critiques present Putin with a problem. He has previously been comfortable purging lower levels of Russia’s elite cadres: the military, the intelligence services and other parts of the Russian bureaucracy. But Shoigu is one of the most powerful people in Russia after Putin. While dismissing him would rid Putin of a potential rival, it would also upset a delicately balanced circle of patronage and power. That could end up rebounding on Putin himself.

It’s true that Putin has contained rumblings among the population. The estimated 700,000 Russians who fled the country following Putin’s mobilisation order are no longer a potential hub for disquiet.

But if jockeying for position at the top feeds popular discontent, Putin may find himself trapped between two unhappy constituencies: the Russian citizenry with whom he broke his contract by sending them to war; and Russia’s elites who are expected to carry out his orders without question, and then take the fall when they fail.

There are signs this is already occurring. General Andrey Kartapolov, a member of Russia’s parliament, and until recently the head of its influential Defence Council, has called openly for the government to “stop lying” to the population about its military failures in Ukraine. “The people know”, Kartapolov observed, adding:

Our people are not stupid, they see they are not telling them the truth and this can lead to loss of credibility.

Where does Putin go from here?

So how does Putin extract himself from this mess of his own creation? Realistically the only way to do so is to win the war in Ukraine, or at least to win sufficient concessions that would permit him to spin it as a victory.

However, that’s now highly unlikely. Putin has broadened the parameters of the conflict by endorsing the narrative – amplified by Russia’s far right – that he’s at war not only with Ukraine, but with NATO itself.

Putin evidently judged that necessary to rally flagging domestic support. But doing so also redefined his concept of victory. In order to “win” in Ukraine, Russia’s armed forces must now not only achieve their stated aims but dramatically exceed them, compelling the West to accept Putin’s demands for a new security compact in Europe on his terms.

Another problem for Putin is that Ukraine is unlikely to accommodate Putin, either on the battlefield or at the bargaining table. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already said he would only negotiate with Russia’s “new president”. He has also doubled-down on Ukraine’s war aims, amounting to the complete liberation of its territory.

The spectacular strike on the Kerch Bridge, sometimes referred to as Putin’s “wedding band to Crimea” was a direct insult to Putin, who had personally overseen its construction. In comparison to wilting Russian morale, it also symbolised the sense among Ukrainians that the war’s tide had turned.

Read more:
Crimean Bridge blast: experts assess the damage

Finally, Russia’s military position in Ukraine is now looking hopeless. Its forces are exhausted and they continue to retreat.

Putin’s decision to appoint Sergei Surovikin – the general who ordered indiscriminate bombings in Syria and Chechnya – to oversee Russia’s war has been uninspiring.

Indeed, his shift in tactics to mass cruise missile strikes against Ukrainian population centres and power generation facilities has backfired completely: it has made Ukrainians even keener to fight, and been seen globally as a vindictive act of petulance.

Unable to win on the battlefield, Surovikin has so far expended some US$400-700 million in missiles from a dwindling stock in an attempt to cow Ukraine’s population. This included hitting cities Russia had purportedly annexed, effectively targeting its own territory and people.

The upshot is that unless Putin chooses to escalate dramatically, even by crossing the nuclear threshold (which itself is fraught with risk), his only option is to find a face-saving way out.

3 hints at saving face

Putin has recently tried to do that in three ways. Instructively, they’re at odds with his more customary violence and threats. They also suggest a growing sense that his position is untenable.

1. Turkish diplomats communicated Putin’s desire for a new “grand bargain” with Europe. This reportedly envisaged talks between Russia, the US and the EU. But doing so shut Ukraine out of the process, and little has come of the proposal.

2. An apparent attempt to weaponise SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who tweeted a peace proposal for Ukraine and warned Russia would use nuclear weapons if its Crimean Black Sea base was threatened. Despite denying he had spoken to Putin, Musk’s proposal closely matched Putin’s past demands, including specific details about access to fresh water for Crimea.

3. An overture from Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, claiming Putin would be open to peace talks with US President Joe Biden at the upcoming G20 Summit in Bali.

Read more:
Ukraine war: a desperate Russia defaults to attacking civilians

The West shouldn’t react to these Kremlin hints. For one thing, they only restate its long-standing ultimatums. For another, Putin has ignored every previous diplomatic off-ramp offered to him, instead escalating his campaign against Ukraine ever more brutally.

It’s also likely Putin will use any ceasefire merely as a pause to refashion his forces for a renewed onslaught.

To his credit, US President Joe Biden has already said he has no intention of meeting Putin, and the recently-released US National Security Strategy paints a picture of continued mistrust of Putin’s intentions.

Ultimately, if peace breaks out in Ukraine it will be something Putin must arrive at himself. Otherwise, it looks increasingly likely Ukraine’s armed forces will bring him to that realisation.

And although Putin would find any climb-down unappealing and embarrassing, he has already lost his dignity. It now only remains to be seen whether he can retain his political skin.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute, and various Australian government agencies.

– ref. Vladimir Putin is increasingly isolated in Russia and abroad. Does he have an exit strategy? – https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-is-increasingly-isolated-in-russia-and-abroad-does-he-have-an-exit-strategy-192175

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isabella Bower, Research Fellow and PhD Candidate, Deakin University

Think of a time when you felt vulnerable. Perhaps you were in a hospital corridor, or an exam hall, about to be tested. Now, focus on the building you were in. What if, without you knowing, the design of that space was affecting you?

We study environmental psychology, a growing field of research investigating the relationship between humans and the external world. This includes natural, and human-made environments, such as buildings.

Researchers could just ask people what they feel when inside a building – how pleasant or unpleasant they feel, the intensity of that feeling, and how in control they feel.

But we use neuroscience to see how the brain is stimulated when inside a building. The idea is for people to one day use that information to design better buildings – classrooms that help us concentrate, or hospital waiting rooms that reduce our anxiety.

Read more:
Build me up: how architecture can affect emotions

Why study buildings this way?

We spend at least 80% of our lives inside buildings. So it is critical we understand whether the buildings we occupy are affecting our brain and body.

Buildings – hospitals, schools, offices, homes – are often complex. They can have various contents (fixtures, fittings and objects), levels of comfort (such as the light, sound, and air quality). Other people occupy the space.

There are also a range of design characteristics we can notice inside a building. These include colour (wall paint, chair colour), texture (carpet tiles, timber gym floor), geometry (curved walls or straight, angular ones), and scale (proportions of height and width of a room).

Read more:
We can use colour to communicate how we feel – here’s how

What did we do?

We wanted to see what effect changing some of these characteristics had on the brain and body.

So we asked participants to sit in the middle of a virtual-reality (VR) room for 20 minutes.

We designed the room with a door (to show height) and chair (to show depth), keeping it empty of other cues that might influence people. We modelled the room using dimensions set by the local building code.

Other studies have compared complex environments, which are more realistic to everyday life. But we chose to use a simple VR room so we could understand the impact of changing one characteristic at a time.

To measure brain activity, we used a technique called electroencephalography. This is where we placed electrodes on the scalp to measure electrical activity as brain cells (neurons) send messages to each other.

We also monitored the body by measuring heart rate, breathing and sweat response. This could reveal if someone could detect a change to the environment, without being consciously aware of that change.

Lastly, we asked participants to report their emotions to understand if this matched their brain and body responses.

Read more:
Buildings have their own microbiomes – we’re striving to make them healthy places

What did we find?

We published a series of studies looking at the impact of room size and colour.

Making the room bigger resulted in brain activity usually linked to attention and cognitive performance. This is the type of brain activity we would see if you were doing a crossword, your homework or focusing on a tricky report you were writing for work.

A blue room resulted in brain activity associated with emotional processing. This is the pattern we’d typically see if you were looking at something that you felt positive about, such as a smiling face, or a scenic sunset.

Changing the size and colour of a room also changed brain network communication. This is when different parts of the brain “talk” to one another. This could be communication between parts of the brain involved in seeing and attention, the type of communication needed when viewing a complex scene, such as scanning a crowded room to spot a friend.

The rooms also changed the participants’ autonomic response (their patterns of breathing, heart activity and sweating).

Despite these brain and body responses, we found no change in what participants told us about their emotions in each of these different conditions.

This suggests the need to shift from just asking people about their emotions to capturing effects they may not be consciously perceive or comprehend.

What does this mean for designing buildings?

This work tells us that characteristics of buildings have an impact on our brains and our bodies.

Our next steps include testing whether a larger room affects brain processes we use in everyday life. These include working memory (which we’d use to remember our shopping list) and emotion recognition (how we recognise what different facial expressions mean).

This will enable us to understand if we can design spaces to optimise our cognitive performance.

We also want to understand the implications on a wider population, including people who may be experiencing poor mental health, or diagnosed with an underlying condition where the environment may have a larger impact on their response.

This will help us to understand if we can change our built environment for better health and performance.

Read more:
Prisons and asylums prove architecture can build up or break down a person’s mental health

Why is this important?

Architects have long claimed buildings affect our emotion. But there has been a lack of brain-based evidence to back this.

We hope our work can help shape building planning and design, to support the brain processes and emotions we might require under different circumstances.

Isabella Bower receives funding from Deakin University, the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture and Creative Futures Pty. Ltd. She is affiliated with the Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society as the Student Representative and Pint of Science Australia as the Chief of Staff.

Peter Enticott receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Medical Research Future Fund.

Richard Tucker has received no funding relevant to the research presented in this article.

– ref. Your home, office or uni affects your mood and how you think. How do we know? We looked into people’s brains – https://theconversation.com/your-home-office-or-uni-affects-your-mood-and-how-you-think-how-do-we-know-we-looked-into-peoples-brains-189797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wendy Walls, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, The University of Melbourne

The appointment of chief heat officers in Melbourne is a vital acknowledgement of how serious urban heat is for Australia. It’s a first for the country and part of an international movement to improve how cities handle heat in a warming world.

In partnership with the US-based Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, six cities around the world now have chief heat officers dedicated to reducing heat risks.

Urban heat does more than cause discomfort for city residents. It’s a threat to their lives. The City of Melbourne’s new chief heat officers, Tiffany Crawford and Krista Milne, will oversee the work of managing the risks of extreme heat in the city.

Read more:
Cities could get more than 4°C hotter by 2100. To keep cool in Australia, we urgently need a national planning policy

Why do cities need heat officers?

There is growing recognition urban heat problems are not simply an external environmental impact. They are tied to the ways we live in and use urban areas.

While rising temperatures and heat waves are hazardous for cities, Australia has a cultural expectation of living in a harsh environment. As Melbourne’s first climate adaptation strategy from back in 2009 explains, Australians have a “propensity to participate in events in very hot conditions”.

Even with increasing public recognition of the threat of climate change, these kinds of background social assumptions (and of course economic agendas) set up the public and political debates about how we should respond to our warming environment.

Melbourne is a particularly challenging city to plan for heat in a changing climate. It’s known for its variable weather – “four seasons in one day” – and temperatures can flip from hot to cold in the space of ten minutes.

Alongside overall warming, Melbourne suffers from dangerous heatwaves. As the 2019 Living Melbourne Strategy summarises:

“In Melbourne, deaths begin to rise when the mean daily temperature reaches 28℃, with hospital admissions for heart attack increasing by 10.8 per cent when the mean daily temperature reaches 30℃. When the average temperature is higher than 27℃ for three consecutive days, hospital admissions increase by 37.7 per cent. This suggests that even a small reduction in temperature during a heatwave will reduce the numbers of deaths.”

Read more:
Climate change hits low-income earners harder – and poor housing in hotter cities is a disastrous combination

So what can heat officers do?

The appointments of heat officers are a recent response to projections of a hotter climate alongside more frequent and intense heat waves. The first chief heat officer was installed in Miami-Dade County in the United States in 2021. Appointments followed in Athens, Greece; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Santiago, Chile; and Monterrey, Mexico.

In less than two years, these officers have overseen projects such as developing new ways to monitor urban heat, trialling cool pavement materials and creating refuges from the heat.

In Freetown, the chief heat officer, Eugenia Kargbo, has focused on the informal settlements and markets most exposed to increasing heat. New shading and tree plantings will help protect these economically important spaces.

In Santiago, Cristina Huidobro is sponsoring the roll-out of green roofs across state-owned buildings such as schools and hospitals. The Hospital de Maipú is being retrofitted with more than 1,000 square metres of vegetated rooftop to help keep the building cooler.

As these examples show, responses to heat must draw on both climate knowledge and local social understanding. Problems of heat in Melbourne are different to those of Sydney’s western suburbs or Darwin’s tropical intensity. Developing resilience to heat requires actions that work with the form of each city, the rules governing its spaces and how locals behave.

Read more:
Requiem or renewal? This is how a tropical city like Darwin can regain its cool

For Melbourne, practical actions might include trials of urban forms that allow for mixed plantings across buildings, infrastructure and streets.

Another option is to manage traffic to take account of local climate patterns. Melbourne’s heat waves often peak in the very late afternoon as people travel home. Reducing car traffic and adding cooled trams and buses at these times will help move more people safely.

We do know what to do

We already have a huge body of science, local research and tools to help keep cool in our cities.

For example, the Cool Routes project allows you to plot a path through Melbourne based on live temperature data. There are also heat health alerts, cool places mapping and heat-specific support for people who are homeless.

We have a world-leading Urban Forest Strategy to guide urban planning and design. Toolkits such as the Guide to Urban Cooling Strategies and the Green Factor Tool are available.

Despite this, Melbourne is still vulnerable to heat. Extreme heat increases the risk of power failure and buildings then overheat. And most of our outdoor spaces were never designed for heat in the first place.

Even with the knowledge and tools at our disposal, it is voluntary for designers and developers to use them.

There is no single solution to manage increasing heat. While trees are fantastic for natural cooling, they aren’t a cure-all.

Read more:
How new design patterns can enable cities and their residents to change with climate change

Keeping cities cool is a complex task

Resilience to urban heat requires work across multiple physical scales. It involves negotiating the political and economic contests about how the city should grow.

The biggest task Melbourne’s heat officers face will be co-ordinating between partners – both within government and with the developers and private agencies that shape so much of the city. The officers have to create ties between policy, strategy, planners, designers, developers, research and tools.

They will also need to be on the ground and talk to the communities who experience heat stress. Much of our existing work on urban heat has been done from desktops and satellites. It’s time to hit the streets and start negotiating the technical, social and political worlds that determine how Australian cities respond to heat.

Wendy Walls 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. Melbourne now has chief heat officers. Here’s why we need them and what they can do – https://theconversation.com/melbourne-now-has-chief-heat-officers-heres-why-we-need-them-and-what-they-can-do-192248

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

The big question prior to Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivering the Albanese government’s first budget on October 26 has been whether it will seek to modify the “stage 3” tax cuts legislated by the Morrison government, with Labor’s support.

The cuts, set to come into effect in 2024, reduce the marginal tax paid on incomes between $45,000 and $200,000 to 30% (instead of the 32.5% now paid up to $120,000, 37% between $120,000 and $180,000, and 45% after that).

Labor promised before the election it would implement the cuts, but over the past few weeks it has encouraged a debate about abandoning this position, given changed circumstances. Nevertheless, it now appears the tax cuts will go ahead as legislated.

À lire aussi :
Grattan on Friday: Should Anthony Albanese keep his word on the Stage 3 tax cuts?

It’s worth considering that debate – and the comparisons drawn to the United Kingdom, where new Prime Minister Liz Truss announced a radical package of tax cuts, including reduced marginal rates for high income earners.

Within a matter of weeks she has been forced to scrap central elements of the package. She has now sacked her Chancellor of the Exchequer (treasurer) Kwasi Kwarteng, with whom she designed and announced the package. It looks like a doomed attempt to save her prime ministership.

Her backdown emboldened those calling for a similar policy shift in Australia. The parallels aren’t exact, but there are plenty of similarities between the economic and political difficulties faced by the UK and Australian governments.

What made the UK cuts different?

In both countries, the response to the COVID pandemic was broadly successful in keeping unemployment down and allowing for a rapid return to the pre-pandemic growth path.

High inflation, rising interest rates and sharp increases in energy costs now threaten to derail this recovery. The UK also faces extra challenges of its own making, with the mismanagement of Britain’s exit from the European Union disrupting exports to Europe and creating labour shortages.

Under previous prime minister Boris Johnson, the UK government’s economic response was more or less similar to that of other countries – with a modest increase to national insurance contributions and cost-of-living increase to welfare payments.

After replacing Johnson, Truss announced a radical package combining a massive fuel subsidy with equally massive tax cuts mostly benefiting corporations and high-income earners.

No offsetting savings were announced, although it was hinted that welfare benefits would not be raised in line with inflation. Estimates of the cost were £100 billion to £150 billion (7-10% of Britain’s annual national income), of which about half was associated with the tax package.

The public reaction was swift and hostile. But what mattered more was the response of financial markets.

Fears of inflation, which would reduce the real value of government bonds, led to holders of those bonds selling them off. Since market interest rates – that is, the return demanded by bond holders – move in the opposite direction to bond prices, these rates rose sharply.

The pound plummeted in value, as traders expected its real value to decline. Major pension funds, which employed complex strategies to manage their holdings of bonds, faced collapse. The Bank of England was forced to intervene by stepping in to inflate demand for government bonds.

Truss backed down on scrapping the top marginal tax rate of 45%, paid on income in excess of £150,000 (about A$250,000). This saved about £2 billion. In a second backdown late last , Truss accepted that a previously announced increase in corporate tax rates, which she had planned to cancel, would go ahead after all. But the equally regressive cut in national insurance contributions remains, along with a range of business handouts.

Projections now bear no relation to reality

Truss’s tax package was ideologically extreme. But it was, at least, designed as a response to current conditions.

By contrast, Australia’s stage 3 tax cuts were planned and legislated in 2018, on the basis of economic projections that now bear no relation to reality.

As their name implies, they followed two previous rounds of tax cuts. Stages 1 and 2, which came into effect in 2018-19 and 2020-21 respectively, were smaller and largely designed with the political goal of smoothing the path for stage 3.

Because of the unexpected acceleration of inflation, most of the tax relief these cuts provided for low- and middle-income earners will be eroded by bracket creep – the process by which inflation pushes incomes into higher tax brackets, even with no change in the real value of those incomes.

À lire aussi :
That $243 billion ‘saving’ from axing the Stage 3 tax cut is more mirage than reality

Moreover, some of the stage 1 cuts are temporary – implemented by then treasurer Scott Morrison as the so-called Low and Middle Income Offset (LMITO) rather than as a permanent change in tax rates.

This measure was originally due to expire in 2020-21, but Morrison extended it to 2021-22. Unless Chalmers extends it again, many Australians on modest incomes will face a tax increase this financial year, as their wealthier compatriots look forward to a cut.

As with the Truss tax measures, stage 3 massively favours high earners, with 70% of the benefits going to the 10% of taxpayers who earn more than $120,000 a year.

Let debt grow or cut services?

The macroeconomic impacts of the stage 3 cuts remain to be seen. But no one now can see them as a sensible response to economic difficulties likely to worsen over the next couple of years.

One idea that emerged from the past few weeks of debate was to maintain part of the cuts, by reducing the 32.5% marginal tax rate on incomes between $45,000 and $120,000 to 30%, while scrapping or scaling back the cuts for incomes between $120,000 and $180,000.

But with the tax cuts going ahead exactly as they were legislated in 2018, the Albanese government is left the same dilemma as in the UK: a choice between growing debt and cutting expenditure on vital services.

At a time when wages are failing to keep pace with inflation, while profits are booming, it’s not the kind of choice any government would normally like to make.

John Quiggin ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. In sticking with tax cuts divorced from reality, Labor is left with a hard choice – https://theconversation.com/in-sticking-with-tax-cuts-divorced-from-reality-labor-is-left-with-a-hard-choice-192243

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessie Boylan, PhD student, RMIT University

Overlooking the Bass Strait on the remote and windy northwest tip of Lutruwita/Tasmania is the Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station.

The air that arrives at Kennaook has travelled thousands of kilometres. It hasn’t touched land for many days, weeks or even months. It is said to be some of the cleanest in the world.

The powerful westerly winds – the “roaring forties” – carry air masses across the Southern Ocean, reaching land well-mixed and uncontaminated by recent human activity.

Considered “baseline”, this air is representative of true background atmospheric conditions, and grants us insight into the driving forces behind human-driven climate change.

When I arrived at Kennaook in mid-April, it was late afternoon and a storm was brewing. The wind was blowing from the southwest at a steady 54 kilometres an hour – baseline conditions – and the carbon dioxide levels were 413.5 parts per million.

More than 40 years ago, scientists warned⁠ CO₂ levels like these would create catastrophic and irreversible environmental damage and species collapse.

I climbed the stairs to the top deck, set up my camera and tripod, and started filming.

Read more:
Forty years of measuring the world’s cleanest air reveals human fingerprints on the atmosphere

Making invisible visible

Much of my work has been about the ongoing human and environmental harm caused by uranium mining and atomic testing programs. The invisibility of both the harm and the substances has continued to challenge me creatively.

How do you make visible the invisible? How do you communicate imperceptible change?

Discovering there is a place that captures, archives and measures the air and these imperceptible changes presented me with an opportunity to do just that.

I have since based my creative-practice PhD on the work done at Kennaook/Cape Grim, working alongside the scientists from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO.

As an artist whose projects have a documentary basis, I use photography, video and sound to respond to place through story, and expand out from there to go beyond what is simply before me.

I believe art has the capacity to reach us in ways other forms of information cannot, revealing the imperceptible hidden in the everyday. In this case: what stories are we breathing?

Sarah Sentilles wrote in The Griffith Review⁠ that art shows us “the world is made and can be unmade and remade”.

In troubled times, we are collectively searching for ways to unmake and remake the world around us. Art is one way to unlock that capacity.

The present emergency

For this project, titled The Smallest Measure, I have taken an intentionally slow, observational approach, using “slow cinema” techniques to respond to the slow science carried out on site and to the “slow violence” of climate change.

Slow cinema, says writer Matthew Flanagan, “compels us to retreat from a culture of speed […] and physically attune to a more deliberate rhythm”.

Slow violence is described by environmental literature professor Rob Nixon as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight […] an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all.”⁠

This kind of violence is so embedded within daily life, connected to commonplace activities and daily rituals we don’t see it at all, let alone regard it as an emergency. In using slow aesthetic techniques, myself and the viewer use our own capacities to observe and pay attention to the damage within the everyday.

On the top deck of the station, as I watch the storm roll across the ocean, I wonder where the air has come from, who else has breathed it, what is inside of it and how long it has been on its journey.

While at Kennaook, I film and record the landscape and science working together, in constant conversation.

Inside the station, the scientists and technicians are at work. A day is spent cleaning one of the instruments, tubes are flushed and reflushed, tests are run. All the while the air is flowing in from the outside through pipes and into different machines, registering numbers and building graphs, telling us what gases are contained within it and which direction it may have come from.

If there is a sudden spike, it has come from a car outside the station. If it is a more consistent patch of dirty contaminants, the air is probably coming from the north, from Melbourne.

Meanwhile, outside the station, the landscape is working too. The ocean currents ebb and flow, the waves crash onto the rocks below, the wind keeps on blowing, making patterns across the grass, sometimes with such force it is destabilising.

My work doesn’t show dramatic scenes or spectacularly catastrophic events. Instead, through slow visual, aural and scientific processes of attention and observation it shows the emergency is already here. We are entangled within it.

If we really want to, we have the capacity to respond.

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?

Jessie Boylan has received funding from RMIT University and the Australia Council for the Arts for this artwork.

– ref. The air we breathe: how I have been observing atmospheric change through art and science – https://theconversation.com/the-air-we-breathe-how-i-have-been-observing-atmospheric-change-through-art-and-science-187985

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

A blueprint developed by federal and state governments to counter violence against women and children includes the ambitious goal of eliminating gender-based violence within one generation.

But a proposed standalone plan for dealing with violence against Indigenous women, which is much more prevalent than in the general community, is yet to be developed. No date is set for its release.

The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022 to 2032, put out on Monday by the Minister for Women Katy Gallagher and the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth, describes violence against women and children as “a problem of epidemic proportions in Australia”.

One in three women has experienced physical violence since age 15; the figure for sexual violence is one in five. A woman is killed by a current or former intimate partner every ten days.

Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised due to violence than non-Indigenous women, report three times as many incidents of sexual violence, and are more likely to be killed due to assault.

The national plan, which covers the four areas of prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery and healing, focuses on

• promoting gender equality and combatting other forms of discrimination that contribute to this violence

• changing attitudes in order to prevent violence

• embedding effective early intervention measures

• building the frontline sector workforce and ensuring women and children have access to support wherever they live

• making sure tailored and culturally-safe support is there for all women and children and

• the need for person-centred services and better coordination and integration across systems.

Read more:
Paid parental leave extended to 26 weeks by 2026, with pressure on dads to share more early caring

There will be two five-year action plans. They will include specific commitments by governments and investments in the various areas.

“In the longer term, a standalone First Nations National Plan will be developed to address the unacceptably high rates of violence Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children experience,” the plan says.

“This violence happens alongside the multiple, intersecting and layered forms of discrimination and disadvantage affecting the safety of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities.

“A deliverable under this National Plan is a dedicated action plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family safety, which will provide the foundations for the future standalone First Nations National Plan.”

In the last few years, during the previous plan, attitudes in Australia seem to have improved but not the outcomes.

“Since the 2010-2022 National Plan, fewer Australians hold attitudes that support violence against women, and most Australians support gender equality. Women report that they are increasingly feeling safer in private and in community settings.

“Despite this progress, the 2010-2022 National Plan did not succeed in its goal of reducing violence against women and children. The prevalence of violence against women and children has not significantly decreased during the last 12 years and reported rates of sexual assault continue to rise.

“While increases in reporting may be due to women feeling more supported to come forward and seek help, we must reduce the prevalence.”

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Government must find a way to force gas prices down – but how?

With advancing gender equality central to solving the problem, the plan says, “Everyone has a meaningful role to play – as families, friends, work colleagues, employers, businesses, sporting organisations, media, educational institutions, service providers, community organisations, service systems and governments”.

Rishworth said: “Current rates of family, domestic and sexual violence are unacceptable. We want to make these changes now so the next generation of women and children can live in a society free from violence.”

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. Blueprint to tackle violence against women unveiled but detailed Indigenous plan still to come – https://theconversation.com/blueprint-to-tackle-violence-against-women-unveiled-but-detailed-indigenous-plan-still-to-come-192578

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Parkinson, Associate, Grattan Institute

School education in Australia needs a circuit-breaker. Student performance continues to stagnate and teachers report excessive workloads and alarming rates of stress.

Our new report from the Grattan Institute, Ending the Lesson Lottery: How to Improve Curriculum Planning, looks at how teachers could be much better supported.

Rather than tinkering at the edges of the education system, we should be looking more closely at curriculum planning – the process of deciding what to teach and the materials to use. This would reduce the load on teachers and help boost student achievement.

Why is lesson planning so important?

The Australian school curriculum and state versions provide broad direction on what to teach. But they leave teachers to do the heavy lifting when it comes to lesson planning and assessment.

To make the most of class time, lessons should be carefully planned and sequenced so teachers can build on student learning in previous years and set up future learning. This requires a coordinated approach to curriculum planning, across all school years and subjects.

Read more:
Why is Peter Dutton trying to start another political fight over the school curriculum?

This is where a comprehensive bank of curriculum materials, which teachers can use and adapt, comes in. It means, for example, that all year 3 teachers at a school agree on the key storybooks they’ll use. And it means a student in one year 7 health class learns from the same classroom materials as their peers down the hall. While they’re using the same materials, teachers will make adjustments based on their students and bring their personal flair to the classroom.

A crucial part of this is a whole-school commitment to the process, so teachers work together and agree “this is what we’ll teach, this is how we’ll teach it, and these are the materials we’ll use”.

Without an approach like this, students can miss crucial content, double up on topics or get contradictory explanations from one classroom to the next. It also increases the odds that lessons are hastily cobbled together because a teacher simply – and understandably – ran out of time.

Our survey

As part of a new report, we surveyed more than 2,200 teachers and principals about curriculum planning.

We asked them if they had a bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all classes at their school. Only 15% said yes. Teachers in disadvantaged schools were only half as likely to have a bank as those in advantaged schools.

Our survey also found 50% of teachers spend six or more hours a week creating and sourcing lesson materials, and a quarter of teachers spend ten hours or more. Pressed for time, 66% of those surveyed go to social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube to look for materials. The quality of what they find obviously varies widely.

Burdened with a heavy planning load, it’s no wonder teachers are crying out for help. Teachers told us they cannot possibly maintain high-quality planning within reasonable working hours. As one teacher in the survey said:

There’s not enough hours in the day to make materials as high-quality as I would like them to be. I forever feel guilty for not being good enough.

Curriculum banks save time

Our survey found teachers in schools with a bank of common materials for all their subjects spend three hours a week less sourcing and creating materials. And these teachers are almost four times more satisfied with curriculum planning at their school.

Teachers in schools with a bank are also nearly twice as likely to say students consistently learn the same thing, no matter who they’re taught by, compared to teachers in schools without one.

Nine out of ten teachers surveyed said access to shared, high-quality materials would give them more time to meet the needs of individual students. Many were frustrated that it isn’t the norm. As another teacher told us in the survey:

It frustrated me to no end that schools and governments do not provide resources/lesson plans/unit plans that are ready to go. I was a lawyer before I was a teacher, and I would never have drafted a legal document without using a precedent!

Many schools will need help

Our report also profiles schools who have managed to establish an effective whole-school approach to curriculum planning. Four in five are public schools and they come from a range of areas, from metropolitan to regional.

What they have in common is school leaders who understood the need for a materials bank, prioritised school time and resources to develop it, and built a culture of professional trust where teachers share materials.

Our case studies didn’t have much government help, but realistically, without it, most schools will find it challenging to follow their lead.

Governments and education sector leaders need to invest in more high-quality, comprehensive curriculum materials that schools can choose to adapt and use.

Schools will also need more curriculum-specific professional development and less generic training.

We estimate an investment of between $15 million and $20 million would be enough to develop comprehensive high-quality materials for a single subject, up to year 10 level. This is a small amount in the overall scheme of the $71 billion we spend a year on education.

These materials should also be quality assured by an independent, expert body.

It is important to note that governments don’t necessarily have to do all the development work themselves. The United Kingdom uses a mix of government-made, charity and commercial providers for materials.

But time and money is only part of the solution. At the individual school level, we need principals prepared to lead change.

This is about giving teachers more time for teaching (not less)

Previous debate around lesson banks have sparked some anger among teachers who say lesson planning is a core part of their profession and should not be “outsourced”.

But this is not about removing school autonomy or downgrading professional expertise. Our case studies found a whole-school approach meant teachers could spend more time planning key lessons (rather than being stretched thin across 20 lessons a week).

Read more:
Australia spends $5 billion a year on teaching assistants in schools but we don’t know what they do

Our survey also overwhelmingly found teachers thought having access to high-quality materials would give them more time to respond to the individual needs of their students.

This is also not a call to mandate the curriculum materials that teachers must use. It is about increasing the availability of quality materials so schools have more options. Schools may adapt what is provided or choose to develop their own shared curriculum materials (provided they have the time and resources).

The burden of having to plan mostly from scratch is taking a heavy toll on teachers. A new partnership is needed between governments, education leaders, and schools to reduce this. Failure to do so is unfair on teachers as well as students.

Nick is currently training to be a teacher at the Melbourne University’s Graduate School of Education.

– ref. ‘I feel guilty about not being good enough’: why all Australian schools need teaching material banks – https://theconversation.com/i-feel-guilty-about-not-being-good-enough-why-all-australian-schools-need-teaching-material-banks-192399

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mel Taylor, Associate Professor, Macquarie University

The floods ravaging Victoria have destroyed hundreds of homes and left at least one person dead. Some rivers are not expected to peak until Monday and more wet weather may leave towns battling floodwaters again in the coming weeks.

We’ve been researching the experiences of people who survived floods in Queensland and New South Wales this year. Our initial findings offer insights as Victoria now suffers its own flood disaster.

The current crisis is far from over. Those affected will be feeling confused and overwhelmed. Well-meaning helpers are likely to rush in, and recovery agencies will be mobilising.

In the difficult weeks and months ahead, here’s what Victorian flood survivors will be going though – and how best to help.

‘Just one step in front of the other’

Our study involves researchers from Macquarie University, University of Southern Queensland and Queensland University of Technology. Since late August this year, we’ve interviewed more than 200 flood survivors from about 40 communities.

Our research area stretches from the Queensland town of Maryborough down to Sydney’s Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley, taking in communities west of Brisbane as well as those in the Northern Rivers area around Lismore.

Some flood survivors we interviewed in September and October had experienced three or four floods this year – and lost everything multiple times.

Read more:
‘One of the most extreme disasters in colonial Australian history’: climate scientists on the floods and our future risk

Almost eight months after the worst of the floods, many are not back in their homes. Some have returned but don’t have electricity or water, and only have one or two habitable rooms in what is otherwise a shell of a house.

People were worn down by the multiple floods and getting back on their feet each time. They’d faced difficulties getting help from recovery organisations, and dreaded another summer the same as the last.

As one flood-affected resident said:

It’s just one step in front of the other, because what else can we do?

Another participant expressed frustration with the recovery efforts of their local council:

This isn’t their first rodeo. What the **** are they doing?

Some of the worst affected people lived in properties that had never flooded before. Some didn’t act to protect their belongings because their homes were built above all previous flood levels. But their homes were inundated to the ceilings, and they lost everything.

Read more:
‘I simply haven’t got it in me to do it again’: imagining a new heart for flood-stricken Lismore

An avalanche of decisions

Having disorganised thoughts is a normal response to stress and trauma. We spoke to many flood survivors who felt as if their brains were “scrambled” during and after the disaster.

Many said it had led to poor decision-making that left them facing a more complex and protracted recovery. For example, some who chose to delay evacuation faced trauma that could have been avoided, such as the loss of pets. Others regretted decisions made during the clean up.

Some people had the added stress of having to decide if they must permanently leave their homes – because, for example, it is built on a floodplain or is too damaged to repair. This additional emotional strain was also experienced by survivors of Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires.

Cleaning up after the floods has been fraught. Many people didn’t take photos of their damaged houses before they were stripped out – and are now struggling to prove to their insurance company how badly their house was affected.

Wonderful people helped with the flood clean-up – but in some cases, it meant everything happened too fast. Precious damaged items that might have been cleaned or repaired – such as photos or a grandfather’s timber chair – were instead chucked out.

The many questions from those offering help were overwhelming: what do you need? What can we do? We found in the first few weeks, survivors generally had capacity to answer only very specific questions involving a “yes” or “no” answer: would you like lunch? Can I clean out the chook house? Can I get you a trailer or generator?

Tracking down help was a grind. Every call seemed not to reach the right person to talk to, and ended in a promise that the person would call them back. Frequently, they didn’t.

Some insurance companies were dragging the chain, preventing people from rebuilding or relocating. Others with properties that had never flooded never thought they needed insurance – and their homes may now be un-insurable.

Local communities stepped up to carry survivors through the initial clean-up and recovery – a common experience after disasters.

Read more:
Floods in Victoria are uncommon. Here’s why they’re happening now – and how they compare to the past

But once the urgent work is done, volunteers usually return to their families, lives and jobs. For survivors, the feeling of being forgotten can be overwhelming – especially for those who live alone, or those struggling to access mental health services.

Our in-depth interviews with flood survivors will inform the next phase of the research, an online survey opening later this month. Anyone interested in contributing can contact us here.

Many themes we identified in our research so far also emerged after the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. The journey of recovery from that tragedy is still underway.

The age of disasters

As we write, floodwaters in parts of Victoria continue to rise. Elsewhere the water is receding, but flooding is expected to persist for days yet.

We were saddened by the hundreds of conversations with flood survivors this year. But we also have huge admiration for people’s determination to pick themselves up.

And despite the devastation they’d experienced, most interviewees found silver linings. Some found renewed faith in their neighbours, friends and towns. Others were committed to being less attached to things, to helping their community when they can, or to be more responsive to family and friends.

Our research is too recent to provide tangible help to Victoria’s flood survivors. But we hope it will help in future as Australians recover from floods and other disasters.

The authors would like to acknowledge their fellow researchers on this project: Professor Kim Johnston, Associate Professor Fiona Miller, Associate Professor Anne Lane, Dipika Dabas and Harriet Narwal.

Read more:
More than a decade after the Black Saturday fires, it’s time we got serious about long-term disaster recovery planning

Mel Taylor receives funding from Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Barbara Ryan receives funding from Natural Hazards Research Australia. She is affiliated with Emergency Media and Public Affairs, a community of practice of emergency communicators and engagement practitioners.

– ref. ‘Would you like lunch? Can I clean out the chook house?’: what flood survivors actually need after disaster strikes – https://theconversation.com/would-you-like-lunch-can-i-clean-out-the-chook-house-what-flood-survivors-actually-need-after-disaster-strikes-192577

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

Government-funded paid parental leave will be extended, and more pressure placed on fathers to share caring for babies, under an initiative to be unveiled by Anthony Albanese on Saturday.

Parental leave will be lengthened by six weeks, phased in, to total 26 weeks by 2026, with use-it-or-lose-it provisions directed to having fathers undertake a greater part of the early parenting.

Leave will be able to be taken in blocks between periods of work. Single parents will be entitled to the full 26 weeks.

The present scheme is for 18 weeks government-funded leave to care for a newborn. There is a separate “Dad and Partner” payment for two weeks.

The government says it will introduce reforms to modernise the system and improve flexibility from July next year. From July 1 2024 the time will start lengthening, with two extra weeks put on each year until the scheme reaches 26 weeks from July 2026.

The government’s women’s economic equality taskforce, chaired by Sam Mostyn, will advise on details of the model, including what mix of flexible weeks and the use-it-or-lose-it component for each parent are considered best. Details will be in the October 25 budget.

Albanese will formally announce the initiative when he addresses the NSW ALP conference on Saturday morning.

In his speech, an extract of which was released ahead of delivery, Albanese says that, like the government’s child care policy, extending PPL is an economic reform.

“By 2026, every family with a new baby will be able to access a total of six months paid leave, shared between the two parents,” he says.

“We will give families more leave and more flexibility, so people are able to use their weeks in a way that works best for them.

“Our plan will mean more families take up this leave, share in that precious time – and share the caring responsibilities more equally.

“This plan will support dads who want to take time off work to be more involved in those early months.

“It’s a modern policy, for modern families. It delivers more choice, it offers greater security – and it rewards aspiration.”

Albanese says that extended leave was one of the clearest calls that came out of the recent jobs summit.

“Businesses, unions, experts and economists all understand that providing more choice, more support and more flexibility for families and more opportunity for women boosts participation and productivity across the economy.”

He says the government sees this as “the baseline, a national minimum standard.

“We are encouraged that there are already employers across Australia competing to offer working parents the best possible deal. And we want to see more of it.

“Because a parental leave system that empowers the full and equal participation of women will be good for business, good for families and good for the economy.”

Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said that “having a child shouldn’t be an economic barrier for families or indeed act as a handbrake on the broader economy.

“Right now, this burden is borne disproportionately by women but we know that good women’s policy is also good economic policy and this decision is evidence of that.”

Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth said: “This will benefit mums, it will benefit dads, it’s good for children, and it will be a huge boost to the economy.

“We know that treating parenting as an equal partnership helps to improve gender equality.”

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

– ref. Paid parental leave extended to 26 weeks by 2026, with pressure on dads to share more early caring – https://theconversation.com/paid-parental-leave-extended-to-26-weeks-by-2026-with-pressure-on-dads-to-share-more-early-caring-192506

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lindsay A. Pearce, Research Associate, Curtin University

From October 16 to 27, United Nations will pay a special visit to look at some of the hidden corners of Australian society.

A UN torture prevention subcommittee will be making unannounced visits to various places of detention. These could include adult prisons, youth detention facilities, immigration detention centres, police cells, mental health institutions, and secure welfare facilities.

It will be looking for opportunities to prevent abuse and improve conditions of detention.

The visit will place international pressure on Australia to finally move forward with its commitments under the UN anti-torture protocol, on which the country has been dragging its feet.

It’s also a unique opportunity for Australians to see what’s happening behind closed doors and to demand better transparency, accountability, and treatment of vulnerable citizens.

Preventing harm

The subcommittee is a new treaty body that supports UN member states to prevent torture and mistreatment.

It has a right to unannounced visits to examine the treatment of people in prisons and other places of detention in countries that have signed the anti-torture protocol.

The subcommittee can publicly report their findings.

The anti-torture protocol signifies a commitment to establish independent monitoring bodies, called “national preventive mechanisms”. The bodies can freely access all places of detention, make recommendations, and engage in constructive dialogue to facilitate changes that prevent harm, mistreatment, and human rights abuses. Each state and territory, as well as the federal government, is expected to have its own monitoring body.

Like the subcommittee, the Australian monitoring bodies can show up completely unannounced so they can see what conditions are like when facilities haven’t been given advance notice.

These kinds of inspections are a powerful tool for transparency and accountability within sectors that typically operate behind closed doors.

Read more:
3 types of denial that allow Australians to feel OK about how we treat refugees

Australia dragging its feet

Unfortunately, Australia has not upheld its commitment.

Australia first signed the anti-torture protocol in 2009 and ratified it in 2017, joining 91 other countries.

After postponing the 2018 deadline to establish monitoring bodies and missing the latest deadline in January 2022, the UN reluctantly granted Australia another one-year extension.

So far, the federal government and the governments of Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT have identified who will comprise their monitoring bodies. But New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria have resisted until federal funding is confirmed.

By January 23 2023, all states and territories are required to have a monitoring body that’s fully compliant with the requirements laid out by the anti-torture protocol.

The apparent reason for the delay is a funding stalemate between the federal government and state and territory governments. The latter are responsible for nominating and coordinating their own jurisdictional monitoring bodies.

It’s hoped the subcommittee visit will speed up the implementation of the anti-torture protocol.

People deprived of liberty are vulnerable

Australia’s delay in establishing a monitoring body has been described as an international shame.

Prisons and other places of detention house some of our most vulnerable citizens. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2018:

• 40% of people in Australian prisons had a pre-existing mental illness
• 65% had used illicit drugs in the past year
• 21% had a history of self-harm
• 30% had a chronic illness
• and 29% had a disability.

What’s more, over one-third of deaths in Australian prisons in 2020-21 were self-inflicted.

The statistics are similar in youth detention and immigration detention.

These vulnerabilities make people extremely susceptible to the physical and psychological harms of mistreatment.

Read more:
Why Australia needs its own torture report

Human rights abuses

Australia has an abysmal reputation when it comes to protecting the health and human rights of those in detention. A few examples of the conditions people may be subjected to include:

• corrupt conduct including assault, unjustified use of force, bribery, solitary confinement, and inappropriate strip searching

• inadequate access to health care

• and exposure to extreme heat waves.

Despite recommendations from the 2017 Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory, the following are still commonly reported in youth detention across Australia:

• dehumanising conditions, increases in violence, self-harm, and suicide

• concerns over the safety and retraumatisation of young people

• the use of spit hoods in police custody

• and extended periods of lockdown and solitary confinement.

Disproportionate harm

These conditions disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. They are around ten times more likely than non-Indigenous people to be detained in prison and 17 times more likely to be detained in the youth justice system. This is largely due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, systemic racism, and over-policing.

There have been 517 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody since the 1991 royal commission into the issue.

The anti-torture protocol ensures governments are accountable to the unique needs of all people deprived of liberty, including Indigenous people, children, and those with a disability.

A different future

Australia has a dark past when it comes to human rights in places of detention. Our future can, and must, be better.

The subcommittee’s visit should be a catalyst for establishing routine, independent monitoring that Australia has committed to under the anti-torture protocol.

It signals change towards collaborative, open discussion about the prevention of harm, mistreatment, and human rights abuses in all places where people are deprived of their liberty.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the following people who provided input on this article: Daphne Arapakis of Koorie Youth Council, Tiffany Overall of YouthLaw, and Fergus Peace of Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service.

Stuart Kinner receives funding from the NHMRC for research on the health of people in contact with the justice system. He is a technical advisor on the WHO Health in Prisons Programme.

Lindsay A. Pearce 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. Why is a UN torture prevention committee visiting Australia? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-a-un-torture-prevention-committee-visiting-australia-192169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tuthill, Astrophysicist, University of Sydney

In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads. The picture, which looks like a kind of “cosmic thumbprint”, came from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship observatory.

The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some on the wild fringe even claimed it as evidence for “alien megastructures” of unknown origin.

Luckily, our team at the University of Sydney had already been studying this very star, known as WR140, for more than 20 years – so we were in prime position to use physics to interpret what we were seeing.

Our model, published in Nature, explains the strange process by which the star produces the dazzling pattern of rings seen in the Webb image (itself now published in Nature Astronomy).

The secrets of WR140

WR140 is what’s called a Wolf-Rayet star. These are among the most extreme stars known. In a rare but beautiful display, they can sometimes emit a plume of dust into space stretching hundreds of times the size of our entire Solar System.

The radiation field around Wolf-Rayets is so intense, dust and wind are swept outwards at thousands of kilometres per second, or about 1% the speed of light. While all stars have stellar winds, these overachievers drive something more like a stellar hurricane.

Read more:
This mysterious ‘exotic stellar peacock’ may open the door to a realm of physics only ever glimpsed

Critically, this wind contains elements such as carbon that stream out to form dust.

WR140 is one of a few dusty Wolf-Rayet stars found in a binary system. It is in orbit with another star, which is itself a massive blue supergiant with a ferocious wind of its own.

Only a handful of systems like WR140 are known in our whole galaxy, yet these select few deliver the most unexpected and beautiful gift to astronomers. Dust doesn’t simply stream out from the star to form a hazy ball as might be expected; instead it forms only in a cone-shaped area where the winds from the two stars collide.

Because the binary star is in constant orbital motion, this shock front must also rotate. The sooty plume then naturally gets wrapped into a spiral, in the same way as the jet from a rotating garden sprinkler.

WR140, however, has a few more tricks up its sleeve layering more rich complexity into its showy display. The two stars are not on circular but elliptical orbits, and furthermore dust production turns on and off episodically as the binary nears and departs the point of closest approach.

An almost perfect model

By modelling all these effects into the three-dimensional geometry of the dust plume, our team tracked the location of dust features in three-dimensional space.

By carefully tagging images of the expanding flow taken at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, one of the world’s largest optical telescopes, we found our model of the expanding flow fit the data almost perfectly.

Except for one niggle. Close in right near the star, the dust was not where it was supposed to be. Chasing that minor misfit turned out to lead us right to a phenomenon never before caught on camera.

The power of light

We know that light carries momentum, which means it can exert a push on matter known as radiation pressure. The outcome of this phenomenon, in the form of matter coasting at high speed around the cosmos, is evident everywhere.

But it has been a remarkably difficult process to catch in the act. The force fades quickly with distance, so to see material being accelerated you need to track very accurately the movement of matter in a strong radiation field.

This acceleration turned out to be the one missing element in the models for WR140. Our data did not fit because the expansion speed wasn’t constant: the dust was getting a boost from radiation pressure.

Catching that for the first time on camera was something new. In each orbit, it is as if the star unfurls a giant sail made of dust. When it catches the intense radiation streaming from the star, like a yacht catching a gust, the dusty sail makes a sudden leap forward.

Smoke rings in space

The final outcome of all this physics is arrestingly beautiful. Like a clockwork toy, WR140 puffs out precisely sculpted smoke rings with every eight-year orbit.

Each ring is engraved with all this wonderful physics written in the detail of its form. All we have to do is wait and the expanding wind inflates the dust shell like a balloon until it is big enough for our telescopes to image.

Then, eight years later, the binary returns in its orbit and another shell appears identical to the one before, growing inside the bubble of its predecessor. Shells keep accumulating like a ghostly set of giant nesting dolls.

However, the true extent to which we had hit on the right geometry to explain this intriguing star system was not brought home to us until the new Webb image arrived in June.

Here were not one or two, but more than 17 exquisitely sculpted shells, each one a nearly exact replica nested within the one preceding it. That means the oldest, outermost shell visible in the Webb image must have been launched about 150 years before the newest shell, which is still in its infancy and accelerating away from the luminous pair of stars driving the physics at the heart of the system.

With their spectacular plumes and wild fireworks, the Wolf-Rayets have delivered one of the most intriguing and intricately patterned images to have been released by the new Webb telescope.

This was one of the first images taken by Webb. Astronomers are all on the edge of our seats, waiting for what new wonders this observatory will beam down to us.

Peter Tuthill receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Alien megastructures? Cosmic thumbprint? What’s behind a James Webb telescope photo that had even astronomers stumped – https://theconversation.com/alien-megastructures-cosmic-thumbprint-whats-behind-a-james-webb-telescope-photo-that-had-even-astronomers-stumped-192249

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nasim Salehi, Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator, Southern Cross University

The “Women, Life, Freedom” movement that has taken hold in Iran in recent weeks is not new. Young Iranian women have been involved in small but consistent evolutionary actions during the entire 44 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly in the past two decades.

The initial movement goes back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the year radical Islamic groups took power. Street protests, the so-called “evolution toward revolution”, have accelerated since 2017.

In all these movements, women have been courageous and bold. Key demonstrations include:

• student protest on the closure of a reformist newspaper (1999)
• protest about the irregularities in the presidential election (2009)
• protest against the government’s economic policies (2017-2018)
• Bloody November (2019)/Bloody Aban (2020) protests, caused by the significant increase in fuel prices.

Young Iranian women position themselves as agents of social change. They are not, as they are often represented outside Iran, powerless victims. They have always been at the forefront of breaking down social boundaries and taboos.

They have been fighting to enhance their social status through education and career development.

They believe in evolution (small yet strong and consistent change), rather than sudden revolution (temporary and unsustainable change). The idea is that incremental change can lead to another unsuccessful revolution, such as in 1979.

In our research, we spoke to 391 women aged 18-35 from Shiraz, one of the biggest cities in Iran. We found that their evolutionary actions can be captured by key themes: they may seem ordinary, but they represent what young Iranian women are fighting for. They are not looking for something extraordinary. They only want to exercise some level of control over their basic rights.

1. Developing multiple identities. Young Iranian women must manage multiple identities due to the oppressive system. They feel their values, behaviour and actions are not aligned – and not truly free – because of the contradictory expectations their society places on them. They feel they are not always free to be their true selves.

They have used the creation of multiple identities as a coping strategy to be accepted by their society in different stages of their lives, from childhood to university, marriage and working life. As one young woman in our research observed:

Iranian women always should jump from a barrier [to achieve the most obvious rights they have], the barrier of traditional families, the barrier of (morality) police, the barrier of culture.

Another participant said:

My fake identity has been the dominant identity and I have not had a chance to be the real me.

2. Building digital freedom. Iranian women use social media to engage in national and international online social protest groups, exchange information and generate ideas on how to tackle social challenges in their society. Despite the government’s active crackdown on international social media platforms, young Iranians still find innovative ways of accessing them.

Social media have increased social, cultural and political awareness among the young generation, and this appears to be increasing the gap between younger and older generations of the country. One woman told us:

Although satellite TV and some of the social networks [such as Facebook] are banned in Iran, young generations try to have access, using different anti-filters.

3. Creating a unique style of dressing. Research has found that most young Iranians are against mandatory hijab. It is not a cultural issue in Iran, but rather a very restrictive and radical Islamic law, which is one of the key foundations of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The regime assumes that if the rules around mandatory hijab break down, other pillars of the Islamic Republic will be in danger. So protests against hijab – as we are seeing in Iran – challenge the legitimacy of the regime.

Read more:
Iran: ‘hijab’ protests challenge legitimacy of Islamic Republic

Young Iranian women have a high level of education and awareness, respecting different cultures, beliefs, religions and dress codes. They only want to have freedom of choice. As one woman told us: “Islamic leaders want us to hide our beauty.”

A recent study found the majority of Iranians (58%) did not believe in the practice of wearing hijab. Only 23% agreed with the compulsory hijab, which is respected by the rest of the population: people do not want hijab abolished, they just want freedom of choice.

Read more:
Iran protests: majority of people reject compulsory hijab and an Islamic regime, surveys find

4. Creating hidden leisure opportunities. Young Iranian women try to create more opportunities to express the enjoyable yet hidden parts of their life. As one woman said:

We prefer to stay at home and have our gatherings and parties in private places, as we find indoor activities more interesting because we don’t have the limitations of dressing, drinking, female-male interactions.

5. Changing social and sexual relationships. Our research found Iranian women believe the limitations on social and sexual relationships can result in psychological and social health issues. In addition, they believe limitations on relationships before marriage can result in unsuccessful marriages.

Young Iranian women use different strategies to keep their relationships. One specific example is the creation of “white marriage” – where a man and a woman live together without passing the Islamic process of marriage in Iran.

In many of these movements, Iranian women also find support from men (despite the general perception), particularly in the young generations, who equate a push for gender equality and women’s rights with a more democratic society.

They know that fighting for gender equality is everyone’s job, to enhance awareness and bring about change. There can be no democracy without first respecting women’s rights and restoring their dignity and freedom.

This study was funded by Griffith University and supported by both Griffith University and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

– ref. Not ‘powerless victims’: how young Iranian women have long led a quiet revolution – https://theconversation.com/not-powerless-victims-how-young-iranian-women-have-long-led-a-quiet-revolution-192188

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Mannell, Research Fellow in Digital Childhoods, Deakin University

This week, Todd Sampson’s documentary Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate screened on Channel Ten. The documentary focuses on harms that occur through social media and online platforms.

It raises important points about the need for awareness and regulation, but these are often crowded out by alarmist tropes that don’t reflect what we know from decades of research into digital technologies. Left unchallenged, they can prompt unnecessary worry and distract us from having important conversations about how to make technology better.

As digital media researchers, here are some of the claims we think people should approach with caution.

Digital technology and ADHD

While it’s sensible to avoid letting young children spend all day on digital devices, the documentary’s suggestion that using digital devices causes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children is questionable.

The neuroscientist interviewed about this notes that studies have found “correlations” between digital device use and ADHD diagnoses, but the documentary never explains to viewers that correlation doesn’t equal causation. It may be that having ADHD makes children more likely to use digital devices, rather than digital devices causing ADHD.

Even more importantly, longitudinal studies have looked for evidence that device use causes ADHD in children and haven’t found any.

There are other reasons why the science here is much less conclusive than the documentary suggests. Studies that find these correlations often use parents’ estimates of their children’s “screen time” to measure technology use.

This method is now regarded by some experts as an almost meaningless measure of technology use. Parent estimates are usually inaccurate, and “screen time” combines many different technologies into one concept while failing to account for the content being watched or the context of use.

Read more:
Relax, it’s just a ringlight for kids. Toys like the ‘vlogger set’ prepare them for a digital world

The trope of pseudo-connections

Another key focus in the documentary is the idea that online interactions and relationships are not real and have no value. There are claims about “pseudo-connections” leading to poor mental health and increased loneliness.

Overall, the documentary suggests online communication is fake and harmful while in-person interaction is real and beneficial.

This well-worn trope ignores decades of evidence about the value of online interactions and relationships. Keeping in touch with friends and family overseas, finding people with shared interests, and political organising and activism are all meaningful online interactions.

It’s especially important to recognise that online friendships and interactions can be crucial for LGBTIQ+ young people. These young people suffer disproportionate rates of suicide and mental illness. However, studies have repeatedly shown digital communication tools such as social media provide them with valuable sources of emotional support, friendships and informal learning, and are ultimately linked to improved mental health.

Read more:
Scare-mongering about kids and social media helps no-one

Strangers on the internet?

Mirror Mirror pays a lot of attention to the dangers of children interacting with strangers online. Its most alarmist claim on this topic is that today, the majority of children’s friends are strangers on the internet.

However, research has consistently shown young people mostly use social media to connect with people they already know. However, other kinds of online spaces, like gaming platforms, are also accessed by children and do encourage interactions between strangers. Serious harms can come from these kinds of interactions, although it’s important to remember this is less common than you might think.

A world-leading European Union study of children’s internet use provides a more balanced picture. It found most children are not interacting with strangers online and when children meet friends from the internet in person, it’s usually a happy experience.

The study emphasises that while it’s important to talk to children about managing risks, meeting new people online can have benefits, such as finding friends with similar interests or practising a foreign language.

Read more:
Children can be exposed to sexual predators online, so how can parents teach them to be safe?

The anonymity trope

In the show’s second episode, Sampson states anonymity is “perhaps the biggest killer of empathy” in internet communication. The documentary never defines anonymity and frames it as almost exclusively negative.

While anonymity can be a part of the way people inflict harms online, forcing people to use their real names doesn’t automatically make them behave better.

Research has also shown online anonymity is used for many different purposes, including positive ones. It can reduce online harms such as doxxing and enable consensual sexual interactions. It can also ensure that people who experience marginalisation feel comfortable using the internet without fear of retribution.

Mirror Mirror is too quick to frame anonymity as the cause of online abuse rather than as one of many contributing factors. It’s important we don’t lose sight of these other factors, especially the social contexts of misogyny and racism in which online abuse occurs.

The real issues

The documentary includes some heartbreaking accounts from parents, young people and women who have experienced devastating harm online. These are real issues and, as Sampson notes, responsibility for fixing them lies with tech platforms, regulators and educators.

We wholeheartedly agree and welcome discussions about regulating big tech and developing awareness and education campaigns.

But we would like to see more practical discussion of how platforms need to change, and fewer sensationalist claims and implicit critiques of individual users.

Read more:
Coroner finds social media contributed to 14-year-old Molly Russell’s death. How should parents and platforms react?

Kate Mannell is a Research Fellow in the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, which is funded by the Australian Research Council.

Caitlin McGrane is the Manager, Policy and Online Safety, at Gender Equity Victoria. Gender Equity Victoria has received State and Federal Government to investigate experiences and solutions to gendered online harassment.

– ref. Todd Sampson’s ‘Mirror Mirror’ raises the alarm on our lives online – but not all its claims are supported by evidence – https://theconversation.com/todd-sampsons-mirror-mirror-raises-the-alarm-on-our-lives-online-but-not-all-its-claims-are-supported-by-evidence-192395

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

The northern Murray-Darling Basin produces 93% of Australia’s cotton. Cotton is one of Australia’s biggest agricultural industries – worth about A$2 billion each year – and a steady supply of water is crucial for production.

Our recently published research reveals that since the 1990s, average April-May rainfall in the northern basin has decreased significantly. The decrease coincides with accelerated climate change.

Our research also found average or below-average rainfall in the remaining cool season months June to September. Without substantial spring or summer rain, this leads to less rainfall runoff in dams – and less water to irrigate cotton and other crops.

Climate change will bring more frequent droughts, as well as more frequent flooding. These two future extremes in rainfall both have the potential to damage Australia’s lucrative cotton industry.

A vital river system

The northern Murray-Darling Basin spans northeast New South Wales and southeast Queensland. It comprises floodplains of streams or small rivers that feed into the Darling River.

Cotton in the basin is mostly grown on clay soils on floodplains next to rivers. When rivers flood after heavy rain, the soil stores water for later plant growth.

Water stored in the cooler months ensures an adequate supply of water in summer, when cotton crops require the most water. Insufficient rain in the cooler months means dam water will be needed in summer. But highly variable summer rain means this water is not always available.

Maintaining water flow through the northern Murray-Darling Basin is crucial. Many farms and communities rely on river water for human consumption and to irrigate cotton and other crops. And a sustainable water supply is vital for the ecological health of wetlands, waterholes and floodplains.

What we found

Our research examined annual April-May rainfall in the northern Murray-Darling Basin from 1911 to 2019. Other research has concentrated on autumn rainfall for southeast Australia but not specifically on this part of the basin.

We already knew 94% of water gauges in the northern Murray-Darling Basin showed declining trends in water flow since records began in 1970. Our previous research had also found a declining rainfall trend in April-May in the southern Murray-Darling Basin. So we wanted to see if the trend was similar in the north.

For the drought from 2017 to 2019, almost all the northern parts of the basin experienced their driest ever period or close to it.

But the consecutive La Niñas of 2020-21 and 2021-22 brought heavy rain to the northern Murray-Darling Basin – filling dams and leading to flooding.

Rain is generated by short-term events such as thunderstorms, as well as large-scale systems. In eastern Australia, these include climate drivers such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Southern Annular Mode and Indian Ocean Dipole.

These climate drivers influence weather over months and seasons. In the northern Murray-Darling Basin, they’re responsible for highly variable seasonal and annual rainfall. Specifically, we found:

• the El Niño-Southern Oscillation influences spring/summer rainfall
• the Southern Annular Mode affects summer rainfall
• the Indian Ocean Dipole is important for late winter/spring rainfall.

Significantly, global warming was a prominent contributor to extremes of rainfall in all seasons, both individually and in combination with other climate drivers.

Read more:
The Murrumbidgee River’s wet season height has dropped by 30% since the 1990s — and the outlook is bleak

North vs south

Typically, it rains more in the northern Murray-Darling Basin during the warmer season, and more in the south in the late cool season. Both receive significantly decreased rainfall in April and May.

So in the north, reduced April-May rainfall, coupled with the usual lower rainfall late in the cool season, can mean dams are not full heading into the warmer season where irrigation water is crucial for cotton crops.

A compounding factor is that the northern dams have about one-third the capacity of the south. What’s more, rising temperatures since the 1990s have increased evaporation lost from vegetation across the basin – and during 2018-2019, the evaporation was higher in the north.

So what does all this mean? The results suggest global warming will both increase temperatures and rainfall extremes in the northern Murray-Darling Basin, bringing more frequent droughts and floods. The associated impact on yields will likely threaten the future of cotton farming – by far the basin’s most important crop.

Read more:
Cotton breeders are using genetic insights to make this global crop more sustainable

Looking ahead

About 90% of Australia’s cotton crop is irrigated. This changes each year depending on how much natural rainfall is received across the cotton-growing catchments.

Our research confirms rainfall extremes in the northern Murray-Darling Basin are increasing. The subsequent longer and more frequent droughts and floods are likely to lead to lower cotton yields, which may affect the livelihood of the communities dependent on cotton farming.

River flows are affected by both rainfall and human management of rivers, such as the allocation of water for irrigation and other uses. More accurate rainfall models are needed to help state and local water authorities make crucial management decisions. These models should predict the climate drivers identified in our study.

Read more:
While towns run dry, cotton extracts 5 Sydney Harbours’ worth of Murray Darling water a year. It’s time to reset the balance

Joshua Hartigan receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Lance M Leslie and Milton Speer 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. Cotton on: one of Australia’s most lucrative farming industries is in the firing line as climate change worsens – https://theconversation.com/cotton-on-one-of-australias-most-lucrative-farming-industries-is-in-the-firing-line-as-climate-change-worsens-191864

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Joy Godden, VIce-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, Centre for People, Place and Planet, Edith Cowan University

All around us, climate change is worsening existing disadvantage. In Australia, we need only look to low-income households hit harder by rising energy and fuel prices, and flood responses in northern New South Wales overlooking the needs of people with disability.

These are examples of “climate injustice”. In our research on climate change and social justice in Australia, we have found again and again that people already experiencing marginalisation are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

But importantly, these are often the groups leading social movements to demand that equity and fairness for current and future generations are at the heart of climate action.

Sadly, climate justice is still not central to current climate deliberations, as shown in Labor’s recent refusal to rule out new coal and gas projects – despite the huge impact on emissions. These complex injustices will require transformative policy responses to ensure no one is left behind.

Climate change makes existing inequalities worse

Over the past decade, we have conducted feminist and participatory research projects about climate justice, in partnership with grassroots communities.

We have found climate change acts to reinforce existing systems of oppression and inequality. People who already experience marginalisation and disadvantage in our community are worse placed to weather climate extremes. If you are living in low quality housing and struggling to pay the bills, you will not have spare cash to cool your home during a heatwave.

Many other researchers have come to similar conclusions. We know climate change is already forcing some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to leave their traditional homelands.

We also know violence can increase against women and children during and after extreme weather events – as it did after the enormous 2009 Black Saturday fires.

There has been discrimination against LGBTQIA+ peoples in disaster recovery. And low income earners face increased costs of living to cope with unbearable heat or cold.

When we think about climate action, we tend to think of solar panels, electrified transport and wind turbines. That’s because climate policies focus on technology-based answers.

For instance, in Western Australia’s 2020 climate policy, “hydrogen” is mentioned 58 times while the word “people” is only used once. This focus on “techno-fixes” promotes climate solutions while overlooking entrenched systems of disadvantage and injustice.

Living on Country is becoming harder

Australia’s remote Indigenous communities already face real challenges in living on Country as global heating intensifies.

As Wardaman woman and Central Land Council policy director Josie Douglas told The Guardian,

without action to stop climate change, people will be forced to leave their country and leave behind much of what makes them Aboriginal.

The way the Aboriginal Health Council of WA describes climate change is telling: it is “a disease that […] affects and impacts on every living thing”.

As climate change affects Country, impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples include personal grief and loss, water and food insecurity, and destruction of sacred places and wild food networks.

Issues such as poor-quality housing make it increasingly difficult for First Nations peoples to live on Country. Cheaply built cement houses become sweltering hotboxes.

Importantly, this is a story of strength and resilience. Many First Nations peoples are highly active in responding to the threat, campaigning for climate justice through better protection of Country. First Nations peoples are also developing community-owned renewable energy so they can live and work on Country with greater energy independence.

And a group of Torres Strait Islanders took their human rights complaint against the federal government to the United Nations over the government’s inaction on climate change. They won.

Read more:
Disaster survivors feel more prepared for the next one but are often left out of planning

Climate change can kill

Over the Black Summer of 2019–20, forests up and down the east coast burned much more land than usual. The dense smoke from these fires led to the death of an estimated 445 people, the bushfire royal commission heard.

This is the starkest example of how climate change can worsen health. But it can also operate in insidious ways.

Two years ago, Western Australia released the findings of the world’s first public inquiry on how climate change affects health. It found children and youth, farming communities, people with disabilities, low income earners and older people at particular risk.

Climate change also worsens gender inequality and social justice issues such as poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. For instance, as climate change upends traditional farming and fishing livelihoods, some women are forced to shoulder more unpaid labour caring for family and community health and wellbeing.

Australia’s overstretched (and highly feminised) social services workforce is now increasingly having to respond to the fallout from climate change.

Young people told us of their growing grief and distress. As one teenage respondent said,

climate change can be sad and overwhelming for young people, particularly due to our powerlessness to fix the issue.

Read more:
‘Die of cold or die of stress?’: Social housing is frequently colder than global health guidelines

Action can help on many fronts

Communities are adapting, building resilience, and working to stem climate change. They demand just climate solutions upholding the rights of people and the planet and address the structural drivers of disadvantage, like colonialism.

The worldwide school strike movement has galvanised a generation, confronted world leaders and shifted the views of powerful institutions. Climate activism is also a proven way of countering a sense of powerlessness and eco-anxiety.

From farmers and bushfire survivors to sportspeople and parents, Australians with lived experience of climate change are turning to collective action to demand a safer world.

Their approach adds to the overwhelming evidence that social justice and equity need to be at the heart of climate action.

Read more:
How climate change is turning remote Indigenous houses into dangerous hot boxes

Naomi Joy Godden has received research funding from Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre, Plan International Australia, Climate Justice Union WA, and Oxfam Australia. She is the Chair of Just Home Margaret River Inc. and a member of the Australian Greens.

Kavita Naidu is a Council Member of Progressive International.

Dr Keely Boom has received funding from the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Edith Cowan University, and the Climate Justice Union for work on climate justice. She is the Executive Officer of the Climate Justice Programme. She teaches Climate Law at the Australian National University.

– ref. Climate change hits some of us much harder than others – but affected groups are fighting back – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-hits-some-of-us-much-harder-than-others-but-affected-groups-are-fighting-back-176805

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew M. Baker, Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Environmental Science, Queensland University of Technology

Life on Earth is undergoing a period of mass extinction – the sixth in history, and the first caused by humans. As species disappear at an alarming rate, we have learned that we understand only a fraction of Earth’s variety of life.

The task of describing this biodiversity before it is lost relies on the discipline of taxonomy, the scientific practice of classifying and naming organisms.

Read more:
It’s not the science of tax, and five other things you should know about taxonomy

But taxonomy is far more than just naming things. It underpins an enormous range of human activities, including biology (via health and conservation management), the economy (via agriculture and biosecurity) and many other areas of endeavour.

Unfortunately, taxonomy is suffering globally from reduced support and funding. This is an area of ongoing concern recognised in Australia’s State of the Environment report released in July this year. The workforce of taxonomists has declined when it is needed most.

Taxonomists unite

So, what is being done?

Communities of taxonomists in Australia and the world over are making a concerted effort to face the challenge of naming and understanding Earth’s unknown species.

Australian taxonomists are garnering support to achieve the goal of documenting all Australian species by 2050.

Read more:
About 500,000 Australian species are undiscovered – and scientists are on a 25-year mission to finish the job

This ambitious plan requires not just government and other external support but also co-ordination of our taxonomists. Success will mean bringing together those who study lesser-known groups, such as insects, spiders and fungi, with those who work on more familiar groups such as vertebrates, including mammals.

Mammals under threat

Mammals are perhaps the best known and cherished group of species on the planet. Even so, many mammals remain undiscovered.

Mammals are also among the most threatened animal groups globally. And because it has contributed the most species to the list, Australia has the worst modern mammal extinction record of any country, along with one of the most distinctive mammal faunas on Earth: about 90% of our terrestrial mammals live nowhere else.

Read more:
Extinction crisis: native mammals are disappearing in Northern Australia, but few people are watching

More than 100 species that lived only in Australia are recognised as having become extinct since 1788.

Thirty-nine of these extinct species are mammals. Most recently, this includes the Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola), a native rodent declared extinct in 2016, and the first known mammal extinction due at least in part to human-induced climate change.

In the face of an avalanche of human-mediated threats, including climate warming, land-use change and introduction of pest species, are the host of hidden mammal species destined for extinction before they are even discovered, described and known to humanity?

The Australasian Mammal Taxonomy Consortium

To help address this existential threat, and in response to the call to arms within Australian taxonomy, we have formed the Australasian Mammal Taxonomy Consortium (AMTC), a group affiliated with the Australian Mammal Society.

The consortium aims to promote stability and consensus, provide advice and guidance, and promote the cause and importance of Australasian mammal taxonomy to both scientists and the broader public.

We have recently introduced the aspirations and aims of our group in a review paper and published our first list of species, covering Australian mammals.

We recognise 404 Australian mammal species, including 2 monotremes (platypus and short-beaked echidna), 175 marsupials (such as the Tasmanian devil, the numbat, the koala, kangaroos and so on) and 227 placentals (such as rodents, bats, seals, whales and dolphins). The list includes 11 species, and numerous subspecies, that have only been discovered and formally named in the past decade.

A suite of other recognised variable forms, new species-in-waiting, need study and description.

The Australian mammal species list will be updated annually to incorporate new species names. In the future, working with research groups throughout the region, we will produce lists of mammal species found elsewhere in Australasia.

A new launching point

We hope this will standardise the use of mammal species names, highlight groups where further taxonomic work is required, and provide a launching point for this work.

In the past decade, rapid DNA sequencing has revolutionised our ability to understand biodiversity, even while species loss to extinction at the hands of humanity is at an all-time high. This juxtaposition makes it both an exciting and critically important time for taxonomy.

We hope the Australasian Mammal Taxonomy Consortium can do its part to help grow and focus an interest to better understand and conserve our precious Australasian mammals before it is too late.

The authors comprise a steering committee representing the broader Australasian Mammal Taxonomy Consortium working group, which includes more than 30 members.

Andrew Baker receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study program.

Diana Fisher has received funding including species discovery from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund and the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund

Greta Frankham receives funding from the Australian Museum Foundation, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, NSW Department of Transport

Kenny Travouillon receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS).

Linette Umbrello receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study program.

Mark Eldridge receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Planning and Environment and the Australian Museum Foundation.

Sally Potter receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Stephen Jackson 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. Australia has hundreds of mammal species. We want to find them all – before they’re gone – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-hundreds-of-mammal-species-we-want-to-find-them-all-before-theyre-gone-185495