Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martien Lubberink, Associate Professor of Economics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

With the transfer this week of Kiwibank’s assets to a state-owned company, the New Zealand crown has now taken full control of the bank. At an estimated cost of NZ$2.1 billion, the change of ownership has all the hallmarks of a government bailout.

Former owners NZ Post, the Accident Compensation Corporation and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund could be considered justified in wanting to get out. It was an ailing bank in the making.

The main capital ratio dropped from a healthy 13% in 2018 to 10.5% this June – the minimum level the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority requires banks to meet in order to be seen as unquestionably strong.

Return on equity lingered at around 6% per year, while the bank’s larger competitors offered a return twice as high. Added to this were the high capital requirements announced by the Reserve Bank in 2019 and which are now being phased in.

Too important to fail?

The government has promised to recapitalise the bank to help it grow. Whatever the bailout is called officially, it was the only realistic option. That said, the government cited several reasons for its decision to transfer control.

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One was to keep the bank in New Zealand hands. The government has also pledged its full commitment to support Kiwibank to be a genuine competitor in the banking industry. And lastly, the transfer allows “all future profits to stay in the country – unlike the Australian-owned banks.”

But these justifications should not be taken at face value, and it is worth looking at them one by one.

Keeping profits in the country

The idea that keeping profits in the country automatically creates value for New Zealanders is by no means a given.

Kiwibank’s latest reported profits were $136 million, or $25 per New Zealander. This pales in comparison to the profits reported by the big four Australian-owned banks: in total, about $6 billion, or $1,200 per head of population.

Other banks either keep their profits or they pay them out to their owners and shareholders. In practice, these are institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies – some of them New Zealand-based.

Moreover, New Zealanders who own shares in Australian banks will receive dividends. Unlike the owner of Kiwibank, these Kiwi investors will benefit directly from their investments.

Lastly, it should be noted that banks have accumulated profits in New Zealand because of the increasing capital requirements. Since 2018, the four Australian-owned banks in New Zealand retained profits worth $12 billion. These would otherwise be transferred to their parents across the Tasman.

Again, these banks contribute to a stable financial system, keep profits in the country and do not need support.

Local ownership

In practice, all New Zealand banks are locally incorporated because of Reserve Bank requirements. Foreign-owned banks operate largely independently from their parents. This has led to inconveniences.

For example, ASB bank cannot freely use new technologies developed by its owner Commonwealth Bank, even though there would be efficiencies of scale if they were allowed to do so.

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Also, creditors cannot hold a foreign parent bank liable when its New Zealand subsidiary fails. It’s therefore unlikely that foreign ownership would significantly change Kiwibank’s operations.

But the prospect of foreign ownership could add value. It could encourage its management to step up efforts to grow and compete.

Viability and competition

With a 5% market share, Kiwibank is small and lacks the critical mass required to thrive and compete effectively. Its small size is already problematic, as the bank cannot serve large clients. The government, for example, does not rely on Kiwibank for its banking.

The growth opportunities for Kiwibank are further limited because the New Zealand banking market is tightly regulated and conservative. European banks, for example, are much further ahead when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. Money transfers between European bank accounts are executed in real time, while such transfers still take hours in New Zealand.

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The government claims that the banking market has become more competitive since the establishment of Kiwibank. According to Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Kiwibank continues to put pressure on the big four.

That may be so, but other small competitors would do that too. Rabobank, for example, is competitive in farm lending. Other small banks remain well-capitalised and don’t face the same challenges as Kiwibank.

The risks ahead

The most likely way forward for Kiwibank is to further increase lending to riskier clients. Robertson has already alluded to this, arguing Kiwibank could be a disruptor in the industry by focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises.

The problem is that Kiwibank needs the expertise to do this. Adding capital is not enough. And the government will want to avoid Kiwibank taking on too much risk because that will put the future of the bank itself at risk.

On top of this is the risk of Kiwibank’s owner wanting to meddle with its operations. While the present government promises to respect operational independence, who knows what a future government might do.

Finally, there is the question of moral hazard – setting a precedent for other banks. What if one of the other, smaller banks finds itself in trouble? Will the government step in? Again, the decision to save Kiwibank suggests the future could be uncertain indeed.

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

– ref. The government taking full ownership of Kiwibank is a bailout in all but name – what are the risks now? – https://theconversation.com/the-government-taking-full-ownership-of-kiwibank-is-a-bailout-in-all-but-name-what-are-the-risks-now-189378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law, Australian National University

Recent comments by Defence Minister Richard Marles about Australia, China and the international law of the sea raise the spectre of Australia acting as an Indo-Pacific “deputy sheriff” for the United States, enforcing the rules-based international order.

According to Marles, China’s live-fire military operations encircling Taiwan have breached the UN Law of the Sea, which requires countries to ensure peace and security in international waters. Marles is calling for China to cease its operations around Taiwan and has asserted that Australia will continue its own peaceful military operations in the region.

Read more:
Explainer: why is the South China Sea such a hotly contested region?

Marles was responding to Taiwan Strait tensions following the recent visit of US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and resulting Chinese military exercises in and around Taiwan including the launching of ballistic missiles. Australia’s military chiefs have also implied Australia will not go backwards in its South China Sea operations and will continue surveillance and other activities.

China increasingly asserts itself in the region

Throughout the year, China has taken an increasingly robust approach towards American, Australian, and Canadian military activities in the South China and East China Seas.

In May a RAAF P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft was challenged by Chinese military aircraft near the Chinese claimed Paracel Islands. In July, HMAS Parramatta was subject to surveillance and monitoring by a number of Chinese aircraft and naval vessels, including a nuclear submarine, while passing through the South China and East China Seas.

In both instances, the official Chinese position has been that the Australian ships and aircraft were unnecessarily and illegally intruding into Chinese waters and airspace. China justifies its actions as seeking to expel a foreign military force from an area over which it exercises sovereignty.

Australia’s response is that it is acting consistently with the international law of the sea. Its position has been that its ships are exercising freedom of navigation and its aircraft the freedom of overflight.

Read more:
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Actions exacerbate growing tensions

Each of these encounters occurs within a wider geopolitical and legal space which the recent tensions over Taiwan have further sharpened. They align with three distinct types of recent actions.

First, China has increasingly taken a much more assertive position throughout the region with respect to its territorial claims to both the South China Sea islands and Taiwan.

Second, China is seeking to exercise sovereign control over the waters and much of the airspace in the South China Sea.

Finally, China wishes to expel all foreign militaries from the region, especially the United States.

The United States has for 50 years conducted freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) around the world to ensure the freedom of navigation for American merchant ships and warships. US FONOPs originally challenged sweeping Cold War claims by the former Soviet Union and evolved to challenge excessive maritime claims, or claims inconsistent with international law, by any country.

FONOPs in Asia-Pacific

These FONOPs are a Congressionally-approved and fully transparent military operation designed to advance a number of US national security interests.

There is a large number of ships assigned to FONOPs as part of the Seventh Fleet, the largest of the US Navy’s forward-deployed fleets, based in Japan. There are 50-70 ships and submarines, 150 aircraft, and more than 27,000 sailors and marines regularly deployed to the Seventh Fleet.

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Despite strong words, the US has few options left to reverse China’s gains in the South China Sea

Recently, FONOPs have begun to focus on the South China Sea, sending multiple assets to respond to China’s actions. In July, an encounter between the USS Benfold_= and the Chinese military was soon followed by the US deploying an aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, with accompanying support ships and aircraft. Australia does not have that level of back up and support, let alone an aircraft carrier.

Australia’s position

The official Australian position is that it does not conduct US-style FONOPs. Australia has consistently claimed under both Coalition and Labor governments that it seeks to assert the freedom of navigation and strongly supports the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The Albanese government has stated Australia’s formal position has not changed and any South China Sea operations – whether at sea or in the air – are routine.

The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) says its operations are often associated with port visits within the region to Vietnam, Korea, or Japan. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) notes they are undertaking regular surveillance operations throughout the region in cooperation with regional partners.

Future Australian operations?

Port visits and surveillance operations are all legitimate grounds for the Australian military to be operating in the South China Sea. However, it is the pattern of conduct and the support that Australia is showing for the Americans that needs more attention.

That Defence Minister Marles is standing by his 2016 comments proposing Australia conduct its own FONOPs, including within 12 nautical miles of the artificial islands China has built, may indicate further Australian military operations in the region.

Already, the 2022 maritime patrols and interactions with the Chinese military give the appearance Australia is acting as an American “deputy sheriff” enforcing the rules-based order of the law of the sea. If this is what the Australian government intends, there needs to be more transparency about Australia’s ultimate regional goals and objectives, the consequences of these tactics towards the bilateral relationship with China, and the back-up Australia can expect from the Americans if miscalculations arise and incidents occur during encounters with the Chinese military.

Donald Rothwell receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. Is Australia in danger of becoming the US’s ‘deputy sheriff’ in the South China Sea? – https://theconversation.com/is-australia-in-danger-of-becoming-the-uss-deputy-sheriff-in-the-south-china-sea-189314

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Greenacre, Senior lecturer in marketing, Monash University

When asked to write the numbers from one to ten in a sequence, how do you order them? Horizontally? Vertically? Left to right? Top to bottom? Would you place them randomly?

It has been often been assumed, and taught in schools in Western countries, that the “correct” ordering of numbers is from left to right (1, 2, 3, 4…) rather than right to left (10, 9, 8, 7…). The ordering of numbers along a horizontal dimension is known as a “mental number line” and describes an important way we represent number and quantity in space.

Studies show humans prefer to position larger numbers to the right and smaller numbers to the left. People are usually faster and more accurate at comparing numbers when larger ones are to the right and smaller ones are to the left, and people with brain damage that disrupts their spatial processing also show similar disruptions in number processing.

But so far, there has been little research testing whether the horizontal dimension is the most important one we associate with numbers. In new research published in PLOS ONE, we found that humans actually process numbers faster when they are displayed vertically – with smaller numbers at the bottom and larger numbers at the top.

Not just humans

Our associations between number and space are influenced by language and culture, but these links are not unique to humans.

Tests on three-day-old chicks show they
seek smaller numbers with a leftwards bias and larger numbers with a rightwards one. Pigeons and blue jays seem to have a left-to-right or right-to-left mental number line, depending on the individual.

These findings suggest associations between space and numbers may be wired into the brains of humans and other animals.

However, while many studies have examined left-to-right and right-to-left horizontal mental number lines, few have explored whether our dominant mental number line is even horizontal at all.

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How we test for these spatial-numerical associations

To test how quickly people can process numbers in different arrangements, we set up an experiment where people were shown pairs of numbers from 1 to 9 on a monitor and used a joystick to indicate where the larger number was located.

If the 6 and 8 were shown on the screen, for example, the correct answer would be 8. A participant would indicate this by moving the joystick towards the 8 as fast as possible.

To measure participant response times as accurately as possible, we used fast-refresh 120 Hertz monitors and high-performance zero-lag arcade joysticks.

What we found

When the numbers were separated both vertically and horizontally, we found only the vertical arrangement affected response time. This suggests that, given the opportunity to use either a horizontal or vertical mental representation of numbers in space, participants only used the vertical representation.

When the larger number was above the smaller number, people responded much more quickly than in any other arrangement of numbers.

This suggests our mental number line actually goes from bottom (small numbers) to top (large numbers).

Why is this important?

Numbers affect almost every part of our lives (and our safety). Pharmacists need to correctly measure doses of medicine, engineers need to determine stresses on buildings and structures, pilots need to know their speed and altitude, and all of us need to know what button to press on an elevator.

The way we learn to use numbers, and how designers choose to display numerical information to us, can have important implications for how we make fast and accurate decisions. In fact, in some time-critical decision-making environments, such as aeroplane cockpits and stock market floors, numbers are often displayed vertically.

Read more:
Numbers on the mind: how maths can help explain the workings of our brain

Our findings, and another recent study, may have implications for designers seeking to help users quickly understand and use numerical information. Modern devices enable very innovative number display options, which could help people use technology more efficiently and safely.

There are also implications for education, suggesting we should teach children using vertical bottom-to-top mental number lines as well as the familiar left-to-right ones. Bottom-to-top appears to be how our brains are wired to be most efficient at using numbers – and that might help getting our heads around how numbers work a little easier.

Luke Greenacre receives funding from the NHMRC. He is affiliated with Monash University and the University of South Australia.

Adrian Dyer receives funding from The Australian Research Council and The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Scarlett Howard receives funding from Monash University and the Hermon Slade Foundation. She is affiliated with Pint of Science Australia.

Jair Garcia 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. Counting from left to right feels ‘natural’ – but new research shows our brains count faster from bottom to top – https://theconversation.com/counting-from-left-to-right-feels-natural-but-new-research-shows-our-brains-count-faster-from-bottom-to-top-189339

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

Now entering its seventh month, Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine shows no sign of resolution.

It has become a grim battle over territory between dug-in forces, resembling the conflicts of last century instead of the complex melange of covert operations and hybrid warfare that supposedly characterise contemporary “grey zone” contests.

Both sides are playing to their strengths: Russia to its dominance in firepower, and Ukraine to its ability to corrode the invader by targeting its supply lines.

Yet this is only part of the picture. Putin is actually waging three wars, each of them undeclared. He simultaneously seeks to control Ukraine, to dominate Russia’s region, and to hasten the fall of the West. And is there an internal struggle on the horizon?

Russian expansion

Putin’s “Special Military Operation” is an undeclared war of imperial expansion seeking to enlarge Russian territory by, as Putin himself put it, taking back “our lands”.

Depending on how we assess its war aims – which have pivoted from conquest and regime change to “protecting” the people of Donbas and back again – Russia’s performance is mixed. Certainly it has succeeded in bringing Ukraine to the brink of state failure. It has already left a reconstruction burden that will take decades to overcome.

Despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s perfectly understandable desire to keep fighting until all Russian invaders leave its territory, in even the most optimistic outcome for Kyiv the complete restoration of Donbas or Crimea is far from assured.

But Putin has also decimated Russia’s conventional forces for surprisingly little gain in six months. Along the way, he has blunted his own rhetoric about Russian power, demonstrated a callous disregard for human rights, and revealed his armed forces to be corrupt, poorly managed, and deficient in doctrine, discipline and capabilities.

Struggle for regional primacy

Putin’s second undeclared war is aimed at consolidating control over a sphere of influence stretching from Central Asia to Central Europe.

It is most certainly a war: Russia destroyed Georgia’s armed forces in five days during 2008 over the disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It has threatened Moldova with invasion if it abandons neutrality. And it has intervened with military forces in Kazakhstan, and in the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Putin is badly losing his struggle for regional primacy. Russia’s diminishing influence relative to China – especially in Central Asia – has long been recognised. But the war against Ukraine shows just how much the Kremlin’s reach has slipped.

Kazakhstan has called the Russian invasion a war, and sent aid to Ukraine. Moldova is actively seeking to join the EU. With the exception of Belarus, all the states that were once part of the USSR abstained in the United Nations instead of supporting Russia’s invasion.

Putin’s stated desire to prevent Ukraine becoming an “anti-Russia” has failed utterly. Even Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenka, beholden to Putin for his political survival, has resisted attempts to lure him directly into the conflict. And the decision by Finland and Sweden to join NATO has brought the military alliance closer to Russia, lengthening its border with the alliance by some 1,300 kilometres.

War with the West

Putin’s third undeclared war is his most nebulous, taking the form of a global struggle against the West, with an eye on resetting Europe’s strategic map.

It has three main components:

1. political warfare designed to fragment European and North American societies from within

2. exploiting dependencies for strategic purposes

3. and seeking to weaken Western influence by courting the parts of the world where its reach is weakest.

Putin’s war with the West is important for his great power vision of Russia as a Eurasian Third Rome. It also carries the most risk for those who seek to contain him. The spectre of Putin running rampant in Europe under the indifferent eye of a second Trump administration should underline the urgent task of healing America’s fractured society.

A looming hard winter for many Europeans will reinforce the lesson that deterrence comes with costs, as does over-dependence on resource giants who can weaponise energy for strategic leverage. The West must also recognise that comfy rhetoric about Russia being a global pariah is untrue: there are plenty of nations sympathetic to Kremlin disinformation about NATO’s historic culpability for today’s events in Ukraine.

The West’s future credibility also relies on how well it withstands Russian pressure at home and abroad. It will need to resist the temptation of inward-looking statism and continue supplying Ukraine with the weapons and assistance it needs. It will also need to actively counter false Russian narratives currently flooding India, Africa, and parts of South-East Asia.

But is another undeclared war on the horizon for Putin?

The car-bomb killing of Darya Dugina, daughter of Russia’s neofascist philosopher Alexander Dugin, has prompted an outpouring of bile from the Russian extreme right.

With it has come the first hint of domestic fragility in Russia since February’s invasion, which saw 15,000 anti-war protesters arrested.

Both Dugin (who is neither Putin’s “brain” nor his muse) and Dugina (who promoted far-right propaganda) are bit players in Russian politics at best. However, the targeting of an ultranationalist is a rare event in Russia, where assassinations, poisonings and “accidental” deaths overwhelmingly afflict moderates.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (shortened to FSB) took a lightning-fast 36 hours before unconvincingly announcing it had cracked the case. Displaying a Ukrainian National Guard ID card (likely faked) it claimed the perpetrator was Natalya Vovk, a member of the Azov Regiment, which Russia falsely claims to be a Nazi-dominated military unit. According to the FSB, Vovk had moved into Dugina’s apartment block, followed her for weeks, carried out the bombing, and then escaped to Estonia with her young daughter and her cat.

While we will probably never discover the true identity of Dugina’s killer, any remotely plausible explanation is damaging for Russia. If Ukraine was indeed to blame, how did Russian security fail to stop Vovk at the border, since deep background-checks of all Ukrainians entering the country are supposedly routine? And why was she permitted to leave?

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Alternatively, if the killing was carried out by the FSB itself, was it a rogue anti-Putin faction, or acting on Putin’s orders to whip up flagging support for the war? If the former, it points to a deep rift in Russia’s elite. If the latter, Putin has cynically targeted Russia’s ultra-right, which has criticised him for not being tough enough on Ukraine.

Finally, very few observers believe the hitherto-unknown National Republican Army, which claimed responsibility for the killing, was to blame. But if it were, then it points to the real possibility of organised domestic terrorism in Russia.

So any way you cut it, the killing of Darya Dugina brings Putin’s own leadership into question. This is something he has scrupulously avoided. He is obsessed with control, and enjoys the support of a massive propaganda machine to turn defeats into triumphs and blame others for his mistakes.

That’s a common vehicle for autocrats to deflect criticism, and has certainly worked for Putin. But unlikely though a Russian revolution from below may be, history is replete with examples – including the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself – where lies, repression and personalised power eventually revealed the Emperor’s nakedness.

So perhaps three undeclared wars are not enough for Putin. Has he just lit the spark of another, personally more dangerous one?

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

– ref. Russia is fighting three undeclared wars. Its fourth – an internal struggle for Russia itself – might be looming – https://theconversation.com/russia-is-fighting-three-undeclared-wars-its-fourth-an-internal-struggle-for-russia-itself-might-be-looming-189129

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

Dogs get dementia too. But it’s often difficult to spot. Research published today shows how common it is, especially in dogs over ten years old.

Here are some behavioural changes to watch out for in your senior dog and when to consult your veterinarian.

What is doggy dementia?

Doggy dementia, or canine cognitive dysfunction, is similar to Alzheimer’s disease in humans, a progressive brain disease that comes with behavioural, cognitive and other changes.

It is generally seen in dogs over eight years old, but can occur in ones as young as six.

Pet owners may dismiss many behaviour changes as just a normal part of ageing. So it’s likely there are more dogs with it than we realise.

Veterinarians can also find it difficult to diagnose. There is no accurate, non-invasive test for it. And, just like humans, senior dogs are likely to have a number of other health issues that can complicate diagnosis.

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Does my dog have dementia?

Dogs with dementia can often get lost in their own backyard or home. They can get stuck behind furniture or in corners of the room, because they forget they have a reverse gear. Or they walk towards the hinge side of a door when trying to go through.

Dogs’ interactions with people and other pets can change. They may seek less or more affection from their owners than before, or start to get grumpy with the other dog in the home where once they were happy housemates. They may even forget faces they have known all their lives.

They also tend to sleep more during the day and be up more at night. They may pace, whine or bark, seemingly without purpose. Comfort does not often soothe them, and even if the behaviour is interrupted, it usually resumes quite quickly.

Sometimes caring for a senior dog with dementia is like having a puppy again, as they can start to toilet inside even though they are house-trained. It also becomes difficult for them to remember some of those basic behaviours they have known all their lives, and even more difficult to learn new ones.

Their overall activity levels can change too, everything from pacing all day, non-stop, to barely getting out of bed.

Lastly, you may also notice an increased level of anxiety. Your dog may not cope with being left alone any more, follow you from room to room, or get easily spooked by things that never bothered them before.

I think my dog has dementia, now what?

There are some medications that can help reduce signs of doggy dementia to improve quality of life and make caring for them a little easier. So, if you think your dog is affected, consult your veterinarian.

Our group is planning research into some non-drug treatments. This includes looking at whether exercise and training might help these dogs. But it’s early days yet.

Unfortunately there is no cure. Our best bet is to reduce the risk of getting the disease. This latest study suggests exercise might be key.

What did the latest study find?

US research published today gathered data from more than 15,000 dogs as part of the Dog Aging Project.

Researchers asked pet dog owners to complete two surveys. One asked about the dogs, their health status and physical activity. The second assessed the dogs’ cognitive function.

Some 1.4% of the dogs were thought to have canine cognitive dysfunction.

For dogs over ten years old, every extra year of life increased the risk of developing dementia by more than 50%. Less-active dogs were almost 6.5 times more likely to have dementia than dogs that were very active.

While this might suggest regular exercise could protect dogs against dementia, we can’t be sure from this type of study. Dogs with dementia, or with early signs of dementia, may be less likely to exercise.

However, we do know exercise can reduce the risk of dementia in people. So walking our dogs may help them and us reduce the risk of dementia.

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‘I love my girl so much’

Caring for a dog that has dementia can be hard, but rewarding. In fact, our group is studying the impact on carers.

We believe the burden and stress can be similar to what’s been reported when people care for someone with Alzheimer’s.

We also know people love their old dogs. One research participant told us:

I love my girl so much that I am willing to do anything for her. Nothing is too much trouble.

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

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

– ref. Dogs can get dementia – but lots of walks may lower the risk – https://theconversation.com/dogs-can-get-dementia-but-lots-of-walks-may-lower-the-risk-189297

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pi-Shen Seet, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Edith Cowan University

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

Next Thursday, union, business and political leaders will meet in Canberra for the jobs and skills summit. One of the key issues Treasurer Jim Chalmers has listed for discussion is “addressing skills shortages”.

We hear the term “skills shortages” all the time in media and policy debates about jobs and the economy. But what skills do we need, and more importantly, how do we get them?

While Australia must also think about longer-term planning, we suggest some solutions to train people for the vacancies we have now.

What skills do we need?

Australia’s unemployment rate is only 3.4%, and is currently at a 48-year low. There are more than 480,000 job vacancies, and many employers struggling to find and retain suitable workers.

Both treasury’s pre-summit issues paper and National Skills Commission show the most in-demand jobs are in nursing, disability care, accounting, retail and cafe work. These have a wide range of skill requirements: nursing jobs need at least 18 months for the relevant diploma, it is possible to get a disability care qualification in 12 weeks, while you can train on the job for retail.

We also know, 42% of technician and trade occupations are facing a skills shortage compared to 19% of other occupations that require skills assessed by an outside body. In a worrying trend, completion rates for trade apprenticeships declined to 54% for those who started in 2017, five percentage points lower than completion rates for those who started in 2013.

How do we fix this?

Many of these issues are well-known. Two major recent reviews have looked at Australia’s skills and training system. The Morrison government commissioned the 2019 Joyce review into vocational education and in 2020, the Productivity Commission did a study on skills and workforce development.

When it comes to quick fixes about jobs, migration is often seen as the answer. We have previously argued this does not position Australia well for the mid- or long term, rather we need to make changes to our education and training systems.

With this in mind, here are three ideas or changes that can bring about quick change to fill immediate gaps, but do not rely on migration.

3 ideas to fix the skills shortage now

1. Micro-credentials

Based on our research, industry, vocational education and university providers should do “micro-credentialling”. These are mini qualifications that can meet the current, specific gaps in a shorter amount of time.

Both Australian universities and TAFEs have begun doing this in recent years. This could include topics from business leadership and coding to disability support. If the job and skill requirements are higher, these micro-credentialed offerings can be upgraded to micro-apprenticeships.

Read more:
Migration offers an urgent fix for the skills we need right now, but education and training will set us up for the future

The summit should look at fast-tracking micro-credential schemes. Our research shows the lengthy process required to recognise and accredit training package skill sets – the formal mechanism for micro-credentials in the Australian VET system – makes it hard to adjust program offerings to meet changes in demand.

If we are going to respond quickly to market or technology changes, employers and managers also need to be flexible.

This may include changing their mindsets from only employing “fully qualified” employees, to hiring people that will require ongoing support for life-long learning.

2. Stop the tertiary education wars

While many education providers want a clear delineation between different skill levels and qualifications, and who can deliver what, these demarcations are artificial and restrict the ability to meet the needs of employers.

In many of the jobs facing shortages, there is not a clear line between what employees trained at different skill levels can and should do. For example, in hospitality and tourism, university graduates and VET sector diploma holders are all trained similarly in business operations and how to use industry-standard technology, while incorporating international and cultural perspectives.

Our research has shown that one of the largest challenges facing making the Australian skills and training system more flexible is the lack of cooperation between the vocational education and university sectors. Both often see each other as competitors for school leavers and government funding.

The TAFE and university sectors have already proven they can work together through a series of “test labs” that focus on manufacturing skills. The model could be applied for industries facing critical staffing and skills shortages such as health and disability care.

3. Stop the state wars

States and territories are also parochial and competitive when it comes to skills and this doesn’t help us fill shortages as a national level.

For example, the Western Australian government and mining sector have been enticing eastern states-based FIFO workers to relocate permanently to the west, with large financial incentives.

Meanwhile fee-free TAFE courses are set by state and territory governments, with a mind to which skills are needed locally, rather the bigger, national picture. This is in keeping with the traditional Australian view that skills training and education is mainly to meet local needs.

The Albanese government has already pledged to provide 465,000 fee-free TAFE places in areas with a critical skills gap. There is an opportunity here. If these places are created immediately, they will help states and territories train more workers for each other – instead of just for themselves.

Provided there is also a free flow of workers between states, this will reduce skill mismatches between employers and employees across the nation and boost productivity.

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

– ref. Yes, we know there is a ‘skills shortage’. Here are 3 jobs summit ideas to start fixing it right away – https://theconversation.com/yes-we-know-there-is-a-skills-shortage-here-are-3-jobs-summit-ideas-to-start-fixing-it-right-away-188833

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca English, Senior Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology

As of next year, a Melbourne private school will open to online-only enrolments for years five to 12.

It will cost A$18,000 per year in fees, and parents will have to supervise their child the whole time they are “at school”. It is billed as giving families flexibility and providing opportunities for those who live far away from the school. This comes as new data shows there has been a 44% rise in students homeschooling in Victoria since 2019.

There are good reasons why the mainstream school system does not work for some students. And there are multiple options for families to explore if they are considering learning from home.

At-home education in Australia

With a small population spread across a vast continent, Australia has a long history of distance and at-home education. There are public distance education schools in all states and territories.

Access, and pricing, depends on your state or territory. In Queensland, for example, anyone can access state distance education. Those who are “homeschooling by choice” are required to pay around $1,600 for the service; those who are “homeschooling by limited choice” don’t have to pay. In Western Australia, it is also available to students who require more “flexibility” or who want to study subjects not available at their school.

It may also suit students who are geographically isolated or whose circumstances mean they are unable to access school on a regular basis, perhaps because of health issues or extracurricular commitments such as elite sports training.

We also know in-person learning may not suit students with special education needs, such as those with autism or ADHD, students who are bullied, or those who feel the school system does not suit them.

Learning away from the mainstream system can also help accelerate gifted students.

In the wake of COVID lockdowns, many of these children have drifted toward homeschooling or private, often Christian, distance education offerings instead of going back to in-person learning at school.

Homeschooling enrolments have been rising

Mainstream school has been losing enrolments for a number of years – even before COVID. Home education/homeschooling is the fastest-growing education cohort in the world.

A recent study found that, in Australia, it’s grown 53% compared with the next closest alternative, independent schools. There were around 26,000 young people home educating in Australia in 2021 out of about four million school students overall, and that number has grown since then.

Read more:
Homeschooling boomed last year. But these 4 charts show it was on the rise before COVID

But at-home learning is not limited to home educators, nor is it new. Distance education, particularly by choice and among those in city or regional areas, has also seen significant growth in the past few years.

There is some evidence that many parents would like to keep their children home, at least some of the time, if they could. Some parents report they wanted more time with their children, or they want more control over they way their children learn.

The issues faced by many young people in mainstream schools, as well as high rates of anxiety diagnosed among young people, suggests there is a market for more flexibility at school. School refusal also appears to be on the rise.

While it requires a lot of parental support, those families who can find the flexibility in their lives to support this school enrolment might find it suits their child, even for a limited period of time.

Some studies suggest this approach is effective because it allows parents and educators to better meet the child’s learning needs.

What options do you have?

Most parents and students prefer the mainstream system, but for some, it doesn’t meet their needs or they want something different.

If you would like to enrol your child in an online-only school, but don’t have the time to supervise your child all day or $18,000, there are some alternatives.

In Victoria, parents can enrol their child part-time in school and keep their child home the rest of the time. This option is at the principal’s discretion and needs to be negotiated with the school.

Read more:
How can you support kids with ADHD to learn? Parents said these 3 things help

There are also other, private distance education schools that do not charge as much as this Victorian school. These include some secular options.

If your child is around 15 or older, TAFE might be an option and it may also provide avenues into higher education.

And there is always homeschooling, in which parents take full responsibility for their child’s learning, independent of a formal educational institution.

Whatever parents decide, if in-person, mainstream school is not working for your child, the chances are, if you look around, you’ll find something that might work better. Your options might be a lot cheaper than $18,000, too.

Rebecca English 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 a new online-only private school: what are the options if the mainstream system doesn’t suit your child? – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-new-online-only-private-school-what-are-the-options-if-the-mainstream-system-doesnt-suit-your-child-189138

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Stanford, Economist and Director, Centre for Future Work, Australia Institute; Honorary Professor of Political Economy, University of Sydney

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

The Treasury issues paper published in the lead-up to the Albanese government’s Jobs and Skills Summit runs to 11 pages of text. It mentions productivity 21 times.

It’s a safe bet that increasing productivity – put simply, looking at how Australia’s workers can produce more from the same inputs – will be a dominant theme in the summit’s crowded agenda.

That’s certainly the emphasis business groups want. Their pre-summit messaging has stressed that productivity is the secret to prosperity and higher wages.

It’s an equally safe bet the summit will hear a familiar list of business-friendly measures – deregulation, lower business taxes, liberalised immigration – as the means to that end.

Productivity growth is important. It is a vital dimension of economic success. It creates the possibility for higher living standards. But it doesn’t automatically deliver them.

Yes, we want work to be as productive as possible, but always within the bounds of safety, quality and fairness.

An uncritical obsession with productivity threatens to distract us from the deeper problems Australia must solve to make economic and social progress in the 21st century.

The wrong idea about productivity

Productivity has gained a bit of a bad name after decades of technocratic inquiries and pompous browbeating about how workers are unfocused or even lazy.

It is commonly misunderstood as anything that cuts costs, tightens belts or speeds up work. Some employers laughably describe wage cuts as a “productivity initiative” – turning economic theory on its head.

Properly measured, productivity means getting more out of what we put into the economy – first and foremost among these inputs is our labour.

It means valuing work and investing in workers, not cheapening and intensifying labour. It entails quality as much as quantity. Doubling pupil-student ratios in schools, or loading up nurses with extra patients, hardly improves genuine productivity.

In the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia’s productivity performance was certainly poor by historical standards. Labour productivity grew at an average annual rate of less than 1% – the slowest in the postwar era.

Australia’s productivity growth has been poor relative to other industrialised economies too, being below the OECD average over the past two decades.

But this poor performance needs to be kept in perspective.

Read more:
Why productivity growth stalled in 2005 (and isn’t about to improve)

Productivity has never been higher

First, productivity growth, even if slower than in the past, has still been positive. Hence the level of productivity demonstrated by the average Australian has never been higher.

In the three months to March (the most recent data available), an average hour of expended labour produced A$110 worth of gross domestic product (GDP). Even after adjusting for inflation, that’s a 13% gain in the past decade. (Workers, on average, receive less than half of that in compensation.)

The productivity slowdown of the 2010s reflected a complex set of causes. Likely culprits include the growth of insecure, relatively unproductive service jobs; very weak business investment in capital and innovation; and falling productivity in resource extraction (due to the exhaustion of more economical reserves).

Nevertheless, productivity growth remained positive.

There are signs of improvement

Second, there are encouraging signs productivity has picked up since the pandemic.

Huge swings in employment and output during the lockdowns complicate productivity measures, but despite these ups and downs, labour productivity was 6% higher in March 2022 than before COVID. That’s an annualised growth rate of 2.6%, rivalling the most exuberant years of the postwar boom.

A post-COVID improvement in productivity is visible in other countries too.

There is no consensus yet on its causes, or whether it will be sustained. Possible explanations include productivity benefits of working from home, and the fact that tight labour markets force employers to try harder to get more value from each worker (as it’s no longer easy to hire new staff).

Yet wages continue to lag

These two points demonstrate that productivity is no magic bullet for the other challenges facing Australia’s labour market.

Nor is it credible to blame lack of productivity for another big issue on the summit agenda: the historically weak growth in wages over the past decade.

Business leaders like to insist wage increases aren’t possible without productivity growth. But the actual problem for the past decade has been the opposite: productivity grew while real wages stagnated – and are now falling rapidly due to the surge in inflation.

Read more:
Proof positive. Real wages are shrinking, these figures put it beyond doubt

Consequently, the gap between productivity and real wages has widened dramatically.

In fact, the relationship between the two (which many economists assume to be automatic) has been broken for much longer.

Since the mid-1970s, economic and labour market policy in Australia deliberately undermined wage growth through measures such as weakening collective bargaining, downgrading the award system to a safety net, vilifying and policing unions, and (for many public sector workers) simply dictating minimal wage gains.

Not surprisingly, all this kept wage growth well behind productivity. As a result, the share of labour compensation in GDP has fallen by 13 percentage points since the mid-1970s, reaching an all-time low of 45% this year.

The share of corporate profits in GDP, not coincidentally, increased by a similar margin, and is now at record highs.

Read more:
Profits push up prices too, so why is the RBA governor only talking about wages?

These tectonic shifts in national income distribution refute the common assumption that workers are automatically paid according to their productivity.

Workers can be rightly sceptical that a generic commitment to revitalising productivity growth will automatically solve the problems they face – falling real wages, endemic insecurity and the erosion of collective representation.

To build a genuine consensus on productivity, therefore, the jobs summit must also advance a convincing vision for how the gains from productivity growth will be more fairly shared.

Jim Stanford is a member of the Australian Services Union.

– ref. If productivity was the magical fix some claim, we wouldn’t need a jobs summit – https://theconversation.com/if-productivity-was-the-magical-fix-some-claim-we-wouldnt-need-a-jobs-summit-188716

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristie Patricia Flannery, Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University

House of the Dragon chronicles the fall of the Targaryen dynasty some two centuries before life on the continent of Westeros is upended by war and a mini ice age – the events dramatised in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The new series’ first episode powerfully suggests that political instability and dynastic decline begin with disease and health crises.

The ruling Targaryen King Viserys I suffers from a large and painful puss-filled open wound on his back. He dismisses this injury as a minor one he sustained from sitting on the famous Iron Throne forged with the swords of the vanquished.

His wife, the heavily-pregnant Queen Aemma Arryn, who has endured multiple miscarriages and infant losses in her lifetime, is worried about the health of their unborn baby. The childbirth depicted in this episode is extremely traumatic.

The diseases and medical afflictions that plagued the ruling houses of Westeros – pregnancy complications, madness and genetic disorders – affected the real royal families of Europe during the medieval and early modern periods. And just as in House of the Dragon, these afflictions shaped real dynastic struggles.

Genetic disorders

Like the fictional Targaryens, real European royals frequently married close relatives, contributing to genetic disorders in their families.

Spain’s last Habsburg king, Charles II, is a poster child for royal incest. He suffered from multiple health problems before his death at 38, including an extreme case of the so-called Habsburg jaw or badly misshapen mandible that made it very difficult to speak and to chew food. His parents were uncle and niece. Geneticists have argued that consanguinity, or parents being descended from the same ancestors, caused this condition.

Queen Victoria of England passed the gene that caused the recessive blood disease hemophilia to the royal families of Russia, Spain and Germany through the marriages of her children.

Victoria’s great-grandson, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, inherited this disease. The holy man Rasputin, who was brought into the palace to treat the Russian Tsar, came to meddle in government affairs, leading to rising tension within the aristocracy and public distrust of the royal family. In this roundabout way the “royal disease,” as hemophilia is known, contributed to the revolution that ended the Romanov monarchy.

Pregnancy and fertility

The primary goal of royal marriage, in both early modern Europe and Westeros, was to bring together powerful families and produce living heirs who would carry on the dynasty.

House of the Dragon’s creators have been criticised for the graphic childbirth scene in episode one, yet they were correct in portraying pregnancy as dangerous for royals. Seven queens and princesses of Asturias (heirs to the Spanish throne) had children between 1500 and 1700. Four died of pregnancy-related causes.

While childbirth could prove fatal to royal women, failure to produce an heir could also see the end of a dynastic house. The history of the island of Westeros, which looks incredibly similar to the British Isles, mirrors much of Britain’s history too. The desire for a male heir could tear apart royal families.

In 16th-century England, King Henry VIII (who also sported an ulcerated wound on his leg, perhaps serving as inspiration for Viserys I’s back wound), would famously break away from the Catholic Church in Rome and marry six times to secure male heirs that would sustain the Tudor dynasty. Ironically, it was eventually Henry’s daughters Mary I and Elizabeth I who took the throne after their brother, Edward VI, died at the age of 16.

Read more:
Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon confirms there will be no sexual violence on screen. Here’s why that’s important

Queen Anne famously endured at least 17 pregnancies in 17 years. She gave birth to 18 children, many were stillborn and only one lived to the age of 11. Without an heir, the throne was passed to the Stuart’s German cousins, the Hanovarians.

Mental illness

King George III of England suffered from manic episodes that lead to government instability and regency crises, just like the mad King Aerys Targaryen in the world of Game of Thrones. Various medical conditions have been offered to explain the historic monarch’s madness, including porphyria, a genetic blood disease that can lead to anxiety and mental confusion, or more recently, bipolar disorder.

George was subsequently portrayed as a mad tyrant king and the reason for England’s loss of its American colonies in the American Revolution. However, in reality the British monarchy was constitutional by this point and George had little direct influence on the colonies.

Treatments

Historians might expect to see more religion combined with medicine in Kings Landing if the creators of The House of the Dragon wanted to create a royal household that closely resembled those of early modern Europe.

Sick and injured Catholic monarchs sought out the healing powers of sacred objects. In the 17th century, pregnant queens of Spain were loaned the “santa cinta” or the “holy belt”, a relic that was believed to have belonged to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Wearing or touching this item of clothing was believed to give protection to pregnant queens and their fetuses.

The corporeal remains of deceased holy men and women who were known as saints also played a part in healing Catholic monarchs and their families.

When Prince Don Carlos of Asturias, heir to Spain’s King Philip II, sustained a life-threatening head injury in 1562, Franciscan friars brought the corpse of Fray Diego de Alcalá to the prince’s bed chamber and placed it in his bed. Early moderns attributed Don Carlos’s recovery to this relic and the cranial surgery that doctors performed to save his life.

In a protestant country like England by the late 18th century, treatments were far more conventional to modern eyes, if not more brutal as well.

Treatment of mental illness, including George III’s mania, involved straitjackets and restraining chairs, the latter of which George, who still retained his humour, often called his “coronation chair”. Not quite the Iron Throne, but a throne for a
“mad king”, nonetheless.

Sarah Bendall receives funding from Australian Research Council and Pasold Research Fund.

Kristie Patricia Flannery 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. Madness, miscarriages and incest: as in House of the Dragon, real-life royal families have seen it all throughout history – https://theconversation.com/madness-miscarriages-and-incest-as-in-house-of-the-dragon-real-life-royal-families-have-seen-it-all-throughout-history-189225

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

The escalating cost of living is your ally when you’re an opposition seeking election, but when you’re in office, it’s a rampaging beast to manage, economically and politically.

Labor railed about real wages stagnating under the Coalition. Now grappling with rising inflation, the Albanese government has had to tell people to brace for even higher prices and mortgage costs before their real wages start to improve (hopefully) in 2024.

That’s the grim background to next Thursday-Friday’s jobs and skills summit, from which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers will be trying to extract a story line of common purpose, even if not unity, from stakeholders with disparate and conflicting interests.

Calling this a “jobs” summit is, incidentally, somewhat of a misnomer. For the first time in records going back four decades, we currently have more job vacancies than we have people who are unemployed. The problems are other than a shortage of jobs.

Albanese makes much of wanting to emulate Bob Hawke’s consensus style and this summit, like that of 1983, is at core a gesture of inclusion, while grappling with very different economic conditions.

Preparing for the day-and-a-half gathering – in parliament house’s Great Hall – of more than 100 participants from business, unions and civil society, ministers had by Thursday this week conducted over 65 meetings with a wide range of groups around the country.

Read more:
Morrison’s multiple ministries legal but flouted principle of ‘responsible government’: solicitor-general

The summit itself will be carefully choreographed. Given its relative brevity, the formal time devoted to particular issues is short. For instance “sustainable wage growth and the future of bargaining” gets an hour on Thursday morning, while migration, divided into two sessions, runs from 8.50 to 10.30 on Friday morning.

Obviously there’ll be much informal discussion outside the conference room. Tea breaks, a dinner on Thursday night, and the availability of “light breakfasts” provide plenty of opportunities for networking, as well as for participants to rub shoulders with (and lobby) ministers and each other.

Among the minglers will be Nationals leader David Littleproud. When opposition leader Peter Dutton declined an invitation, Littleproud quickly sought one.

Distinguished economist Ross Garnaut, economic adviser to Bob Hawke and climate change adviser to the Rudd government, will speak at Thursday’s dinner.

The summit is a forum for the airing of ideas and wish lists. Centrally, it is a platform for the government to set its narrative as it looks to the October budget and beyond.

But the narrative needs to be underpinned by some broad agreements. The government can’t afford the commentary afterwards to conclude it was primarily a hot air occasion.

Hence there’ll be a desperate scrabbling by the government to land agreement in key areas which, despite the extensive agenda, boil down to the interrelated issues of industrial relations, immigration, and skills.

As of now, unions and employers are miles apart on workplace relations reform despite their common view that the present system is unfit for purpose and must be changed.

The ACTU this week flagged it is seeking a return to sector-wide bargaining – partially reversing the 1990s move to enterprise bargaining – which would strengthen the hand of workers in pursuing pay rises.

Read more:
View from The Hill: How does Albanese frame Morrison inquiry without embroiling the governor-general?

ACTU secretary Sally McManus said on Wednesday that in our service-based care economy “it makes sense to have multi-employer bargaining – that both the workers’ representatives and the employers sit down and negotiate across their sector”.

Asked on the ABC whether she had any reason to think the government was ready to embrace the ACTU’s ideas for big reforms in industrial relations, McManus replied bluntly: “I’d say this: they were elected on a mandate to get wages moving”.

The ACTU proposal has encountered immediate push-back from employers, with the Australian Industry Group’s chief executive Innes Willox describing the call as “a throwback to the 70s”.

Willox argued: “The cornerstone of our workplace relations system is the objective of achieving productivity and fairness through an emphasis on enterprise-level collective bargaining”. The Business Council of Australia was also critical of the ACTU proposal.

Chalmers on Thursday danced around when questioned on this gulf. But Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke, who is doing the detailed wrangling on industrial relations, made it clear he was open to the ACTU proposal, telling the ABC he was “very interested” in it and that the “destination” he was aiming for was to “get wages moving”.

Read more:
Word From The Hill: More heat piled on Morrison over those multiple ministries

Where the government ends up on the ACTU demand will be an early test of its relationship with the union movement, to which it has already thrown a bone by emasculating the Australian Building and Construction Commission ahead of its scrapping.

If the employers are to give some (unspecified) ground on industrial relations, the unions will be expected to be flexible about a higher immigration level.

Businesses facing acute labour shortages are desperate for more migrants, and there has been speculation about the present cap of 160,000 being raised to about 180,000-200,000.

Immigration is good for the economy. Apart from filling labour shortages, migrants spend their money, creating demand and therefore further jobs.

But boosting migration is not without short-term problems. Migrants put strains on housing (at a time of high rents), the health system (already stretched) and other services. And bringing in more skilled migrants doesn’t necessarily address acute shortages such as in the aged care industry.

Traditionally unions are wary of too many migrants. In the current context, they are demanding that a rise in immigration should be tied to conditions, including training measures for locals. To the extent businesses are asked to do this, there will be some complaints.

One thing that desperately needs fixing is the slow processing of visas for immigrants. The government says it is working on the backlog, but unblocking the system will take a while.

The supply of local workers could also be increased in the short term by, for example, allowing older people to earn more before they lose some of their pension, and bringing forward the start date for Labor’s more generous financial arrangements for child care. But these moves impose budget costs.

It’s all a matter of trade offs.

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. Grattan on Friday: Can Albanese government wring consensus from union-business impasse over industrial relations? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-can-albanese-government-wring-consensus-from-union-business-impasse-over-industrial-relations-189392

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Baker, Speech Pathology Research and Clinical Practice Lead, Monash Health; Adjunct research fellow, La Trobe University

Seventy three-year-old Australian music icon John Farnham is in a stable condition in intensive care after undergoing surgery to remove an oral cancer. Farnham’s family paid tribute to the health-care professionals after more than 11 hours of surgery on Tuesday.

Farnham’s diagnosis comes as a shock to many, there is little public awareness about oral cancer and the broader range of head and neck cancers.

So what is it? Who is more likely to be diagnosed with it? And what does recovery or rehabilitation look like?

Oral cancer is one type of head and neck cancer. While we can’t comment on Farnham’s condition specifically, we’re speech pathologists and researchers with experience working with our teams to support other patients with these cancers and guiding them through their recovery.

What is head and neck cancer? How common is it?

Head and neck cancers most commonly begin in the cells lining the mouth (oral cavity), nose and sinuses, throat (pharynx) or voice box (larynx).

Risk factors for head and neck cancer include smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and being infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). But some patients may have no identifiable cause for their cancer.

In Australia, almost 4,000 people are diagnosed with head and neck cancer each year, and this number is increasing.

Globally, the impact of head and neck cancer disproportionately affects those in developing countries due to increased risk factors, delays in diagnosis and limitations on interventions.

Cancers of the head and neck have typically been more common in men over the age of 65. However, an increase in cancers related to infection with HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infection, has seen a change in these demographics to include younger people.

Read more:
Health Check: can sex affect your risk of getting cancer?

Unfortunately, these cancers do not always receive the same media and philanthropic attention as other cancers.

What are the symptoms and treatments?

Finding cancer early is important but unfortunately, there are no formal screening tests for head and neck cancer.

Common signs and symptoms can include a neck lump, a lump or sore that does not heal, a red or white patch in the mouth, trouble speaking or using your voice, or difficulty breathing. Always speak to your doctor and dentist about any of these concerns.

Treatment for head and neck cancers can include surgical interventions, radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy. This will depend on the size, location, and progression of the cancer, among other factors.

Treatment may include the insertion of a breathing tube (tracheostomy) or feeding tube (nasogastric or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy). For some these are temporary measures while recovering from surgery, for others they can be life-long changes.

Breathing tubes impact and change the person’s ability to speak, cough and swallow. Feeding tubes can support the person’s nutritional needs. Changes to communication and swallowing may mean the person has difficulty with everyday activities such as eating a meal with family and singing their favourite songs.

Survivorship is high, meaning people are living longer with the impacts of their cancer and its treatment. In 2006–2010, the five-year relative survival was 68% for all head and neck cancers combined.

What are the lasting effects?

Living with head and neck cancer may have big impacts on the physical, emotional, and social wellbeing of the person and their family.

At various stages of recovery, people who have had head and neck cancer can experience life-altering consequences, including pain and difficulties speaking, eating, drinking, swallowing and breathing. Their appearance may change due after oral or facial reconstruction.

Survivors experience varying degrees of disease severity and feelings of distress. One survivor described her experience of head and neck cancer as “brutal,” saying “we lose our careers […] our relationships fall apart.”

Examining social media posts on #headandneckcancer highlights others are concerned about fatigue, appearance, weight and nutrition.

Families also feel the impact, with many experiencing elevated levels of distress and reduced quality of life.

Reducing stigma

Some of the risk factors for head and neck cancers such as smoking and heavy drinking are seen as “lifestyle risk factors” and may attract stigma.
This can have a significant impact on recovery.

Stigma increases distress, depression, anxiety and reduces social participation. These impacts are exacerbated for those who live in the public eye or are professional voice-users such as singers, radio broadcasters or teachers.

Read more:
‘It’s your fault you got cancer’: the blame game that doesn’t help anyone

Supporting loved ones after head and neck cancer

People with head and neck cancers require specialist, interdisciplinary health care. Multidisciplinary care teams include medical, nursing, and allied health professionals (speech pathologists, physiotherapists, dietitians, and occupational therapists) who work collaboratively to optimise the person’s health and rehabilitation.

Survivors also need strong social support, as changes in facial appearance and difficulties speaking and eating can lead to feelings of isolation, frustration, and a loss of enjoyment in social situations. Seeking psychological and emotional support is invaluable.

When communicating with a person with head and neck cancer, allow extra time for them to speak, maintain eye contact, minimise background noise and use body language and gesture to convey messages.

Farnham’s family acknowledge a “long road of recovery and healing”. We wish our much-loved Farnsey a pathway through cancer that is enriched with love and support of family, friends, community and music.

Caroline Baker receives funding from Speech Pathology Australia and Stroke Foundation.

Nothing to disclose.

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

– ref. What is oral cancer, the condition John Farnham is being treated for? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-oral-cancer-the-condition-john-farnham-is-being-treated-for-189375

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Professor, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King yesterday handed Australia’s fossil fuel industry two significant wins.

The minister announced oil and gas exploration will be allowed at ten new Australian ocean sites – comprising almost 47,000 square kilometres. And she approved two new offshore greenhouse gas storage areas off Western Australia and the Northern Territory, to explore the potential of “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) technology.

The minister said the new oil and gas permits will bolster energy security in Australia and beyond, and ultimately aid the transition to renewables. King also said controversial carbon-capture and storage was necessary to meet Australia’s net-zero emissions targets.

The world’s energy market is going through a period of disruption, largely due to Russian sanctions and the Ukrainian war. But expanding carbon-intensive fossil fuel projects is flawed reasoning that will lead to greater global insecurity.

Research shows 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves must stay in the ground if we’re to have half a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century.

Ignoring the facts

The new sites for offshore gas and oil exploration comprise ten areas off the coasts of the NT, WA, Victoria, and the Ashmore and Cartier Islands. King’s announcement came at a resources conference in Darwin, where she said:

Gas enables greater use of renewables domestically by providing energy security. Australian [liquefied natural gas] is also a force for regional energy security and helps our trading partners meet their own decarbonisation goals.

The problem with this assessment is that it ignores two things.

First, Australia exports nearly 90% of domestically produced gas and lacks robust export controls to moderate this. Without these controls, increasing domestic production will not improve Australia’s energy security.

Second, gas can only enable greater use of renewables domestically and provide energy security where it is “decarbonised” through the use of carbon-capture and storage. If it isn’t decarbonised, using gas undermines energy security by risking further global warming.

However the deployment of CCS technology is complex, expensive and faces many barriers. To date it has a history of over-promising and under-delivering.

Carbon capture and storage typically involves capturing carbon dioxide at the source (such as a coal-fired power station), sending it to a remote location and storing it underground.

Offshore CCS involves injecting and storing CO₂ in suitable rock formations. Doing so safely requires robust monitoring and verification, but challenging ocean conditions can make this extremely difficult.

For example, Chevron allegedly failed to capture and store CO₂ at its huge offshore Gorgon gas project, after the WA government approved the project on the condition the company sequester 80% of the project’s emissions in its first five years.

Read more:
1 in 5 fossil fuel projects overshoot their original estimations for emissions. Why are there such significant errors?

A report in February suggested the project emitted 16 million tonnes more than anticipated due to injection failure. King calls CCS a “proven” technology, but Chevron’s experience indicates this is far from the case.

King did say the federal government won’t rely entirely on CCS, adding “it’s one of the many means of getting to net-zero” and renewable energy remained central to Australia’s emissions reduction efforts.

But critics labelled the technology a “smokescreen” behind which fossil fuel companies can continue to pollute.

Fossil fuel is not the future

Putting gas in competition with renewable energy will end badly for the fossil fuel industry. As renewable energy’s market share expands, fossil fuels will become uneconomic due to their environmental impacts and higher costs.

Eventually, natural gas will be used only during periods of peak demand or when wind and solar are not producing electricity – in other words, when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. It will not provide the steady, constant electricity supply that makes up our baseload power system. This will significantly reduce demand and negate the need for carbon-capture and storage.

Read more:
Why did gas prices go from $10 a gigajoule to $800 a gigajoule? An expert on the energy crisis engulfing Australia

Opening up new gas and oil exploration is a reactive and dangerous move that does not support Australia’s long-term energy future. Many of our international peers already acknowledge this.

The United Kingdom, for example, now generates 33% of its electricity from renewable sources such as onshore and offshore wind, solar and biomass. The subsequent decline of fossil fuels means the UK has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% on 1990 levels.

Gas in the UK is valuable for its ability to provide rapid, flexible power supply during peak periods, to integrate with other renewable technologies and to improve system flexibility. During periods of high demand, storage devices can discharge into the grid and maintain security of supply.

Wrong way, go back

Clearly, Australia is heading in the wrong direction by opening up new fossil fuel exploration.

The move will damage our longer-term security and undermine our climate imperatives. It ignores the glaring economic realities that will eventually push gas out of the market.

And opening new gas fields while carbon-capture remains uncertain is dangerous for the planet.

Read more:
Liquid marbles: how this tiny, emerging technology could solve carbon capture and storage problems

Samantha Hepburn 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. Opening 10 new oil and gas sites is a win for fossil fuel companies but a staggering loss for the rest of Australia – https://theconversation.com/opening-10-new-oil-and-gas-sites-is-a-win-for-fossil-fuel-companies-but-a-staggering-loss-for-the-rest-of-australia-189374

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John McKay, Honorary Professor in Development Studies, Deakin University

Sweden’s decision to apply for NATO membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has generally been greeted with enthusiasm, as a further demonstration of Western unity in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

But even two years ago, such a step would have been unthinkable. Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814, Sweden had asserted a firm policy of neutrality that involved non-participation in any wars and an avoidance of alliances during peacetime.

For Swedes, neutrality was at the centre of their identity and their perception of their special place in the world. Their new position will inevitably involve some psychological readjustments.

However, for the rest of us, there are also some significant costs that flow from the end of Swedish neutrality.

Why has Sweden abandoned neutrality?

Since the 1990s, Sweden has been enhancing its relationship with the European alliance system.

It joined the European Union in 1995 and gradually increased its involvement with NATO. In 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea, Sweden became an “enhanced opportunities partner”, an arrangement that involves the sharing of intelligence.

Yet it took the clear increase in the threat environment during early 2022 to push Swedish public opinion, and the representatives of all parties in the Swedish parliament, towards the momentous decision to abandon its longstanding policy of neutrality. The threats include enhanced Russian naval activity in the Baltic, and overt threats by Russia against the Baltic States and Finland to bolster its forces and nuclear capability in the region.

While there’s still significant opposition to this decision within Sweden, there’s also a broad understanding of why the threats to the security of both Sweden and the wider Baltic region have been perceived so seriously.

The history of Swedish neutrality

The decision is understandable, but it’s not without costs, both for Sweden and the wider world, especially in the longer term.

During the Cold War in particular, Sweden played an essential role as a critic, mediator and bridge-builder in a deeply divided world. Far from being a reclusive nation that eschewed involvement in global affairs, Sweden was an international activist, an enthusiastic champion of both international law and collective action.

In the process, it managed to enrage both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Important examples included its opposition to the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq. It has also regularly campaigned against nuclear armaments.

After the end of the Cold War, Sweden played a constructive role in efforts to establish new cooperative security arrangements in Europe based around preventing conflict, respect for national sovereignty, and an enhanced role for organisations such as the United Nations.

Read more:
Finland’s and Sweden’s pursuit of NATO membership is the exact opposite of what Putin wanted for Russian neighbors

Swedish troops have had a long involvement in peacekeeping operations around the world, stretching back to the Arab-Israel war of 1948. The country’s neutral stance meant it was trusted to be impartial by both sides in any conflict.

For example, it has been a member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission established to monitor the armistice signed in 1953 at the end of the Korean War, and still in existence today. It has also provided troops for peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East, the Congo, Cyprus, and Bosnia Herzegovina among others.

Sweden has been an important contributor to efforts to promote international development. The country built some important links with Africa and is widely respected there because of its long-term support for African liberation movements. It is also highly regarded for its opposition – especially during the Cold War – to the use of aid funds as a tool to enhance support for one side or the other in a global battle for “hearts and minds”.

What the world loses from Sweden’s decision

Will Sweden continue to play these important roles now from within NATO? Perhaps, because old habits do die hard, and there are signs the ruling Social Democrats are retreating from neo-liberal economic policies.

But there are bound to be compromises that need to be made in the interests of alliance solidarity. We have already seen hints of this in Sweden’s responses to Turkey’s demands regarding the Kurdish refugees. Turkey threatened to block Sweden’s NATO application until it received some assurances about the activities of the significant Kurdish refugee population in Sweden, which Turkey has always considered a terrorist group.

These kinds of demands to restrict criticism of Turkey’s human rights record are likely to continue.

Yet the current international environment demands such a critic, bridge-builder and mediator, perhaps even more so now than during the Cold War.

We are faced with unprecedented uncertainty, complexity and entrenched hostilities that are threatening peace. As is clear in the current contest for influence in various nations in the Pacific, development aid is once again being used primarily as an instrument in a new Cold War.

We are crying out for the kind of moral leadership that Sweden provided earlier, especially under the government of Prime Minister Olof Palme during the 1980s.

However, it may be that this has all been sacrificed in the name of alliance solidarity. It’s far from clear if any other country can fill this crucial gap.

John McKay 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. Sweden has broken its neutrality convention and sided with Ukraine. Does this matter? – https://theconversation.com/sweden-has-broken-its-neutrality-convention-and-sided-with-ukraine-does-this-matter-189062

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

David Littleproud runs his own race. In opposition he’s Nationals leader first and Coalitionist second. Thus he was quick out of the blocks criticising Scott Morrison’s power grab, and when Peter Dutton rejected an invitation to next week’s jobs and skills summit, Littleproud said he wanted to go.

In this Podcast Littleproud says about the government’s planned inquiry into Morrison’s actions: “I’m happy to work within whatever the constraints of what the government decides, that’s their prerogative. But it just seems to me this has now become an obsession of Anthony Albanese.”

Of the conflicting signals from the opposition about the jobs summit, Littleproud says: “We’re two separate parties. I represent the National Party and Peter Dutton represents the Liberal Party. He made a decision on behalf of the Liberal Party that he would not attend.”

He’s scathing that the Nationals were not originally invited. “The fact that this government didn’t even bother to ask anyone from regional and rural Australia to represent their interests was a failing to start with.”

Littleproud has stressed to his party the need to rebuild trust in the community, especially with women. “We’re going to do that at a grassroots level. “We’ve got to listen and understand”.

He is enthusiastic about the Coalition’s embrace of an examination of nuclear power. “I’m pleased to say that Peter Dutton has subsequently been able to get the Liberal Party to support that view. We’re not talking about big nuclear power plants across this country, we’re talking about the emerging technology of small scale modular technology for nuclear that’s appearing particularly in northern America.”

When asked which position is more difficult, being a senior minister with great responsibility or being leader of his party in opposition, Littleproud says: “I think obviously in opposition, because you’ve got to try and convince someone that holds the pen of the necessity of what you’re trying to prosecute”.

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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: David Littleproud on charting his course in opposition – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-david-littleproud-on-charting-his-course-in-opposition-189384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Ireland-Piper, Associate Professor of Constitutional and International Law, Bond University

What do farm animals have to do with the Australian Constitution?

Should the public know what happens in abattoirs and farms? Do we have the right to publish footage of what happens to animals in slaughterhouses? Should governments be able to make laws criminalising it? How do we best protect the privacy of farmers and prevent trespass?

The High Court considered these issues this in Farm Transparency v New South Wales, handing down its judgment this month. This case concerned sections 11 and 12 of the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW): section 11 prohibits the publication or communication of footage or photographs of “private activities”, including intensive farming and slaughtering operations, with penalties of up to five years in prison. Section 12 criminalises the possession of such recordings.

In 2015, Farm Transparency Project’s director, Chris Delforce, was charged with publishing footage and photos depicting lawful practices at piggeries. The footage related to the use of carbon dioxide gas as a means of slaughtering animals.

While the charges were eventually dismissed, animal welfare organisations are concerned the legislation will obstruct legitimate whistleblowing (and public access to information) about the agricultural industry. There are also concerns the legislation may dampen the willingness of media to grapple with these issues. In turn, this may limit the ability of the Australian consumer to make informed choices about what they eat, and hinder public discussions about animal welfare due to a lack of information.

In that context, Farm Transparency took legal action arguing that the Surveillance Devices Act was in breach of the “freedom of political communication” implicitly protected by the Australian Constitution. In doing so, they turned an animal welfare and consumer rights issue into a constitutional issue.

Read more:
Not just activists, 9 out of 10 people are concerned about animal welfare in Australian farming

What is the implied freedom of political communication?

Australia, unlike all other western democracies, does not have a federal bill of rights. This means there is no stand-alone right to free expression or speech.

However, freedom of political communication is implied from sections 7 and 24 of the Australian Constitution, which require that elected representatives be “chosen by the people”.

The courts have held previously that this implies laws should not limit our communication on political matters because that influences our choice of representative. This means state or federal laws that disproportionately “burden” communication about political matters can be struck down as unconstitutional.

The High Court has repeatedly emphasised that the freedom of political communication is not absolute, nor is it a personal right. Rather, laws directed at a legitimate objective that are reasonable and adapted to that objective will still be valid.

In this case, the question before the court was whether the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 is “suitable”, “necessary” and “balanced” in pursuing a legitimate objective. These questions have also been considered before by the court in relation to, for example, protesting, tweeting, political donations, bail conditions, and media reporting.

What did the High Court decide?

Four members of the court (Kiefel CJ, and Keane, Edelman, and Steward JJ) held that while the legislation did burden political communication, it also has a legitimate purpose of privacy. They also held that the offence provisions were proportionate to that purpose. Another judge (Gordon J) “read down” the reach of the provisions, which meant she thought they had limited scope and couldn’t be enforced to restrict publication of political communication.

Notably, two judges disagreed with the majority view (Gageler and Gleeson JJ), and found that the legislation was invalid. In their view, sections 11 and 12 impose blanket prohibitions and do so indiscriminately. In particular, Gageler J thought “The prohibitions are too blunt; their price is too high”.

However, ultimately the majority view was that sections 11 and 12 are constitutionally valid.

Of significance to those interested in animal welfare is that Kiefel CJ and Keane J accepted it was “a legitimate matter of governmental and political concern”. However, in their views, the relevant provisions in this case were not directed at restricting the content of the communications, but to the manner (such as trespass) in which they were obtained.

Read more:
Can Labor’s animal welfare plan improve Australia’s lacklustre record?

Why does this matter?

This decision means improved conditions for farm animals needs to be achieved by legislative and policy reform. Concerned consumers must convince parliaments to improve legal protections for non-human animals.

The issue is unlikely to go away. Animal welfare groups are increasingly concerned about standards of care and the manner in which animals are raised and slaughtered. Consumers are savvier in the information age and prefer choice.

The recognition of animal sentience and animal rights may eventually curtail the ability to engage in large-scale factory farming. This in turn will contribute to overall efforts to mitigate climate change and other environmental effects.

There is also the overarching issue of the legal protection offered to whistleblowers generally and the inherent problem in restricting information necessary for meaningful public debate.

Individuals and organisations do have legitimate expectations of privacy. However, disclosing reasonable concerns about conduct is an important tool in maintaining good governance and advancing accountability. Protections for whistleblowers are limited in Australia and there is space for legislative reform on this.

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

– ref. What the High Court decision on filming animals in farms and abattoirs really means – https://theconversation.com/what-the-high-court-decision-on-filming-animals-in-farms-and-abattoirs-really-means-177146

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chantel Carr, ARC DECRA Fellow, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong

More frequent and extreme weather associated with climate change is creating uncertainty across society. In particular, it raises challenges for the workers required to fix and maintain things. In a warming world this includes equipment such as air-conditioning and refrigeration.

These workers are essential for helping society adapt to climate change. Air-conditioning provides the space cooling that supports our everyday lives. Refrigeration underpins global food supply chains, health care, agriculture and more.

Despite the significance of this workforce, it remains largely under the radar. These workers face difficulties such as heat stress and skills shortages. They also play an important role in climate mitigation by installing more efficient appliances – work that is largely undervalued.

Next week’s national jobs and skills summit will focus, among other issues, on the energy transition. But it should also consider other workers at the frontline of climate change.

‘Work up on the roof which is 60℃’

My research looks at the work of skilled trades, particularly in the area of repair and maintenance. Along with a team of engineers and social scientists at the University of Wollongong, I have been researching the air-conditioning and refrigeration sector.

The team was commissioned by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources to research maintenance practices in commercial office buildings. Many issues we found were also common across other building types, including hotels, aged-care facilities and shopping centres.

The study comprised a large industry survey, 70 in-depth interviews, and four focus groups with building contractors and facilities managers. Our team also accompanied workers as they responded to service calls and undertook routine maintenance in buildings.

Read more:
The UK just hit 40℃ for the first time. It’s a stark reminder of the deadly heat awaiting Australia

The installation, maintenance and repair of domestic and commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning helps provide cooling and comfortable indoor environments – an increasingly challenging task as average global temperatures rise.

Australia’s building stock is ill-equipped for climate change. Much of it is poorly insulated, and relies on electrical appliances to stay warm or cool.

This puts air-conditioning workers at the centre of climate adaptation – a job not without risk. Heat stress is already an issue for Australian workers, affecting not just their health and safety but also productivity.

As one professional in the air-conditioning industry explained:

Call someone out when it’s 40℃ […] all of a sudden the (contractor) is going to go work up on the roof which is 60℃, which is probably a workplace health and safety issue that no one knows about because it’s hidden.

Maintenance: it actually matters

Together, air-conditioning and refrigeration account for about 17% of global energy consumption. The industry’s workers can help address this by educating consumers about, and installing, more efficient appliances. The timely maintenance of air-conditioning and fridges can also reduce system energy consumption.

However, building owners are not always convinced of the need to upgrade equipment or carry out preventative maintenance. For example, it’s estimated up to 80,000 commercial buildings in Australia need energy efficiency upgrades – many of them due to air-conditioning systems that are decades old.

Industry contractors told us cooling and ventilation systems are frequently “run to fail”, consuming excess energy and increasing the risk of overloading the broader electricity network. As one worker said:

if we unpack this problem properly, and got preventative maintenance done two months out before summer, we get… all the peak demand issues get reduced, we get reliability.

Upgrading air-conditioning and refrigeration systems is a significant economic and environmental opportunity. But this requires workers, and the sector has struggled to recruit.

Industry figures suggest about 1,600 people each year start an apprenticeship or traineeship in the refrigeration and air-conditioning trade across Australia. But fewer than half complete the training, pointing to attrition problems.

The industry needs a strong pipeline of skilled workers. Any workforce shortages could seriously inhibit Australia’s capacity to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Helping people and the planet

There’s an urgent need to look more closely at the skills required to deliver the energy transition and help humans survive on a warmer planet.

Workers in air-conditioning and refrigeration are just a few of the many skilled professionals we’ll lean on heavily in the coming years and decades. Helping these workers meet the challenges ahead should be a national priority – and doing so will help both people and the planet.

Read more:
It’ll be impossible to replace fossil fuels with renewables by 2050, unless we cut our energy consumption

Chantel Carr receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This work was commissioned and funded by the Australian Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources (now DCCEW). Dan Daly, Elyse Stanes, Matt Daly and Pauline McGuirk contributed to the broader research from which this article was drawn.

– ref. Spare a thought for air-conditioning repair people. As the planet warms, they’re really up against it – https://theconversation.com/spare-a-thought-for-air-conditioning-repair-people-as-the-planet-warms-theyre-really-up-against-it-187143

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

Dominic Bryce Abelen has been described as a “warrior until the end”. He is also New Zealand’s first serving soldier to be killed fighting in Ukraine. His death puts renewed focus on the status of foreign fighters in that war.

Abelen was off duty from the Royal NZ Infantry Regiment’s 2/1 Battalion and one of many former or current New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) soldiers in Ukraine. Like other volunteers, he will have felt a strong ethical duty to be there and believed he was defending a country against an indiscriminate and inhumane aggressor.

The call by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for individuals to help has seen thousands of foreign fighters respond since Russia invaded six months ago. Russia is playing the same game, actively recruiting mercenaries and foreign volunteers.

The upshot is that hundreds of New Zealand volunteers may be in Ukraine right now, despite the very limited assistance their government can give them.

Walking a tightrope

Two problems arise when volunteers from other countries join the fight on another nation’s soil.

First, the lines between what constitutes a lawful or unlawful fighter blurs, and warfare can often become particularly unrestrained.

Second, what starts out as a bilateral conflict turns into an international quagmire.

That is why the United States, NATO and allied countries like New Zealand have actively tried to walk a difficult tightrope – giving military support, but only up to the Ukraine’s sovereign border.

Read more:
Ukraine’s foreign legion may be new, but the idea isn’t

So, New Zealand may provide military equipment but cannot physically use it within the country’s borders. Military personal from the NZDF may also train Ukrainian soldiers, but this must be done outside Ukrainian territory.

While these efforts mean New Zealand is not technically neutral, neither is it an active participant. It is a very fine line. And if NATO or its supporters became active participants, Ukraine could easily turn into a third world world.

If New Zealanders were to fight in Ukraine with official authorisation, it would effectively make New Zealand an active participant. New Zealand’s relationship with Russia would become very difficult.

To avoid a global conflict, then, there can be no officially sanctioned NATO (or Kiwi) boots on the ground.

The status of unofficial soldiers

Assuming that critical boundary is not crossed, the question then becomes what to do about volunteers who go to fight without official permission or recognition. Two basic principles apply when considering the status of New Zealanders fighting in Ukraine:

• NZDF members who join to fight for another country without permission are on dangerous legal ground – a soldier cannot have two masters

• a general principle applies that such fighters must not become mercenaries, a status prohibited by both international and domestic law.

The key definition of a mercenary is they make money “substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar rank and functions in the armed forces” of the foreign country they’re fighting for.

If they’re caught, mercenaries don’t have the rights of genuine prisoners of war and can be executed. If the volunteer is a citizen or resident of the country at war, or they are a member of the armed forces of that country, they are not mercenaries.

For such reasons, countries such as Britain, Australia and the US have tried to steer would-be volunteers away from joining.

So the status of New Zealanders fighting in Ukraine without official permission is difficult. Although a general travel warning to avoid Ukraine has been issued, this doesn’t actually prohibit New Zealanders going. Nor does it prohibit them volunteering to fight.

There is something of an anomaly here, considering the lengths taken to prevent volunteers joining terrorism groups and to deal with those returning.

Can NZ volunteers be stopped?

In reality, whether the rules around foreign fighters in Ukraine are being followed is up for debate.

Russia is already taking a hard line against foreign volunteers, conducting trials and promising executions. Captured New Zealand volunteers will likely face the same consequences – irrespective of whether they are wearing the uniform of the Ukrainian army.

Read more:
There is little to stop New Zealanders leaving to fight in Ukraine – but few legal protections if they do

This is difficult for any government. Offering more equipment, training and humanitarian relief to Ukraine can be justified. But this can also encourage some that joining a “just” war themselves is the right thing to do.

There is no question the government must keep an exceptionally tight leash on any NZDF personnel who try to join the conflict. That cannot be tolerated.

The harder question is whether to take a harder position against those outside the military who would voluntarily put themselves at risk – and in doing so, make this war even more complicated and dangerous.

Alexander Gillespie 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. With the death of a Kiwi fighter in Ukraine, should the government make it harder for volunteers to go? – https://theconversation.com/with-the-death-of-a-kiwi-fighter-in-ukraine-should-the-government-make-it-harder-for-volunteers-to-go-189367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Md Abdul Alim, Associate lecturer, Western Sydney University

Access to clean drinking water is fundamental to our health and wellbeing, and a universal human right. But almost 200,000 Australians are still forced to use water contaminated with unsafe levels of various chemicals and bacteria. The situation is especially dire in remote areas.

To tackle this issue, we have developed an integrated rainwater harvesting unit at Western Sydney University (WSU).

This simple system can produce safe drinking water for households and communities in remote areas. It’s cheap, easy to use, and could improve the lives of thousands of people.

Far from city life

In large Australian cities, we are used to turning on the tap – clean, plentiful water is always there, coming from the central water supply. We also take for granted the use of potable water for other uses, such as car washing, gardening and laundry.

But in rural and remote Australia, communities must develop private water supply systems to get safe drinking water from other sources. These can be rainwater, groundwater, surface water and “carted water” – treated water from a supplier.

Among these sources, harvested rainwater is considered to be the second-safest option after mains supply, according to the private water supply risk hierarchy chart. So, many residents in rural and remote Australia are using rainwater for their needs.

But rainwater isn’t always safe to drink without adequate treatment, as it can be contaminated from various sources, including air pollution, runoff chemicals, animal droppings, and more.

Read more:
Bushfires threaten drinking water safety. The consequences could last for decades

Unknown water quality

In Australia, roughly 400 remote or regional communities don’t have access to good quality drinking water, and 40% of those are Indigenous communities.

According to a 2022 drinking water quality report by Australian National University researchers, at least 627,736 people in 408 rural locations have drinking water that doesn’t meet at least one of the standards set by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.

Although the 2022 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals progress report declares that 100% of the Australian population has access to safe and affordable drinking water, it seems this report excluded about 8% of the population living in regional and remote areas.

The issue could be even more widespread due to lack of adequate testing.

Read more:
Your drinking water could be saltier than you think (even if you live in a capital)

Better options are available

Our low-cost rainwater harvesting unit can produce safe drinking water that meets Australian guidelines, particularly maintaining Escherichia coli and nitrate levels below the recommended limits.

Most importantly, the system is integrated, which means it both collects rainwater, and treats it to be safe for household use.

The system is sustainable, uses locally available materials (such as gravel, sand, charcoal, limestone and stainless steel wire mesh or even cheesecloth), needs minimal maintenance, and is simple to operate. Communities can be trained to use these water systems regardless of technological skill level.

It’s also affordable. The cost of the drinking water produced through this system would be just over 1 cent per litre, according to a recent technical and financial feasibility analysis.

Ready to use, with improvements on the way

Despite their simplicity, these rainwater filter systems don’t even have to be confined to individual households – we can scale them up so entire communities can benefit.

A case study has proved this in both developed and developing countries. Our collaborators in Bangladesh made the first move to adopt this technology, supplying safe drinking water to student accommodation at the Khulna University of Engineering & Technology.

We are also working on improvements. For example, we are building an automated system that can monitor the water quality from the unit regularly and adjust disinfectant dosing to keep it safe for drinking. We’re also developing a method for the system to sense when the filter materials need cleaning, and even start this process automatically.

In Australia, there is a clear need to improve water quality in remote communities. Adopting our simple rainwater filtering system would help communities to produce safe drinking water at minimum cost, and the WSU team is ready to work with local shire councils and groups from different remote communities to transfer the knowledge.

Read more:
Getting clean drinking water into remote Indigenous communities means overcoming city thinking

Ataur Rahman received funding from Halal Australia NSW Pty Ltd to carry out the initial experimental study.

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

– ref. Not all of us have access to safe drinking water. This clever rainwater collector can change that – https://theconversation.com/not-all-of-us-have-access-to-safe-drinking-water-this-clever-rainwater-collector-can-change-that-188800

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol Richards, Associate professor, Queensland University of Technology

Recent UN data on food insecurity paints a bleak picture of a growing international problem: global hunger is not only growing but it disproportionately affects women. Similarly, the international humanitarian aid organisation, CARE, estimates that 150 million more women than men went hungry in 2021.

Despite gains in global food security since 2015, food security has gone backwards, with an increase of 150 million people experiencing hunger since 2019.

Read more:
Feeding the world: addressing gender divides could help reduce malnutrition

The UN reports that globally, 2.3 billion people were food insecure in 2021 with 276 million (12%) facing severe food insecurity. This rapid and sustained increase in hunger over a short time is highly concerning. So too, is the growing gender gap, with 32% of women compared to 27.5% of men going hungry.

Why are women more affected by food insecurity than men?

To answer this question, the global food system needs to be understood as a mirror of society. It reflects income inequalities and the uneven distribution of goods and services and, as such, is likely to show the same underlying structural inequalities as society at large.

The causes of food insecurity are complex and multi-dimensional. However, two important dimensions are the availability of food (is there enough food?) and the accessibility of food (is it affordable?).

Recently, the availability of food has been challenged by climate crises, conflicts, and disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, cost of living pressures have pushed the accessibility of food beyond the means of many people in both developed and developing countries.

Read more:
Food democracy: why eating is unavoidably political

On official measures of gender equality, women tend to experience a lower socio-economic status than men. Globally, 388 million women and girls live in extreme poverty right now, compared to 372 million men and boys. Oxfam reports that women earn 24% less than men, work longer hours, have more precarious work and do at least twice as much unpaid work.

The impact of other forms of inequality

Income disparities are also important to consider. Even when food is in abundance, with a few exceptions, it cannot be accessed without money. Accordingly, a bigger gender gap in income equality also means women have fewer means to purchase food.

The disadvantage of women has also been described in terms of their lack of agency to change their circumstances. In developing countries where subsistence farming is a key means of food provision, structural inequalities in land tenure and access to credit undermine women’s ability to generate income. Women make up 43% of the agricultural workforce, yet own less than 15% of land.

Improved women’s agency is strongly correlated with a reduction in poverty and has been recognised by the Higher Level Panel of Experts on Food Security as a critical dimension of food security.

Australia also has severe food insecurity, but women aren’t counted

Despite being the “lucky country,” Australia does not have a food security policy, nor does it collect the data necessary for an informed and targeted response.

Read more:
Hunger in the lucky country – charities step in where government fails

In fact, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry argues that concerns about food security are “understandable, yet misplaced” because Australia “[…] produces substantially more food than it consumes.”

The narrative might work in terms of availability of food but overlooks key issues regarding its accessibility, including gender dimensions, the difference between individual, household and domestic food security, and the link between poverty and food insecurity.

Some of these data gaps have been filled by Food Bank, a food relief organisation, that conducts annual surveys on food insecurity in Australia. Their recent data reveals 17% of Australian adults are “severely” food insecure. While the data is not segregated by gender, we can surmise a food insecurity gap if we use income as a proxy.

Indeed, the Australian parliament reports that women’s median weekly earnings were 25% lower than men’s in 2019, suggesting women may also have reduced access to food. We may also expect a “food security gap” with other marginalised groups such as the aged, people with disabilities, sole parents, and Indigenous populations.

Read more:
Don’t panic: Australia has truly excellent food security

Future responses

Severe levels of food insecurity are currently increasing in all regions of the world, and women are faring worse than men. Gender inequality worldwide intensifies the lack of access to food for women.

Recognising that women’s food security cannot be separated from broader concerns of agency, policies must consider the specific issues of gender equality, women’s rights and empowerment.

To do this, governments must also institute funded, systematic data collection, segregated by gender. Improved knowledge and transparency is central to policies aiming to strengthen women’s agency, lift women out of poverty and ensure the food security gender gap does not widen.

Carol Richards receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Fight Food Waste CRC and Meat and Livestock Australia.

Rudolf Messner received funding from the QUT Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy and the Centre for a Waste-free World.

– ref. Hunger is increasing worldwide but women bear the brunt of food insecurity – https://theconversation.com/hunger-is-increasing-worldwide-but-women-bear-the-brunt-of-food-insecurity-188906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Evans, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

A record 11 Indigenous representatives recently took their seats in the new federal parliament – three in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. Of these, nine are women and just two are men.

It’s worth recalling that after the 2001 federal election, there were no Indigenous members in the House of Representatives, and just one, Aden Ridgeway of the Australian Democrats, in the Senate.

Since then, we have seen the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives, Liberal Ken Wyatt, elected in 2009; the first Indigenous woman, Labor’s Nova Peris, elected to the Senate in 2013; and the first Indigenous woman elected to the House of Representatives, Labor’s Linda Burney, in 2016.

Ideally, the purpose of parliament is to represent the diversity of our nation, and ensure legislative decision-making is informed by representatives with diverse experiences. These Indigenous politicians bring their experience and cultural networks to parliament, and represent a people who have previously not had a voice in these proceedings. Indigenous representation has an enormous impact on strengthening democracy, and increasing the quality and standard of political life in Australia.

Liberal vs Labor

At state and territory level, there have also been increases in Indigenous representation, albeit less significant than the numbers federally. In 2001, there were only five Indigenous representatives around the country in state and territory parliaments.

Some 20 years later, by the end of 2021, there were 14. In that time, we also saw the first Indigenous chief minister of a state or territory, when Adam Giles of the Country Liberals took the top job in the Northern Territory in 2013.

Beyond this overall picture of Indigenous representative progress, there are significant differences between the major parties. The Labor party is currently doing far better than the Liberals.

As we reported in a recent study, while Indigenous candidates were put forward by the major parties on 143 occasions at state, territory, and federal levels between February 2001 and May 2021, over 70% of these were from Labor.

In total, over that period, the ALP fielded Indigenous candidates 102 times, over double the combined 41 of the Liberal Party and the Country Liberals. There was also a strong gender disparity among the major parties: while the ALP stood Indigenous women on 53 occasions and Indigenous men on 49 between 2001 and 2021, the Liberals and CLP put forward Indigenous men 33 times and Indigenous women just eight.

We also find clear differences in success rates between the main parties. Overall, almost two-thirds (61.6%) of Labor’s Indigenous candidatures resulted in an election victory, compared to just under one-third (32.5%) of those from the Liberals and Country Liberals.

This reflects the fact that 70.9% of candidatures for the ALP and 44.4% for the Liberals and Country Liberals were in winnable seats (that is, there was no more than a 5% difference in votes received, following the distribution of preferences, between the top two candidates at the previous election).

Read more:
Establishing a Voice to Parliament could be an opportunity for Indigenous Nation Building. Here’s what that means

The gender gap in Labor’s electoral success

Indigenous women and men in the ALP have run in roughly equal measures in winnable seats. However, from 2001 to 2021, Indigenous women had a much higher success rate than men (66.1% to 43.8%). Given these figures, it’s not surprising nine of the Indigenous representatives in the new parliament are women.

Two decades ago, this would have come as a surprise to many. The ALP’s new MP Marion Scrymgour, who represents the largely remote NT seat of Lingiari, certainly found this. Scrymgour recalled in an interview for our project, how she had been told before standing for the NT assembly seat of Arafura in 2001 that “only a man can win a bush seat”.

That is clearly not the case, either in remote or urban settings. In fact, as Scrymgour and Burney from Labor, Jacinta Price from the Country Liberals and Kerrynne Liddle from the Liberal Party have shown, Indigenous women from both left and right across the country have been consistently more successful than their male counterparts.

Read more:
You can’t be what you can’t see: the benefits for and the pressures on First Nations sportswomen

What our research found

Beyond election results, as part of our Australian Research Council project on Indigenous representation and involvement in the major parties, we were also interested in people’s pathways to parliament – whether they came through grassroots politics or other routes.

We spoke to 50 of the 62 Indigenous candidates who stood for the major parties at federal, state, and territory levels between 2010 and 2019. Of these, 34 were already party members when they first stood (or what we call “partisans”), while 16 were “parachutes”, meaning they had not been in the party before pre-selection.

The latter group includes high-profile figures like former Olympian Peris and Catholic priest and Yawuru Elder Patrick Dodson. As both told us in our interviews with them, they were persuaded to stand by the respective Labor leaders at the time: Julia Gillard in 2013 and Bill Shorten in 2016. Peris recalled how it’s hard to say no “when a prime minister taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Will you serve?’”.

While Peris and Dodson duly became elected representatives, many less high profile First Nations parachute candidates, particularly at state or territory level, did not. For these, the experience of standing was often fraught and even traumatic, especially for those who spent a lot of their own money campaigning only to lose and, in some cases, never hear from the party again.

The disparity in the accounts we heard from the “partisan” and “parachute” candidates was evident, with the former holding clear advantages in terms of how they approached election campaigns and the resources they could draw on.

As Chansey Paech (now a minister in the Northern Territory government) recounted to us, his many years of grassroots involvement in the Labor Party meant his first pre-selection and campaign in 2016 went smoothly.

Overall, the story of Indigenous representation of the last two decades, is one largely of success, especially for Indigenous women and the ALP.

Greater numbers do not necessarily translate into policy advances, and challenges also remain in terms of encouraging Indigenous people to sign up as grassroots members of parties.

However, the fact our federal parliament contains more Indigenous representatives than ever before is nonetheless an important step for Australian democracy. All Australians have the valuable contribution of diverse Indigenous voices and experiences informing our national decision making.

Michelle Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Duncan McDonnell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Women in the Labor party are leading the way in increasing Indigenous representation – https://theconversation.com/women-in-the-labor-party-are-leading-the-way-in-increasing-indigenous-representation-188450

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Lunnay, Post-doctoral researcher in Public Health , Torrens University Australia

Many of us enjoy a drink at the end of a stressful day. But for some, this is less of a discretionary treat and more of a nightly must-have.

While alcohol reduction campaigns ask us to check our relationship with alcohol, emphasising the role it can play in causing violence and disease, our research has found many Australian women view alcohol in a different way. Many don’t see alcohol as only a bad thing and have complex reasons for their relationships with alcohol.

We conducted 50 interviews with midlife women (45–64 years of age) from different social classes living in South Australia. All women had a relationship with alcohol but the nature of the relationship was really different according to their social class.

Our study, published today in the journal Health Promotion International, suggests the problem for public health lies in the circumstances that shape women’s lives and lead to a relationship with alcohol.

Public health messaging around alcohol harm reduction needs to be more nuanced, and tailored to women’s level of disadvantage and what support they can access. A message that hits home for middle class women won’t necessarily resonate for working class women.

Here are some key themes that emerged from our research.

Read more:
Did you look forward to last night’s bottle of wine a bit too much? Ladies, you’re not alone

For many midlife women, alcohol makes life better – or at least, liveable

For all women we spoke to, drinking alcohol was perceived to reduce loneliness and isolation. They didn’t just drink alcohol, they had a “relationship” with alcohol.

Women often have many competing responsibilities (working, caring, domestic duties). Many described feeling invisible and unacknowledged.

One middle class woman noted alcohol could be “numbing”. Another said:

[I drink] just on my own; doesn’t bother me. I don’t need to be sociable and I don’t necessarily drink when I’m out […] alcohol has always played a fairly large role.

For working class women however, alcohol can provide a reliable stand-in support in the absence of anything else. As one woman said:

Loneliness is definitely a factor for me, and I think it is for a lot of women. And I think once you start having a drink, it becomes a habitual […] I’d like to see more done in terms of the loneliness because I think it is a real thing.

Another woman noted:

I didn’t have anything – so in my life I have actually always had, like, a glass of wine.

Women with the most privilege drank to celebrate their achievements and enjoy life within social networks of similar women. Many middle class women described drinking alcohol as a long-standing part of their lives – drinking for relaxation, empowerment or because they felt they deserved a reward. As one put it:

It seems to be that ladies our age, all the ones I hang out with, are exactly the same as me. They say, “Oh well, wine o’clock.” […] I don’t need it, I don’t have to have a drink. I just choose to.

Many described drinking as socially acceptable, normal, or even “expected” of them. One middle class woman described “girl’s nights out” where drinking is “what I’m supposed to do”.

But, women with less privilege described drinking alcohol, often alone, to make a difficult and isolated life more liveable. As one put it:

It provides relief, even if for a couple of hours, to take that away, thinking, “Where the hell am I going to come up with A$1000 from?” OK, let me have a drink. Calm down. Think of this. To me, to remove that from women, you’re actually removing a part of their autonomy.

Many working class women we interviewed thought of alcohol as a reliable friend that allowed them to cope with really difficult and sometimes intolerable lives. One remarked:

How is that not a positive? […] I’m not going to cut something out that enhances my life so much.

‘Breaking up with alcohol’ can be hard to do

All women have complex reasons for drinking, which can make it hard to “break up” with alcohol.

Middle class women wanted to change their drinking and sometimes regretted drinking, taking steps to moderate their alcohol. But many working class women felt they could not manage their consumption when they already felt so restricted by life’s difficulties and saw alcohol as the only way to cope.

Some working class women felt punished if their drinking was questioned, because alcohol served as a way to regain control.

Clues for public health messaging

A blunt public health message telling women “do not drink, it is bad for you” does not address the structural reasons women drink in the first place – seeking connection for middle class women and dealing with isolation and hardship for working class women.

The positive and negative roles alcohol plays in women’s lives would need to be replaced, if alcohol were reduced. Our research shows society needs to pay more attention to the broader systemic issues underpinning women’s drinking, particularly the general absence of support for women during midlife. This is especially so for working class women without the resources to access support and appropriate care.

Getting the support needed to reduce drinking can use up a lot of resources (including what we have, who and what we know). And many working class women would lose what they see as an important (and often only) coping mechanism.

The challenge for public health is to make reducing alcohol or becoming “sober curious” a reasonable, affordable and feasible option for all women.

Belinda Lunnay receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Kristen Foley receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia for her doctoral scholarship which explores the social and commercial determinants of alcohol for Australian women in midlife.

Paul Ward 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. ‘Oh well, wine o’clock’: what midlife women told us about drinking – and why it’s so hard to stop – https://theconversation.com/oh-well-wine-oclock-what-midlife-women-told-us-about-drinking-and-why-its-so-hard-to-stop-188882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Feld, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Our siblings play a central role in our childhoods, so it stands to reason they influence our personality in the long term. In particular, researchers have long been interested in how growing up with a sister compared to a brother might influence who we become as adults.

How do children interact with their sister or brother? How do parents behave differently towards their children of different genders, and how does that interaction influence the children?

Past theories have made quite different predictions: siblings of the opposite gender may plausibly result in either gender-stereotypical personalities (a girl may take on a more feminine role to differentiate herself from her brother) or less gender stereotypical personalities (a girl may take on more masculine traits because she imitates her brother).

In fact, psychological research has been exploring these differences for over half a century. In some studies, siblings of the opposite sex seemed to be more gender-conforming. Girls with brothers later become more “typically female” and boys with sisters more “typically male”.

Other studies find the exact opposite, however. Opposite gender siblings developed in typically gender-conforming ways. To resolve these contradictions, we wanted to test the effect of sibling gender on personality in a rigorous and comprehensive way.

Using big data

In our new study we focused on the relationships between children and their next older or younger sibling. We compiled a unique data set by combining 12 large representative surveys covering nine countries across four continents (US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China and Indonesia).

This resulted in a data set of more than 85,000 people – many times the sample sizes used in previous studies.

Read more:
When do children develop their gender identity?

We also investigated many more personality traits than previous studies have. This included the traits that have been most widely studied in other research, and which have been shown to be important predictors of people’s decisions and choices.

The “big five” of these traits are: openness to experiences, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The other traits examined were: risk tolerance, trust, patience and “locus of control” (the degree to which people believe they have control over their lives).

We also created an index describing to what extent people have a typically female personality. This allowed us to test comprehensively whether growing up with an opposite gender sibling leads to a more or less gender-stereotypical personality.

Sibling gender and life experience

This study is not only innovative in its use of a large data set, but it also applies a consistent method to identify any causal effects of a sibling’s gender on personality traits.

To estimate credible causal effects, we make use of an interesting fact of nature: once parents decide to have another child it is essentially random whether they have a girl or boy. In this “natural experiment” some people are therefore “randomly assigned” a younger sister or brother.

This allows us to estimate the causal effect of sibling gender on personality by comparing the average personality of people who grew up with a sister as their next youngest sibling with those who grew up with a next younger brother.

Read more:
Are your squabbling kids driving you mad? The good/bad news is, sibling rivalry is ‘developmentally normal’

Brothers and sisters

Our results suggest sibling gender has no effect on personality. For all nine personality traits and the summary index, we find people who have a next younger sister display, on average, the same personality traits as people who have a next younger brother.

We also see no difference in personality between people who have a next older sister and people who have a next older brother. Because we have data on more than 85,000 people, these results are estimated with great precision.

Read more:
When parents play favourites, what happens to the kids?

The results help refute the idea that brothers or sisters cause each other to develop “feminine” or “masculine” personality traits over the long term.

However, the results don’t mean sibling gender has no long-term effect at all. Other studies that applied a similar methodological approach have shown that women with brothers in the US and Denmark earn less. And a study of Asian populations has found women with younger sisters marry earlier and women with older sisters marry later.

So, there seem to be interesting sibling dynamics related to gender – but personality is probably not part of the explanation for those effects.

During this research project, Thomas Dudek received funding from QuakeCoRE, a New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission-funded Centre.

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

– ref. Does a sibling’s gender influence our own personality? A major new study answers an age-old question – https://theconversation.com/does-a-siblings-gender-influence-our-own-personality-a-major-new-study-answers-an-age-old-question-188532

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerry Walton, Researcher, University of Otago

Most people have collected shells at the beach. Some have even started a shell collection. But few people realise these shells are a unique genetic resource that scientists are only beginning to tap into.

For over a decade it has been possible to extract and sequence ancient DNA from empty mollusc shells up to tens of thousands of years old. However, these techniques have so far proven very expensive and unreliable.

Our new international research represents a major advance towards doing so consistently and (relatively) cheaply. We employed these methods to better understand the evolutionary relationships between diverse populations of Aotearoa New Zealand’s smallest abalone/pāua species, Haliotis virginea.

Our results show the evolutionary history in this group was a lot more complicated than it appeared. Understanding how different populations are related to one another, and indeed what species they are, is critical in managing and conserving marine areas and resources.

Natural history collections across the world contain tens of millions of mollusc shells. Broader application of our methods would increase the proportion of samples in museum collections that can be used for genetic research by several orders of magnitude. Normally, only freshly collected and preserved tissues are used for genetic research.

We can now sequence DNA from thousands of mollusc species that have never been found alive, including those that went extinct recently, or those living in difficult-to-access places such as on deep-sea mountains. Such palaeogenetic studies of shells can reveal how species and populations have changed through time.

Read more:
New Zealand should celebrate its remarkable prehistoric past with national fossil emblems – have your say!

A rich and varied biological menagerie

Molluscs are an extraordinarily diverse animal group that includes snails, clams and octopuses.

In New Zealand, culturally important kaimoana (seafood) species such as green-lipped mussels are farmed extensively and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.

Molluscs can also be carnivorous, such as New Zealand’s giant, worm-eating Powelliphanta snails, many of which are critically endangered.

Blue sea dragons drift in the open ocean and feed on dangerous bluebottle jellyfish. Some cone snails shoot poisoned darts to catch fish, and have been known to kill humans. Fortunately, those in New Zealand are unlikely to be deadly.

Molluscs can also be parasitic, living inside or attached to other marine species. Tropical vampire snails suck the blood of sharks while they sleep.

Scaly-foot snails secrete metal scales like a suit of armour. Other species rely on camouflage for protection. Carrier shells glue rocks and other shells onto their own shell to blend in on the seafloor.

Most molluscs are really small. Tiny, almost transparent snails, often less than a millimetre in size even when fully grown, live deep underground in aquifers and caves. Conversely, giants such as the colossal squid, which live in Antarctic waters, can exceed 500kg and would produce a calamari ring larger than a hula hoop.

The living dead of natural history collections

Some molluscs living today were born before Europeans arrived in New Zealand. Icelandic clams have been recorded as living for more than 500 years.

However, death may not be the end of their story. Most mollusc species produce a robust shell that can persist in the environment for thousands of years. Molluscs are, accordingly, very well represented in the fossil record, and have significantly improved our understanding of biodiversity changes through time.

Read more:
‘Micro snails’ we scraped from sidewalk cracks help unlock details of ancient earth’s biological evolution

Amazingly, only half of New Zealand’s roughly 4,000 living mollusc species have been seen or collected alive. This includes tiny tree-top-dwelling snails that have been sieved out of leaf litter, or shells scooped out of sediments around the base of undersea mountains that are too rocky to sample directly.

A large proportion of the known mollusc species have yet to be given scientific names.

Natural history collections represent an invaluable and undervalued resource: an archive of knowledge and the solutions to questions never before thought possible, or that were held back by technological limitations of the time.

Read more:
Museum specimens could help fight the next pandemic – why preserving collections is crucial to future scientific discoveries

With congruent climate and biodiversity crises, museum collections are no mere Victorian-era flights of fancy. They are critical to help us to better understand and protect our unique fauna and flora. These collections are essential to connect present and future generations with these amazing species.

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.

Kerry Walton 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. Empty mollusc shells hold the story of evolution, even for extinct species. Now we can decode it – https://theconversation.com/empty-mollusc-shells-hold-the-story-of-evolution-even-for-extinct-species-now-we-can-decode-it-187927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexia Maddox, Research Fellow, Blockchain Innovation Hub, RMIT, RMIT University

The role of the city is changing. To find out how, we surveyed more than 2,000 Victorians living in Melbourne, its suburbs and regional centres in April 2022.

The survey is the first of its kind in Australia and documents a pivotal point in Melbourne of social and economic reopening after long and stringent COVID lockdowns. The findings are being released today in our Digital Infrastructures report as a part of the Digital CBD project.

At the threshold of a “new normal”, we found the long lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus, and the rapid adoption of digital technologies, have changed the way we engage with the city. It’s now seen as less a place of work and more of a place for socialising, shopping and services.

What people told us is that at the time of reopening in Melbourne, they were getting into the city about once a month on average. This included people living in the suburbs and regional centres. People who went into the city for work did so for an average of only nine hours a week.

It’s not surprising they were visiting the city centre much less often but, still, it raises the question of what we want to use the city for. That was the subject of a long and complex debate even before the pandemic.

We surveyed a representative sample of 2,064 people. This means we can be confident that what they told us broadly represents experiences across the population.

Read more:
Liveable cities: who decides what that means and how we achieve it?

What is the role of the city in the wake of the pandemic?

Work remains the main reason for people to engage with the city. Our survey respondents in the workforce did so for an average of nine hours a week.

When we look at the work-from-home data we gathered, one in seven employed people work from home completely, and a third practice hybrid work arrangements in Victoria. We found that on average people will work from home two days a week. These averages are taken from people who live and work full-time and part-time across the regions and suburbs, not just in the inner city. Most employed people valued and wanted to continue to have this choice of whether to work from home or in the office.

So, Melbourne city can’t really be thought of as the place where workers go – that is, the office hive. What people told us makes it seem like a lifestyle space. Indeed, what they felt was important in Melbourne was the hospitality scene, essential services (such as medical appointments), and the cultural and creative life, including education, sport and shopping.

Read more:
Few Australians have the right to work from home, even after COVID. Here’s how that could change

The suburbs as ‘cities’

But many could easily find those activities in their suburbs. This means getting to the city is much less important for them.

Those living in the regions had more trouble remembering when they last visited the city, which suggests it is not essential to their everyday lives.

Despite these perceptions of the shifting centrality of the city in people’s daily lives, residents felt they were spending about the same amount of time in the city as before the pandemic. This observation needs to be treated with caution because a quarter of Melbourne residents in our survey were spending much less time in the city than before the pandemic.

Are people ready for a digital city?

These findings suggest we need to ask whether a city can depend on its reputation for lifestyle to hold its position in a global economy, or as a political centre and trade gateway. As digital technologies have been rapidly adopted during the pandemic, we think it is more important to consider how we can position Melbourne as a digital city of the future.

A digital city refers to the array of connected devices and infrastructures that complement the city’s business, cultural and social life. Digital activities range from personal devices such as smartphones to initiatives like the digital art gallery.

In our report on the new infrastructure demands for Melbourne, we see the city as an eclectic hub that supports entrepreneurial, creative, cultural, learning and digital endeavours that interweave the regions and connects to the global context.

Read more:
Tech diplomacy: cities drive a new era of digital policy and innovation

Digital inclusion is vital

But for city residents to know how to engage with and benefit from a digital city, they need to have the skills and access to technology. Melbourne residents also told us about their digital abilities. Like the findings from the Australian Digital Inclusion Index, we found Melburnians have high digital abilities, but not all are ready for the digital city of the future.

Digital skill-building is essential. We also need to ensure technologies are accessible and affordable and that internet access is reliable so no one is left behind.

The pandemic has transformed the city. This is an opportunity for some more imaginative thinking.

Our report highlights the investments we need to make to create a more inclusive city. We now need to think about what is needed, materially and socially, for a digital city to foster wellbeing for every individual and across society.

Alexia Maddox receives funding from the Victorian Higher Education State Investment Fund (VHESIF).

Jacinthe Flore receives funding from the Australian Research Council and RMIT University.

– ref. The ‘city’ is becoming increasingly digital, forcing us to rethink its role in life and work – https://theconversation.com/the-city-is-becoming-increasingly-digital-forcing-us-to-rethink-its-role-in-life-and-work-189118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Peetz, Professor Emeritus, Griffith Business School, Griffith University

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

To those old enough, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Jobs and Skills Summit brings back memories of Bob Hawke’s National Economic Summit conference, held the month after his 1983 election victory.

But they are very different animals in very different contexts.

The inflation contexts

In the 1983 summit, the context was high inflation and unemployment, fed by high wages growth. Profits were squeezed. The unions had to be persuaded to restrain wages demands, and the Prices and Income Accord of February 1983 had achieved that. The summit reinforced that consensus.

In 2022, the context is high inflation and low unemployment. Unions are much less powerful than they were in 1983. Rising prices are feeding into rapidly growing profits, and corporations benefit from shortages and market concentration by pushing up prices in numerous areas. That’s how markets work in times of shortages.

Government might like firms to restrain their price demands, but there is no existing agreement about that, and Australian business is not known for engaging in self-restraint when profits and executive bonuses might be at risk.

So the task for Albanese would be much harder than that facing Hawke, if the jobs summit were aimed at inflation. It is not. Its agenda is about full employment, productivity, job security, wages, labour force participation, skills and the labour force aspects of industrial change.

The Albanese government can’t use tripartism (discussions between the government, business and unions) to deal with inflation, the way the Hawke government did. But it needs tripartism to deal with many of those issues up for discussion at the job summit.

The mostly zero-sum issues

On some of the issues, unions have a strong inherent interest. The second of the five headline issues in the Issues Paper is “Boosting job security and wages”.

Unions have some fairly obvious demands here. They want the government to remove some of the legal barriers to collective action. They want it to cut opportunities for employers to use casual labour and contractors in place of permanent employees. They want action to better protect workers in the gig economy. They also want state governments to loosen their salary caps, though that’s not something the federal government can determine.

Read more:
If the PM wants wage rises, he should start with the 1.6 million people on state payrolls

The federal government receives limited support from Treasury, which would vigorously oppose most of the unions’ proposals on tax or economic reform. Treasury still pushes the line (repeated in the summit Issues Paper) that low wage growth reflects low rates of job switching. It is as if low wages growth is workers’ fault for not being adventurous enough.

Treasury’s failure to understand the changing labour market is one reason it has overestimated future wages growth in most budgets since 2015-16. Increasingly, employers have been unwilling to offer wages high enough to get people to switch jobs. Less orthodox economists talked of increasing “monopsony” – a situation where there is only one buyer – in labour markets.

Still, this failure is not fatal, as a Labor government has many sources of advice. So, it can be expected to support some, but not all, of the unions’ proposals. For example, the federal minister, Tony Burke, has already signalled he wants to stop exploitation of loopholes in termination of agreements.

We might also see the federal tribunal given the power to set standards for contractors working in road transport, much as has happened in NSW since 1979 and is now proposed by the Queensland government.

Read more:
Guilt, shame, dissatisfaction: workers and customers on the gig economy (and how to make it better)

These are matters on which consensus is unlikely. They are mostly zero-sum issues: the previous government’s attempts to weaken unions and enable cuts to labour costs did nothing to boost the size of the cake, and reversing them will not change that. After decades of higher profits being gained through lower wages, there is little prospect that lifting wages at the expense of profits would get the support of business.

The positive-sum issues

However, most of the other issues for the job summit are not at all zero-sum, and the government will want all sides to think outside the box and contribute to the solutions. Raising productivity, improving skills and training, having a labour force able to promote and adapt to industrial change, and ensuring an adequate climate and energy “transition” are all matters on which both capital and labour can benefit and contribute.

Unions are explicitly mentioned in the Issues Paper for their potential role in dealing with barriers to employment, migration, training, female employment and regional policy. The government will no doubt seek their views and encourage their further engagement in the issues.

Even though talk of a climate and energy transition is now too optimistic — we are more likely to see a series of disruptions than any smooth transition — the role of unions will be very important here. They will be key to shaping how far and how fast Australia adapts to the changing environment, and the changing demands of our trading partners for action on climate change.

The solutions to these many problems won’t all be found at the jobs summit. But we can expect it will facilitate the establishment of a number of tripartite mechanisms, some formal, some informal, that will guide reform in a number of areas over the next few years.

In that sense, the summit is part of a long game that Albanese is playing. It’s not about short-term theatrics. It is about laying the groundwork for several years of policy development. The unions and the government will both look for co-operation from the other over the long haul.

David Peetz receives funding from the Australian Research Council and, as a university researcher, has undertaken research over many years with occasional financial support from governments from both sides of politics, in Australia and overseas, employers and unions.

– ref. What can unions and the Albanese government offer each other at the jobs summit? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-unions-and-the-albanese-government-offer-each-other-at-the-jobs-summit-188535

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University

Next week’s job summit will need to address the massive staff shortages in aged care. Estimates suggest 35,000 additional aged care workers per year are needed to fill growing aged care skill shortages. These problems will only increase as demand continues to grow.

Aged care workers provide personal and health care such as showering, feeding and changing dressings, help people with shopping and other community tasks, and support people in their homes and in aged care facilities?.

As the recent royal commission into aged care found, after decades of poor planning and governance, particularly at the local and regional level, it’s now hard to attract workers.

Workers are poorly paid, with hourly wages starting at around A$22. They often work casually or part time and there are limited career pathways.

Only around 5% of providers are currently exceeding the target staffing levels the new government has promised for 2023. Not surprisingly, there is high staff turnover in the industry and many providers simply can’t get staff.

But while skilled migration can play a role in aged care, it’s unlikely to be enough to fix the immediate or long-term problems.

Read more:
‘Fixing the aged care crisis’ won’t be easy, with just 5% of nursing homes above next year’s mandatory staffing targets

What has the government done to boost workers so far?

The new federal government has opened up the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme to bring in more aged care workers to plug the gap.

The PALM scheme allows eligible aged care providers to hire workers from nine Pacific islands and Timor-Leste for between one and four years in unskilled, low skilled and semi skilled positions when there are not enough local workers available.

Currently, there are about 27,000 PALM workersin Australia. Most are in agriculture and manufacturing. The federal government is committed to growing the scheme, but at the end of 2021 there were only about 150 PALM workers in the care sector.

Migration processing is lagging

The total migration program is 160,000 visas per year. About 110,000 visas are for skilled migration. The rest is for families. The federal government has recently indicated it is looking at permanent migration for aged care workers.

Following COVID, there is a massive backlog in processing applications, resulting in a substantial reduction in migration.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade handles skilled visa applications and the actual assessments are issued by one of 42 skills assessing authorities. A full skills assessment takes about four to six weeks. But it takes around six to nine months for the department to issue skills visas for permanent migration and longer for temporary migration.

The Department of Home Affairs has been directed to speed up visa processing and clear the substantial backlog that has built up during the last three years.

But migration numbers are unlikely to meet demand

Even if the backlog is addressed and processing times improve, it is unlikely there will be sufficient appropriately qualified applicants to meet the aged care shortages through skilled migration, given the high demand for workers across the board and the international shortage of health care workers.

There are also broader risks in relying on temporary migration to fix short-term problems. Temporary solutions have a nasty habit of becoming permanent and undermining labour market conditions. There is now a long history of temporary migration undercutting wages and workers’ rights.

Read more:
Australia is missing 500,000 migrants, but we don’t need visa changes to lure them back

So what can be done to attract and keep aged care workers?

5 ways to boost the aged care workforce

1. Increase wages

Most importantly, wages for aged care workers must be improved immediately. The current work value case before the Fair Work Commission will help if the commission grants a substantial wage increase. The unions have called for a 25% lift to wages for aged care workers. That case should be determined later this year.

2. Improve conditions

Better wages alone won’t be enough. Conditions for aged care workers have to be made more secure. While consumer choice and flexibility are important, that can’t be at the expense of proper protections for workers. Aged care workers often have insecure and variable hours, split shifts and out-of-pocket costs.

3. Scale up training

Training and career structures have to be much more attractive. Around 30% of the workforce do not hold a relevant aged care qualification.

Despite the demand for improved training, the vocational education sector has difficulty attracting aged care students. Entry pathways to aged care work have to be made much more attractive.

While there are some traineeships for aged care, these could be scaled up. A national scaled up program of paid aged care traineeships should be considered to address the problem as an immediate extension of the federal government’s free TAFE initiative.

A Certificate III in Individual Support could be completed over two years with trainees working three days a week with approved home care and residential care providers. Training and supervision could be provided in partnership with TAFEs.

Paid traineeships would be attractive – and 10,000 to 15,000 traineeships would make a significant dent in the aged care workforce shortage.

The costs of aged care employment and training are already included in federal and state aged care and VET budgets. A traineeship scheme could be implemented in 2023.

Read more:
Budget gives $49.5 million for aged care training, but what about wages?

4. Develop career structures so workers can progress

In the medium term, aged care career structures have to be reformed both to improve the quality of the management, supervision and care of aged care services and to develop and retain the aged care workforce.

The new government’s initiatives to require 24/7 nursing oversight in all residential care facilities and to increase the care time to be provided are a start, but a broader emphasis on restructuring the personal care workforce is also needed. In particular, all personal care staff should be required to have appropriate training and registration to work in aged care.

5. Make it more attractive

Finally, the attractiveness of working in a reformed aged care sector needs to be promoted. A compelling vision of a high quality, well run, properly funded aged care sector with good wages and conditions and career pathways is needed to make aged care a much more desirable career choice.

Hal Swerissen is a non executive director of the Bendigo Kangan Institute for TAFE and a non executive director of the Murray PHN

– ref. Overseas recruitment won’t solve Australia’s aged care worker crisis – https://theconversation.com/overseas-recruitment-wont-solve-australias-aged-care-worker-crisis-189126

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Diesendorf, Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney

Energy consumption – whether its heating your home, driving, oil refining or liquefying natural gas – is responsible for around 82% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Unless Australia reduces its energy consumption, my recent study finds it’ll be almost impossible for renewable energy to replace fossil fuels by 2050. This is what’s required to reach our net-zero emissions target.

Yet, as the nation’s economy recovers from the pandemic, Australia’s energy consumption is likely to return to its pre-pandemic growth. The study identifies two principal justifications for reducing energy consumption (or “energy descent”):

1. the likely slow rate of electrifying transport and heating
2. that renewable energy will be chasing a retreating target if energy consumption grows.

Energy descent isn’t an impossible task. Indeed, in 1979, Australia’s total final energy consumption was about half that in 2021. Key to success will be transitioning to an ecologically sustainable, steady-state economy, with greener technologies and industries.

What’s slowing down growth in renewables?

To transition to sustainable energy, Australia must electrify transport and combustion heating, while replacing all fossil-fuelled electricity with energy efficiency and renewables, which are the cheapest energy technologies.

Renewables can be rolled out rapidly: wind and solar farms can be built in just a few years and residential rooftop solar can be installed in a single day.

But rapid growth in wind and solar is slowed by three critical infrastructural and institutional requirements of the electricity industry:

• to establish Renewable Energy Zones (a cluster of wind and solar farms and storage)
• to build new transmission lines and medium-term energy storage such as pumped hydro
• to reform electricity market rules to make them more suitable for renewable electricity.

These take longer than building solar and wind farms and much longer than installing rooftop solar and batteries. Nevertheless, they could be fully implemented within a decade.

In fact, transitioning existing fossil-fuelled electricity generation, such as coal-fired power stations, to 100% renewables could possibly be completed by the early 2030s.

But optimistic calculations based on how quickly we can build solar and wind farms and their infrastructure ignore the fact that the growth of renewable electricity is limited by electricity demand.

When existing coal-fired power stations have been replaced by renewables, electricity demand will be determined by how rapidly we can electrify transport and combustion heating. These are the principal tasks that will limit the future growth rate of renewable electricity. They will likely be implemented slowly, despite the urgency of climate change.

Read more:
Why Labor’s new tax cut on electric vehicles won’t help you buy one anytime soon

Households and industries have big investments in petrol/diesel vehicles and combustion heating. They may be reluctant to replace these working technologies, without substantial government incentives.

So far, effective federal government policies are almost non-existent for transitioning transport and heating, which are together responsible for 38% of Australia’s emissions.

This month’s announcement of a future “consultation” on fleet fuel efficiency standards is the government’s tentative first step.

Chasing a retreating target

If we look at only percentage growth rates, the task of renewable electricity looks misleadingly easy. From 2015 to 2019, Australia’s renewable electricity grew by 62% – an excellent achievement.

But, it was starting from a small base. This means its increase in energy production over that period was only slightly bigger than the growth of total final energy consumption – comprising electricity, transport and heating – which is still mostly fossil fuelled.

On the global scale, the situation is even worse. As a result of growth in total final energy consumption, the share of fossil fuels was the same in 2019 as in 2000: namely around 80%.

The challenge for renewable energy is like a runner trying to break a record while officials are striding away down the track with the finishing tape.

This situation is not the fault of renewable energy technologies. Nuclear energy, for example, would grow much more slowly and would take even longer to catch up with growing consumption.

In one of the scenarios I explore in my study, Australia’s total final energy consumption grows linearly at the pre-pandemic rate from 2021 to 2050. Then, renewable electricity would have to grow at 7.6 times its pre-pandemic rate to catch up by 2050.

Alternatively, if renewable electricity growth is exponential, it would have to double every 6.8 years until 2050.

Considering that future growth in renewable electricity will be limited by the rate of electrifying transport and combustion heating, both the required linear and exponential growth rates appear impossible.

Possible solutions

Both the International Energy Agency and modelling done for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change avoid the problem by assuming large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage or directly capturing CO₂ from the air will become commercially available.

But relying on these unproven technologies is speculative and risky. Therefore, we need a Plan B: reducing our energy consumption.

Read more:
Engineers have built machines to scrub CO₂ from the air. But will it halt climate change?

My study shows if we could halve 2021 energy consumption by 2050, the transition may be possible. That is, if raw materials (such as lithium and other critical minerals) are available and local manufacturing could be greatly increased.

For example, if the total final energy consumption declines linearly and renewable electricity grows linearly, the latter would only have to grow at about three times its 2015–2019 rate to replace all fossil energy by 2050. For exponential growth, the doubling time is 9.4 years.

Improvements in energy efficiency would help, such as home insulation, efficient electrical appliances, and solar and heat pump hot water systems. However, the International Energy Agency shows such improvements will be unlikely to reduce demand sufficiently.

We need behavioural changes encouraged by socioeconomic policies, as well as technical.

Implications of energy descent

To reduce our energy consumption, we would need public debate followed by policies to encourage greener technologies and industries, and to make socioeconomic changes.

This need not involve deprivation of key technologies, but rather a planned reduction to a sustainable level of prosperity.

It would be characterised by greater emphasis on improving and expanding public transport, bicycle paths, pedestrian areas, parks and national parks, public health centres, public education, and public housing.

Read more:
Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists

This approach of providing universal basic services reduces the need for high incomes and its associated high consumption. As research in 2020 pointed out, the world’s wealthiest 40 million people are responsible for 14% of lifestyle-related greenhouse gas emissions.

And on a global scale, energy descent could be financed by the rich countries, including Australia. Most people would experience a better quality of life. Energy descent is a key part of the pathway to an ecologically sustainable, socially just society.

Mark Diesendorf 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. It’ll be impossible to replace fossil fuels with renewables by 2050, unless we cut our energy consumption – https://theconversation.com/itll-be-impossible-to-replace-fossil-fuels-with-renewables-by-2050-unless-we-cut-our-energy-consumption-189131

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Keating, Visiting Fellow, College of Business & Economics, Australian National University

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

Treasury’s issues paper for the jobs summit says fair pay and job security “strengthen communities, promote attractive careers and contribute to broad-based prosperity”.

But it notes “many Australians have not experienced real wage gains.

It says real (inflation-adjusted) wages have grown by only 0.1% per year over the past decade and have declined substantially over the past year.

It is important to note Australia is not unique.

In Canada, France, Britain and the United States as well as in Australia, real wage growth has been much lower in the 12 years preceding COVID than it was in the decade before that.

The critical question is why. Good policy depends on the answers.

For a long time, the authorities (in Australia, the Treasury and the Reserve Bank) assumed that low wage growth was caused by excessive slack in the labour market – too many unemployed workers available to take jobs, pushing down what could be asked for.

Low unemployment isn’t driving up wages

Unemployment exceeded their estimate of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), which was believed to be about 5%. The theory was that once unemployment fell below that level, workers would feel more confident about asking for bigger wage increases and employers would feel the need to offer them.

The problem was that as unemployment fell, wage growth still did not recover, or did not recover sufficiently. The authorities responded by lowering their estimate of the NAIRU to somewhere between 4.5% and 5% without changing the model.

But with unemployment now down to 3.4%, and wage growth still low at 2.6%, it might be time to reexamine the model.

Productivity works both ways

The other thing the authorities consider is the rate of growth in labour productivity (output per hour worked). Australia’s productivity growth averaged 2.1% per year from 1989 to 2004 but has since fallen to about 1% per year, the lowest rate in half a century.

The authorities’ model, which assumes perfect competition, constant returns to scale and neutral technological progress implies that real wages can be expected to grow at the same rate as productivity, neither more nor less, making it look as if the collapse in productivity growth explains the collapse in wages growth.

Read more:
Are real wages falling? Here’s the evidence

But there are problems with this explanation. One is that real wage growth has not always kept pace with productivity growth. In many countries the share of national income going to wages fell as productivity growth was climbing.

Another problem is that low wage growth can contribute to low productivity growth.

Productivity growth depends principally on the adoption of and adaptation to new innovations, which require new investment. However, investment depends principally on consumer demand, which is driven by wages growth.

Wages can drive investment

Private business investment in plant and machinery averaged 6.7% of gross domestic product between 1989 and 2004 but fell to 5.1% after 2004.

It is entirely possible that if we were able to successfully address the structural causes of low wage growth, we could accelerate wages growth and thus consumer demand, which would accelerate productivity growth, giving us wages growth without a wage-price spiral.

So, what are these structural factors slowing wage growth?

The most-discussed suggestions are changed industrial relations settings (including shrinking trade union membership) and technological change and globalisation.

Low-skill jobs are hollowing out

Although there is something in both of these explanations, I put more weight on technological change and globalisation in part because other countries with different industrial relations systems also experienced weak wage growth, and also because the hollowing out of occupations clearly played a role and it is hard to see how the industrial relations system could have contributed to this.

Read more:
The Chalmers graphs: 7.75% inflation, plunging real wages, weak growth

The argument is that technological change and globalisation have hollowed out routine middle-level jobs, depressing pay in these occupations relative to higher-paid occupations.

This means programs to lift wage growth should focus on improving the capacity of the labour market to adapt to new technologies, which means retraining.

As the workforce upskills, wages will increase as workers shift to higher-paid jobs where workers are in short supply.

Thomas Piketty put it this way in his major study of inequality:

the best way to increase wages and reduce wage inequalities in the long run is to invest in education and skills

Although skills, training and migration are listed as key topics for the jobs summit, the treasury’s issues paper focuses almost entirely on industrial relations in its discussion of how best to boost wages.

The paper puts a lot of emphasis on restoring and improving enterprise bargaining, which the paper says, “should be a key enabler of both productivity growth and secure and well paid work”.

I am sceptical about this making much difference.

As I noted, other countries with different industrial relations systems have low wage growth.

The changes to the industrial relations system that would most help are those that improve job and pay security for the almost one third of workers who are casuals or independent contractors.

Helping them might flow on to others.

And wages in the public sector and jobs that are largely financed by government – such as those in health, education and caring – appear to be inadequate. There is clear evidence of unattractive salaries and work conditions causing labour shortages.

Read more:
If the PM wants wage rises, he should start with the 1.6 million people on state payrolls

These sectors are dominated by women, meaning improving their pay and conditions would help address the gender pay gap.

The price of improving the pay and conditions of these workers is worth paying, but it will come at a cost to budgets, which will have to be financed by tax, something participants at the summit should acknowledge.

Michael Keating is a former Secretary of the departments of Employment and Industrial Relations, Finance, and Prime Minister and Cabinet.

– ref. Many jobs summit ideas for lifting wages don’t make sense – upskilling does – https://theconversation.com/many-jobs-summit-ideas-for-lifting-wages-dont-make-sense-upskilling-does-189114

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chari Larsson, Senior Lecturer of art history, Griffith University

Review: Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)

Drawing together 19 artists and collectives, Embodied Knowledge: Queensland Contemporary Art is a celebration of women, people of colour and LGBTIQA+ artists. All share a connection to Queensland.

Co-curators Ellie Buttrose and Katina Davidson have presented an energetic and inclusive group show. The conversations are varied and important without collapsing into parochial cliché.

The curators cleverly weave multiple interconnecting themes investigating history, memory and self. Embodied Knowledge gives visual form to the complexity and diversity of contemporary art in Queensland.

At the entrance to this exhibition, you are immediately greeted with Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist Archie Moore’s newly commissioned installation in the gallery’s Watermall. Titled Inert State 2022, it consists of pieces of paper gently floating on the surface of the water.

On closer inspection, each document is a coroner’s report.

Counter-memorials

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, memorials have become increasingly contested terrain, with artists seeking to challenge the very idea of what a memorial might be.

Since the 1991 release of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report, more than 500 Indigenous people have died in police custody in Australia. Moore’s installation is a no-nonsense account of the ongoing racial violence in Australia’s prison systems.

Bitterly, this is a memorial in the present tense: Indigenous deaths in custody have not stopped.

Read more:
Black Lives Matter is a revolutionary peace movement

Also working in a counter-memorial mode, Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall critiques museum collections that continue to hold human remains and cultural objects from Weatherall’s Country and its surrounds.

To Know and Possess (2021) is a series of ten memorial plaques cast in bronze. Each plaque is a cast of an original museum record.

The series sits awkwardly, out of scale on the expansive and otherwise empty gallery wall.

This is entirely the point, Weatherall is interrogating the supposed “ideological purity” and neutrality of the gallery space and, by extension, the institutional archive.

He reminds the viewer of the violence collecting practices continue to exert on Indigenous peoples.

It is as if the plaques are deliberately antagonising or waging war with the wall where they are hung.

Callum McGrath’s installation emerges from his ongoing research project investigating and documenting public sites that are memorials for the queer community.

Part travel diary, part images selected from the internet, Responsibilities to time (2019) is presented in a series of leather-bound photo albums.

The scale of McGrath’s work is intimate: he invites the spectator to step in and take a closer look. The frosted page dividers frustrate the viewer’s desire to see. Instead, the viewer is left with absences and gaps.

The work is a potent reminder of how queer histories are made invisible by heteronormative history. By working with amateur photography, McGrath is undermining the archive and its claims to authority.

A sense of self

This exhibition cleverly interweaves key moments in the history of native title.

Meriam artist Obery Sambo is from the Torres Strait island of Mer (Murray Island) and a descendent of a long line of master mask and headdress-makers. Here he continues that tradition with his own ornate masks.

In 1898, the University of Cambridge sponsored a team of anthropologists to travel to the Torres Strait, where they filmed Sambo’s ancestors dressed and dancing for ceremony.

Many years later, the footage was used as evidence of cultural continuity in the Mabo ruling in 1992.

Read more:
Australian politics explainer: the Mabo decision and native title

Working in an entirely different register, Justene Williams’ installation The Vertigoats (2021) consists of a series of mannequins.

Williams has long been associated with the grunge aesthetic of Sydney in the 1990s. This work is more disco. With their disproportional limbs, Williams’ figures gleefully dance and cavort across the gallery space.

In her sights is the darker side of the online wellness and fashion industries. The idealised fabrication of our online selves is placed under pressure as the mannequins’ elongated limbs stretch to nightmarish proportions.

In playful dialogue with Williams’ mannequins is Jenny Watson’s series Private views and rear visions (2021-2022). Comprising of 48 paintings displayed along the length of the gallery wall, the work’s scale is commanding.

Watson has painted over printer’s proofs of the exhibition catalogue for a showing of her work in 2016. This creates a curious fold in time: Jenny on Jenny.

Watson is at her performative best: she places the notion of the authentic self under pressure while working in her distinctly confessional mode of address. Watson draws on recurring motifs that have defined her career, such as the lone woman, horses and the playful incorporation of text.

Embodied Knowledge is on display at QAGOMA until January 22.

Chari Larsson 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. QAGOMA’s Embodied Knowledge is an energetic and inclusive celebration of contemporary Queensland art – https://theconversation.com/qagomas-embodied-knowledge-is-an-energetic-and-inclusive-celebration-of-contemporary-queensland-art-188722

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sutton, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, University of Technology Sydney

Aged care homes struggling to meet staffing needs are increasingly relying on externally contracted care workers to make up shortfalls.

However, our new study, shows homes that rely more heavily on externally contracted care staff provide significantly worse quality of care.

With the government convening a national jobs and skills summit next week, much attention is focused on addressing current staff shortages across the economy. Legislation has just been passed to increase the numbers of workers in aged care homes, and our research indicates workers’ employment conditions are critical to ensuring higher quality of care is provided to senior Australians.

‘Agency’ staff across the sector

Within the residential aged care sector, approximately 9% of all the registered nurses, enrolled nurses and personal care workers are external contractors. Employed by third-party labour hire agencies, these “agency” staff work across different aged care homes on a temporary basis.

This sort of employment arrangement can help homes deal with short-term fluctuations in demand and staffing shortfalls. So it’s not surprising that as shortages have become more acute, this workforce strategy has become more commonplace.

In particular, as homes have struggled to maintain sufficient staff during the COVID pandemic, the use of agency staff has increased across the sector.

As agency staff tend to work intermittently, there are concerns they lack familiarity with individual residents and their unique needs. This can be disruptive and distressing for residents and their families and undermine the continuity of their care.

Also, as agency staff frequently work across different homes, they tend to be less efficient and require more supervision. This can can increase workload pressures, stress and turnover of permanent workers.

Read more:
Getting more men into nursing means a rethink of gender roles, pay and recognition. But we need them urgently

The relationship between staffing and quality care

Our study of 1,709 aged care homes over five years investigated the relationship between the quality of care provided by aged care homes and their reliance on agency contract care staff.

We found the use of agency staff was relatively common, with the majority of homes using agency care staff at some point.

More importantly, we found homes that rely more heavily on agency staff have worse quality of care. Specifically, they have higher rates of workforce-related complaints to the regulator, occurrences of missing residents, reportable assaults, preventable hospitalisations and instances of non-compliance with accreditation standards.

While this is the first such study in Australia, these results align with international evidence. One striking similarity is how sensitive care quality is to even tiny increments of agency staffing. We found that even if just 5% of care time is delivered by agency staff, homes deliver significantly poorer quality outcomes.

Read more:
‘Fixing the aged care crisis’ won’t be easy, with just 5% of nursing homes above next year’s mandatory staffing targets

But we’re in the middle of a workforce crisis

Our findings suggest one way to improve quality of care is for homes to reduce their reliance on contract care staff. This could involve efforts to improve the recruitment, retention and rostering of permanent nurses and care workers.

However, in the current context, this might be easier said than done. With the industry in the midst of a massive workforce crisis, homes may have no choice but to continue to rely on agency workers.

In such cases, homes should adopt strategies to mitigate the potential for bad outcomes. For example, they might improve residents’ continuity of care by drawing from a pool of regular agency workers and investing in better orientation and shift handover processes.

In terms of policy, much of the recent reform agenda has focused improving staffing numbers and skills in aged care, through funding for training programs, mandatory care minutes, 24/7 registered nurses and addressing workers pay.

Another of Labor’s election promises was to implement a recommendation from the Royal Commission to require aged care providers to preference direct employment over using contracted “agency” workers. This issue is now being investigated by the Productivity Commission, which will hand its report down next month.

Read more:
‘Respite care’ can give carers a much-needed break, but many find accessing it difficult

No quick fixes

Simply putting limits on agency staff is unlikely to work in the current context. Imposing caps may result in homes providing less total care to residents.

Rather, the widespread use of agency across the sector reflects a need to understand and address its root causes. As will be discussed next week at the jobs summit, staffing shortages are not isolated to aged care but widespread across the economy.

Policymakers also will have to be mindful of the impact of other reforms in play. For instance, the use of contractors may well increase as providers attempt to increase staffing levels to meet incoming mandatory minimum standards, while managing the demands and disruptions of COVID outbreaks.

Despite these challenges our research highlights the importance of finding ways to sustainably curb the use of contract staff so as to deliver the quality of care all senior Australians deserve.

Nicole Sutton is the current Treasurer of Palliative Care Association of N.S.W.

Nelson Ma 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. Complaints, missing persons, assaults – contracting outside workers in aged care increases problems – https://theconversation.com/complaints-missing-persons-assaults-contracting-outside-workers-in-aged-care-increases-problems-188745

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jaelen Nicole Myers, PhD Candidate, James Cook University

Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to unloved Australian animals that need our help.

Have you ever done the “stingray shuffle”? If you live by the coast, you’ve probably taken this precaution to frighten off any buried stingrays as you wade into the water. Breath easy – your chances of getting stuck with a nasty barb are slim.

Any thoughts we have about stingrays usually end once danger is averted, but these fascinating creatures are much more than an inconvenience for beachgoers.

Stingrays are flat-bodied sharks that live in almost all marine environments worldwide. In fact, there are over 600 recognised species – most of which we know very little about. Even in the research world, we struggle to answer simple questions such as: which areas are most valuable for stingray populations and why?

The mangrove whipray (Urogymnus granulatus) is one such species. Aptly named, mangrove whiprays feel at home gliding through submerged mangrove roots in the tropical coastal regions of the Indo-Pacific and Northeast Australia. Unfortunately, they are at risk of decline and localised extinctions.

As a scientist who studies them, I attest these rather ordinary, mud-covered stingrays are beautiful, and I never tire of watching them. We have to ask ourselves: would it make any difference if these rays were here or not? How relevant are they for ecosystem health?

The situation at hand

Sharks and rays are experiencing some of the most drastic declines of any animal group inhabiting our oceans today due to fishing pressure and habitat loss, and coastal species are particularly vulnerable.

Stingrays are occasionally preyed upon by their toothy relatives, such as formidable Carcharhinid or hammerhead sharks. However, the shark-eat-shark world isn’t all to blame for losses of abundance and species becoming red-listed.

Most stingrays depend on shallow tidal habitats for feeding and protection, especially during their first years of life, but many of these areas worldwide are being lost and degraded. This is a big threat to the survival of mangrove whiprays.

Coastal development is a major contributor to the destruction of mangroves as we replace these seaside forests with marinas, agricultural land, factory ports, ocean-view hotels, homes, and other structures.

A recent global assessment of tidal wetlands found that compared to other coastal environment types, mangroves experienced some of the greatest losses due to human activities, with 3,700 square kilometres lost worldwide between 1999-2019.

Worsening drought conditions due to climate change may also threaten mangrove forests. For example, recent research suggests climate change contributed to the deaths of 40 million Northern Australian mangroves in the summer of 2015 and 2016.

We can only expect that with the loss of pristine mangrove environments, mangrove whiprays will diminish along with them. As this threat continues into the future, this little stingray remains at risk.

Why they matter

Mangrove whiprays do much more than lay buried in the sand. While they’re not high profile apex predators, they fill an important niche as intermediate predators. Essentially, they are the glue that connects higher and lower levels of the food chain.

Since they’re usually seen from above, it’s hard to notice the small, suction-like mouth underneath, which they use to extract buried invertebrate prey. Combined with vigorous flapping of their winged pectoral fins, their feeding can stir up hefty clouds of sediment.

Through this intense excavation, they recirculate buried nutrients and small food items back into the water column. This, in turn, can be important for creating feeding opportunities for other organisms. My personal observations of foraging mangrove whiprays have revealed that small fishes often linger nearby to snack on stray food particles.

As both predator and prey, these rays also help transfer nutrients beyond where they feed across a broader range of ecosystems. This can occur at small scales when they creep in and out of intertidal areas with the tide and at larger scales when juveniles transition to deeper waters as adults.

This strengthens ecosystem connectivity, which is a critical component of overall health and stability of coastal environments.

So, under the category “ecosystem functions”, coastal stingrays like the mangrove whipray have an impressive resume worthy of our attention. The next big question regarding their conservation is: what can we do for them?

What we can do

Realistically, we cannot snap our fingers and stop all human activities from threatening the coastal mangroves they call home. What we can do is achieve a better understanding of where they are highly abundant and why, so we can identify pieces of critical habitat.

This way, conservation efforts can be designed to protect the areas they rely on the most.

An improved understanding on how mangrove whiprays participate in coastal food chains would also help us determine if declining populations threaten the welfare of coastal mangrove forests.

But the campaign for action doesn’t stop at mangrove whiprays. This species represents just one of many creeping into the bubble of conservation concern, and more may join the list if we continue without vital knowledge that can support their protection.

Examples of other vulnerable species that have been documented sharing habitats with mangrove whiprays are the pink whipray (Pateobatus fai) and giant guitarfish (Glaucostegus typus). Therefore, in areas where these different ray species live together, conservation strategies for one may have positive outcomes for all.

It’s up to scientists to fill the existing gaps on stingray ecology, but the average bystander can also help by spreading awareness for stingrays so their plight won’t drag on without any media headlines to lament it.

They may not warm our hearts with their cuddly cuteness (me excluded), but the wellbeing of our coastal ecosystems may just depend on these remarkable flat-bodied sharks. I know I will miss them if they are gone.

Jaelen Nicole Myers receives funding from James Cook University’s College of Science and Engineering and Orpheus Island Research Station; funding also provided by the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment via the Ecological Society of Australia

– ref. ‘I will miss them if they are gone’: stingrays are underrated sharks we don’t know enough about – https://theconversation.com/i-will-miss-them-if-they-are-gone-stingrays-are-underrated-sharks-we-dont-know-enough-about-186214

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly E Matthews, Associate Professor, Higher Education, Institute of Teaching and Learning Innovation, The University of Queensland

Each year tens of thousands of higher education students complete the Student Experience Survey. It’s seen as a litmus test of student engagement, satisfaction and educational quality. But do the ways in which institutions and governments try to understand student experiences still add up?

The pandemic has transformed enrolment patterns and the ways in which students interact with their institutions and the courses they offer. We suggest the data from the 2021 survey released today no longer adequately capture students’ experience of study. The current version of the survey was designed for a time when modes of study were more clearly defined than they have become since COVID-19 emerged.

The student survey is part of the Australian Quality Indicators of Learning and Teaching (QILT) suite of measures for higher education. The 2021 report shows ratings are more positive compared to 2020 for younger and internal (classroom-based) students. According to the report, this “can likely be attributed to some return to on-campus learning and also a change in the expectations and experience of students”.

Read more:
COVID has changed students’ needs and expectations. How do universities respond?

But how are “internal” students engaging in their studies? Does learning look the same today compared to 2019, and should it?

New forms of flexibility in student mode of study have to be matched with new forms of support to enable students to make smart choices. The mode of study categorised as internal for the survey now includes so much variation that it no longer serves a useful function for reporting and analysis purposes.

Read more:
Digital learning is real-world learning. That’s why blended on-campus and online study is best

Why QILT results matter

Individual higher education providers might use results to:

• set key performance indicators – for example, “by 2030, we will be in the top 3 universities for learner engagement”

• market themselves – “we are the top Australian university for teaching quality”

• undertake evidence-informed planning – “develop sense-of-belonging roadmap to increase scores”.

Student survey data are also used in research that informs policymakers. Drawing on many years of survey results, social scientists analyse datasets to answer big, high-level questions.

It’s more than a matter of comparing universities and providers. Questions of equity and access are investigated. For example, how are rural and regional students engaging in higher education?

These data are used in research with other national datasets. For example, reports from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education at Curtin University demonstrate the importance of such data.

COVID has changed how we study

The pandemic shone a light on issues of student equity as mode of study shifted (as a recent review showed). Mode of attendance is defined as:

• internal: classroom-based

• external: online, correspondence, and electronic-based (the language used for data-collection purposes shows how outdated it is)

• multimodal: mix of internal and external.

In 2019, about 75% of Australian higher education students were enrolled as internal students. Multimodal studies accounted for roughly 14%.

Even at that time, it could have been argued that the lines between internal (classroom-based) and external (online) were already becoming blurred. Lecture recordings, learning management systems, flipped classrooms, endless debates about the “lecture”, and growth in digital technologies not only broadened access to knowledge but also enabled a mix of online and in-class interaction.

The use of existing technologies was a key reason the higher education sector could pivot online in a week when the pandemic hit in early 2020. Imagine if the pandemic had happened in 2005 instead of 2020? Higher education institutions would have simply shut down without these technologies.

Now we have had two years’ experience of online learning and new modes of study. Examples include attendance via Zoom rooms, live online, hi-flex (making class meetings and materials available so students can access them online or in person), swapping from on-campus to online due to lockdowns, students moving between internal and external study on a week-by-week basis. Does the either-or categorisation of modes of attendance – internal or external – still make sense?

Read more:
Beyond Zoom, Teams and video lectures — what do university students really want from online learning?

5 problems with categorising attendance this way

We have identified at least five problems with the current survey categorisation of modes of attendance:

1. categorising attendance as purely one or other mode, rather than a combination of modes, stifles research and analysis of important national datasets

2. the existing categorisations stifle innovation, limiting institutions from creating distinctive blends of modes of teaching and learning

3. it perpetuates an outdated, either/or mindset that permeates discussion in the sector

4. it masks important implications of differences between new and established modes of attendance, including:

• hidden workloads for staff, leading to questions of burnout and mental health

• unclear expectations for students, which hinders decision-making and effective study approaches

• hidden costs and unclear planning processes for differing modes of study

• lack of clarity about blurred modes of study being offered, which can restrict access to higher education and create obstacles to success for equity students.

5. the sector is missing opportunities to gather relevant mass-scale data on modes of attendance to guide policy and practice.

Sector needs to agree on a new model

The crude categorisation of modes of study is hindering evidence-based decision-making. Across the sector, institutions are scrambling to sort out how best to maintain the flexibility many students now demand while ensuring students meet expected learning outcomes. And institutions need to do so in ways that are sustainable and healthy for staff.

As the chaos of the pandemic hopefully subsides, the higher education sector would benefit from a sector-wide process of developing an agreed way of describing the full range of modes of attendance. A framework is needed that enables shared understanding of all these modes. This will enable institutions to better plan, resource, innovate and engage students and staff.

Such a framework could then inform ongoing national data collection, such as QILT, so social scientists and educational researchers can, in turn, better guide policy and practice.

Kelly E Matthews has received funds from the Australian Department of Education, Skills and Employment in a project with the co-authors and Matthias Kubler.

Jason M Lodge has received funds from the Australian Department of Education, Skills and Employment in a project with the co-authors and Matthias Kubler.

Melissa Johnstone has received funds from the Australian Department of Education, Skills and Employment in a project with the co-authors and Matthias Kubler.

– ref. 5​ problems with the Student Experience Survey’s attempt to understand what’s going on in higher education post-COVID – https://theconversation.com/5-problems-with-the-student-experience-surveys-attempt-to-understand-whats-going-on-in-higher-education-post-covid-185483