Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jarryd Bartle, Associate Lecturer, RMIT University

The New South Wales government is set to introduce new “no body, no parole” laws, which will deny parole for homicide offenders who refuse to provide information or assistance to locate their victim’s remains.

This follows Chris Dawson’s murder conviction of Lynette Dawson, whose remains have yet to be found.

Such laws offer prisoners an incentive to give up information about the location of their victims’ remains. Similar laws have already been introduced in Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.

In general, “no body, no parole” laws mandate that parole authorities should deny parole unless they are satisfied about the level of cooperation provided by the prisoner to identify remains, including how early the information was provided.

These laws are designed to provide closure to friends and families of homicide victims, allowing them to bury their loved ones. However, there’s scant evidence they are effective. And they could prove disastrous for people in Australian prisons who have been wrongfully convicted.

Read more:
True crime entertainment like The Teacher’s Pet can shine a light on cold cases – but does it help or hinder justice being served?

What is parole and why is it important?

Parole is the conditional early release of prisoners, allowing them to serve a part of their sentence in the community.

When given a prison sentence, a judge will determine how long an offender must remain in custody (a non-parole period) and at what point they can become eligible to serve the rest of their sentence in the community.

Parole recognises that aims of rehabilitation may be best served by providing opportunities for prisoners to transition back into the community. The courts decide whether a person is eligible for parole, but state parole authorities decide whether or not to release them when the time comes.

Evidence suggests offenders who complete some period of parole before the end of their sentence are less likely to re-offend.

While completing their sentence in the community, parolees also must comply with parole conditions. This can include reporting conditions and mandatory behavioural programs that reduce the risk of re-offending.

Tightening parole exacerbates the issue of overcrowded prisons
with offenders capable of being managed in the community being housed at the public expense in correctional facilities.

There is considerable concern in Australia over prisoners “maxing out” their custodial sentence, either by choosing not to apply for parole to avoid conditions upon release, or because of restrictions on parole eligibility such as “no body, no parole” laws.

The effectiveness of ‘no body’ laws

We recently looked into the effectiveness of Queensland’s “no body, no parole” laws, which were passed in 2017.

As our work with RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative often involves working with people serving terms of imprisonment while claiming their innocence, evaluating the effectiveness of such laws and their risk for the wrongfully convicted is of considerable interest.

Most Australian jurisdictions don’t publish their parole decisions. However Queensland does – specifically for “no body” law outcomes.

Our analysis showed that of the ten cases that came before the parole board during our collection period, six involved cooperation by the applicant but none resulted in remains being found.

The Queensland case of Graeme Evans, who was convicted of manslaughter over the death of his former partner Leeann Lapham in 2018, has been cited in the media as an example of “no body” laws working effectively.

However, Evans pleaded guilty to the offence and was not eligible for parole at the time when he helped investigators find Lapham’s remains.

This example is only related to “no body” laws because the detective in charge of the case has claimed he used the threat of those laws to convince Evans to cooperate.

We believe “no body” laws lack evidence to support their use and may offer false hope to victims’ families if remains cannot be found. They rely on many assumptions about how crimes occur, how offenders may cooperate, and effective policing investigations post-disclosure.

They may also prove disastrous for the wrongfully convicted.

What about the wrongfully convicted?

We have no idea how many people have been wrongfully convicted in Australia. An estimate based on research from the United States indicates up to 3% of all convictions may be wrongful. But the reality is we have no way of finding out.

A person can be found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit for a variety of reasons, including eyewitness misidentification, improper forensic evidence, coerced or otherwise false confessions, or police misconduct.

Wrongful convictions remain a persistent risk within our criminal justice system, even when high standards of procedural justice are upheld.

Wrongfully convicted prisoners face what is referred to as “the innocent prisoner’s dilemma” when they become eligible for parole. If they maintain their innocence and refuse to admit responsibility or express remorse, they may be denied parole. If they do accept responsibility for a crime they did not commit, they may limit options in the future of having their conviction overturned.

“No body” laws add a further complication for the wrongfully convicted. The factually innocent are clearly unable to provide information to authorities about the location of the victim as they did not commit the crime and would not know where the body is.

A well known example is Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, who was wrongfully convicted in 1982 for murdering her daughter Azaria.

Chamberlain was demonised publicly for not admitting guilt and for not leading investigators to Azaria’s body. A 2012 inquest later found Azaria was killed by a dingo.

“No body” laws may at first appear to be acting in the public interest in ensuring families can bury their loved ones. But the lack of evidence of real outcomes and the very real risk it may disproportionately penalise the wrongfully convicted should give us pause before expanding this policy further.

Jarryd Bartle works for RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative which examines cases of wrongful conviction that may be subject to no body, no parole laws.

Greg Stratton works for RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative which examines cases of wrongful conviction that may be subject to no body, no parole laws.

Michele Ruyters works for RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative which examines cases of wrongful conviction that may be subject to no body, no parole laws.

Monique Moffa works for RMIT University’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative which examines cases of wrongful conviction that may be subject to no body, no parole laws.

– ref. ‘No body, no parole’ laws could be disastrous for the wrongfully convicted – https://theconversation.com/no-body-no-parole-laws-could-be-disastrous-for-the-wrongfully-convicted-191083

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

The Ukraine conflict has escalated this week, with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announcing a partial military mobilisation and once again raising the threat of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile Ukraine has been pressing Australia to provide another 30 Bushmasters, after those already helping the war effort are proving very effective.

In this podcast Ukraine’s ambassador Vasyl Myroshnychenko urges the Albanese government to reopen Australia’s embassy in his country as soon as possible.

“By now 60 different countries have sent their embassies and ambassadors back to Kyiv. And I think it’s important for Australia to go back because if Bruce Edwards [the ambassador, now stationed in Poland] is on the ground, he’s capable of meeting people there and interacting with the minister of defence, with the minister of foreign affairs, with other stakeholders in Ukraine, to provide a better feedback to Canberra.”

Pushing for the additional Bushmasters and other weaponry, Myroshnychenko says: “Hop in a taxi [in Kyiv] and the taxi driver is going to ask you, ‘where are you from?’ And you will say you’re Australian. So most likely he’s going to say ‘Bushmaster’ […] It’s kind of a very strong brand name, currently strongly associated with Australia. Just like kangaroos and koalas are. It’s now a Bushmaster.”

Myroshnychenko also calls for the government to replace the scheme, now expired, that was set up by the Morrison government to give some financial help to Ukrainians who fled the war.

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. Ukraine ambassador urges Australian embassy in Kyiv to reopen ASAP – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-ambassador-urges-australian-embassy-in-kyiv-to-reopen-asap-191255

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosemary Grey, Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney

A United Nations-backed tribunal in Cambodia has just concluded its largest trial, concerning crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. The tribunal’s appeal judges yesterday confirmed the conviction against 91-year-old Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, for his role in these crimes.

Yesterday’s decision was a turning point. After this, there will be no further trials in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. But what will the lasting impacts of these trials be?

Read more:
Khmer Rouge genocide: Nuon Chea’s death has major implications for justice in Cambodia

What was the Khmer Rouge regime?

The Khmer Rouge, otherwise known as Communist Party of Kampuchea, held power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Their assent to power followed a period of violent authoritarianism, conflict and the loss of half a million lives during US bombing in the Vietnam war.

While many Cambodians initially welcomed the Khmer Rouge’s victory, this popular support was short-lived. Life under Khmer Rouge rule meant forced labour, starvation, and the constant threat of torture, imprisonment and death.

Prosecuting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge

In 1979, the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge and installed a tribunal to prosecuted Communist Party of Kampuchea Prime Minister Pol Pot and Deputy Prime Minister Ieng Sary in absentia.

After that largely symbolic effort, there was no accountability for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge for several decades.

However, following negotiations between the Cambodian People’s Party (still in power) and the UN, in 2003 a tribunal was established to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders and “those most responsible” for the crimes.

Known officially as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, this UN-backed tribunal started work in 2006. Its jurisdiction covers crimes defined in Cambodian law and international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

There is now a permanent court to prosecute these kinds of crimes: the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But it can only address crimes committed after 2002, whereas the UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia’s mandate reaches back to the 1970s.

The trials

In its 16 years of operation, the UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia has completed just three trials.

In the first trial, it found Kaing Guek Eav (alias “Duch”), former head of the S-21 prison, guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

S-21 was used to torture suspected enemies of the regime. An estimated 12,000 men, women and children were detained there; only 12 are known to have survived. Duch’s conviction was upheld on appeal, and he died in prison in 2020.

The next case concerned four Communist Party of Kampuchea senior leaders: Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.

But Ieng Thirith was found unfit to stand trial in 2012 and Ieng Sary died in 2013, leaving only two defendants in the case.

Due to the complexity of the case, the tribunal split it into two phases.

In 2014, the tribunal convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan of crimes connected to the expulsion of Cambodia’s urban population into rural worksites. This conviction was mostly upheld in 2016, with both defendants receiving a life sentence.

In 2018, it convicted both men of further crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

This conviction covered forced labour, the torture and execution of suspected dissidents, crimes targeting ethnic, political and religious groups, and orchestrating forced marriages with a view to incentivising population growth.

The judgement also recognised many rapes by Khmer Rouge cadre in worksites and prison sites, although these crimes were not formally charged.

Both men appealed the 2018 judgement, but Nuon Chea died shortly after at age 93, leaving Khieu Samphan as the sole appellant.

Genocide

The case that ended yesterday was the Cambodia tribunal’s only case to include charges of genocide.

Nuon Chea was convicted of genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese and Cham groups; Khieu Samphan was convicted of genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese only.

These legal findings do not necessarily square with popular conceptions of genocide in Cambodia, where “genocide” has come to mean the atrocity crimes against the entire population.

But in international law, “genocide” is defined more narrowly – it only captures crimes committed with an intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Nor do the tribunal’s genocide findings necessarily accord with the perspectives of the targeted groups. Our research suggests the Cham and ethnic Vietnamese communities do not always draw clear distinctions between their experience, and that of the broader Cambodian population. While they wanted the tribunal to recognise their suffering, this did not have to include a conviction of genocide targeting them exclusively.

But ultimately, these legal details may not matter. It seems the 2018 genocide conviction was meaningful for many Cambodians, who viewed it as affirming their experience of “genocide”.

What next?

Many Khmer Rouge leaders died before they could be indicted, and attempts to prosecute other suspects were blocked by the Cambodian government.

Now, attention is turning to the tribunal’s legacy.

Already, there are signs it affected the historical record. For example, the pattern of forced marriage and sexual violence recorded in its judgements was not widely acknowledged by Cambodian or Western historians prior to these trials.

But the full extent of the tribunal’s impact will take decades to assess.

It is yet to be seen whether it effected the rule of law in Cambodia, whether its judgements and reparations brought a meaningful sense of justice to survivors, and how the judgements will influence understandings of the regime and its crimes.

Read more:
Cambodians await crucial tribunal finding into 1970s brutal Khmer Rouge regime

Rosemary Grey receives funding from the Australian Research Council and University of Sydney, and has previously received funding from the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre.

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

– ref. A UN-backed tribunal on Khmer Rouge crimes just confirmed the conviction of key leader Khieu Samphan. What now? – https://theconversation.com/a-un-backed-tribunal-on-khmer-rouge-crimes-just-confirmed-the-conviction-of-key-leader-khieu-samphan-what-now-191060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Aiken, Adjunct Associate Lecturer, UNSW Sydney

You’re at a barbecue and the adults are enjoying a few drinks. Everyone is relaxed and having a great time. One of your friends has just given their teen a beer. Next thing you know, your 15-year-old is asking for one too.

You don’t really want them drinking alcohol yet, but they’ll probably try it sooner or later. You’d rather they get it from you than somewhere else. But you’re also worried about what trying alcohol now might lead to in the future.

What do you do?

The results of our study show that not offering your teen alcohol is best. But if you do, a sip is less risky down the track than giving your teen a whole bottle or can.

Parents play a key role

Fewer teens are drinking alcohol than in previous generations. Nevertheless, alcohol is still one of the biggest contributors to death and illness in young people, including via injuries, accidents and suicide.

Parents play a key role in providing teens with the tools to make healthy life choices. They’re also one of the main sources of alcohol for teenagers.

In fact, many parents give their teens alcohol thinking it’s the safest way to introduce it.

À lire aussi :
Why are young people drinking less than their parents’ generation did?

No alcohol is best. But is that realistic?

We set out to understand common patterns of alcohol supply from parents and peers, and whether some patterns increased the chance of binge drinking, alcohol-related harms, and problem drinking as young adults.

So we surveyed the same group of young Australians every year from when they were 13 to 19 years old.

We found not providing adolescents any alcohol is the least-risky option in terms of preventing later binge drinking, alcohol-related harms (for example, accidents, blackouts, fights) and problem drinking.

Young people who were not supplied alcohol, or only supplied minimal amounts under the age of 18, had the lowest risk of binge drinking, experiencing alcohol-related harms, and reporting symptoms of alcohol abuse, dependence and alcohol use disorder in early adulthood.

This aligns with previous research that not allowing any alcohol before the age of 18 is the best way to reduce the chance adolescents will binge drink and develop physical, psychological, or social problems due to alcohol. It also aligns with
the current Australian alcohol guidelines.

However, this is sometimes unrealistic as adolescence can be a time of experimentation. Parents can also feel pressure to supply alcohol to their teen if other parents they know are doing so.

À lire aussi :
A parent’s guide to why teens make bad decisions

What other options are there?

We found young people who received whole drinks from their parents earlier in adolescence (aged 14-16) and/or were mainly supplied by their peers drank more heavily during adolescence. They were also much more likely to binge drink, report symptoms of problem drinking and experience alcohol-related harms in early adulthood.

Earlier parental supply and supply from peers have previously been linked with greater alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems (with the risk increasing for each year earlier supply occurs). Earlier escalation of heavy drinking comes with an increased risk of a range of negative outcomes, including those related to physical and mental health, school or work, and social problems.

Sitting in the middle of the risk continuum were young people who received sips only from their parents in early to mid-adolescence (14-16 years), and were then supplied whole drinks from around age 17 by their parents, and to a lesser extent, their peers.

These young people were more likely to binge drink or experience alcohol-related harms compared to those not supplied alcohol at all. But they were less likely than teens who received whole drinks during early-mid adolescence and/or who were mostly supplied by peers.

Regardless of the intent, any supply may normalise and signify approval or permissiveness of alcohol use to adolescents.

While it is safest to not supply alcohol in adolescence, if parents do, providing sips only in early to mid-adolescence, and delaying supply of whole drinks for as long as possible is likely to result in less harm than earlier supply of whole drinks, or allowing supply from peers.

À lire aussi :
Three ways to help your teenage kids develop a healthier relationship with alcohol

Tips for parents

Here are some tips for parents of teens to help their child make healthy life choices about alcohol:

• ideally, do not supply alcohol to anyone under 18; waiting as long as possible to start drinking alcohol is safer

• if you are providing sips, do so under supervision, for example, at home

• know who your teen’s friends are; if they go out make sure you know where they will be and who they will be with; if they will be home late, they should check in with a parent or caregiver. This monitoring reduces the chance of your teen being in an unsafe environment and their friends supplying them with alcohol

• establish some alcohol-specific rules (for instance, no alcohol from friends, only allowed to drink if a parent or caregiver is there to supervise)

• limit access to alcohol at home (for instance, keep alcohol in locked cupboards, don’t keep too many drinks in the fridge)

• model positive alcohol behaviours (for instance, eating before and while drinking, and sticking to the recommended number of drinks per day or week)

• understand the alcohol secondary supply laws in your state or territory. These relate to the laws about supplying alcohol for people under 18.

If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s use of alcohol or other drugs call the National Alcohol and other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015, free from anywhere in Australia.

Evidence-based online resources and services for parents and teenagers include: Positive Choices, ReachOut, Alcohol and Drug Foundation, Kids Helpline and Lifeline.

Alexandra Aiken is an Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. The Australian Parental Supply of Alcohol Longitudinal Study (APSALS) was funded by a 2010–2014 Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP:1096668), two Australian Rotary Health Mental Health Research Grants, a Research Innovation Grant from the Australian Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, a 2018-2022 National Health and Medical Research Council project grant (APP1146634), and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales Sydney,
Australia, which is supported by funding from the Australian Government under the Drug and Alcohol Program.

Amy Peacock receives funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs, and ACT Health. She has previously received untied educational funding from Mundipharma and Seqirus for post-marketing surveillance of pharmaceutical opioids; these organisations had no involvement in study design, conduct and reporting, and funding was for work unrelated to that presented here.

Philip Clare receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, and previously received funding from the Australian Government under the Research Training Program. These organisations had no role in the conduct of any studies, and funding was not directly for work presented here.

Wing See Yuen received funding from the Australian Government under the Research Training Program and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. She works for the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW Sydney.

– ref. Should I give my teen alcohol? Just a sip, the whole can, or none at all? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-give-my-teen-alcohol-just-a-sip-the-whole-can-or-none-at-all-190234

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jade Fountain, PhD Student, University of Adelaide

Noisy miners are complicated creatures. These Australian native honeyeaters live in large cooperative groups, use alarm calls to target specific predators, and sometimes help raise the young of other miners. But they’re perhaps best known for their aggressive and coordinated attacks on other birds – a behaviour known as “mobbing”.

We conducted a study investigating some of the possible factors that influence mobbing. We were interested in whether access to human food left on plates at cafes, or a high nectar supply thanks to planted gardens, might give urban miners extra energy and time to mob other species more often. We also examined whether miners were more aggressive towards some species over others.

Our study, published in the journal Emu – Austral Ornithology, found it wasn’t cafes with access to sugar-rich food that led to more miner aggression. In fact, gardens were where we recorded the highest amount of aggressive behaviour.

Understanding mobbing is important, because this behaviour can drive out other birds and reduce diversity. Smaller birds with a similar diet to noisy miners are particularly vulnerable.

Read more:
Should we cull noisy miners? After decades of research, these aggressive honeyeaters are still outsmarting us

What we did

The noisy miner’s preferred habitat is along the edges of open eucalypt forest, including cleared land and urban fringes. Their numbers have grown in recent decades, presenting a significant conservation problem.

We know from previous research that urban noisy miners tend to be more aggressive compared with rural populations.

But to examine mobbing behaviour more closely, we placed museum taxidermies (stuffed animals) of different species of birds in three different types of habitat around Canberra:

• urban cafes with lots of food leftovers

• urban gardens that had higher-than-usual supplies of nectar

• bush areas more typical of “natural” miner habitat.

For each habitat, we then presented the resident noisy miners with three different types of museum taxidermy models of birds:

• food competitors with a similar diet to miners, both of the same size (musk lorikeets) and a much smaller species (spotted pardalote)

• potential predators, including a dangerous species that preys on miners (brown goshawk) and a species that robs nests but poses less of a risk to adult miners (pied currawong)

• neutral species, meaning a bird that does not prey upon nor compete with miners for food (in our study, we used a model of an eastern rosella).

We wanted to see how miners responded to these “intruders” in various settings. We also set up a speaker nearby to broadcast alarm calls, to see how miners reacted.

What we found

We found interesting differences in how miners responded to our taxidermy models and the broadcasted alarm calls.

Noisy miners exhibited aggressive behaviours for a much longer time in gardens and cafés in comparison to natural bush areas.

Surprisingly, however, access to sugar-rich food from cafes didn’t yield the most aggressive behaviour. Rather, we recorded the highest levels of aggressive behaviour near garden sites.

Nectar-rich plants (such as grevilleas and bottlebrushes) are attractive to birds with a sweet tooth, and miners are no exception. Newer cultivars flower for longer, meaning miners living in our gardens may have access to an almost year-round source of food.

Ready access to these flowering shrubs may affect aggression by providing more time, energy or reward to noisy miners defending these uber-rich resources.

The type of model presented also impacted miner response.

More miners were attracted to an area and mobbed the subject for longer when the model was of a predator.

Miners showed even greater aggression to food competitor models, however. They were more likely to physically strike food competitor models with a peck or swoop compared to predator models.

What can gardeners do with these findings?

Our research shows the importance of considering how gardens – whether in back yards, in parks or new housing estates – can affect local ecosystems, including bird behaviour. Previous studies have drawn a link between the types of plants humans choose to plant and the local mix of bird species.

To reduce the risk of creating a perfect habitat for despotic miners in your garden, aim to:

• plant multi-layered levels in your garden – that means including ground cover, small shrubs, medium shrubs and trees to provide shelter at different heights for various birds and animals

• consider planting plenty of dense shrubs with small flowers to attract insects and provide shelter for small birds

• use a mix of nectar-rich and non-flowering shrubs and grasses (instead of focusing too heavily on flowering plants)

• try to avoid planting too many exotic species; opt instead for native plants local to your area and suited to the climate, as these benefit native plants and animals whilst minimising benefits to aggressive noisy miners.

Read more:
Why we ‘hate’ certain birds, and why their behaviour might be our fault

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

– ref. Want noisy miners to be less despotic? Think twice before filling your garden with nectar-rich flowers – https://theconversation.com/want-noisy-miners-to-be-less-despotic-think-twice-before-filling-your-garden-with-nectar-rich-flowers-190226

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Soheil Mohseni, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sustainable Energy Systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Globally, the electricity sector is shifting from large, centralised grids powered by fossil fuels to smaller and smarter renewable local networks.

One area of strong interest is “energy arbitrage”, which allows users to buy and store electricity when it is cheaper and sell or use it when the cost is high.

But Aotearoa New Zealand is slow to take this up – even though it is a crucial part of the transition to a zero-carbon future. Why is this?

Small-grid technologies and infrastructure are still in the experimental phase, being tested for effectiveness and desirability of different set-ups, ownership models and commercial arrangements. And intelligent energy-management systems that can provide a prescient forecast of market dynamics are not used widely.

To better understand these dynamics, we’ve modelled a theoretical “microgrid” in a residential subdivision, Totarabank, in the North Island of Aotearoa.

We used the model to forecast the expected commercial returns from investing in microgrids and to unlock potential revenue streams from energy arbitrage.

Smart scheduling of batteries

Energy arbitrage requires battery storage and intelligent control to make the most of a local renewable energy system’s generation.

This can be achieved by forecasting short-term future electricity consumption and linking this to the spot power price on the market. Sophisticated real-time controllers then decide if the local system should store or sell to the market (or store and sell later).

Battery storage systems can vary in size, from community-scale batteries supplying a neighbourhood to batteries within a fleet of electric vehicles (EVs). The fundamental controlling processes required to achieve an optimal outcome are broadly the same, except that community batteries are stationary while EV batteries move around.

Read more:
Good news – there’s a clean energy gold rush under way. We’ll need it to tackle energy price turbulence and coal’s exodus

Community batteries can store electricity purchased from the grid during off-peak periods and then discharge it during peak periods. Neighbourhoods with solar power can charge community batteries in the middle of the day when solar-generated electricity is abundant and discharge during the higher-priced evening peak.

EV batteries can be used similarly, using cheaper night rates or periods of surplus wind during the night to charge. The energy stored in EV batteries can then be discharged into local loads or sold back into the grid when the price is highest, creating an additional revenue stream.

Modelling return on investment

In our modelling, we assumed the primary reasons people will invest in clean-energy technologies are sustainability, energy independence and resilience. We believe energy arbitrage could be an enabler of capital-intensive microgrids, as opposed to an investment made on a purely commercial basis.

Specifically, we considered a grid-connected microgrid integrating solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbines. The system is also backed by a community battery and has a fleet of ten personal EVs to serve.

We considered two scenarios: one with grid arbitrage revenues and one without.

Our results suggest revenues procured explicitly from energy arbitrage could reduce the total cost of the system by at least 12%. To put this into perspective, for a typical NZ$10 million town-wide microgrid investment, this means $1.2 million in savings.

Another interesting finding was that the length of time the batteries were able to sustain critical loads during unplanned grid outages was greater by about 16 hours per year, compared to the case without intelligent control. This is a remarkable resilience advantage.

Read more:
‘We want to be part of that movement’: residents embrace renewable energy but worry how their towns will change

So what does this kind of analysis mean for you? If you are part of a community interested in owning and operating a microgrid, you now have enough evidence to ask your developer to consider energy arbitrage so the community can participate in the electricity market to make a profit.

If you own an EV and are trying to get cheaper night rates, this is a heads-up on future offerings from electricity retailers to get your storage-on-wheels to work with the vehicle-to-grid technology.

On the whole, energy arbitrage is an excellent tool to provide support for renewable energy investment decisions and help firm up revenue forecasts.

Alan Brent receives funding from Victoria University of Wellington.

Soheil Mohseni 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. Small communities could be buying, selling and saving money on electric power right now – here’s how – https://theconversation.com/small-communities-could-be-buying-selling-and-saving-money-on-electric-power-right-now-heres-how-190740

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janice Crerar, Lecturer in Education, Charles Darwin University

How is lava made? – Leon, age 7, Sydney, Australia

Thank you for a great question Leon!

Have you ever seen lava? What does it look like to you? Lava can be red, fiery and liquid or cool, dark and solid, like in the picture above.

In the picture you can see red hot lava, flowing over black solid rock where the lava has cooled. Lava is molten rock, melted because of very high temperatures, much, much hotter than you would see on the surface of the earth.

Can you imagine how hot it must be to melt rock? This gives a clue about how lava is made, somewhere with very high temperatures below Earth’s surface.

While underground, the liquid rock is called magma; it becomes lava when it flows onto the planet’s surface, usually through a volcano. When the lava cools – that’s the dark solid ground you see in the image – it is called “igneous” rock. This means “fire” in Latin (scientists use a lot of Latin words), so it is fire rock.

To understand how lava is made and where it comes from, we need to journey below Earth’s surface – which we can’t do, because it would be too dangerous. Imagine trying to travel somewhere hot enough to melt rock, what would that do to you?

Instead, we can look at the structure of Earth in the image below and imagine the journey.

We would travel down through Earth’s crust, into the mantle and then into the core. Once there, we would discover that the crust and mantle are mostly solid rock. After the mantle we would notice the liquid outer core and then the solid metal inner core.

In Earth’s core the temperatures are very hot, usually between 5,000 and 7,000 degrees Celsius. Think about this to compare: chocolate starts melting at around 80℃ and tap water boils at 100℃. This very hot core acts like an oven for Earth, heating it from within.

Along the way we might find some magma in the mantle where it is made, in a space between the outer mantle and Earth’s crust. Magma is formed through heat and pressure – imagine squeezing a ball of plasticine as hard as you can: that is you putting pressure on the ball. While the mantle is not as hot as the liquid core, there is a lot more pressure. The pressure is caused by movement in the rocky mantle, pressing against the crust.

This pressure, and the temperatures from Earth’s “oven” at the core, cause rock to melt and magma is formed. The magma moves to Earth’s surface through openings – sometimes these openings are volcanoes – and forms new crust.

Often the new crust forms into islands, like many of the Pacific islands. This happens because liquid comes out through openings on the sea floor and cools, forming land.

You can watch this video for the story from Mother Earth herself. But be warned: never put rocks in a fire to try and melt them, some might explode! I’ll let you ask about that another time.

Janice Crerar 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. Curious Kids: How is lava made? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-is-lava-made-190431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney

Since 2017, Victoria has commemorated AFL Grand Final Friday as a public holiday, with a parade of the two competing teams through a festive Melbourne (apart from interruptions in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19).

Saturday’s match between Geelong and Sydney is especially anticipated because it welcomes back the grand final to the MCG after a two-year absence due to local COVID restrictions. So, the packed stadium and associated entertainment promise to demonstrate renewal in the wake of the pandemic. It is also a celebration of a unique game, Australian made and owned, with a goal of competitive balance.

Read more:
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Made in Australia

Australian Rules football, as the name suggests, is a substantial part of this country’s cultural fabric. It began as a pragmatic effort to keep Melbourne cricketers fit during cold winters in the 1850s. Rather than an invention, this game was more of an adaptation, as the colonists who drew up the initial rules (1859) took inspiration from various informal “kicking” and “handling” ball sports in Britain.

In that respect, although this Australian brand of footy evolved to become unique, it was not conceived as a challenge to imperial orthodoxy. Soon after, Association Football (1863) and Rugby Football (1871) were formalised in Britain, then transplanted around the empire.

The unorthodox aspect to this story is that, despite the import of soccer and rugby, the Australian game not only survived, it began to flourish in many parts of the country. That was unexpected: the colonists typically saw themselves as British subjects, paying homage to the cultural pastimes of the homeland. This game, made in Australia, was not part of the apron strings of empire.

But it was a colonial project. Indigenous people were often not welcomed to the sport in its development phase, and at the game’s elite level were all but absent until the last quarter of the 20th century. Despite this marginalisation, some believe the white man’s game of the 19th century was inspired by an Aboriginal cultural practice, Marn Grook.

It’s an unproven position, but a commonly touted explanation of how and why football was indeed “made in Australia”.

Read more:
The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football

Owned by Australians

Globally, sport is being shaped by seemingly irresistible money and power. Competitions like soccer’s English Premier League epitomise private ownership and the demonstration of extraordinary wealth.

Most often, these owners are billionaires from abroad, for whom sinking money into a football club can be an indulgence. When Liverpool FC won the Football Association (FA) Cup in 2021, the trophy was held aloft by the club’s principal owner, the American John W. Henry, who flew in to mark the occasion.

In Australia, private ownership of football clubs is varied. Every A-League club and about one-third of NRL clubs are privately held, with a mix of local and foreign owners. Super rugby clubs have not experienced private ownership, though Rugby Australia is considering private equity investment to help alleviate its weak financial position.

In contrast, no AFL club is owned by entrepreneurs, nor is the league seeking to sell its well-funded competition to entrepreneurs. There were fledgling experiments with private owners at clubs, such as with the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Bears, but none lasted.

Today, AFL clubs are either member-based organisations or, in the case of very new clubs, run by the league until they reach a level of maturity.

Fan avidity is core to the success of the AFL. The league has long attracted large crowds, averaging around mid-30,000s since 1997. Additionally, some 1.19 million people are members of AFL clubs. Even though 25% of these fans don’t have attendance packages, they have a connection with a club and the sport.

In most clubs, full members have , though the of these organisations has meant much more board control than democratic sway.

Whatever the case, these member-fans have more influence than followers of privately owned clubs, where entrepreneurs have operational control over their investment.

Structured for Australia

In England, soccer clubs participate in leagues that have long lacked regulations to establish competitive balance. Without equalisation measures like salary caps and draft systems, the winners of the Premier League title commonly reflect the financial power of club owners.

This is anathema to the AFL. For decades the league has endeavoured to limit the power of money over the competition by setting salary caps on players and soft caps on high-performance staff, and by distributing to clubs on a needs basis. The result of this is higher grants to “weaker” clubs.

Additionally, the AFL has borrowed from American sport a player draft system. The best young talent is first made available to poorly performed teams. Compared to the English Premier League, these design levers have provided hope for fans that their AFL team has a chance for success.

And it has largely worked. For example, between 1990 and 2010, 14 of the 16 clubs in that era tasted premiership victory.

This is not to suggest there are no structural problems. The AFL is contracted to showcase the grand final at the MCG, an arrangement that may disadvantage teams from outside Melbourne. There is also the question of fairness in the annual competition schedule, with critics asserting problematic variability across seasons.

Finally, on grand final day itself there is consternation that too few members end up with tickets while too many go to “corporate” guests, with the ratio roughly 70:30.

Of course, outside the ground, some 4 million Australians will tune into the free-to-air broadcast. May the best team win.

Daryl Adair 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. Grand design: why the AFL structure is unique – and has enabled competitive balance – https://theconversation.com/grand-design-why-the-afl-structure-is-unique-and-has-enabled-competitive-balance-190935

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

Throughout the pandemic, one of the biggest COVID risks has been sharing a house with someone who is infectious.

Given how contagious COVID is, especially more recent variants, you’d imagine if you lived with someone who has COVID it would be inevitable you’d get infected.

But this isn’t the case. A recent study suggests you have a 42.7% chance of catching COVID from a housemate who tests positive to Omicron.

That means if someone introduced the Omicron variant to a household of six, you would expect two of the remaining five household members, on average, to become infected.

How is household transmission measured?

We use the “secondary attack rate” to describe the average number of secondary infections among a group of exposed people, once a virus has been introduced into to a particular setting such as a household. It accounts for a number of different factors including:

• how infectious the virus is
• how high the viral load of the infectious person is, and how efficiently they shed the virus
• the susceptibility of others present
• the characteristics of the setting such as crowding and ventilation.

The secondary attack rate is an average, and transmission varies considerably between households. So some households see all members infected, while others have little or no transmission.

From early in the pandemic we’ve also seen “superspreading”, where a small number of people are responsible for a large proportion of new COVID cases.

Conversely, a large proportion of people infected don’t spread it at all.

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How has household transmission changed through the pandemic?

A meta-analysis (where the results of earlier studies are pooled together) published in April combined the results from 135 studies and 1.3 million people across 136 countries published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

It estimates the household secondary attack rate for the original virus was 18.9%. So your risk of being infected with COVID if you shared a house with one or more infected people was approximately one in five.

The increase in infectiousness of new variants that emerged from late 2020 translated to an increase in household transmission. The Alpha variant had a a household secondary attack rate of 36.4%. This decreased to 29.7% for the Delta variant, before increasing again to 42.7% for Omicron.

However, even studies as large and comprehensive as this are limited in their ability to make direct comparisons of all the factors that may impact secondary attack rates, such as the household environment, the behaviour of household contacts and the use of masks to name a few. And this study did not include the newer Omicron variants.

Why has has the household secondary attack rate varied?

The secondary attack rate for the Delta variant declined compared to the Alpha variant, despite its increased infectiousness. This is likely explained by rising immunity in the population – both due to vaccination and prior infection.

While vaccines were not as effective against Delta as previous variants, and the protection waned over time, they still reduced the risk of household transmission.

Read more:
No, vaccinated people are not ‘just as infectious’ as unvaccinated people if they get COVID

Despite a significant increase in the infectiousness of the Omicron variants and their immune-escape properties, the risk of being infected in a household was still only estimated to be 42.7%. Increased immunity in the population is likely the reason it isn’t higher.

Vaccination reduces transmission

The reduction in the household secondary attack rate was greater when households had received their booster vaccination.

The takeaway is that sharing a household with an infectious person doesn’t mean you will inevitably become infected, but being fully vaccinated helps reduce the spread of Omicron among household contacts.

Read more:
New COVID variants may be more transmissible but that doesn’t mean the R0 – or basic reproduction number – has increased

Catherine Bennett receives funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Funds, and VicHealth, and an independent scientific advisor on the AstraZeneca Australian Vaccine advisory group, ResApp Health, and Impact Biotech Healthcare.

Hassan Vally 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. Someone in my house has COVID. How likely am I to catch it? – https://theconversation.com/someone-in-my-house-has-covid-how-likely-am-i-to-catch-it-189386

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Cheesman, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University

When we consider termites, we may think of the danger they can pose to our houses once they settle in and start eating wood. But in fact, only about 4% of termite species worldwide are considered pests that might, at some point, eat your house.

In nature, wood-eating termites play a broad and important role in warm tropical and sub-tropical ecosystems. In feeding on wood, they recycle essential nutrients to the soil and release carbon back to the atmosphere.

Our new research, published today in Science, quantified for the first time just how much termites love the warmth. The results are striking: we found termites eat deadwood much faster in warmer conditions. For example, termites in a region with temperatures of 30℃ will eat wood seven times faster than in a place with temperatures of 20℃.

Our results also point to an expanding role for termites in the coming decades, as climate change increases their potential habitat across the planet. And this, in turn, could see more carbon stored in deadwood released into the atmosphere.

Deadwood in the global carbon cycle

Trees play a pivotal role in the global carbon cycle. They absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and roughly half of this carbon is incorporated into new plant mass.

While most trees grow slowly in height and diameter each year, a small proportion die. Their remains then enter the deadwood pool.

Here carbon accumulates, until the deadwood is either burned or decayed through consumption by microbes (fungi and bacteria), or insects such as termites.

If the deadwood pool is consumed quickly, then the carbon stored there will rapidly be released back to the atmosphere. But if decay is slow, then the size of deadwood pool can increase, slowing the accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.

For this reason, understanding the dynamics of the community of organisms that decay deadwood is vital, as it can help scientists predict the impacts of climate change on the carbon stored in land ecosystems.

This is important as releasing deadwood carbon to the atmosphere could speed up the pace of climate change. Storing it for longer could slow climate change down.

Read more:
Decaying forest wood releases a whopping 10.9 billion tonnes of carbon each year. This will increase under climate change

Testing how fast termites eat deadwood

Scientists generally understand the conditions that favour microbes’ consumption of deadwood. We know their activity typically doubles with each 10℃ increase in temperature. Microbial decay of deadwood is also typically faster in moist conditions.

On the other hand, scientists knew relatively little about the global distribution of deadwood-eating termites, or how this distribution would respond to different temperatures and moisture levels in different parts of the world.

To better understand this, we first developed a protocol for assessing termite consumption rates of deadwood, and tested it in a savannah and a rainforest ecosystem in northeast Queensland.

Our method involved placing a series of mesh-covered wood blocks on the soil surface in a few locations. Half the blocks had small holes in the mesh, giving termites access. The other half didn’t have such holes, so only microbes could access the blocks through the mesh.

We collected wood blocks every six months and found the blocks covered by mesh with holes decayed faster than those without, meaning the contribution of termites to this decay was, in fact, significant.

But while the test run told us about termites in Queensland, it didn’t tell us what they might do elsewhere. Our next step was to reach out to colleagues who could deploy the wood block protocol at their study sites around the world, and they enthusiastically took up the invitation.

In the end, more than 100 collaborators joined the effort at more than 130 sites in a variety of habitats, spread across six continents. This broad coverage let us assess how wood consumption rates by termites varied with climatic factors, such as mean annual temperature and rainfall.

Termites love the warmth, and not too much rain

For the wood blocks accessible to only microbes, we confirmed what scientists already knew – that decay rates approximately doubled across sites for each 10℃ increase in mean annual temperature. Decay rates further increased when sites had higher annual rainfall, such as in Queensland’s rainforests.

For the termites’ wood blocks, we observed a much steeper relationship between decay rates and temperature – deadwood generally decayed almost seven times faster at sites that were 10℃ hotter than others.

To put this in context, termite activity meant wood blocks near tropical Darwin at the northern edge of Australia decayed more than ten times faster than those in temperate Tasmania.

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Our analyses also showed termite consumption of the wood blocks was highest in warm areas with low to intermediate mean annual rainfall. For example, termite decay was five times faster in a sub-tropical desert in South Africa than in a tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico.

This might be because termites safe in their mounds are able to access water deep in the soil in dry times, while waterlogging can limit their ability to forage for deadwood.

Termites and climate change

Our results were synthesised in a model to predict how termite consumption of deadwood might change globally in response to climate change.

Over the coming decades, we predict greater termite activity as climate change projections show suitable termite habitat will expand north and south of the equator.

This will mean carbon cycling through the deadwood pool will get faster, returning carbon dioxide fixed by trees to the atmosphere, which could limit the storage of carbon in these ecosystems. Reducing the amount of carbon stored on land could then start a feedback loop to accelerate the pace of climate change.

We have long known human-caused climate change would favour a few winners but leave many losers. It would appear the humble termite is likely to be one such winner, about to experience a significant global expansion in its prime habitat.

Read more:
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Alexander William Cheesman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and UK’s National Environmental Research Council.

Amy Zanne receives funding from the US National Science Foundation. She is affiliated with the New Phytologist Foundation and Restor Foundation.

Lucas Cernusak receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Termites love global warming – the pace of their wood munching gets significantly faster in hotter weather – https://theconversation.com/termites-love-global-warming-the-pace-of-their-wood-munching-gets-significantly-faster-in-hotter-weather-190067

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Rudd, SIEF Ross Metcalf STEM+Business Fellow – Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia

Since European colonisation, Australia’s farmers have had to pioneer new technologies to adapt agriculture to this dry land.

Think of innovations such as the world’s first mechanical grain stripper, which saved workers from the tedious task of stripping wheat from the stalk, or the stump jump plough, invented to avoid ploughs constantly breaking when they hit mallee roots on newly cleared ground.

The pace of innovation hasn’t slowed, and has led in part to Australia becoming an agricultural powerhouse. We produce enough food for 75 million people, according to the Australian Food and Grocery Council, and export around 70% of the food we produce.

We will need more innovation to cope with the changing climate – which will make water supplies more uncertain and add heat stress to livestock – as well as other environmental issues such as nutrient runoff from too much fertiliser.

In future, expect to see farmers go high-tech, relying more on drones to optimise fertiliser and water use, on harvest robots to tackle challenges with labour shortages, and on sensors to measure the health of the soil.

We need agricultural innovation, now more than ever

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of agricultural innovation. By some estimates, close to half of the world’s population owes its existence to the Haber-Bosch process, which pulls nitrogen from the air to produce fertiliser. The famous mid-20th-century Green Revolution that introduced high-yield varieties of crops also paved the way for major boosts in food security – and population.

Now we face a less certain future. Hunger is growing again. Last year, around 828 million people went to bed hungry every night.

For farmers, it has been a difficult few years. COVID travel restrictions and supply chain disruption coupled with the Russian invasion of Ukraine have caused global uncertainty – and major increases in costs for farmers.

It’s become harder to find workers. Fertilisers have become more expensive, as have herbicides, insecticides, seeds and fuel. Some of the increases are huge: fertiliser costs shot up from A$380 a tonne to a whopping $867 a tonne in just two months, between December 2021 and January 2022.

We will need ways of optimising how we farm and making the most of our farmland, if we are to make farming more resilient to climate shocks, more efficient users of water, fertilisers and chemicals, and keep food affordable.

Read more:
Robot farmers could improve jobs and help fight climate change – if they’re developed responsibly

Luckily, innovators are responding. By 2030, high-tech agricultural approaches are expected to add up to A$20 billion a year in farm production, according to the Australian Farm Institute.

If these new approaches deliver on their promise, it would take us most of the way to the industry’s goal of $100 billion by the end of the decade. At present, we produce $71 billion worth of food a year.

What does high-tech farming look like?

Traditionally, farmers have relied on common sense and experience to gauge the health of their soils and how well their crops are growing.

Increasingly, though, it’s becoming possible to get real-time information on a field-by-field basis using agricultural sensors. Sensors can measure soil moisture, temperature and salinity. If you deploy sensors throughout your fields, you can find out about issues early and respond quickly.

Broader technological advances are proving their worth for farmers too. Drones can give farmers an eye in the sky, which, coupled with AI image recognition, can detect and classify issues affecting plants. Think of getting a notification if telltale signs of an insect pest or destructive fungus are spotted on your farm. Farmers are already using drones to spot feral pigs. Drones can even apply fertiliser or agrochemicals in hard-to-access places.

For livestock farmers, drones offer a much faster way to count stock. Soon, drones may even be able to muster sheep or cattle. For plantation managers, drones can be used to plant trees by firing bundles of seeds and nutrients into the ground.

Farm robots and vertical farms

New advances in robotics are similarly useful. Many farmers were hard-hit by labour shortages due to COVID-linked lockdowns and restrictions on travel. In response, some are turning to the fast-developing field of farm robots. These robots can fertilise, apply pesticides, mow and are even becoming capable of picking fruit and vegetables.

Here, too, Australia has innovators such as Queensland’s SwarmFarm, which makes robots able to accurately spray weeds with herbicide and other routine tasks. As one farmer told the ABC, the robot has cut his use of chemicals by fully 80%. Overseas, robots are even being used to speed up the breeding of new crop hybrids.

Vertical farming – indoor farms done in vertical layers – has the potential to slash water use, food miles and boost climate resilience. Queensland’s Vertical Farm Systems is one of the leaders making vertical farm systems cheaper, which has long been a challenge slowing uptake. Their automated leafy green growing farms are now exported to countries such as Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

Inventing and applying advanced technologies helps Australian farmers make decisions backed by hard data, to boost productivity and profitability. Some new technologies can also help prevent the overuse of fertilisers and other agrochemicals, and help make the wider environment cleaner.

Chemical overuse in farming is a well-known problem, with effects ranging from dangerous blue-green algae blooms linked to nitrogen fertiliser run-off from farms, human health issues from chemicals leaking into groundwater and watercourses, and direct consumption by humans, such as traces of pesticides on foods.

What these agricultural innovations have in common is a focus on precision, where key inputs like fertiliser and herbicides are applied as needed – no more, no less. Similarly, real-time data makes it possible for farmers to make the most out of their crop by fine-tuning irrigation and fertiliser as the plants require.

We will need all of these innovations – and more – to meet the challenges ahead.

Read more:
3 technologies poised to change food and the planet

Sam Rudd works as a researcher at the University of South Australia and is a co-inventor on a Joint patent and co-author of joint publications with Sentek Sensor Technology. Sam is currently on a SIEF Ross Metcalf STEM+Business Fellowship, supported by the Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF) and Sentek to facilitate the development of a world-first sensor based on the joint patent.

Drew Evans works as a Professor and Professorial Lead at the University of South Australia. He receives funding from Sentek Sensor Technology, is co-inventor on a joint patent and co-author on joint publications with Sentek staff. Drew is a current member of the National Committee for Materials Science and Engineering under the Australian Academy of Science, and executive member of the Australian Materials Research Society.

– ref. Australia has relied on agricultural innovation to farm our dry land. We’ll need more for the uncertain years ahead – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-relied-on-agricultural-innovation-to-farm-our-dry-land-well-need-more-for-the-uncertain-years-ahead-188597

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University

Blue-tongue lizards and sulphur-crested cockatoos are among the native animals frequently smuggled overseas.

While the number of live animals seized by the Australian Government has tripled since 2017, the full scale of the problem eludes us as authorities don’t often know where and how wildlife is trafficked. Now, we can add a new technology to Australia’s arsenal against this cruel and inhumane industry.

Our research, published today, shows the potential for new technology to detect illegal wildlife in luggage or mail. This technology uses artificial intelligence to recognise the shapes of animals when scanned at international frontlines such as airports and mail centres.

Exotic species are also smuggled into the country, such as snakes, turtles and fish. This could disrupt Australia’s multi-billion dollar agricultural industries by introducing pests and diseases, and could also threaten fragile native ecosystems.

An animal welfare problem

Wildlife trafficking is driven by several factors, including purported medicinal purposes, animals having ornamental value or for the illegal pet trade.

It can have fatal consequences, as it usually involves transporting individual animals in tight or cramped environments. This often results in the animals becoming stressed, dehydrated and dying.

Some people have even tried to use chip packets to smuggle Australian wildlife.

Read more:
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Traffickers often transport several individuals in one go, in the hope one animal makes it alive.

We don’t know the complete picture of which animals are being trafficked, how they’re trafficked or even when it’s occurring. But examples from seized cases in Australia suggest traffickers highly prize Aussie reptiles and birds.

For example, shingleback lizards, a type of blue-tongue lizard, are considered one of Australia’s most trafficked species.

Apart from being cruel and inhumane, wildlife trafficking can also facilitate the introduction of alien species into new environments.

This brings significant biosecurity risks. For example, zoonosis (diseases jumping from a non-human animal to a human) involves people handling stressed, wild animals. Exotic species can also disrupt natural ecosystems, as we’ve famously seen with the damage wrought by cane toads in northern Australia.

Unregulated wildlife entering the country may also harbour new diseases or destructive parasites. This could damage agricultural industries and potentially raise the prices of our fruit and vegetables.

Read more:
To lock out foot-and-mouth disease, Australia must help our neighbour countries bolster their biosecurity

Creating an trafficking image library

Our new research documents a variety of wildlife species, which have been scanned using state-of-the-art technology to help build computer algorithms using “Real Time Tomography”.

Real Time Tomography is an imaging technique that uses a series of x-rays to scan an item (such as a lizard). It then produces a three dimensional image of the animal which, in turn, is used to develop algorithms. For example, mail and luggage can be scanned at the airport and, if wildlife are enclosed, the algorithms will alert operators of their presence.

Our study scanned known species of trafficked Australian animals to create an image reference library. A total of 294 scans from 13 species of lizards, birds and fish were used to develop initial wildlife algorithms, with a detection rate of 82%, and a false alarm rate at just 1.6%.

This research is the first to document the use of 3D X-ray CT security scan technology for wildlife protection within the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It’s also the first to report results for the detection of reptiles, birds and fish within such scans.

The detection tool is designed to complement existing detection measures of Australian Border Force, biosecurity officers and detection dogs, which remain crucial in our fight against wildlife crime.

How else are we stopping wildlife trafficking?

The tools currently helping to detect and restrict wildlife trafficking mainly rely on human detection methods.

This includes cyber-crime investigations or Australian Border Force and biosecurity officers manually searching bags. Biosecurity detector dogs patrolling airports are also useful, as are smartphone reporting apps such as the Wildlife Witness App.

Also crucial are efforts to dismantle illegal trade networks at the source. This is by understanding and reducing consumer demand for wildlife and wildlife products, providing alternate livelihoods for would-be poachers, and enforcing stronger governance and monitoring.

Seized animals can be used as evidence to identify traffickers, with previous cases resulting in successful prosecution by environmental investigators. For example, a former rugby league player has been jailed for four years after getting caught trying to smuggle a variety of animals in and out of Australia.

Read more:
Elephant ivory: DNA analysis offers clearest insight yet into illegal trafficking networks

Continuing the fight

All these measures help fight wildlife trafficking, but there’s no single solution to predict when and where the events will likely take place.

Wildlife traffickers may adapt their behaviours frequently to avoid being detected. As a result, innovative and adaptive solutions, such as our new technology, are vital to support existing detection techniques.

Any effort to stamp out this terrible activity is a step in the right direction, and the potential for 3D detection enables us to adapt and evolve with how traffickers may change their behaviours.

We would like to acknowledge Dr Phoebe Meagher from the Taronga Conservation Society Australia for her contribution to this research and article.

Dr Vanessa Pirotta is employed by Rapiscan Systems as the chief scientist for this wildlife research project. This is a collaborative project with the Australian Federal Government (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, previously the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment) and the Taronga Conservation Society Australia. This project receives funding from DAFF.

Dr Justine O’Brien is a research scientist and Manager of Conservation Science at the Taronga Conservation Society Australia. She is an Honorary Associate at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of NSW. She receives funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Zoo and Aquarium Association Wildlife Conservation Fund, and the Taronga Foundation.

– ref. Lizard in your luggage? We’re using artificial intelligence to detect wildlife trafficking – https://theconversation.com/lizard-in-your-luggage-were-using-artificial-intelligence-to-detect-wildlife-trafficking-189779

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Whatman, Sessional Academic, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University

Parents will be increasingly aware they need to talk about consent with their children.

There is no such thing as “too young” to start the conversation. In fact, the earlier the better, when it comes to understanding how to have respect for your body and other people’s.

We are researchers on children’s literature that deals with issues around sex and gender. Books can provide a safe, engaging way to discuss the tricky but vital topic of consent.

Books for younger children

For primary-aged children, books don’t usually discuss sexual consent, but cover topics such as boundaries, safe touching and healthy relationships.

Let’s Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent and Respect by primary teacher and mother Jayneen Sanders is one place you can start.

This book teaches verbal and non-verbal ways children can show they are OK for another person to go inside their “body boundary” – an invisible line around the child’s body. It also reminds adult readers that if a child indicates they don’t want to be touched, it’s important to respect this. As the book says in its opening line:

Your body belongs to you and you are the boss of it.

Rissy No Kisses by children’s author Katey Howes is about a lovebird named Rissy. She says “no” to kisses because they make her uncomfortable, but this makes other people think she is being rude. Rissy learns there is nothing wrong with her. As her mother tells her: “your body and your heart are yours, and you choose how to share”.

Both these books show the importance of kids talking to trustworthy adults. They provide notes for children, parents and educators about body autonomy, consent and different ways to show affection. Even just reading and talking about consent with kids shows them their parents are part of their “safety network” (adults they can trust).

Consent (for Kids!): Boundaries and Being in Charge of You by former higher school teacher Rachel Brian uses more lighthearted language, but stays on the same theme. It with begins with the message:

Consent, it’s like being the ruler of your own country. Population: You.
‘I hearby decree that I won’t be doing any snuggling today’.

Books for older children

For older primary school children, there are also books that talk about consent more broadly, as well as sexual consent.

These books introduce the concepts of agency (the power to decide), saying “yes” and “no”, and what consent is before introducing sex, puberty and developing crushes.

They talk about how understanding consent is part of growing up.

Two books to consider here are Welcome to Consent by broadcaster and mother Yumi Stynes and former Dolly doctor Melissa Kang and Can We Talk About Consent by sex and relationships educator Justin Hancock and illustrator Fuchsia Macaree.

The latter’s chapter on sex begins by telling the reader “it’s okay if you aren’t ready to learn about sex yet. Either skip ahead, or put the book down for a bit”.

Both books use hand-drawn illustrations to represent different bodies and experiences.

Importantly, they define consent in clear ways, and use correct language to describe body parts and sexual acts. Unlike the Morrison government’s infamous, confusing “milkshake” video in 2021, there are no embarrassed metaphors or unhelpful euphemisms to talk about sex.

What to watch out for

Not all books cover consent well. Some frame consent as something that boys must get from girls, reinforcing gendered stereotypes. Others assume all readers are heterosexual, white and able-bodied. Look for books featuring different perspectives.

Welcome to Consent uses “own voices” quotes from lots of different people, meaning consent is approached from different angles. For example, 15-year-old Tans writes:

I have ADHD and autism and anxiety. These things can affect my ability to interpret body language. I need a few more cues.

Sometimes you can read these books with your child, sometimes they may want to read them alone. The most important thing is you are starting an open discussion with them.

Talking about consent with young people can be daunting, but it’s an important topic we can’t ignore. Books about consent can teach kids about safety and respect and – when the time is right – can empower them with understanding sex and consent as well.

Emma Whatman is affiliated with The Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR) and The Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA).

Paul Venzo is affiliated with the Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR).

– ref. How do you teach a primary school child about consent? You can start with these books – https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-teach-a-primary-school-child-about-consent-you-can-start-with-these-books-190063

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Gordon, Honorary Professor, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University

Every five years the Productivity Commission is charged with examining everything that can be done to lift Australia’s productivity.

Its first interim report in the current inquiry, issued well ahead of its final report due in February, proposes action on innovation, digital technologies and data and cyber-security, a productivity-friendly business environment, and a skilled and educated workforce.

But it doesn’t propose anything to address inequality.

What it doesn’t consider is the possibility that reducing inequality might be necessary to boost productivity – by improving the quality of our workforce and our institutions.

Productivity increases when you produce the same things with fewer inputs, or produce more (either quantity or quality) with the same inputs.

At the scale of the Australian economy, productivity is increased if we better use our human resources.

And disadvantage reduces people’s capability to be properly used in the workforce.

Workers without foundational numeracy and literacy skills are less useful, particularly for work involving digital technologies of the kind that is becoming more ubiquitous.

Inequality makes people less economically useful

Our highly segregated school system, which concentrates disadvantage, means many students from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t have the peers that would support them to aim for highly productive jobs.

Leaving a substantial share of workers without the ability to do more productive work acts as a drag on productivity growth.

In its interim report the Commission continues its tradition of advocating light-handed regulation of businesses in order to lower compliance costs.

Its motivation is to make it easier for new businesses to enter markets and improve competition. But it pays less attention to the reasons for regulations.

Better regulation, not less regulation

Regulations are needed to protect consumers, workers and the planet by making products, workplaces and the environment safer.

They matter more for people who are disadvantaged and find it hard to take action to protect their rights.

This means the solution is not necessarily less, but better regulations that better protect those least able to protect themselves.

Read more:
What is productivity, and how well does it measure what we do?

Regulations that purport to treat people (or businesses) equally implicitly assume they have similar needs and capabilities. Disadvantage can mean they do not. As an example, it is often the poor who are most exposed to workplace and environmental hazards.

Good regulations take account of the way in which different groups are affected.

Productivity is not everything. What matters most is ensuring everybody has the opportunity to lead a good life – not only for its own sake, but also because where this opportunity is withheld, social stability is at risk. People who do not benefit from a system are less likely to respect the rules and norms that make it work.

Fighting disadvantage can pay off

And how well off we are is not only determined by how well we produce things but also by whether they are the things we value.

As an example, while better-performing justice, health and defence systems are better than worse-performing ones, reducing the need to use those systems by reducing the problems they deal with is even better.

Investments that reduce disadvantage are likely to boost productivity over the long term, a concept acknowledged by the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, and one the Commission ought to pay more attention to in its final report.

Jenny Gordon was the Principal Adviser Research at the Productivity Commission from 2008 to 2017.

– ref. Memo to the Productivity Commission: fixing inequality is the key to productivity – https://theconversation.com/memo-to-the-productivity-commission-fixing-inequality-is-the-key-to-productivity-190245

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carmen Jacques, Research Officer, Edith Cowan University

Around 11pm on October 12 2002, the first of three separate bombs detonated when a suicide bomber entered Paddy’s Bar in Kuta, Bali.

Another bomb detonated shortly after outside the Sari nightclub, before a final explosion in front of the US consulate.

Stan’s new series, Bali 2002, takes a look at these attacks and their aftermath. The physical and emotional traumas play out with desperation and intensity.

The series also shows how our humanity comes out to shine in desperate and violent times. It shows friends helping friends, people helping strangers, doctors on holiday rushing to the hospital to lend a hand and the Australian Federal Police’s directive to help everyone – and not only prioritise Australians.

While the series creators should be lauded for their close consultations with attack survivors in making the series, this dramatisation highlights the very public nature of terrorism. This public nature can have highly personal impacts.

In my research into the events of this night and their aftermath, I have spoken to many people who were there or lost someone in the attack.

Some survivors will find solace in this sharing of their stories; others will struggle with the public commemoration.

Sharing stories

Some people affected by terrorism find telling their story can be harmful to their health and wellbeing. It locks them into a time and place of pain and suffering.

For others, telling their stories and of loved one’s experiences, lives and deaths is an important part of their healing processes.

Kev Paltridge lost his son Corey in the Bali bombings. He told me closure is “bullshit” and he still has “shit bad days”.

But he also said every time he tells his story, it helps him.

Kev doesn’t shy away from the darker side of his healing pathway – the three years of excessive drinking, his continued suffering and grief for Corey – because he knows there are some who were there who are still drinking and haven’t found an alternative pathway yet.

He hopes his story will help others as much as it helps him.

Journalist Nick Way was at the site of the Sari Club bombing hours after it occurred. He later worked as one of the producers on the documentary Cry Bali. During this process, working closely with survivors and their families, he told me “I learnt that very often, expressing feelings is part of the healing journey.”

Read more:
The site of the Bali bombings has been a vacant lot for 16 years. It’s time to build a proper memorial

Before and after

When a terror attack occurs, the media can create a sense of a “victim” identity, which divides a person’s life into one before and after terror, as if they came into being at that moment.

Bali 2002 buys into this division. It gives scant time to our survivors before the event, and these characters feel shallow.

The series also struggles in finding the right balance between the stories of the terrorists and the survivors. Too much focus is given to the individuals who undertook these attacks. More important are the stories of the victims, survivors, family members and first responders.

For some survivors I have spoken to, the trailer alone has triggered traumatic responses. Their capacity to watch the series is doubtful.

The series weaves together a dramatisation of the events alongside real footage. This raw footage adds realism, but the use of this footage is not signposted, and it could be triggering even to survivors who might feel up to watching a dramatised version of events.

Endurance

Bali 2002 is being released in advance of the 20th anniversary of the attacks.

In my research, I found recognising and remembering these events on fewer, more “significant” anniversaries we disavow the experience of living with terror after the experience of an event.

All the survivors I have spoken with endure every day. Kev told me he speaks to his son “every morning without fail”.

This endurance must be acknowledged and recognised.

The stories of their survival could have been stories of vengeance and hate and promoting more violence.

Instead, I have overwhelmingly found these stories are about hope and responsibility.

Nick told me he thinks “about building a new future for the people who feel oppressed and disadvantaged so that they might be [less] open to radicalisation”.

These are not saccharine stories about closure or forgiveness or forgetting. They are about living with and promoting an awareness of the effects that these attacks have upon everyday individual lives.

Read more:
Remembering the Bali bombings ten years on

Lasting impacts

Every person I have talked with is still deeply affected by their experience.

Bali 2002 takes us from the weeks before the bombing to the 2005 death of the bomb maker, Husin. Viewers with little connection to the event will more than likely come away without an understanding of how survivors, their family members and first responders are still impacted two decades on.

A terrorism bombing is a moment where one is made powerless. They are subject to the will of the terrorist. It is so far outside the normal daily experiences it can cause a deep identity shift.

My research shows survivors of terrorism, their family members and first responders must find a way to fold the experience into their ongoing lives.

Sometimes they walk the tightrope gracefully and are well-balanced, at other times they can’t find their footing and are swaying dangerously over the abyss.

I hope some will find peace and healing in the airing of Bali 2002 and the sharing of these stories, but this won’t be true for all.

Bali 2002 is streaming on Stan from September 25.

Read more:
Is it wrong to make a film about the Port Arthur massacre? A trauma expert’s perspective

Carmen Jacques would like to thank Kev Partridge, Nick Way, Gill Hicks and Andrew Wallace for their contributions to, and collaborations in, this research.

– ref. Some survivors will find peace and healing in Bali 2002 – but others may find the series triggering – https://theconversation.com/some-survivors-will-find-peace-and-healing-in-bali-2002-but-others-may-find-the-series-triggering-189538

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

Jim Chalmers’ long term ambition is similar to that of most treasurers. He wants to be prime minister. More immediately, he aspires to be a reformer, which has become harder in today’s electorate, with its low tolerance for pain.

Chalmers likes to talk about having “conversations” on economic matters with the public. On Tuesday – when he was playing down some good news about the $50 billion windfall in the budget outcome for 2021-22 – he spoke of the need for a “national conversation” about how we pay for all the expensive programs people want.

He’d been asked about Reserve Bank Governor Phil Lowe who last week said our fiscal problems demanded higher taxation, spending cuts or economic reforms to grow the economy, or all three. Desirably with a start this parliamentary term, said Lowe.

The governor, who’s in the gun for holding out the prospect of low interest rates continuing until 2024, is not elected and anyway, is not expected to be in his post beyond the expiry of his term in September next year.

Lowe has nothing to lose by being blunt. As a senior minister Chalmers has to be more careful. But he was pleased with Lowe’s words, as he was with similar public sentiments from treasury secretary Steven Kennedy recently.

“I do think we need to have a national discussion about the structural position of the budget, and how we fund the expectations that Australians legitimately have,” Chalmers said.

The cynic might say, talk’s cheap, action could cost votes.

Read more:
Government announces inquiry into childcare costs, while Chalmers promises ‘conversation’ about budget challenges

Chalmers highlighted that five big spending areas – health, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, aged care, defence, and servicing the large public debt – were creating “substantial structural concerns”. The spending represented “a combination of the unavoidable and the desirable”.

Chalmers knows there must be a reckoning. But when, and in what form?

The government is squeezed by the promises it made (to remain a small target in order to get elected), the risks in breaking its word, and a volatile electorate.

We hear endless commentary about the (protected) Stage 3 tax cuts, but they are only one constraint. Apart from a crackdown on multinational tax avoidance, Labor pledged there would be no discretionary increases in tax this term.

In theory it has got greater flexibility on spending cuts and we can expect to see quite a few in the October budget, targeting the former government’s programs. This is not just a matter of removing “rorts” but also replacing that government’s priorities with its own.

Chalmers says this will be a “bread and butter” budget, suggesting the more fundamental attempts at reform will come later.

After this “standard” budget “there are multiple opportunities in multiple budgets over the course of the next three years or so, for us to properly engage the people in a proper national conversation about the services that we provide, and how we fund them,” Chalmers said.

Even so, making major changes this term will be difficult; equally challenging would be putting at the 2025 election a program for structural reform of the budget.

In 2019 Labor took to the election a big spending-big taxing policy; in 2022, it went for minimalism. Nevertheless, the election commitments involve extra spending, notably the generous child care policy, and improvements to aged care, including funding the (uncosted) wage rise for workers that will be handed down by the Fair Work Commission.

Read more:
Word from The Hill: Treasurer Chalmers warns against getting too excited by $50 billion improvement in budget bottom line

The government is also under pressure to do more on various fronts, for example, to extend paid parental leave.

Any “conversation” about what services people want from government can quickly get into tricky issues.

These include the sustainability of what’s being offered (think the ballooning NDIS, costing about $28.6 billion in 2021-22 rising to an estimated $34 billion in 2022-23), and the extent to which users should pay more for some services (think aged care).

Serious attempts to put spending on a better basis in the big areas would be met with loud protests from those losing out.

Then there’s the “conversation” about revenue. Leaving aside the Stage 3 tax cuts, many economists see the tax system as unfit for purpose. Certainly over the long term we need more revenue to finance programs.

Read more:
From curry nights to ‘coal kills’ dresses: how social media drives politicians to behave like influencers

But major tax reform takes political backbone, and efforts don’t necessarily come off. John Howard and Peter Costello introduced the goods and services tax, but the Coalition nearly lost the election at which it sought a mandate for it. Years before, when treasurer, Howard failed to get support in the Fraser government for a broad-based indirect tax.

And who can forget treasurer Wayne Swan’s attempt at a mining tax? Certainly not Chalmers, who worked for Swan at the time.

There was treasurer Scott Morrison’s spruiking of GST reform in Malcolm Turnbull’s government, which ended with him being slapped down by his prime minister.

Robert Breunig. Director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Australian National University’s Crawford School says, “We’re really stuck on tax”.

“The Scandinavian countries are able to reform tax in anticipation of problems. Anglo-Saxon countries generally get into big trouble and are then forced into reform,” he says.

Breunig argues we have too much reliance on personal income tax and company tax, reducing economic incentives. He advocates targeting wealth, through changing tax arrangements on superannuation and imposing a national land tax, which would replace state stamp duties.

Read more:
Child poverty fell to a record-low 5.2% in 2021 – here’s how it could have been even lower

While reducing the tax breaks for superannuation might be obvious, the backlash when the Coalition undertook modest change some years ago was sharp. And a land tax-stamp duty trade off would involve getting the states on board.

What about changes to the GST? They would have been easier, Breunig says, in the days when the budget had multi-billion surpluses and losers could have been paid off.

Of course if Chalmers was really brave, he could push the idea of an inquiry into federal-state revenue arrangements, or even propose a tax summit as in 1985 (guarding against treasurer Paul Keating’s experience of his PM leaving him high and dry).

The reforming ambitions of a treasurer affect the dynamics of their relationship with the prime minister.

Bob Hawke, himself committed to economic reform, was supportive of Keating’s zeal, including on tax. But he also reined him in, when the politics came to the fore or there was insufficient stakeholder support for Keating’s goal.

Keating – whom Chalmers often speaks with and greatly admires – chafed under such restrictions.

So far Anthony Albanese has shown himself a cautious leader, in opposition and now in government. The exception is in a non-economic area – his commitment to a referendum on the Voice to Parliament.

Albanese and Chalmers appear to have a good relationship. It remains to be seen whether they will continue to march to the same beat on policy, or whether Chalmers will push for more and faster change, and how Albanese and other ministers react if that happens.

For a treasurer a “conversation” with the Australian people about economic reform must involve a whole other set of “conversations”, with the prime minister and colleagues. And those can test the mettle of all of them.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Can Jim Chalmers become a reforming treasurer? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-can-jim-chalmers-become-a-reforming-treasurer-191174

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

A lot has changed since world leaders last met in person at the United Nations General Assembly: a global pandemic, a looming food crisis, economic stress, climate disasters – and, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This week’s 77th session of the General Assembly coincides with Ukraine making impressive military gains against Russian forces. But right on cue, Russian president Vladimir Putin has unveiled a new strategy: annexation.

Russia-backed officials in the self-styled people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, both of which Putin recognised as independent just before his tanks crossed the border, have called for referendums on joining Russia.

A “yes” vote will likely see Moscow annex about 15% of Ukraine’s total area. This is precisely what happened with Crimea, annexed and made part of Russia by law in March 2014. Along with Putin’s order for partial mobilisation of military reservists, it ushers in a new and perilous stage of the war.

Modern imperialism

Legal window dressing aside, annexation – where the territory of a country is taken, usually by force – is an aggressive, wrongful and dangerous act. It is not the same as cession, which involves the peaceful exchange of territory, or granting of independence by mutual consent.

Annexation was a feature of 19th-century imperialism. For much of the 20th century, from the League of Nations to the United Nations, the international community tried to prevent such actions and create platforms for peaceful coexistence.

Read more:
Putin’s mobilisation speech: what he said and what he meant

That’s because annexation runs directly against the ideals of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. It provokes wars between countries and insurgencies within them. Since 1945, annexation by force has been rare, and never done by a permanent member of the Security Council against another UN member. Putin is turning this all upside down.

Scholars, diplomats and media will now be deployed to justify Putin’s actions. The UN General Assembly will ring with rhetoric about the right to self-determination of populations in eastern Ukraine, and the failure of the 2014 Minsk agreement to keep the peace there.

Russia will likely have the support of countries such as Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba and Iran. Western liberal democracies will argue the process is illegitimate. Other countries will try to sit on the fence, and how China will react remains unknown.

Global consensus erodes

In an ideal world, these arguments would be settled by a unanimous agreement of the Security Council or the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which could resolve the dispute using established rules and precedents, as it has in the past. But this is not an ideal world.

Russia will veto any resolution against its interests at the Security Council, and has shown no inclination to allow the ICJ or another independent body to adjudicate. Putin did not suspend his invasion of Ukraine when the ICJ found his justifications for war were baseless.

Read more:
Russia says peace in Ukraine will be ‘on our terms’ – but what can the West accept and at what cost?

If the territories are annexed, the option of installing UN peacekeepers becomes remote. And Putin will bristle at the idea of securing a peace deal by giving up what he will now claim is Russian territory.

In turn, this will prolong and deepen the sanctions, restrictions and bans in place against Russia and the occupied territories.

Defending the motherland

Further economic pressure coupled with increased arms transfers to Ukraine can be expected. Putin will respond in kind. Any hope of Russian gas supplies to Europe being resumed before Christmas will evaporate.

Most worryingly, if the annexed territories become part of Russia, Putin will be obliged to defend them with even greater force. The rationale shifts from supposedly defending others to fighting for the motherland.

Read more:
With the UN powerless, the greatest danger now may be Russia beginning to lose in Ukraine

This may also provide the justification for a large-scale military call-up, with mass conscription only one step away. But Putin is also taking a gamble. Mobilising hundreds of thousands more Russians into the military effort will deepen resentment against the war at home and risk undermining his own goals.

Alternately, despite US President Joe Biden’s recent warnings about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may feel he has a freer hand. Russian nuclear doctrine prioritises the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state.

While this escalating sabre rattling is unlikely to deter Ukrainian attempts to regain what Moscow has taken, it may give many in the West pause. Supporting Ukraine could be interpreted as a direct attack on Russia, pushing the war into uncharted and very dangerous territory.

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. Putin plays the annexation card, pushing the war in Ukraine into a dangerous new phase – https://theconversation.com/putin-plays-the-annexation-card-pushing-the-war-in-ukraine-into-a-dangerous-new-phase-191165

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist), The Conversation

At the 2018 Victorian state election, Labor easily won a majority in the lower house of the Victorian parliament, but the upper house result was an anti-democratic shambles, as the Greens won just one of the 40 upper house seats, while three parties with very small vote shares won seats.

Read more:
Victorian upper house greatly distorted by group voting tickets; federal Labor still dominant in Newspoll

The 2018 upper house result was due to “group voting tickets (GVT)”, in which parties choose the preferences of all people who vote for them “above the line”.

Results like in Victoria 2018 have led to GVT being scrapped in New South Wales before the 2003 election, the federal Senate before the 2016 election, and in South Australia before the 2018 election, while reforms to the Western Australian upper house will be implemented at the 2025 election.

Victoria is the last Australian jurisdiction that still uses GVT. All other jurisdictions that used GVT have replaced it with systems that allow voters to direct their own preferences above the line. Preferences are either completely optional (NSW, SA and WA) or require at least six boxes to be marked above the line (federal Senate).

GVT will be used at the November 26 Victorian state election, after no changes to the electoral law were made by Wednesday’s last Victorian parliamentary sitting day before the election.

Victoria uses eight upper house regions that return five members each, so a quota is one-sixth of the vote, or 16.7%. In 2018 the Greens won 9.3% of the statewide upper house vote, but just one of 40 seats (2.5%). There were three occasions where a party won a seat in a region from under 0.1 quotas (1.5% of votes).

GVT allow very small parties to overtake far bigger parties on 100% preference flows from other parties’ above the line votes. When voters direct their own preferences, the GVT preference spiral does not occur. At the last federal election, preferences were only decisive in one Senate seat: David Pocock’s win in the ACT Senate.

Labor has neglected to reform GVT

Labor has been the Victorian government since the November 2014 state election, under Premier Daniel Andrews. In the eight years Labor has governed, they have never proposed anything to scrap GVT and move to a more democratic system. This is a dereliction of Labor’s responsibility to ensure elections are democratic.

At the 2018 election, the upper house result was 18 Labor out of 40, 11 Coalition, one Green, three Derryn Hinch Justice, two Liberal Democrats, and one each for Animal Justice, Sustainable Australia, Transport Matters, Fiona Patten and Shooters, Fishers & Farmers. As tied votes fail, 21 votes are needed to pass legislation.

Labor and the Greens alone could not pass reforms scrapping GVT through the current upper house, and the crossbenchers who owe their seats to GVT are not interested in reforms. But at the 2018 election, the Coalition lost three seats that they would have won under a fairer system.

The Coalition and Labor still easily have a combined majority in the upper house. Labor should have made a concrete proposal for reform. If the Coalition rejected that proposal, then the current situation would be their fault.

Labor has not even attempted to abolish GVT in the last eight years, so we will be stuck with an upper house elected by GVT for at least the next four years.

Labor likely to suffer losses in upper house if vote share falls

If the major parties are strong, the effect of GVT is reduced as they will win a large share of seats on filled quotas. In Victoria, if Labor won 50% in a region and the Coalition 33.3%, Labor would win three seats and the Coalition two.

Upper house vote shares at the 2018 election were 39.2% Labor, 29.4% Coalition, 9.3% Greens and 3.8% Hinch Justice. Labor won 16 of its 18 seats on raw quotas, and received some assistance in Western Metro and Northern Victoria regions.

At the May federal election, the Victorian Senate result had the Coalition down 3.6% from the 2019 election, but Labor’s vote was only up 0.3% with the Greens up 3.2%. Lower house polling for the state election suggests Labor’s primary vote will be down on 2018, with the Greens up.

If Labor’s vote falls, they will win fewer upper house seats on raw quotas, meaning they could be beaten by GVT snowballs. The Greens would benefit from a higher vote share to allow them to reach quota in the Southern Metro region as well as Northern Metro.

In 2018, Labor did well and the Greens and Coalition badly from GTV, but that will not necessarily apply at the forthcoming election. Even if Labor wins the lower house decisively, as polls currently indicate, the upper house could be a massive mess.

I have no idea which particular others will win seats: it’s a lottery that depends on preference deals. But Labor’s failure to do anything about this system could lead to anti-vaxxers winning seats.

What voters can do to thwart preference deals

For a valid vote, Victoria only requires five preferences below the line. The below the line section of the ballot paper has candidate names grouped by party. Voting below the line means the voter controls where their preferences go; it’s not up to party preference deals.

For a meaningful vote, it’s best if people vote at least 1-5 below the line. They can continue to number beyond 5, but only five preferences are required for a formal vote.

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

– ref. How Victorian Labor’s failure on upper house electoral reform undermines democracy – https://theconversation.com/how-victorian-labors-failure-on-upper-house-electoral-reform-undermines-democracy-190136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Qamariya Nasrullah, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Evolutionary Morphology, Monash University

You only get 52 teeth in your lifetime: 20 baby teeth, followed by 32 adult teeth.

It’s not like that for all animals. Some, like rodents, never replace their teeth. Others, like sharks, keep replacing them again and again.

Read more:
Yes, baby teeth fall out. But they’re still important — here’s how to help your kids look after them

So why do we humans replace our teeth only once? And how does the whole tooth replacement process work?

These are tricky questions, and we don’t have all the answers. But a new discovery about the strange tooth-replacement habits of the tammar wallaby, a small Australian marsupial, may help shed some light on this dental mystery.

Not everybody replaces teeth the same way

It has been long assumed modern mammals all replace their teeth the same way. However, advances in 3D scanning and modelling have revealed mammals with unusual tooth replacement, like the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) and the fruit bat (Eidolon helvum).

These mammals have given us important clues as to how humans and other mammals have evolved from ancestors with continuous tooth replacement.

How do humans make and replace teeth?

Human teeth begin growing between the sixth and eighth week of an embryo’s development, when a band of tissue within the gums called the primary dental lamina starts to thicken. Along this band, clusters of special stem cells appear at the sites of future teeth, known as “placodes”.

The placodes then begin to grow into teeth, going through the bud, cap and bell stages along the way. They form into their final shape and harden with layers of dentine and enamel. Eventually, they will erupt through the gums. The incisors are the first to erupt, as early as 6 months old, which is why its called theteethingphase!

Read more:
Curious Kids: what is inside teeth?

This generation of teeth, which grow from the primary dental lamina, are known as “primary dentition”, or baby teeth.

Secondary or adult teeth grow a little bit differently. An offshoot of tissue called the successional lamina grows out from the baby tooth, and that tissue develops the replacement tooth like an apple on a branch of a tree. Adult teeth begin to grow before we are born, but take many years for the full set to form and eventually appear.

Replacement occurs when the adult teeth get large enough that they finally push out the baby teeth and remain as the permanent set of teeth for the rest of our lives. The first molar usually erupts between 6 and 7 years of age, while our wisdom teeth are the last to appear (roughly between 17 and 21 years of age).

Most mammals replace their teeth once in the course of their lives, like we do. This is known as “diphyodonty” (two sets of teeth).

Some groups of mammals, such as rodents, don’t replace their teeth at all. These “monophyodonts” get by with the same set of teeth for their whole lives. There are also a few unusual mammals, such as echidnas, that don’t grow any teeth at all!

Learning from the wallaby

The tammar wallaby is also a diphyodont, replacing its teeth only once.

Scientists long assumed it replaced its teeth in the same way humans do, though historical notes going back as far as 1893 noticed unusual things about this marsupial’s tooth development. For starters, while we replace our incisors, canines and premolars, tammar wallabies only replace their premolars.

Recently my colleagues at Monash University and the University of Melbourne and I observed the teeth of tammar wallabies from the embryo through to adulthood. We used a technique called diceCT, which combines staining and CT scanning, and found something surprising.

Instead of replacement premolar teeth developing from the successional lamina, they were in fact delayed baby teeth developing from the primary dental lamina.

This means the tammar wallaby does not have any traditional tooth replacement. This discovery opens up a huge set of new questions. What exactly are these teeth?

One explanation for these delayed baby teeth could be a link to our ancestry of continuous tooth replacement.

Your teeth are millions of years in the making

Unlike mammals, most other animals, including fish, sharks, amphibians and reptiles, replace their teeth multiple times (they are “polyphyodonts”). Mammals lost this ability around 205 million years ago.

The reason we stop making teeth is because our dental lamina degrades after our second set are made, while it remains active in polyphyodonts.

Interestingly, in modern and fossil polyphyodonts the replacement teeth often develop in groups of alternating waves, known as “Zahnreihen”.

While the tammar only replaces its premolars, these delayed baby teeth could represent the presence of the Zahnreihen still occurring in modern mammals.

This gives us a clue about how we have evolved from ancestors with continuous tooth replacement: by modifying and reducing a system that is hundreds of millions of years old.

Research has also found that fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) make replacement teeth in unusual ways, including growing them in front of the baby tooth, behind it, beside it, or splitting off from it.

This is exciting because, together with the tammar, it shows there may well be a wealth of tooth replacement diversity across mammals happening right under our noses – or our gums!

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

– ref. Why do humans grow two sets of teeth? These marsupials are rewriting the story of dental evolution – https://theconversation.com/why-do-humans-grow-two-sets-of-teeth-these-marsupials-are-rewriting-the-story-of-dental-evolution-189796

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Klugman, Research Fellow, Institute for Health & Sport, member of the Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network, and Co-convenor of the Olympic Research Network, Victoria University

“One more”. In two words, the great Noongar-Wajuk Australian Rules footballer Lance Franklin indicated he would play on until at least 2023. The statement “one more” also encapsulates the desire of the teams set to battle for the 2022 Australian Football League men’s (AFLM) premiership on Saturday. Geelong and Sydney, two powerhouses of the early 2000s, are each desperate for another flag after a number of close misses.

Unlike the supporters of both teams, the Australian Football League (AFL) will be hoping for a close compelling game with the outcome not known until the last few seconds. It is grand finals like Sydney versus West Coast in 2005, or Geelong versus St Kilda in 2009, that fuel the fever that drives the seemingly perpetual rise of the AFL.

In contrast to Franklin, 2022 is Gillon McLachlan’s final year at the AFL. The league’s CEO since 2014, McLachlan has deftly capitalised on the particular powers of sport. In an era where streaming companies have greatly reduced the sway of local TV channels, sport remains one of the few things most people still want to watch live. Those moments when it seems like nothing else matters have to be watched as they occur.

The recent $4.5 billion AFL TV rights deal might be seen as McLachlan’s crowning achievement. From 2025 to 2031, the AFL’s TV partners will pay $643 million per year for the right to broadcast the men’s and women’s competitions.

Yet McLachlan’s broader legacy as the steward of Australian Rules football is more damning, especially when it comes to three central issues: Indigenous players, AFLW, and head injuries.

Urgent need to tackle entrenched racism

“One more” unfortunately also applies to the continuing stream of awful revelations of the racist treatment of Indigenous players during McLachlan’s time as CEO. The racist booing of the Adnyamathanha and Narungga man and dual Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes began at the end of McLachlan’s first year in charge, and continued unabated during 2015, driving Goodes from the game. After refusing to condemn the booing while it was occurring, McLachlan and the AFL eventually apologised and committed to pro-actively ensuring no player would ever be so isolated and unsupported in the face of racist treatment.

Yet, at the same time, the league and its biggest club, Collingwood, were denying Afro-Brazilian Héritier Lumumba’s accounts of the racist treatment he received. An eventual review found there was systemic racism at the Collingwood Football Club.

Belated apologies followed, as they did again this year to Eddie Betts (who is connected to the Gubrun and Wirangu/Kokatha Peoples) and others after Betts wrote about the awful 2018 men’s pre-season training camp of the Adelaide Crows, which included racist activities.

And just this week there have been devastating allegations that celebrated coaches Alastair Clarkson and Chris Fagan pressured young Indigenous players at Hawthorn to leave their partners and have their partners terminate their pregnancies.

The heartbreaking allegations resonate with Australia’s genocidal history. But they also reflect its shameful present. The incarceration of Indigenous peoples in places like Victoria continues to rise while children are being taken away from Indigenous mothers at the highest rates since at least the Stolen Generations.

Despite its celebratory narratives of racial inclusion and anti-racist action, the AFL and its clubs remain institutions that seek to possess Indigenous peoples and their land, rather than recognise and support their sovereignty.

Read more:
Eddie Betts’ camp saga highlights a motivational industry rife with weird, harmful ideas

It remains an indictment of McLachlan’s tenure that the white leadership of the AFL has never enacted a broad review of systemic racism throughout the league. He has also failed to institute a forum for truth-telling with a commitment to implement structural changes to redress its long, racist history.

The failures of the white leadership of the AFL to consider Indigenous peoples were once again on display when the first game of the AFLW’s Indigenous round began with a minute’s silence for the death of the queen who upheld, as well as symbolised, the genocidal colonisation of the lands that make up Australia.

The AFLW must be paid more than lip service

Like its relationship to Indigenous Australians, the league’s purported commitment to women’s football remains more symbolic than grounded in actions. While McLachlan deserves credit for accelerating the development of an elite national competition for women, as soon as the AFLW was launched in 2017 it became something of an afterthought to the league.

Indeed, the following year the AFL turned its attention instead to launching the men’s AFLX competition, redistributing most of the AFLW’s marketing budget to this shiny new gimmick. While the ill-advised AFLX lasted only two seasons, it not only distracted from the women’s competition when it was most in need of support, it also highlighted the disparity in how the AFL viewed the labour of the women and men who played the game. In 2019, for example, the four male captains of the AFLX sides each received more money for two weekends of work than the combined salaries of each AFLW side for the whole season.

The start of the AFLW’s seventh season amid the men’s finals has highlighted the jarring disjunctions between the two leagues. Despite many compelling contests, the resources that the league and its media partners invest in covering the men dwarfs that of the women.

AFLW games have often been scheduled at inconvenient times (such as 5.10pm on Fridays), so as not to clash with the men. None of the innumerable footy TV talk shows focus on the women’s game. AFLW games have fewer camera angles, no capacity for reviewing scores, and broadcasts end almost as soon as the games are over.

The superb AFLW season 6 documentary series, Fearless, shows how things can be different. Using laudably high production values, it provides a gripping insight into the highly skilled teams and athletes of the AFLW competition. Yet those who run the AFLW are still yet to provide a clear plan for its development to either the public or the clubs themselves.

The huge new TV rights deal provides more than enough funds to make the AFLW fully professional. Yet recent history makes it hard to trust the AFL will do this well or in a timely fashion.

Read more:
The AFL has consistently put the women’s game second. Is it the best organisation to run AFLW?

Turning a blind eye to head injuries and their devastating impact

Under McLachlan, the AFL has also failed to adequately deal with perhaps the greatest threat to the viability of both the AFLW and AFLM competitions. Head injuries and their devastating legacies remain a persistent issue.

Early in McLachlan’s tenure, the AFL’s medical advisory board made the confounding argument that concussions suffered in Australian Rules football were somehow different from those suffered in American football. More recently, they have hindered research into head injuries suffered by AFL players.

Geelong’s captain in Saturday’s grand final – Joel Selwood – is famous for, among other things, having developed a method of winning free kicks by inducing head-high tackles. Despite some attempts, the AFL has been unable to stop players wilfully harming themselves to gain an advantage in this manner.

A key limitation here is the league’s refusal to move to full-time professional umpires for its billion-dollar industry. In a further embarrassment to McLachlan, the 2022 Brownlow medallist, Patrick Cripps, was only eligible for the award because the AFL appeals board decided his head-high bump that concussed Callum Ah Chee did not merit a suspension.

Lance Franklin’s extraordinary combination of talent and hard work over more than a decade exemplifies the spectacle that continues to lead so many people to watch the game.

There is a significant chance that in Saturday’s grand final Franklin will do something that seems to transcend human possibility, creating the kind of must-watch moment that powers live sport.

Yet the incoming AFL CEO from 2023 faces considerable challenges to make AFL a safe space in which all Indigenous people can thrive without systemic racism, to fully realise the glorious potential of AFLW, and to make the game safe for all of those who play it.

Matthew Klugman has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council..

– ref. As the 2022 AFLM season comes to a close, the game must ask itself some difficult questions – especially on racism – https://theconversation.com/as-the-2022-aflm-season-comes-to-a-close-the-game-must-ask-itself-some-difficult-questions-especially-on-racism-190847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

You may have heard about the longevity diet, and its promise of an extended life span – but what exactly is it and is it any different to other diets promoting good health?

The longevity diet is a set of eating recommendations compiled by a biochemist called Valter Longo, director of the University of Southern California’s Longevity Institute. He is known for his research on the role of fasting, the effects of nutrients on your genes and how these may impact ageing and the risk of diseases.

While the longevity diet has been targeted to older adults, it is also recommended for younger people. Longo has said he plans to live to 120 by following this diet.

So, what does the diet look like?

Foods in this diet are vegetables, including leafy greens, fruit, nuts, beans, olive oil, and seafood that’s low in mercury.

So most foods in the longevity diet are plant based. Plant-based diets are generally higher in vitamins and minerals, dietary fibre, antioxidants and lower in saturated fat and salt, which lead to health benefits.

Foods that are discouraged are an excess of meat and dairy, and those high in processed sugar and saturated fats.

For people who don’t want to go without dairy, the longevity diet recommends switching from cow’s milk to either goat’s or sheep’s milk, which have a slightly different nutrient profile. But there is little evidence sheep’s and goat’s milk provide more health benefits.

Including fermented dairy (such as cheese and yoghurt) in your diet, as recommended in the longevity diet, is beneficial as it provides a more extensive microbiome (good bacteria) than any milk.

Read more:
Why you should eat a plant-based diet, but that doesn’t mean being a vegetarian

Have you seen this diet before?

Many of you may recognise this as a familiar dietary pattern. It is similar to the Mediterranean diet, especially as both feature olive oil as the oil of choice. The Mediterranean diet is promoted and backed by a considerable body of evidence to be health promoting, reducing the risk of disease, and promoting longevity.

The longevity diet is also similar to many national, evidence-based dietary guidelines, including Australia’s.

Two-thirds of the recommended foods in the Australian dietary guidelines come from plant-based foods (cereals, grains, legumes, beans, fruits, vegetables). The guidelines also provide plant-based alternatives for protein (such as dried beans, lentils and tofu) and dairy (such as soy-based milks, yoghurts and cheeses, so long as they are supplemented with calcium).

Intermittent fasting

Another aspect of the longevity diet is the specified periods of fasting, known as intermittent fasting. The diet advocates eating in a 12-hour time-frame, and not eating for three to four hours before bed time.

Typically with intermittent fasting people fast for 16–20 hours with a four to eight hour window of eating. Another intermittent fasting option is the 5:2 diet, in which eating is restricted to about 2,000–3,000 kilojoules for two days of the week and for the other five days, eating normally.

The evidence indicates intermittent fasting may lead to improvements in insulin resistance, which leads to better blood glucose control. This can reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases, such as heart disease and obesity.

Read more:
Is intermittent fasting actually good for weight loss? Here’s what the evidence says

Maintain a healthy weight

The longevity diet recommends that people who are overweight eat only two meals a day – breakfast and either a midday or evening meal – plus just two low-sugar snacks. This is to try to reduce kilojoule intake for weight loss.

Another important aspect of this recommendation is to reduce snacking, particularly of foods high in saturated fat, salt or sugar. These are the foods we typically refer to as discretionary/sometimes foods, or ultra-processed foods. These offer little nutritional value, and in some cases are linked to worse health outcomes.

Read more:
Ultra-processed foods: it’s not just their low nutritional value that’s a concern

Eat a rainbow of colours

The longevity diet recommends eating foods rich in nutrients, which most national dietary guidelines also advocate. This means eating a diet rich in plant foods, and a variety of foods within each food group.

Each colour fruit and vegetable contains different nutrients, so eating a range of coloured fruit and vegetables is recommended. The recommendation to select a range of wholegrains over refined cereals, breads, pasta and rice also reflects the best nutritional evidence.

Read more:
How to get children to eat a rainbow of fruit and vegetables

Restrict protein intake

This diet recommends a restricting protein intake to 0.68-0.80g per kilogram of body weight per day. This is 47-56g of protein a day for a 70kg person. For reference each of these foods contains about 10g of protein: two small eggs, 30g cheese, 40g lean chicken, 250mL dairy milk, 3/4cup lentils, 120g tofu, 60g nuts or 300mL soy milk. This is in line with government recommendations.

Most Australians easily consume this level of protein in their diet. However it is the elderly population, to whom the longevity diet is targeted, who are less likely to meet their protein requirements.

In the longevity diet it is recommended most of the protein comes from plant sources or fish. This may require special planning to ensure a complete range of all the nutrients needed if the diet is missing red meat.

Read more:
How to get the nutrients you need without eating as much red meat

Are there any problems with this diet?

This diet recommends taking a multivitamin and mineral supplements every three to four days. Longo says this prevents malnourishment and won’t cause any nutritional problems.

However, many health bodies including the World Cancer Research Fund, the British Heart Foundation and the American Heart Association do not recommend taking supplements to prevent cancer or heart disease.

Supplements should only be taken on your doctor’s advice, following a blood test showing a deficiency in a specific nutrient. This is because some vitamins and minerals may be harmful in high quantities.

If you are eating a variety of foods across all food groups, you are meeting all your nutrient requirements and shouldn’t need supplements.

Read more:
Vitamins and minerals aren’t risk-free. Here are 6 ways they can cause harm

The verdict?

This longevity diet is a compilation of many aspects of evidence-based healthy eating patterns. We already promote these as they improve our health and reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases. All of these aspects of healthy eating could lead to increased longevity.

What’s not mentioned in the longevity diet is the importance of exercise for good health and a long life.

Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

– ref. What’s this ‘longevity’ diet, and will it really make you live longer? – https://theconversation.com/whats-this-longevity-diet-and-will-it-really-make-you-live-longer-189140

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University

You might feel despondent after reading news reports about countries doubling down on fossil fuels to cope with energy price spikes.

Don’t. It’s a blip. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a temporary fossil fuel resurgence, it also accelerated Europe’s renewable ambitions. And the United States and Australia have finally passed climate bills. This week, federal energy minister Chris Bowen announced “Australia is back” on climate action.

There’s better news too. In March this year, the world hit one terawatt of installed solar. By 2025, the world’s polysilicon factories are predicted to bounce back from supply shortages and churn out enough high-purity silicon for almost one terawatt of solar panels every year.

Coupled with major growth in wind, pumped hydro, energy storage, grid batteries
and electric vehicles, the solar boom puts zero global emissions within reach before 2050.

Best of all – Australia could show the world how to add solar to their grid. You might not suspect it, but we’re the global leaders in finding straightforward solutions to the variability of solar power and wind. We’re showing that it’s easier to get carbon emissions out of electricity generation than many predicted.

Rapid, deep and cheap emissions reductions

This surge in the renewable supply chain allows sustained exponential growth that is already disrupting fossil fuel markets in some countries, notably Australia.

This year, global fossil fuel prices have skyrocketed in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In turn, that’s generated intense interest in solar and wind energy to boost domestic energy security, particularly in Europe, which needs to wean itself off Russian gas.

While fossil fuels are concentrated in countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and Australia, solar and wind resources are widely distributed. Most countries can generate all their own energy from the sun and wind.

Europe could readily become energy independent, harnessing its enormous North Sea offshore wind resources and solar in the south. Even densely populated countries such as Japan and Indonesia have far more solar and wind resources than they need.

Solar and wind now provide the cheapest new electricity generation in most markets. As a bonus, the widespread uptake of solar and wind will eliminate many of our worst air pollutants and improve our health.

Read more:
Australia could get to net zero emissions much quicker than 2050 – if our politics was a force for change. Here’s how

Why are solar and wind winning?

In a word, cost. Solar and wind have won the race for the energy of the future because they are cheap. Once built, the fuel is free, and does not need to be imported or dug up.

Wind and solar are being built three times faster than everything else combined. It follows they will dominate future energy markets as existing fossil fuel generators retire and electricity use grows rapidly.

Nuclear generation hasn’t grown in the past decade. Coal and gas plants able to capture and store carbon have not got traction in the energy market. Hydroelectricity can’t expand much further. There will, however, be a huge market for off-river pumped hydro energy storage.

There are no serious technical, environmental or material constraints to solar power on any scale. However, solar has been hit by supply chain issues in recent months, with major price spikes in polysilicon. These are common to any rapidly growing industry, and should resolve as more suppliers see the opportunity and enter the market.

There is enough land

Most of the world’s population live at moderate latitudes with good sunshine on most days. Here, solar is effectively unlimited. Those further north have abundant wind energy (particularly offshore wind) to offset weaker solar in winter.

Sceptics point out you need more land or sea to produce the same amount of electricity as fossil fuel plants. While true, solar farms can happily coexist with livestock and cropping to create a double income for farmers. The solar electricity needed to power the world and eliminate all fossil fuels can be generated from about 1% of the land area devoted to agriculture.

Once we have cheap clean electricity, we can use it to eliminate the use of fossil fuels altogether by electrifying nearly everything: transport, heating, industry and chemical production. This could reduce emissions by three quarters.

Global electricity production will need to rise sevenfold to about 200,000 terawatt-hours a year to give everyone the energy needed to reach developed nation living standards. But this is not all that hard over the next 30 years. And the alternative – keep pumping warming pollutants into the atmosphere – will make the lives of our children harder and harder.

Together, solar and wind have passed two terawatts of installed capacity. That means we’re about 2% of the way to reaching the almost 100 terawatts of solar and wind required to decarbonise the world, while raising living standards.

Annual solar deployment needs to double every four years to get the job done by 2050–60 – similar to the global growth rate achieved over the past decade.

Australia can show the way

You might not think it, given the decade of political climate wars, but Australia is the world leader in terms of solar electricity produced per person.

In Australia, solar and wind are booming while coal is rapidly falling. We’re already on track to reach 80-90% renewables by 2030. Remarkably, our per capita solar generation is twice as large as the second placed countries (Germany, Japan and the Netherlands) and far ahead of China and the USA.

Australia is quietly demonstrating how to accommodate huge new flows of cheap, clean electricity. The world will soon follow suit.

Read more:
Beyond net-zero: we should, if we can, cool the planet back to pre-industrial levels

Andrew Blakers receives funding from ARENA and DFAT.

– ref. There’s a huge surge in solar production under way – and Australia could show the world how to use it – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-huge-surge-in-solar-production-under-way-and-australia-could-show-the-world-how-to-use-it-190241

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Waters-Lynch, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Organisational Design, RMIT University

Michael and Karen moved from Melbourne to Castlemaine, about 130km northwest of Victoria’s capital, in mid-2020 – using, like tens of thousands of Australians, the shift to remote work to make a larger lifestyle change.

They sold the small two-room inner-urban apartment they had bought in 2018 and bought a large three-bedroom home on a 1,200 square metre block in the historic goldfields town (population about 10,000).

“There’s an orchard, an amazing garden for growing veggies, and a good shed out the back,” enthuses Michael. “I have a room now for full-time remote work and a third bedroom for the baby, which is on its way.” He plans to convert the shed into a studio for Karen, an artist.

But not everything was easy. “The internet connection has been dropping in and out, repeatedly and for large durations,” Michael says. “I’ve had to use my phone’s 3G hotspot as a backup.”

We’ve tracked the experience of Michael and Karen along with 20 other households in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland to better understand how the influx of “e-changers” to “lifestyle towns” is affecting infrastructure and social cohesion.

This demographic shift has long been predicted – facilitated by technology and the population stresses in major cities. But the pandemic accelerated the trend.

Slow internet speeds are just the tip of the infrastructure pressures being placed on hundreds of towns within a few hours’ drive of cities – the sweet spot for e-changers looking to combine city jobs with country town lifestyles. Others include health and education services, water security and, most urgently, housing availability and affordability.

Helen Haines, the independent federal member for the rural Victorian electorate of Indi, has put it like this:

For a long time, when we talked about regional development, we said ‘build it and they will come’. Well we haven’t built it and they’ve come.

It’s a challenge that will require cooperation between federal, state and local policy makers to resolve.

Rise of the e-changers

In 2016 demographer Bernard Salt described living in a country town while keeping a city-based job as the ultimate Australian lifestyle choice:

“Move to a lifestyle town, telecommute using broadband, and come into the city perhaps once a week for face-to-face meetings. Sounds pretty damn good to many Australians.”

He estimated about one in six Australians were interested in doing this. The major obstacle: having a job they could do from home. But based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data, he predicted the proportion of the workforce able to work from home would double from 4% in 2016 to 8% by 2026.

COVID-19 has dramatically changed that trajectory, with up to 40% of the workforce working from home during the pandemic’s peak.

This, along with favourable interest rates, enabled tens of thousands to make the shift. Between July 2020 and June 2021 the population of regional Australia grew by about 70,900, while capital cities declined by 26,000 – the first time in 40 years that regional population growth outpaced the cities.

Most of this shift occurred in NSW and Victoria. Sydney’s population fell about 5,200, while the rest of the state increased by 26,800. Melbourne’s population declined by about 60,500, with the rest of the state picking up 15,700.

Indicative of the e-change trend was the decline in the median age of those migrating away from the cities (from 38 to 34 in South Australia, from 37 to 33 in NSW, and smaller changes elsewhere).

Looking at lifestyle hotspots

Our research mostly focused on e-changers moving to “hotspots” – towns within a few hours’ commute of a capital city. But we also included some towns further afield, such as Broken Hill in far-west New South Wales and Rockhampton in central Queensland.

We were interested in their experiences with remote work, given Australia’s fixed broadband speeds already lag behind most industrialised countries, ranking 65 of 182 countries on a current global index. Regional towns generally fare even worse.

Two households in our study did report better speeds but nine said slowness and bad connection limited their ability to use it for work. One recounted spending weeks chasing their service provider before it was discovered the copper wiring to their home had eroded. These problems are unlikely to get better in any area affected by heavy rainfall and flooding events.

Gentrification hurting low-income residents

A more fundamental issue for lifestyle towns is what growing populations mean for the attributes attracting e-changers in the first place.

In the Hunter Valley, Southern Highland and Shoalhaven regions of NSW, and in the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast areas in Queensland, house prices rose more than 35% in the 12 months to January 2022.

This has contributed to an unprecedented rental crisis, displacing those on lower incomes and making it harder for local businesses to fill job vacancies.

A discussion paper published by the Regional Australia Institute in May 2022 noted that while regional Australia’s population grew by an average of 76,500 people a year in the decade to 2020, the number of homes approved for construction declined in five of those ten years. It argues that market forces alone are insufficient to address the problem.

Population influxes also risk altering the appealing character of lifestyle towns. The population surge in Torquay on Victoria’s Surf Coast, for example, has seen the once sleepy coastal town come to resemble an outer suburb of Geelong.

Investment urgently needed

Michael and Karen may not stay in Castlemaine. But they don’t plan to move back to Melbourne. They are considering Tasmania. They like working remotely, having more space and time for their young family, being closer to nature and the sense of community a country town offers.

All the evidence suggests hundreds of thousands more will follow their path, with hybrid and remote work here to stay.

Good planning and policy is needed to ensure this historic demographic shift does not overwhelm these towns. To maintain their livability and ability to accommodate remote work, they require urgent investment in telecommunications and transport infrastructure, health and education services and – most of all – housing.

Julian Waters-Lynch received funding from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) to conduct this research.

Andrew Glover received funding from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) to conduct this research.

Tania Lewis received funding from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) to conduct this research.

– ref. ‘We haven’t built it, and they’ve come’: the e-change pressures on Australia’s lifestyle towns – https://theconversation.com/we-havent-built-it-and-theyve-come-the-e-change-pressures-on-australias-lifestyle-towns-188228

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damien O’Meara, PhD Candidate, Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology

Peppa Pig’s first same-sex couple, a pair of lesbian polar bears, were recently introduced after a petition to include a same-sex family received nearly 24,000 signatures.

Children’s television has often been a place to push the boundaries of diverse representations onscreen. In particular, Australian children’s TV has been a global leader in screen diversity, including gender and queer representation.

Emmy-winning Australian series First Day (2020-22) tells the story of a transgender girl starting high school.

Another Emmy-winner, Hardball (2019-21) includes gay dads for one of the lead characters.

Even recent updates to The Wiggles’ line-up has placed a greater emphasis on gender diversity, including adding a non-binary unicorn.

Diverse representation

Children’s TV is often less risk averse than programming aimed at adults.

The ABC is empowered to take risks with representations of gender and sexuality in children’s programming because of its publicly funded role.

But such progressive portrayals can sometimes chafe with outdated expectations of children’s television. In 2004, Play School faced controversy for showing lesbian mothers.

As social acceptance has progressed, Australian children’s TV has been able to achieve more queer representations.

Talking to the Queering Australian Screens research project, television professionals often praised the genre for its openness to new ideas, representations and bringing in new talent.

Tony Ayres, Creator of Nowhere Boys (2013-18), observed those who commission children’s TV are “generally very open to diverse representation”.

This representation happens behind the scenes, too, with Ayres describing how these shows often give new talent their first credit.

David Hannam, who has written for several kids’ TV shows including Dance Academy (2010-13), said children’s television “has led the way”.

Speaking of his time at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, Hannam noted the foundation had an “almost charter responsibility” to show diversity on screen, “with great caution and responsibility”.

Julie Kalceff created First Day, which starred a young trans actor, Evie McDonald, as a trans girl starting high school.

When she was developing the show, Kalceff shared that she was initially concerned about what would be allowed on children’s TV:

There were no trans people on television. There were no TV shows with trans actors in the lead role. I thought there’s no way the ABC is going to do this. And there’s no way they’re going to do it with kids’ TV. But to their credit, the ABC was so supportive, and was so behind the project from the beginning.

What audiences want

It is not only TV producers who are eager to widen representation in children’s television. Audiences are also seeking out more inclusive content.

Just like Peppa Pig in the UK, there have been calls in Australia for more diversity in animated hit Bluey, with the show adding its first Auslan signing character in June.

One of our research projects, Australian Children’s Television Cultures’ 2021 survey found 90% of Australian parents believe diverse representation is an important element of children’s TV.

As one father explained:

Diversity on screen helps children learn about people with different upbringings from their own, expanding their empathy for and curiosity about other people.

In contrast to the controversy Play School received nearly 20 years ago for its inclusion of same-sex parents, a mother praised the show for “doing a fantastic job” of depicting diversity in relationships.

Not everyone believes Australian television is doing enough. One survey respondent praised the way shows like Bluey reflect Australian culture, but said he would “love to see more LGBT representation […] It would be nice as a kid to know you’re valid.”

Uncertain futures

The streaming era has changed how families and children watch TV. This raises concerns about the future of Australian children’s content.

The recent removal of quotas for Australian networks to air a minimum number of hours of children’s television, alongside the absence of quotas on streaming services, has led to a reduction in the production of local kids’ TV.

From Play School to Bluey, children’s TV has reflected the richness of Australian cultural life. There is a risk that if Australian child audiences need to rely on international content, future generations will not see themselves on screen.

With the loss of local voices, Australian kids’ TV may also lose its ability to push boundaries of diversity and inclusion.

Read more:
Cheese ‘n’ crackers! Concerns deepen for the future of Australian children’s television

We are conducting a survey of parents and guardians with children aged up to 14 about how families watch kids’ TV in the streaming era. You can participate here.

Damien O’Meara is a Research Assistant for the Australian Children’s Television Cultures research project at Swinburne University of Technology.

Liam Burke receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).

– ref. Peppa Pig has introduced a pair of lesbian polar bears, but Aussie kids’ TV has been leading the way in queer representation – https://theconversation.com/peppa-pig-has-introduced-a-pair-of-lesbian-polar-bears-but-aussie-kids-tv-has-been-leading-the-way-in-queer-representation-190648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley Cullen, Associate lecturer, University of Newcastle

In 2000, 18-year-old Baltimore man Adnan Syed was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in prison and served close to 23 years in prison for the crime.

That was until this week, when Syed was released from prison at the age of 41 after his murder conviction was vacated by a Baltimore City Circuit Judge.

The vacation of his conviction doesn’t mean Syed is formally recognised as innocent. Instead, Judge Melissa Phinn expressed serious concern over Syed’s initial conviction based on new evidence as well as evidence that was not handed over to Syed’s defence team. Syed and his supporters have always maintained his innocence.

Syed has been released from prison, but Phinn has ordered him to remain on house arrest. The state has 30 days to make a decision as to whether Syed will face a new trial, or whether the case will be dismissed.

While Syed’s fate remains undetermined, he’s just one of many people around the globe who have spent time in prison for crimes they strongly contend that they did not commit.

Unfortunately, wrongful convictions do happen, and they often share similar underlying causes.

The case and the podcast

The murder of Hae Min Lee was the first case featured on the highly popular podcast series Serial, one of the pioneers of the true-crime podcast genre.

It very quickly became one of the most rapidly downloaded podcasts of all time, and the first series now boasts over 300 million downloads worldwide since its release in 2014.

Lee was a senior high-school student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She disappeared one day after school, and her body was found in a nearby park one month later. Based on the results of the autopsy, Lee had been strangled.

As Lee and Syed had dated not long before the time of Lee’s death, Syed became a prime suspect. Other suspects emerged, but none were investigated as closely as Syed.

Cell tower records that placed Syed’s phone near the location of the park where Lee’s body was buried implicated him. A former classmate of Syed’s, Jay Wilds, also provided testimony indicating that he had assisted Syed with disposing Lee’s body. These two pieces of evidence ultimately formed the basis of the case against Syed that led to his eventual conviction.

After Syed was convicted, a close friend of the Syed family contacted reputable journalist Sarah Koenig in 2013, who independently investigated the case. Serial shone light on some of the oddities of the case, including the inconsistencies in the testimony given by Wilds and the lack of forensic evidence linking Syed to the crime.

For some, Serial consolidated the suspicion they held towards Syed, and for others, it cast serious doubt over his conviction.

The podcast’s popularity contributed to the ongoing fight for Syed’s freedom over the years.

Read more:
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How common are wrongful convictions?

One problem with wrongful convictions is that it’s impossible to know exactly how frequent they are. This is because many people in prison who say they are innocent never receive the opportunity to have their cases reviewed.

Even if we conservatively estimate that criminal convictions are accurate 99.5% of the time, an error rate of 0.5% could still result in thousands of wrongful convictions in the US alone each year.

Read more:
Serial: murder, mystery and the science of memory

In 2020, The National Registry of Exonerations in the United States reported over 2,600 exonerations following wrongful convictions across the United States since 1989. That number is always on the rise.

In the closest Australian repository of wrongful convictions, there were 71 documented wrongful convictions between 1922 and 2015.

What often leads to a wrongful conviction?

Wrongful convictions often share a common set of causes. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 and has overturned the wrongful convictions of 375 people in the United States using DNA evidence.

Based on the Innocence Project’s data, the factors that are most common in wrongful conviction cases are:

• mistaken eyewitness identification

• improper or invalid forensic science

• false confessions

• and informant testimony.

The National Registry of Exonerations has also identified misconduct as a common factor in known wrongful convictions.

In Syed’s case, issues with the validity of the cell phone evidence and the accomplice witness testimony provided by Wilds are among those common factors.

Read more:
Lessons from the Chamberlain case: the human cost of wrongful conviction

Based on known Australian wrongful conviction cases, the most common factors appear to be:

• police misconduct

• erroneous judicial instructions to the jury

• forensic errors or misleading forensic evidence

• incompetent defence representation

• and false witness testimony, among others.

If Syed is indeed innocent of the murder he was convicted of, the 23 years of his life that he lost are a grave injustice. Lee’s family have also suffered tremendously and would continue to suffer with the lack of closure that comes with Syed’s wrongful conviction.

Any of us could be at risk of being wrongfully convicted, and the suffering that it comes with. Increasing education about what factors are common in wrongful conviction cases may hopefully mean we can make more informed decisions, should we ever hold an individual’s freedom like Adnan Syed’s in our own hands.

I have previously worked on a voluntary basis for Not Guilty: The Sydney Exoneration Project, a separate organisation that reviews cases of potential wrongful conviction.

– ref. ‘Serial’ podcast’s Adnan Syed has murder conviction vacated. How common are wrongful convictions? – https://theconversation.com/serial-podcasts-adnan-syed-has-murder-conviction-vacated-how-common-are-wrongful-convictions-190968

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Francke, Research Fellow, University of Adelaide

Plants capture around half the carbon we emit by burning fossil fuels, making them a crucial part of mitigating climate change. But carbon is often released back into the atmosphere when plants die, decompose and eventually turn into dirt.

Carbon is only permanently removed from the atmosphere if it’s stored in sediments that accumulate at the bottom of oceans, lakes, reservoirs, or in peat bogs.

Our latest research on the Thirlmere Lakes near Sydney aimed to find out how trees, shrubs and soils in Australia’s eastern tablelands responded to climate changes over the last 130,000 years. The key question we sought to answer was whether carbon stored in Australia’s trees, shrubs, and soils contribute to the pool of carbon stored safely in lake sediment.

The answer, we determined, depends on a number of crucial factors, and erosion plays an essential, previously neglected, part.

Erosion is like a conveyer belt for carbon – it transports carbon to the lake from nearby hills where plants die. We found when the climate near Sydney was warm and wet, then trees and shrubs flourished and erosion was reduced. So while more carbon was stored in plants, it took longer for carbon in soil to be safely buried in the lake.

Previous research has shown ignoring the impact of erosion on carbon burial has caused Australia to overestimate the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere over the last 50 years, by a staggering 40%.

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The cycle of carbon

Plants capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and store carbon in their tissue. So what happens when plants die?

The equation is easier for the oceans: dead phytoplankton (tiny algae floating close to the surface) sinks to seafloor, where most of its captured carbon is stored safely far away from the atmosphere. On land things are more complex.

When trees and shrubs die, they cover the surface, decompose and become part of the soil. In fact, 80% of carbon on land is stored in soils. Decomposition releases some of the captured carbon back into the atmosphere, unless they’re buried deep.

In Australia, much more carbon is stored when weather conditions are wetter. During the strong La Niña event of 2010-2012, large areas of the Australia’s dry interior and temperate landscape experienced significant “greening”.

Research shows 20% more carbon was captured from the Earth’s atmosphere during this La-Niña event due to increasing plant growth. Australia contributed more than half of this.

The last 130,000 years

The story is even more dramatic if you look back at the last 130,000 years. During this time, the planet experienced cycles of two climate phenomena: glacial periods and interglacial periods.

A “glacial” period is characterised by much colder and drier conditions, when wide parts of northern Europe, Eurasia, and America were covered by ice kilometres thick. The last time it peaked was around 21,000 years ago.

Australia endured warmer and wetter conditions during “interglacial” periods, which peaked around 125,000 years ago and again over the last 11,600 years.

For our research, we drilled deep into Sydney’s Thirlmere Lake mud, and pulled up long columns of sediment containing traces of vegetation, climate, and erosion from the last 130,000 years. We observed significant changes in the types of vegetation growing in the catchment over this time.

Read more:
Soil abounds with life – and supports all life above it. But Australian soils need urgent repair

Shrubs and large trees such as eucalypts flourished during warmer and wetter interglacial periods. They were less abundant when it was colder and dry during glacial periods, when grass and herbs became more common.

Large trees capture more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than grasses and herbs. And this captured carbon then accumulates in the surface of soils when the plant dies.

But how is the soil-carbon transported from the slopes where the trees and shrubs grow, to the bottom of the lake?

Soil erosion

Erosion – whether gravity, water or wind – forms our landscape and is essential for the accumulation of soil carbon in lakes, reservoirs and the oceans.

The deeper the carbon is buried in the sediments of these reservoirs, the more efficiently it is locked away from the atmosphere. In contrast, the longer it remains on the slopes and in soils close to the surface, the more it decomposes, and carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere.

For the wider Sydney region, more plant growth occurred during the interglacial period, which take up vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But this may be offset by decreased erosion. And indeed, our data suggests decreased erosion during interglacial periods.

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This decreased erosion is because of the protection of trees which, for example, stabilise the soil with their roots. Indeed, we found tree cover slows the rate that soil carbon moves from slope to lake by nearly 10 times.

This means there’s much more time for soils to decompose on the slope, and to release carbon back into the atmosphere.

Nevertheless, we still recorded significantly higher carbon storage in lake sediments during warmer and wetter periods, thanks largely to the greater growth of trees and shrubs compared to grasses, which are more abundant during interglacial periods. This compensates for the reduced erosion.

We also found the lake transformed into a productive wetland during warm periods. This means more carbon is also captured by plants growing in the lake.

What will happen under climate change?

The interplay between climate, vegetation, and erosion is difficult to quantify. Our research fills a critical gap in knowledge, as climate models currently don’t account for soil-carbon erosion.

Those models assume all soil-carbon is eventually emitted back into the atmosphere, introducing uncertainties into climate predictions.

Future climate change may raise the risk of the Thirlmere Lakes drying out, which means the sediments will be exposed, which promotes decomposition. This means the previously stored carbon will be emitted back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Extreme aridity may also reduce terrestrial plant growth, as it did during the millennium drought.

Further, destruction of vegetation by severe bushfires reduce biomass yield to the wetlands. Preserving Australia’s unique native terrestrial vegetation and wetlands is therefore essential to sustain the continent’s role in the global carbon cycle.

Read more:
Australian forests will store less carbon as climate change worsens and severe fires become more common

The research at the Thirlmere Lakes was funded by the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage and commenced following community concerns that nearby mining was affecting the hydrology of the lakes and the Friends of Thirlmere Community group continues to advocate for the protection and enjoyment of the area. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Matthew Forbes to this article. We acknowledge the contribution of the Aboriginal people of the area who are the first custodians of Country.

Alexander Francke receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Anthony Dosseto receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Haidee Cadd receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

Tim Cohen has received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC); ARC Centre of Excellence Scheme (Project Number CE170100015) and ARC Future Fellowship (FT180100524) and NSW OEH Thirlmere lakes Research Program

– ref. We helped fill a major climate change knowledge gap, thanks to 130,000-year-old sediment in Sydney lakes – https://theconversation.com/we-helped-fill-a-major-climate-change-knowledge-gap-thanks-to-130-000-year-old-sediment-in-sydney-lakes-187784

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cynthia Sear, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne

As we have seen from coverage of “The Queue” – capitalised and thus now, apparently, a proper noun – the English are proud of their queuing prowess.

The Queue for the queen lying in state is portrayed as testament to the English ideals of civility, duty and sacrifice.

David Beckham’s 13-hour wait in the crowd was widely praised, while TV hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield’s alleged (although denied) “push-in” has been admonished.

But The Queue is part of a bigger picture. Like class, the English propensity to celebrate queuing illuminates a peculiar national obsession with order, hierarchy, and one’s place within it.

Queueing as a form of ceremony

Let’s address something important: are we talking here about Britishness or Englishness? What is seen to define an English person, British person or person
of the United Kingdom is a matter of considerable debate. Our choice of the word “English” over “British” in this article reflects the fundamental Englishness of the British national project, to which the monarchy is central.

The English proclivity for queuing has been the subject of cultural commentary for decades.

In 1946 Hungarian humourist George Mikes reportedly noted:

An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one […] [queueing is] the national passion of an otherwise dispassionate race.

British anthropologist Kate Fox, author of Watching the English, wrote that in the 2011 London riots:

I witnessed looters forming an orderly queue to squeeze, one at a time, through the smashed window of a shop they were looting.

Queueing as a form of ceremony, such as seen in London this week, is perhaps a particular type of queue.

In defiance of the typical English reservedness, The Queue has been credited with fostering cameraderie and even chance meetings.

Read more:
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Queuing in England and around the world

Of course, it’s not only the English who queue. Regulating the flow and order of people is a universal human need.

Saving space in densely populated urban milieu, Japanese people form tight zig-zags.

In Spain, the penultimate person to arrive for a bus merely nods to the last person to let them know whom to follow.

In both cases, what appears to be anarchy is, in fact, tightly regulated.

However, there is something culturally distinctive about the English queue. The English seem to have a fondness for publicising their queuing ability.

Queuing and deficiency

While much of the recent coverage has emphasised the egalitarianism of The Queue, researchers such as Joe Moran have noted queuing has endured a chequered past.

In economically impoverished postwar Britain, food queues became a source of national resentment.

Many felt the queue was an unfair method of distribution – especially for older people, mothers with young children or working women, who faced more difficulty to wait in line for essential items.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Winston Churchill seized on the unpopularity of queues to argue:

We [The Conservatives] are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They [Labour] are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes.

Queues, he argued, were socialist, and that, should a Labour government have its way, the country could become “Queuetopia”.

In the 1960s and ‘70s the English faced recurrent queues at banks and post offices. The queue was widely depicted as a symptom of inefficiency of the national economy, something one might expect on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but not appropriate for Britain.

Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, associating queues with incompetence and disorganisation was a constant theme in politics.

Advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi produced a 1978 election poster for the Conservatives depicting a queue outside the unemployment office and the slogan: “Labour isn’t working”.

Queues and queue-jumping

More recently, as observed by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, the queue and queue-jumping have been weaponised in political discourse regarding minorities.

As one of us (Andrew Dawson) has noted, many of Britain’s white working class perceive the British policy of multiculturalism as a relegation of their status.

The benefits that flow to immigrant ethnic minorities are often presented as an unfair “push-in” for the social mobility ladder, allowing them to effectively “jump” Britain’s class queue.

That queuing for social occasions such as the queen’s death has been reimagined in recent years as a positive phenomenon is curious.

Whether in a queue or a ladder, however, such appeals to social organisation are about knowing one’s place – a particularly English preoccupation.

Ask any Englishperson about their position in society. Depending upon their class, they may be embarrassed or affronted by the question, but they will have an answer, whether they share it with you or not (determined, again, by their class).

To this end, the reaction to Willoughby and Schofield’s alleged transgression speaks to the ability of this class system to reassert itself in the face of celebrity and fame.

Perhaps The Queue helps to explain why Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, has experienced such hostility upon entering British society. Not just because of discriminatory and racist attitudes based on her biracial, divorcee, actress status, but also because she is American.

Queuing is seen by some as antithetical to America’s rampant individualism – where your place is often imagined as malleable rather than rigid, dependent on achievements, popularity and wealth.

Australians also may recoil at suggestions of one’s place in society, with some insisting that in contrast to the stuffy British “motherland”, we are a classless society.

While “The C-word”, as the Australian author Tim Winton called class, of course very much exists in Australia, we have far less of a vocabulary or understanding of class than the English.

While it may be less obvious in Australia, or railed against in America, many English people continue to embrace these systems even as the wider world moves on in seemingly disordered ways.

Read more:
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Cynthia Sear receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship Grant.

Andrew Dawson 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. ‘An obsession with order, hierarchy, and one’s place within it’: what The Queue says about Englishness – https://theconversation.com/an-obsession-with-order-hierarchy-and-ones-place-within-it-what-the-queue-says-about-englishness-191059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dana Wong, Associate Professor & Clinical Neuropsychologist, La Trobe University

Almost 50% of Australians experience mental illness in their lifetime, costing our economy up to A$220 billion annually, according to pre-pandemic figures.

The full impact of the pandemic on our nation’s mental health is still emerging, but early signs are bleak, with one in five Australians experiencing a mental health disorder between 2020 and 2021.

This includes 3.3 million people with anxiety disorders, 1.5 million with mood disorders, 650,000 with substance use disorders, and more than 3,000 deaths by suicide every year.

But accessing help can be very difficult. Government investment in psychology training programs is part of this problem.

Read more:
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A severe shortage of psychologists

Currently, the federal government is meeting only 35% of its psychology workforce target.

One in three psychologists report having closed their books to new patients, due to overwhelming demand. Despite this, psychology workforce issues were not on the agenda at the recent jobs and skills summit.

Brain and mental health disorders including stroke, dementia, ADHD, depression and alcohol/substance misuse are major causes of disability, with significant personal and societal impacts.

Timely diagnosis, assessment and treatments for these complex conditions are crucial. However, these services require psychologists with advanced training. This includes clinical psychologists, clinical neuropsychologists, counselling psychologists, educational and developmental psychologists, forensic psychologists and health psychologists. These psychologists are comprehensively trained in assessment, intervention and treatment of people with mental illness and brain conditions.

Hundreds of hospital-based psychology positions remain unfilled, with patients (including children) waiting up to two years for care. Positions are often advertised for months with no qualified applicants, particularly in regional and remote hospitals.

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Psychology training places are declining despite high demand

Postgraduate psychology courses are costly to run, requiring high staff-to-student ratios and incurring high clinical supervision and placement costs.

Unlike medical degrees, government funding for these programs does not come close to covering the costs of the courses. The recently reduced federal government support is half that given to veterinary science. This means universities lose money on these programs, making them an unattractive financial prospect for ever-tightening higher education budgets.

This has led to program closures, despite consistently high demand for training places. Across Australia, the number of clinical neuropsychology training programs has fallen from eight to five in the past ten years. There have been similar reductions in health, counselling and forensic psychology training.

La Trobe University’s neuropsychology program received more than 300 applications annually for up to ten places, yet the program was closed in 2020. Similarly, according to course conveners, clinical psychology programs regularly receive at least 20 applicants for each available place.

Universities are now resorting to reducing government-funded masters places in favour of costly full-fee places (around $35,000 each year), impacting affordability, equity of access and student diversity. This disrupts any endeavour to develop a culturally and socioeconomically representative workforce and fails to meet the needs of our healthcare sector.

Many psychologists choose to enter better-paying private practices straight out of university, bypassing public health roles. This affects the general public’s access to mental health services.

We must do better. Vulnerable people living with mental health problems deserve to be supported and protected.

5 solutions to the psychology workforce problem

There are straightforward steps that could go a long way to addressing this issue.

1. Increase funding for postgraduate psychology training so universities do not lose money by offering these programs.

2. Ensure a minimum number of Commonwealth Supported Places (that is, with no, or reduced, student fees) are protected for students in psychology training programs and make sure these align with workforce demands and job vacancies.

3. Consider training models that incorporate “return-of-service” obligations. This is when the government subsidises student fees but requires graduates to engage in paid health services work for a minimum period, such as two years.

4. Invest in joint university/health service psychology staff positions (as occurs in medical training) to provide supervision and placements within the sector.

5. Increase placement opportunities for postgraduate students via better collaboration between universities, services and government.

All Australians deserve to have their mental health needs supported by trained and qualified psychologists. Investing in the psychology workforce will be good for the economy, increase total workforce participation, reduce wait times and save lives.

The authors would like to thank Tamara Cavenett (President, Australian Psychological Society) and Lynda Katona (Manager, Psychology Services, Alfred Health) for their contributions to this article.

Dana Wong receives research grant funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and the Stroke Foundation. Dana is President-Elect of the Australasian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment, and a member of the APS College of Clinical Neuropsychologists.

Catriona Davis-McCabe is the President-Elect of the Australian Psychological Society and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer/Researcher at Curtin University.

Joanne Wrench is the Manager, Psychology at Austin Health and Chair of the Victorian Hospital Heads of Psychology.

Katherine Lawrence has previously received research grant funding from Australian Rotary Health.

Lorelle Burton is Chair of the Heads of Departments and Schools of Psychology Association (HODSPA) and is Professor and Head of the School of Psychology and Wellbeing at the University of Southern Queensland

– ref. We can’t solve Australia’s mental health emergency if we don’t train enough psychologists. Here are 5 fixes – https://theconversation.com/we-cant-solve-australias-mental-health-emergency-if-we-dont-train-enough-psychologists-here-are-5-fixes-190135

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Duncan, Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University

With local body elections currently under way, democracy makes its triennial appearance in New Zealand’s towns and cities once again. But elections alone don’t automatically make for democratic governance at street level. And this is particularly true of Auckland.

Since the unification of regional, city and district councils in 2010, the so-called “super city” has been run by a single Auckland Council.

It covers a diverse urban and rural region of 1.7 million people, spread across more than 4,894 square kilometres. The mayor and 20 councillors set the rates, pass bylaws and control city planning.

The 21 subordinate local boards have no rating or regulatory powers. On the old maxim of “no taxation without representation”, local board members aren’t representatives in a full political sense. It’s the power to tax that really matters.

So, in effect, 21 people represent 1.7 million. That’s a ratio of one elected representative to approximately every 81,000 people – somewhere between the populations of Whangārei and Dunedin.

Power imbalance

By comparison, at the national level there is one member of parliament to every 42,700 people. Auckland has 23 electorate MPs, and 16 list MPs are based in the region. That’s 39 MPs in Auckland compared with 20 councillors and one mayor.

Ironically, Aucklanders are better represented in parliament in Wellington than in the council chamber in downtown Auckland.

Compare this also with Central Hawkes Bay District, for example, where there are nine council members, including a mayor, representing 14,142 people: a ratio of one to 1,571.

A vote there is clearly worth a lot more – roughly 53 times more – than one in Auckland. That other old maxim of “one person, one vote” comes to mind. Little wonder Hawkes Bay voted not to unify its local government along the same lines as Auckland.

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While representing and taxing 81,000 people, an Auckland ward councillor is rarely heard or seen by residents between elections. Your chances of bumping into one in Queen Street to say “g’day” and tell them your thoughts are almost zero.

Local boards have no rating or regulatory powers, despite each covering populations the size of cities. In 2018, for example, the Waitematā Local Board area had an estimated 82,866 residents, and Devonport-Takapuna 57,975.

Whether you’re a farmer close to the northern or southern border of the council territory, or an inner-city student, the real decision makers are remote and largely beyond the influence of ordinary ratepayers and voters.

Democratic deficit

Compounding this had been the historical decline in voter turnout for local elections, with participation down to 42% in 2019. This is the opposite of general elections: following a low in 2011, turnout rose to 81.5% of those enrolled in 2020.

In Auckland, there are presently 22 candidates running for mayor, most of whom get no voice in the media. To get ahead in this election requires more than just competence and a good track record. You need plenty of money, wider political backing and, above all, media attention.

But media space is limited, so news coverage and live debates focus on those deemed to stand a chance of getting within the first three or four places.

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This process, and the subsequent withdrawal of two centre-right candidates, has seen the media and pollsters anoint two remaining front-runners: the centre-right Wayne Brown and the centre-left Efeso Collins. Neither is clearly ahead in polls.

But given the forgone conclusions of previous mayoral contests, Aucklanders at least have a real electoral choice of leadership styles and visions for the city’s future.

Collins espouses a caring and inclusive approach that looks to the interests of the city’s worst-off, as well as its economic development. Brown pushes the pragmatic and task-oriented attitude of an engineer who prides himself on “fixing” things.

Centralisation of power

This close and less predictable contest may help boost participation. But it doesn’t negate the essential problem of genuine representation.

Auckland’s many problems are expensive to fix – and expensive to leave unfixed. The solutions frequently involve partnerships with central government, which to a large extent was the reason for unifying the region’s governance in the first place.

Cabinet ministers, it was believed, should be able to call one person – the mayor – when dealing with the city’s significant infrastructure deficits. Even so, much of the city’s real assets and services were carved off into “council-controlled organisations”, entities with their own governance structures. Many argue the council should exert more control over these.

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Whatever the motivation, the outcome has certainly not been an improvement in local democracy. The governance of Auckland is remote from, and happens high above the heads, of ratepayers and residents.

This attenuated system of representation appears to reflect a national, indeed international, trend towards centralisation of government.

Not only has the unification of Auckland thinned out representation and put up barriers to participation, across the whole country we’ve seen central government overruling local government in matters such as public health, urban development and water use.

Regardless of where you might stand on those issues, we certainly hear a lot less about devolving decision making closer to those directly affected.

Grant Duncan 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. Remote control: why Auckland’s local election is neither local nor democratic – https://theconversation.com/remote-control-why-aucklands-local-election-is-neither-local-nor-democratic-190837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins.

Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.

The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.

It sets out to understand why the war was never declared, why the British didn’t follow their own laws, and the tactics and strategies Aboriginal people deployed defending their land and survival.

Perkins asks us to consider this difficult history, why there are only a handful of monuments to this warfare, and how it should be memorialised.

To ask these questions, Perkins deploys stunningly shot re-enactments, archives, artefacts, biography, expert evidence and uses place to great effect.

The series treats the viewer with the ability to critically reflect and ask why we still struggle to come to terms with this history.

The frontier wars

The “frontier wars” were the conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people over access to land the British sought to occupy exclusively without any agreement, treaty or settlement. This series emphasises Aboriginal people resisted these wars in multiple ways, including warfare. Aboriginal people are still resisting these wars today, in the courts.

The Australian Wars is an important contribution to truth-telling. Perkins provides a public reckoning with the means by which the British Empire – followed by independent democratic Australian governments – managed to grab the entirety of the land assets of the continent.

The dominant narrative of Australian settler colonialism was once sunny tales of possession, sustained by hard toil. Aboriginal acts of resistance, refusal and warfare were somehow miraculously omitted.

Only in recent decades has a more truthful account of the past emerged. New conversations and responsibility are slowly navigating the realities of the frontier, the shared history of “both sides” and how the past can be remembered.

Reconciliation Australia’s “Reconciliation Barometer” survey identified only 64% of non-Indigenous Australians believed the frontier wars occurred. Some 30% of respondents were unsure and 6% rejected the factual accuracy of significant aspects of Australia’s colonial history.

The Australian War Memorial, once tasked with considering how to reflect frontier wars in Australia’s story, rejected any inclusion of the frontier wars in its exhibitions.

The documentary returns to the theme of rejecting this part of Australia’s history and asks: how can the frontier wars be remembered and memorialised?

Perkins reminds us that as many people – both black and white – died in the frontier wars as did in overseas conflicts featured at the Australian War Memorial.

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The moving frontier

The Australian Wars draws together experts of Australian history, detailed studies of the expansive colonial records, the oral testimony of survivors’ descendants and new archaeological research.

With this trove of references, Perkins reveals the extent and breadth of violence, the global networks of military men and the strategies they honed on the frontier, and the technology that came to enable this.

Ultimately, we learn unfettered access to the land resource was the driving factor. The rule of law, claims of humanitarianism and Christianity were readily dispensed with in pursuit of land.

Perkins begins this story in the nation’s capital at the War Memorial. She then follows the moving frontier from the Sydney settlement to Tasmania and crossing Bass Strait. The story then moves with rapid pace from south to north and across the top end to the Kimberley, as settlers expanded across landscapes in always violent encounters.

She dispenses with the abiding myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back.

In each location Perkins focuses on, we see different strategies deployed, tactical advantage held at times by Aboriginal people, the fear and terror struck in the settlers, and the military actors and strategy that underpinned the colonial settlements.

By the third episode, as the frontier heads north, settlers take lessons from Sydney, Tasmania and the New South Wales grasslands country. Moving with much greater speed aided now by horses, the settlers recruited skilled Native Mounted Police, used repeating rifles and developed systems and infrastructure to confine Aboriginal people to prisons.

But the Aboriginal peoples whose lands were being invaded were fast developing new tactics.

In Queensland alone it is estimated 72,000 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed.

How do we remember?

The series prompts us to ask: if not war, then what do we call the process by which the land, once all carefully delineated and peopled, is occupied by settlers?

How do we remember this and memorialise those who died?

Perkins tells us this violence was often very well documented. This violence was acted against people whose eyes you could see. Yet from Lake George, just outside the nation’s capital, to the Sydney wars and massacres, Tasmania, Queensland and to the Kimberley, sites of violence are overwhelmingly unmarked, unobserved, save for colonial names: “Blackfellows Bones”, “Victory Hill”.

The silence continues.

Leading Australian historian Henry Reynolds says the frontier wars are our most important war because of where they were fought and what they were about: the outcome determined the ownership and sovereign control of a whole continent.

As he comments in the series “what can be more important than that to us?”

The Australian Wars is on SBS and SBS on Demand from today.

Read more:
Friday essay: it’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars

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

– ref. In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back – https://theconversation.com/in-the-australian-wars-rachel-perkins-dispenses-with-the-myth-aboriginal-people-didnt-fight-back-190967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins.

Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.

The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.

It sets out to understand why the war was never declared, why the British didn’t follow their own laws, and the tactics and strategies Aboriginal people deployed defending their land and survival.

Perkins asks us to consider this difficult history, why there are only a handful of monuments to this warfare, and how it should be memorialised.

To ask these questions, Perkins deploys stunningly shot re-enactments, archives, artefacts, biography, expert evidence and uses place to great effect.

The series treats the viewer with the ability to critically reflect and ask why we still struggle to come to terms with this history.

The frontier wars

The “frontier wars” were the conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people over access to land the British sought to occupy exclusively without any agreement, treaty or settlement. This series emphasises Aboriginal people resisted these wars in multiple ways, including warfare. Aboriginal people are still resisting these wars today, in the courts.

The Australian Wars is an important contribution to truth-telling. Perkins provides a public reckoning with the means by which the British Empire – followed by independent democratic Australian governments – managed to grab the entirety of the land assets of the continent.

The dominant narrative of Australian settler colonialism was once sunny tales of possession, sustained by hard toil. Aboriginal acts of resistance, refusal and warfare were somehow miraculously omitted.

Only in recent decades has a more truthful account of the past emerged. New conversations and responsibility are slowly navigating the realities of the frontier, the shared history of “both sides” and how the past can be remembered.

Reconciliation Australia’s “Reconciliation Barometer” survey identified only 64% of non-Indigenous Australians believed the frontier wars occurred. Some 30% of respondents were unsure and 6% rejected the factual accuracy of significant aspects of Australia’s colonial history.

The Australian War Memorial, once tasked with considering how to reflect frontier wars in Australia’s story, rejected any inclusion of the frontier wars in its exhibitions.

The documentary returns to the theme of rejecting this part of Australia’s history and asks: how can the frontier wars be remembered and memorialised?

Perkins reminds us that as many people – both black and white – died in the frontier wars as did in overseas conflicts featured at the Australian War Memorial.

Read more:
Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism’s final encounter with the Barkandji

The moving frontier

The Australian Wars draws together experts of Australian history, detailed studies of the expansive colonial records, the oral testimony of survivors’ descendants and new archaeological research.

With this trove of references, Perkins reveals the extent and breadth of violence, the global networks of military men and the strategies they honed on the frontier, and the technology that came to enable this.

Ultimately, we learn unfettered access to the land resource was the driving factor. The rule of law, claims of humanitarianism and Christianity were readily dispensed with in pursuit of land.

Perkins begins this story in the nation’s capital at the War Memorial. She then follows the moving frontier from the Sydney settlement to Tasmania and crossing Bass Strait. The story then moves with rapid pace from south to north and across the top end to the Kimberley, as settlers expanded across landscapes in always violent encounters.

She dispenses with the abiding myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back.

In each location Perkins focuses on, we see different strategies deployed, tactical advantage held at times by Aboriginal people, the fear and terror struck in the settlers, and the military actors and strategy that underpinned the colonial settlements.

By the third episode, as the frontier heads north, settlers take lessons from Sydney, Tasmania and the New South Wales grasslands country. Moving with much greater speed aided now by horses, the settlers recruited skilled Native Mounted Police, used repeating rifles and developed systems and infrastructure to confine Aboriginal people to prisons.

But the Aboriginal peoples whose lands were being invaded were fast developing new tactics.

In Queensland alone it is estimated 72,000 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed.

How do we remember?

The series prompts us to ask: if not war, then what do we call the process by which the land, once all carefully delineated and peopled, is occupied by settlers?

How do we remember this and memorialise those who died?

Perkins tells us this violence was often very well documented. This violence was acted against people whose eyes you could see. Yet from Lake George, just outside the nation’s capital, to the Sydney wars and massacres, Tasmania, Queensland and to the Kimberley, sites of violence are overwhelmingly unmarked, unobserved, save for colonial names: “Blackfellows Bones”, “Victory Hill”.

The silence continues.

Leading Australian historian Henry Reynolds says the frontier wars are our most important war because of where they were fought and what they were about: the outcome determined the ownership and sovereign control of a whole continent.

As he comments in the series “what can be more important than that to us?”

The Australian Wars is on SBS and SBS on Demand from today.

Read more:
Friday essay: it’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars

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. In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back – https://theconversation.com/in-the-australian-wars-rachel-perkins-dispenses-the-myth-aboriginal-people-didnt-fight-back-190967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Harvey-Smith, Australian Government Women in STEM Ambassador, Professor, UNSW Sydney

Today, the Australian government released the STEM Equity Monitor 2022 – the nation’s annual scorecard on gendered participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers.

These data are more relevant than ever. Australia is facing unprecedented skills shortages in critical areas – we need highly qualified people to help address our economic, environmental, and technological challenges.

Future careers in all sectors will rely heavily on STEM skills. But a lack of diversity means we have a limited workforce, and it’s missing a broad range of perspectives.

Read more:
Australia needs more engineers. And more of them need to be women

What does the scorecard say?

We start with some positive news – the number of women enrolling in university STEM courses increased by a whopping 24% between 2015 and 2020, compared with a 9% increase among men. There was a more gradual rise in vocational STEM enrolments, where only 16% are women.

Women’s workforce participation is gradually increasing too. The proportion of STEM-qualified jobs held by women was 15% in 2021 – that’s an increase of 2% in just 12 months.

But just 23% of senior management and 8% of chief executive officers in STEM industries are women. On average, women are paid 18% less than men across all STEM industries – although this gap closed by 1% last year.

Although we are doing a better job at attracting women to some university STEM courses, very few women are still going for vocational STEM education. And there’s far too little attention paid to actually keeping STEM-qualified women in the workforce.

A five-year study of STEM graduates from the year 2011 found that by 2016, only 1 in 10 STEM-qualified women worked in a STEM industry, compared with more than 1 in 5 STEM-qualified men. Data on other gender identities were not collected.

The huge difference in retention rates should come as no surprise when we consider the gendered roles our society enforces, and the vastly different experiences people face, both in workplaces and in society at large.

It is important to acknowledge the major gaps in these data, for example on other gender identities, sexual orientation, socioeconomic factors, disability, and race. Broadening the data captured will enable us to better understand the full impact of the many intersecting barriers to participation that people face.

Read more:
Educators can help make STEM fields diverse – over 25 years, I’ve identified nudges that can encourage students to stay

We need structural workplace changes

Businesses suffering chronic skills shortages can’t keep focusing on programs designed to grow the pipeline, in the hope that the system will fix itself. We need structural workplace changes.

One avenue is to introduce more flexible work options and broaden access to paid parental leave. According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, gender-equal primary carer’s leave was offered by 3 in 5 employers in 2020-21.

Thanks to a concerted effort by many employers, 12% of this leave was taken by men last year, almost twice as much as the year before. This figure was even higher (20%) in management roles.

Bias, discrimination, and sexual harassment are major factors that drive people from workplaces. Solving these issues receives too little funding and attention.

Workplace sexual harassment costs Australia A$3.5 billion per year and inflicts a terrible personal toll on those affected. Women are more likely to be sexually harassed than men, and people from racial minorities, people with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ individuals suffer disproportionately.

Read more:
Antarctic stations are plagued by sexual harassment – it’s time for things to change

According to the Respect@Work: Sexual Harassment National Inquiry Report, sexual harassment is more prevalent in male-dominated industries. The Australian government recently committed to implementing all 55 recommendations of that report – a significant, positive step.

Businesses must urgently put robust systems in place to prevent discrimination, bias, and sexual harassment. There are many excellent tools available to guide this work, for example these provided by the Australian Human Rights Commission, Chief Executive Women, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Our Watch, and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.

Crashing barriers

Ultimately, we need rigorous and well-resourced initiatives to reduce barriers to workforce participation. My office has created a national evaluation guide for STEM equity programs for this purpose.

Rather than the usual PR campaigns and cupcake drives, we need investment in evidence-based solutions to address systemic issues affecting people who face discrimination in the workforce.

Nothing short of strong, decisive, and coordinated action from governments and the business sector will shift this pattern. The Australian government has already committed to this path, by announcing a review of existing government women in STEM programs.

This review will determine the impact of these programs, to drive future investments into measures that are proven to strengthen Australia’s STEM workforce.

The key to diversifying STEM workplaces is respect – and reducing power differentials that appear along gendered, cultural and other lines.

Greater respect for every person will build a stronger, more cohesive society ready to tackle future challenges. And it will ensure that Australia’s fast-growing sectors – like space, advanced manufacturing, quantum technologies and cybersecurity – are well supported by a qualified workforce into the future.

Read more:
A law on workplace gender equality is under review. Here’s what needs to change

As Australia’s Women in STEM Ambassador, Lisa Harvey-Smith receives funding from a Commonwealth grant.

– ref. More women are studying STEM, but there are still stubborn workplace barriers – https://theconversation.com/more-women-are-studying-stem-but-there-are-still-stubborn-workplace-barriers-190839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW, UNSW Sydney

A little-known provision of the Privacy Act makes it illegal for many companies in Australia to buy or exchange consumers’ personal data for profiling or targeting purposes. It’s almost never enforced. In a research paper published today, I argue that needs to change.

“Data enrichment” is the intrusive practice of companies going behind our backs to “fill in the gaps” of the information we provide.

When you purchase a product or service from a company, fill out an online form, or sign up for a newsletter, you might provide only the necessary data such as your name, email, delivery address and/or payment information.

That company may then turn to other retailers or data brokers to purchase or exchange extra data about you. This could include your age, family, health, habits and more.

This allows them to build a more detailed individual profile on you, which helps them predict your behaviour and more precisely target you with ads.

For almost ten years, there has been a law in Australia that makes this kind of data enrichment illegal if a company can “reasonably and practicably” request that information directly from the consumer. And at least one major data broker has asked the government to “remove” this law.

The burning question is: why is there not a single published case of this law being enforced against companies “enriching” customer data for profiling and targeting purposes?

Read more:
It’s time for third-party data brokers to emerge from the shadows

Data collection ‘only from the individual’

The relevant law is Australian Privacy Principle 3.6 and is part of the federal Privacy Act. It applies to most organisations that operate businesses with annual revenues higher than A$3 million, and smaller data businesses.

The law says such organisations:

must collect personal information about an individual only from the individual […] unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so.

This “direct collection rule” protects individuals’ privacy by allowing them some control over information collected about them, and avoiding a combination of data sources that could reveal sensitive information about their vulnerabilities.

But this rule has received almost no attention. There’s only one published determination of the federal privacy regulator on it, and that was against the Australian Defence Force in a different context.

According to Australian Privacy Principle 3.6, it’s only legal for an organisation to collect personal information from a third party if it would be “unreasonable or impracticable” to collect that information from the individual alone.

This exception was intended to apply to limited situations, such as when:

• the individual is being investigated for some wrongdoing
• the individual’s address needs to be updated for delivery of legal or official documents.

The exception shouldn’t apply simply because a company wants to collect extra information for profiling and targeting, but realises the customer would probably refuse to provide it.

Who’s bypassing customers for third-party data?

Aside from data brokers, companies also exchange information with each other about their respective customers to get extra information on customers’ lives. This is often referred to as “data matching” or “data partnerships”.

Companies tend to be very vague about who they share information with, and who they get information from. So we don’t know for certain who’s buying data-enrichment services from data brokers, or “matching” customer data.

Major companies such as Amazon Australia, eBay Australia, Meta (Facebook), 10Play Viacom and Twitter include terms in the fine print of their privacy policies that state they collect personal information from third parties, including demographic details and/or interests.

Google, News Corp, Seven, Nine and others also say they collect personal information from third parties, but are more vague about the nature of that information.

These privacy policies don’t explain why it would be unreasonable or impracticable to collect that information directly from customers.

Consumer ‘consent’ is not an exception

Some companies may try to justify going behind customers’ backs to collect data because there’s an obscure term in their privacy policy that mentions they collect personal information from third parties. Or because the company disclosing the data has a privacy policy term about sharing data with “trusted data partners”.

But even if this amounts to consumer “consent” under the relatively weak standards for consent in our current privacy law, this is not an exception to the direct collection rule.

The law allows a “consent” exception for government agencies under a separate part of the direct collection rule, but not for private organisations.

Data enrichment involves personal information

Many companies with third-party data collection terms in their privacy policies acknowledge this is personal information. But some may argue the collected data isn’t “personal information” under the Privacy Act, so the direct collection rule doesn’t apply.

Companies often exchange information about an individual without using the individual’s legal name or email. Instead they may use a unique advertising identifier for that individual, or “hash” the email address to turn it into a unique string of numbers and letters.

They essentially allocate a “code name” to the consumer. So the companies can exchange information that can be linked to the individual, yet say this information wasn’t connected to their actual name or email.

However, this information should still be treated as personal information because it can be linked back to the individual when combined with other information about them.

At least one major data broker is against it

Data broker Experian Australia has asked the government to “remove” Australian Privacy Principle 3.6 “altogether”. In its submission to the Privacy Act Review in January, Experian argued:

It is outdated and does not fit well with modern data uses.

Others who profit from data enrichment or data matching would probably agree, but prefer to let sleeping dogs lie.

Experian argued the law favours large companies with direct access to lots of customers and opportunities to pool data collected from across their own corporate group. It said companies with access to fewer consumers and less data would be disadvantaged if they can’t purchase data from brokers.

But the fact that some digital platforms impose extensive personal data collection on customers supports the case for stronger privacy laws. It doesn’t mean there should be a data free-for-all.

Our privacy regulator should take action

It has been three years since the consumer watchdog recommended major reforms to our privacy laws to reduce the disadvantages consumers suffer from invasive data practices. These reforms are probably still years away, if they eventuate at all.

The direct collection rule is a very rare thing. It is an existing Australian privacy law that favours consumers. The privacy regulator should prioritise the enforcement of this law for the benefit of consumers.

Read more:
Amazon just took over a primary healthcare company for a lot of money. Should we be worried?

Katharine Kemp receives funding from The Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Future of Finance Initiative in India, and the Australian Privacy Foundation.

– ref. This law makes it illegal for companies to collect third-party data to profile you. But they do anyway – https://theconversation.com/this-law-makes-it-illegal-for-companies-to-collect-third-party-data-to-profile-you-but-they-do-anyway-190758

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katy Bell, Associate Professor in Clinical Epidemiology, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney

Last week, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney released a video of themselves getting colonoscopies to encourage others to undergo screening. The procedure detected polyps in the two men, both aged 45.

Last year, the United States updated its guidelines to recommend bowel cancer screening begin at 45 years, in response to rising bowel cancer rates among younger people.

There have been calls for Australia to follow the US and lower the age for screening, from the current starting age of 50. So should we follow suit?

How does Australia screen for bowel cancer?

Established in 2006, the Australian National Bowel Cancer Screening Program offers free screening to all people aged 50 to 74 years every two years.

A few weeks after turning 50, Australians are mailed a test kit to collect two samples of poo which are put inside a ziplock bag and sent to the lab for testing.

The lab uses an immunochemical faecal occult blood test to look for traces of blood in the stool, which could indicate cancer. Most people get a negative result, and are then be invited to test again every two years until they are 74.

The few people who get a positive result will be asked to see their GP. The GP is likely to refer them to a specialist for a colonoscopy, where a thin, plastic tube with a camera attached is used to find the cause of bleeding.

If any polyps (small growths attached to the bowel wall) are found, these are removed during the colonoscopy. Polyps are common in adults and are usually harmless, but some can develop into cancer.

Reynolds’ video doesn’t mention the poo test at all, despite this test being recommended in both the US and Australia for screening. Instead it jumps straight to a colonoscopy.

The video is helpful for raising awareness about the potential benefits from screening for bowel cancer, or colorectal cancer, in general. And this might increase uptake in 50-74 year olds, which is currently low.

But as Australian GP Dr Vyom Sharma points out, the video tends to overstate potential benefits of screening and omits the potential harms.

Bowel cancer by age group

Rates of bowel cancer in people aged 50 years and over have decreased over time. This is likely due to the detection and removal of precancerous bowel polyps, as well as decreases in risk factors like the number of people who smoke in the population.

But there has been a recent 2–9% per year relative increase in cases of bowel cancer in people aged under 50.

Despite this relative increase, the actual numbers of bowel cancer diagnoses and deaths remain much lower in those under 50 years than in those 50 years or older.

(The decrease in the number of cancers after 70 years is because there are fewer people in the older age groups).

What do other countries do?

Many countries start screening at 50 years like we do in Australia, but some start older. Ireland and Finland both start at age 60 years, as did England and Wales until last year, when the starting age was lowered to 50.

A number of countries offer screening to people in their 40s: Italy begins at age 44, while China, Japan, and Austria begin at age 40.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of starting younger?

The risk of bowel cancer is a lot lower for people under 50 than than those 50 years and over. This means more people would have to be screened to detect one person with a (progressive) pre-cancerous polyp or an early cancer.

Many more people might end up having unnecessary colonoscopies. Some will be false alarms, where the poo test was positive but the colonoscopy turns out to be normal. For others, the colonoscopy will find one or more polyps that wouldn’t have otherwise caused any harm but now mean the person will have surveillance colonoscopies for the foreseeable future.

Unnecessary colonoscopies run the risk of complications, waste health resources, and can blow out wait list times for patients who definitely need the procedure.

Read more:
Needless procedures: when is a colonoscopy necessary?

The change in US guidelines to start at 45 years was prompted by modelling to assess potential benefits, harms, and costs of lowering the starting age.

All the models found expanding the program would be likely to prevent some people dying from colorectal cancer with acceptable costs (including downstream health system costs from colonoscopies and other procedures).

However, there are some caveats. All models assumed 100% adherence with screening. This is a long way from actual adherence in the Australian program (44% in 2018–2019).

Also, only one model allowed for the fact that many bowel polyps are non-progressive and don’t turn into cancer. This model found a smaller and more uncertain net benefit to expanding the screening program.

Finally, all the models assumed that if left untreated, the precursor lesions and colorectal cancers would behave in the same way in younger age groups as in those aged 50 years and over, and that screening would be just as effective.

But it’s possible that colorectal cancers in patients under 50 are more aggressive and develop more rapidly from a precursor lesion, which would make screening less likely to pick them up early.

A recent modelling study for the Australian context concluded that while expanding the program to start screening at age 45 could be worthwhile, the benefit-to-harm balance was less favourable for people in their 40s.

The researchers suggested a better use of resources would be to increase adherence in the existing program rather than in extending the age range who are offered screening.

Selective screening

Another option to pick up some cancers under 50 is to start screening at a younger age only in those at higher risk – for example those with a family history or other risk factors such as inflammatory bowel disease.

These higher-risk people may stand to benefit more from starting screening at a younger age, as their baseline risk (pre-test probability) would be higher than the general population, and the rate of false-positives (and unnecessary colonoscopies) would likely be lower.

In fact, screening from age 40 is already recommended in Australia for those in a higher risk category.

This is based on an “equal risks” principle: the ten-year risk of developing colorectal cancer in high-risk people at age 40 (or 35 for those at particularly high risk) is equivalent to the ten-year risk at age 50 for those without a family history.

If the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program does decrease the starting age to 45 or even 40 for all Australians, an independent evaluation should also be planned to assess the benefits, harms and costs.

Katy Bell receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Paul Glasziou receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for work on screening and diagnostic testing.

– ref. Actor Ryan Reynolds has urged 45 year olds to screen for bowel cancer. But the case for screening in your 40s isn’t clear cut – https://theconversation.com/actor-ryan-reynolds-has-urged-45-year-olds-to-screen-for-bowel-cancer-but-the-case-for-screening-in-your-40s-isnt-clear-cut-190409

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicky Morrison, Professor of Planning and Director of Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University

More and more farming land is being lost to other land uses such as housing on the outskirts of our cities. But how much land is being lost? And why does it matter?

Our newly published research used the Western Sydney region as a case study of land lost since the 2011 census, and newly released Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS) data allowed us to update our findings. While changes in ABS land-use definitions make precise comparisons difficult, Western Sydney may have lost as much as 60% of its agricultural land over the past ten years.

The significance of these losses is that Western Sydney has long been seen as the foodbowl of Greater Sydney. It produces more than three-quarters of the total value of agricultural produce in the metropolitan region. The city relies heavily on Western Sydney for livestock, vegetables, eggs, grapes and nuts.

Read more:
Why ‘best before’ food labelling is not best for the planet or your budget

We also interviewed people from different tiers of government working in Western Sydney. Our study highlights growing tensions between the New South Wales government and its attempts to manage population growth and housing pressures, and local councils and their efforts to protect food production on the city outskirts. The loss of productive land around our major cities is an increasingly urgent issue for our food security.

Food systems under pressure

Like many cities, Sydney is being hit by many shocks and stresses – drought, bushfires, storms, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on supply chains. This rapid succession of shocks tests the resilience of local food security. Communities face soaring food prices as part of a broader surge in costs of living.

A lack of political will, short-term election cycles with shifting priorities, and low public awareness have meant the importance of retaining farming land close to the city isn’t well understood. Perishable foods grown close to urban markets not only reduce transport and energy costs, and emissions, but also improve a city’s food security.

Read more:
We’ve had a taste of disrupted food supplies – here are 5 ways we can avoid a repeat

Our study quantifies the loss of land categorised as agricultural or primary production in Western Sydney over time. Based on ABS data for land use by mesh blocks (the smallest geographic areas defined by the ABS), we estimate Western Sydney lost 9% of its primary production land from 2016 to 2021. The worst-affected council areas over this period, The Hills Shire, Blacktown, Camden and Campbelltown, lost 43%, 39%, 26% and 19% respectively.

Changes in ABS mesh block land-use definitions (from “agriculture” in 2011 to “primary production” in 2016 and 2021), as well as changes to mapping standards, make it difficult to accurately calculate the loss of land between 2011 and 2021. However, if these land-use categories in 2011, 2016 and 2021 are assumed to be broadly comparable, we can estimate that Western Sydney lost roughly 60% of its farming land over the past ten years.

Read more:
Urban sprawl is threatening Sydney’s foodbowl

The pressures of growth

The NSW government has historically looked to Western Sydney to accommodate Greater Sydney’s growing population.

The population in Western Sydney is estimated to increase from 2.4 million residents in 2016 to 4.1 million in 2041. The Department of Planning and Environment’s latest housing supply forecast predicts the region will supply roughly 60% of Greater Sydney’s new dwellings in the period 2021-2025.

Attempts have been made to concentrate new development in two designated growth areas – the North-West and South-West – from 2006 onwards. These locations used to contain swathes of undeveloped greenfield land. But local council policies to retain productive farmland have been put aside to accommodate state government growth plans.

The Greater Sydney Commission (now the Greater Cities Commission) introduced the concept of Metropolitan Rural Areas (MRAs) to help preserve the remaining peri-urban rural land. The MRA is defined as the land uses outside the established and planned urban areas of Greater Sydney. It broadly comprises rural towns and villages, farmland, floodplains, defence land, national parks and wilderness areas.

Satellite imagery from our research
reveals a slow but steady housing sprawl into surrounding rural land. Is the MRA concept too late to stem urban encroachment?

Read more:
To protect fresh food supplies, here are the key steps to secure city foodbowls

Why are farmers selling up?

Why is farming land disappearing? Part of the answer lies in the cost-price squeezes farmers face. Costs of farming inputs have risen, while farmgate prices have fallen because of pressure from major retailers and competition.

As the cost of land and farming costs increase, low returns mean many farmers consider selling up to capitalise on land speculation. We estimate price differences between rural and residential land plots of up to 200% in Western Sydney (using the NSW Valuer General online tools).

The potential value uplift is a big incentive for farmers to approach the council and seek land rezoning to convert their rural holdings to more profitable land uses, such as housing and other urban uses. It makes financial sense. Who can blame them?

Read more:
Feeding cities in the 21st century: why urban-fringe farming is vital for food resilience

Local food production has been undervalued

Our study suggests some questioning of a pro-urban growth agenda has begun. There is growing recognition of the importance of preserving agricultural and rural land on the outskirts of our major cities to help us withstand and recover from crises.

We are seeing shortages of essential items, supply-chain disruptions and rises in the prices of foods affected by climate-related events. These developments highlight the need to reduce dependence on distant food supplies.

Australian cities must find ways to maximise the sustainable use of available natural resources for more localised food production. We should also consider more carefully the role that farming land plays in other land-use functions, including flood mitigation.

Read more:
What’s causing Sydney’s monster flood crisis – and 3 ways to stop it from happening again

Amy Lawton, consultant in the advisory team at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at UTS, was a co-author of this article, and of the journal publication while at WESTIR Ltd.

Amy Lawton, consultant in the advisory team at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at UTS, was a co-author of this article, and of the journal publication while at WESTIR Ltd. Nicky Morrison 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.

Awais Piracha 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. Half of Western Sydney foodbowl land may have been lost to development in just 10 years – https://theconversation.com/half-of-western-sydney-foodbowl-land-may-have-been-lost-to-development-in-just-10-years-190148

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey-Ann Palmer, Lecturer, Initial Teacher Education, University of Technology Sydney

The current teacher shortage in Australia has been building for years.

The pipeline of new teachers entering the profession is inadequate, and attrition rates are high, particularly in science and mathematics.

Shortages have led to more teachers teaching subjects “out of field”. Recent estimates show 29% of science classes are taught by someone who is not trained as a science teacher.

The lack of suitably science qualified teachers is a big problem. Not only is science a huge part of the education system, scientific skills lie at the heart of some of our most in-demand jobs, from engineering to agriculture and information technology.

They are also necessary to understanding and finding solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems, like climate change.

Our survey

In June and July 2022, we surveyed more than 300 primary and high school science teachers about their work and workloads.

The research was done with the Science Teachers Association of NSW and respondents came from a mix of government, private and Catholic schools. We found:

• 48% of respondents said there was at least one permanent vacancy for a science teacher in their school

• 84% said science classes had been taught by a non-science teacher in the previous week

• 57% said their school had at least one science teacher with less than one year of teaching experience.

À lire aussi :
Thinking of choosing a science subject in years 11 and 12? Here’s what you need to know

‘We need more time’

Teachers also reported they were burnt out, saying they were “exhausted” by all the administration involved in their jobs. As one teacher told us:

Our roles are added to regularly and nothing is taken away to compensate for the extra requirements.

They reported not having time for a recess or lunch break and working out of hours during at home in the evening. As another reported:

We need more time to plan, review and improve effective and engaging lessons NOT more administrative tasks.

Research has already shown teachers work long hours due to an increasing administrative burden. To meet regulatory requirements, teachers have to document things including detailed professional development, maintaining their accreditation and student records. Some of this is necessary but the volume has become unmanageable.

On top of this general administration burden, science teachers also also need to manage science supplies, test experiments and submit risk assessments for them.

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‘There will be gaps’

Science teachers lamented that there was no back-up for their skills of expertise in schools.

More than 80% of those surveyed said they had difficulty in finding science teachers to cover their classes when when they are sick, on leave or need to attend compulsory professional development.

It is not just that classes are being covered by non-science teachers but that we have to cover classes in other faculties […].

Respondents reported concern for students as some classes were not being taught by qualified science teachers and schools were merging classes, to cope with staff absences. As one teacher warned:

There will noticeable gaps in the level of skills and critical thinking required of senior science students because of the disruption of teacher shortages.

What will keep science teachers teaching?

If we want to attract and retain talented science teachers we need to reduce teachers’ administrative workload to give them more time to plan and teach.

Real actions to help science teachers would include funding lab technicians and administrative staff to support non-teaching duties.

We should also give science teachers access to compliance and risk assessment technologies. These will make it easier for science teachers to meet regulations around health and safety.

Science teachers need extra support to do their jobs because providing real science experiences that foster deep learning needs complex planning to keep students safe.

Our science teachers are passionate and enthusiastic professionals who love what they do. As one teacher told us:

I adore my job, I adore my kids [but] we now are so bogged down in paperwork and bloody reporting that our passion and enthusiasm for the job is burning out faster than a candle in a wind tunnel.

Tracey-Ann Palmer is affiliated with the Science Teacher’s Association of NSW.

– ref. ‘I’d just like to get on with my job’ – the barriers facing science teachers in Australia – https://theconversation.com/id-just-like-to-get-on-with-my-job-the-barriers-facing-science-teachers-in-australia-190921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Shiels, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

In his 1980 Boyer Lecture, art historian Bernard Smith said a “white blanket of forgetfulness” had been thrown over the horrors of Australia’s colonial past.

Renowned Australian artists, Waanyi woman Judy Watson and second-generation Anglo immigrant Helen Johnson, have individually spent decades exposing these secrets by translating archival material into paintings, prints and installations.

In a new exhibition, the red thread of history, loose ends, they come together in a visual, and conceptual dialogue of reworked maps, cartoons, proclamations, records and correspondence.

Watson takes charge of the shocking historical material she exposes. No anger or outrage is evident, even though her emotionally charged paintings and installations deal with deaths in custody, genocide or indentured labour.

Instead, she overwrites these crimes and injustices by initiating communal artmaking processes with friends and family or layering them with indigenous plant life and motifs from her country.

By contrast, there is an urgency to Johnson’s work. The shocking words in the texts she exposes spill out unedited across large canvases.

Multiple layers are built up with complex textures of raked paint, masking and interpretations of images sourced from archives. The surfaces are then cut and pealed back to reveal hidden and intersecting content: Australians uncovering the true history of colonisation.

The banality of evil

Watson exposes the banality of the bureaucratic and institutional language of colonial records.

In Carpentaria, we hear the words of white men from stations located on Watson’s country, who petitioned the “protector” complaining about mandated wages for Aboriginal workers. They wanted to pay them less.

Watson translated their signatures onto canvas and stained it by dancing pigment and volcanic soil into its fibres with her community.

The work is then overlaid with motifs from her country, symbolically referencing her great, great grandmother Rosie’s escape from a massacre.

Watson similarly reasserts her connection to country. With In broken Country, blacks not to be trusted, she has highlighted words on an 1897 ethnographic map, then overpainted with an image of Gotton tree fibre string suggesting cultural tracks and trading routes.

Shocking words, shocking histories

A quiet fury sits under Johnson’s layered reinterpretations of the establishment of structures that justified the primacy of white men with racist policies and attitudes.

There is a deliberate brutality in Crises, Johnson’s response to the stories and attitudes reported in the colonial publications The Bulletin and The Police Gazette.

Reworking their decorative lettering, she captures a colony obsessed with wealth, fixated on class and preoccupied with law and order. “Complacent”, “cowed”, “ignorant” and “complicit” reflect the crude characteristics of Australian colonial society.

The calligraphy has been updated to include images of contemporary figures such as Scott Morrison and George Pell, alluding to the continuities of Australian history.

Johnson challenges the pomp and glory of federation and the establishment of the first federal parliament to remind us it formalised an ethos of racism and discrimination still felt today.

Sitting below reconfigured press images of the time, she introduces a frieze of cartoon-like heads and speech bubbles quoting Hansard records from the first sitting.

Most revealing is Samuel Winter Cooke’s comment:

We must do our best to see that Australia remains as a possession for the white man, and the white man only.

Women’s perspective

Watson’s interest in matrilineal kinship is realised in a series of paintings using silhouettes of her mother, her sister, her daughter and herself.

She layers topographical maps, flora and other symbols from their country under and over their portraits. Global temperature charts gestures ominously toward the future.

In her chilling video work, Skullduggery (2021), Watson also exposes the callous disregard of “bone enthusiasts” like Agnes Kerr, matron of Burketown Hospital in 1938.

Voiced by Aboriginal readers, Kerr’s letters to London’s Wellcome Museum catalogue the bones of known Aboriginal people she has plundered from burial sites.

Johnson places a birthing woman at the centre of The Birth of an Institution. Surrounded by onlookers including bankers, priests and politicians, the dome of an ornate colonial structure is crowning.

The scale of the building is monstrous. Unlike the waiting stakeholders, the identity of the mother is obscured – she will not be acknowledged for her labour.

Truth telling

Addressing colonisation and its legacies is an undertaking white artists often avoid. Many believe it should only be told by First Peoples.

Johnson, however, believes processing the constructs of colonisation is also the work of people who benefit from it.

It was Johnson’s initiative to work with Watson and the ensuing dialogue has produced a complex and nuanced retelling of history.

Their works harness the words of the colonisers to poetically expose blind spots and provide evidence of colonial crimes and cruelties. Once seen, they can never be forgotten.

Judy Watson & Helen Johnson: the red thread of history, loose ends is at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) until November 12, and will be at Museum of Art and Culture, yapang, NSW from May 2023.

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

– ref. How artists Judy Watson and Helen Johnson are stripping back Australia’s ‘white blanket of forgetfulness’ – https://theconversation.com/how-artists-judy-watson-and-helen-johnson-are-stripping-back-australias-white-blanket-of-forgetfulness-188721