Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Smith, Senior lecturer, The University of Melbourne

The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability delivered 222 recommendations on Friday after four and a half years of investigation and deliberation. In its 32 hearings and nearly 8,000 submissions, people with disability shared difficult stories of personal and systemic violence. The commission’s final report showed Australians of all ages with disability continue to experience injustice that must be addressed.

As signatories to the Convention for the Rights of People with Disability and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the commission concluded children and young people have a right to inclusive education.

But the commissioners passed down divided recommendations that will continue education segregation for Australia’s young people for at least a generation and possibly longer.

Read more:
The disability royal commission recommendations could fix some of the worst living conditions – but that’s just the start

Split on segregation

Many disability advocacy organisations hoped the commission report would call for an end to segregation of people with disability across education, housing and employment. Yet the final report found the commissioners split on this issue.

Commissioners Barbara Bennett, Rhonda Galbally and Alastair McEwin believe “the deliberate and systematic separation of people based on disability constitutes segregation”. The remaining commissioners disagreed.

Two contrasting sets of education recommendations emerged from this split.

One seeks to phase out “special” or segregated education by 2051. Commissioners Galbally and McEwin – who are the only disabled commissioners and have close relationships with the disability community – support this approach, along with Bennett.

This proposal has still come under fire. West Australian senator Jordon Steele-John argues a 30-year phase out process is too long. He says it would mean disabled children entering school today would likely be separated from their age peers for the duration of their school life.

Organisations such as the Australian Coalition for Inclusive Education have set out roadmaps to this end within a decade.

The alternative recommendation proposed by commissioners Andrea Mason and John Ryan seeks to maintain special schools but, where practicable, locate these close to mainstream schools. This could create partnerships so students can participate in activities together. Critics of this approach say it does not suggest a time when segregated schooling might cease.

And bringing mainstream and special schools together would not necessarily achieve inclusion. The suggestion of scheduling in partial participation could send a message to students and teachers that not everyone belongs in all learning spaces.

The recommendations did not mention the private education sector, referring only to a future possibility of inclusion within state schooling.

Why inclusive education is important

Education is not just about academic outcomes and future employment. It is about creating tomorrow’s Australian communities, society and citizens.

The disability royal commission’s recommendations represent progress in terms of understanding diversity, listening to the voices of young people, capacity building, leadership and governance, and employment opportunities. But they lack insight into the importance of inclusive education in achieving all of these goals.

The very establishment of the commission was a commitment to addressing the violence and discrimination people with disability experience. But the lack of a firm commitment to a fully inclusive education system denies the opportunity for all young people to grow and understand their diversity of experiences.

All children and young people in a community need to play, grow and develop together. This means they can learn how to develop social-emotional skills and empathy for each other’s strengths and differences.

Why some see segregated education as necessary

Not everyone within the disability community sees segregated education as problematic. There are a number of reasons why special settings for students with disability have been established and chosen by families and students.

Schools are under-resourced and teachers in mainstream settings are often undertrained for working with students with disability in inclusive ways.

Many schools lack the facilities and adjustments required to keep some students with disability safe and included alongside their peers. There are concerns about bullying and meeting personal needs in some cases. Staff in specialist education settings may be more experienced with these needs.

Read more:
The disability royal commission delivers its findings today. We must all listen to end violence, abuse and neglect

The royal commission recommendation that teaching standards should include inclusive education training across the careers of teachers is important. But teachers cannot achieve this without the time or resources to develop the meaningful meetings and planning of Individual Education Plans (IEP) with students, carers and other professionals, including classroom assistants.

Much of the expertise in meeting the needs of students with disability are located in specialist schools, with little opportunity for skill and strategy sharing with mainstream teachers. Continuing to segregate these skills will make inclusive education unachievable.

Where to next?

The commission’s final report identifies the need for better data collection and analysis to make decisions. Existing mechanisms including the Disability Standards for Education, the Australian Curriculum, the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability, and an additional monitoring of progress through IEP reporting will be an important step in identifying where additional supports may be required at the school and student level.

Many within the disability community will not be heartened by the disability royal commission’s recommendations because they leave an option for segregation on the table. And this may set up the next generation of disabled children and young people for a life of being excluded from mainstream society.

Read more:
Why do students with disability go to ‘special schools’ when research tells us they do better in the mainstream system?

Catherine Smith receives funding from CYDA and Down Syndrome Victoria.

Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC and CYDA

– ref. Disability royal commissioners disagreed over phasing out ‘special schools’ – that leaves segregation on the table – https://theconversation.com/disability-royal-commissioners-disagreed-over-phasing-out-special-schools-that-leaves-segregation-on-the-table-214706

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elina Hypponen, Professor of Nutritional and Genetic Epidemiology, University of South Australia

Australia has seen a surge in vitamin D testing of children, with similar trends reported for adults around the world. GPs are now being urged not to test for vitamin D unnecessarily.

So when is low vitamin D a potential concern? And when might you need to get your levels tested?

How much vitamin D do we need?

Vitamin D is not only a nutrient – when metabolised in the body it acts as a hormone. We have receptors for this hormone all around our body and it helps regulate the metabolism of calcium and phosphorus.

Vitamin D also has many other roles, including helping our immune defences and contributing to DNA repair and cell differentiation.

We can thank the sun for most of our vitamin D. A chemical in our skin called 7-dehydrocholesterol is converted to vitamin D after contact with UVB radiation from the sun.

While we get some vitamin D also through our diet, this makes a relatively small contribution. It’s difficult to get much more than one-third of our daily vitamin D requirement from diet without supplementation.

Read more:
Curious Kids: how does the Sun help your body make vitamin D?

Nutritional vitamin D status is typically measured via a blood test. This checks the calcidiol (calcifediol, 25-hydroxyvitamin D) concentrations, which reflect the average intakes from the sun and diet over the past three to four weeks.

The current recommendation is that we should all aim to have at least 50nmol/L (20ng/mL) at the end of winter.

However, one problem with vitamin D tests is that there is variation in measured concentrations between the laboratories and between the assays, and whether you’re deemed to have a deficiency can depend on the testing method used.

Doctors do not always agree with what is deficiency. While very low concentrations are likely to prompt doctors to recommend a supplement (and, potentially, follow-up testing), some may consider even relatively high concentrations as inadequate.

This is all understandable as research in this space is still evolving, and we know low concentrations do not always cause any symptoms.

Why avoid vitamin D deficiency?

Prolonged, severe vitamin D deficiency will lead to softening of bone tissue and cause diseases such as rickets (children) and osteomalacia (adults).

However, avoiding low concentrations is likely to be good for many aspects of health, with consistent evidence suggesting benefits for infectious diseases and autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis.

Randomised trials have also provided evidence for lower cancer and all cause mortality by daily supplementation, although any benefit is likely to be restricted to those who otherwise have insufficient intakes.

Who is at risk of deficiency?

Most of us do not need tests to have a relatively good idea whether we might be at risk of a clinically important deficiency.

If it’s not late winter, we spend regularly at least some time outside with skin exposed to the sun, and we do not belong to a specific high-risk group, it is unlikely that our levels would be very low.

The two main reasons for vitamin D deficiency typically relate to:

1. not getting (enough) vitamin D through sun exposure. Deficiency risk can be high for anyone who is housebound, such as older or disabled people in residential care. The risk of deficiency increases if we always cover our skin carefully by modest cultural dress, and also dark skin pigmentation is known to reduce vitamin D synthesis.

2. having a chronic disease that alters your requirement. Medications such as anticonvulsants used to treat epilepsy, and conditions such as liver and kidney diseases can interfere with vitamin D metabolism. Some digestive diseases can reduce vitamin D absorption from your diet, while obesity will increase your vitamin D requirement and make it more difficult to raise your blood levels.

Am I getting enough sun exposure?

In Australia, it is possible to get enough vitamin D from the sun throughout the year. This isn’t so for many people living in the northern hemisphere.

For those who live in the top half of Australia – and for all of us during summer – we only need to have skin exposed to the sun a few minutes on most days.

The body can only produce a certain amount of vitamin D at the time, so staying in the sun any longer than needed is not going to help increase your vitamin D levels, while it will increase your risk of skin cancer.

Read more:
Why you need more Vitamin D in the winter

During winter, catching enough sun can be difficult, especially if you spend your days confined indoors. Typically, the required exposure increases to two to three hours per week in winter. This is because sunlight exposure can only help produce vitamin D if the UVB rays reach us at the correct angle. So in winter we should regularly spend time outside in the middle of the day to get our dose of vitamin D.

If you are concerned, you have very dark skin, or are otherwise in a high-risk group, you may want to talk to your GP.

In any case, taking a modest daily dose of vitamin D (1,000-2,000 IU) during the darker winter months is unlikely to cause harm and it may be beneficial.

Why does excess vitamin D testing matter?

When not indicated, testing can cause unnecessary worry and promote a cascade of laboratory, prescription and imaging services that are of low value.

Excessive testing is also a waste of health-care resources, with one single test costing about the same as a years’ worth of vitamin D supplementation.

Very often, we can make relatively small changes to our lifestyles to reduce the risks of vitamin D deficiency.

Read more:
There’s no such thing as a safe tan. Here’s what’s happening underneath your summer glow

Elina Hypponen receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund Australia, and Arthritis Australia. She is affiliated with Multicultural Communities Council South Australia.

– ref. Should I be getting my vitamin D levels checked? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-be-getting-my-vitamin-d-levels-checked-211268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

Aside from humans, dingoes are Australia’s largest land-based predator. They are arguably our most maligned, misunderstood, and mismanaged native species.

But evidence suggests this iconic canine helps maintain healthy ecosystems. They’re also a tourist draw-card. And they hold deep values for First Nations peoples.

Since colonisation, Australian governments and land managers have trapped, shot, poisoned and excluded dingoes from large parts of their Country. Policy and practices have frequently overlooked First Nations’ perspectives.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can hear the diverse voices and values of First Nations peoples, livestock producers, ecologists, and others as we shape future policy and practices. By collaborating and drawing from both Indigenous and Western knowledge, we can find ways to live in harmony with our apex predator.

Read more:
The dingo is a true-blue, native Australian species

How are dingoes currently treated?

Under federal environmental law, any species present in Australia before AD 1400, such as the dingo, is classified as native. However, dingoes are not listed nationally as a threatened species. So individual state governments make their own decisions about how to treat them.

In the Northern Territory, Queensland and Victoria, dingoes are managed as protected wildlife in National Parks and conservation areas but they’re unprotected on private land.

In Western Australia, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales, dingoes are unprotected wildlife. That means they are afforded no protection, even in conservation areas.

But state governments also list “wild dogs” as a priority pest species. That allows – even requires – them to be killed on public and private land.

Some states, such as Victoria, have “wild dog” bounties where landholders can turn in wild dog (but more likely dingo) body parts for money.

The state definitions of “wild dogs” includes dingoes and dingo-dog hybrids. This is based on the mistaken belief that interbreeding between dingoes and dogs was widespread across Australia.

But recent DNA research shows dingo-dog hybrids are rare. Most wild dingoes have little to no dog ancestry. This has led scientists, conservationists, and First Nations peoples to call on state governments to change dingo policies.

Read more:
New DNA testing shatters ‘wild dog’ myth: most dingoes are pure

Stark contrasts in dingo management

Stretching more than 5,600km across Australia, the dingo barrier fence is the longest continuous artificial environmental barrier in the world. It was designed to keep dingoes out of the more productive sheep grazing areas in southeastern Australia.

In South Australia, dingoes south of the “dingo fence” are declared “wild dogs” and subject to an eradication policy. North of the “dingo fence” they are unprotected wildlife.

In contrast, dingoes are listed as threatened throughout Victoria. They are protected on public land (if more than 3 km from a private land boundary).

The existence of an isolated and threatened “Big Desert” wilkerr (dingo) population on the border between these two states highlights their differing approaches.

While the Victorian population is partially protected in the Big Desert-Wyperfeld conservation reserve complex, the South Australian wilkerr population is poisoned four times a year inside Ngarkat Conservation Area.

Read more:
Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope

What do dingoes mean to First Nations peoples?

Dingoes hold strong cultural significance for First Nations peoples across Australia. They are considered loved and respected family members that have always been by their sides. A healthy dingo population is seen as essential for healthy Country and healthy people.

Despite the harms of colonisation on dingoes and First Nations, Indigenous people continue to feel and nurture this connection to dingoes. Maintaining their culture means fulfilling the general cultural obligation and rights of First Nations peoples to protect this sacred animal.

This was reinforced at the National Inaugural First Nations Dingo Forum in Cairns last month (September 15–16). The forum produced a powerful statement signed by more than 20 Nations.

The national dingo declaration is clear: First Nations peoples want an immediate end to the “genocide” (deliberate killing) of dingoes on Country. Lethal control of dingoes is not acceptable, nor justified.

We join the call for an end to the use of the term “wild dog”, because it’s misleading and disrespectful. Pure dingoes, not feral or hybrid wild dogs, are predominately being killed.

First Nations people want to see the dingo reinstated as “the boss of Country”. They call on governments at all levels to involve First Nations peoples in decisions relating to dingo management, to implement and support educational programs across a variety of platforms and organisations, and to see dingoes protected under legislation.

The recent Victorian decision to maintain lethal control of dingo populations against the wishes of First Nations peoples is extremely disappointing.

Non-lethal ways to protect livestock

While lethal methods have historically been used to protect livestock from dingoes, there is growing awareness of their limitations.

Firstly, these methods have not been consistently effective in eliminating livestock losses. In some cases they have exacerbated the problem, possibly due to killing and loss of older individuals, which changes the social cohesion of dingo populations, their movements, how territorial they are. It may also alter how successful they are at hunting kangaroos, causing more attacks on livestock.

Secondly, they have been associated with adverse consequences for biodiversity. In some cases, having dingoes around can be beneficial for graziers by reducing the total grazing pressure of kangaroos, feral goats, and other herbivores, and in some cases the impacts of feral pigs too. Increasing numbers of landholders are recognising this.

Lastly, there is growing consensus these lethal approaches are not aligned with the values of the general public, particularly First Nations peoples.

Non-lethal approaches to managing dingoes are gaining prominence as they are more environmentally sustainable and compassionate. These approaches prioritise coexistence by reducing conflict between dingoes and human interests while allowing dingoes to persist in landscapes.

One of the most promising non-lethal methods involves guardian animals, such as livestock-guarding dogs, llamas, and donkeys. These guardian animals establish protective bonds with livestock and effectively deter dingoes from approaching, reducing livestock losses for graziers.

Additionally, there is growing interest in developing innovative dingo deterrents, such as electric fencing and devices that emit loud noises, smells or visual stimuli, to discourage interaction between livestock and dingoes.

Initiatives promoting best practices for animal husbandry, including secure fencing, corralling, shepherding, and reducing access to resources (such as water and carcasses), play a crucial role in diminishing the attractiveness of livestock as prey to dingoes.

Working and walking together

By promoting coexistence and exploring and investing in innovative non-lethal solutions, we can strike a balance between safeguarding human interests, preserving the vital ecological role that dingoes perform, and respecting First Nations’ culture. In doing so, it is our hope that communities will be more united than divided.

We would like to acknowledge retired graziers Angus and Karen Emmott and family from far North Queensland. Their personal story about dingoes at Noonbah Station in Queensland’s Channel Country helped inform our article, and we consider Angus a co-author.

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. Euan is a Councillor within the Biodiversity Council, and a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Mammal Society.

Bradley Smith is an unpaid director of the Australian Dingo Foundation, a non-profit environmental charity that advocates for dingo conservation. He also serves as a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) dingo working group, which is part of their Species Survival Commission (Canids Specialist Group).

Kylie M Cairns receives funding from the Australian Dingo Foundation, New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society, NSW Koala Strategy and Australia and Pacific Science Foundation. She is a scientific advisor to the Australian Dingo Foundation, the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation and serves as co-chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) dingo working group which is part of their Species Survival Commission (SSC) Canid Specialist Group.

Sonya Takau is the founder of Dingo Culture, a digital media platform for her own personal advocacy work for the Dingo that also provides the Aboriginal perspective about the Dingo.
Sonya also holds the following positions:
Director – Defend the Wild (Not for Profit organisation that advocates for wildlife)
Director – Mamu Health Service Limited (Not for Proft organisation based in Innisfail, North Queensland)
Committee Member – IRAC (Indigenous Reef Advisory Committee) which acts in an advisory capacity to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Board.

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

– ref. ‘The boss of Country’, not wild dogs to kill: living with dingoes can unite communities – https://theconversation.com/the-boss-of-country-not-wild-dogs-to-kill-living-with-dingoes-can-unite-communities-214212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas White, Senior lecturer, University of Sydney

The brain is an evolutionary marvel. By shifting the control of sensing and behaviour to this central organ, animals (including us) are able to flexibly respond and flourish in unpredictable environments. One skill above all – learning – has proven key to the good life.

But what of all the organisms that lack this precious organ? From jellyfish and corals to our plant, fungi and single-celled neighbours (such as bacteria), the pressure to live and reproduce is no less intense, and the value of learning is undiminished.

Recent research on the brainless has probed the murky origins and inner workings of cognition itself, and is forcing us to rethink what it means to learn.

Learning about learning

Learning is any change in behaviour as a result of experience, and it comes in many forms. At one end of the spectrum sits non-associative learning. Familiar to anyone who has “tuned out” the background noise of traffic or television, it involves turning up (sensitising) or dialling down (habituating) one’s response with repeated exposure.

Further along is associative learning, in which a cue is reliably tied to a behaviour. Just as the crinkling of a chip packet brings my dog running, so too the smell of nectar invites pollinators to forage for a sweet reward.

Read more:
Bees can do so much more than you think – from dancing to being little art critics

Higher still are forms like conceptual, linguistic and musical learning, which demand complex coordination and the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking. They also require specialised structures within the brain, and a large number of connections between them. So, to our knowledge, these types of learning are limited to organisms with sufficient “computing power” – that is, with sufficiently complex brains.

The presumed relationship between brain complexity and cognitive ability, however, is anything but straightforward when viewed across the tree of life.

This is especially true of the fundamental forms of learning, with recent examples reshaping our understanding of what was thought possible.

Who needs a brain?

Jellyfish, jelly-combs, and sea anemones stand among the earliest ancestors of animals, and share the common feature of lacking a centralised brain.

Nonetheless, the beadlet anemone (Actinia equina) is able to habituate to the presence of nearby clones. Under normal circumstances it violently opposes any encroachment on its territory by other anemones. When the intruders are exact genetic copies of itself, however, it learns to recognise them over repeated interactions, and contain its usual aggression.

A recent study has now shown box jellyfish too are avid learners, and in an even more sophisticated manner. Though they possess only a few thousand neurons (nerve cells) clustered around their four eyes, they are able to associate changes in light intensity with tactile (touch) feedback and adjust their swimming accordingly.

This allows for more precise navigation of their mangrove-dominated habitats, and so improves their odds as venomous predators.

No neurons, no problem

Stretching our instincts further, evidence now abounds for learning in organisms that lack even the neuronal building blocks of a brain.

Slime moulds are single-celled organisms that belong to the protist group. They bear a passing resemblance to fungi, despite being unrelated. Recently (and innacurately) popularised on TV as zombie-making parasites, they also offer a striking case study in what the brainless can achieve.

Elegant experiments have documented a suite of cognitive tricks, from remembering routes to food, to using past experience to inform future foraging, and even learning to ignore bitter caffeine in search of nutritious rewards.

Read more:
This freaky slime mould from HBO’s The Last of Us isn’t a fungus at all – but it is a brainless predator

Plants too can be counted among the brainless thinkers. Venus flytraps use clever sensors to remember and tally up the touches of living prey. This allows them to close their traps and begin digestion only when they’re sure of a nutritious meal.

In less gruesome examples, the shameplant (Mimosa pudica) curls and droops its leaves to protect itself from physical disturbance. This is an energetically costly activity, however, which is why it can habituate and learn to ignore repeated false alarms. Meanwhile, the garden pea can seemingly learn to associate a gentle breeze, itself uninteresting, with the presence of essential sunlight (though this finding has not gone unchallenged).

These results have driven calls to consider plants as cognitive and intelligent agents, with the ensuing debate spanning science and philosophy.

Read more:
Can plants think? They could one day force us to change our definition of intelligence

Thinking big

Learning, then, is not the sole province of those with a brain, or even the rudiments of one. As evidence of cognitive prowess in the brainless continues to accumulate, it challenges deep intuitions about the biology of sensation, thought, and behaviour more generally.

The implications also reach beyond science into ethics, as with recent advances in our understanding of nociception, or pain perception. Do fish, for example, feel pain, despite not having the requisite brain structures like those of primates? Yes. What about insects, with an even simpler arrangement of an order-of-magnitude fewer neurons? Probably.

And if such organisms can learn and feel, albeit in ways unfamiliar to us, what does it say about how we treat them in our recreational, research and culinary pursuits?

Above all else, these curious and diverse forms of life are a testament to the creative power of adaptive evolution. They invite us to reflect on our often-assumed seat at the apex of the tree of life, and remind us of the inherent value in studying, appreciating and conserving lives very different from our own.

Thomas White is a scientific advisor for the environmental charity Invertebrates Australia, and receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Organisms without brains can learn, too – so what does it mean to be a thinking creature? – https://theconversation.com/organisms-without-brains-can-learn-too-so-what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-thinking-creature-214275

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ann Kayis-Kumar, Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney

Why do I suddenly owe tax this year?

This is one of the most Googled questions in Australia right now. And rightly so.

Ever since Australia’s transition to self-assessment for income tax returns, we have been primed to expect an annual refund.

That’s by design. Thinking we will get a refund acts as an incentive to get us to fill in the form.

But it’s actually not a good thing to get a refund. Bear with me. Refunds mean the Tax Office has been holding onto our money.

Nevertheless, many of us would really, really like a big refund this year.

Read more:
Does paying for tax advice save money? Only if you’re wealthy

Abysmal wage growth, rapidly rising living costs, a housing affordability crisis and the fastest tightening of interest rates in 30 years have been putting us under the most financial pressure in years, and (given known associations) quite likely harming our mental health.

However, two changes this year mean our refunds are likely to either be much smaller than before, or to vanish altogether and be replaced with tax bills.

One of the changes is to rules governing how working-from-home expenses are calculated. You can read about it here.

The other, the focus of this piece – and it applies to many more people – is the end of the A$11 billion Low and Middle Income Tax Offset, known as LMITO.

LMITO was for higher rather than lower earners

Worth up to $1,500 per taxpayer in 2022, and paid or part-paid to taxpayers who earned between $37,000 and $126,000, LMITO was introduced in 2018 as a temporary measure by then treasurer Scott Morrison to “increase disposable incomes to help relieve household budget pressures”.

Taxpayers earning between $48,000 and $90,000 got the maximum, which began at $1,080 in 2019 and climbed to $1,500 in 2022.

“Low and Middle Income Tax Offset” was a misnomer. The benefit wasn’t available to really low earners (who were eligible for a separate offset) and it was available to people who earned a good deal more than middle incomes.

The median (middle) income in tax returns filed for 2020-21 was $62,600.

A taxpayer on $90,000 and eligible for full LMITO would be in the top 28% of earners. A taxpayer on $126,000 and partly eligible would be in the top 13%.

‘Temporary’, then extended, then extended again

Morrison always intended LMITO to be temporary because it was to be replaced in 2022 by measures in Stage 2 of his tax cut plan that would have the same effect.

But in the 2020 budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg brought forward Stage 2 from 2022 to 2020 and kept LMITO in place to provide an “additional benefit”.

In 2021 Frydenberg extended LMITO for yet another year to give recipients what he called a “further benefit” that would help secure the economic recovery.

In 2022 Frydenberg stopped. The benefit for 2021-22 to be paid out in 2022 would be the last, although it would be boosted from $1,080 to $1,500 as a “temporary, targeted and responsible way to reduce cost of living pressures”.

Now its gone, tax bills are $1,500 higher

The benefit’s design, being paid out at the end of each tax year rather than through the year, meant that when it went, it would be noticed.

If there would have otherwise been a tax bill, it would be up to $1,500 bigger. If there would have otherwise been a tax refund it would be up to $1,500 smaller – enough to turn many tax refunds into tax bills.

That’s what’s happening now. More than 10 million Australians received LMITO in its final year, most of them the full LMITO.

That means millions who have submitted their forms this year are getting bills in place of refunds, and millions more are getting refunds that are smaller or bills that are bigger.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers could have saved the benefit – in April Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor accused him of trying to hide a decision to axe it “under the cover of Easter”.

But the decision to end it was taken a year earlier in Frydenberg’s budget for the 2022-23 tax year, meaning it is only now being felt.

A flawed idea, at odds with advice

Offsets aren’t an ideal way to deliver tax support. Those that are means-tested (like LMITO) distort effective marginal tax rates. Those that are paid out at the end of each tax year (like LMITO) withhold support at the time it is needed.

The 2009 Henry Tax Review wanted most offsets removed and replaced with either direct payments or changes to the tax scales.

Its preferred model was a fairly flat tax scale with a high tax-free threshold of $25,000, meaning an extra 10% of taxpayers would pay no tax. At today’s wage rates that would be a tax-free threshold of $36,000, freeing 1.3 million taxpayers from the need to pay tax.

Where to from here?

Assuming your income stays roughly the same, your refund is likely to be lower than it has been over the past few years or to turn into a tax bill.

But please, don’t let this deter you from doing your tax.

If you’re behind, it might seem daunting to get back on track, especially if you think you’ll have to pay extra tax this year instead of getting a refund.

But not lodging your returns will backfire. Like avoiding a trip to the doctor to get a skin check, the longer you wait, the more the problem will grow.

Reaching out to the Tax Office is the key because they have tools to support you, including payment plans.

Getting in touch rather than waiting for the Tax Office to chase you shows you are willing to comply.

Ultimately, being up to date will save you fines, interest and penalties.

It can help to reach out to a registered tax agent if you need help to get back on track.

If you are one of the 80,000 Australians in serious hardship who need but can’t afford professional help to complete and lodge overdue returns, the government-funded National Tax Clinics Program can help with pro bono tax advice.

Ann Kayis-Kumar receives funding from the Australian Government’s Australian Taxation Office National Tax Clinic Program, the Ecstra Foundation’s Financial Capability Program, and the NSW Department of Communities & Justice’s Investing in Women Funding Program.

– ref. Why do I suddenly owe tax this year? It could be because the Low and Middle Income Tax offset is gone, forever – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-suddenly-owe-tax-this-year-it-could-be-because-the-low-and-middle-income-tax-offset-is-gone-forever-214632

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Labrousse, Chercheuse en écologie polaire, Sorbonne Université

The long-term future looks bleak for Emperor penguins, but our new research shows some birds may be able to survive in certain conditions, depending on where they live, at least for the next few decades.

Over the past two years, Antarctic sea ice has declined dramatically, prompting scientists to suggest it could reach a “new state”.

A study based on satellite images shows that sea ice broke out early in Antarctica’s Bellingshausen Sea in 2022, potentially resulting in breeding failures across several Emperor penguin colonies in that region.

Our research shows Emperors form colonies in surprisingly diverse environmental conditions that vary depending on location around the continent. Within each of these regions, there is little difference between where birds make their homes and other sites, suggesting they could shift if they had to. This provides a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak outlook.

Emperor penguins may be the only birds to rarely set foot on land. They are unique among penguin species in that they breed on sea ice during the harsh Antarctic winter.

We know that they need “fast ice” – the coastal sea ice attached to the Antarctic continent or ice shelves. But they actually inhabit a range of fast-ice locations that differ in the timing of ice formation, how much ice forms and breaks, and even how close they get to other penguin species.

Depending on where they are along the Antarctic coast, Emperors make use of the habitat available to them. Their behaviour may be flexible enough to allow some colonies to cope better in a warming world.

Read more:
As Antarctic sea ice continues its dramatic decline, we need more measurements and much better models to predict its future

Why fast ice is important

Emperor penguins rely on fast ice as a stable platform for their breeding season. Female Emperors lay their eggs and the males incubate them for about two and a half months.

Even though Antarctica’s sea ice is diminishing, this refers to a measure known as “sea ice extent”, which includes all sea ice covering the polar ocean, whether it is fast ice or drifting pack ice.

A decrease in sea ice extent is not necessary linearly linked to a drop in the area covered by fast ice (although the reverse is true).

Read more:
Fractured foundations: how Antarctica’s ‘landfast’ ice is dwindling and why that’s bad news

If fast ice were to disappear, we would expect more than 90% of Emperor colonies to become functionally extinct by the end of the century. However, our study suggests that in the short to medium term, we should consider the differences in the penguins’ breeding habitats when we think about ways to protect them.

Emperors are unlikely to move far

By looking a little closer at different fast-ice habitats, we found Emperor penguins have certain preferences. The persistence of the ice (how long it lasts into the summer) was important because chicks had more time to develop their water-proof swimming feathers.

In some cases, being close to Adélie penguins made a difference. In other cases, Emperors preferred sites with shallow ocean depths below the colony.

Our results suggest that two of these habitat conditions support larger colonies: stable fast ice that lasts throughout the breeding season (with only small changes in the growth and retreat seasonal cycle) and a good balance between a fast-ice platform that is wide enough to raise chicks but close enough to the ocean to get food for them.

We need further studies to clarify these links and the relationship between population size and habitat quality. In our study, we weren’t able to consider prey availability and there may be other factors that play an important role.

Previous research has already shown that Emperor penguins have limited capacity to disperse to find more suitable climate refuges. This is supported by the genetic partitioning among the penguin populations in different Antarctic regions we studied.

It is therefore unlikely Emperors would move far to avoid more severe climate impacts, even if “better” habitats existed and could host larger colonies.

Protecting penguin habitat

Climate change is currently one of the main pressures driving Emperor penguins closer to extinction.

However, the latest global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) clearly identified fishing activities as historic and current drivers of the erosion of marine biodiversity worldwide.

This is also true for Antarctica. While fishing pressure there is limited to a fraction of the global fishing fleet, some of the largest vessels target krill, a tiny shrimp-like crustacean consumed by many Antarctic predators, including Emperor penguins.

Read more:
I’ve spent 40 years studying Antarctica. The frozen continent has never needed our help more

With climate models predicting further reductions in sea ice extent, new fishing grounds could open and amplify pressure on other Antarctic wildlife.

If we want to live in a world with Emperor penguins, the most important thing to do would be to cut greenhouse gas emissions steeply. Another key action could be to prevent fishing in areas where climate change will have the most impact.

In this respect, truly protected areas are one conservation tool at our disposal. Now that our research provides more detailed information about penguin habitats, we can begin the process of more careful planning for conservation.

The world’s largest marine protected area exists in the Ross Sea, which is home to about 25% of the world’s Emperor penguins. Lessons we learn from protection there could help mitigate future declines of Emperors around Antarctica.

Sara Labrousse is affiliated with LOCEAN/CNRS.

Michelle LaRue receives funding from the National Science Foundation and NASA.

– ref. Emperor penguins face a bleak future – but some colonies will do better than others in diverse sea-ice conditions – https://theconversation.com/emperor-penguins-face-a-bleak-future-but-some-colonies-will-do-better-than-others-in-diverse-sea-ice-conditions-214625

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

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are in dire straits. With the market in a severe downturn, it’s safe to assume the NFT bubble has well and truly burst.

It was never clear why these digital collectables traded for such large amounts of money. Now they mostly do not. What’s behind their turn of fate? And is there any hope for their future?

What are NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens are a blockchain-based means to claim unique “ownership” of digital assets. “Non-fungible” means unique, as opposed to a “fungible” item such as a five-dollar bill, which is the same as every other five-dollar bill.

But just because an item is unique that doesn’t make it valuable. Digital assets are easily copied, so an NFT is essentially a receipt showing you have paid for something that other people can get for free. This is a pretty dubious basis for value.

The two most traded sets of NFTs are the Bored Apes collection created in April 2021 and the CryptoPunks collection launched in June 2017.

Both sets consist of 10,000 similar-looking but unique figures, distinguished by differing hairstyles, hats, skin colours and so forth. The Bored Ape character seems derivative of the drawings of Jamie Hewlett, the artist who drew Tank Girl and Damon Albarn’s virtual band Gorillaz. The CryptoPunks are even less interesting.

Why did people buy NFTs?

Although the first NFTs emerged around a decade ago, the trend really started to take off in 2021. And for a time NFTs were very fashionable.

Even the venerable auction house Sotheby’s, founded in 1744, jumped on the NFT bandwagon. Sotheby’s sold 101 Bored Ape NFTs for more than US$20 million in September 2021. They’re now facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled buyer.

As with Bitcoin and similar speculative tokens, the primary driver for buying NFTs was greed. Seeing the initial price rises, people hoped they too could make huge profits. NFTs are essentially a superficially sophisticated form of gambling. Like Bitcoin, they have no fundamental value.

Read more:
NFTs, an overblown speculative bubble inflated by pop culture and crypto mania

Generally, one would only profit from buying an NFT by finding a “greater fool” willing to pay even more for it. So there was never a shortage of people – including some quite famous ones – talking them up and hoping to instil a fear of missing out.

Eminem bought a Bored Ape that looked a bit like him. Rapper KSI boasted on Twitter about his Bored Ape rising in price.

For a while there were large increases in the prices of many NFTs. But like all speculative bubbles, it was likely to end in tears. Although it’s almost impossible to predict when a bubble for a speculative asset will burst, we have seen this process play out before.

Centuries ago there were the Dutch tulip, South Sea and Mississippi bubbles. Around 1970, there was a speculative bubble in the shares of nickel miner Poseidon. Then came the Beanie Baby and dotcom booms of the late 1990s – and more recently, meme stocks and Terra-Luna cryptocurrency.

The NFT crash

Punters now seem to be as bored with NFTs as the apes. Google searches for “NFT” – which grew rapidly through 2021 – have fallen away dramatically. Trading volumes have collapsed.

Prices in the NFT market have also seen huge falls. The prices of Bored Ape NFTs are down about 90% from their peak. The CryptoPunks have done slightly better by losing only 80%.

A recent report covering about 73,000 NFTs estimated 70,000 are now valued at zero. This leaves 23 million people holding a worthless “asset”.

One high-profile example is an NFT of the first tweet by then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought this NFT for US$2.9 million in March 2021. When he tried to sell it a year later the top bid was US$6,800.

What drove the NFT collapse? As well as losing their novelty, the market was hurt by the large falls in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, as well as the collapse of the FTX exchange and publicity given to scams.

Beyond that, the lifting of COVID lockdowns meant people who began trading NFTs now had other ways to pass their time. And higher interest rates from mid-2022 made most speculative assets seem less attractive.

Collectively, all of these factors made NFTs seem like a riskier proposition. Prominent people started jumping off the bandwagon. Some of KSI’s later tweets lament the losses he suffered from his gambles.

Last year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced, when he was chancellor of the exchequer (their equivalent of treasurer), the Royal Mint would produce an NFT. The plan has now been abandoned.

Some foolish people had even taken out loans using the “value” of their NFTs as collateral. When the lenders wanted the money back, they were in trouble: forced to sell their NFTs, they got back much less than they’d paid. Fortunately, there weren’t enough people like this to lead to a systemic problem in the financial sector.

Read more:
Damien Hirst’s dotty ‘currency’ art makes as much sense as Bitcoin

Gone for good?

NFTs probably won’t completely disappear. Some subjects of past bubbles are still around. Tulips are still grown in the Netherlands. Poseidon shares, which ran up from 80 cents in September 1969 to $280 in February 1970, are still listed (and currently trading for 2 cents).

But unless some actual use is found for them, NFTs are likely to fade further from public discussion, with their prices increasingly trending down (although the occasional blip up may give die-hard fans some hope).

They will probably join the Dutch tulips and dotcoms in the history of speculative follies.

Read more:
Almost no one uses Bitcoin as currency, new data proves. It’s actually more like gambling

John Hawkins 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. Are NFTs really dead and buried? All signs point to ‘yes’ – https://theconversation.com/are-nfts-really-dead-and-buried-all-signs-point-to-yes-214145

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Emeritus professor of politics, Monash University

It was Robert Menzies, father of the modern Liberal Party, who famously remarked: “to get an affirmative vote from the Australian people on a referendum proposal is the labour of Hercules”.

Menzies knew this from bitter experience. The politician with the electoral Midas touch was the sponsor of three unsuccessful referendums. Most notable was Menzies’ (thankfully) failed 1951 attempt to win public support for amending the Constitution to grant his government the power to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia.

On the Labor side of politics, the feat of constitutional change has been an even more unfulfilling exercise. The party has been responsible for 25 amendment proposals and only one has been successful. It has been a truly Sisyphean quest.

If the opinion polls are to be believed, history is repeating itself with the impending Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice referendum. Since the middle of the year, those polls have been relentlessly moving in the wrong direction for the “yes” case. On the current trajectory, the Voice will secure less than 40% of the national vote and also fail to win the support of a majority of states. The frontier states of Queensland and Western Australia in particular are lost causes.

Read more:
Labor and Albanese recover in Newspoll as Dutton falls, but the Voice’s slump continues

As it must, the “yes” camp continues to evince optimism. Its advocates point, for example, to the relatively high number of undecided voters, hoping they break heavily in their favour. I fervently pray this optimism is well placed. Yet a prudent government would now be wargaming what to do in the scenario that the Voice is defeated on October 14.

For Anthony Albanese, a “no” vote will present diabolically difficult challenges. As prime minister, he will be tasked with making sense of that result. His response will need to be finely calibrated, modulating the message to different audiences.

First, and most importantly, he will have to devise a formula of words to console and soothe the Indigenous population, the majority of whom will likely feel that the rejection of the Voice is another in a long line of acts of dispossession and exclusion by settler Australia. Albanese has often likened the Uluru Statement from the Heart to a generous outstretched hand. He will not only need to explain why that hand has been spurned, but give cause why First Nations people should continue to keep faith with non-Indigenous Australia. He will have to provide reassurance that reconciliation endures as a genuine project.

Both at home and abroad there will be those who view a “no” vote as having exposed a dark streak of racism in Australia’s soul. Albanese will feel obliged to seek to absolve the nation of that stigma. But given some of the more noxious attitudes aired during the referendum campaign, airbrushing racism out of the picture will not be easy.

On election nights, leaders are typically magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat. There is a convenient myth about election results: that the punters always get it right. Albanese will no doubt have to publicly give lip service to that notion if the referendum fails. He will avoid recriminations, despite the sophistry and mendacity that has characterised the “no” side of the debate. In this way, he will play the role of healer-in-chief after the bitter divisions of the referendum campaign. What attacks there are on Peter Dutton for being a wrecker will probably be left to be made by other government members, but even these will have to be carefully framed so as to not indict all those who fell in behind the “no” cause.

The larger dilemma Albanese and his government will face if the referendum is lost is where to next with the Uluru Statement agenda, to which the prime minister signed up lock stock and barrel on election night in May 2022.

Most pressing will be the question of what happens to the idea of an Indigenous Voice to parliament. The most obvious fallback position will be a legislated rather than constitutionally enshrined Voice. The complication is that Dutton has claimed some of that space and Indigenous leaders have rightly portrayed a legislated Voice as a poor substitute because it can be repealed by a future government. Somehow a legislated Voice will have to be transformed into a palatable alternative.

The Voice was the low hanging fruit of the Uluru statement when compared to treaty-making. The realpolitik takeout from the rejection of the Voice referendum will be that there is next to no chance of delivering on a national treaty in the short to medium term, especially if that were to involve some form of constitutional amendment. It would provoke an even more shrill scare campaign than the one we have endured over the Voice. In the absence of progress at the national level, it will be left to the states to advance treaty making and truth telling.

Read more:
What actually is a treaty? What could it mean for Indigenous people?

The defeat of the Voice referendum may set back other elements of Labor’s vision for the nation. When he won office, Albanese appointed an assistant minister for the republic in a clear signal that a move to a republic would be a feature of his government’s longer term reform program.

With the Australian public’s profound reluctance to embrace constitutional change demonstrated yet again, it will likely douse enthusiasm within the government for proceeding to a referendum on a republic in its second term. The idea will continue to drift, as it has since 1999.

Another probable consequence of the loss of the referendum will be a narrowing of the priorities of the government. Labor hardheads will read that result and opinion polls showing a dip in the government’s support as evidence that voters are growing frustrated by what they regard as a straying from bread and butter issues.

So, we are likely to see a less expansive government as it steers towards focussing chiefly on matters such as the economy, cost of living pressures and housing shortages. These, of course, are vital issues, but they will not stir the soul or etch themselves into history as would a Voice, treaty and republic.

All of this seems a desperate shame. But it is the Australia we will wake up to the morning after October 14, if indeed the referendum goes down.

Paul Strangio received funding from the Australian Research Council in the past.

– ref. What kind of Australia will we wake up to if the Voice referendum is defeated on October 14? – https://theconversation.com/what-kind-of-australia-will-we-wake-up-to-if-the-voice-referendum-is-defeated-on-october-14-214359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tara Crandon, Psychologist and PhD Candidate, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

When we think of spring, we might imagine rebirth and renewal that comes with the warmer weather and longer days. It’s usually a time to celebrate, flock to spring flower festivals and spend more time in nature.

Spending time in nature or doing things outside, such as exercising or gardening, lifts our mood.

But this year, with an early start to the bushfire season, and the promise of long, hot months ahead, we may see our views about the warmer months start to shift.

For some people, the coming months are not a celebration. They are something to fear, or feel sad about.

In particular, communities and emergency responders who have experienced bushfires or drought in the past may see rising levels of stress and anxiety as they face the months ahead.

Read more:
Here comes the sun: how the weather affects our mood

How’s this spring different?

In recent weeks, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has declared two climate events are now under way: El Niño and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole.

These events predict warmer, drier conditions through to summer, as well as more intense heatwaves, bushfires and droughts.

In temperate and subtropical regions, our summers are on average becoming hotter and longer, and winters are becoming warmer and shorter. Climate change is the primary driver of these shifts.

Read more:
Explainer: El Niño and La Niña

What happens to our mood as the temperature rises?

Hotter temperatures and prolonged heat is linked to aggression and higher rates of emergency hospital admissions due to health conditions, heat-related injuries, and mental health concerns.

After an extreme weather event or disaster, rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress rise.

Many Australians have already experienced the psychological and physical impacts of bushfires, droughts, floods and heatwaves.

For some communities and individuals, experiencing these types of events may mean they are more resilient or prepared for the future. For others, the anticipation of rising heat or other climatic threats may cause concern. They may also prompt pre-traumatic stress – the stress that comes ahead of expected loss or trauma.

Read more:
Worried about heat and fire this summer? Here’s how to prepare

Anxiety, anger and sadness

As climate-related events become more widespread, people may also become increasingly affected by feelings such as anxiety, anger and sadness.

Climate anxiety refers to the fear, dread and worry about climate change. Anxiety can be a helpful response as it allows us to prepare and respond to future threats. For instance, climate anxiety may help prompt pro-environmental behaviour and climate action, such as attending a protest. But this type of anxiety can also become overwhelming.

The loss of wildlife and nature due to bushfires can leave people feeling grief over what’s lost, and anger about the lack of action to prevent these losses.

Losses could also be more personal, including damage to health, livelihoods, homes, or even the ability to do enjoyable outdoor activities, such as playing sports or exercising outside.

Another experience, solastalgia, is the “homesickness you have when you are still at home”. Researchers suggest solastalgia is a type of distress when someone perceives negative changes and gradual deterioration to their own home environment. These feelings could arise when we notice seasonal and environmental changes to the places we love and call home.

Read more:
You’re not the only one feeling helpless. Eco-anxiety can reach far beyond bushfire communities

But there are things you can do

Heading into the hotter months, strong community support, cohesion and preparedness may be especially important. There are also things you can do to maintain and manage your mental health and wellbeing. Though more research is needed to understand which strategies work best, health professionals suggest:

• connecting with others, especially people you trust and who support your wellbeing

• finding ways to connect with your community either in person (for example, through community gardening) or online (for example, via discussion groups)

• being mindful of your physical and psychological safety (for instance, especially during climate-related events) and, if you need it, seeking professional support

• taking a break from distressing media content when needed.

Read more:
Keeping your cool in a warming world: 8 steps to help manage eco-anxiety

Understandably, people may continue to be anxious about the seasons to come with the ongoing threat of climate change.

To avoid becoming overwhelmed, you can also respond to and channel your distressing feelings. You can take part in community-led climate action projects, and spend time outdoors and in nature (even for short bursts of time).

These actions might help uphold the positive links between wellbeing and nature, no matter the season.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Tara Crandon receives funding from the Child and Youth Mental Health group at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

– ref. Our mood usually lifts in spring. But after early heatwaves and bushfires, this year may be different – https://theconversation.com/our-mood-usually-lifts-in-spring-but-after-early-heatwaves-and-bushfires-this-year-may-be-different-213643

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Skarbek, CEO, Climateworks Centre

This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.

The marks of industry have forever changed the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, edged by the Blue Mountains to the south and ancient rainforests to the north. Coal has been mined here for more than 200 years, providing generations of people with good livelihoods and lives. But the end of coal in the Hunter does not spell the end of communities. Quite the opposite.

The Hunter is developing a clean manufacturing precinct, and state and federal governments are investing heavily in the effort. Projects to create hydrogen and renewable energy to replace coal and gas are underway.

At Kooragang Island, just north of Newcastle, Orica and the Australian government are working together to change what the exhaust stacks at three nitric acid manufacturing plants put into the air. Nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas now released directly into the atmosphere, is being converted into nitrogen and oxygen, and emissions at these plants are set to halve.

In the Hunter-Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone around Muswellbrook and Newcastle, the Waratah Super Battery, likely to be the Southern Hemisphere’s largest standby network battery, is among the renewable energy projects that will replace the Eraring coal-fired power station when it closes in 2025. Even in the Hunter, with its long fossil fuel history, change is in the air.

Pessimism abounds about the world’s capacity to solve climate change, but as chief executive of Climateworks Centre, which works with governments, companies, regulators and investors to create pathways to net zero emissions, I see evidence every day of people doing hard practical work to bring their organisations into line with our national and global climate goals.

The road is long and time is short, but our pace is quickening. The price of renewables is falling, coal-fired power plants are sunsetting sooner, hydrogen technology is progressing. And as industries and economies change, so too will minds.

The ambition of climate action must continue to aim at a global temperature increase of no more than 1.5℃ because every tenth of a degree of warming brings exponentially worse outcomes. Last week, the US Treasury advised that financial institutions’ net zero plans should be in line with a 1.5℃ pathway.

In 2020 when my organisation’s climate modelling with CSIRO showed the first 1.5℃-aligned path to net zero for Australia, the Paris Agreement, which committed the world to strive for such a pathway, was five years old. The progress in technology in that time demonstrated potential to bring emissions to net zero over a decade faster than previously shown. Today, our modelling consistently identifies a 1.5℃-aligned pathway. But implementation needs to pick up speed.

Australia’s emissions are roughly a third from electricity, a third from mining, manufacturing, construction and buildings, and a third from transport and agriculture. So the path is clear.

Switch anything that runs on fossil fuels to electricity or, in a few cases, to a zero-emissions substitute such as green hydrogen or biofuel. Generate all electricity from renewable sources, and sequester emissions that can’t be eliminated. In short, it’s a technology upgrade across the economy plus investment in nature-based solutions that protect and restore ecosystems and sustainably manage agricultural land and forests.

At the same time, improve energy efficiency, a stealthy superpower at our disposal. Already, digitalisation is making everything from home thermostats to long-haul trucking more efficient. More stars are cropping up on home appliance energy rating labels.

Building standards are improving home energy performance. Victoria has said all new homes will be fully electric from next year. With a clear view of what is needed to bring homes to net zero, other states and the federal government can follow its lead.

As for electrification, even some of the trickiest switches from fossil fuels to renewable energy are underway. The Australian Industrial Energy Transitions Initiative, a group of heavy industry and business leaders co-convened by Climateworks Centre, shows iron and steel, aluminium and chemical supply chains, home to many of Australia’s “hard-to-abate” emissions, can cut between 96% and 99% of emissions by 2050, while increasing production to meet the needs of a net-zero global economy.

Read more:
Too hard basket: why climate change is defeating our political system

Until recently, electric and renewable processes simply could not generate as much heat as fossil fuels to power these industries. Take aluminium, which begins as bauxite, a reddish-brown rock very common in Australia.

To be transformed into aluminium, bauxite must undergo a process called digestion at around 200℃, followed by calcination at around 1,000℃, before it’s smelted into its final silvery state.

For a long time, no renewable process could get anywhere near 1,000℃. But near Gladstone earlier this year the world’s first hydrogen calcination demonstration pilot was announced at Rio Tinto’s Yarwun Alumina Refinery in Queensland. The pilot, funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, aims to prove hydrogen calcination is viable for industrial use at scale.

Success would be no small thing; this one industrial process alone is responsible for 1% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonising both calcination and digestion would cut up to three times that amount.

Yet we are out of time to work on all this incrementally. A few big changes are needed now. One is to deploy technologies across entire supply chains and across new, net zero precincts, with companies and sectors pulling together to achieve more than they can on their own.

Over the next year the federal government is also developing net zero plans for six sectors: electricity and energy, industry, resources, the built environment, agriculture, and land transport. Done properly, they will be a big deal in getting us to net zero.

A holistic approach can solve multiple goals at once: electrify, build renewable power, support communities and protect nature. This must occur in the industrial regions that power Australia’s economy. Five of them – the Pilbara, Kwinana, Hunter, Illawarra and Gladstone – contribute more than $160 billion to Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP), the equivalent of nearly half the value of Australia’s exported goods.

Industrial facilities in these regions can be brought together within a renewable energy industrial precinct. The idea is simple – supercharge industrial areas with plenty of renewable energy, green hydrogen, shared infrastructure, labour and knowledge. Coordinate the public policy and investment that will attract further private sector investment, supporting the transition of the existing and creation of the new at the same time.

These precincts will provide a path to prosperity for workers and industries, built on demand for the renewable energy that will underpin Australia’s ambitions to be an energy superpower produces green iron, green hydrogen and other products the world urgently wants.

The Net Zero Authority – created in July to help “seize the opportunities of Australia’s net zero transformation” – is the layer of connective tissue that will help these precincts succeed. The Authority will coordinate policies to support regions and communities to attract clean energy industries, and help investors and companies to take up net zero opportunities.

Beyond industry, all Australians have a role to play, in our actions and in our minds. At Climateworks we say, “start at the end goal”. Imagine a prosperous net zero society 30 years from now.

Huge industrial regions feature battery blocks, not exhaust stacks. Cities hum, more quietly than today, with electric vehicles. Homes are warmed and cooled by the power of the sun, and we breathe fresh air.

Once we put ourselves in that future, and look around at the infrastructure and relationships needed to create it, the rest of the equation can – and I believe will – be solved.

We are still far from that ideal, but the turning point, when it comes, will be swift. Australia has an enormous opportunity in decarbonising quickly, in a world that we know wants the same.

Anna Skarbek is CEO of Climateworks Centre which receives funding from philanthropy and project-specific financial support from a range of private and public entities including federal, state and local government and private sector organisations and international and local non-profit organisations. Climateworks Centre works within Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute. Anna is on the board of the Centre for New Energy Technologies, the Green Building Council of Australia, Sentient Impact Group and the Asia-Pacific Advisory Board of the Glasgow Financial Alliance on Net Zero. She is a member of the Net Zero Economy Agency Advisory Board, the SEC Expert Advisory Panel, Grattan Institute’s energy program reference panel and the Blueprint Institute’s strategic advisory council.

– ref. The road is long and time is short, but Australia’s pace towards net zero is quickening – https://theconversation.com/the-road-is-long-and-time-is-short-but-australias-pace-towards-net-zero-is-quickening-214570

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe University

This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.

When I was first asked to write an opening piece in The Conversation’s series on climate change and the energy transition, I wanted to say no. I didn’t want to think about what I and anyone else who has been paying attention knows is coming; not just next summer, which is likely to be a scorcher like the one the northern hemisphere has just endured, but in the summers after that for centuries to come.

It may already be too late to save the world as we know it. Coral reefs, low-lying atolls and coastal strips, glaciers, Arctic summer sea ice, will all likely be gone in the near future with predictable and unpredictable consequences for the life that depends on them, including ours.

Or should I write “be under threat” instead of “likely be gone”, to soften the story? No, already there has been too much softening and taking comfort in uncertainty. The focus on rising temperatures itself makes the future seem more benign than it’s likely to be. What is a degree or two warmer here or there on a linear graph? But linear graphs are not the main story.

The main story is Earth’s complex climate systems, and the risk that the continuing burning of fossil fuels is pushing some systems towards tipping points, including the way ocean and atmospheric currents move heat and moisture around the globe, with unpredictable cascades of non-linear consequences.

The climate scientist, the late Will Steffen explained there is a point at which Earth’s cascading feedbacks drive it past a global threshold and irreversibly into a much hotter state. This is the biggest risk, and it is existential.

The Albanese government’s softly-softly response

The Albanese Labor government is not denying the risk. In his 2023 Intergenerational Report Treasurer Jim Chalmers included climate change as one of the five major forces affecting future wellbeing. It’s one among many, and the emphasis is on the economic opportunities and jobs offered by the energy transformation.

This downplays both the risk and the changes needed to combat it. Chief Climate Councillor Tim Flannery said:

Climate dwarfs everything else in this report. If we don’t fix it, nothing else matters.

Media commentary, however, has been mostly about the consequences of an ageing population.

Soon after it assumed office, the new Labor government ordered a climate and security risk analysis. This has now happened, undertaken by the Office of National Assessments (ONI) and delivered to the government in late 2022. But you wouldn’t know it. The analysis has not been released, and there is no indication it will be.

Since then the government has barely said a word about the ONI findings or about climate security risks, although it has said plenty about the risk we face if, as seems likely, China supplants the United States as the dominant power in our region.

Responding to this risk, our government is allocating hundreds of billions of dollars of defence spending to buy submarines. The Greens have called for the immediate release of ONI’s assessment, as has former Chief of Australia’s Defence Forces Admiral Chris Barrie.

The think tank Breakthrough, the National Centre for Climate Restoration, has made some shrewd guesses at what’s in the report: that the world is unlikely to meet the Paris agreement goals and that the risks are compounding fast; that in the Asia-Pacific region some states will fail and political conflict increase as other states retreat into authoritarian and hyper-nationalist politics; that there will be refugee and climate-forced displacement crises of greater magnitude than ever.

In The New Daily, Michael Pascoe asked, “What is Albanese hiding? Maybe it’s the experts’ view of the climate hell ahead”. Perhaps, he speculates, the report canvasses the idea that our new best friend India with its burgeoning population may be a greater future security risk than China whose population is in decline.

The Labor government’s response to the greatest emergency we face seems set on slow, as if we have time for an incremental response with little disruption to daily life and it’s OK to keep subsidising fossil fuels and approving new gas and coal projects. So it’s not surprising it’s keeping the seriousness of the crisis under wraps.

Government can and must act

Government is our ultimate risk manager and as extreme weather events proliferate, calls increase for it to bail people out – from floods, fire and drought, as well as from increased food and energy prices. All this after four decades of neoliberalism in which both the federal and state governments have surrendered capacity to the private sector.

But as the COVID crisis showed us, when faced with an emergency our governments can act decisively and put the lives of people ahead of the interests of business. Assumptions that had guided monetary policy for three decades or more were overturned as both state and federal governments borrowed heavily to support people through the lockdowns and to buy and administer vaccines. If the political will is there, governments can find a way.

We have to convince reluctant governments to listen to the science, as they did with COVID, so people know the seriousness of the crisis we are facing. Here our federal political system is both a curse and a blessing: a curse because it can hamper federal initiatives, but a blessing because it multiplies potential sources of action.

There are some signs Labor knows effective state capacity needs to be re-built, but none yet that the Coalition does, nor that it has thrown off its climate denialism. How, when Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor berated Chalmers and the Intergenerational Report for worrying about what might happen in 40 years rather than 40 days, can we expect it to respond effectively to climate change?

But there is hope here too. Support for the temporally challenged Coalition is in freefall among younger voters and there is no indication the Liberal Party yet has a clue about how to regain wealthy urban seats lost to the teals.

A report from the Centre for Independent Studies claimed voters born after 1996 were the most progressive since the Second World War. As the electoral weight shifts away from the old baby boomers Labor’s federal future is likely to be as a minority government with support from Greens and independents who will demand bolder action.

Why we struggle to face facts

Frogs in boiling water and lemmings going over the cliff are frequently used to describe humanity’s current predicament of living as usual in the face of looming disasters. More apt I think are these lines of T.S. Elliot from “Burnt Norton”, the first of his “Four Quartets”:

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

As governments around the world, not just ours, are failing to reduce carbon emissions fast enough to prevent catastrophic climate change, we still have to live from day to day, week to week and year to year.

I don’t want to live in dread of a dystopian future, or consumed with anger at go-slow governments, or in a state of depressed apathy because of my powerlessness, so I go about my generally enjoyable life accompanied by the drone of doom in the pit of my stomach.

Judith Brett 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. Too hard basket: why climate change is defeating our political system – https://theconversation.com/too-hard-basket-why-climate-change-is-defeating-our-political-system-214382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

Researchers and policymakers are advocating all-electric housing to reduce energy bills and emissions. Using energy-efficient reverse-cycle air conditioners is a core element of the shift from gas.

However, not everyone is happy with the change. “I just don’t feel warm,” said some people we interviewed after they switched to reverse-cycle air conditioning.

Others are very happy with the comfort, hundreds of dollars in savings and low lifetime carbon emissions.

How can different people have such varied experiences with the same technology? Our computer modelling of air flows in the home offers an answer: the quality of the building’s insulation makes a big difference to how people feel with reverse-cycle heating.

Read more:
All-electric homes are better for your hip pocket and the planet. Here’s how governments can help us get off gas

What’s different about this heating?

Reverse-cycle air conditioners are different from traditional gas or electric heaters. They produce warm, not hot, air, and the unit is usually mounted high on a wall. This is a suitable position for cooling but not so effective for heating.

When cooling, output air cools the hot air near the ceiling and the air movement provides a complementary cool breeze.

In heating mode, the warm outlet air cools down as it flows along surfaces such as the ceiling, external walls, windows and floor and mixes with cool air. It is then drawn back to the air conditioner where it is reheated.

If the building is poorly insulated and has single-glazed windows, the surface temperatures in the home are low and heat losses and temperature drops are high. The cooled air flowing close to the floor creates a “wind chill” effect – it feels like a cold draught.

Also, our warm bodies radiate heat to the cold surfaces of the walls and windows. This means we tend to feel even colder when we are near them.

In contrast, the surfaces of insulated walls, ceilings, floors and windows stay warmer and allow much less heat loss. When the heated air touches them, it stays relatively warm as it flows back to the air conditioner to be reheated. The air circulating in the room is warmer, which reduces the “wind chill” effect.

Because the surfaces of insulated walls and windows are much warmer, our bodies also radiate much less heat to them, so we feel warmer.

Read more:
Cooking (and heating) without gas: what are the impacts of shifting to all-electric homes?

Our modelling shows these effects

We modelled the heating energy and temperature distributions in a living room of a 1960s home. It had large areas of glazing on two side walls, an internal end wall and a reverse-cycle air conditioner mounted high on the external end wall.

Case 1 was uninsulated with single glazing. Case 2 had insulated walls, ceiling and floor and double glazing.

The temperature distributions are shown below.

Read more:
Want an easy $400 a year? Ditch the gas heater in your home for an electric split system

For both scenarios, the outdoor temperature was 10℃. The air conditioner delivered 287 litres of heated air per second at a constant 30℃. This meant average room air temperatures were higher than if the thermostat was set at a typical 20–22℃ with heat output varying.

This simplification showed how different the temperatures were in the two cases for the same amount of heat supply.

In case 1, as the heated output air contacted the cold, uninsulated surfaces, its temperature dropped so the average room temperature was 23.5℃. Air returning to the air conditioner was 24.7℃, 5.3℃ lower than the outlet air.

Case 2 had a higher average room temperature of 26.5℃ with a return air temperature of 26.4℃. The surfaces of the walls, ceiling and floor were warmer, which increased comfort by reducing radiant heat loss from occupants. Since the return air was warmer, about 30% less energy was used to reheat it to the 30℃ outlet temperature.

What does this mean for home heating?

These modelling results seem to explain people’s experiences of discomfort. The policy and technology implications are significant.

If reverse-cycle air conditioning is to deliver improved comfort, it should be combined with upgrading the building’s thermal performance. Programs that subsidise reverse-cycle air conditioners and heat pumps should be linked to retrofitting adequate insulation and draught sealing.

Occupants will not only be more comfortable, but the air conditioner can be smaller and cheaper. Carbon emissions and energy costs will be lower too.

Read more:
Heat pumps can cut your energy costs by up to 90%. It’s not magic, just a smart use of the laws of physics

Further research is needed to explore a wider range of situations. There can be different combinations of insulation, varying areas of glazing and window coverings, and other appliance-related options such as floor-mounted reverse-cycle air conditioners and ceiling fans.

If we want people to embrace heat pumps and reverse-cycle air conditioners as the new normal, we must ensure they provide the comfortable temperatures people want and need. Push-back due to feelings of discomfort may undermine progress towards a zero-emission future.

We need to understand the interactions between heating and cooling technologies and real-world buildings much better. We also need to make sure policy does not lock in certain technologies without fully understanding their impacts.

Alan Pears consults to industry organisations such as the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity and energy efficiency industry groups. He has received funding from the RACE for 2030 CRC and government agencies. He is affiliated with several community organisations including Renew and Climate Council.

Nicola Willand receives or has received funding for research from various organisations, including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian State Government, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, the Future Fuels Collaborative Research Centre, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Centre and the British Academy. She is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Architects.

Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners. He is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network.

Sara Vihaji 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. Replacing gas heating with reverse-cycle aircon leaves some people feeling cold. Why? And what’s the solution? – https://theconversation.com/replacing-gas-heating-with-reverse-cycle-aircon-leaves-some-people-feeling-cold-why-and-whats-the-solution-213542

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

With school and university exams looming, students will be thinking about how they can maximise their learning.

Memory is a key part of how we learn.

If students understand how memory works, they can prioritise effective study habits. This will help for exams as well as their learning in the longer term.

Read more:
Curious Kids: how can we concentrate on study without getting distracted?

What is memory?

According to cognitive psychology (the study of our mental processes), there are three distinct types of memory. Each plays a different role in effective study:

1. sensory memory temporarily holds vast amounts of new information from our senses. This includes everything we have just seen, heard, touched or tasted. If we pay attention to that information, it moves into working memory for processing. If we don’t pay attention, it is discarded.

2. working memory is our brain’s control centre. All conscious cognitive activity, including remembering, calculating, planning, problem-solving, decision-making and critical thinking happens in our working memory. However, if we have too much on our minds, working memory can easily become overloaded. This makes it important to offload knowledge and skills to long-term memory.

3. long-term memory is our brain’s library. When new knowledge or skills are well practised, they are “encoded” from working memory and into long-term memory. Here they are stored in vast networks called schemas. To use those knowledge and skills again, we retrieve those schemas back into working memory. The more we encode and retrieve knowledge and skills, the stronger those memory pathways become. Well-learned schemas can be retrieved automatically, which creates space in working memory for new thinking and learning.

How to help your memory when preparing for exams

Not everyone likes exams and educators often debate their advantages and disadvantages.

But if you are a student who is studying for exams right now, here are some tips to help you use your time well:

• create the conditions for attention: put your phone away and remove distractions. Remember, your attention is needed to bring information into working memory and keep it there. Loss of attention, or mind wandering, can result in poorer learning. Harvard professor of psychology Dan Schachter calls absent-mindedness one of the “seven sins of memory”.

• consider your subject area: different disciplines ask different kinds of questions and you should study with these in mind. In a Year 12 English exam, for example, you might be asked to write a response about your interpretation of a particular text. So don’t just re-read the text; effective study involves drawing out themes and insights, practising your arguments and seeking feedback.

• minimise “shallow” study: most students report re-reading and highlighting text when studying. But these are less effective than other study techniques. Shallow study or encoding focuses more on surface features and less on meaning. This encourages rote recall over genuine understanding and leads to poorer learning. In one study, re-reading a textbook twice in a row offered no advantage over reading it for the first time.

• maximise “deep” study: this involves actively using the information you are studying. Depending on your discipline, this might include answering practice questions, constructing your own questions, summarising, identifying themes, evaluating existing arguments, making decisions, or explaining concepts to others. This deep encoding results in stronger schematic networks, which are more easily reactivated when you need them.

• move beyond worked examples: worked examples are step-by-step illustrations of the processes to solve a problem. They can be powerful starting points because they show you how to use a particular strategy. They also help to reduce working memory load. But as you become more expert, it is more effective to draw those strategies from long-term memory yourself.

• take breaks: research with Australian university students shows even a five-minute rest break can support attention – the gateway to learning. Research using brain scans also shows rest can help you consolidate memories.

• don’t cram: the so-called “spacing effect” shows memory and conceptual understanding both benefit from distributed rather than massed learning. This means six half-hour sessions are better for learning than one three hour block.

• mix up your study: this could mean varying questions and activities, so your brain is forced to compare, contrast, refine, and draw distinctions between concepts and approaches. This is known as “interleaving”, and has been shown to boost learning in subjects such as maths, music and medicine.

• don’t skip sleep: sleep is crucial for the consolidation of memory or solidifying new connections or insights you have made.

• give yourself enough time: unfortunately, there are no shortcuts here! Each time you practise drawing specific knowledge and skills from long-term memory into working memory, you are etching a memory super-highway. The more you do this, the better and quicker you become – which is what you will need come exam time.

Read more:
Preparing for exam season: 10 practical insights from psychology to help teens get through

Penny Van Bergen receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Association for Psychological Science, and the NSW Department of Education.

– ref. Avoid cramming and don’t just highlight bits of text: how to help your memory when preparing for exams – https://theconversation.com/avoid-cramming-and-dont-just-highlight-bits-of-text-how-to-help-your-memory-when-preparing-for-exams-213996

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury

If you’ve made your way through our September picks and are looking for something new, this month’s streaming picks have something for everyone.

There is a classic romantic comedy, some British crime drama and even some contemporary dance. The weather might be turning, and the sun might be shining – but these picks will have you wanting to spend some more time on the couch.

Yellowjackets season two

Paramount+ (Australia), Neon (New Zealand)

While the second season of Yellowjackets is not necessarily a new series, given it was released across April and May, I have only recently caught up on this excellent show, whose buzz this year seems to have been overshadowed by both Succession and White Lotus.

In season one, a high-school girls’ soccer team survive a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness. The narrative constantly switches between attempts at survival in the past and the survivors 25 years on as they cope with their trauma. The cast is incredibly strong, featuring Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis. Season two introduces Lauren Ambrose and Elijah Wood to the cast.

Season two continues to follow the depths of how dire the situation becomes for the survivors in the early timeline, as they lean into their belief of the occult.

Central to this season is the power Lottie (Courtney Eaton/Simone Kessell) has over the group. In the wilderness, the survivors slowly believe in her spiritual connection to the wild, relying on her instincts for survival. In the present day, Lottie now runs a cult, loosely disguised as a wellness retreat. One by one, the survivors are drawn to Lottie, once again needing guidance.

Yellowjackets reminds me of Lost, with its jumping between timelines and several mysteries remaining unanswered. The show balances the heartbreak faced by the young girls (episode six Qui is a season standout) and the dark humour, particularly Ricci’s sociopathic Misty, and Lynskey’s Shauna, who is trying to get away with murder.

If you missed Yellowjackets earlier this year, I highly recommend catching up.

– Stuart Richards

Read more:
Cannibalism, mutilation and murder: the Australian calamities that rival Yellowjackets for survival horror

The Way Home

Binge (Australia)

If you’ve finished the latest season of Sweet Magnolias and Virgin River and are looking for some more small-town sincerity, then check out The Way Home.

Starring Andie MacDowell and Chyler Leigh as mother and daughter, this new series tackles grief, friendship and growing up across generations and time, thanks to a pond-base portal to the past.

The Way Home tells the story of three generations of women coming to terms with their trauma and how it has shaped their past and present. The series joins Chesapeake Shores and When the Heart Calls as part of Hallmark’s stable of beloved, brightly lit family dramas about, and for, women.

If you enjoy Christmas movies where a pretty, white heterosexual woman returns home to be conveniently reunited with a lost love, then The Way Home is for you. It is light on plot and heavy on feelings. However, the inclusion of non-white and queer supporting characters reflects Hallmark’s increasing attempts to appeal to a wider audience and reflect more contemporary and diverse values.

Ultimately, The Way Home is more enjoyable than the sum of its parts.

– Jessica Ford

Read more:
How to make a perfect romcom – an expert explains the recipe for romance

Am I

shaunparkercompany.com (worldwide) from October 4

Shaun Parker & Company’s 2014 work Am I is part of The Sydney Opera House’s 50 days of streaming, celebrating its 50th birthday, taking us on a journey into the who-am-I of the human condition.

The narrator, Shantala Shivalingappa, guides us with answers from physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics and sociology as we move through scenes exploring important elements of existence such as the Big Bang, chromosomes, reproduction, the number pi and religion.

The dancers are all in black with only their feet, arms and faces visible, accentuating the shapes made by their upper bodies. The backdrop is a wall of golden white light bulbs, which light in different patterns: at times a pixelated digital screen, other times an exploding sun.

The dancers interact geometrically like the nuts and bolts of units of matter. They move through sequences using silver rods to produce line drawings in two dimensions, then three-dimensional clusters and networks.

They become less mechanised and breathier and airier as they shift from depicting the microcellular to the macro-whole of the human in an investigation of ideas, such as tribe (in its broadest sense) and consumption.

The music and song are loud, abstract and powerful.

Am I is a hypnotic and visually-engaging 80-minute piece of dance theatre which works spectacularly on film. I’ll be watching it again.

– Yvette Grant

While the Men Are Away

SBS OnDemand (Australia)

This eight-part dramedy is a queer reimagining of Australia’s World War Two history.

Set in rural New South Wales, when most men are away at war, Italian-Australian Frankie (Michela De Rossi) recruits two Women’s Land Army girls, Gwen (Max McKenna) and Esther (Jana Zvedeniuk), to work on her apple farm, alongside Indigenous domestic servant Kathleen (Phoebe Grainer) and conscientious objector Robert (Matt Testro). Well-meaning Gwen falls instantly for Frankie; the intense Esther is soon exchanging meaningful looks with Robert.

Overheated, melodramatic hijinks ensue.

The series is full of deliberate anachronism, with contemporary dialogue and a rock soundtrack. The costumes and production design have a soft-focus, Women’s Weekly glamour – a far cry from rationing and making do.

While the Men Are Away is a fantasy of queer visibility and acceptance, but the uneven script, churning plot and the often-didactic tone undermine its ambitions. The casting of Asian-Australian actors as Land Army girls and internment camp guards reveals the limitations of fantasy as a mode for telling historical stories: it effectively erases Australia’s history of anti-Asian racism.

The series is a playful – but not entirely successful – experiment.

– Michelle Arrow

Read more:
Discrimination, internment camps, then deportation: the end of the second world war did not mean peace for Japanese-Australians

Annika season two

Neon (New Zealand); season one is available in Australia on iView and BritBox

The second season of offbeat BBC police procedural Annika stands apart in a genre that usually veers towards silliness or misanthropy.

Droll Detective Inspector Annika Strandhed (national treasure Nicola Walker) is a Norwegian-born homicide detective with a penchant for bad puns, a stack of sensible wet weather gear, and a tendency to break the fourth wall with literary digressions that flesh out each episode’s themes.

Season one followed the establishment of Glasgow’s specialist Maritime Homicide Unit, a small and unflappable team, which spends its time fishing bodies out of Scottish waterways and solving odd coastal crimes. This is all while Annika navigated the prickly relationship with her teen daughter Morgan.

This season’s crimes are just as unconventional. A man is found frozen in a giant block of ice; a woman is drowned in a dog cage; a millionaire is discovered dead in his own shark tank. The season’s domestic B plot centres on Annika’s family life, particularly the newly-disclosed identity of Morgan’s father, which Annika has long kept secret. Although the narrative integration of home and work feels a little clumsier this time round.

Nonetheless, Annika remains a worthy comfort watch full of smart scripting, lush coastal landscapes, and charmingly wry cops who rarely raise their voices.

– Erin Harrington

Read more:
Romantic comedies, Japanese reality television and New Zealand true crime: the best of streaming this September

Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Erin Harrington, Jessica Ford, Stuart Richards, and Yvette Grant 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. Wartime hijinks, wilderness survivors and contemporary dance: what we’re streaming this October – https://theconversation.com/wartime-hijinks-wilderness-survivors-and-contemporary-dance-what-were-streaming-this-october-214469

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Di Winkler, Adjunct Associate Professor, La Trobe University

The bite mark on Ashlee’s cheek, her broken teeth and other photos of injuries from assaults in disability housing are some of the haunting images emerging from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. It’s hard to fathom how someone could commit these brutal crimes, let alone how they were not stopped or reported by a registered National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider.

After more than four years and many traumatic stories, the disability royal commission’s final report was released this morning. Included in its 6,845 pages are 222 recommendations.

The scope of the A$600 million disability royal commission included school, work, housing, hospitals and the criminal justice system.

The recommendations include the introduction of an Australian disability rights act, a new disability government portfolio, a minister for disability inclusion, and a department of disability equality and inclusion. There should be an independent national disability commission and major reforms to dismantle barriers to inclusive education, open employment, and accessible, appropriate and safe housing, the report says.

Rather than respond to specific recommendations, the government announced it would establish a taskforce for a staged response. But there is an urgent need to ensure NDIS participants with the highest level of support need – who are often the most vulnerable – have access to safe and adequate housing.

Read more:
The disability royal commission delivers its findings today. We must all listen to end violence, abuse and neglect

A long time coming

The horrific treatment documented by the commission is not new. People with disability have long experienced violence, abuse and neglect at much higher rates than the rest of the community. Still, a decade after the introduction of the NDIS, the prevalence of assaults, abuse and neglect and the squalid living conditions in some disability housing remains shocking.

The commission heard that some 17,000 people with disability living in group homes are at significant risk.

Early this year a separate government report revealed thousands of incidents of serious injury, abuse and neglect of people with disability living in group homes including unlawful sexual conduct and death.

The problem with group homes

All the commissioners agreed major improvements are needed when it comes to group homes. But they differed in their views about the future role of such settings.

There is little evidence to indicate group home are cost effective, provide quality support or deliver good outcomes for people living there.

The annual cost of NDIS-funded support within disability housing is $8.8 billion. There is also a significant cost that results from poor-quality support. The yearly cost of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of Australians with disability is estimated to be $46 billion.

Many group homes in Australia fail to keep people safe and deny their basic rights. The commission affirmed a commitment to make the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities a reality in Australian law.

The root cause of neglect and abuse is that many people with disability are segregated from the rest of society. Although commissioners were divided on the topic of segregation, they regarded the “inherent dignity, individual autonomy and independence of all people with disability as fundamental to Australia becoming a more inclusive society”.

Inclusive housing recommendations

The commission began its housing recommendations by acknowledging people with disability are “conspicuously absent” from national housing and homelessness policy frameworks.

The commission listed 11 recommendations for more inclusive housing. The recommendation (from four commissioners) to phase out group homes within the next 15 years is both pragmatic and feasible.

Both the human cost evidenced in the commission’s final report and the economic cost demand a transition to more contemporary housing.

The commission made some recommendations with the potential for more immediate improvement. These included addressing the practice of “third line forcing”, which means a single organisation can be both the landlord and the support provider in group homes. Stopping this will help prevent the “commodification” of some of the most vulnerable NDIS participants.

People who live in closed settings, who only engage with paid staff and other people with disability, are the most at risk of abuse and exploitation. Implementing the recommendations to make mainstream services more inclusive will help keep people living in disability housing safe.

Read more:
People with disabilities in group homes are suffering shocking abuse. New housing models could prevent harm

Minimum standards

The commission also recommended the introduction of minimum service standards, monitoring and oversight for boarding houses around Australia. If acted upon, these could fix some of the worst living conditions and extreme cases of exploitation, described as “human trafficking” with hundreds of people reportedly “missing” in the system.

The recommendations go on to highlight the urgent need to develop alternative housing options for people with disability. Rather than a standardised model of support, frameworks and principles need to be co-designed to increase the agency of people living in disability housing and develop bespoke models.

Real solutions start by working with people with disability. They need support to understand their rights, understand their housing and support options and exercise real choice about where they live and who they live with.

Only 6% of NDIS participants are eligible for disability specific housing called Specialist Disability Accommodation. So mainstream housing needs to be more inclusive and accessible.

Given the evidence about the impact of unsuitable housing on the lives of people with disability, the commission’s recommendation for national minimum accessibility standards in all new housing as soon as possible is critical too. The New South Wales and Western Australia governments have not yet committed to implement mandatory accessible design standards.

Read more:
Inclusion means everyone: 5 disability attitude shifts to end violence, abuse and neglect

What’s next?

Some of the most marginalised people in Australia were heard for the first time during the disability royal commission. Almost 10,000 people shared their stories via public hearings, submissions or private sessions. They represent thousands of others who were not heard. Many took risks to speak out. Over four years of tears and recounting trauma cannot be for nothing.

People with disability have given a lot to the commission and expectations are high for a comprehensive response and tangible action from the government. This needs to be balanced with adding layers of regulation that will do little to improve the lives of people with disability.

But the final report is momentous and the current NDIS review (due to report in October) will add to this momentum. There is scope to build on existing work and evidence to co-design, demonstrate and evaluate more contemporary models of housing and the way that support is provided within the home.

We all have a role to play in creating belonging, changing attitudes and recognising people’s shared humanity. Living free of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation is not a big ask.

Di Winkler is the CEO and Founder of Summer Foundation and a director of Liverty Housing

– ref. The disability royal commission recommendations could fix some of the worst living conditions – but that’s just the start – https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-recommendations-could-fix-some-of-the-worst-living-conditions-but-thats-just-the-start-213466

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

Tax cuts, crime, the cost of living, potholes and co-governance … these and various other issues are now familiar to most voters. But there has been one major election area missing the serious debate it needs: foreign policy.

Whichever parties form the next government, and whoever becomes prime minister, they will also be charged with negotiating New Zealand’s place in a dynamic and changing world.

Military and security alliances, trade, climate change and foreign aid are all presenting significant challenges. So here are some of the questions any incoming administration should be able to answer to the satisfaction of voters.

Defence and security

Having recently deepened military relationships with Australia and Japan, New Zealand needs to be clear about whether it will join “pillar two” of the AUKUS security pact between the US, UK and Australia.

Directly related to the AUKUS question are the hard military implications: who or what would New Zealand fight for? Were the US and China to square off over Taiwan, with Australia (New Zealand’s only formal ally) drawn into such a conflict, would New Zealand send military help?

Less speculatively, will New Zealand continue to send naval assets to support exercises aimed at defending freedom of the seas, given the very recent history of Chinese military confrontation in the disputed South China Sea?

The Pacific is also in a state of geopolitical flux. New Zealand has upgraded its military relationship with Fiji, and the US has secured “unimpeded access” to strategic ports and airports in Papua New Guinea. But how does New Zealand respond to the “comprehensive partnership” just announced between China and Timor-Leste covering military exchanges, training and exercises?

Read more:
Talk of a new Cold War is overheated – but NZ faces complex challenges in the era of ‘strategic competition’

Ukraine and defence budgets

The war in the Ukraine will also demand attention. While New Zealand is not directly involved, it provides military training, financial, legal and humanitarian assistance. Does this continue or ramp up, or does the level of aid depend on what New Zealand’s allies do?

Further to that, what is New Zealand’s official position on what peace would look like for Ukraine? Would New Zealand support a peace deal that involved territory trade-offs or did not include the prosecution of war crimes?

Read more:
AUKUS is already trialling autonomous weapons systems – where is NZ’s policy on next-generation warfare?

Related to that is the uncertainty over US commitment to supporting Ukraine, given some Republican resistance. New Zealand’s next government will face potentially very unpredictable outcomes from the US presidential election in November 2024. What happens if Donald Trump returns to power?

Many of New Zealand’s key allies (including NATO countries) are spending or aiming to spend 2% of GDP (or more) on their militaries. New Zealand currently only spends about 1.5% of GDP. Ideally, voters would know whether that will increase, by how much, and by when.

More specifically, would any extra spending see the New Zealand Defence Force adopt militarised artificial intelligence technologies?

Trade and sanctions

An open, predictable and rules-based global economy can no longer be taken for granted. Regional trade integration has been disrupted, with a shift towards unilateral trade policies and agreements.

What is New Zealand’s response, and will local exporters be encouraged and helped to diversify their markets?

Beyond the simple mantras of negotiating new trade agreements with India or the US, how will that diversification and continued growth be achieved?

Will New Zealand support China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership – or would it back Taiwan’s?

Will New Zealand continue to support the use of sanctions outside the United Nations’ system (such as those imposed on Russia), and will it consider extending sanctions to countries for grievous human rights abuses (such as those imposed on Iran)?

Read more:
The ‘number 8 wire’ days for NZ’s defence force are over – new priorities will demand bigger budgets

Climate and foreign aid

Climate change presents extreme challenges domestically and internationally. New Zealand’s overall performance is rated “highly insufficient” by the independent Climate Action Tracker. So what will the next government do at a global level?

Where does New Zealand stand on mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund, the world’s largest multilateral fund dedicated to helping developing countries address the climate crisis, and will it increase pledged funding for it?

And will New Zealand continue to believe in and support the Global Methane Pledge, a joint US-European Union initiative to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030?

Read more:
New Zealand’s strategic priority in the Indo-Pacific is not AUKUS – it’s helping to defeat Russia in Ukraine

The UN sets a target for all developed nations to give 0.7% of their gross national income as aid to developing countries, but New Zealand only manages to give 0.23% – well below the OECD average. Will the next government seek to increase or even decrease this? And would it support the creation of a regional development bank or cooperative aid projects with China?

Finally, New Zealand will need to confirm if it will keep taking 1,500 refugees annually.

These are not easy questions. But the New Zealand public should know the answers before they vote – and before the next government positions the country in an increasingly turbulent global order.

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. Foreign policy has been missing from NZ’s election campaign – voters deserve answers to these big questions – https://theconversation.com/foreign-policy-has-been-missing-from-nzs-election-campaign-voters-deserve-answers-to-these-big-questions-214633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Simmons, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, University of New England

Australia’s plan to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 relies heavily on carbon credits.

These credits are awarded to projects that avoid the release of greenhouse gases or remove and “sequester” (store) carbon so it’s no longer warming the atmosphere.

Farmers can be awarded credits for increasing soil carbon content. The federal government or companies can then purchase these credits to offset their carbon emissions.

These credits must represent genuine carbon sequestration if they are to mitigate climate change.

As Australian agricultural and soil scientists, we have serious concerns about the way credits are awarded for soil carbon sequestration under the Australian carbon credit unit scheme. There are four main issues with the method that must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Read more:
US scheme used by Australian farmers reveals the dangers of trading soil carbon to tackle climate change

Understanding the carbon cycle

Much like water, carbon cycles through the environment, moving between plants, the earth and the atmosphere.

Plants take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. The carbon is stored in the plant tissue. When plants die, or drop leaves, this carbon-rich organic matter enters the soil. Then it decomposes, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

When carbon inputs from plants exceed losses from the decomposition of organic matter, the amount of soil carbon increases. That means soil organic carbon is more likely to increase during good seasons when there’s plenty of rainfall available to support plant growth – such as during the recent three-year period of consecutive La Niña events.

Increases need to be due to management

The recent tranche of credits awarded to soil carbon projects raises similar concerns to those that have been raised by experts about credits awarded to trees. Namely, carbon credits are being awarded for changes associated with seasonal conditions (changes that would have happened anyway) rather than human actions.

The current soil carbon method awards credits when an increase in soil organic carbon is detected between two points in time. This is problematic because it can award credits to projects that report increases during relatively wet periods.

This is the case for projects sampled in 2021, directly after a period where conditions were unusually favourable for plant growth. That means credits were awarded for sequestration that had more to do with the weather than good management.

Where crediting occurs due to seasonal conditions, the scheme is not providing any true (additional) climate change mitigation.

Soil carbon can be lost

Where soil carbon losses are greater than inputs, soil carbon stocks decline and sequestered carbon is released back to the atmosphere. The emissions can be rapid and considerable.

Furthermore, modelling indicates it’s likely soil carbon could be lost under the warmer and drier conditions of future climates.

Where a project loses soil carbon, the legislation does not require excess credits to be returned. Rather, a scheme-wide buffer generated from all sequestration projects covers such losses.

This approach is inequitable because all projects share the same burden of maintaining the buffer, irrespective of the risk of reversal of individual projects.

Overinflated sequestration rates

Based on a comprehensive global analysis, the number of carbon credits generated by some Australian projects appears unrealistically high. The most likely reason for these large values is high rainfall, but the way the method works makes it impossible to know for sure because the impacts of management are not identified.

This is not the first time a soil carbon project has made unrealistic claims.

In addition, one project saw 44% of the increase in soil carbon at depths below 30cm. This is an issue because published studies show soil carbon changes in deeper soil are relatively small and happen slowly. We are concerned the reported changes may have more to do with the way they were calculated.

Currently, data used to calculate credits are not released by the scheme regulator so cannot be scientifically verified. The release of data under strict non-disclosure arrangements would allow scientists to assess the implementation of the method. This would provide confidence credits generated represent real climate change mitigation.

Increased transparency was a key recommendation of the Chubb Review of Australian Carbon Credit Units in 2022.

Read more:
Chubb review of Australia’s carbon credit scheme falls short – and problems will continue to fester

Contributing to our emissions targets?

Australia’s emissions are reported annually to the United Nations in the national greenhouse gas inventory. These annual inventories show progress towards our declared emissions reduction targets.

The current inventory method used to account for changes in soil carbon uses coarse regional-level statistics. Changes to practices at farm level, such as grazing management, are not detected and will not be reflected in our national greenhouse gas accounts. Further, Australia reports changes in soil carbon for the top 30cm of the soil only whereas carbon credits are also awarded for changes that occur deeper in the soil.

This means some soil carbon credits the Australian government purchases do not count toward our emissions targets. It calls into question the effectiveness of using taxpayer funds to purchase soil carbon credits as a policy tool.

Read more:
Australia relies on controversial offsets to meet climate change targets. We might not get away with it in Egypt

Getting it right

To address the issues we have identified, the measurement-based soil carbon method needs to be revised to only credit increases due to management. For instance, the Verra scheme in the international voluntary carbon market uses a method that minimises crediting for increases associated with rainfall.

To support revision of Australia’s scheme, scientists should be granted access to project data. Data could to be used to improve models in order to distinguish between climate and management effects. This would ensure the method is fit for purpose.

There also needs to be greater focus on monitoring changes in soil carbon. For a start, Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network should be extended to include agricultural land. This would provide data to increase transparency, independence and rigour of soil carbon estimates.

The revisions we propose would help ensure investment in carbon credits contributes to our national emissions reduction targets and addresses the urgent challenge of climate change.

Read more:
A tonne of fossil carbon isn’t the same as a tonne of new trees: why offsets can’t save us

Aaron Simmons is a Senior Research Scientist with the NSW Department of Primary Industries. Aaron has received funding from the Commonwealth and NSW governments for soil carbon research and policy development.

Annette Cowie is a Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Climate Branch at the NSW Department of Primary Industries, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Environmental and Rural Science at the University of New England. She has received funding for soil carbon research from NSW and Commonwealth government programs. Annette is a member of Soil Science Australia, a not-for-profit, professional association for soil scientists, and on the Advisory Board of Australia New Zealand Biochar Industry Group.

Dr Beverley Henry is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology. She has previously worked for, and received funding from, the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments, and has, or has previously held, science consulting and advisory roles with Australian and international government and agricultural organisations.

Brian Wilson is a Professor in Terrestrial Carbon Management at the University of New England. He has received funding from the Commonwealth and State Government and from the Cotton Research and Development Corporation for research relevant to soil carbon.

David Pannell is a professor in environmental economics and agricultural economics at the University of Western Australia. He has received funding from the Commonwealth Government and from Grains Research and Development Corporation for research relevant to soil carbon.

David Rowlings is a Professor in Sustainable Agriculture at Queensland University of Technology. He receives funding from Meat and Livestock Australia and Department Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries for soil carbon research.

Elaine Mitchell is a Research Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology. She has received funding from the Commonwealth Government for soil carbon research. She is also the founder of Ecometric, which provides advisory services in the natural capital space, including advice to carbon project developers on approaches to stratification, soil sampling and soil carbon modelling.

Matthew Tom Harrison is an Associate Professor at the University of Tasmania. He has been awarded funding from State and Commonwealth Governments, as well as Research Development Corporations to research practices, skills and technologies for improving soil organic carbon sequestration.

Peter Grace is Professor Global Change at Queensland University of Technology. He currently receives funding from the Grains Research and Development Corporation, Meat and Livestock Australia, the Dept of Climate Change Energy Environment and Water, National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme – Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, AgriFutures, and AgriMix. He has previously received funding from the Clean Energy Regulator, the Dept of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, and Cotton Research and Development Corporation.

Raphael Viscarra Rossel is a Professor of Soil and Landscape Science at Curtin University. Previously, he was a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO, where he received funding from the Commonwealth Government for developing innovative soil carbon measurement methods that aided the formulation of the soil carbon methodology.

Richard Eckard receives funding from Meat and Livestock Australia and the Commonwealth of Australia on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and carbon farming. His science contributed to six Australian carbon credit methods.

Warwick Badgery is a Research Leader with the NSW Department of Primary Industries and is an Honorary Senior Fellow at Melbourne University. He receives funding from Meat and Livestock Australia, the NSW and Federal Governments for research on climate mitigation and soil carbon.

– ref. Here’s how to fix Australia’s approach to soil carbon credits so they really count towards our climate goals – https://theconversation.com/heres-how-to-fix-australias-approach-to-soil-carbon-credits-so-they-really-count-towards-our-climate-goals-210880

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Howell, OzGrav Associate Investigator; Adjunct Research Fellow in Astrophysics, The University of Western Australia

Every so often, astronomers glimpse an intense flash of radio waves from space – a flash that lasts only instants but puts out as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun does in a few years. The origin of these “fast radio bursts” is one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy today.

There is no shortage of ideas to explain the cause of the bursts: a catalogue of current theories shows more than 50 potential scenarios. You can take your pick from highly magnetised neutron stars, collisions of incredibly dense stars or many more extreme or exotic phenomena.

How can we figure out which theory is correct? One way is to look for more information about the bursts, using other channels: specifically, using ripples in the fabric of the universe called gravitational waves.

In a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, we cross-referenced dozens of fast radio burst observations with data from gravitational wave telescopes to see if we could find any links.

Gravitational wave astronomy

If you think of telescopes, you probably think of ones that look for electromagnetic signals such as light, radio waves or x-rays. Lots of stars and other things in the cosmos produce these signals. But dust and gas abundant in the galaxies in which star systems reside can dim or block these signals.

Gravitational waves are different: they pass straight through matter, so nothing can really get in their way.

Astronomers have so far detected gravitational waves from colliding systems of compact stars such as black holes and neutron stars, as well as discovering the engines behind gamma-ray bursts.

We also have reason to think fast radio bursts may produce gravitational wave signals.

What produces fast radio bursts?

Some fast radio bursts have been seen to repeat, but most are seen as single events.

For the repeating bursts, a recent simultaneous observation of x-rays and a radio burst from a highly magnetised neutron star in our own Milky Way galaxy proves this type of star can produce fast radio bursts. No source has so far been identified for the non-repeaters.

Read more:
A brief history: what we know so far about fast radio bursts across the universe

However, some theories involve astronomical objects and events we know produce strong gravitational waves. So if we have an idea of where in the sky a fast radio burst occurs, and when, we can do a targeted, sensitive search for gravitational waves over the same patch of sky.

The CHIME radio telescope

To look for new evidence on what causes fast radio bursts I co-led a targeted search using fast radio bursts detected by a radio telescope called CHIME in Canada.

As the CHIME/FRB project has detected hundreds of fast radio bursts, there’s a good chance of catching one close enough to Earth to be observed by a gravitational wave telescope. This is important as fast radio bursts are so bright they can be seen from billions of light years away – much farther than present gravitational wave observatories can see.

So what did we do and how did we do it? The project team gave us the data for a few hundred fast radio bursts. As much of this data is still not publicly available, we signed a special agreement that we would not share the details outside the search teams.

Read more:
535 new fast radio bursts help answer deep questions about the universe and shed light on these mysterious cosmic events

We then estimated the distance to each fast radio burst, and searched for gravitational wave data around the 40 closest events (which had evidence of being within gravitational wave detector range).

Our search team was a small group of scientists from the LIGO gravitational wave observatory in the United States, the Virgo observatory in Italy, and collaborators from the fast radio burst team CHIME/FRB.

We looked for gravitational wave signals around the sky position of each non-repeating fast radio burst around the time each occurred. For these non-repeaters, we did two kinds of search: one that looked for known gravitational wave signals, like those from colliding black holes or neutrons, and another that essentially looked for any burst of energy that was out of the ordinary.

For the repeating bursts, because we know that at least one such source is associated with a magnetised neutron star, we looked for the kind of gravitational wave signals we might expect from an isolated neutron star.

What did we find out?

Did we discover anything? Well, not this time.

It was not such a surprise, as we think fast radio bursts are much more common than detectable gravitational wave signals. In other words, gravitational wave sources would only account for a small fraction of fast radio bursts.

However, the closest fast radio burst in our sample was almost close enough for us to rule out the possibility it was caused by a collision between a neutron star and a black hole. Uncertainty in the distance to the burst means we can’t rule it out conclusively, but we are encourage by the fact the sensitive range of gravitational wave detectors is closing in on the distance to fast radio bursts.

What next?

Despite no definitive results this time, future searches could be a vital stepping stone to understanding fast radio bursts.

Gravitational wave detectors have become more sensitive than when we conducted this search, and will continue to improve in the coming years. This means they will allow a greater reach throughout the cosmos, so we can test a much larger sample of fast radio bursts.

We are also targeting future fast radio bursts from the known repeating source in our own galaxy mentioned above.

Eric Howell would like to acknowledge the contribution towards this work by the other FRB-GW search co-chair Ryan Fisher; the other members of the paper writing team Kara Merfeld, Iara Tosta e Melo, Michael Patel; and the CHIME/FRB collaborators Shriharsh Tendulkar, Mohit Bhardwaj, Andrew Zwaniga, Adam Dong and Victoria Kaspi. The LIGO-Virgo GW analysts included Michael Patel, Patrick Sutton, Teresa Slaven-Blair, Amin Boumerdassi, Grace Johns, Nathan Ormsby, Max Elias Trevor, Adrian Helmling-Cornell, Hannah Griggs, Brandon Piotrzkowski, Benjamin Mannix, Kaemon Watada, Jacob Buchanan; the LIGO-Virgo review team were Tito Dal Canton, Marco Drag, Om Sharan Salafia, Ronaldas Macas and Michal Was.

Eric Howell 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 search for links between two of the universe’s most spectacular phenomena has come up empty – for now – https://theconversation.com/a-search-for-links-between-two-of-the-universes-most-spectacular-phenomena-has-come-up-empty-for-now-180237

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

Saturday’s premiership tussle between Collingwood and Brisbane features the two top-ranked teams from 2023. Hopefully, unlike last year’s final, it will be a gripping match. The 2023 finals series has so far featured edge-of-the-seat contests, as reflected in media audiences: some 13.3 million eyeballs tuning in, at an average of 1.66 million per game.

Perhaps most importantly, after lean years during COVID, there has also been bountiful spectator interest this season. The finals matches have attracted an average of 70,595 fans, with an expected 100,000 set to attend on Saturday.

All this follows a bumper season for the AFL, with 36,110 attendees per game, the league’s highest average since 2010.

Read more:
Want to really understand football culture? Here are 6 things to watch out for on Grand Final Day

Rivals with September history

The premiership contestants, Brisbane and Collingwood, are meeting for the third time since the AFL was formulated as a national competition in 1990. No other two clubs have faced each other more in an AFL grand final.

The Magpies lost to the Lions in 2002 and 2003, so they will be especially keen to soar against their Queensland rivals. Collingwood boasts 15 VFA/VFL/AFL titles since its inception in 1892, but only two have come in the past 65 years (1990 and 2010).

Despite a lack of recent success, the black and white Magpie “army” is the biggest fan base for a club in any Australian sport, with an average of 63,723 fans attending home matches during the season and the two finals matches averaging 95,151 fans.

As with last week’s preliminary final, Collingwood will have the advantage of playing in Melbourne against an interstate rival. This means greater familiarity with the hallowed turf of the Melbourne Cricket Ground and, without a doubt, a much larger fan base inside the stadium.

Brisbane, meanwhile, has not featured in a grand final for nearly 20 years. The Lions pulled off an incredible three premierships in a row from 2001-3, then fell to Port Adelaide in the 2004 final.

The Lions are reborn

Those three flags marked a rise from ignominy for a club that began in 1987 as the Brisbane Bears but played at Carrara Stadium on the Gold Coast. The Bears finished regularly near the bottom of the ladder in these foundational years, capturing the wooden spoon in 1990 and 1991. Little wonder they averaged a modest 10,000 spectators per game.

In 1996, the Brisbane Bears were reinvented as the Brisbane Lions following an AFL-managed merger with the financially distraught Fitzroy Lions. For Fitzroy players and fans, the amalgamation with Brisbane was effectively a takeover. A move from the Gold Coast’s Carrara Stadium to Brisbane’s Gabba embedded the newly branded Lions in Queensland’s capital. Significant crowds soon followed, buttressed by vastly improved on-field success.

That said, after the heady three-peat of 2000-3, the Lions endured some very lean years, making the finals only once between 2005 and 2018.

Since 2019, the club has been part of September action again, but until this year, not on grand final day.

In 2020, Brisbane superstar Lachie Neale remarked that he “would gladly swap his Brownlow Medal for a premiership”. That year, the Lions were eliminated in the preliminary final, so it was a metaphorical opportunity lost.

This week, Neale claimed his second Brownlow Medal. And in keeping with his team-first approach, again said he would “gladly swap both of his Brownlow triumphs for premiership glory at the MCG this weekend”.

If only it were that easy. Since 1993, only six players have achieved the Brownlow/premiership double.

Collingwood’s transformation

A common refrain among footy fans is that those who don’t support Collingwood inevitably “hate” them. This speaks largely to football rivalries, particularly Collingwood’s traditional foes like Carlton and Essendon. But sport is not simply about winning or losing; it’s also about how you play the game – both on and off the field.

In that respect, Collingwood is undergoing a renaissance that could not have been imagined just two years ago. Under fire from First Nations and other Black players, who claimed they experienced racism throughout their careers with the club, Collingwood was dragged into supporting an independent investigation of its culture. This led to the 2021 release of the “Do Better” report, which found evidence of systemic racism at the club.

Soon after, the club president, Eddie McGuire, stepped down – though, to critics, this ought to have happened years ago after several unseemly incidents. While governance has remained challenging at Collingwood, and not all former players are satisfied with how the club handled the racism allegations, the public relations disasters under McGuire have at least disappeared.

The other key change at Collingwood was a new coach. Club legend Nathan Buckley exited after ten years at the helm, having made the finals five times. He quit midway through the 2021 season after which the Magpies stumbled to near the bottom of the ladder.

Enter the former Brisbane player Craig McRae in 2022. Nicknamed “Fly”, McRae brought a brazen attacking game style to Collingwood, with stunning results. Midway through the 2022 season, the longtime AFL reporter Damien Barrett reckoned that McRae had made the “hated” Magpies “likeable again” and provided compelling viewing.

The Pies eventually lost by a single point to the Swans in the 2022 preliminary final, but McRae was recognised as the AFL coach of the year.

Fast forward to 2023 and the “love affair” with Collingwood’s adventurous playing style has continued. The journalist John Stensholt reported that, contrary to conventional wisdom, this Magpies team is no longer so polarising.

It is now led by a “fly” with a positive psychology mindset, a captain (Darcy Moore) who speaks with humility and grace, and father-son greats in Josh and Nick Daicos. Even Jordan De Goey, a serial off-field offender in previous years, has seemingly discovered inner peace after working with a sports psychologist.

A premiership would cap a remarkable revival story for either club – and with another enormous grand final crowd, it will mark a continuing resurgence for the league itself from the lows of the pandemic years.

Read more:
As the 2022 AFLM season comes to a close, the game must ask itself some difficult questions – especially on racism

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. Lions to roar or Magpies to soar? It’s a remarkable revival story either way on grand final day – https://theconversation.com/lions-to-roar-or-magpies-to-soar-its-a-remarkable-revival-story-either-way-on-grand-final-day-214384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

Maybe you have hay fever, COVID, a cold or the flu, and are reaching for a tissue or handkerchief.

But which one’s better at stopping infections spreading? Which has a smaller environmental impact? Is it the hanky, which has been with us since at least Roman times? Or the more recent and widely-used paper tissue?

You might be surprised at the results.

Read more:
Health Check: what’s the right way to blow your nose?

A short history of the handkerchief and tissue

Today, we think of hankies as something to wipe noses, and catch coughs and sneezes. But such a simple square of cloth has a complex history.

In the first century, the Romans used a sudarium (Latin for sweat cloth) to wipe off sweat, or to mask the mouth and face.

Over time, people have used what we now call a handkerchief or hanky, as a head covering, as a veil and for disguise, to clean hands, for wounds and to staunch blood.

Wealthy people have used them to signify class and manners, and for discretely wiping away phlegm rather than smearing snot on sleeves or down skirts. Royalty have used them to indicate wealth and power through their gifts of fine linen and silk handkerchiefs to favoured subjects. Henry VIII owned an extensive collection, some embossed with gold and silver.

Handkerchiefs have also been markers of love, fidelity and sexual preferences. In the late 19th century the “handkerchief code” was a system of colour coding and handkerchief placement used to indicate sexual preferences, which is still active in LGBTQ+ communities today.

We can trace the origins of paper tissue to China in the 2nd century BC. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that tissue as we know it today was developed to remove make-up and wipe
runny noses from hay fever.

Read more:
How do hay fever treatments actually work? And what’s best for my symptoms?

So, which one is better for our health?

More than 100 years ago, a cloth hanky was considered a “little flag of Death” because of the germs it carried and how it contaminated pockets it was left in. Later, we were urged to use a hanky as “coughs and sneezes spread diseases”.

Today, we know nasal secretions harbour cold-type viruses that can be transferred to a range of surfaces – hands, handkerchiefs, tissues, door knobs, keyboards – sometimes surviving long after the initial exposure.

So blowing your nose into a reusable cotton hanky, then touching another object, means these viruses can spread. Even if you put your cotton hanky in the wash immediately, you’d likely contaminate surfaces on the way, such as doorknobs, and use your infected hands to operate the washing machine.

Viruses don’t tend to survive so long on tissues. As long as you throw tissues away after using them, and don’t leave them lying around for others to pick up, the chance of passing germs to others from a used tissue is far lower.

Then there’s the question of whether hankies or tissues are effective barriers to coughing and respiratory spray.

Basic cloth coverings, such as handkerchiefs or bandannas, can catch sputum, as can tissues. But several studies have shown they do not effectively filter respiratory aerosols, or stop you inhaling pollutants, pathogens or small airborne particles.

Read more:
We know hand dryers can circulate germs through the air. Why are they still used everywhere?

Which one is better for the planet?

If you want to look at environmental considerations, US company Ecosystem Analytics compared resusable cotton hankies to disposable paper tissues using a lifecycle analysis. It considered four measures of environmental impacts associated with production, transport, use and disposal:

• climate change (sum of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour, nitrous oxide and CFCs)

• ecosystem quality (chemical pollution of land and water)

• human health (carcinogenic and non‐carcinogenic toxicity to humans)

• resources (total energy requirements of non‐renewable energy and mineral extraction).

The verdict? Across the four measures, a cotton hanky had five to seven times greater impact than an equivalent tissue.

And, by far, the greatest impacts were related to the production of each of these products, rather than using or disposing of them.

If you’re still keen to use a cotton hanky, you could opt for organic cotton, which has a lower ecological footprint compared to standard cotton produced in the same location. But organic cotton production has lower yields than its conventional equivalent, meaning more land is needed to produce an equivalent amount, compounding the total environmental impact.

If you want to feel better about using tissues, ones made from recycled material may be a better option. Their manufacture leads to fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared with making regular tissues.

Read more:
Sustainable shopping: for eco-friendly jeans, stop washing them so often

The verdict

Wiping our noses with paper tissues we dispose of properly after use (and don’t store in our pocket), made from recycled material, is preferable from both a health and environmental perspective.

But tissues don’t quite have the same panache as the historic and versatile cloth hanky.

Mark Patrick Taylor is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist. He is also an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Hester Joyce 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. Handkerchief or tissue? Which one’s better for our health and the planet? – https://theconversation.com/handkerchief-or-tissue-which-ones-better-for-our-health-and-the-planet-213065

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Lou Rasmussen, Professor, School of Sociology, Australian National University

Smoke covered large swathes of Australia during the catastrophic summer fires of 2019-2020. You could see the plumes from space. Over 20% of Australia’s forests went up in smoke and flame.

As the fires spread, smoke covered towns and cities. Millions of people were suddenly confronted with bad air. Many had children. Many were pregnant. All worried about what the smoke might mean for their child.

Our new book explores the worries and desperation of people who were pregnant or parenting during the unprecedented fires over the 2019–2020 summer. We drew on in-depth stories from 25 mothers (and sometimes their partners).

The smoke was something they had no control over. But public health advice told them they had the responsibility to keep their child safe. Mothers and their partners worried endlessly about what damage the pollutants in the air were doing. This, we argue, speaks to how those who have done little to fuel the climate crisis can be particularly at risk.

What did we find?

One woman, Renee, told us about the anxiety of being pregnant and with two small children in the smoke:

I was really worried about lung damage for my kids upstairs, but I was also worried, [for] like, brain development at that point, as you get into the end of the pregnancy […] I kept having conversations with myself going, ‘I’m not in my first 12 weeks, surely that’s riskier. I’m in this safer zone’.

Renee’s story speaks to how our interviewees tried to take responsibility for themselves and their foetuses.

It was a common thread. The 25 mothers and partners we interviewed were living in Canberra or on the south coast of New South Wales. These areas were among the worst affected by smoke.

Renee’s feelings of risk and responsibility are amplified in an era that historian of fire Stephen Pyne has named the “Pyrocene”, a time when bushfires and the burning of fossil fuels are careering out of control.

Our research shows pregnant people were framed as “doubly vulnerable” to smoke, due to their own exposure and that of their foetus. Health advice from organisations such as the Royal Women’s Hospital urged them to stay indoors, use air-conditioning and to spend time at libraries and shopping centres to avoid exposure.

Who is responsible?

Given health warnings about smoke exposure, it’s not surprising our interviewees expressed considerable concern for their unborn babies.

Alice, pregnant during the fires:

It was really constantly on my mind, and I tried to kind of not get too anxious about it, but it was really difficult because […] I mean, you just think about it all the time. You’re just constantly worrying when you’re pregnant what’s going to affect the baby. Like everything you do.

Gina, pregnant during the fires:

It was just always kind of lingering, like we were just unsure about what kind of effects it would have on the development of his organs and whatever else. I was obviously more stressed than my husband, just because, you know, the mother is carrying the baby and there’s more stress just naturally on the mum

Even while worrying about the health of their babies, women also felt the responsibility for keeping them “safe” from smoke exposure fell primarily to them.

What we ask is – is this fair? As recent research makes clear, pollutants such as bushfire smoke are uncontrollable.

Feminist scholars note that public health advice and scientific research tends to emphasise how vulnerable the foetus is and, by extension, place responsibility on the mother – even while acknowledging how little control they have over the situation.

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

When responsibility meets uncertainty

Australia has long been affected by bushfires. But they’re getting worse as the world heats up.

There’s no roadmap for how to live with sudden crises such as fires or the long, slow burn of incremental change. We’re all experimenting at individual, household and community levels as well as nationally and regionally.

Many of us are having to tinker with our machines and our homes to take care of others and to survive the new extremes.

Climate change is happening to the globe. But the devastation wreaked by extreme weather, disruption to farming or intensified fires is not evenly distributed, either by who did the most to cause it or by who is most hard hit.

Wealth magnifies unfairness. Those who have done the most to create and benefit from carbon-intensive capitalism are more likely to be able to shield themselves from its effects, while people who are pregnant and parenting, and First Nations people – especially children aged five and under – are more vulnerable.

What we point to is a question. How can we find ways to take care of foetuses and young children without forcing parents (and mothers, in particular) to shoulder the impossible responsibility of safety?

Read more:
The Black Summer bushfires put an enormous strain on families with young children. We can’t make the same mistakes again

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. ‘You’re constantly worrying’: pregnant women, bushfire smoke and the impossibility of safety – https://theconversation.com/youre-constantly-worrying-pregnant-women-bushfire-smoke-and-the-impossibility-of-safety-211747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Muhammad Rizwan Azhar, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Picture this: you’re cruising down the Great Ocean Road in your brand new
electric vehicle (EV), the ocean to your left and the wind in your hair. But what if I told you this idyllic drive could turn into a nightmare, with the faint smell of something burning?

This month we have had at least two large lithium-ion battery fires in Australia – one in the Sydney airport car park and another one more recently at the Bouldercombe battery storage site in Queensland.

When a lithium-ion battery fire breaks out, the damage can be extensive. These fires are not only intense, they are also long-lasting and potentially toxic.

Read more:
Electric vehicle fires are very rare. The risk for petrol and diesel vehicles is at least 20 times higher

What causes these fires?

Most electric vehicles humming along Australian roads are packed with
lithium-ion batteries. They’re the same powerhouses that fuel our smartphones
and laptops – celebrated for their ability to store heaps of energy in a small
space.

The reality is that lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles are very safe. In fact, from 2010 to June 2023, only four electric vehicle battery fires had been recorded in Australia. And a recent paper forecasts a possible total of around 900 EV fires from 2023 and 2050. This is, for all intents and purposes, a small amount.

Nonetheless, when EV batteries do overheat, they’re susceptible to something called “thermal runaway”. This chemical reaction can be triggered from faults in the battery – whether that’s an internal failure (such as an internal short circuit), or some kind of external damage. In extreme cases, it causes the battery to catch fire or explode.

The onset and intensification of lithium-ion battery fires can be traced to multiple causes, including user behaviour such as improper charging or physical damage.

Then there are even larger batteries, such as Megapacks, which are what recently caught fire at Bouldercombe. Megapacks are large lithium-based batteries, designed by Tesla. They are intended to function as energy storage and to help “stabilise the grid and prevent outages”.

The Megapack that caught fire on Tuesday is one of 40 lithium-ion Megapack 2.0 units on-site. A Megapack fire is daunting for obvious reasons. Megapacks have a capacity of 3 megawatt hours, which equals 3,000 kilowatts of electricity generated per hour.

It’s no surprise the Bouldercombe fire may be burning for several days.

What to do when a fire has started?

If a fire bursts out in an EV or battery storage facility, the first instinct may be to grab the nearest hose. However, using water on a lithium-ion battery fire could spell even greater disaster.

That’s because lithium-ion batteries have a rather unwelcome talent for chemical reactions when they come into contact with water. Instead of snuffing out the flames, water can actually fuel the fire and cause it to intensify.
This is because the water’s reaction with lithium produces flammable hydrogen gas, adding more of a fire hazard to an already perilous situation.

While firefighters have used water in the past on lithium-battery fires (since water helps with cooling the battery itself), they have at times needed up to 40 times as much water as a normal car fire required.

It may often be safer to just let a lithium battery fire burn, as Tesla recommends in its Model 3 response guide:

Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish. Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.

This would explain why Tesla advised authorities in Bouldercombe to not put out the blaze.

The risk from water doesn’t end there. Water also conducts electricity, which means spraying it on a battery fire could lead to electrical shocks or short-circuits – especially if the battery remains connected to a device, such as an electric vehicle.

The best way to put out these fires is to reach for a specialised fire extinguisher. Experts recommend using Class D fire extinguishers designed for lithium-metal fires, or dry chemical fire extinguishers that are appropriate for electrical fires.

These extinguishers contain substances – such as sodium chloride powder or pressurised argon – that can combat the challenges posed by lithium-ion batteries. Sodium chloride, commonly known as table salt, melts to form an oxygen-excluding crust over the fire. Similarly, argon is an inert and non-flammable gas, which can help put out fires by suffocating oxygen.

That brings us to the aftermath of the fire – and another often-overlooked hazard: toxic fumes.

When lithium-ion batteries catch fire in a car or at a storage site, they don’t just release smoke; they emit a cocktail of dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride.

These fumes can be hazardous to your health, especially when inhaled in significant quantities. This is why these battery fires are a particular concern in confined spaces such as a garage, where noxious gases can accumulate quickly.

What to do if your car catches fire

Although EV fires are very rare, if you do own an EV (or plan to in the future), there are a few steps you can take to tip the scale in your favour.

First, get to know your EV inside and out. Familiarise yourself with its safety features. Does it have a functioning thermal management system to help keep the battery cool? What about sensors that could alert you to a problem before it turns into a crisis?

Secondly, be smart about how you charge your EV. Avoid using fast chargers as your
go-to, because these can cause the battery to heat up more quickly. Overcharging your battery can also increase the risk of it lighting up.

If, despite your best efforts, you do find yourself head-to-head with a blaze, your first course of action should be to call emergency services for professional help.

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

– ref. What causes lithium-ion battery fires? Why are they so intense? And how should they be fought? An expert explains – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-lithium-ion-battery-fires-why-are-they-so-intense-and-how-should-they-be-fought-an-expert-explains-214470

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Ireland, Education Editor, The Conversation, Australia

Every year, Times Higher Education – a global higher education publication – ranks universities around the world. This one of three prominent international ranking systems for universities.

Its 2024 list has just been released and includes 1,904 universities across 108 countries.

The top five universities are all in the United Kingdom and United States: Oxford University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.

In Australia, headlines have talked about a “slide” down the world rankings for Australian universities, with our reputation also “slipping”.

Australia’s highest-ranking institution, The University of Melbourne, dropped from 34 to 37. Many other local universities also fell in the rankings. For example, The University of Sydney dropped six places to 60 and the Australian National University dropped five places to 67.

The Conversation spoke to Associate Professor Gwilym Croucher, a higher education researcher at the University of Melbourne about what the latest rankings mean.

How are the rankings calculated?

The Times Higher Education takes in a range of measures, from teaching to research productivity, research citations, industry connections and international students.

The way the rankings are calculated is complicated. And there has been a change in the way universities are scored this year, with additional measures such as a weighting given to the relationship between research and patents.

Why have we seen Australia drop in the rankings?

One thing is there has been a change in the methodology this year, which has likely had some downside for how Australian universities have fared.

A second factor is the international landscape is becoming more competitive – two Chinese universities and the National University of Singapore are in the top 20. There’s significant higher education investment in some countries, such as China, especially for their elite research universities.

This means on some measures, Australian universities are facing more competition.

The third thing is, while it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how Australia’s response to the pandemic affected the rankings, without a doubt, border closures during COVID had some impact on our international reputation.

The Times rankings take into account teaching and research reputation, both of which may have been affected by the pandemic when we saw classes go online.

Is this a problem?

While nobody likes to go down in the rankings, we have to be careful not to read too much into this news.

Rankings can be useful for indicating there are areas we need to address. For example, we know Australia’s research funding lags behind other similar countries.

But these rankings are also based on somewhat narrow measures, such as research citations and ratios of students vs staff and undergraduate vs postgraduate students. These don’t necessarily tell us everything we need to know about teaching and research quality.

Read more:
International student numbers hit record highs in Canada, UK and US as falls continue in Australia and NZ

Besides media outlets, who will be looking at these rankings?

Many international students do pay attention to these rankings, it’s one way they judge the overall quality of education.

So this is another indication that competition for international students is fierce. Given international student fees have played a key role in funding much research in Australian universities, this is important.

Any change in the rankings should give us pause to think about what we might change in Australia. But we are also in the middle of a higher education reform process in Australia with the Universities Accord. The final report is due in December.

This is looking at teaching quality, research quality, research funding and international students. So, we are having a national discussion about these issues right now.

– ref. Australian universities have dropped in the latest round of global rankings – should we be worried? – https://theconversation.com/australian-universities-have-dropped-in-the-latest-round-of-global-rankings-should-we-be-worried-214555

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO

It was a rare bit of good news on climate. The International Energy Agency this week released its latest net zero roadmap, showing it was still just possible to hold global heating to 1.5℃.

In the last two years, we’ve seen major global investment in clean energy, spurred on by energy independence concerns raised by the war in Ukraine, as well as intensifying extreme weather.

Even so, it’s unlikely to actually keep us under 1.5℃, the globally agreed target to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Why? Because emissions are still rising – even as many countries make their energy grids greener.

Why is it so hard?

In part, because we’ve left our run very late. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first assessment in 1990. Since then, the world has emitted one trillion tons of carbon dioxide, which is two-thirds of the carbon budget. That is, the amount of permissible emissions that would feasibly allow us to limit global warming to 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial temperature.

At the beginning of this year, the world had just 380 billion tons of carbon dioxide left in the carbon budget. Global emissions have been about 40 billion tonnes a year over the past few years with no sign of decline. At that rate, we’ll hit 1.5℃ in about nine years, and 2℃ in 30 years.

Read more:
Renewables are cheaper than ever yet fossil fuel use is still growing – here’s why

We are not moving fast enough, on enough fronts, to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

For instance, even though the use of electric vehicles is growing fast, it’s off a low base. The world still has an estimated 1.4 billion internal combustion engine cars, which run on petrol, diesel or gas.

Emissions from all forms of transport are increasing. Fossil gas use is surging. Coal use was thought to have peaked in 2013. But it’s back at even higher levels over the past two years, as nations scramble to shore up energy supplies due to the war in Ukraine.

Clean alternatives haven’t yet replaced fossil fuels at sufficient scale. It doesn’t matter how many solar panels are installed unless they also substitute the power that fossil fuels provide. And on a global scale, that’s not happening quickly enough to prevent us hitting 1.5℃.

But the good news is we’re finally seeing something that seemed all but impossible just 10 years ago – nation after nation finally getting serious on climate change.

Renewables are so cheap they’re getting built because they make money – at the expense of old fossil fuel plants. Electric vehicles are here, and will make life better, from cutting running costs to radically improving air quality in our cities. Many nations will achieve energy independence.

We are doing rapid progress in greening the electric grid, with China building even more renewables than its goverment targets. On the streets of Shanghai and Oslo, electric vehicles are a common sight.

These trends need to spread worldwide, and fast.

Read more:
We just blew past 1.5 degrees. Game over on climate? Not yet

Economic sectors that produce large volumes of emissions, such as concrete and steel making, are difficult to decarbonise and will take longer. Likewise for the aviation and food system sectors, where emissions keep rising.

Renewables, after all, are a means to an end. The goal is to rapidly reduce the use of fossil fuels, with any unavoidable emissions captured and permanently sequestered.

Until now, the very best we’ve done is to meet the growth in global demand for energy with non-fossil fuel sources – not to actually cut emissions. To actually slash emissions means transformational change.

Why the positive forecast?

Our best climate projections, the rate we’re using our remaining carbon budget, and current climate policies in place all consistently lead us to temperatures well past 1.5℃ by the end of the century.

So why is the International Energy Agency still floating the possibility of stabilising the climate at 1.5℃?

If you read the report, it becomes clear. Achieving net zero at this late stage will mean overshooting 1.5℃ – and then using trees and negative emissions technologies at a very large scale to bring us back to that level.

This will take the creation of a whole new industry of atmospheric greenhouse gas removal and decades of effort.

So even as the world accelerates climate action, the claim that we can avoid climate change from reaching and passing 1.5℃ is out of reach.

Read more:
Global carbon emissions at record levels with no signs of shrinking, new data shows. Humanity has a monumental task ahead

What does this mean?

If humanity blows past the target of 1.5℃ and keeps warming the planet, it doesn’t mean we just give up. Every decimal of a degree avoided matters a lot.

We’re only at 1.2℃ now, and extreme weather, fire activity and other damage from climate change is coming thick and fast.

But there are clear risks in relying too much on the potential of removing large quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere while also bringing down emissions as close to zero as possible.

Overshooting 1.5℃ has another important implication. For years, climate action – cutting emissions – has been at the forefront of global efforts. But we have been too slow. Now we have to adapt to the rapidly evolving climate, with new policies, investment and preparedness.

This is not a story of unavoidable catastrophe. Climate scientists, on the whole, are optimists. All the work being done means we’re finally seeing positive change. But the numbers don’t lie. We must get those emissions down.

Read more:
EV sales growth points to oil demand peaking by 2030 − so why is the oil industry doubling down on production?

Pep Canadell receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Climate Systems Hub.

– ref. The green energy surge still isn’t enough for 1.5 degrees. We’ll have to overshoot, adapt and soak up carbon dioxide – https://theconversation.com/the-green-energy-surge-still-isnt-enough-for-1-5-degrees-well-have-to-overshoot-adapt-and-soak-up-carbon-dioxide-214463

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Russell Fewster, Lecturer in Performing Arts, University of South Australia

The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme as she navigates the patriarchal world of Victorian England. While her father and colleagues construct the Oxford English Dictionary, Esme begins to form her own dictionary – particularly the words spoken by women and the working class who have been excluded.

Along the way she is buffeted by the seismic events of the early 20th century in the suffrage movement and the first world war.

Verity Laughton’s stage adaptation of Pip Williams’ best-selling book is a wonderful work.

We are introduced to a crusty world of dedicated male lexicologists who are gathered together in the shed, or “scriptorium”, of Sir James Murray, played with erudite Scottish enunciation by Chris Pitman. They valiantly set out to construct volumes of meaning for words from the letters of the alphabet – with a hint of empire-building about the enterprise.

Read more:
Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

A brilliant innovation

Tilda Cobham-Hervey makes a standout return to the stage carrying the central character of Esme.

We first see her as an ingénue child hiding under the large desk of the eminent lexicologists. Her direct address to the audience draws us into her perspective of what is occurring around her.

As she grows, her curiosity about the world deepens while her determination to be her own person strengthens, in spite of the limited opportunities for women. Cobham-Hervey navigates this journey of discovery and identity formation with a surety of purpose and endows Esme with a passion for words and their meaning.

In a brilliant innovation from designer Jonathon Oxlade we see words handwritten and projected from a camera hidden within a lamp above the central desk. This also enables the cast to indicate the location and the passing of time at the beginning of each scene – always a challenge when moving across the many scenes a novel brings. Postcards from locations are projected on a curved back-screen that echoes the diorama and magic lantern popular at the time.

Below the screen are immense rows of pigeonholes where the slips of paper containing word meanings are filed. In a neat twist, these pigeonholes become letterboxes as Esme distributes pamphlets for the women’s movement when she is converted to the cause by the suffragette Tilda, given appropriate boldness by Angela Mahlatjie.

Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest sweeps diverse colours across the pigeonholes, also lit within, with the various hues accompanying the emotional arc of the play.

Composer Max Lyandvert adds fine and sensitive nuances to his score, which heightens the total theatre nature of the experience. A stylised version of Auld Lang Syne becomes a motif for the passing of those close to Esme, notably her father Harry, given dignity and depth by Brett Archer.

A beautiful realisation

Director Jessica Arthur handles the cast and use of video well. An inspired touch is having the ensemble move slowly behind key monologues and duologues, adding intricate detail. When Esme gives birth we see her mouth magnified by the live camera, in a close-up that amplifies the intensity of the birth.

Cobham-Hervey is supported by a fine ensemble who succinctly double up as required in Laughton’s economy of writing. Rachel Burke brings dynamism to Lizzie Lester, Esme’s “bondmaid”. Ksenja Logos doubles well between Esme’s supportive aunt and the rowdy and endearing market stallholder Mabel.

The market scene is one of the triumphs for the ensemble as it bustles with liveliness. The audience explodes with laughter as Esme discovers swear words though the indomitable Mabel.

In the quieter second half, Raj Labade brings a warmth to Gareth, Esme’s suitor. Esme must first confess her dalliance with a former lover, Bill Taylor, played by Anthony Yangoyan with rakish charm. This is brilliantly shown by the ensemble as a flashback, where Esme has to make the agonising choice between keeping her illegitimate child, with the social consequences of the time, or giving her child away, with the accompanying grief that would follow.

As with Williams’ book, the play ends with an abrupt shift to 1989 and to Esme’s long-lost daughter who begins a speech with the Kaurna welcome “Niina marni”.

Williams’ intention is to highlight that the struggle for inclusivity continues, in particular for Indigenous languages. However, having spent so long with Esme, this feels like a rupture within the narrative – which indeed may be the purpose.

“Realised” might be defined as to give shape to an artform. This is a very clever realisation of Williams’ novel for the stage and gives great power to key moments of this epic story.

The Dictionary of Lost Words is at the State Theatre Company of South Australia until October 14, then at the Sydney Theatre Company from October 26 to December 16.

Read more:
Pip Williams shows how World War I transformed women’s lives, in a new novel that captures the ‘poetic materiality’ of books

Russell Fewster has worked with State Theatre Company of South Australia in co-ordinating the second year course State Theatre Masterclass at the University of South Australia.

– ref. A journey of discovery and identity formation: The Dictionary of Lost Words makes its wonderful stage debut – https://theconversation.com/a-journey-of-discovery-and-identity-formation-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-makes-its-wonderful-stage-debut-214552

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney

Accounting and consulting group PwC has been front page news ever since its chief executive Tim Seymour stepped down “effectively immediately” in May, when the firm said it had “betrayed the trust” of Australians and promised an independent review of its governance, accountability and culture.

That review, conducted by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, was published on Wednesday, along with an assurance from the firm that it would implement the recommendations.

Released with the review was a separate Statement of Facts prepared by PwC. This set out how it had provided advice to clients based on confidential government information about tax policy, which had been provided to one of its partners on the condition it be kept confidential.

‘Untouchables’ and ‘troublesome practice matters’

Switkowski found PwC Australia’s culture and governance practices were so weak they led to “integrity failures”.

It was an organisation that prized revenues and growth over ethics, values and purpose, with a “whatever it takes” culture that made “heroes” out of partners who raked in the most money.

If you were at the top, you were called a “rainmaker”. The biggest rainmakers who brought in the most money were referred to as “untouchables”, to whom “the rules
don’t always apply”.

Switkowski found the culture was “collegial” in the sense that dissent wasn’t welcome.

While good news was shared among partners, difficult news was kept quiet and referred to internally as “troublesome practice matters”, or TPMs. Legal updates about TPMs were “generally verbal”.

Read more:
More than reputation at stake: PwC faces penalties, including jail time

The chief executive, elected by partners in a “presidential-style campaign”, was “not perceived to be accountable to the board”.

Among Switkowski’s most important recommendations were that PwC Australia be run like a public company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange – with a board that included independent directors and had the power to hire and fire the chief executive.

PwC Australia has agreed to this, and all 23 recommendations.

Problems far from over

As damning as the report is, Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill – who is chairing the Senate inquiry into the management and integrity of consulting services – says it “merely scratched the surface” of what was going on both at PwC.

Her committee has until November to report.

Back in May, the Australian Treasury asked the Australian Federal Police to consider commencing a criminal investigation into PwC’s improper use of confidential Commonwealth information.

And in July, Greens Senator Barbara Pocock formally referred PwC’s conduct to the new National Anti-Corruption Commission.

This all spells more trouble ahead for PwC, and perhaps for the Australian consulting industry more generally.

More than one bad apple?

Although sparked by the revelations about PwC Australia, Senator O’Neil’s committee is inquiring into the behaviour of all of Australia’s consultancy groups.

It has taken evidence from Deloitte, EY, KPMG, McKinsey and The Boston Consulting Group.

New research by Roy Morgan suggests the bad image of corporations spreads beyond the consultants.

Asked about distrust or distrust of any brand in Australia in June, the result was an all-time high for distrust.

Roy Morgan identified the PwC tax scandal and the data breaches at Optus and Medibank among recent events accelerating distrust.

It also identified:

the Harvey Norman JobKeeper scandal, Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge, Qantas’ refusal to pay back any of the $2.7 billion in COVID government handouts and the class action by hundreds of thousands of customers fuelled by the airline’s unwillingness to refund $2 billion in cancelled flights

A record number of those surveyed identified “too motivated by profit” as a reason for their distrust.

This makes it reasonable to ask whether a culture of ruthless profiteering has infiltrated Australian corporate cultures across the board.

After the consultants have been dealt with, there is a case for royal commission into whether Australia’s entire corporate sector is meeting its responsibilities.

PwC has helped open the door.

Read more:
My 3-point plan to untangle the public service from consultants such as PwC

Carl Rhodes 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. Beyond the PwC scandal, there’s a growing case for a royal commission into Australia’s ruthless corporate greed – https://theconversation.com/beyond-the-pwc-scandal-theres-a-growing-case-for-a-royal-commission-into-australias-ruthless-corporate-greed-214474

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nikki-Anne Wilson, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), UNSW Sydney

Our ability to adapt our behaviour to changes in temperature takes a significant amount of thought and decision making. For example, we need to identify suitable clothing, increase our fluid intake, and understand how to best keep the house cool.

A person with dementia may find some or all these things challenging. These and other factors mean, for someone with dementia, extreme heat can be deadly.

But as the temperature rises, friends, relatives and carers can help.

Read more:
5 reasons to check on your elderly neighbour during a heatwave

El Niño means there are challenges ahead

The recent declaration of another El Niño means we need to think about how we can best support those more vulnerable to be safe during the warmer months.

Extreme heat and bushfires bring unique challenges for someone with dementia.

Bushfires have a significant impact on older people’s mental health. But they generally bounce back quickly.

However, for someone with dementia, extreme heat can lead to a significant deterioration in their overall health and they may not recover.

Emergency evacuations can also be confusing and distressing for a person with dementia, so it is important to think ahead.

Read more:
Worried about heat and fire this summer? Here’s how to prepare

Why are people with dementia more at risk?

Dementia can affect the parts of the brain that help regulate our body temperature. Some medications can also increase someone’s sensitivity to heat.

Problems with memory and thinking associated with dementia means remembering to drink or communicating you are thirsty can be challenging.

Heat can affect everyone’s mood. But if someone with dementia becomes dehydrated this can increase confusion and agitation, making it harder for them to know how to cool down.

A person with dementia can also wander and become lost, which can be dangerous in extreme heat.

Read more:
Is my medicine making me feel hotter this summer? 5 reasons why

4 ways to support someone with dementia

1. Avoid dehydration and heatstroke

Try to avoid dehydration by encouraging someone to drink throughout the day. It’s better to have small amounts of liquid regularly instead of a large amount all at once. Little and often will help maximise hydration while avoiding sudden trips to the bathroom.

Try to offer different types of drinks, or ice blocks. Placing drinks in sight can help as a reminder to drink. Choose foods with a high liquid content, such as fruit, salads, cool broths and yoghurt.

Look out for signs of heatstroke, such as increased confusion beyond what the person would usually experience. Heatstroke may be more difficult to spot in someone living with dementia so it is important to check in when possible and to help them cool down if needed.

Read more:
Health Check: how do I tell if I’m dehydrated?

2. Cool the home

Try to modify their home to make it easier to stay cool. Some air-conditioners have complex settings so make sure the temperature is set appropriately and the person with dementia knows how to use the controls.

It is important to keep blinds and curtains shut where possible to reduce heat. However, ensure the lighting is adequate to avoid falls.

Try to support the person to make suitable clothing choices for the season by having cool, lightweight options easily available.

Read more:
What is delirium?

3. Think about communications early

If someone with dementia lives alone, consider how you will maintain contact in an emergency.

Some people may not realise many landlines don’t work in a power outage, and of course, mobile phones can’t be recharged. Ensure the person with dementia has access to an uninterruptable power supply. This can help maintain communication for a few hours in a blackout.

Read more:
Why people with dementia don’t all behave the same

4. Have an evacuation plan

In case of fire, flash flooding or severe storm, have an evacuation plan. If the person with dementia attends a day or respite centre, know their plan too.

The situation can change quickly in an emergency, and this can be particularly overwhelming for people with cognitive issues.

Understand that someone with dementia may become distressed when their routine is disrupted. So be prepared with some simple activities or comfort items, current medications, and any specific medical information.

Stay up-to-date with current warnings and act early whenever possible.

Read more:
Floods and other emergencies can be extra tough for people with dementia and their carers. Here’s how to help

We can all help

It’s not just carers of people with dementia who can help. We can all ensure people with dementia stay safe and cool this spring and summer.

So remember to check in on your relatives, friends and neighbours or arrange for someone to do so on your behalf.

Nikki-Anne Wilson receives funding from the Australian Association of Gerontology and the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute.

– ref. 4 ways to support someone with dementia during extreme heat – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-support-someone-with-dementia-during-extreme-heat-213987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Karoly, Professor emeritus, The University of Melbourne

From Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef in the North, to the Snowy Mountains in the Southeast, and jarrah and marri forests in the Southwest, Australia is home to incredibly diverse ecosystems. Many of our plants, animals, birds and fish are found nowhere else in the world.

Our First Nations people protected these living wonders through their holistic approach to managing the land and caring for Country for more than 65,000 years. But the European settlers took a different approach and the land suffered.

Federal laws made in 1999 to better protect the environment are failing. Climate change is not explicitly mentioned in the legislation. These shortcomings have prompted a volunteer environment group to mount a legal challenge against federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek “to protect our living wonders from coal and gas”. The matter is currently before the courts.

This week’s new report from the Climate Council Australia (which I was an expert reviewer on) explains the problem with our environment law and charts a way forward.

The fundamental flaw in our national environmental law must be urgently addressed if we are to have any hope of protecting our wildlife and habitat into the future.

Read more:
Times have changed: why the environment minister is being forced to reconsider climate-related impacts of pending fossil fuel approvals

Australia’s national environmental law

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) should be designed to keep our living wonders safe from harm.

The primary objective of the EPBC Act is to:

provide for the protection of the environment, especially those aspects of the environment that are matters of national environmental significance.

But it’s clear the environment is deteriorating. The EPBC Act requires a comprehensive assessment of Australia’s environment every five years. The latest assessment, published in 2022, found the state of Australia’s environment is poor and getting worse.

Read more:
This is Australia’s most important report on the environment’s deteriorating health. We present its grim findings

Climate change was identified in that assessment as one of the greatest threats to all aspects of the Australian natural environment. Climate change is a compounding factor that increases the impacts of other pressures on our environment, such as land clearing, invasive species, pollution and resource extraction.

However, climate change is not considered directly in the EPBC Act as one of the factors affecting matters of national environmental significance.

According to the Climate Council report, since 1999, 740 new projects to extract coal, oil and gas have been approved or passed, with 555 of them not having undergone detailed environmental assessment. Burning these fossil fuels increases greenhouse gas emissions and makes climate change worse.

In 2020, a scathing independent review of the EPBC Act led by former competition watchdog chair Graeme Samuel found the act is ineffective, outdated and needs comprehensive reform.

Read more:
Our laws fail nature. The government’s plan to overhaul them looks good, but crucial detail is yet to come

Climate risks to Australia

In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most recent comprehensive global assessment of climate change risks.

The special fact sheet about climate impacts on natural and human systems in Australia and New Zealand provides a helpful summary of that assessment.

It lists nine key risks in Australia associated with climate change. Of these, the top five risks for our living wonders are:

• “loss and degradation of coral reefs and associated biodiversity and ecosystem service values [what they are worth] in Australia due to ocean warming and marine heatwaves

• loss of alpine biodiversity in Australia due to less snow

• loss of natural and human systems in low-lying coastal areas due to sea level rise

• increase in heat-related mortality and morbidity for people and wildlife in Australia due to heatwaves

• inability of institutions and governance systems to manage climate risk”.

That last one is particularly relevant to the EPBC Act.

A legal challenge is underway

To test the climate blindspot in the EPBC Act, the Environment Council of Central Queensland submitted 19 reconsideration requests to Plibersek in July 2022.

The minister was asked to reconsider the previous evaluation of 19 coal and fossil gas extraction projects under the former government, because they did not take into account potential harms on Australia’s living wonders.

Read more:
Times have changed: why the environment minister is being forced to reconsider climate-related impacts of pending fossil fuel approvals

The environment council provided the minister with thousands of state and federal government reports listing the impacts of climate change on several thousand matters of environmental significance.

In November 2022, the minister accepted 18 reconsideration requests as valid. However, in May 2023, the minister decided not to change the climate risk assessments by the previous government for three of the projects she was asked to reconsider. In Plibersek’s official responses she determined that based on the new information provided to her in the reconsideration requests, it wasn’t possible to say the proposals would be a “substantial cause of the stated physical effects of climate change” on a matter of national environmental significance.

The matter is now in the Federal Court. Last week, the environment council challenged Plibersek’s rejection to reconsider two of the three coal mine expansion projects, both in New South Wales. A decision from the judge on this case is pending and should be provided in the next few months. A spokesperson for the minister has advised the media they would not comment “as this is a legal matter”.

Protecting our living wonders means fixing Australia’s environment law

We need to fix Australia’s national environment law, making sure it contains an explicit objective to prevent actions that accelerate climate change. We need a national environment law that genuinely protects our environment by stopping highly polluting projects and enabling ones that can help us rapidly switch to a clean economy instead.

Every fraction of a degree of avoided warming matters for preserving our environment. Every decision made under our national environment law can either help or hinder the urgent task to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more:
Australia’s environment law doesn’t protect the environment – an alarming message from the recent duty-quashing climate case

David Karoly is a Councillor on the Climate Council Australia.
He provided an expert report in support of the initial reconsideration request made by the Environment Council of Central Queensland to the Minister for the Environment.
David is also a Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

– ref. We should use Australia’s environment laws to protect our ‘living wonders’ from new coal and gas projects – https://theconversation.com/we-should-use-australias-environment-laws-to-protect-our-living-wonders-from-new-coal-and-gas-projects-214211