Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Martin, Animal Ecology Lab, Western Sydney University

Bloody hell! That cockatoo just opened my bin, and it’s eating my leftover pizza. We can’t have that, I’ll put a rock on the lid to stop it opening the bin. Problem solved…?

And so began an arms race in the suburbs of southern Sydney: humans trying to deter sulphur-crested cockatoos from opening kerb-side bins, and cockatoos overcoming their deterrents to feast on our food waste.

The ability to open kerb-side bins is unique to cockatoos of southern Sydney, but this behaviour appears to be spreading. Last year, we published research revealing that this behaviour is a stunning display of “social learning”, as birds learn the bin-opening technique by observing its neighbour.

This had global significance – it meant we can add parrots to the list of animals capable of foraging culture, which also includes chimpanzees, humpback whales and New Caledonian crows.

Our new research, published today, documents 50 bin-protection methods. It provides another example of a global issue of human-wildlife conflict – indeed, it is rare to document a behavioural change of a species in response to the actions of another.

Cockatoos make a mess

While cockatoos opening bins is fascinating, it can also create a mess. The birds search through the rubbish to find food, occasionally throwing out items in the way. Needless to say, coming home to find your rubbish spread on the ground in front of your house is not appreciated.

Some people are also concerned that the food being eaten isn’t healthy for the cockies, such as pizza, bread or chicken.

This arms race is a unique story, as we show it not only involves social learning by cockatoos, but also by humans in response.

Read more:
Clever cockatoos in southern Sydney have learned to open kerb-side bins — and it has global significance

Through our community survey, participants reported how and when they protected their bins from cockatoos, that they changed their bin protection in response to the cockies solving a method, and that they learnt new protection methods from their neighbours.

Our research shows people have escalated their methods to deter cockatoos from opening bins over time, as cockies overcame their efforts. These appear to prevent or hamper cockatoos from opening the bin lid (at least for now), while allowing it to be emptied when the bin is inverted by the garbage truck.

From rubber snakes to custom locks

Our research made observations about the many innovative ways to stop cockatoos opening bins, but we plan to assess the success of different methods in more detail in the future.

We’ll start with the quick and easy method of placing a brick, wood, metal or bottle filled with water on top of the bin lid, making it too heavy for a cockatoo to lift. If the object is heavy enough, then it should work.

If it isn’t, a cockatoo can push it off, open the lid and have a feed, as the video below shows.

A more sophisticated solution is to bolt wood, metal or brick to the lid, or strapping the bottles to the top or underside of the lid. This method permanently makes the lid too heavy and appears to be an effective deterrent.

Another popular method is preventing the bin lid from flipping open via rope, bungee cord, metal spring, or a stick placed through the handle or hinge. These methods had only varying success.

Attaching a custom designed lock was also popular and, if working properly, appears to deter cockies. These locks allow the bin to open when tipped upside down by the garbage truck.

Some people placed metal or plastic spikes around the rim to prevent the birds landing, or they installed barriers to stop a bird getting their beak under the bin lid. These methods appeared to work.

Methods with poor outcomes include modifying the bin lid to deter the birds from landing or walking by making them uncomfortable, such as with netting. And aiming to scare the birds away by attaching a rubber snake is an interesting method but not a popular one, so perhaps it isn’t effective.

Still, the race continues, both in the suburbs where we’ve studied this novel behaviour and in new suburbs as this fast-food foraging behaviour spreads to neighbouring suburbs and, with time, beyond.

An example of human-wildlife conflict

We categorise cockatoo bin-opening as a “human-wildlife conflict”. Such conflicts are common, from possums in a household roof, to the official bin-chicken (the Australian white ibis) scavenging a free feed, to flying-foxes roosting in urban areas or foraging in orchards.

Conflicts can result from noise, smell, poo, damage to crops, gardens, or buildings, or threatening people, stock or pets.

Globally, human-wildlife conflict is common and diverse – think lions eating cattle, monkeys stealing tourists’ cameras, pigeons pooing and nesting in cities, seals sleeping on boats, sharks biting people, ducks eating crops, and snakes sharing homes.

Our attempts to deal with such conflicts can have tragic results for wildlife. One extreme example is shark nets, which kills sharks yet don’t prevent them from accessing the beach. They also kill or entangle non-target – and sometimes threatened – species, such as turtles, dolphins, grey-nurse sharks and whales.

We should learn to live alongside wildlife instead, especially as “conflict species” may be under threat, such as the grey-headed flying-foxes (an important pollinator) or great white sharks (an important predator).

In many instances of human-wildlife conflict, public education goes a long way to reducing conflict. Understanding wildlife behaviour and appreciating the fascinating features of native species often favourably shifts community attitudes – we can grow to love them, not fight them.

So whether it’s finding new and harmless ways to protect your bin from hungry cockatoos, or having shark-smart behaviour, there are positive actions we can take if we are informed.

To help our ongoing research, please take the 2022 Bin-Opening Survey and report if you “have” or “have not” seen cockatoos opening bins.

The authors gratefully thank the contributions of the survey participants and research volunteers; we acknowledge our co-authors of this research: Barbara, Lucy, Damien, and Richard.

John Martin receives funding from the ARC.

– ref. An arms race over food waste: Sydney cockatoos are still opening kerb-side bins, despite our best efforts to stop them – https://theconversation.com/an-arms-race-over-food-waste-sydney-cockatoos-are-still-opening-kerb-side-bins-despite-our-best-efforts-to-stop-them-189969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Scully, Associate Professor of Modern European History, University of New England

It sounds very familiar – a well-respected monarch dies, and a radical, left-leaning, Antipodean cartoonist struggles to find the right tone to commemorate the event.

He is torn between his distaste for what he sees as the archaic, pre-modern institution of monarchy, and the undoubted personal quality of the late incumbent.

More used to poking fun at the great and good, or attacking governments for their weak-willed or wrong-headed policies, changing tone to reverence and respect is difficult.

But in the end, he manages to strike a very good balance and produce a memorable cartoon.

The well-respected monarch was George VI; the radical, left-leaning, Antipodean cartoonist was David Low; and the year was 1952. With From One Man to Another, Low not only conveyed his own respects, man-to-man, but imagined also the British workman, his hat in his hand and sleeves rolled-up, casting a humble bunch of flowers towards a mighty tombstone labelled “The Gentlest of the Georges”.

This was an expression of democratic – even socialist – sensibility, in an age when monarchy seemed, to many, to be increasingly out-of-step with the advance of modernity and the inexorable march of post-war history.

Low was compelled to look back, not forward, conscious he had an historic role to fulfil in commemorating the passing of the king who had embodied so much of the stolid, British pluck and humility during the second world war.

He reflected in his 1956 autobiography that he hated the old-fashioned, “The Nation Mourns”-style of Victorian cartoon, but it was to that set of images and traditions that he turned.

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A long lineage

Cartoonists have had to do something similar in 2022, with the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the United Kingdom, the likes of Peter Brookes, Ben Jennings and Christian Adams have all been conscious of the need for solemnity, as well as celebration.

Across the world, cartoonists have had to struggle with much the same thing, and some favoured themes are already apparent: Elizabeth reunited with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, or troops of sad corgis; the Union Flag with an Elizabeth II-shaped hole at the centre; or a tube train with a sole occupant heading into a blaze of light at the end of the tunnel.

All of these images speak to the style and the visual language of today, but also share a lineage several centuries old.

Read more:
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A bereaved widow, again

Nobody would have thought to depict Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 with her travelling to heaven by tube, although the Underground seems emblematic of her age (London’s first underground railway was opened in January 1863, 26 years into Victoria’s reign).

There were no sad corgis (that breed only became associated with the Royal Family from the 1930s), but a downcast British Lion was imagined by Francis Carruthers Gould in Fun.

The theme of a bereaved widow finally reunited with her spouse is clearly a parallel (Albert, the Prince Consort had died in 1861). So too is the very idea that a cartoonist should commemorate the event – something unthinkable when William IV died in 1837, or so much so when George IV died in 1830 that a well-known cartoonist never published his draft sketch.

The sheer immensity of the loss of Victoria called for some pretty special treatment, at a time when cartooning was a lot more formal and respectable than it is today.

It preoccupied several days’ work for Linley Sambourne, chief cartoonist of London’s Punch (for a while, a magazine that was almost as much a British institution as the monarchy).

Requiescat was huge: a double-page spread in sombre black-and-white, depicting a gaggle of goddesses in mourning for their lost monarch.

Allegorical female figures representing countries were all the rage in Victorian and Edwardian cartooning (something David Low also hated and thought was “moth-eaten” by the time he was at his peak).

England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India were all included by Sambourne.

Just one goddess was enough for his junior colleague, Bernard Partridge, who imagined Clio – History herself – adding the name of Victoria to the roll of great monarchs.

It was the same when Victoria’s son and heir, Edward VII, died in May, 1910.

Bernard Partridge went with just two figures, rather than a whole host, imagining a weeping Britannia seated before the empty Coronation Chair, an angel of peace reaching out to touch her shoulder.

This was designed to express “an empire’s grief” in terms even more explicit than Sambourne had done with Victoria, but the imagery was very British; even domestic.

Minus the caption, it could almost be recycled in 2022 – crucially, the monarch does not actually appear. So too, Partridge’s offering in January 1936, when George V died (apparently by the hand of his doctor).

Britannia tolling a bell from a medieval bell-tower, with a fog-laden London skyline in the background. Clear the fog, add a Gherkin and a Shard, and the effect would be much the same.

While David Low struggled against the Victorian style of memorial cartoon, it is still very much with us. As so often, cartoons can encapsulate a whole host of feelings that mere words can’t express.

Richard Scully receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Political Cartoon Society, the Cartoon Museum (London), and the Australian Cartoonists’ Association.

– ref. Solemnity and celebration: how political cartoonists have handled the death of a monarch, from Victoria to Elizabeth II – https://theconversation.com/solemnity-and-celebration-how-political-cartoonists-have-handled-the-death-of-a-monarch-from-victoria-to-elizabeth-ii-190338

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jordan Peter Anthony Pitt, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Adelaide

One of the harshest and most dynamic regions on Earth is the marginal ice zone – the place where ocean waves meet sea ice, which is formed by freezing of the ocean’s surface.

Published today, a themed issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A reviews the rapid progress researchers have made over the past decade in understanding and modelling this challenging environment.

This research is vital for us to better understand the complex interactions of Earth’s climate systems. That’s because the marginal ice zone plays a role in the seasonal freezing and thawing of the oceans.

A harsh place to study

In the Arctic and Antarctic, surface ocean temperatures are persistently below -2℃ – cold enough to freeze, forming a layer of sea ice.

At the highest latitudes closer to the poles, sea ice forms a solid, several-metre-thick lid on the ocean that reflects the Sun’s rays, cooling the region and driving cool water around the oceans. This makes sea ice a key component of the climate system.

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But at lower latitudes, as the ice-covered ocean transitions to the open ocean, sea ice forms into smaller, much more mobile chunks called “floes” that are separated by water or a slurry of ice crystals.

This marginal ice zone interacts with the atmosphere above and ocean below in a very different way to ice cover closer to the poles.

It’s a challenging environment for scientists to work in, with a voyage into the marginal ice zone around Antarctica in 2017 experiencing winds over 90km/h and waves over 6.5m high.
It is also difficult to observe remotely because the floes are smaller than what most satellites can see.

Crushed by waves

The marginal ice zone also interacts with the open ocean via surface waves, which travel from the open waters into the zone, impacting the ice. The waves can have a destructive effect on the ice cover, by breaking up large floes and leaving them more susceptible to melt during summer.

By contrast, during winter, waves can promote the formation of “pancake” floes, so called because they are thin disks of sea ice (you can see them in the image above).

But wave energy itself is lost during interactions with floes, so that waves gradually become weaker as they travel deeper into the marginal ice zone. This produces wave–ice feedback mechanisms driving sea ice evolution in a changing climate.

For example, a trend for warmer temperatures will weaken the ice cover, allowing waves to travel deeper into ice-covered oceans and cause more breakup, which further weakens the ice cover – and so on.

Scientists studying marginal ice zone dynamics aim to improve our understanding of the zone’s role in the dramatic and often perplexing changes the world’s sea ice is undergoing in response to climate change.

For instance, in the Arctic Ocean, sea ice cover has “has dropped by roughly half since the 1980s”. In the Antarctic, the sea ice cover has recently had both one of its largest and smallest recorded extents, with the marginal ice zone being one source of year-to-year variability.

Our progress in better understanding these harsh regions has revolved around large international research programs, run by the United States’ Office of Naval Research and others. These programs involve earth scientists, geophysicists, oceanographers, engineers and even applied mathematicians (like us).

Recent efforts have produced innovative observation techniques, such as a method to 3D-image wave and floe dynamics in the marginal ice zone from onboard an icebreaker and capture waves-in-ice from satellite images.

They have also resulted in new models capable of simulating the interaction of waves and ice from the level of individual floes to the overall behaviour of entire oceans. The advances have motivated an Australian led multi-month experiment in the Antarctic marginal ice zone, on the new $500M icebreaker RSV Nuyina, which is expected next year.

The marginal ice zone will be an increasingly important component of the world’s sea ice cover in the future, as temperatures rise and waves become more extreme.

Despite the rapid progress, there is still some way to go before the understanding of feedback processes in the marginal ice zone translates into improved climate predictions used by, for example, the International Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports.

Including the marginal ice zone in climate models has been described as the “holy grail” for the field by one of its leading figures, and the theme issue points to closer ties with the broader climate community as the next major direction for the field.

Read more:
Ice shelves hold back Antarctica’s glaciers from adding to sea levels – but they’re crumbling

Jordan Peter Anthony Pitt receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Luke Bennetts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Antarctic Science Program.

– ref. Scientists are divining the future of Earth’s ice-covered oceans at their harsh fringes – https://theconversation.com/scientists-are-divining-the-future-of-earths-ice-covered-oceans-at-their-harsh-fringes-189393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oliver Eklund, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology

Ads are coming to Netflix, perhaps even sooner than anticipated.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Netflix has moved up the launch of their ad-supported subscription tier to November. The Sydney Morning Herald, meanwhile, is reporting that Australia is amongst the first countries likely to experience ads on Netflix later this year.

Netflix first announced they would introduce a new, lower-priced, subscription tier to be supported by advertising in April. This was an about-face from a company that had built an advertising free, on-demand television empire. Indeed, it was only in 2020 that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings ruled out advertising on the platform, saying “you know, advertising looks easy until you get in it.”

The change of heart followed Netflix’s 2022 first quarter earnings report which saw a subscriber loss for the first time in over a decade. The addition of ads to the platform is a clear sign of the emerging period of experimentation across the streaming landscape.

Read more:
In a market swamped with streaming services, Netflix’s massive loss of subscribers is a big deal

How will it work?

It’s important to note that not every Netflix subscription tier will carry advertising. The current plan is there will be one newly introduced and cheaper subscription tier supported by advertising, targeting in the US market around USD $7-9 a month as the price point. This will represent a discount from the current cheapest plan of US $9.99 (AUD $10.99) a month. These prices will be adapted to the different currency markets Netflix operate across and the existing price points in those markets.

By bringing a hybrid advertising/subscription tier, Netflix is adopting a business model already present on other streamers like Hulu. Netflix is keeping this a hybrid tier, meaning while the new tier will be cheaper, it will not be free, like ad-supported streaming available on Peacock.

Advertising presents complex new technological and business challenges for Netflix, which has not worked in this market before. To enter this new market, Netflix announced advertising would be delivered through a partnership with Microsoft.

Partnering with Microsoft allayed some fears around Netflix entering a new media market and gives Netflix access to Microsoft’s extensive advertising delivery infrastructure.

Netflix has announced that original movie programming may stay free of ads for a limited period upon release, and that both original and some licensed childrens’ content will remain free of ads.

As well as staying away from children’s advertising, which in Australia is highly regulated by government and industry codes, Netflix is also avoiding any advertising buyers in cryptocurrency, political advertising, and gambling.

Advertising will run around 4 minutes per hour of content – for context Australian commercial free-to-air TV networks are limited on their primary channels to 13 minutes per hour and 15 minutes per hour on multi-channels between 6am and midnight.

Netflix will also have limits on the number of times a single ad can appear for a user and there is expectation that ads for movie content will be delivered in a pre-roll format, not interrupting the feature.

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Advertising in the streaming sector

Netflix is not the only subscription service to announce advertising as part of new pricing strategies. Earlier this year Disney announced a highly successful quarter from a subscriber uptake perspective, growing by 15 million subscribers, however streaming-induced losses were $300 million greater than estimated.

Disney also announced that an ad-supported Disney+ subscription option will become available in December. The Wall Street Journal reported that the December timeline given by Disney is what drove Netflix to bring forward their ad plans.

TV consumers are historically well accustomed to advertising in television – in Australia, commercial free-to-air networks Seven, Nine, and Ten carry advertising, public broadcaster SBS carries a limited amount of advertising, and even pay-TV provider Foxtel is supported by both subscription fees and advertising. Advertising itself is not new to audiences, but it has not been present on a number of premium streaming platforms like Netflix before.

Streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ are seeking ways to both reach new audiences and to maximise their revenues from each user. There is a belief amongst top executives that providing a cheaper ad-supported tier will tap into the market of audiences who both do not mind advertising and see current subscription prices as too high.

There is also evidence from other streaming platforms, such as Hulu and Discovery+, that have offered ad-supported subscription tiers, that these tiers can generate greater average revenue per user (ARPU) than higher priced subscription-only tiers.

The ARPU is a metric used in the streaming industry that looks at how much money a company makes from each subscriber after deducting business costs. Having higher revenues from a subscriber can be driven by increasing subscription prices, driving subscribers to more expensive subscription tiers, reducing business costs, or by adding additional revenue streams like advertising.

In 2021, Discovery CEO David Zaslav noted that Discovery+ was generating more revenue per subscriber from their cheaper ad-supported tier than their more expensive subscription-only tier thanks to the advertising revenue. Zaslav commented that advertisers were keen to reach an audience that was largely not accessible through other television means.

With this in mind, Netflix and Disney are betting that their ad-supported tiers can perform similarly and increase the revenue they can generate per subscriber.

Experimentation across the streaming sector

Experimentation around established business strategies is ruling the current streaming landscape.

HBO Max, under newly merged corporate parent Warner Bros. Discovery, is now switching to licensing content in select markets rather than streaming on its own platform. With the airing of The Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime Video is discovering whether its experiment with the most expensive television production ever at US $715 million (AUD $1.05 billion) will pay off with audiences.

Read more:
The new Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power, is set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth – here’s what that means

There is experimentation across the streaming industry in licensing strategies, spectacle television, pricing models and beyond. The results of this experimentation will take time. But what the arrival of advertising on Netflix signals is that established strategy no longer rules the streaming landscape.

Oliver Eklund owns shares in Apple, Disney, and Netflix.

– ref. Ads are coming to Netflix soon – here’s what we can expect and what that means for the streaming industry – https://theconversation.com/ads-are-coming-to-netflix-soon-heres-what-we-can-expect-and-what-that-means-for-the-streaming-industry-190236

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Hardman, Professional Researcher, Electric Vehicle Research Center, University of California, Davis

Among the many similarities between California and Australia, both are impacted by bushfires and climate change, and both are home to larger cars and trucks than is the norm in developed countries. They are dissimilar, though, when it comes to electric vehicles and vehicle regulations. While California has been pursuing low-carbon and electric vehicles for decades, Australia has trailed most developed nations.

Plug-in electric vehicles accounted for 16% of new light-duty vehicle sales in California in the first half of 2022. In Australia, electric vehicle sales are only 2% of the market, and mostly from one carmaker, Tesla.

Australia, a country with no vehicle fuel economy or CO₂ emissions regulations, is debating how to move forward. The local auto industry suggests Australia needs a slow transition to electric vehicles and should lag the United States, Europe, China and neighbouring New Zealand. Compared to proposed European vehicle emission standards of 43 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre in 2030, the local industry proposes 98-143g CO₂/km (for light cars and SUVs).

Read more:
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The proposed Australian target would result in a slow transition, which new research suggests will have little or no effect on the transport sector’s CO₂ emissions.

The rationale for a slow transition is the same as was heard for decades in California: electric vehicle prices are too high, there isn’t enough infrastructure to support these vehicles, their driving ranges are too short, and certain models aren’t available (electric utes, for example).

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The surprising history of how electric vehicles have played the long game and won

These concerns have some validity, but are largely out of date. Australia in 2022 faces a very different situation from California when it started down the electric vehicle path.

Let’s deal with why each of these four concerns might now be overstated.

1. Limited range

Drivers in both Australia and California travel similar distances per year. In both regions, most trips are well within electric vehicle range.

Further, in both regions most households own two vehicles. This means buyers can, if needed, use another vehicle for longer trips.

Electric vehicle range has also improved: the average range of available electric vehicles in 2013 when electric vehicle sales in California reached Australia’s current level of 2% was 179 kilometres (111 miles). Now, it’s 443 kilometres.

2. Lack of charging infrastructure

In California and other markets like Norway, most early electric vehicle buyers charge at home on their driveway or in a garage. In Australia even more people live in a detached house than in California. Drivers in these households could charge their vehicle at home, which reduces the need for public charging stations.

Public charging may be needed to support occasional charging, to enable longer journeys and to support the smaller proportion of households without home charging. But public infrastructure is not a prerequisite for early market growth.

Australia already has as many charging stations per person as California had in 2016. In fact, Australia might be only a few years behind.

3. High prices

In Australia the average new car is AU$40,729 (US$28,000). Electric vehicles with ranges of around 400km could be made available at that price.

For example, the 2023 Chevrolet Bolt starts at US$25,600 (AU$37,000) in the US. And until 2020 the Renault ZOE was sold in Australia for AU$37,400. Both models have a range of about 400km.

Consumers have also been shown to be willing to pay more for an electric vehicle compared to a conventional vehicle. This might be partly due to the savings on fuel and maintenance costs.

Read more:
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4. Lack of models

In 2022, 316 electric and 162 plug-in hybrid models are on sale globally. These models include SUVs, utes and pick-up trucks.

The lack of choice and of lower-cost electric vehicles in Australia is because carmakers prefer to send these models to markets with supportive electric vehicle policies . Making these models available in Australia may be as simple as giving carmakers the motivation to sell them there.

Australia may be well positioned for a rapid transition to electric vehicles if it adopts more supportive policies. If Australia brings in policies such as ambitious fuel-economy standards or a zero-emission-vehicle sales mandate, the country could benefit in the same ways as California did.

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All that’s needed now is supportive policy

Supportive policies like these help set the stage for the early electric vehicle market to grow. They do this by:

• giving carmakers the confidence to develop and supply electric vehicles at multiple price points, in multiple body styles and with long driving ranges

• giving providers confidence to roll out charging infrastructure

• giving consumers the supply of electric vehicles they are waiting for.

An electric vehicle mandate can also protect consumers from supply ebbs and flows that are common in import-only markets.

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Other nations have been down this road

Australia is not the first nation to grapple with these challenges. South Korea, despite being a global producer of electric vehicles, was experiencing slow domestic market growth. Many Korean electric vehicles were exported to regions with policies more friendly to the technology.

The government responded with policies to support electric vehicles. Since then, domestic sales have tripled. South Korea is now the seventh-largest electric vehicle market in the world, up from 11th in 2019.

And as federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen noted at the EV Summit last month, with the right policy settings, Sweden increased its proportion of electric vehicle sales from 18% to 62% in just two years.

Similar approaches could yield similar results for Australia. While some nations may need a slower transition for a variety of reasons, Australia need not be one of them. Concerns about range, infrastructure and model availability can be readily overcome.

The country is well placed for early market growth. All states already offer incentives for electric vehicle buyers, including rebates, registration discounts and road tax exemptions.

All that may be needed is for the federal government to adopt policies that support electric vehicles. Based on the remarkable improvements in the technology and what has been learned in California and elsewhere, Australia is well placed for rapid market growth.

Scott Hardman receives funding from the California Air Resources Board, the California Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and CliamteWorks Foundation.

Daniel Sperling has a seat on the California Air Resources Board. The institutes he directs receive funding from foundations, automotive and energy companies, and local, state and national governments.

Gil Tal directs the Electric Vehicle Research Center, which receives funding from foundations, automakers, energy companies, and state and national policymakers.

– ref. Australia is failing on electric vehicles. California shows it’s possible to pick up the pace – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-failing-on-electric-vehicles-california-shows-its-possible-to-pick-up-the-pace-189871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jess Carniel, Senior Lecturer in Humanities, University of Southern Queensland

On September 8 2022, King Charles III ascended to the throne. Like his mother Queen Elizabeth II before him, he has opted to keep his own name as his regnal name.

Traditionally, monarchs may choose their own regnal name, which can be different to the name they otherwise use. For example, Charles’s grandfather Albert became George VI (who reigned from 1936 to 1952). This strengthened the connection of his reign to that of his father George V (1910-36) after the abdication of his older brother, Edward VIII (Jan-Dec 1936). Although Edward was his first name, his family called him by the last of his given names, David.

King Charles III could have chosen one of his other names – Philip, Arthur or George – but has decided to remain Charles. Some have lauded this decision for keeping it simple, although given the history of the two previous King Charleses, one might have forgiven him if he had decided to sidestep it.

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Charles I: the king who lost the monarchy

Charles I, born in 1600, was the second son of King James VI. He became heir apparent (first in line to the throne) after the death of his older brother, Henry. He ascended to the throne in 1625.

Charles I’s policies were frequently unpopular with both his subjects and the parliament. His religious policies were considered too sympathetic to Roman Catholicism, and he levied taxes without parliamentary consent.

Tensions between his supporters, known as Cavaliers, and parliamentary supporters, known as Roundheads, led to the English Civil War. He was defeated in 1645, imprisoned, convicted of high treason, and executed by beheading in 1649.

The Commonwealth of England was established as a republic, and the monarchy was abolished, albeit only for 11 years.

Charles II: the king without a parliament

Although initially proclaimed as king by the Scottish parliament after his father’s execution, Charles II (born in 1630) did not reign until 1660. He lived in exile in Europe until the monarchy was restored and he was invited to return to England.

Relations between the new monarch and the parliament were not smooth. Charles II dissolved parliament four times, and ruled without it altogether for the final four years of his reign before his death in 1685.

Political tensions notwithstanding, Charles II was a more popular king than his father. He was known as the “merry monarch” and presided over a lively and hedonistic court. He had at least 12 illegitimate children by mistresses, but left no legitimate heir. He was succeeded by his brother, James II of England (James VII of Scotland).

In recent days many people have remarked how it’s difficult to hear the phrase “King Charles” without wanting to add the word “spaniel”. So how did this breed of dog get its name?

Spaniels were as ubiquitous in King Charles II’s court as corgis in Queen Elizabeth II’s. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, to give it its full name, was bred in the 20th century to resemble his favoured dogs, and named after his political supporters, the Cavaliers. The dogs’ ears also bear an uncanny resemblance to Charles II’s famous long wig.

What lies ahead for King Charles III?

Royal beheadings and exiles may be much rarer these days, but King Charles III faces his own more modern set of challenges. He became king just two days after a new British prime minister was sworn into office.

Conservative Liz Truss may have left her anti-monarchist days behind her, but the United Kingdom is facing a cost of living crisis that could potentially stoke public resentment about royal family expenses.

While the first two Charleses stood and fought for particular political ideologies, the contemporary British monarch is expected to be apolitical. Indeed, while still Prince of Wales, Charles had previously stated he wouldn’t “meddle” as king.

This was reaffirmed in his first public speech, in which he said, “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply.” His challenge here will be remaining silent on politicised issues that are known to be close to his heart, such as climate change.

Read more:
It would be appropriate for King Charles to remain strong on climate: Albanese

King Charles III starts his reign less popular than both his predecessor and his heir, Prince William. Affection for Queen Elizabeth II is not the sole reason republican debates have faltered in the past, but an unpopular monarch could be leveraged to raise questions about the institution as a whole.

In a political and economic climate where the meaning and expense of the monarchy is subject to debate, taking on a regnal name with a legacy of abolished (and restored) monarchy might be tempting fate.

Read more:
What the Queen’s death means for an Australian republic

Jess Carniel 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. Beheaded and exiled: the two previous King Charleses bookended the abolition of the monarchy – https://theconversation.com/beheaded-and-exiled-the-two-previous-king-charleses-bookended-the-abolition-of-the-monarchy-190410

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Browne, Research Fellow, Deakin University

First Nations children represent the future of the world’s oldest continuing culture. Of the 66,000 Victorians who identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 Census, one-third were aged under 15 years.

First Nations children in Victoria are doing well in several health outcomes, our recent report has found. This report provides valuable insight into nutrition, physical activity and wellbeing among First Nations children living in regional Victoria.

Our survey found more than 300 First Nations primary school children were meeting guidelines for physical activity, healthy eating and screen time. Those who met these guidelines also had higher health-related quality of life.

However, our study is rare. Before our report, there was no information available about nutrition and physical activity among primary school-aged First Nations children in Victoria.

More evidence is needed about First Nations children’s health in Victoria. And it needs to be strengths-based, as opposed to highlighting deficits.

Read more:
‘I am Country, and Country is me!’ Indigenous ways of teaching could be beneficial for all children

A strengths-based approach

To examine First Nations childrens’ health, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers from Deakin University partnered with the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO). This organisation is the peak body representing Victoria’s Aboriginal community-controlled health sector.

VACCHO’s nutrition team works to improve food security and nutrition outcomes among Aboriginal communities across Victoria. Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations such as these provide culturally safe care, and support self-determination.

In our research, we found there is potential for health data to stigmatise First Nations peoples by focusing on negative outcomes instead of progress. To avoid this, when collating data, we focused on measuring positive health outcomes (such as healthy weight) rather than measuring “problems” (like obesity).

We were interested in identifying factors that contribute to positive wellbeing. This strengths-based approach acknowledges and celebrates the strength of First Nations children.

Read more:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population has increased, but the census lacks detail in other facets of Indigenous lives

Many First Nations children are meeting the health guidelines

Our findings indicate that many of the children surveyed were meeting nutrition and physical activity guidelines.

For most of these measures, there was no significant difference between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in the survey.

Read more:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population has increased, but the census lacks detail in other facets of Indigenous lives

There’s still work to do

Our survey found Aboriginal children were more likely to report meeting vegetable consumption guidelines than their non-Aboriginal classmates. However, only 21% of Aboriginal children who participated reported eating the recommended number of vegetables each day.

While 53% of Aboriginal children had a healthy body weight, just under half did not. Non-Aboriginal children were more likely to have a healthy weight and on average had a lower body mass index than Aboriginal children.

This could be addressed through the development of a national First Nations food and nutrition plan. This plan would need to address issues such as food security and workforce capacity while directing funding to First Nations community-controlled nutrition programs.

Read more:
‘Decolonising’ classrooms could help keep First Nations kids in school and away from police

Connecting physical health with social and emotional wellbeing

Our survey also evaluated perceived physical, social, emotional and school-related wellbeing. This was measured using the Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory.

We found non-Aboriginal children in our survey had significantly higher average health-related quality of life scores compared to Aboriginal children. This highlights this importance of promoting children’s mental health and social and emotional wellbeing alongside healthy eating and physical activity.

It’s important to recognise the connection between physical health (such as body weight) and health behaviours (diet, physical activity, screen time and sleep) with social and emotional wellbeing.

This view of health is defined by the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation as “not just the physical wellbeing of an individual but the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing of the whole Community”. This is why culturally appropriate research undertaken in partnership with Aboriginal organisations is so important, and something we prioritised in our work.

It is our hope our findings can be used by health services to plan culturally appropriate health promotion programs for First Nations children in Victoria. Ideally governments can use these findings to better support Victorian Aboriginal community controlled health organisations to implement these programs.

Our strengths-based approach should be replicated in future surveys of First Nations childrens’ health. Importantly, Aboriginal health must be in Aboriginal hands.

Jennifer Browne receives funding from the Heart Foundation and VicHealth

Jill Gallagher, Joleen Ryan, Mark Lock (Ngiyampaa), and Troy Walker 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. Rather than focusing on the negative, we need a strength-based way to approach First Nations childrens’ health – https://theconversation.com/rather-than-focusing-on-the-negative-we-need-a-strength-based-way-to-approach-first-nations-childrens-health-187986

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lixin Jiang, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland

Former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch famously promoted the “20-70-10” system to increase labour productivity. Managers were asked to rank employees on a bell curve; the top 20% received rewards, while the bottom 10% were fired.

Yahoo, Amazon and IBM, among many others, later adopted this performance review approach, termed stack ranking, forced ranking or “rank-and-yank”. Similar practices – termed “up or out” – dominate law firms, accounting firms, the military and professional sports teams.

The goal of “rank-and-yank” is to stimulate subordinates’ work performance by creating the constant threat of job insecurity. It’s a fairly ruthless way to improve the bottom line, but some employers might find it justifiable if it worked. So does it?

Our research reveals the answer depends on the level of job insecurity and the performance criteria in question. But the overall answer might not please fans of the late Jack Welch.

Insecurity and performance outcomes

Researchers disagree about the effects of job insecurity on work performance. Some focus on the adverse consequences of job insecurity, while others spotlight its potential motivating function.

Researchers at the University of Auckland and the University of Texas at San Antonio theorised that the impacts of job insecurity depended on its level of severity and the specific types of work performance that were considered.

Given no single empirical study can adequately address this question, the best way to understand it is to conduct a meta-analysis.

Based on data from over a hundred studies into “rank-and-yank” we concluded that Welch was both right and wrong.

Insecurity as motivation?

We observed that when job insecurity is extremely high, employees do increase their performance and the types of behaviours that are explicitly recognised by the formal reward system.

Similarly, employees also take on tasks that are beyond their formal duties but are beneficial to organisational productivity and visible to mangers. Such tasks may include attending non-required meetings, sharing informed opinions to solve work problems, and volunteering for overtime work when needed.

This appears to be good news. But such “motivating” effects of job insecurity are very weak (albeit statistically significant), with very few practical implications in the real world.

Read more:
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Thus, the job insecurity associated with a “20-70-10” approach is less of a motivating factor for workers than Welch might have hoped for. Additionally, as job insecurity increases, employee creativity declines – and then flattens out.

Employees’ creativity, or their ability to generate innovative and practical ideas or solutions, can contribute to an organisation’s success and is therefore highly valued by organisations.

Moreover, employees facing low to moderate levels of job insecurity decrease behaviours that may benefit their colleagues, such as lending a hand when needed.

Taken together, extremely high job insecurity does not contribute to employee creative performance or “good citizenship” in the workplace.

An unsafe work environment

The data also revealed a link between job insecurity and a decline in employee safety performance.

Safety performance includes wearing safety gear, following safety protocols and communicating safety concerns to managers. These measures are critical to prevent employee injuries and on-site accidents.

Job insecurity also consistently increases the likelihood that employees engage in destructive behaviours that harm the organisation, including calling in sick when not ill and destroying or stealing company property.

Overall, considering the overwhelmingly negative effects of job insecurity on employee attitudes, organisational commitment, health and wellbeing, the small, positive, motivating effect of increasing job insecurity may not be worth it.

Uncertainty and productivity

Considering New Zealand’s poor productivity output, it is worth managers considering how they can effectively motivate workers.

According to the Productivity Commission, New Zealanders worked 34.2 hours per week and produced NZ$68 of output per hour. Yet in other OECD countries, employees worked 31.9 hours per week and produced $85 of output per hour.

So, finding ways to increase employee performance is important. But, considering the data, using a “stick” of job insecurity is unlikely to achieve it.

Read more:
‘I couldn’t see a future’: what ex-automotive workers told us about job loss, shutdowns, and communities on the edge

With the threat of job loss, employees are likely to engage in “quiet quitting”. Employees will also refuse to go the extra mile and instead are more likely to only do the minimum required.

Considering the current low unemployment rate (below 5%) and the “great resignation” trend that emerged after COVID-19, employers need to think twice before using job insecurity as a motivator. People may simply find an alternative employer that treats them with a “carrot”.

Retaining talent and increasing productivity requires offering employees better wages, opportunities for training and career advancement, greater control over their work, and more decision-making opportunities.

Essentially, employers should treat employees the way they want to be treated themselves. After all, as studies have shown, a happy employee is a productive employee.

Lixin Jiang 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. Is job insecurity really the great motivator some managers believe it is? We crunched the numbers to find out – https://theconversation.com/is-job-insecurity-really-the-great-motivator-some-managers-believe-it-is-we-crunched-the-numbers-to-find-out-189972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoe Doubleday, Marine Ecologist and ARC Future Fellow, University of South Australia

Fake foods are invading our supermarkets, as foods we love are substituted or adulterated with lower value or unethical goods.

Food fraud threatens human health but is also bad news for industry and sustainable food production. Seafood is one of most traded food products in the world and reliant on convoluted supply chains that leave the the door wide open for seafood fraud.

Our new study, published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, showcases a new approach for determining the provenance or “origin” of many seafood species.

By identifying provenance, we can detect fraud and empower authorities and businesses to stop it. This makes it more likely that the food you buy is, in fact, the food you truly want to eat.

Read more:
How technology will help fight food fraud

Illegal fishing and seafood fraud

Wild-caught seafood is vulnerable to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing can have a devastating impact on the marine environment because:

• it is a major cause of overfishing, constituting an estimated one-fifth of seafood

• it can destroy marine habitats, such coral reefs, through destructive fishing methods such as blast bombing and cyanide fishing

• it can significantly harm wildlife, such as albatross and turtles, which are caught as by-catch.

So how is illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing connected to seafood fraud?

Seafood fraud allows this kind of fishing to flourish as illegal products are laundered through legitimate supply chains.

A recent study in the United States found when seafood is mislabelled, it is more likely to be substituted for a product from less healthy fisheries with management policies that are less likely to reduce the environmental impacts of fishing.

One review of mislabelled seafood in the US found that out of 180 substituted species, 25 were considered threatened, endangered, or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

Illegal fishing and seafood fraud also has a human cost. It can:

• adversely affect the livelihoods of law-abiding fishers and seafood businesses

• threaten food security

• facilitate human rights abuses such as forced labour and piracy

• increase risk of exposure to pathogens, drugs, and other banned substances in seafood.

The chemical fingerprints in shells and bones

A vast range of marine animals are harvested for food every year, including fish, molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms.

However, traditional food provenance methods are typically designed to identify one species at a time.

That might benefit the species and industry in question, but it is expensive and time consuming. As such, current methods are restricted to a relatively small number of species.

In our study, we described a broader, universal method to identify provenance and detect fraud.

How? We harnessed natural chemical markers imprinted in the shells and bones of marine animals. These markers reflect an animal’s environment and can identify where they are from.

We focused on a chemical marker that is similar across many different marine animals. This specific chemical marker, known as “oxygen isotopes”, is determined by ocean composition and temperature rather than an animal’s biology.

Exploiting this commonality and how it relates to the local environment, we constructed a global ocean map of oxygen isotopes that helps researchers understand where a marine animal may be from (by matching the oxygen isotope value in shells and bones to the oxygen isotope value in the map).

After rigorous testing, we demonstrated this global map (or “isoscape”) can be used to correctly identify the origins of a wide range of marine animals living in different latitudes.

For example, we saw up to 90% success in classifying fish, cephalopods, and shellfish between the tropical waters of Southeast Asia and the cooler waters of southern Australia.

What next?

Oxygen isotopes, as a universal marker, worked well on a range of animals collected from different latitudes and across broad geographic areas.

Our next step is to integrate oxygen isotopes with other universal chemical markers to gives clues on longitude and refine our approach.

Working out the provenance of seafood is a large and complex challenge. No single approach is a silver bullet for all species, fisheries or industries.

But our approach represents a step towards a more inclusive, global system for validating seafood provenance and fighting seafood fraud.

Hopefully, this will mean ensure fewer marine species are left behind and more consumer confidence in the products we buy.

Dr Jasmin Martino, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, contributed to this research and article.

Zoe Doubleday receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, and the Australian Academy of Science.

– ref. Where is your seafood really from? We’re using ‘chemical fingerprinting’ to fight seafood fraud and illegal fishing – https://theconversation.com/where-is-your-seafood-really-from-were-using-chemical-fingerprinting-to-fight-seafood-fraud-and-illegal-fishing-189471

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Henderson, PhD Candidate in Literary Studies and Creative Writing, University of Canberra

Few settings invite drama, messy emotions and chaos like a high school.

The original 1990s Heartbreak High ran for seven seasons and was broadcast in over 70 countries including the UK, US, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, India and Indonesia. The show followed a cast of students at a multicultural Sydney high school and became an icon of Aussie TV. It stood out as an honest and gritty depiction of teen life, especially compared against the “squeaky clean” visions in other dramas of the time.

Now, a new reboot under showrunner Hannah Carroll Chapman revisits the fictional Hartley High in 2022, dealing with issues and themes relevant to a contemporary audience.

Heartbreak High will find its place alongside series like Netflix’s Sex Education and HBO’s Euphoria exploring the often grimy realities of modern adolescence with style and humour.

But here we have a uniquely Australian take on the current wave of teen dramas.

A new class

Amerie (Ayesha Madon) and Harper (Asher Yasbincek) have been ride-or-die best friends since childhood. Their greatest project is a map of all the hook-ups and romantic entanglements at Hartley High, drawn in a secret, out-of-bounds stairwell.

When the map is discovered, Amerie gets blamed, and an unlikely group of students find themselves stuck together in “Sexual Literacy Tutorials”.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Harper turns up to school with a shaved head and a mysterious vendetta against Amerie.

With her social life turned upside down, Amerie falls in with class misfits Darren (James Majoos) and Quinni (Chloe Hayden). From here, she must repair her reputation, figure out what’s wrong with Harper, and navigate the rocky terrain of romance, sexuality and heartbreak.

The series is an echo of contemporary teen culture. Pop culture references and slang like “unalive” and “flop era” will date the episodes, but for now Heartbreak High is an effective mirror of modern life.

Much like the original series gave us a diverse set of characters, this series refreshingly reflects the diversity of today’s high schools.

Our heroine Amerie and her two love interests, long-time crush Dusty (Josh Heuston) and sweet new boy in town Malakai (Thomas Weatherall), are all characters of colour.

Darren is non-binary, out and proud but dealing with parents who complain Darren’s gender identity and singular they/them pronouns are “too confusing”.

Quinni is queer and autistic, with one episode sympathetically exploring her difficulties with dating and trying to mask and appear “normal”.

These teenagers all face their own unique issues, but also find themselves dealing with universal ups and downs every viewer will be able to relate to.

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Let’s talk about sex

As the Hartley High hook-up map would imply, teen sexuality is at the core of the story.

Heartbreak High uses this plot device not just for love triangles and drama, but as a chance to interrogate how we talk to teenagers about sex.

The Sexual Literacy Tutorials – or “SLTs”, which the students point out ironically sounds like “sluts” – provide some wonderfully awkward scenes.

The school’s sex education curriculum is full of outdated language and knowledge gaps, leaving the staff woefully (but amusingly) unprepared for nuanced discussions about sex with their students.

Long-suffering teacher Jojo (Chika Ikogwe) tries to mix up the curriculum by injecting some sex positivity, inclusive language and nuanced discussion of consent – to mixed results.

As the bright pink dildo stuck to the school’s basketball court proves, sex is very much present and unavoidable in the high school environment, whether the scandalised school board likes it or not.

The question is how to broach the topic in a nuanced way that keeps those vulnerable students safe.

Heartbreak High’s writing follows from Jojo’s example. When sex is depicted between the characters, the dialogue emphasises the importance (and joy) of consent. The framing makes the scenes intimate without sexualising the teenagers themselves.

The frank depiction of female sexuality and queer sexuality is also refreshing, whether it’s comedic scenes of Amerie being too horny to concentrate, or a matter-of-fact discussion of the average labia size.

Read more:
Netflix’s Sex Education is doing sex education better than most schools

Complicated, messy lives

This reboot is a bright new piece of Australian television, running on an engaging blend of comedy and drama.

It doesn’t shy away from serious topics such as drug use, youth crime or discrimination. But it also provides plenty of moments of levity, letting its characters joke around about everything from astrology, to erections, to bad haircuts.

Heartbreak High avoids cliche and shows its teen heroes as complicated, messy people the audience can root for – even when they make mistakes.

Heartbreak High is streaming on Netflix from September 14.

Alex Henderson 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. Teenage misfits, messy emotions and joyous discussions on consent: Heartbreak High is a bright new piece of television – https://theconversation.com/teenage-misfits-messy-emotions-and-joyous-discussions-on-consent-heartbreak-high-is-a-bright-new-piece-of-television-188733

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University

Sometimes it seems like passwords have been with us forever, and yet every year we’re reminded how we still don’t use them properly!

The annual publication of the “worst passwords” list shows we haven’t become much more password savvy over the decade. And while several replacements for the humble password have been proposed, none have come close to the ease of using the traditional method.

But this changes today with the introduction of Passkeys – an update in Apple’s latest iOS 16 operating system. Passkeys could be the long-awaited solution to password malpractice, and the near-constant problem of compromised credentials.

Read more:
This New Year, why not resolve to ditch your dodgy old passwords?

What’s wrong with passwords?

The problem with passwords has been well documented. We choose weak ones, write them down (for others to see), share them, and re-use them on multiple websites.

The last of these is particularly problematic. Once your details are breached (and subsequently leaked), they’re vulnerable to “credential stuffing” – where cybercriminals take a set of login credentials and try them on multiple websites.

“But I use a password manager,” you might say.

Well, that’s good. The standard advice for years has been to use password managers such as 1Password or LastPass. These let you create unique passwords for each website or service you use. So even if a website is compromised, only one password is revealed.

But this approach requires the ability to synchronise across all your devices – a feature not all password managers provide.

And even with a password manager, our passwords are still stored on the remote website we’re accessing. Although most websites store passwords in a secure (hashed) format, they are still routinely compromised. It’s estimated more than two billion sets of credentials (including passwords) were leaked online in 2021.

Along come Passkeys

Apple devices using the newest operating system release (iOS 16 or MacOS Ventura) will integrate a new password mechanism called Passkeys. Unfortunately iPad users will need to wait a little longer for the feature.

It’s worth noting you won’t be forced to use Passkeys, but your Apple device will prompt you with the opportunity to do so. Also, most websites will continue to support password access for people without the latest devices.

You’ll also have the option to use Apple’s secure cloud storage, iCloud, to back up your keys and share them across your Apple devices.

How do they work?

The concept behind Passkeys is relatively simple. Every website you elect to use Passkeys on will securely generate a unique pair of secret codes (referred to as “keys”).

One of these is a public key, stored on the website you’re registered on. The other is a private key stored on your device. Both keys are related, but one can’t be used to get the other.

When you attempt to log in to the website, instead of entering a password, your device will ask you to verify your login using your device’s biometric unlocking mechanism. So you’ll either scan your face or your finger.

This deliberately limits Passkeys’ functionality to devices with biometric support (iPhones have offered Touch ID since 2013 and Face ID since 2017).

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Once your biometrics are verified, your device will use your private key to prove your identity to the website by tackling a complex mathematical “challenge” issued by the site. At no point is your private key sent across the internet to the website.

The response from your device can only be verified by the website, using the public key generated when you registered. And nobody can pretend to be you without your private key, which is safely stored on your device.

If a website is compromised, the public key alone is useless to cybercriminals.

Moreover, while biometric technology can be compromised, this is relatively difficult. To exploit a biometrics/PassKeys combination, a criminal would first need to obtain your device and then do a great job faking your face or fingerprint (or force one from you) – unlikely circumstances for most users.

Usability barriers

Passkeys will initially launch on Apple, but others are close behind. Microsoft will likely launch its own equivalent soon, although it may not initially be compatible with Apple’s implementation. This could be an issue for people wanting to use both an iPhone and Windows laptop.

Moving forward, it’s important Apple, Google and Microsoft work together to ensure maximum compatibility across devices.

Until then, there are some workarounds. If you need to access an Apple Passkeys-protected service on your Windows laptop (or any other device), you can scan a QR code with your iPhone and provide your biometric login verification that way.

This means users will always need to have their phone on them when they want to authenticate to a remote service – whereas currently they can just type out their password, or use a password manager synced across their devices.

For some users, needing to have their phone all the time could be enough to give Passkeys a pass altogether.

The long tail of adoption

The Passkeys approach has the potential to make passwords obsolete, but this will require organisations around the world to invest time, effort and money into it.

Big players like social media companies are well positioned to adopt Passkeys early on, but there will be millions of websites that may take years to do so – or may never.

Indeed, looking at the state of play today, many leading sites still fall short of applying existing good practice around passwords. So it’s hard to say exactly how quickly, and how widely, Passkeys will be implemented.

Read more:
Four ways to make sure your passwords are safe and easy to remember

Steven Furnell is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Information Security.

Paul Haskell-Dowland 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. Apple’s PassKeys update could make traditional passwords obsolete – https://theconversation.com/apples-passkeys-update-could-make-traditional-passwords-obsolete-188300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Warhurst, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Australian National University

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II has the potential to transform Australia’s republic debate.

While the debate should not be about personalities, the monarch’s identity clearly makes a difference. Former prime minister and republican Malcolm Turnbull once famously said many Australians were “Elizabethans” rather than monarchists.

However, as we mark the transition from one monarch to another, republic supporters still need to be patient, for a number of reasons.

Speaking on talk radio on Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declined to address the republic question, saying: “Today is a day for one issue, and one issue only, which is to pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and to give our thanks for her service to our country.”

But what can we expect in the longer term?

The Charles factor

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles has become King Charles III, not just of the United Kingdom, but of Australia and other dominions too. Camilla has become Queen Consort with Elizabeth’s blessing.

Read more:
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Opinion surveys have regularly shown the idea of Charles becoming king raises support for a republic. I believed in 1999, at the time of the constitutional referendum, the figure was about 5%. It was widely recognised Charles was not as popular among Australians as his mother. That is still the case.

After the first, failed referendum, influential republicans, like Turnbull, believed Australia should not consider a second referendum until the queen had passed away. The Australian Republic Movement disagreed – but that view became widespread.

This has prevented any official preparatory initiatives prior to the end of her time on the throne.

Back to the start

Much has changed over the past 23 years since we last seriously considered a republic. This means the public discussion must begin again almost from scratch and under new circumstances. For one thing, any Australian currently under 40 years of age did not vote in 1999.

Some lessons have also been learned from 1999, including problems with divisions between republicans about what model to adopt, but many issues remain unresolved. The central arguments for a republic have not changed markedly, but the situation is different.

One important development has been the increased urgency for constitution recognition of Indigenous rights. The republic movement and most republicans recognise the latter now has precedence over a second republic referendum.

Preferred models and public support

Experience and common sense dictate the move towards a republican constitution should not be rushed anyway. There needs to be time put aside for considered community discussion. While the initial discussion can be led by civil society groups, like the republic movement, ultimately the discussion must be led by the federal parliament and government if we are going to make genuine progress.

Read more:
The republic debate is back (again) but we need more than a model to capture Australians’ imagination

The republic movement has recently launched its preferred model for a republic, which is a starting point for public discussion. This follows years of stating the model should be decided by the community at a plebiscite prior to a referendum.

The new model proposes Australian parliaments nominate candidates for president before a popular vote to decide between them. It has been derided in some quarters for its complexity, but it is a creative attempt to resolve differences between direct election and parliamentary republicans. The model also reflects the realities of a federal system.

What are the mechanics?

The method of constitutional reform remains unchanged from 1999 (there has not been a referendum question put since then and the last successful referendum occurred in 1977). This recent history of our failure weighs heavily on any new referendum proposal.

Such proposals must effectively first win the support of the both houses of federal parliament. Then the specific proposal must be put to a yes/no referendum.

There is no other legitimate constitutional way, even though some people would prefer an “in principle” referendum to test the waters first. Realistically, the support of the federal government and opposition is also a necessary condition for a successful referendum.

Another decade away?

At any rate, any radical transformation of the republic/monarchy debate will not happen straight away. There needs to be time for the public to mourn the loss of Elizabeth.

That means a timetable for a second republican referendum, given King Charles has come to the throne in 2022, is at best five to ten years away (after the 2025 federal election at the earliest). By that stage Charles himself will be close to 80 years of age or even older.

John Warhurst is a former chair of The Australian Republican Movement.

– ref. What the Queen’s death means for an Australian republic – https://theconversation.com/what-the-queens-death-means-for-an-australian-republic-181610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow, Menzies Health Institute, Griffith University

The cost of groceries in Australia has sky-rocketed this year. So people may be tempted to switch to home-brand foods to save on their weekly food bill.

Home-brand foods are certainly cheaper. But are they healthy?

Here’s what we know about the nutrients they contain compared with the more expensive named brands.

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What are home-brand foods?

Home-brand foods have various names. You might hear them called supermarket own-brand foods, private label, in-house brands, store brands, or retailer brands.

These are foods made specifically for a supermarket (you cannot buy them at a competing store). They are advertised as low-priced alternatives to more expensive items.

Home-brand foods are widely available in Australia and other countries, making up to 30% of what you can buy at a supermarket.

Some people once viewed these as inferior products. But their nutrient content, and wide availability in supermarkets, may play a role in boosting population health. Some evidence shows home-brand foods increase availability and accessibility to more affordable food options, and contribute to improving food safety standards.

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Why are they cheaper?

Cheaper prices associated with home-brand products are possible due to lower costs associated with research and development, marketing and packaging. This means we cannot assume lower prices mean cheaper or inferior ingredients.

In fact, supermarkets can influence the ingredients and processing of home-brand foods by benchmarking against named brands.

Before a home-brand product is made, stores will also specify to manufacturers what it should cost to consumers. Manufacturers often choose to use the same ingredients and processes as name-brand products to reduce costs through economies of scale.

This means not having to clean or reprogram equipment between making the different products. It also means most home-brand products are very similar to branded products, aside from the packaging.

However, for mixed foods, such as breakfast cereals and pre-made sauces, the manufacturer may change the ingredients, such as using cheaper or fewer ingredients, to help reduce costs.

Read more:
How Australians talk about tucker is a story that’ll make you want to eat the bum out of an elephant

How much can I save?

Home-brand products can be up to 40% cheaper than named brands. So yes, home-brand products can make a real difference to the total cost of groceries.

However, some products have bigger cost savings than others, as we show below.

Most labels on supermarket shelves show the cost per 100g (or equivalent) for an item, which can help shoppers choose the most cost-effective option, especially useful when items are on sale.

But are they healthy?

For simple, unprocessed products such as milk, eggs and pasta there is virtually no difference in nutritional quality between home-brand and named brand foods. There is very little the manufacturers can do to modify ingredients to reduce costs.

But sometimes cheaper ingredients are used in higher concentrations in home-brand products. For example, home-brand pre-made pasta sauces may have less of the vegetable ingredients, and greater amounts of sugar, sodium (salt), and additives (such as stabilisers, colours and flavours). This may change the quality and taste.

Very few studies have explored how home-brand products may differ in nutritional profile.

Overall, serving size, sodium and other nutrients appear similar across home-brand and named brand food. But there are some differences with certain food types.

Serving sizes

For instance, serving sizes are generally smaller in home-brand pizza, canned legumes, grains, biscuits and ready meals. In fact, edible oil is the only type of food where serving size is greater for home-brand foods.

Salt

Sodium levels of home-brand breakfast cereals, cheese and bread are higher than branded products. But sodium levels of cooking sauces, frozen potato products (such as oven-baked fries) and biscuits are lower in home-brand foods.

Other nutrients

For energy and fat intake, again it seems there are inconsistent differences between home-brand foods compared to branded foods.

How about sugar? Unfortunately, the studies didn’t look at this.

In fact, overall, Australian home-brand products are not consistently nutritionally different to branded products.

Health star ratings

On a related note, unhealthy home-brand products – such as juices, meat pies and muesli bars – are more likely to include a health star rating, compared to nutritious foods. This may incorrectly imply they are a healthy choice.

This means no matter which brand you choose, remember to check the food label to make sure you are getting the quality of food you like for the price you are comfortable with.

Lauren Ball receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, RACGP Foundation, VicHealth and Queensland Health. She is a Director of Dietitians Australia.

Katelyn Barnes is an executive member of the Australasian Association of Academic Primary Care.

– ref. Are home-brand foods healthy? If you read the label, you may be pleasantly surprised – https://theconversation.com/are-home-brand-foods-healthy-if-you-read-the-label-you-may-be-pleasantly-surprised-189445

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noel Castree, Professor of Society & Environment, University of Technology Sydney

“Crisis” is an incredibly potent word, so it’s interesting to witness the way the phrase “climate crisis” has become part of the lingua franca.

Once associated only with a few “outspoken” scientists and activists, the phrase has now gone mainstream.

But what do people understand by the term “climate crisis”? And why does it matter?

The mainstreaming of crisis-talk

It’s not only activists or scientists sounding the alarm.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres now routinely employs dramatic phrases like “digging our own graves” when discussing climate. Bill Gates advises us to avoid “climate disaster”.

This linguistic mainstreaming marks redrawn battle lines in the “climate wars”.

Denialism is in retreat. The climate change debate now is about what is to be done and by whom?

Scientists, using the full authority of their profession, have been key to changing the discourse. The lead authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports now pull no punches, talking openly about mass starvation, extinctions and disasters.

Read more:
An official welcome to the Anthropocene epoch – but who gets to decide it’s here?

These public figures clearly hope to jolt citizens, businesses and governments into radical climate action.

But for many ordinary folks, climate change can seem remote from everyday life. It’s not a “crisis” in the immediate way the pandemic has been.

Of course, many believe climate experts have understated the problem for too long.

And yet the new ubiquity of siren terms like climate “crisis”, “emergency”, “disaster”, “breakdown” and “calamity” does not guarantee any shared, let alone credible, understanding of their possible meaning.

This matters because such terms tend to polarise.

Few now doubt the reality of climate change. But how we describe its implications can easily repeat earlier stand-offs between “believers” and “sceptics”; “realists’ and “scare-mongerers”. The result is yet more political inertia and gridlock.

We will need to do better.

Four ideas for a new way forward

Terms like “climate crisis” are here to stay. But scientists, teachers and politicians need to be savvy. A keen awareness of what other people may think when they hear us shout “crisis!” can lead to better communication.

Here are four ideas to keep in mind.

1. We must challenge dystopian and salvation narratives

A crisis is when things fall apart. We see news reports of crises daily – floods in Pakistan, economic collapse in Sri Lanka, famine in parts of Africa.

But “climate crisis” signifies something that feels beyond the range of ordinary experience, especially to the wealthy. People quickly reach for culturally available ideas to fill the vacuum.

One is the notion of an all-encompassing societal break down, where only a few survive. Cormac McCarthy’s bleak book The Road is one example.

Central to many apocalyptic narratives is the idea technology and a few brave people (usually men) can save the day in the nick of time, as in films like Interstellar.

The problem, of course, is these (often fanciful) depictions aren’t suitable ways to interpret what climate scientists have been warning people about. The world is far more complicated.

2. We must bring the climate crisis home and make it present now

Even if they’re willing to acknowledge it as a looming crisis, many think climate change impacts will be predominantly felt elsewhere or in the distant future.

The disappearance of Tuvalu as sea levels rise is an existential crisis for its citizens but may seem a remote, albeit tragic, problem to people in Chicago, Oslo or Cape Town.

But the recent floods in eastern Australia and the heatwave in Europe allow a powerful point to be made: no place is immune from extreme weather as the planet heats up.

There won’t be a one-size-fits-all global climate crisis as per many Hollywood movies. Instead, people must understand global warming will trigger myriad local-to-regional scale crises.

Many will be on the doorstep, many will last for years or decades. Most will be made worse if we don’t act now. Getting people to understand this is crucial.

3. We must explain: a crisis in relation to what?

The climate wars showed us value disputes get transposed into arguments about scientific evidence and its interpretation.

A crisis occurs when events are judged in light of certain values, such as people’s right to adequate food, healthcare and shelter.

Pronouncements of crisis need to explain the values that underpin judgements about unacceptable risk, harm and loss.

Historians, philosophers, legal scholars and others help us to think clearly about our values and what exactly we mean when we say “crisis”.

4. We must appreciate other crises and challenges matter more to many people

Some are tempted to occupy the moral high ground and imply the climate crisis is so grand as to eclipse all others. This is understandable but imprudent.

It’s important to respect other perspectives and negotiate a way forward. Consider, for example, the way author Bjørn Lomborg has questioned the climate emergency by arguing it’s not the main threat.

Lomborg was widely pilloried. But his arguments resonated with many. We may disagree with him, but his views are not irrational.

We must seek to understand how and why this kind of argument makes sense to so many people.

Words matter. It’s vital terms like “crisis” and “calamity” don’t become rhetorical devices devoid of real content as we argue about what climate action to take.

Read more:
Mass starvation, extinctions, disasters: the new IPCC report’s grim predictions, and why adaptation efforts are falling behind

Noel Castree 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 climate crisis is real – but overusing terms like ‘crisis’ and ’emergency’ comes with risk – https://theconversation.com/the-climate-crisis-is-real-but-overusing-terms-like-crisis-and-emergency-comes-with-risk-188750

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

A year ago, El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender – alongside the US dollar, which the Central American country adopted in 2001 to replace its own currency, the colón.

President Nayib Bukele, a cryptocurrency enthusiast, promoted the initiative as one that would deliver multiple economic benefits.

Making Bitcoin legal tender, he said, would attract foreign investment, generate jobs and help “push humanity at least a tiny bit into the right direction”.

His ambitions extended to building an entire “Bitcoin city” – a tax-free haven funded by issuing US$1 billion in government bonds. The plan was to spend half the bond revenue on the city, and the other half on buying Bitcoin, with assumed profits then being used to repay the bondholders.

Now, a year on, there’s more than enough evidence to conclude Bukele – who has also called himself “the world’s coolest dictator” in response to criticisms of his creeping authoritarianism – had no idea what he was doing.

This bold financial experiment has proven to be an almost complete failure.

Making Bitcoin legal tender

Making Bitcoin legal tender meant much more than allowing Bitcoin to be used for transactions. That was already possible, as it is in most (but far from all) countries.

If a Salvadoran wanted to pay for something in bitcoins, and the recipient was willing to accept them, they could.

But Bukele wanted more. Making bitcoins legal tender meant a payee had to accept them. As the 2021 legislation stated, “every economic agent must accept Bitcoin as payment when offered to him by whoever acquires a good or service”.

Read more:
Can Bitcoin be a real currency? What’s wrong with El Salvador’s plan

To encourage Bitcoin uptake, the government created an app called “Chivo Wallet” (“chivo” is slang for “cool”) to trade bitcoins for dollars without transaction fees. It also came preloaded with US$30 as a bonus (the median weekly income is about US$360).

Yet despite the law and these incentives, Bitcoin has not been embraced.

Greeted with little enthusiasm

A nationally representative survey of 1,800 Salvadoran households in February indicated just 20% of the population was using Chivo Wallet for Bitcoin transactions. More than double that number downloaded the app, but only to claim the US$30.

Among respondents who identified as business owners, just 20% said they were accepting bitcoins as payment. These were typically large companies (among the top 10% of companies by size).

Business acceptance of Bitcoin in El Salvador

A survey for the El Salvador Chamber of Commerce in March found only 14% of businesses were transacting using Bitcoin.

Making huge losses

Fortunately for Salvadorans, nothing has come of the US$1 billion Bitcoin bonds scheme. But the Bukele government has still spent more than US$100 million buying bitcoins – which are now worth less than US$50 million.

When Bukele announced his plans in July 2021, Bitcoin’s value was about US$35,000. By the time the legislation came into effect, on September 7 2021, it was about US$45,000. Two months later, it peaked at US$64,400.

Now it is trading at around US$20,000.

Bukele has made self-congratulatory tweets about “buying the dip” but almost all the bitcoins bought by the government have been for more than US$30,000, at an average price of more than US$40,000.

A year ago, Bukele was urging his citizens to hold their money in bitcoins. For anyone who did, the losses would be devastating.

Flawed analyses

Bukele’s misunderstanding of Bitcoin – and economics more generally – has been demonstrated repeatedly.

In June 2021 he tweeted: “Bitcoin has a market cap of US$680 billion. If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.”

This suggests he seemed to think Bitcoin was some sort of investment fund. It also showed he did not understand GDP. Foreign investment is not a component of GDP. There has been no surge in foreign investment nor GDP.

In a January 2022 tweet he argued a “gigantic price increase is just a matter of time” because there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins while there are 50 million millionaires in the world. “Imagine when each one of them decides they should own at least ONE #Bitcoin,” he proclaimed. Bitcoin’s value has since halved.

The rest of the world is not impressed

The Bitcoin plan has adversely affected El Salvador’s credit rating and relations with the International Monetary Fund. With investors more wary of lending to the country, local borrowers have had to offer higher interest rates.

In January the IMF urged El Salvador to reverse Bitcoin’s legal lender status because of the “large risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability and consumer protection”. Bitcoin is notorious for its use in scams and other illegal activities, as well as its volatility.

Bukele tweeted a dismissive response involving a Simpsons-themed meme.

This seems particularly rash, given El Salvador has been seeking a loan of more than $1 billion from the IMF.

International credit rating agencies Fitch has downgraded El Salvador’s credit rating this year, citing concerns about its Bitcoin policies.

Read more:
Cryptocurrencies are great for gambling – but lousy at liberating our money from big central banks

No other country with its own currency, not even ones such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela with discredited currencies, has followed suit and made Bitcoin legal tender.

Given El Salvador’s record, it is is unikely any ever will.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with the Bank for International Settlements.

– ref. One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a spectacular failure – https://theconversation.com/one-year-on-el-salvadors-bitcoin-experiment-has-proven-a-spectacular-failure-190229

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Bastin, Associate Professor of English, Flinders University

Charles Philip Arthur George, Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son, has finally ascended the throne as King Charles III.

As Prince of Wales, Charles has been there for as long as many of us can remember; every major moment in his life, from his birth through to his marriages and parenting of two sons, his public declarations about architecture, environmental sustainability and so on have been paraded before us in a regular drip feed of media
coverage.

And yet, many Australians feel as if they know little about Charles the man.

Read more:
Australia has a new head of state: what will Charles be like as king?

A sensitive, solemn boy

Born in 1948 to the then Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Charles soon emerged as a solemn, sensitive young boy; he was loved but bullied by his father and loved but kept at arm’s length by an emotionally distant mother whose first duty in life was to the Crown.

The scene of his parents’ return from a 36-day royal tour of Canada in 1951 offers a poignant snapshot of Charles’s early life as a royal prince.

Prince Philip decided Charles would benefit from going to the same schools he had himself attended, and Charles was despatched to the prep school Cheam in Hampshire, and later to Gordonstoun in Scotland. Charles hated both of them.

After graduating with a 2:2 (lower second class honours) from Cambridge (the first British royal ever to earn a university
degree) and time spent in the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy between 1971 and 1976, Charles transitioned to civilian life and began to develop interests in the causes that would prove his enduring passion for the rest of his adult life: environmental sustainability, urban and rural conservation, architecture, spirituality, social reform and gardening.

He launched The Prince’s Trust and the Business in the Community (BITC) scheme and oversaw the management of the Duchy of Cornwall.

The search for an heir

Throughout the 1970s the pressure grew for Charles to find a wife and cement the line of succession. His bachelor days whizzed by with a series of relationships with beautiful women (who were almost always blondes) who each seemed to be treated to endless afternoons gazing on admiringly while Charles played polo.

But there was a problem: in 1970 Charles had already met the love of his life, Camilla Shand, who would go on to marry military veteran Andrew Parker-Bowles in 1973. The woman Charles most wanted to marry was not in the running.

An heir, however, was required, and subsequently in 1981 Charles married the young Lady Diana Spencer in one of the most famous weddings of the 20th century.

For 15 years the world looked on with fascination as the marriage produced two sons, William and Harry, before eventually ending in divorce in 1996.

One story that serves to sum up the Waleses’ marriage concerns the interior decoration of Charles and Diana’s apartments in Kensington Palace and country estate, Highgrove.

Before his wedding, Charles lived in an apartment in Buckingham Palace described by royal biographer Sally Bedell-Smith as possessing a “strong masculine flavour”. With Charles and Diana’s subsequent move to Kensington Palace:

came Diana’s pastels and chintzes to brighten the rooms made gloomy by limited sunlight […] Diana and Charles’s divergent personalities defined their respective offices. Hers, the one room where sunlight flooded through tall windows, had two pink sofas and was brimming with embroidered pillows, porcelain figures, enamel boxes, and her childhood collection of stuffed animals. Charles’s study was his man cave: small and dark, with stacks of books and papers, watercolour box, and sketch pads. From a portrait behind his desk, his mother gazed in silent judgment

Upon his separation from Diana, Charles moved his own interior designer, Robert Kime, into Highgrove and charged him with the task of expunging “all traces of Diana”.

The years after Diana’s death saw a recalibration of Charles’s public image. After a life spent in the shadows of the arc lamp of Diana’s fame and popularity, Charles brought in a public relations team to re-shape his reputation and to pave the way for Camilla’s gradual acceptance as his future Queen Consort.

Read more:
16 visits over 57 years: reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II’s long relationship with Australia

A man of contradictions

The Charles who is keen to stress that he is “just an ordinary person in an extraordinary position” and someone to be “treated like any other” person, is one whose identity is nonetheless anchored in his royal heritage.

This is the schism that besets his life.

For example, it has been reported he is someone who each day has a simple light breakfast such as a boiled egg, yet given his royal status, the egg must be cooked to perfection (four minutes exactly) and his cook boils several eggs in the event the one Charles is served does not meet his standards.

He has worn the same grey double-breasted suit for years as proof of his environmental credentials, yet he’s a person for whom his clothes are laid out each morning, his toothpaste (it has been noted, perhaps erroneously) is squeezed on to his toothbrush for him. A valet carries a special cushion Charles needs to have placed on nearly every chair he sits on.

His “Farmer George” image (inherited from his ancestor George III who earned the nickname because of his love for agriculture) rests alongside the reality that the gardens he tends belong to stately homes and palaces owned or managed by his own family.

As Bedell-Smith notes, Charles’s:

cunning in extracting money from eager benefactors was perilously entwined with a weakness for the company and perks of the superrich […] he took full advantage of free yachts, flights on private jets, and estates for private vacations. From time to time his patrons turned out to be shifty, and Charles would find himself tarred by the tabloids

Charles’s many internal contradictions reflect both aspects of his character but have also been shaped by the royal system into which he has been born.

With the death of his mother, Charles is confronted with perhaps the most searing contradiction of his life: the moment he became king was one that he has waited for — often impatiently — for decades, and yet it was also the “the moment he has most been dreading” for as long as he can remember.

Read more:
What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of Queen Elizabeth II’s death?

Giselle Bastin 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. Charles has been proclaimed king. But who is Charles the man? – https://theconversation.com/charles-has-been-proclaimed-king-but-who-is-charles-the-man-190342

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

Anthony Albanese has said it would be appropriate for King Charles to continue his advocacy on the challenge of climate change.

“That’s a matter for him, of course,” Albanese said on Sunday. But “in my view that would be appropriate”.

“I think dealing with the challenge of climate change shouldn’t be seen as a political issue – it should be seen as an issue that is about humanity and about our very quality of life and survival as a world,” he told the ABC.

“This is a big threat and King Charles has identified that for a long period of time. I think engagement in issues is very different from engagement in party political matters.”

Albanese’s comment came as he declared a public holiday in Australia on Thursday September 22, which will be a “national day of mourning” and the day a national memorial service will be held for the late Queen.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, quizzed on whether King Charles should drop his public advocacy on issues such as climate change, expected him to become less outspoken. “As King, he is there now as an impartial person.”

“He will have very strong views on this issue and many others, I’m sure, but I think the point he made in his speech yesterday was that he now doesn’t express those views on a day-to-day basis,” Dutton said on the ABC.

Read more:
What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of Queen Elizabeth II’s death?

He said Prince William, now Prince of Wales, was “very strong in relation to this issue and many others. He’s a patron of many organisations as well, and as the Prince of Wales he will have a greater ability to speak out on, and to support causes that are important to him.”

In his Friday (Saturday morning AEST) address to Britain and the Commonwealth King Charles said: “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

The King flagged he expected William to fill a similar role to the one he had filled. “With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will, I know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the centre ground where vital help can be given.”

On Sunday Governor-General David Hurley, in a ceremony at parliament house, formally proclaimed King Charles king of Australia.

This week’s sitting of federal parliament has been cancelled, and politics essentially put on hold. But Albanese indicated the days missed would be made up later. Maintaining the cancellation was appropriate, he said: “It would be difficult to envisage parliament sitting and going through the sort of adversarial activity that occurs in our parliament, under our Westminster system”.

Read more:
Albanese to attend Queen’s funeral and meet King Charles, parliament cancelled

Albanese and Hurley leave on Thursday to attend the Queen’s funeral on Monday September 19.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson was critical of the Albanese announcement of a public holiday, tweeting it would mean cancellation of operations and lots of patient consultations “at a time when access is difficult”.

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

– ref. It would be appropriate for King Charles to remain strong on climate: Albanese – https://theconversation.com/it-would-be-appropriate-for-king-charles-to-remain-strong-on-climate-albanese-190416

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

Anthony Albanese has said it would be appropriate for King Charles to continue his advocacy on the challenge of climate change.

“That’s a matter for him, of course,” Albanese said on Sunday. But “in my view that would be appropriate”.

“I think dealing with the challenge of climate change shouldn’t be seen as a political issue – it should be seen as an issue that is about humanity and about our very quality of life and survival as a world,” he told the ABC.

“This is a big threat and King Charles has identified that for a long period of time. I think engagement in issues is very different from engagement in party political matters.”

Albanese’s comment came as he declared a public holiday in Australia on Thursday September 22, which will be a “national day of mourning” and the day a national memorial service will be held for the late Queen.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, quizzed on whether King Charles should drop his public advocacy on issues such as climate change, expected him to become less outspoken. “As King, he is there now as an impartial person.”

“He will have very strong views on this issue and many others, I’m sure, but I think the point he made in his speech yesterday was that he now doesn’t express those views on a day-to-day basis,” Dutton said on the ABC.

Read more:
What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of Queen Elizabeth II’s death?

He said Prince William, now Prince of Wales, was “very strong in relation to this issue and many others. He’s a patron of many organisations as well, and as the Prince of Wales he will have a greater ability to speak out on, and to support causes that are important to him.”

In his Friday (Saturday morning AEST) address to Britain and the Commonwealth King Charles said: “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

The King flagged he expected William to fill a similar role to the one he had filled. “With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will, I know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the centre ground where vital help can be given.”

On Sunday Governor-General David Hurley, in a ceremony at parliament house, formally proclaimed King Charles king of Australia.

This week’s sitting of federal parliament has been cancelled, and politics essentially put on hold. But Albanese indicated the days missed would be made up later. Maintaining the cancellation was appropriate, he said: “It would be difficult to envisage parliament sitting and going through the sort of adversarial activity that occurs in our parliament, under our Westminster system”.

Read more:
Albanese to attend Queen’s funeral and meet King Charles, parliament cancelled

Albanese and Hurley leave on Thursday to attend the Queen’s funeral on Monday September 19.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson was critical of the Albanese announcement of a public holiday, tweeting it would mean cancellation of operations and lots of patient consultations “at a time when access is difficult”.

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

– ref. It would be appropriate for King Charles to remain strong voice on climate change: Albanese – https://theconversation.com/it-would-be-appropriate-for-king-charles-to-remain-strong-voice-on-climate-change-albanese-190416

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

Anthony Albanese has said it would be appropriate for King Charles to continue his advocacy on the challenge of climate change.

“That’s a matter for him, of course,” Albanese said on Sunday. But “in my view that would be appropriate”.

“I think dealing with the challenge of climate change shouldn’t be seen as a political issue – it should be seen as an issue that is about humanity and about our very quality of life and survival as a world,” he told the ABC.

“This is a big threat and King Charles has identified that for a long period of time. I think engagement in issues is very different from engagement in party political matters.”

Albanese’s comment came as he declared a public holiday in Australia on Thursday September 22, which will be a “national day of mourning” and the day a national memorial service will be held for the late Queen.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, quizzed on whether King Charles should drop his public advocacy on issues such as climate change, expected him to become less outspoken. “As King, he is there now as an impartial person.”

“He will have very strong views on this issue and many others, I’m sure, but I think the point he made in his speech yesterday was that he now doesn’t express those views on a day-to-day basis,” Dutton said on the ABC.

Read more:
What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of Queen Elizabeth II’s death?

He said Prince William, now Prince of Wales, was “very strong in relation to this issue and many others. He’s a patron of many organisations as well, and as the Prince of Wales he will have a greater ability to speak out on, and to support causes that are important to him.”

In his Friday (Saturday morning AEST) address to Britain and the Commonwealth King Charles said: “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”

The King flagged he expected William to fill a similar role to the one he had filled. “With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will, I know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the centre ground where vital help can be given.”

On Sunday Governor-General David Hurley, in a ceremony at parliament house, formally proclaimed King Charles king of Australia.

This week’s sitting of federal parliament has been cancelled, and politics essentially put on hold. But Albanese indicated the days missed would be made up later. Maintaining the cancellation was appropriate, he said: “It would be difficult to envisage parliament sitting and going through the sort of adversarial activity that occurs in our parliament, under our Westminster system”.

Read more:
Albanese to attend Queen’s funeral and meet King Charles, parliament cancelled

Albanese and Hurley leave on Thursday to attend the Queen’s funeral on Monday September 19.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson was critical of the Albanese announcement of a public holiday, tweeting it would mean cancellation of operations and lots of patient consultations “at a time when access is difficult”.

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

– ref. Appropriate for King Charles to remain strong voice on climate change: Albanese – https://theconversation.com/appropriate-for-king-charles-to-remain-strong-voice-on-climate-change-albanese-190416

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University

From the very beginning, Queen Elizabeth II’s reign was deeply connected to Britain’s global empire and the long and bloody processes of decolonisation.

Indeed, she became Queen while on a royal visit to Kenya in 1952. After she left, the colony descended into one of the worst conflicts of the British colonial period. Declaring a state of emergency in October 1952, the British would go on to kill tens of thousands of Kenyans before it was over.

Is it possible to disentangle the personal attributes of a gentle and kindly woman from her role as the crowned head of a declining global empire that waged numerous wars and resisted those demanding independence across the globe?

Even though she was a constitutional monarch who generally followed the lead of her parliament, many of Britain’s ex-subjects don’t think so, and some historians agree, with one commenting that “Elizabeth II helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation whose legacies have yet to be adequately acknowledged”.

Here in Australia, too, while some Australians remember with nostalgia the time they waved small flags along the route of royal tours as children, one Indigenous scholar has pointed out that the queen “wasn’t a bystander to the effects of colonisation and colonialism”.

À lire aussi :
The royal family can’t keep ignoring its colonialist past and racist present

It depends who’s remembering

How the queen and her reign is being remembered depends on where the remembering is taking place and by whom.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Unforgettable is the royal tour of the Caribbean in March 2022, when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were bluntly told by the prime minister of Jamaica the region was “moving on” from the British monarchy.

Others, too, noted the British monarchy was a constant reminder of the period of slavery, with a government committee in the Bahamas urging them to offer “a full and formal apology for their crimes against humanity”.

This ongoing process of national distancing from a British royal past is continuing today, even in the week of the queen’s death.

In India, for example, only days ago the once grand boulevard of empire, Rajpath (and before that Kingsway in honour of the British Emperor of India, George V) has been renamed Kartavya Path and headed with a giant statue of Subhas Chandra Bose, one of India’s most strident (and controversial) anti-British nationalists.

At the unveiling of this statue, India’s nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that “another symbol of slavery has been removed today” and urged all Indians to visit the site.

Complicated histories

The theme of a “complicated historical relationship” with the monarchy is also prominent in South Africa, with one African news site declaring that “South Africa’s relationship with the British monarchy is as complicated as it gets”.

It was in South Africa that Elizabeth declared her intention to devote herself to Britain’s “imperial family” of colonies on her 21st birthday. But it was also on the question of South Africa’s apartheid regime that the queen showed a rare moment of dissent with one of her prime ministers, refusing to accept quietly Margaret Thatcher’s decision not to join other countries in placing economic sanctions on the regime.

Elsewhere, Iraq’s complicated history with the United Kingdom, which stretches back to the 1920s, has also been noted in local reports. More recently, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed during the war that Britain began alongside the United States, Australia and other nations in 2003.

In Malaysia, the role of the British in massacres and mass resettlement programs during the bloody Malayan Emergency (1948-60) and the period of decolonisation is also still clearly remembered. Not only did this conflict rumble on during the early years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, all attempts at an inquiry into events in Malaya have been stymied by British governments.

Even in neighbouring Ireland, which has sought to smooth relations with its nearest neighbour, President Michael D Higgins has spoken euphemistically of Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with “those with whom her country has experienced a complex, and often difficult, history”.

Newspapers there also ponder what her death might mean for Northern Ireland, the site of the Anglo-Irish conflict euphemistically known as the “Troubles” as well as recent strained relations.

The queen may have “charmed” some in Ireland with her commemoration of those who fought the British there. But few will have forgotten the role of the British army in Northern Ireland, including the now infamous “Bloody Sunday” Massacre of 1972, nor the queen’s statement on behalf of Boris Johnson’s government rejecting its victims’ demands for justice.

À lire aussi :
Five ways the monarchy has benefited from colonialism and slavery

Some might suggest the tortured history of the declining British Empire should be seen as separate from the reign and person of Elizabeth II. Certainly nothing suggests the queen was particularly bellicose in her demeanour.

But as Thomas Paine once remarked, while a monarch might personally be kind and generous, they remain the monarch, the head of the state which fights its wars and (on occasion) commits its crimes – all in the name of the Crown.

The role of Queen Elizabeth II in the history of British colonialism will continue to be debated well after her death.

Matt Fitzpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The Queen has left her mark around the world. But not all see it as something to be celebrated – https://theconversation.com/the-queen-has-left-her-mark-around-the-world-but-not-all-see-it-as-something-to-be-celebrated-190343

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael P. Theophilos, Associate Professor, Australian Catholic University

Since the introduction of decimal coinage in 1966, about 15 billion Australian coins have been minted with an image of Queen Elizabeth II.

Many of us fondly associate her image with Australian coins, and for most of us it’s all we have ever known (on one side of our money, at least).

Of all the changes that lie ahead now the queen has died, one of the most conspicuous, and to some the most jarring, will be that our new coins will soon be adorned with a portrait of King Charles III.

What happens now?

Tradition holds that each British monarch’s portrait on coins should face in the opposite direction to their predecessor. George IV faced left, Elizabeth II faced right, and thus we expect Charles III will face left.

The design of Charles’ portrait (or “effigy”) is yet to be determined, but it will be supplied by the United Kingdom’s Royal Mint, and Australia’s new coins will be in circulation from 2023.

Traditionally, the reigning monarch is also portrayed on the smallest denomination banknote, but the Reserve Bank of Australia has indicated it will be some time before we see King Charles III on our $5 note. Until then, don’t worry, it will be business as usual. All Australian money bearing a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II remains legal tender, and is likely to circulate for many years to come.

Read more:
16 visits over 57 years: reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II’s long relationship with Australia

Ideologically speaking, the next chapter in Australian coinage is open. What message will the portrait and imagery of Charles III communicate? Will it be one of unity, diversity, leadership, strength, openness, or something else? How will the message be communicated?

Hopefully, we can anticipate a meaningful portrait of King Charles III circulating on our coinage, which captures something of our collective past traditions and future aspirations.

Six progressively ageing portraits

In total we have seen six progressively ageing portraits of Queen Elizabeth II on Australian coins.

Australians first saw Elizabeth on their coins in pre-decimal times: 1953, to be exact, the year of her coronation. At that time, our money was based on British pounds, shillings and pence.

Thirteen years later, on February 14 1966, Australians awoke to a new currency, the Australian dollar, featuring a decimal system.

Cue the collective sigh of relief and joyful cheers of primary school students who no longer had to suffer the complex mathematical calculations of 12 pence to the shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound.

The visual element that was unchanged in the transition from Australian pounds to Australia dollars in 1966 was the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which continued to adorn the “heads” side of the coin.

In preparation for the 1966 currency change, media outlets of the day broadcast this educational ditty, set to the tune of “Click go the Shears”:

In come the dollars and in come the cents

To replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence

Be prepared, folks, when the coins begin to mix

On the fourteenth of February, Nineteen Sixty-Six.

Why do we have leaders’ faces on our coins anyway?

The invention of coinage stretches back over 2,500 years. During the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, city states in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) began minting coins from gold and silver and using them as a means of economic exchange.

But coins were not only important as units of currency. They had (and have) the capacity to communicate ideas and stories graphically.

Initially, the design of coinage used symbols and depictions of gods and goddesses. It was only two centuries later, around 445-395 BCE, that a human face (Tissaphernes, a Persian soldier and statesman) first appeared on a coin, and even then it was a humanised deity.

In the ensuing centuries, rulers have celebrated and reinforced their rule through honorific portraiture on coinage. As one scholar has noted, “coins and statues allowed for the diffusion of the likeness of the ruler in the realm, rendering him omnipresent and his face familiar to his subjects”.

Julius Caesar was the first living Roman to depict a portrait of himself on a coin. Accompanied by the inscription “CAESAR DICT PERPETVO” (Caesar, dictator for life), the coin made a bold statement about the apparent length of his rule. Ironically, however, this coin was one of the catalysts for cutting short his life through assassination.

The Roman people had officially overthrown the monarchy of its founders in 509 BCE, but occasionally flirted with centralised power. Caesar’s kingly act of putting his portrait on coinage, along with other ways he concentrated his power, was deemed more than mere flirtation. It was seen as a direct threat to 500 years of Roman tradition.

As we consider the implications of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing for our own country, its governance and symbols that represent it, we should not neglect the significance of the symbols that define our culture. Or, at the very least the images that accompany us in our daily routines, even the apparently mundane.

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

– ref. What happens to Australia’s money now the Queen has died? And why are leaders’ faces on coins anyway? – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-to-australias-money-now-the-queen-has-died-and-why-are-leaders-faces-on-coins-anyway-190333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kira Westaway, Associate Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

Did humans hunt and eat woolly mammoths or dinosaurs? – Jasmine, age 10, Central Coast NSW

Hi Jasmine,

Thanks for this great question!

Humans can be blamed for a lot of things: chopping down rainforests, worsening climate change, and driving precious species like the Tasmanian Tiger to extinction. But can we add hunting and eating woolly mammoths and dinosaurs to the list?

Well, we can safely assume dinosaurs never fell prey to humans – mainly because the two never even met (despite what the Jurassic Park films suggest). Dinosaurs had already been extinct for about 62 million years by the time modern humans started roaming the planet!

But what about woolly mammoths? In this case, the movie Ice Age was actually correct. Humans and woolly mammoths lived side by side for at least 15,000 years.

Mammoth findings in the fossil record

So did humans hunt woolly mammoths to extinction? To answer this question we must look at clues in the fossil record, which is made up of the preserved remains of ancient life.

In the case of the dodo, a large flightless bird that went extinct, documents from 1690 make it clear that over-hunting by humans was the cause.

But woolly mammoths were around long before we had paper to write on. They existed from about 300,000 years ago – a time when ice covered the northern parts of the world.

As for when they went extinct, a small number of dwarf mammmoths survived on a little isolated island in the Arctic until about 4,000 years ago. But the full-sized species disappeared from an area called Beringia (located between Siberia and Alaska) some 12,000 years ago – after living alongside humans for at least 15,000 years.

Did humans kill them off?

Hunting for clues

When early humans hunted, they tended to kill many animals at the same time. This created “kill sites”, which are literally huge piles of animal bones. And when they pulled the meat off the bones to eat, they used stone tools that created cut marks or small notches in the bones.

These marks now provide vital clues. In Beringia, there is fossil evidence for mammoth kill sites, and cut marks on mammoth bones – so all the clues point to humans having hunted woolly mammoths.

But the strongest evidence was found in southern Poland in 2019. A small part of a stone tool, made into a spear blade by a human, was found in the rib bone of a woolly mammoth. If this was evidence presented in a murder trial, that human would be locked up straight away!

Even so, does that mean humans alone were responsible for wiping out all the full-sized woolly mammoths?

Some scientists suggest the climate also played a role.

It could be that climate conditions at the time shifted away from what woolly mammoths preferred and caused a large drop in their numbers.
This may have made the remaining mammoths more vulnerable to increasing hunting as the human population grew.

Australia’s own ‘mammoths’

Australia didn’t have woolly mammoths. They would have gotten very hot in those thick coats! But we did have giant animals known as megafauna, which went extinct between 5,000 and 17,000 years (depending on the species) after the First Peoples arrived.

Interestingly, we don’t find any reliable fossil evidence of these people hunting Australia’s ancient megafauna. There are no known kill sites, no cut marks on the animal bones, and no evidence of spear blades being lodged in ribs.

Was the megafauna’s disappearance related to human activity? Or did climate change play a part here as well?

The jury is still out on this one! But the more fossils we find, and the better we get at studying them, the closer we’ll come to understanding what happened all those years ago.

Read more:
Curious Kids: could dinosaurs evolve back into existence?

Kira Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. Curious Kids: did humans hunt and eat woolly mammoths or dinosaurs? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-did-humans-hunt-and-eat-woolly-mammoths-or-dinosaurs-190146

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Macintosh, Professor and Director of Research, ANU Law School, Australian National University

This week, several of the largest companies that profit from Australia’s carbon market called for changes to the system. They said the rules that govern the issuing of carbon credits to some projects were too lax and the market’s integrity should be improved.

The companies operate projects under what are known as “landfill gas methods”. Using these methods, landfill gas companies capture and burn methane generated by decomposing rubbish, turning it into carbon dioxide – a less potent greenhouse gas. In return, they receive carbon credits.

The industry’s decision to speak out is an important development. It shows a significant proportion of the carbon market is willing to work constructively to improve the system.

Australia’s carbon credit system is now being reviewed. The federal government must seize this opportunity to ensure the system performs well for taxpayers and the environment.

What’s this all about?

Under the Emissions Reduction Fund, projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions are granted carbon credits. These credits can be sold to the federal government or to private entities that are required, or voluntarily choose, to offset their emissions.

The fund, which began operating in 2014, was the centrepiece of the Coalition government’s climate policy and will continue under Labor.

I’m a former chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, the government-appointed body that oversees the fund’s methods. Earlier this year, my colleagues and I went public with details of serious integrity issues with the scheme, including landfill gas projects.

More than 100 landfill projects currently claim carbon credits for destroying landfill gas. They account for almost 30% of carbon credits issued under the fund.

These projects are registered under four separate methods, including one established late last year for projects that use methane to generate electricity. The concerns about landfill projects centre on this method.

Read more:
We blew the whistle on Australia’s central climate policy. Here’s what a new federal government probe must fix

What’s wrong with the new method?

A key principle that underpins the integrity of carbon offset markets around the world is the concept of “additionality”. It means that the carbon abatement for which companies receive credits must be additional to what would have happened otherwise, without the incentive provided by the scheme.

In the case of landfill gas projects, additionality problems arise because most landfills would destroy methane even without the incentive provided by carbon credits. That’s because they’re required to do this under state laws governing air pollution and safety. These legal requirements mean not all carbon abatement at landfills is additional to what would have occurred anyway.

The landfill methods seek to address this issue using something known as a “baseline”, which is a prescribed proportion of the methane combusted at landfill sites. This baseline is deducted when calculating carbon credits. So for example, if a project has a 30% baseline and destroys 100 tonnes of greenhouse gases, it will be credited only for 70 tonnes.

To be conservative, the baseline proportion should at least represent what operators are legally required to destroy. This is made challenging by the fact that the state regulatory conditions are often drafted in imprecise terms. This makes it hard to set baselines that accurately reflect the regulatory requirements.

In 2011-12, when the original landfill gas methods were being devised, the government and industry agreed on a default minimum baseline of 30%. But most of the biggest landfill gas projects were allowed to use baselines below 30%, and roughly ten projects were given 0% baselines.

This was a product of a deal that allowed operators to use baselines that applied under older offset schemes.

These concessions were meant to expire around now. But the new landfill gas method extended the concessional arrangements, allowing the larger landfill projects to keep using their low baselines for another five years.

And there’s another problem.

Carbon credits are not the only means through which large landfill sites can profit from destroying methane. Using generators, they can harness the heat from burning methane to produce electricity. They can then sell this electricity, as well as earn and sell renewable energy certificates. So even if they don’t receive carbon credits, the sites with generators will often destroy more methane than they are legally required to.

The baselines should account for this fact, but they don’t. They assume that, in the absence of carbon credits, landfills would only ever destroy what they are required to by law. This assumption is not true, particularly at larger landfills.

Read more:
Australia’s central climate policy pays people to grow trees that already existed. Taxpayers – and the environment – deserve better

Way forward

The Clean Energy Regulator and the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee deny any problems with the new landfill gas method. But the industry’s statements this week have made their position untenable.

John Falzon, chair of LMS Energy, is among those calling for a change to the way credits are calculated. He told the ABC:

If the market doesn’t have integrity it’ll crash, so the business itself will collapse with that […] We would forgo some short-term revenue for the opportunity to participate in a market that is more robust and has more credibility and that provides a future.

The actions taken by the industry have created a unique opportunity to fix the landfill gas method and, in the process, showcase how to put Australia’s carbon credit system back on the rails.

The Clean Energy Regulator, which oversees Australia’s carbon credit system, provided the following response:

As has always been our practice, the Clean Energy Regulator welcomes genuine feedback and scrutiny. The independent Review of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), led by Professor Ian Chubb, is underway. The landfill gas method is within their terms of reference. The Clean Energy Regulator is actively assisting this review and is currently considering the new information on the method that has been reported in the last few days.

Read more:
Methane in the atmosphere is at an all-time high – here’s what it means for climate change

Andrew Macintosh is a Director of Paraway Pastoral Co. Ltd, a pastoral company that undertakes projects under the Emissions Reduction Fund. He is also the former chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee.

– ref. ‘Untenable’: even companies profiting from Australia’s carbon market say the system must change – https://theconversation.com/untenable-even-companies-profiting-from-australias-carbon-market-say-the-system-must-change-190232

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne

Some Australians will be paying less for prescription medicines from January, in a move announced this week and designed to ease cost-of-living pressures.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the maximum price of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines would drop from A$42.50 to $30, at a cost to taxpayers of $765.3 million.

There is no reduction for concession-card holders, who will continue to pay up to $6.80.

Cutting the cost of medicines this way is a welcome move. But the government has missed a chance to better target cost cuts to certain patient groups, for specific medical conditions and for generic drugs.

Australians are going without medicines

Australians are currently paying more for their prescription medicines than some similar countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

And we know many Australians can’t afford to fill their scripts.

Just under 7% of older Australians said they didn’t buy their prescribed medications because they were too expensive, a higher proportion than other similar countries. For the UK, this figure was about 3%, in New Zealand it was just under 5%.

This is a problem because people who cannot afford to buy essential medicines have worse health and higher mortality. Forgoing medicines may also lead to more health costs in the future, as conditions go untreated and complications arise, leading to emergency care and hospital visits.

So reducing the price of prescription medicines, as announced this week, will mean more people will be able to afford them, with the health and other benefits this brings.

Read more:
Last year, half a million Australians couldn’t afford to fill a script. Here’s how to rein in rising health costs

Can we better target the price cuts?

People who cannot afford to fill their scripts are more likely to have a below-average income, be Indigenous, be adults under 65, and have little input in decisions about their medical treatment. A high price for medicine at the pharmacy (known as a co-payment) is another big factor.

So other countries use a variety of strategies to make it easier for people to afford to fill their scripts. These include:

• reducing the price of medicines (reducing the co-payment)

• varying the co-payment by patient characteristic (for instance, income, age and health needs)

• promoting the discussion of medicines and their costs between providers (such as doctors, pharmacists) and patients.

Australia already has different co-payments – one for general patients and a much lower one for concession-card holders.

There is no firm evidence concession-card holders are forgoing medicines at a different rate to the general population because of costs. So, it makes sense to target any price cuts to the general population, with its higher co-payment.

But there are ways of lowering the co-payment for certain medicines, in particular those that control life-threatening conditions and prevent hospitalisation.

These medicines include those used to treat asthma, severe mental disorders (such as severe depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder), heart diseases and diabetes.

The government could consider lowering the co-payment for these medicines, especially for people with multiple chronic conditions and on lower incomes.

Read more:
What is the PBS safety net and is it really the best way to cut the cost of medicines?

What else could we do?

This latest announcement only affects medicines costing more than $42.50. The patient pays this co-payment and the government covers the rest. But these accounted for only 70% of PBS drugs dispensed in 2020–21.

A total of 30% of PBS subsidised medicines are cheaper than the co-payment, so the patient pays the full cost.

Most of these cheaper drugs are generic drugs – ones no longer under patent protection. So lowering the co-payment will unlikely affect the cost of these.

If we were hoping to cut the cost of medicines even further, we need to target these generic drugs, which Australians generally pay more for than people in countries including Canada, New Zealand, Japan and many member states of the European Union.

One reason is these countries set a price for each generic drug by using the best price obtained by other comparable countries. If Australia adopted this international benchmarking pricing, we could be saving even more at the pharmacy.

Read more:
Explainer: what is Medicare and how does it work?

Yuting Zhang receives funding from Australian Research Council, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Victorian Department of Health, and National Health and Medical Research Council. In the past, Professor Zhang has received funding from several US institutes including the US National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth fund, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

– ref. The price of PBS medicines is coming down. But are we helping the right people? – https://theconversation.com/the-price-of-pbs-medicines-is-coming-down-but-are-we-helping-the-right-people-190137

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley will fly to London for events marking the passing of Queen Elizabeth, culminating in her funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Next week’s sitting of federal parliament has been cancelled, with no word yet on whether it will be rescheduled ahead of the budget session that begins in late October.

On Friday Albanese signed a condolence book at parliament house.

Ministers and assistant ministers have been invited to a meeting of the executive council at government house on Sunday.

There the prime minister recommends to the governor-general that he issues the proclamation relating to the accession of King Charles. Hurley will then read the proclamation at parliament house.

In London Albanese will attend the Lying in State at Westminster Hall, and will have a brief audience with King Charles.

After his return to Australia there will be a national memorial service.

The governor-general officially informed the prime minister of the Queen’s death in the early hours of Friday morning, and issued a short public announcement.

Albanese said that over her seven-decade reign, the Queen was “a rare and reassuring constant amidst rapid change.

“Through the noise and turbulence of the years, she embodied and exhibited a timeless decency and an enduring calm,” he said.

“Her life of faithful service will be remembered for centuries to come.

“In particular, we recall the sympathy and personal kindness she extended to Australians afflicted by tragedy and disaster — from floods and bushfires to wars and a pandemic.

“Her words and presence were a source of comfort, hope and solace for millions of Australians.

“Today marks the end of an era, the close of the second Elizabethan age.”

In radio interviews Albanese deflected questioning on whether the Queen’s death brought Australia closer to a republic. “Today’s not a day to talk about that.”

Labor has said the republic issue is one for a second term.

But Greens leader Adam Bandt posted on Twitter that Australia must move forward. “We need Treaty with First Nations people, and we need to become a Republic.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said: “A comforting warmth has left the world. One of humanity’s brightest lights has gone out. May our memories of our dear Queen inspire the very best in us, just as she drew inspiration from her subjects.”

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said the Queen was a very contemporary monarch. He recalled when he had talks with her in 2017 she was “full of curiosity” and “on top of things”. King Charles was “a really good man”, who wanted to do good things, Turnbull said.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison said the Queen had a “regal humility”. He said she had a particular empathy with people in rural and regional Australia. “In our last discussion we talked about the mice plague in NSW.”

Another former PM, Kevin Rudd, recounted how he had told the Queen his mother had thought her the “bees knees”,

“And the Queen said, why was that? And I said, because my mum always said, you made a damn fine mechanic during the war. And secondly, you and your sister stuck it out in Buckingham Palace when the place was being bombed.” The Queen had enjoyed the story, Rudd said.

Officials said King Charles will appear on Australian coinage next year. It is not yet known when the $5 note, that features the Queen, will change.

In Australia, as in the United Kingdom, there has long been a very detailed timetable of arrangements to follow the Queen’s death.

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

– ref. Albanese to attend Queen’s funeral and meet King Charles, parliament cancelled – https://theconversation.com/albanese-to-attend-queens-funeral-and-meet-king-charles-parliament-cancelled-190337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Wayland, Senior Lecturer Social Work, University of New England

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has prompted public displays of grief around the world – from public gatherings at Buckingham Palace in London, and condolences from world leaders, to individuals reflecting on social media about what she meant to them.

Of course, the vast majority of people grieving or acknowledging the queen’s passing will have never met her in person.

So is this outpouring of grief of someone we don’t know any different to mourning someone we were close to?

There are some similarities and some stark differences. There’s also a tussle emerging over how the queen is remembered, which can potentially complicate the grieving process.

Read more:
Queen Elizabeth II: the end of the ‘new Elizabethan age’

How is this grief similar?

Grieving someone is about reflecting on our lifetime connection and the attachment we had with them that no longer physically exists.

Even though the queen may not have been part of our immediate family, many of us have “grown up” with her.

During her 70-year reign, she’s been part of our lives – part of our grandparents’ lives, our parents’ lives and now ours. Think of these as cross-generational connections. We, collectively and across the generations, feel as if we “know” her.

Globally, we’ve also been preparing for her loss. Her advanced aged, health issues, and plans for what happens after her death have been the subjects of much media coverage.

So this “familiarity” means the type of grief we are seeing now can feel very similar to having someone in our own lives, then losing them.

Read more:
Operation London Bridge: why Britain is obsessed with the days that will follow The Queen’s death

How is this grief different?

But grief for a public figure we don’t know, such as the queen, can be quite different.

We’re missing the close connection with that individual. Many do not have personal anecdotes, or one-on-one shared experiences. We don’t have those intertwined memories to reflect on. As that person is out of reach, it’s difficult to create an image of who that person really was and what they mean to us.

Rather than reflecting on an individual relationship with a loved one, after the death of a public figure, we rely on community experiences for a type of collective grief that shapes how we share our grief online.

Read more:
COVID deaths are now barely mentioned in the media. That changes the very nature of grief

A contested grief

Because most of us didn’t know the queen personally, our perception of her – her attributes, her personality – is not grounded in facts.

For instance, how an individual might remember her may be coloured by their age, their political views, or whether their lives have been shaped by colonialism.

So a tussle for how she is remembered – in the United Kingdom, in the Commonwealth and more broadly – is being played out on social media. That tussle can also complicate grief when people share differing reactions to her death.

It raises questions of whether we’re allowed to grieve, or who can voice their grief, or even if we disagree whether grieving is appropriate.

We need to make space for all these different reactions to her loss.

Read more:
Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee comes amid her declining health, royal backlash and a colonial reckoning

What role does the media play?

The media plays an integral role in how we grieve.

Real-time updates and constant coverage, as we’ve seen around the queen’s death, means we’ve been bracing for the news of her passing. Then the news came.

But this front-row seat to unfolding events and the outpouring of public grief that followed can be triggering for some.

For people who have lost a loved one – recently or even years ago – this rolling media coverage may trigger memories of what happened when their family member or friend died.

COVID restrictions may have robbed them of their chance to deliver end-of-life care or attend a funeral in-person.

So this 24-hour news cycle, and being updated on every single step of the queen’s illness and now death, can trigger our own lived experiences of loss. We need to be gentle with those varied reactions.

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

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

– ref. Why do we mourn people we don’t know? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-mourn-people-we-dont-know-190331

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has prompted many people, perhaps for the first time, to wonder: what happens now, legally?

In fact, there are clear rules around succession and how it plays out in Australia. Because Queen Elizabeth has lived a long time, there has been a lot of planning for the transition to the new king.

The change is automatic

Legally, there does not need to be anything done in Australia to result in the change from queen to king. That happens automatically as soon as a monarch dies. When Queen Elizabeth II died, Charles immediately became king of Australia.

This is because the rules of succession in relation to the crown of Australia, while controlled by Australia and part of Australian law, are kept consistent with the British rules.

Most activity will be ceremonial and symbolic

There will be proclamations made in both the United Kingdom and Australia. The governor-general will read a proclamation at parliament house in Canberra. But that’s a ceremonial matter. It does not have any legal effect in changing the monarch.

There will be a national memorial service for the queen, flags will fly at half-mast, there will be gun salutes and other public ceremonies to mark this momentous change. Churches will hold ceremonies and the public will be invited to sign books of condolence. There is a whole history of tradition around royal mourning.

But because we haven’t had a change of monarch for so long, the traditions from the past will probably look different to those we use today. In the past, people might have worn black, donned black armbands, or put up portraits of the queen draped in black and purple crepe.

It is more likely today we would see people laying flowers and signing remembrance books. The laying of flowers, however, is not a particularly environmentally sound practice. It just leaves a pile of soggy, rotting foliage. A better way of remembering Queen Elizabeth would be to plant a tree. The queen planted many trees in ceremonies during visits to all her realms, including Australia. The new king, we know, is a keen environmentalist and a tree-lover. So planting a tree, #royaltree, would be a more appropriate sign of remembrance and respect.

What about the Australian parliament?

Australia’s parliament, which was due to sit next week, will instead break for 15 days.

This is not a legal requirement; it is a matter of choice and a sign of respect. The prime minister will be heading to the UK for the queen’s funeral, so it is also a matter of practicality as he will be out of the country.

There is no legal requirement for federal members of parliament to re-swear their oaths. They have already sworn an oath to Queen Elizabeth II and “her heirs and successors according to law”, so that will continue to apply to the queen’s heir and successor, King Charles. But the Houses could choose to have their members take new oaths, as a matter of symbolism.

Read more:
16 visits over 57 years: reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II’s long relationship with Australia

Continuity is key

Some people may try to use the queen’s death to argue that there are legal consequences to the change which affect legal proceedings, the validity of laws or the powers of office holders. They relish arguing about seals and oaths in an attempt to use these technicalities to escape from the application of the law or avoid having to pay tax.

However, there are numerous laws that make it very clear that the death of the monarch (which in legal terms is known as the “demise of the crown”) does not disrupt legal proceedings, invalidate laws or require officials to re-take an oath in order to exercise legal powers.

For example, in NSW section 12(4B) of the Constitution Act says that members of parliament do not have to re-swear their oath. Section 49A says that the holding of any office under the Crown is not affected by the death of the monarch and it is not necessary for the office holder to take a new oath. Section 8 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1988 of NSW says that legal proceedings are not affected by the demise of the Crown.

Passports, official seals and currency which mention the queen will all remain valid. The system of change from one monarch to the next is legally seamless, leaving it a matter for the people how they decide to mark the change in a ceremonial and symbolic manner.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the Australian Research Council and occasionally does consultancy work for governments and inter-governmental bodies. She has written books on the reserve powers and the role of vice-regal officers in Australia.

– ref. What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of Queen Elizabeth II’s death? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-legal-and-constitutional-consequences-for-australia-of-queen-elizabeth-iis-death-190335

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has prompted many people, perhaps for the first time, to wonder: what happens now, legally?

In fact, there are clear rules around succession and how it plays out in Australia. Because Queen Elizabeth has lived a long time, there has been a lot of planning for the transition to the new King.

The change is automatic

Legally, there does not need to be anything done in Australia to result in the change from queen to king. That happens automatically as soon as a monarch dies. When Queen Elizabeth II died, Charles immediately became King of Australia.

This is because the rules of succession in relation to the crown of Australia, while controlled by Australia and part of Australian law, are kept consistent with the British rules.

Most activity will be ceremonial and symbolic

There will be proclamations made in both the United Kingdom and Australia. The governor-general will read a proclamation at Parliament House in Canberra. But that’s a ceremonial matter. It does not have any legal effect in changing the monarch.

There will be a national memorial service for the Queen, flags will fly at half-mast, there will be gun salutes and other public ceremonies to mark this momentous change. Churches will hold ceremonies and the public will be invited to sign books of condolence. There is a whole history of tradition around royal mourning.

But because we haven’t had a change of monarch for so long, the traditions from the past will probably look different to those we use today. In the past, people might have worn black, donned black armbands, or put up portraits of the Queen draped in black and purple crepe.

It is more likely today we would see people laying flowers and signing remembrance books. The laying of flowers, however, is not a particularly environmentally sound practice. It just leaves a pile of soggy, rotting foliage. A better way of remembering Queen Elizabeth would be to plant a tree. The Queen planted many trees in ceremonies during visits to all her realms, including Australia. The new King, we know, is a keen environmentalist and a tree-lover. So planting a tree, #royaltree, would be a more appropriate sign of remembrance and respect.

What about the Australian parliament?

Australia’s parliament, which was due to sit next week, will instead break for 15 days.

This is not a legal requirement; it is a matter of choice and a sign of respect. The prime minister will be heading to the UK for the Queen’s funeral, so it is also a matter of practicality as he will be out of the country.

There is no legal requirement for federal Members of Parliament to re-swear their oaths. They have already sworn an oath to Queen Elizabeth II and ‘her heirs and successors according to law’, so that will continue to apply to the Queen’s heir and successor, King Charles. But the Houses could choose to have their Members take new oaths, as a matter of symbolism.

Leer más:
16 visits over 57 years: reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II’s long relationship with Australia

Continuity is key

Some people may try to use the Queen’s death to argue that there are legal consequences to the change which affect legal proceedings, the validity of laws or the powers of office holders. They relish arguing about seals and oaths in an attempt to use these technicalities to escape from the application of the law or avoid having to pay tax.

However, there are numerous laws that make it very clear that the death of the monarch (which in legal terms is known as the “demise of the crown”) does not disrupt legal proceedings, invalidate laws or require officials to re-take an oath in order to exercise legal powers.

For example, in NSW section 12(4B) of the Constitution Act says that Members of Parliament do not have to re-swear their oath. Section 49A says that the holding of any office under the Crown is not affected by the death of the monarch and it is not necessary for the office holder to take a new oath. Section 8 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1988 of NSW says that legal proceedings are not affected by the demise of the Crown.

Passports, official seals and currency which mention the Queen will all remain valid. The system of change from one monarch to the next is legally seamless, leaving it a matter for the people how they decide to mark the change in a ceremonial and symbolic manner.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the Australian Research Council and occasionally does consultancy work for governments and inter-governmental bodies. She has written books on the reserve powers and the role of vice-regal officers in Australia.

– ref. What are the legal and constitutional consequences for Australia of the Queen’s death? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-legal-and-constitutional-consequences-for-australia-of-the-queens-death-190335

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury

The death of Queen Elizabeth II brings to an end a long, complex and remarkable chapter in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand’s evolution from colony to independent, bicultural and multicultural nation.

Throughout that period, however, New Zealanders have generally admired and even loved the monarch herself, even if the institution she represented lay at the centre of a vexed, often traumatic, reckoning with the colonial past.

If there was a highpoint in New Zealand royalism, it was witnessed during the first visit by the young Queen and Duke of Edinburgh between December 23 1953 and January 30 1954. An estimated three in every four people turned out to see the royal couple in what historian Jock Phillips has called “the most elaborate and most whole-hearted public occasion in New Zealand history”.

After decades of economic depression and war, Elizabeth’s June 1953 coronation heralded an optimistic postwar atmosphere. Following the conquest of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay – claimed as a jewel in the new Queen’s crown – the royal tour was the perfect moment for New Zealand to celebrate.

The Queen’s presence also fulfilled the long anticipated wish that a reigning British monarch would visit. War, then bad health, had previously dashed hopes for a tour by George VI.

Elizabeth II made a huge impression. She appeared as a youthful, radiant, even magical queen, one dedicated to serving her people. She charmed an older generation and embedded herself in the memories of the children who lined up to see her. They would all grow up to be, one way or another, “royal watchers”, aware of her reign and its milestones, keeping up with the lives of her children, their spouses and her grandchildren.

And then, less than 40 hours after her arrival, the young Queen’s leadership was put to the test when 151 people died in the Tangiwai rail disaster on Christmas Eve. She visited survivors and included words of comfort in her speeches, cementing her connection to the grieving, and to the country.

The female crown

Remarkably, it was not until 2011 that females became equal to males in the rules of British royal succession. Queens only came to power in the absence of a male heir. And yet, this historical sexism also endowed queens with an exceptional quality – strong mother figures presiding over their subjects.

Indeed, in the past two centuries of the British monarchy, it is Queen Victoria (who reigned for almost 64 years) and Queen Elizabeth II (reigning for 70 years) who stand out as not just the longest-serving, but also most significant monarchs. Both played a crucial part in New Zealand’s history.

Read more:
Queen Elizabeth II: the end of the ‘new Elizabethan age’

In my work as a historian I have argued that the politically conservative “female imperialism”, emblemised in the reigns of Victoria and Elizabeth, encouraged women to support the British Empire and Commonwealth. In turn, it helped raise women’s status in society.

For example, both queens inspired women to “take up their mantle” and work for empire and nation: often in maternal roles with children as teachers and nurses. The female crown encouraged citizenship based on British values, offering school prizes and support for migrants.

The young Elizabeth’s volunteer work during the second world war set an example for youth, as did her longtime role as patron of the Girl Guides. The gender-power of the Queen was already on display during the 1952-53 tour when she visited servicewomen, nurses and mothers with new babies, and was given presents for her own children.

Celebrity status

Over the past 70 years, the Queen also became something of a modern celebrity, a fixture in women’s magazines, on radio, television and now social media. As well as turning out to see her in person during her ten visits, New Zealanders “took her into their homes” with press clippings, souvenir pictures and keepsakes.

During that first tour, the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly pronounced upon the Queen’s role in the enduring relationship with Britain:

An even stronger link will be consolidated and spiritual stimulus given to life by the influence of one who is an inspiration to all.

She was described as “enchanting”, with her “exquisite complexion, her eyes like sapphires […] and her beautiful mobile mouth as she talked and smiled”. In 1963 she was “lovely” with “the breathtaking brilliance of [her] peacock silk outfit against the broad canvas of sea and sky”.

In 1970 she was “a fairytale Queen – a glittering image such as children visualise when they think of the word Queen”. In 1977, “The Queen is perfection”. On a 1986 visit she was reportedly closer and more familiar than ever, but at nearly 60 her “movements are inclined to be slower, her smile reflects more understanding than youthful sparkle […] and there were times when she looked as if she would rather kick off her shoes and have a cup of tea”.

By the 1980s, the glamour baton had passed to the next generation, notably the hugely popular Diana, Princess of Wales. Proving that royalty was not immune from modern life, three of the Queen’s four children divorced, most publicly and scandalously. Ironically (perhaps absurdly), there were accusations the Queen was out of touch with the times.

Relationship with a colony

As power devolved around the Commonwealth during the Queen’s reign, the relationship with New Zealand inevitably changed too. Notions of a settler colony of Anglo-Celtic descendants emulating a “superior” British imperial economy, politics and culture – with a distant monarch as head of state – became outmoded.

Most importantly, the colonisation and assimilation of Indigenous peoples were challenged.

As historian Michael Dawson has shown, Māori involvement was minimal at the 1950 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. There was no Māori welcome or presence in the opening or closing ceremonies, with only a musical performance as athletes and officials arrived in the country.

It was left to King Korokī and Te Puea Herangi to hold their own welcome for athletes at Ngāruawāhia. The prime minister of the day, Sidney Holland, attended and considered the event an excellent example of good race relations. But rather than Māori being partners in the planning of the first royal tour, they were largely expected to fit in, mostly providing entertainment.

In the original tour plans, Arawa were expected to represent all Māori during a lunch stop. Only when they asked for more time were plans changed. Meanwhile, the Kīngitanga had to lobby hard for the Queen to visit Ngāruawāhia. This eventually happened, with the Queen and Duke spontaneously deciding to spend more time there than had been allocated.

Importantly, through the Queen’s reign, the Crown’s role in redressing the past became an essential part of New Zealand’s post-colonial development. After much agitation, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975 to investigate Crown breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In 1987, Māori became an official language. Rather than assimilating into a devolved settler state, decolonisation came to mean mana motuhake for Māori.

By the 1974 Commonwealth Games – the “friendly games” – in Christchurch, Māori “were centrally incorporated” into the festivities, including a leading role in the opening ceremony. By the 1990 games in Auckland, also the 150th anniversary of signing of the Treaty, emerging biculturalism was evident in the medals incorporating Māori design.

Abandoning Britain?

In late 20th century New Zealand there were simmering republican sentiments. At the same time, because of the regenerating Iwi-Crown relationship under the Treaty, there was a reluctance to move away from Britain constitutionally.

Ironically, it was Britain going its own way – most notably by joining the EEC in 1973 – that moved the issue along. Symbolically, the number and length of temporary working visas for New Zealanders were cut back, despite an “OE” in the “mother country” being still viewed as a rite of passage.

There were other reasons republicanism was not a priority for the state. The shift towards a laissez-faire, free-market economic ideology shifted the ground; the move to a new electoral system in the 1990s underscored New Zealand’s growing independence.

Read more:
What would King Charles mean for the monarchy, Australia and the republican movement?

But through those decades of change, the popularity of the Queen provided a constant. If there was a moment when the republican break might have happened, it was missed. New Zealand has been more reticent than Australia, where a referendum on becoming a republic was only narrowly defeated in 1999.

New Zealand has also retired and then later reinstated the royal honours system. Attempts to change the flag and remove the Union Jack from its corner came to nothing in a 2016 referendum.

And New Zealand still doesn’t have its own constitution outlining its fundamental laws of government. Rather, we rely on a conglomerate constitution, messily located in 45 acts of parliament. And of course, the head of state remains a hereditary monarch who lives half a world away.

Aotearoa after Elizabeth

The Queen’s death presents another opportunity for New Zealand to reassess its nationhood – and perhaps be creative.

King Charles and the Queen Consort Camilla simply don’t have the appeal of Elizabeth II. But postcolonial Britain and the modern, diverse Commonwealth still have much to offer an increasingly multicultural New Zealand.

Read more:
Prince Charles: the conventions that will stop him from meddling as King

Most importantly, it is time for a broad conversation about how the various dymamics of contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand – liberal and egalitarian traditions, Pākeha settler notions of governance, Te Ao Māori, and the special Iwi-Crown connection – might work together in the future.

After all, Māori signed the Treaty with Queen Victoria at least in part as protection from the behaviour of unruly settlers. Does 21st-century New Zealand still need a monarch to protect against settler colonialism?

Whatever the answer, any move away from the Crown needs to honour the history of which Elizabeth II has been such a significant part.

Katie Pickles 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. From evolving colony to bicultural nation, Queen Elizabeth II walked a long road with Aotearoa New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/from-evolving-colony-to-bicultural-nation-queen-elizabeth-ii-walked-a-long-road-with-aotearoa-new-zealand-179933

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Finch, Research Affiliate, Monash University

A crucial outcome of Australia’s jobs summit last week was the commitment to review programs aimed at boosting the number of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.

Energy is a particularly male-dominated STEM industry, with clean energy on the brink of massive expansion. However, to ensure the clean energy industry is truly sustainable, it must learn from the mistakes of the mining and fossil fuel industry.

If mining workplaces are anything to go by, the clean energy sector will have their work cut out for them to retain women in the workforce.

It’s easy to understand why women are leaving careers in the fossil fuel sector. For example, a Western Australian parliamentary inquiry earlier this year revealed appalling reports of widespread sexual harassment and assault in the state’s fly-in-fly-out mining industry.

As a woman who used to work in and with the mining sector, these findings were no surprise to me. Only by creating workplaces that are inclusive of women and other underrepresented groups will the clean energy sector unlock the economic and innovation benefits of a diverse workforce.

By the numbers

At a glance, it seems Australia’s clean energy industry is making great progress.

A 2021 Clean Energy Council survey found 39% of Australia’s clean energy workforce identify as women. Compare this to 32% of the global renewables sector, 25.9% in Australia’s oil and gas sector, and 17.5% in coal mining.

However, the Australian result was based on a voluntary survey of the renewables sector, which people who feel marginalised by their diversity are more likely to opt into. This means the percentage of women in the sector actually may be lower.

The male-dominated renewables construction sector also had low representation in survey responses, further skewing results.

Read more:
Trailblazing women who broke into engineering in the 1970s reflect on what’s changed – and what hasn’t

If we look at the mining sector overall, census data reveals that at junior levels there is a relatively even gender split, with women comprising roughly 40% of 20-27 year olds in the industry.

But this gender split doesn’t persist for long. The proportion of women in mining begins to decrease from age 28, so that in the 56-59 age bracket, women comprise less than 15% of the workforce. The census data also reveal there has been little improvement in these numbers in the last 15 years.

So why are women leaving the mining industry? There are three main reasons.

1. Sexual assault and harassment

The mining industry, including the fossil fuel industry, can be a dangerous place for women.

In early 2022, an external review of Rio Tinto’s workplace culture found bullying, sexism and racism are systemic across the company.

In the last five years, 28% of women had experienced sexual harassment at Rio Tinto worksites, and 21 women were victims of actual or attempted rape or sexual assault.

This finding is consistent with the WA parliamentary inquiry, which found sexual harassment is, and has long been, prevalent across the industry. It is fostered by gender inequality, power imbalances and exacerbated by high alcohol consumption.

Read more:
Antarctic stations are plagued by sexual harassment – it’s time for things to change

The inquiry’s report highlighted that when women tried to report harassment and assault they were bullied, threatened or lost their jobs.

The parliamentary inquiry made a number of recommendations to improve the safety of women in the FIFO mining industry, such as an overhaul of reporting structures within companies.

So far Rio Tinto is the only major mining company that has announced their plan to overhaul their systems to protect women. There has been no word from governments outside of WA on any action in the face of this damning parliamentary inquiry.

2. Biases against women

Women tend to face more obstacles to progression and job satisfaction than men do, because there are systematic biases against them. While a minority belief persists that biases against women simply do not exist, we have known of bias in science for a long time.

In Australia, as in many nations, women do more household and caring work, and STEM fields are generally male dominated. Our expectations of the roles of each gender are influenced accordingly, creating implicit bias against women in science.

Read more:
It’s not lack of confidence that’s holding back women in STEM

Research shows these biases negatively affect all decisions made about women in a professional context, including hiring, promotion, awards, the value of their work, and other professional opportunities.

This means once women are in STEM careers, especially in male-dominated industries such as the mining industry, they encounter more barriers to success than their male colleagues.

3. Parental leave

It’s clear having children isn’t the sole cause of women leaving STEM careers, otherwise we’d see a flood of childfree women in leadership positions throughout the STEM sector, and this is certainly not the case.

However, in Australian heterosexual couples, women generally shoulder the bulk of childcare. This is perhaps in part because men are not ordinarily given equal access to parental leave and flexible working arrangements.

Read more:
The fatherhood penalty: how parental leave policies perpetuate the gender gap (even in our ‘progressive’ universities)

When both parents have equal access to parental leave, families can structure home and outside work equitably. On the other hand, providing birth mums vastly more leave can incentivise inequality, since families may be better off financially or otherwise by not using childcare.

Some mining companies recognise that flexible working conditions could increase retention, and have policies allowing any employee to work flexibly. Others have “family friendly” FIFO rosters, which tends to involve prescription of the roster they believe to be family friendly.

We need systemic change

Like the fossil fuel industry, women in renewables face barriers to retention and promotion.

Representation of university-qualified women decreases in leadership roles and above age 40. Women in the renewables sector make up just 32% of senior leadership or executive roles, 19% of board positions, and 62% of administrative roles.

In Australia’s mining and energy sector, some people are pushing for change and equity, but the problems are widespread and can be difficult to detect.

We need sector-wide, systemic change. This must be brought about by thoughtful and insightful leadership at our most senior levels, guiding new policies and procedures to make workplaces more inclusive of women.

Read more:
Getting more men into nursing means a rethink of gender roles, pay and recognition. But we need them urgently

Research shows achieving greater gender balance leads to better economic performance and outcomes, and more innovation. In many STEM industries, we have a strong pipeline of women university graduates being lost to other sectors in their early to mid-careers.

In fact, shifting only 1% of Australia’s workforce into STEM jobs would add $57.4 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product over 20 years.

The clean energy sector has an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the mining and fossil fuel sector and harness the untapped potential of women in Australia’s STEM-trained workforce. Doing so will deliver even greater economic and environmental benefits.

Emily Finch has previously received funding from an Australian Postgraduate Award and a Society of Economic Geologists Graduate Student Fellowship.

Melanie Finch receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is the President of Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences Australasia (WOMEESA).

– ref. 3 ways the fossil fuel industry failed women (and how clean energy can learn from its mistakes) – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-the-fossil-fuel-industry-failed-women-and-how-clean-energy-can-learn-from-its-mistakes-189965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jess Carniel, Senior Lecturer in Humanities, University of Southern Queensland

With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Australia has a new king. The BBC has confirmed Charles will take on the regnal name of “King Charles III”.

Charles was made the Prince of Wales at age nine in 1958 – with his investiture held a decade later – making him the longest serving royal heir in the longest reign of a British monarch.

We are familiar with him as a senior royal, but what will it be like now he is king?

Read more:
16 visits over 57 years: reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II’s long relationship with Australia

Who is Charles?

With the popularity of Netflix drama The Crown and Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart, we are currently awash with fictional (re)imaginings of Charles.

Of particular interest, however, is his marriage to Princess Diana. Despite now being married to Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, for almost 16 years, the pageantry of his wedding to Diana and the subsequent divorce still loom large in the public imagination.

Romantic entanglements aside, Charles’s career as a senior royal has been plagued by scandals.

Two salient examples include his association with Jimmy Saville and, more recently, cash-for-honours allegations against his foundation.

He has also had a tumultuous relationship with the press, filing a successful court case against the Mail on Sunday in 2006 for publishing excerpts from his private journals. Charles was also one of several royals targeted by the News of the World phone hacking affair.

Like other senior royals, Charles is patron of numerous charities.

However, the issue apparently most dear to his heart is the environment. He has long advocated for environmental sustainability and even has his own organic brand and sustainably-built urban village.

The British monarch is intended to be a non-partisan, impartial head of state. As heir, however, Charles has been prolific in letters lobbying various government ministers. This makes Charles much more interventionist than his predecessors.

Will Charles make a ‘good king’?

Since 2019, British market research firm YouGov have maintained a poll tracker asking this very question.

The results paint the very picture of ambivalence, with 34% of respondents endorsing King Charles and 33% opposing such an outcome. The final 33% were unsure.

Importantly, despite being the second most popular royal, Prince William is not necessarily viewed as “king material”. In fact, only 37% of Brits expressed a preference for Prince William to lead the monarchy over Charles.

A similar poll taken while the queen was alive asking whether she was doing a good job found 59% believe she did, while only 4% believe she did not.

But what do we mean by a “good king” or “good queen” in a constitutional monarchy where political power rests largely with the parliament?

We shouldn’t simply dismiss the political power of the monarch entirely – after all, they can still sack the government.

However, the idea of a good king or queen today is more linked to their symbolic power. They derive this symbolic power not only from their ceremonial roles, but from what they mean to the ordinary Commonwealth citizen.

The long reign of Queen Elizabeth II has made her an icon of familiarity and constancy, particularly amid a tumultuous 20th and 21st centuries.

As her long-serving heir, Charles has also come to represent stability, but has generally failed to capture public sentiment.

So even if Charles succeeds in meeting some objective criteria to become a “good king”, he may not assume this role with the same public favour as his mother.

What will this mean for Australia and the Commonwealth?

Australia arguably has sentimental meaning for Charles. He spent a semester of his schooling at Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus, and at one point was even keen to become its governor-general.

However, this idea proved to be unpopular with both Australians and the Queen, albeit for different reasons.

Today, modern attitudes to the monarchy and the question of an Australian republic remain ambivalent.

A 2021 Ipsos online poll found that republican attitudes in Australia had subsided since their peak in 1999 – the year of the failed republic referendum.

Only 34% agreed that Australia should become a republic, while 40% were against the proposal. The other 26% were unsure. This uncertainty was highest among respondents aged between 18 and 24.

The future of the monarchy is an issue entwined with the historical and contemporary legacies of colonialism. Combined with the personal ambivalence some may feel towards Charles, his succession may reignite republican debates.

Read more:
Long live King Charles? An Australian republic is in Turnbull’s hands for now

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

– ref. Australia has a new head of state: what will Charles be like as king? – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-new-head-of-state-what-will-charles-be-like-as-king-176878

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

Doomscrolling can be a normal reaction to living through uncertain times. It’s natural to want to understand dramatic events unfolding around you and to seek out information when you’re afraid. But becoming absorbed in bad news for too long can be detrimental.

A newly published study has found that people with high levels of problematic news consumption are also more likely to have worse mental and physical health. So what can you do about it?

We spoke to Australians in the state of Victoria about their lengthy lockdown experiences and found how they managed to stop doomscrolling. Here are some tips to help you do the same.

Doomscrolling – unhelpful and harmful

“Doomscrolling” describes what happens when someone continues to consume negative news and information online, including on social media. There is increasing evidence that this kind of overconsumption of bad news may have negative impacts.

Research suggests doomscrolling during crises is unhelpful and even harmful. During the early COVID-19 pandemic, consuming a lot of news made people feel overwhelmed. One study found people who consumed more news about the pandemic were also more anxious about it.

Research into earlier crises, like 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings, also found that sustained exposure to news about catastrophes is linked to negative mental health outcomes.

Read more:
Doomscrolling COVID news takes an emotional toll – here’s how to make your social media a happier place

Choosing to take control

During the peak of COVID-19 spread, many found themselves doomscrolling. There was lots of bad news and, for many people, lots more spare time. Several studies, including our own, have found that limiting news exposure helped people to cope.

Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, experienced some of the longest-running lockdowns in the world. Wanting to know how Victorians were managing their news consumption during this time, we launched a survey and held interviews with people who limited news consumption for their own wellbeing.

Read more:
When too much news is bad news: is the way we consume news detrimental to our health?

We found that many people increased their news consumption when the lockdowns began. However, most of our participants gradually introduced strategies to curb their doomscrolling because they realised it was making them feel anxious or angry, and distracted from daily tasks.

Our research found these news-reduction strategies were highly beneficial. People reported feeling less stressed and found it easier to connect with others. Here are some of their strategies, which you might want to try.

1. Make a set time to check news

Rather than checking news periodically across the day, set aside a specific time and consider what time of day is going to have the most positive impacts for you.

One participant would check the news while waiting for her morning cup of tea to brew, as this set a time limit on her scrolling. Other participants preferred saving their news engagement for later in the day so that they could start their morning being settled and focused.

2. Avoid having news ‘pushed’ to you

Coming across news unexpectedly can lure you into a doomscrolling spiral. Several participants managed this by avoiding having news “pushed” to them, allowing them to engage on their own terms instead. Examples included unfollowing news-related accounts on social media or turning off push notifications for news and social media apps.

3. Add ‘friction’ to break the habit

If you find yourself consuming news in a mindless or habitual way, making it slightly harder to access news can give you an opportunity to pause and think.

One participant moved all her social media and news apps into a folder which she hid on the last page of her smartphone home screen. She told us this strategy helped her significantly reduce doomscrolling. Other participants deleted browser bookmarks that provided shortcuts to news sites, deleted news and social media apps from their phones, and stopped taking their phone into their bedroom at night.

4. Talk with others in your household

If you’re trying to manage your news consumption better, tell other people in your household so they can support you. Many of our participants found it hard to limit their consumption when other household members watched, listened to, or talked about a lot of news.

In the best cases, having a discussion helped people come to common agreements, even when one person found the news comforting and another found it upsetting. One couple in our study agreed that one of them would watch the midday news while the other went for a walk, but they’d watch the evening news together.

Staying informed is still important

Crucially, none of these practices involve avoiding news entirely. Staying informed is important, especially in crisis situations where you need to know how to keep safe. Our research shows there are ways of balancing the need to stay informed with the need to protect your wellbeing.

So if your news consumption has become problematic, or you’re in a crisis situation where negative news can become overwhelming, these strategies can help you strike that balance. This is going to remain an important challenge as we continue to navigate an unstable world.

Read more:
When tragedy becomes banal: Why news consumers experience crisis fatigue

James Meese currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Meta. He is also a member of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

Kate Mannell 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. Doomscrolling is literally bad for your health. Here are 4 tips to help you stop – https://theconversation.com/doomscrolling-is-literally-bad-for-your-health-here-are-4-tips-to-help-you-stop-190059

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

As the COVID pandemic nears 1,000 days in Australia, we’re well-versed in recognising the cough, fever and fatigue that characterise the infection.

Almost 50% of Australians have now had COVID. Most of us will recover well, but some will experience lingering or new symptoms for extended periods.

As we ride out COVID’s peaks and troughs, a new wave of long COVID is emerging. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.

When does COVID become long COVID?

As a new illness, there is no one definition of when COVID ends and long COVID starts.

The Australian Department of Health defines long COVID as symptoms persisting or emerging at least four weeks after initial infection.

In contrast, the Word Health Organization’s guidelines say long COVID starts three months after infection.

These wide-ranging timeframes have led to estimates that between 5 and 50% of people with COVID infections will develop long COVID.

Read more:
Long COVID: why it’s so hard to tell how many people get it

What are the symptoms?

Definitions of long COVID are further complicated by a list of more than 200 symptoms across ten parts of the body.

The most common and longest-lasting symptoms include brain fog and impaired memory and concentration, fatigue, headaches, tinnitus (ringing in ears), breathing difficulties, and loss of taste and smell.

For many people, these symptoms flare up after physical or mental exertion.

Rarer symptoms include chest pain and heart palpitations, visual impairment and diarrhoea.

People suffering long COVID have also reported dental problems, with teeth becoming loose and crumbling, and gums bleeding.

What causes long COVID?

We know very little about how long COVID affects the body, and why some people develop ongoing symptoms and others don’t.

A recent study found COVID causes increases in chemical messengers that signal inflammation. Over time, this damages the insulating myelin layer of nerve cells that are essential for nerves to carry and co-ordinate messages around the body and brain.

The immune system may also be acting in more obscure ways. Antibodies produced against the SARS-CoV-2 virus may be targeting specialised cells in the walls of blood vessels in the brain, allowing inflammatory cells to enter brain tissue more easily.

Although preliminary, these studies could hint at the underlying mechanisms of brain fog and problems with memory and concentration.

Read more:
Long COVID: How researchers are zeroing in on the self-targeted immune attacks that may lurk behind it

Other studies are so fresh from the research lab they are yet to be peer-reviewed (so should be interpreted more cautiously).

One such new study showed people with long COVID have higher numbers of immune cells circulating in the body, and abnormally low levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Aside from stress, cortisol is also important for regulating inflammation, so low cortisol levels may be one way the immune system becomes over-active. However, these results are far from clear.

Another new study comparing people who recovered to those who developed long COVID found no significant changes in immune signalling chemicals in the blood, no differences in memory and thinking tests, and no differences between groups in lung or heart function.

Together, these research studies suggest that persistent activity of the immune system might contribute to long COVID in multiple and overlapping ways in the brain and other organs.

The causes and consequences of long COVID are a key focus of research worldwide, and are yet to be clearly defined. This is an important line of research because identifying what’s happening in the body will also help us identify targets to treat long COVID.

Long COVID can have far-reaching impacts

We also need to understand how long COVID affects sufferers in more definable ways, such as their ability to work or study, and their quality of life.

The federal government recently announced a parliamentary inquiry into long COVID, which will seek to answer these questions.

Although long COVID sufferers are in the minority, the lowest estimate of a 5% rate of long COVID equates to an estimated 500,000 Australians who currently have, or will soon develop, long COVID.

If you’re one of them, your GP should be your first port of call for assessment and ongoing management.

If needed, your GP can refer you to one of the specialised long COVID clinics opening across Australia. These clinics aim to treat the symptoms of long COVID using multidisciplinary approaches, and act as a central hub for patients to access evidence-based medical care to combat long COVID.

Read more:
Long COVID should make us rethink disability – and the way we offer support to those with ‘invisible conditions’

Sarah Hellewell 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. When does COVID become long COVID? And what’s happening in the body when symptoms persist? Here’s what we’ve learnt so far – https://theconversation.com/when-does-covid-become-long-covid-and-whats-happening-in-the-body-when-symptoms-persist-heres-what-weve-learnt-so-far-188976

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Finch, Beamline Scientist at ANSTO, and Research Affiliate, Monash University

A crucial outcome of Australia’s jobs summit last week was the commitment to review programs aimed at boosting the number of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.

Energy is a particularly male-dominated STEM industry, with clean energy on the brink of massive expansion. However, to ensure the clean energy industry is truly sustainable, it must learn from the mistakes of the mining and fossil fuel industry.

If mining workplaces are anything to go by, the clean energy sector will have their work cut out for them to retain women in the workforce.

It’s easy to understand why women are leaving careers in the fossil fuel sector. For example, a Western Australian parliamentary inquiry earlier this year revealed appalling reports of widespread sexual harassment and assault in the state’s fly-in-fly-out mining industry.

As a woman who used to work in and with the mining sector, these findings were no surprise to me. Only by creating workplaces that are inclusive of women and other underrepresented groups will the clean energy sector unlock the economic and innovation benefits of a diverse workforce.

By the numbers

At a glance, it seems Australia’s clean energy industry is making great progress.

A 2021 Clean Energy Council survey found 39% of Australia’s clean energy workforce identify as women. Compare this to 32% of the global renewables sector, 25.9% in Australia’s oil and gas sector, and 17.5% in coal mining.

However, the Australian result was based on a voluntary survey of the renewables sector, which people who feel marginalised by their diversity are more likely to opt into. This means the percentage of women in the sector actually may be lower.

The male-dominated renewables construction sector also had low representation in survey responses, further skewing results.

Read more:
Trailblazing women who broke into engineering in the 1970s reflect on what’s changed – and what hasn’t

If we look at the mining sector overall, census data reveals that at junior levels there is a relatively even gender split, with women comprising roughly 40% of 20-27 year olds in the industry.

But this gender split doesn’t persist for long. The proportion of women in mining begins to decrease from age 28, so that in the 56-59 age bracket, women comprise less than 15% of the workforce. The census data also reveal there has been little improvement in these numbers in the last 15 years.

So why are women leaving the mining industry? There are three main reasons.

1. Sexual assault and harassment

The mining industry, including the fossil fuel industry, can be a dangerous place for women.

In early 2022, an external review of Rio Tinto’s workplace culture found bullying, sexism and racism are systemic across the company.

In the last five years, 28% of women had experienced sexual harassment at Rio Tinto worksites, and 21 women were victims of actual or attempted rape or sexual assault.

This finding is consistent with the WA parliamentary inquiry, which found sexual harassment is, and has long been, prevalent across the industry. It is fostered by gender inequality, power imbalances and exacerbated by high alcohol consumption.

Read more:
Antarctic stations are plagued by sexual harassment – it’s time for things to change

The inquiry’s report highlighted that when women tried to report harassment and assault they were bullied, threatened or lost their jobs.

The parliamentary inquiry made a number of recommendations to improve the safety of women in the FIFO mining industry, such as an overhaul of reporting structures within companies.

So far Rio Tinto is the only major mining company that has announced their plan to overhaul their systems to protect women. There has been no word from governments outside of WA on any action in the face of this damning parliamentary inquiry.

2. Biases against women

Women tend to face more obstacles to progression and job satisfaction than men do, because there are systematic biases against them. While a minority belief persists that biases against women simply do not exist, we have known of bias in science for a long time.

In Australia, as in many nations, women do more household and caring work, and STEM fields are generally male dominated. Our expectations of the roles of each gender are influenced accordingly, creating implicit bias against women in science.

Read more:
It’s not lack of confidence that’s holding back women in STEM

Research shows these biases negatively affect all decisions made about women in a professional context, including hiring, promotion, awards, the value of their work, and other professional opportunities.

This means once women are in STEM careers, especially in male-dominated industries such as the mining industry, they encounter more barriers to success than their male colleagues.

3. Parental leave

It’s clear having children isn’t the sole cause of women leaving STEM careers, otherwise we’d see a flood of childfree women in leadership positions throughout the STEM sector, and this is certainly not the case.

However, in Australian heterosexual couples, women generally shoulder the bulk of childcare. This is perhaps in part because men are not ordinarily given equal access to parental leave and flexible working arrangements.

Read more:
The fatherhood penalty: how parental leave policies perpetuate the gender gap (even in our ‘progressive’ universities)

When both parents have equal access to parental leave, families can structure home and outside work equitably. On the other hand, providing birth mums vastly more leave can incentivise inequality, since families may be better off financially or otherwise by not using childcare.

Some mining companies recognise that flexible working conditions could increase retention, and have policies allowing any employee to work flexibly. Others have “family friendly” FIFO rosters, which tends to involve prescription of the roster they believe to be family friendly.

We need systemic change

Like the fossil fuel industry, women in renewables face barriers to retention and promotion.

Representation of university-qualified women decreases in leadership roles and above age 40. Women in the renewables sector make up just 32% of senior leadership or executive roles, 19% of board positions, and 62% of administrative roles.

In Australia’s mining and energy sector, some people are pushing for change and equity, but the problems are widespread and can be difficult to detect.

We need sector-wide, systemic change. This must be brought about by thoughtful and insightful leadership at our most senior levels, guiding new policies and procedures to make workplaces more inclusive of women.

Read more:
Getting more men into nursing means a rethink of gender roles, pay and recognition. But we need them urgently

Research shows achieving greater gender balance leads to better economic performance and outcomes, and more innovation. In many STEM industries, we have a strong pipeline of women university graduates being lost to other sectors in their early to mid-careers.

In fact, shifting only 1% of Australia’s workforce into STEM jobs would add $57.4 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product over 20 years.

The clean energy sector has an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the mining and fossil fuel sector and harness the untapped potential of women in Australia’s STEM-trained workforce. Doing so will deliver even greater economic and environmental benefits.

Emily Finch has previously received funding from an Australian Postgraduate Award and a Society of Economic Geologists Graduate Student Fellowship.

Melanie Finch receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is the President of Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences Australasia (WOMEESA).

– ref. 3 ways the fossil fuel industry has failed women – clean energy must learn from its mistakes – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-the-fossil-fuel-industry-has-failed-women-clean-energy-must-learn-from-its-mistakes-189965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trivess Moore, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University

The required energy-efficiency rating of new housing in Australia will increase from 6 to 7 stars from October next year. Some claim this will greatly increase housing costs. But is this true?

Costs for new home owners are the sum of three things:

• capital costs to build the home

• costs to heat, cool and live in the home

• mortgage costs.

The focus has been on the upfront capital costs of new homes – over a million are expected to be built over the next three years. The costs of living in the home and impacts on mortgage payments are neglected. Given the move to 7 stars will cut energy use for heating and cooling by about 24%, the cost savings will outweigh any increase in mortgage repayments in many circumstances.

And there are simple ways to achieve a 7-star rating on a budget, as we’ll explain.

How will the new standards be applied?

The recently announced improvements to Australian housing performance standards were the most significant in a decade. As well as the 7-star standard – on a scale from 0 (worst) to 10 (best) – a whole-of-home energy budget will be introduced. It’s based on the performance of a “benchmark home”, including the building shell, heating and cooling equipment, water heating and lighting.

A dwelling will be compliant if it has the same societal cost of operating as the benchmark home. Societal costs here relate to the wider financial costs of infrastructure (e.g. energy networks) and the environment (e.g. carbon emissions).

If one element performs worse than the benchmark, it will need to be offset by outperforming the benchmark in other areas, or by installing on-site renewable energy sources such as solar panels.

These changes are an important first step towards more sustainable housing. Future changes in 2025 and 2028 will likely improve performance to near-zero emissions.

Read more:
7-star housing is a step towards zero carbon – but there’s much more to do, starting with existing homes

What does the evidence say about costs?

The regulatory impact statement provided for the ministers modelled the changes. For detached housing and townhouses it estimated an average capital cost increase of A$1,704 to achieve the higher standard. The figure varied from $545 in Queensland to $3,275 in the Northern Territory.

For apartments, the average increase is $2,051. Queensland was again lowest at $464, with Western Australia the highest at $2,975.

These increases amounted to 0.1-0.8% of total capital costs. Energy bill savings generally outweighed any increase in mortgage repayments. However, the analysis does find in some locations, such as Brisbane and Sydney, the move to 7 stars may not be cost-effective based upon the conservative assumptions it applied.

These costings are broadly in line with research findings over the past decade. Our 2012 research estimated the cost of moving from a 6 to 7-star detached dwelling in Victoria at $3,012, but as low as $400 in some cases. A 2015 analysis estimated achieving 7.5-star performance in South Australia would cost $3,500. And 2018 Climateworks Centre research put the cost of moving to 7 stars at between $650 and $3,000.

In some cases, this could be done for almost no extra cost. In a 2012 analysis of 20 dwellings across eight climate locations in Australia, Sustainability House found the average cost could be as low as $37!

Did costs rise with previous code changes?

In the past, improving energy efficiency added little to new home costs. Reserve Bank analysis shows the construction cost inflation rate barely changed when 5-star (2006) and 6-star (2011) standards came in.

In fact, CSIRO research found prices dropped in 2006. New houses built to a 5-star standard or above were cheaper on average than lower-rated houses by about $5,000 in Melbourne and Adelaide and $7,000 in Brisbane. Other reviews found the move to 6 stars cost less than predicted.

Government assumptions tend to be conservative. They often overlook the capacity of designers, builders, manufacturers and consumers to find cost efficiencies. International evidence shows costs for higher performance have been over-estimated and fall more quickly than policymakers and industry predict.

How to achieve 7 stars on a budget

One reason costs have been less than expected is because construction prices depend on design. When the 5-star standard came in, houses became more compact. External walls and windows (which cost more per square metre than walls) were reduced.

Orientation makes a big difference too. Research has found a difference in performance of 1-2 stars between best and worst orientation. Simply ensuring your dwelling faces the right way (north) can greatly improve performance, or cut the costs of achieving compliance.

Read more:
People are shivering in cold and mouldy homes in a country that pioneered housing comfort research – how did that happen?

House size also affects construction and running costs. Star ratings express the energy demand per square metre, so a big 7-star home will cost more to heat and cool than a smaller 7-star home.

Australian homes are among the largest in the world. New home buyers should think about the number and size of their rooms and corridors if they wish to keep costs low.

Other basic and low-cost things you can do include adding more insulation (ceiling, floors, walls) and external shading. Windows are also important and the cost of high-performing double-glazed windows will fall as they become the norm.

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel to get to 7-star homes. Online resources such as Your Home already have freely available 7-star house plans.

And we can easily exceed 7 stars. Real-world examples include Lochiel Park, Cape Paterson ecovillage and Nightingale Housing.

Read more:
Low-energy homes don’t just save money, they improve lives

More than capital costs

Capital costs are just one element of the whole-of-life cost. Running costs depend on:

• thermal performance of the building envelope – walls, windows, doors, roof, air-leakage gaps

• efficiency of heating and cooling appliances

• daily electricity and gas tariffs.

Higher-performing dwellings and all-electric homes with heat pumps will save money and be more resilient in a changing climate. Increasing research shows their financial, social and environmental benefits.

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

We need to move beyond the narrow focus on capital costs, which are often overstated. We should think about how higher standards improve our quality of life and liveability.

For example, a growing body of research suggests improved energy efficiency can produce more comfortable temperatures and reduce mould, improving respiratory health. And, if that doesn’t convince you, improving a home’s sustainability greatly increases resale value, outweighing any extra capital costs!

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.

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 and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Centre.

– ref. Will 7-star housing really cost more? It depends, but you can keep costs down in a few simple ways – https://theconversation.com/will-7-star-housing-really-cost-more-it-depends-but-you-can-keep-costs-down-in-a-few-simple-ways-189627