Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Economic Policy, Grattan Institute

The Housing Australia Future Fund, or HAFF, will finally pass the Senate this week, most likely on Thursday.

Based on a Grattan Institute proposal, the fund is expected to support the construction of 20,000 social homes and 10,000 affordable homes over the next five years.

The Bill has been stalled in the Senate for months, with the Coalition opposing it and the Greens refusing to lend their support to it until the government agreed to support a number of their own proposals for housing.

But the Greens have now agreed, in exchange for another A$1 billion for social housing, on top of the $2 billion in extra social housing funds the federal government gave to the states in June.

The biggest social housing boost in years

The fund will begin with $10 billion borrowed by the government and invested by the Future Fund, with the returns used to offer at least $500 million a year in subsidies to state governments and community housing providers in order to support the construction of social and affordable housing.

It will be the biggest single investment in social housing since the global financial crisis 15 years ago.

Social housing – in which rents are typically capped at 25-to-30% of tenants’ incomes – can make a big difference to the lives of many vulnerable Australians.

Yet Australia’s stock of social housing, currently about 430,000 dwellings, has barely grown in 20 years, despite the population growing 33%.

Social housing is expensive

What makes housing “social housing” is a big rental discount, or subsidy, given to tenants. The subsidy needed is thought to be around $15,000 per rental per year.

Once that subsidy is guaranteed to a provider such as a state government or community housing organisation it can pay the upfront costs of construction knowing that rent and subsidy combined will make the project viable.

Future funds are a way of funding it

Future funds are not unusual.

The main Future Fund was set up in 2006 to accumulate funds to pay for public sector pensions and the Board of Guardians currently manages it and five additional special-purpose funds:

• the Medical Research Future Fund,

• the DisabilityCare Australia Fund

• the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land and Sea Future Fund

• the Future Drought Fund

• the Disaster Ready Fund.

The theory, in most years borne out in practice, is that such funds can earn more than the government has to pay to borrow, meaning they can be a better use of government funds than paying off debt.

A concession offered to the Greens during negotiations means the housing fund will have to spend a minimum of $500 million a year on social and affordable housing (a figure that was previously a maximum) regardless of the fund’s returns in any particular year.

The case for further delay was weak

Instead of a rent subsidy of $500 million per year drawn from a future fund, the Greens wanted a number of commitments including $5 billion per year invested directly in social and affordable housing.

As strange as it seems, apart from the amounts involved, the two ideas weren’t that far apart.

One idea (the Greens) has the government borrowing to invest in housing, and using the growth in the value of that investment to subsidise rents.

The other idea (the government’s) has the government borrowing to invest in shares and other assets, and using the growth in the value of that investment to subsidise rents.

Under both, the government would guarantee to subsidise rents using the returns on assets it borrowed to buy.

This made the case for further delay weak.

The fund will need more than $10 billion

The government says in its first five years of operation the $10 billion HAFF will help fund the construction of 20,000 social homes and 10,000 affordable homes.

But Grattan Institute calculations suggest it will do it by committing the returns of the fund to rent subsidies for about 15 years.

This means that, as presently set up, the fund is unlikely to support the building of further social housing for a decade or so beyond the first five years.

Read more:
The compelling case for a future fund for social housing

Yet other calculations suggest Australia is set to need around 6,500 extra social housing dwellings per year just to keep pace with population growth.

This means the initial $10 billion won’t be enough – the HAFF will have to grow.

The Grattan Institute originally suggested $20 billion, which still mightn’t be enough, but it could be enough if state governments agreed to match it.

Then, with a $20 billion fund channelling subsidies of $1 billion a year into housing subsidies, plus matching funding from the states, there’s a chance we could make Australia’s social housing stock grow faster than Australia’s population for the first time in decades.

At $10 billion, the Housing Australia Future Fund is a start.

Brendan Coates 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 Greens were right to agree to pass Australia’s Housing Future Fund bill – the case for further delay was weak – https://theconversation.com/the-greens-were-right-to-agree-to-pass-australias-housing-future-fund-bill-the-case-for-further-delay-was-weak-213255

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ailie Gallant, Senior Lecturer, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University

July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded. And now we know something even more alarming. This week, the European Space Agency announced the July heat pushed the global average temperatures 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial average.

The ominous headlines seemed to suggest we’d blown past the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of holding warming to 1.5℃ – and around a decade earlier than expected.

Is that it? Game over, we lost?

Well, like all things to do with climate change, it’s not quite that simple. The threshold was breached for a month before average temperatures dropped back. And July 2023 isn’t actually the first time this has happened either – the dubious honour goes to February 2016, where we broke the threshold for a few days.

Remind me – why is 1.5℃ so important?

In 2015, the world looked like it was finally getting somewhere with action to combat climate change. After decades of arduous debate, 195 nations adopted the Paris Agreement, a formal but non-binding agreement with a clear goal: limit global warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

But there’s nothing magic about this number. Every increase worsens the impacts. So why is 1.5℃ so important?

Essentially, it was thrashed out by experts as a threshold representing heightened danger. The Paris Agreement states avoiding dangerous climate change means keeping global temperatures “well below 2℃” of warming, and so the 1.5℃ threshold was born.

Read more:
The 1.5℃ global warming limit is not impossible – but without political action it soon will be

What’s a dangerous level of climate change? Basically, levels of warming where the damage becomes so widespread or severe as to threaten economies, ecosystems, agriculture, and risk irreversible tipping points such as the collapse of ice sheets or ocean circulations. More importantly, this level of warming risks pushing us beyond the limits of being able to adapt.

Put simply, the 1.5℃ threshold is the best estimate of the point where we are likely to find ourselves well up the proverbial creek, without a paddle.

Is it too late to act on climate change?

So, should we all just give up?

Not yet.

The global authority on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, defines 1.5℃ as a departure from global average temperatures above the 1850 to 1900 (pre-industrial) average.

It’s true that this threshold was exceeded for the month of July 2023. But the climate is more than a single month.

Global average temperatures go up and down every year on top of the global warming trend, because climates naturally vary year-to-year.

The most recent few years have been much warmer than average, but cooler than they could have been because of consecutive La Niña events.

This year, there’s been a significant acceleration in warming, largely due to the brewing El Niño event in the Pacific. El Niño years tend to be hotter.

To iron out year-to-year differences, we typically average data over several decades. As a result, a 2021 IPCC report defines the 1.5℃ threshold as the first 20-year period when we reach 1.5℃ of global warming (based on surface air temperatures).

Recent research shows the best estimate to pass this threshold is in the early 2030s. That means, by IPCC definitions, the average global temperature between the early 2020s and early 2040s is estimated to be 1.5C.

Dangerously close to the red line

All of this means we haven’t yet failed to meet our Paris targets. But the July record shows us we are dangerously close to the line.

As the world keeps heating up, we’ll see more and more months like this July, and move closer and closer to the threshold of 1.5℃, beyond which global warming will become more and more dangerous.

Is it still possible to stay below 1.5℃? Maybe. We would need extremely aggressive cuts to emissions to have a chance. Failing that, we will likely exceed the Paris target within the next decade or so.

Let’s say that happens. Would that mean we just give up on climate action?

Hardly. 1.5℃ is bad. 1.6℃ would be worse. 2℃ would be worse still. 3℃ would be unthinkable. Every extra increment matters.

The closer we stay to the line – even if we cross it – the better.

And there’s now good evidence that even if we overshoot 1.5℃, we could still reverse it by ending emissions and soaking up excess greenhouse gas emissions. It’s like turning around an enormous container ship – it takes time to overcome the inertia. But the sooner we turn around, the better.

Read more:
After COP27, all signs point to world blowing past the 1.5 degrees global warming limit – here’s what we can still do about it

Ailie Gallant receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

Kimberley Reid receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. We just blew past 1.5 degrees. Game over on climate? Not yet – https://theconversation.com/we-just-blew-past-1-5-degrees-game-over-on-climate-not-yet-213364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Kidson, Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership, Australian Catholic University

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has opened a new front in the national campaign to attract and retain teachers. Amid ongoing teacher shortages, Victoria will offer fee-free education for high school teaching degrees from next year.

This is similar to the free nursing degrees Victoria announced in 2022 to create an “army of home-grown health workers”.

But is it going to fix the problem?

Read more:
Governments are making nursing degrees cheaper or ‘free’ – these plans are not going to help attract more students

What was announced?

On Tuesday, the Victorian government announced a A$230 million teaching package.

This includes scholarships to cover the costs of a high school teaching degree. Students will be required to work in Victorian government schools for two years after they graduate. This is expected to support about 8,000 “future teachers”.

There is a further $27 million to provide up to $50,000 in incentives for graduates to work in hard-to-staff schools, both in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. There is also $95.7 million to support and mentor first year teachers.

It’s an attractive package. But it’s very unlikely to address the core of the problem. That’s because access to tertiary study and incentives to relocate are not the root causes of teachers shortages, particularly in rural and remote areas.

History tells us to be cautious

History suggests free degrees will not see a surge of students applying to study teaching.

There was free university education in Australia between 1974 and 1989. Yet 1996 analysis showed the reintroduction of fees under the Hawke government was accompanied by an increase in university access, rather than a reduction in student numbers.

Greater access to tertiary education also didn’t make it easier to find teachers for hard-to-staff schools. A 2019 University of Canberra review looked at 20 years of evidence around attracting and retaining teachers in rural and remote communities, including financial incentives. It found “we are no closer to solving this perennial issue”.

International evidence is mixed. It shows financial incentives can lead to an immediate increase in enrolments for teaching courses, but this tapers off quickly once the incentive is removed (as appears to be the case here at the end of 2025).

Research also suggests cash incentives can convince some students who are open to the idea of teaching, yet undecided, to enrol. But there is little chance it will bring people into the profession who don’t already value teaching.

It’s a question of motivation

Like nursing, the motivation for pursuing a teaching career is driven by a range of factors largely unrelated to pure financial incentives.

Those who choose, and remain in, teaching beyond their first few years are typically attracted by the intellectual stimulation, social benefits of teaching and opportunity to have a positive impact on people’s lives.

Students motivated predominantly by financial incentives may well get a reality check when they encounter their first practical experience in a classroom, particularly in a hard-to-staff school.

Schools also need to be positive and safe places to work if we want to attract and keep teachers. In a December 2022 review, the Productivity Commission noted “low value” administrative tasks meant teachers were not spending enough time teaching.

There have also been repeated reports about unreasonable expectations and even abuse from parents, as well as student behavioural issues.

Unfortunately many teachers report their work is leaving them stressed and burned out – and wanting to leave the profession.

Read more:
‘They phone you up during lunch and yell at you’ – why teachers say dealing with parents is the worst part of their job

We need to look beyond teaching degrees

It’s good to see almost $96 million in the package to support first year teachers’ transition into the profession through “extra preparation time, mentoring and other professional support”.

This is consistent with the national plan to address teacher shortages, released by federal and state education ministers in late 2022.

But we also need ongoing measures. This includes professional and practical supports.

Adequate housing for teachers amid a housing affordability crisis remains a challenge. The impracticality of being posted to a regional school without housing is self-evident.

Community and social connections are also vital for new teachers who move to non-metropolitan areas for work.

Read more:
We won’t solve the teacher shortage until we answer these 4 questions

More questions

This package is an important and welcome response to teacher shortages. But it is unlikely to fix the problem and leaves us with some questions.

The funding is only for high school teachers. Could this attract students potentially interested in primary teaching and make primary school supply issues a greater problem?

The funding is only for enrolments in 2024 and 2025 and only for government schools. What happens in two years’ time? Could the package be extended to private and Catholic schools?

A two-year package with free degrees may seem like good politics (and it makes a good headline). But we need to look at the bigger picture and examine issues such as working conditions, professional development, and the way our society supports teachers so they can keep doing the essential work they do.

Paul Kidson works in the National School of Education at the Australian Catholic University. ACU provides initial teacher education in Victoria.

– ref. Will free teaching degrees fix the teacher shortage? It’s more complicated than that – https://theconversation.com/will-free-teaching-degrees-fix-the-teacher-shortage-its-more-complicated-than-that-213361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Portolan, PhD student, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

In the ever-evolving realm of social media, TikTok has emerged as a dynamic platform that has reshaped how we engage with content and share our personal romantic stories. Within this vibrant ecosystem, one phenomenon has caught romance raconteurs’ attention: dating story time.

The #DatingStoryTime hashtag has transformed into a virtual stage where users narrate their dating experiences, weaving a colourful tapestry of narratives that mirror the complexities of modern romance.

To unlock the depths of the trend and its impact, I examined a series of TikTok accounts that actively employed the #DatingStoryTime hashtag. My research encompassed several crucial dimensions: the milestone that users discussed, the situational context and the audience engagement.

Milestones, context and comments

The study explored the nature of milestones discussed in the TikTok videos, which ranged from the excitement of a first date to the heartache of a breakup.

Another vital aspect was the context in which users chose to share their dating stories. Were these stories recounted during everyday activities, such as knitting, breakfast or makeup application? This sought to unveil the ordinary scenarios that users engaged in as they participated in the dating story time trend.

The study also delved into the responses generated within the TikTok community, examining the types of comments and interactions these videos attracted. Were users met with support, trolling or a blend of both?

Scrutinising the audience’s reactions provided insights into how this trend influences perceptions of dating.

Humour and horror in dating

Among the TikToks examined in the study, many showcased humorous tales from first date experiences. These stories often revolved around socially awkward behaviours, such as unwanted public displays of affection, conflict about paying the bill or other unusual behaviours.

In addition to recounting in-person encounters, users also shared quirky and entertaining dating app conversations. These interactions offered a glimpse into the early stages of modern romance in the digital age – weird and abrupt, filled with ghosting and often strange or unwarranted sexual and personal requests.

Some TikTok users opted to compile their dating experiences into aggregated summaries. For instance, several users created a lighthearted PowerPoint presentation summarising their dating adventures throughout the year 2022. The presentations included statistics on first dates, compatibility ratings and even the types of dates, ranging from movie nights to weddings.

Subverting dating norms

Overall, the study revealed a challenging of cultural norms in relation to dating. TikTok influencers within this space often subvert conventional dating norms and invite their followers to engage in discussions on difficult topics (like consent) and invite them to demonstrate support.

This is exemplified by users who share stories of boundary violations and encourage their audience to deliberate on whether such behaviour constitutes a red flag. These discussions are conducted in a humorous, ironic way. But they also cut deep and tell a powerful, validating story about modern dating.

Most TikTok users participating in dating story time recorded their videos in ordinary and intimate settings. This practice not only mimics vlogging video blogs but also fosters a sense of intimacy, friendship and community.

By sharing these experiences in familiar surroundings, TikTokers extend their digital reach to a broader audience, creating a culture of care reminiscent of real-life interactions with close friends.

The comments section on TikTok offers a unique space for further negotiation of romantic milestones, support networks and audience engagement. Users can reinforce or challenge behaviours seen in dating experiences, thereby creating or disrupting communities of care.

TikTok has also emerged as a platform for addressing issues such as sexual racism, where users share and challenge stereotypes they have encountered on first dates.

TikTok’s #DatingStoryTime has the power to normalise the idea that dating is a journey filled with potential missteps and pitfalls. It is also a space where inappropriate behaviours should be called out.

Risks and rules

TikTok’s subversion of cultural dating norms fosters a culture of exploration and encourages viewers to challenge conventional ideas of love and connection.

Similar to the characters in romantic comedies who are willing to take risks and break the rules, TikTok influencers within the dating story time space are altering perceptions of dating and relationships.

In the spirit of humour, camaraderie and cultural critique, #DatingStoryTime on TikTok has evolved into a space where romantic cultural norms are questioned, challenge, and reconstructed.

Through humour and authenticity, TikTok is reshaping the narrative of modern romance, allowing users to share their stories, build coalitions, create safe spaces and ultimately reclaim agency in the world of dating.

In a digital landscape characterised by irreverence and absurdity, TikTok’s influence on contemporary dating culture is undeniable and its impact continues to be a subject of fascination and exploration.

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

– ref. How TikTok’s dating story time trend offers a glimpse into the sometimes weird world of modern romance – https://theconversation.com/how-tiktoks-dating-story-time-trend-offers-a-glimpse-into-the-sometimes-weird-world-of-modern-romance-212778

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Jones, Postdoctoral Fellow—Indigenous and Colonial Histories, University of Tasmania

Manchester Museum has formally handed over 174 cultural heritage items to a delegation of women from the Anindilyakwa community of Groote Eylandt, an island in the Northern Territory.

Last week’s event was the result of three years of collaboration between the museum, the Anindilyakwa Land Council and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).

The returned items included arm bands, turtle shell maps, baskets, a model canoe, spears, spear throwers and 70 Dadikwakwa-kwa (shell dolls).

The director of the Manchester Museum, Esme Ward, emphasised repatriation is:

a gain, not a loss. Once you understand that it is about building relationships, it changes everything.

Since her appointment in 2018, Ward has championed these approaches, seeing museums not just as places to care for objects and collections, but as “empathy machines” that generate ideas and foster relationships.

This focus on relationships is relatively new in museums, and remains far from universal. But if museums are to remain relevant, trusted institutions they need to move beyond traditional models of authority.

The museums of the future must become socially engaged platforms where diverse voices and perspectives come together in productive new ways.

Slow waves of change

Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, museums positioned themselves as authoritative spaces for the enlightenment of the people. Indigenous artefacts, ancestors and cultural heritage were taken, traded and studied, resulting in thousands of collections held by institutions around the world.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were objects of curiosity and study, with no say in how their history and cultural knowledge were managed or represented.

Change started slowly in the 1970s. At international meetings and conferences, professionals from colonial countries emphasised the need for more engagement with communities. There were growing calls for the repatriation of ancestral remains.

The first repatriation by an Australian museum came in 1976, when the remains of celebrated palawa leader Trukanini were returned to Tasmanian Aboriginal Community members after years of lobbying.

In the years since there have been many repatriations, though there are still many more to go.

Read more:
The violent collectors who gathered Indigenous artefacts for the Queensland Museum

New relationships

The past decade has seen an interesting shift in museum practice toward a focus on relationships.

Community involvement has gradually changed the ways First Nations cultures and histories are represented in exhibitions. There are more First Nations museum professionals working in the sector than ever before, though there remains more work to do.

While Manchester Museum has returned artefacts to other communities before, its head of exhibitions and collections, Georgina Young, saw last week’s return as unique. This return was facilitated through relationships formed when Young and her colleagues visited Groote Eylandt to meet and work with Elders and community members.

For the Anindilyakwa community, awareness of the now-repatriated dolls has already helped revitalise culture through a contemporary art program, the Dadikwakwa-kwa Project, led by women from Anindilyakwa Arts. Two of the artists were part of the Manchester delegation.

Staff and visitors to the Manchester Museum had the opportunity to hear First Nations voices and stories. The repatriation and associated public programs created a space where people could experience not just historic collections, but living Anindilyakwa culture.

Australian museums are also reconsidering how they can engage with community.

Museum Victoria’s Yulendj group (from the Kulin word for “knowledge and intelligence”) was formed during development of the museum’s First People’s exhibition, installed in 2014.

The group has helped foster strong and deep relationships between the museum, its staff and community members. Aboriginal Elder Esther Kirby (Wiradjuri/Yorta Yorta/Yitha Yitha) characterised the results as like “one of those patchwork quilts. Everybody’s got a different story and them patches all join together”.

The Australian Museum’s 2021 Unsettled exhibition responded to the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s arrival on the Australian mainland. First Nations curatorial team Laura McBride and Mariko Smith engaged with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples before exhibition planning had begun.

Smith describes how they wanted to embrace the role of “curator” as a conduit for First Nations voices. The resulting exhibition gave a genuine sense the curators were holding themselves accountable to community-centred relationships.

Unsettled provided visitors with new and sometimes uncomfortable perspectives on the complex history of Australia since European invasion.

Read more:
Tall ship tales: oral accounts illuminate past encounters and objects, but we need to get our story straight

Building the future

Still, many large institutions remain resistant to change.

Conservative commentators, politicians and museum directors have expressed concerns that repatriation sets a dangerous precedent and risks opening the floodgates.

But political scientist Pierre Losson has analysed the return of cultural heritage objects from “universal museums” in North America and Europe.

He has found the return process can result in new trusted relationships. These relationships can form the basis of a model for the future: networks of related institutions and communities, rather than singular sites of preservation and display.

Thousands of First Nations objects are still held in institutions around the world. Despite the resistance of some, the hope is more museums will see these collections as opportunities for empathy and relationship-building.

For communities, reconnecting with artefacts provides new opportunities for cultural resurgence. And for the institutions involved, the relationships created provide new opportunities for public programming and exhibitions featuring diverse voices and perspectives, connecting their visitors not just with artefacts and artworks, but with living cultures.

As Ward said following the ceremony in Manchester:

We believe this is the future of museums. This is how we should be.

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

– ref. What Manchester Museum’s return of 174 Indigenous artefacts tells us about the future of museums – https://theconversation.com/what-manchester-museums-return-of-174-indigenous-artefacts-tells-us-about-the-future-of-museums-213147

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Huda Syyed, PhD Candidate & Tutor, Charles Darwin University

Female genital cutting is a secretive and largely invisible practice in Pakistan.

The experiences of survivors are the only sources of information we have to understand its prevalence. There are no national statistics or governmental efforts to counter the practice or this lack of awareness. Open conversations are difficult because women’s bodies are treated as a source of shame or taboo.

My research has found we must understand female genital cutting from a Pakistani perspective and work towards bridging the knowledge gap through increased data collection and encouraging greater dialogue with survivors.

Otherwise, Pakistan risks being left behind in achieving one of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, the elimination of female genital cutting by 2030.

What is female genital cutting?

There are four types of female genital cutting, but generally speaking, it involves
the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. This can be through pricking, scraping, stitching and burning.

At least 200 million girls and women globally have experienced different forms of female genital cutting, according to the United Nations. It is practised on every continent, except Antarctica.

A small minority of Dawoodi Bohra Muslims from the Shiite Ismaili sect practice female genital cutting in Pakistan (as well as in India).

The practice also occurs within the Dawoodi Bohra diaspora. In 2015, a mother, nurse and spiritual leader were found guilty in Australia’s first genital mutilation trial. Even though the practice is illegal in Australia, it is still carried out in secret.

Dawoodi Bohras generally practice a type of cutting called khatna, or the removal of the clitoral hood. Young girls usually undergo this practice at seven years old. This is ostensibly done to curb a woman’s sexual desire, to promote genital hygiene and to follow the Islamic sunnah, or the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad.

Religious scholars, medical practitioners and activist organisations argue, however, that it is a harmful practice and not a religious duty.

According to World Health Organization, there are short-term and long-term health risks from the practice. These include severe pain, bleeding, infections, urination problems, obstetric fistulas, perinatal risk, trauma and other mental health problems. A study in India also reported side effects such as low sex drive, oversensitivity in the clitoral area and problems with sexual pleasure and trusting partners.

While there are members of the Dawoodi Bohra community who speak out against the practice, some also defend it as a cultural right. Most Dawoodi Bohras are secretive about it due to a fear of potential backlash, since acts of violence against minorities are common in Pakistan.

Read more:
Why it’s so difficult to end female genital mutilation

Not just an African problem

Most international efforts to eliminate female genital cutting focus on Africa. As a result, it is believed to be an African practice.

Somalia has the one of the highest prevalence rates of female genital mutilation in the world, with 99% of women aged 15-49 having been cut. Sudan also saw an increase in the practice during COVID lockdowns, despite it being criminalised in 2020.

This statistical data is available to us because African countries are able to measure its prevalence through nationally representative household surveys. Self-reporting is also used to acquire data from mothers and daughters.

Although these data collection efforts are not always reliable, the general level of awareness in some African countries gives activists and policymakers a platform to organise more targeted campaigns to bring social change.

Research shows the practice is also widespread among the Dawoodi Bohra community in India. The Indian government, however, has denied the existence of female genital cutting in the country, meaning there is no official data collection there, either.

However, in 2017, a human rights advocate and lawyer filed a petition before the Supreme Court to ban the practice. Although a decision is still pending, non-profit organisations continue to speak out against the practice.

What can be done in Pakistan?

Pakistan ranks as 142nd out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap report 2023 by the World Economic Forum. It is frequently criticised by human rights activists for its high rates of violence against women and mistreatment of minorities.

Recently, there has been more activism in Pakistan against honour killings of women, the mistreatment of the khwaja sira (transgender) community and child labour. Protests and community engagement make these issues more visible and put pressure on the government to respond.

This is not the case with female genital cutting. To curb the practice in Pakistan, it must be openly addressed and understood.

How can we do this? Through responsible data collection and consensual conversations with community members.

Dialogue should start in the Dawoodi Bohra community because change from within is more likely to be long-lasting and less contentious. Considering Pakistan’s fractious religious climate, it is important for communities to mobilise for change from within to avoid the Dawoodi Bohras being targeted in sectarian violence.

Religion and women’s bodies are sensitive topics in patriarchal societies. Pakistan’s history with women has long been marked by an urge to morally police their bodies. One discriminatory practice, the two-finger virginity testing in sexual assault cases, for example, has only recently been abolished after a concerted push from activists.

This is why an issue like female genital cutting must be discussed with contextual care and caution. This approach, supported by activists and lawmakers within the community, will be transformative in ending this practice for good.

Huda Syyed 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. Female genital cutting remains a taboo subject in Pakistan, preventing real progress from being made – https://theconversation.com/female-genital-cutting-remains-a-taboo-subject-in-pakistan-preventing-real-progress-from-being-made-210549

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yianna Zhang, Sessional tutor, The University of Melbourne

Around 75% of infants aged six to 12 months and 25% of toddlers aged one to two years in Australia don’t get the recommended dietary intake of iron.

Despite their small size, weaning infants and children require similar amounts of iron to adults. The iron is crucial for supporting their rapid growth in blood and muscles, immunity, brain development and learning.

Untreated iron deficiency can progress to anaemia – severe iron deficiency where there are insufficient healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body. Alarmingly, anaemia affects around 8% of Australian children under five, and if untreated, can be associated with developmental setbacks and later cognitive deficits.

Read more:
Why iron is such an important part of your diet

How do I know if my kids have iron deficiency?

Iron deficiency in children is often associated with vague or no symptoms, especially if it has not progressed to anaemia.

Symptoms can include fatigue, difficulty concentrating, poor behaviour, frequent infections, and pica (eating non-food substances such as paper, clay or soil).

Diagnosis typically involves a blood test that screens for iron markers such as ferritin, a protein that stores iron. Doctors often recommend these tests for people who are at high risk, detailed in the figure below.

What are the first options for treatment?

When iron deficiency and anaemia are caused by a lack of dietary iron, both can often be effectively addressed through changes to the diet and oral iron supplements.

The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne recommends boosting intake of iron-rich foods such as meat, fish, eggs, leafy greens and legumes, and drinking less than 500mL (about two cups) of cow’s milk per day. This is because cow’s milk has been associated with reduced iron stores in young children.

Doctors might also prescribe oral iron supplements. A course of liquid or tablets would usually be recommended for a minimum of three months , during which follow-up blood tests can show how well the child is responding to the supplementation.

Existing evidence suggests supplements are a more effective way to replenish iron stores than dietary changes alone, and ferrous sulfate is the most effective iron supplement for young children.

Navigating the side effects

Iron supplements are known to have some nasty side effects including constipation, nausea, diarrhoea, dark stools, and stained teeth. This may make compliance challenging, especially for young children. The approaches to alleviate side effects vary depending on the child.

The doctor may recommend alternative supplements as some may be better tolerated than others. Another option is to adjust the dosage, with lower dose supplements or taking it every other day.

Consuming iron supplements with food or immediately after eating can also lessen side effects. However this may result in reduced absorption, and should be discussed with your doctor.

For cases where iron supplements don’t appear to be working or where compliance is an issue, iron infusions may be prescribed by your doctor. These involve injecting iron over multiple visits at a hospital and/or specialist clinic, with each session potentially lasting an hour or more.

Read more:
I’ve been diagnosed with iron deficiency, now what?

How can I prevent iron deficiency in my kids?

To prevent iron deficiency, it’s important to keep an eye on your child’s iron intake, and the factors that may influence their absorption.

For example, drinks which contain tannins (tea, coffee, chocolate drinks) may inhibit iron absorption. But vitamin C and organic acids from fruits and vegetables, as well as high-quality proteins such as those found in meat and fish, can promote absorption.

From infancy, following the national feeding guidelines will help to support your child’s iron status. This includes introducing iron-rich solid foods from around six months of age for healthy breastfed infants to replenish their iron stores from birth.

Around six months is also the prime time for introducing foods to minimise risk of food allergies, including to iron-rich foods such as seafood and nut butters.

From 12 months onwards, children’s diets should align with the Australian Dietary Guidelines, emphasising a balanced, nutritious diet encompassing a range of foods. Diets following this pattern should deliver ample iron from meats, breads and cereals, as well as iron absorption promotors such as oranges, capsicum and other fresh fruits and vegetables?.

In cases where the child is a picky eater, or where access to a diversity of foods is limited, look for fortified iron options such as in bread, drinks (for example juice for kids over 12 months, and Milo for older kids), and breakfast cereals.

If your child is diagnosed with iron deficiency, remember each path to recovery is unique. Consultation with a GP or dietitian can help tailor solutions catering to their specific needs.

Read more:
What to drink with dinner to get the most iron from your food (and what to avoid)

Yianna Zhang has previously received a postgraduate scholarship from CSIRO, which investigated food-based chemical interactions potentially affecting iron absorption.

Amanda Patterson has previously received funding from the Hunter Medical Research Institute and Meat and Livestock Australia for research on Iron Deficiency.

Ken Ng 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. Could my child have low iron? And what are my options if they do? – https://theconversation.com/could-my-child-have-low-iron-and-what-are-my-options-if-they-do-210899

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago

The debate in New Zealand over whether to join “pillar two” of the AUKUS security partnership threatens to overshadow a more important foreign policy challenge: how the country’s allies in the Indo-Pacific region are responding to the war in Ukraine.

AUKUS seems to be based on the assumption it will deter or counter China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. But it is unclear whether this arrangement would advance the core national interests of New Zealand.

While New Zealand’s “stability, security and prosperity” depend critically, in the words of a recent government document, on an international rules-based order, it is also plain that China is not the sole or even most serious threat to this arrangement.

Meanwhile, the capitals of the Indo-Pacific region have been closely monitoring the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most supported last year’s United Nations resolution condemning Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” (Laos and Vietnam abstained).

But only Singapore, a close US ally, imposed sanctions on Russia. And generally, the ASEAN nations’ statements on the invasion have not directly criticised Moscow. This is related to the considerable unease in Asia over the disruption and price shocks for global commodities caused by the Ukraine conflict.

Indo-Pacific interests

For Indonesia and many other South-East Asian states, the war has led to soaring prices for food and energy, and a more polarised diplomatic environment.

Indonesia is the second-largest market for Ukrainian wheat and the fourth-largest for Russian chemical fertiliser, which is needed to grow local rice. Overall, ASEAN countries are major wheat importers, accounting for 15% of global imports.

Read more:
The defence dilemma facing NZ’s next government: stay independent or join ‘pillar 2’ of AUKUS?

At the same time, many Indo-Pacific states are conscious that regional heavyweights China and India remain important partners of Moscow.

China has abstained on crucial UN resolutions condemning Russian actions in Ukraine. Beijing has repeatedly placed the blame for the conflict on NATO and the US purportedly fuelling the conflict.

China has also massively expanded trade with Russia since the start of the invasion. This bilateral trade will exceed US$200 billion in 2023, a jump of $70 billion since 2021. Russian energy shipments to China are projected to increase by more than 40% this year.

China, India and Russia

Military ties between China and Russia continue to deepen. Several joint exercises having taken place since the start of the Ukraine invasion. Beijing has quietly supplied military-related technology to Russia, and reportedly supplied components to Iran in 2023 for use in drones being sold to Russia.

While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been more overtly critical than China’s Xi Jinping of the Ukraine invasion, he continues to emphasise close diplomatic and military ties with Moscow.

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

India has also abstained on key UN resolutions criticising the invasion. And while tensions between India and China have increased, the Indian government shows no signs of reducing its dependence on spare parts and technical support for the many Russian weapons platforms used by the Indian military.

Further, trade turnover has risen by over 300% since the invasion, including a tenfold increase in discounted Russian oil bought by India.

Finally, Indo-Pacific nations will have other concerns about the response of the US and wider international community to the Russian invasion. In particular, they might question the West’s staying power.

Read more:
NZ’s first national security strategy signals a ‘turning point’ and the end of old certainties

The Biden administration has directed more than $75 billion in financial and military assistance in support, NATO has further expanded its membership, and a range of comprehensive and collective sanctions have targeted the Russian economy.

But the US has also tried not to directly “provoke” the Putin regime while supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty.

There are international supporters of Ukraine who champion a “land for peace” deal with Russia, too. And it remains possible that a new Republican administration in Washington in 2024 might abandon the current military commitment.

Supporting Ukraine to counter China

Given the circumstances, New Zealand should remain clear-eyed about the connections between its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific and its support for defeating Russian expansionism.

To date, New Zealand has contributed more than NZ$70 million in humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine. But this looks pretty modest in light of the possible fallout for the Indo-Pacific region if Putin wins any sort of victory.

Read more:
The US navy is still more powerful than China’s: more so than the Australian government is letting on

Especially so, considering Ukraine is a liberal democracy that gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 (in return for Russian recognition of its sovereignty and territorial integrity), and which shares New Zealand’s goal of reforming the UN Security Council.

Indeed, the best way for New Zealand to contribute to countering Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific would be to significantly increase its military support for Ukraine.

If Russia is defeated or forced to withdraw, it will be a serious blow to Xi Jinping’s leadership and complicate any plans he might have for annexing Taiwan. This would go some way towards bolstering the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific that is so clearly in New Zealand’s interests.

Robert G. Patman 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. New Zealand’s strategic priority in the Indo-Pacific is not AUKUS – it’s helping to defeat Russia in Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-strategic-priority-in-the-indo-pacific-is-not-aukus-its-helping-to-defeat-russia-in-ukraine-213354

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Baerbel Koribalski, Senior research scientist, CSIRO

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes, from giant, slowly rotating ovals and fast-whirling spiral disks to faint ball-shaped blobs and dwarf irregulars. Most large, bright galaxies – including our own Milky Way – are orbited by a gang of much smaller dwarf galaxies.

Most of this we know from optical images, whether taken with small backyard telescopes or much bigger dedicated ground- and space-based telescopes that reveal the light from billions of distant suns. However, as we are discovering, what happens beyond the bright disk of stars may be even more interesting.

With radio telescopes, we can map the distinctive glow of free-floating hydrogen atoms throughout the universe, whether they are inside galaxies, around them, or lurking in the lonely spaces between.

Using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia, we recently discovered an enormous ribbon of hydrogen encircling a spiral galaxy called NGC 4632. The results are described in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Galactic leftovers

NGC 4632 appears to be a very rare formation called a “polar ring galaxy”, as the hydrogen ring seems to be rotating over the poles of the galaxy’s disk. The gas in the ring, which makes up about half of the system’s mass, was likely hoovered up from a companion galaxy.

In the words of my colleague Nathan Deg at Queen’s University in Canada, who led the new study:

Polar ring galaxies are some of the most spectacular looking galaxies that we can see. Beyond just being beautiful, they provide important clues about the formation and growth of galaxies over time.

The location and movement of these polar rings can also tell us about the shape of the halo of invisible dark matter astronomers believe surrounds most galaxies.

Spiral galaxies like NGC 4632 are typically rich in cold hydrogen gas. The gas provides the fuel for star formation and typically extends well beyond the bright disk of stars.

In the outskirts of spiral galaxies, we often see that the shape of the gas disk is warped. Why does this happen?

Read more:
Experts solve the mystery of a giant X-shaped galaxy, with a monster black hole as its engine

Some warps may be caused by a galaxy wrestling with its neighbours via gravity, stealing gas which collects in the galaxy’s outer disk or forms a polar ring. This is quite a common process by which galaxies grow: our Milky Way galaxy is known to have munched up several small companions.

Hunting hydrogen

I was first inspired to study polar ring galaxies in the 1990s by astronomers Penny Sackett and Linda Sparke. Eager to understand what these strange cosmic structures could reveal about dark matter, I teamed up with Magda Arnaboldi to observe hydrogen in the nearby galaxy NGC 4650A using CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) on Gomeroi Country, outside Narrabri in north-west New South Wales.

Two big projects, the HI Parkes All Sky Survey (HIPASS) and the Local Volume HI Survey (LVHIS), set the scene for much of my current research on galaxies. As plans advanced for the much larger and more powerful ASKAP telescope, I was one of the founders of the Wallaby project, which uses ASKAP’s capabilities to conduct a huge survey of hydrogen in the local universe.

ASKAP began full operations in late 2022. The telescope is located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison radio astronomy observatory: the traditional name means ‘sharing sky and stars’ in the Wajarri language.

ASKAP now produces such vast amounts of data that we need dedicated software running on the Setonix supercomputer in Perth, not only to produce wide-field images and cubes, but also to sift through them for signs of hydrogen in distant galaxies. We can then conduct more detailed studies of the most interesting galaxies.

Read more:
‘WTF?’: newly discovered ghostly circles in the sky can’t be explained by current theories, and astronomers are excited

Visualising galaxies

Our latest paper highlights two galaxies (of 600 found in our first pilot study) that contain unusual structures.

As Deg puts it, “finding two potential polar ring galaxies in the Wallaby pilot survey is incredibly exciting, as it suggests that these objects may be more common than previously thought”.

To explore the shapes of galaxies we often use 3D visualisation – and even virtual reality software such as iDaVIE.

We expect the full Wallaby survey will reveal more than 200,000 hydrogen-rich galaxies. Among them will be many more unusual objects like the polar ring around NGC 4632, which can then be used to learn more about dark matter.

Baerbel Koribalski is affiliated with the School of Science at Western Sydney University.

– ref. Astronomers have discovered a rare ‘polar ring galaxy’ wrapped in a huge ribbon of hydrogen – https://theconversation.com/astronomers-have-discovered-a-rare-polar-ring-galaxy-wrapped-in-a-huge-ribbon-of-hydrogen-213254

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Thurbon, Professor in International Relations / International Political Economy, UNSW Sydney

This week, a diverse group of organisations called on the Australian federal government to establish a A$100 billion, ten-year policy package to turbocharge Australia’s green energy transition.

Proposed by groups including the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian Conservation Foundation, Climate Energy Finance, Rewiring Australia and the Smart Energy Council, the Australian Renewable Industry Package (ARIP) would dwarf the government’s existing commitments.

Its proponents claim that by 2035, the package would generate at least $300 billion annual clean export revenue and 700,000 much needed jobs, mainly in rural and regional Australia.

So will Australian policymakers from across the political spectrum heed this call and agree to spend big on Australia’s green energy industry capabilities?

If we want policymakers to unify and to act, we have to use language that widely resonates. This, we argue, must be the language of green energy statecraft, not industry policy.

A response to the US

The ARIP is explicitly framed as a response to the United States’ impactful Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The act, passed in August 2022, is Washington’s response to its pressing geostrategic, economic, energy and environmental security challenges.

The IRA contains US$370 billion worth of incentives for clean tech and is estimated to spur US$2.9 trillion of cumulative investment opportunity by 2032.

This comprehensive suite of policy supports has put Australian efforts to shame. As a result, the IRA is now drawing much needed green energy investment away from Australia. Given the support on offer, it is no surprise US manufacturing spending has nearly doubled in the last 12 months, while Australia remains stuck in the investment slow lane.

Even more worrying for Australia is the fact the US is not the only rapid mover in the green energy space. A number of middle powers more similar to us in capacity – such as Canada and Japan – have also announced hugely ambitious green energy investment packages that leave Australia lagging.

There is no question Australia needs the ARIP, and needs it urgently.

Read more:
We need a national renewables approach, or some states – like NSW – will miss out

Industry policy – Australia’s dirtiest word

In arguing for a new big renewables push, some proponents have couched it in the language of a “new industry policy”. But this language is problematic for two main reasons.

First, this language in Australia is highly politicised and divisive. Since the 1980s, “industry policy” has arguably become one of the most misused and abused terms in our nation’s political discourse.

To even utter the words “industry policy” is often enough to spark fierce ideological objection, or to cause people’s eyes to glaze over with disinterest, disillusionment or both. In this sense, the term has become the ultimate thought blocker and conversation stopper.

Unfortunately, such reactions make it almost impossible to have a sensible national debate about what effective industry policy actually looks like. For its many detractors “industry policy” means protectionism and picking winners, and should therefore be avoided at all costs.

This unsophisticated view ignores the fact that in countries that have historically practised highly effective and strategic industry policy – including our northeast Asian neighbours of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – “protectionism” and “picking winners” was far from the norm.

Indeed, because of the goal orientation of East Asian policymakers, who wanted to catch up with developed countries extremely quickly, industry policy was a highly disciplined affair tied to stringent performance incentives.

In this context, East Asian governments did not pick winners. Rather, winning firms self-selected by opting into government support programs, and by then outperforming competitors to keep earning that support.

By contrast, in Australia “industry policy” has become a highly politicised and partisan affair. For this reason, calls for industry policy often fall on deaf ears, and do more to divide policymakers and business leaders than unite them.

Read more:
Industrial policy is back on the agenda — and it’s never been needed more than it is now

Towards ‘statecraft’, not industry policy

But there is another, even more compelling reason for advocates of the renewables package to avoid the language of “industry policy”. The term doesn’t adequately capture the kinds of policies our competitors – both rivals and partners – are now enacting in the green energy space, or the kind of response we require.

Instead, Australia needs to embrace “green energy statecraft”.

Such statecraft involves bold government initiatives to build, grow and dominate the high-technology markets essential to the green transition, and to fend off or outflank rival powers, be they economic, geo-strategic or both.

Green energy statecraft is different from plain old energy policy, or even “industrial policy”. Its focus is squarely on building new industries with the intention of ensuring success in hyper-competitive global markets and, simultaneously, bolstering national security.

We argue that in recent years, the most significant obstacle to Australia’s success in the green energy arena has been the prevailing policymaking mindset: viewing the green energy shift principally as an energy and climate policy challenge, rather than statecraft.

With national security motivations at play, governments that practice green energy statecraft create bold visions for new industries like green hydrogen, green steel and bioenergy. They set clear production, export and, most importantly, technology-upgrading targets. They also mobilise all available financial incentives and policy instruments to ensure these targets are met.

To become a green energy superpower, Australia needs to match our strategic vision with a new green energy statecraft.

Language matters. If we want policymakers to act, and if we want our calls to unite rather than divide, we need to choose our words very carefully.

Elizabeth Thurbon receives funding from the Australian Research Council, The Australian Department of Defence, and The Academy of Korean Studies. She has previously received funding from the Korea Foundation, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and The Asia Society. She sits on the Research Board of the Jubilee Australia Research Centre and is an elected member of the Executive Council of the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics.

Alexander M. Hynd receives funding from the Academy of Korean Studies.

Hao Tan receives funding from the Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project 2019-2023. He previously received fundings from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, from Enova Community Energy Ltd, and funding from the Confucius Institute Headquarters under the “Understanding China Fellowship” in 2017.

– ref. We urgently need $100bn for renewable energy. But call it statecraft, not ‘industry policy’ – https://theconversation.com/we-urgently-need-100bn-for-renewable-energy-but-call-it-statecraft-not-industry-policy-213351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney

Our metabolism is the force inside our bodies that mysteriously decides whether to convert the food we eat into a burst of energy, or extra kilos on the scales.

A “slow” or “sluggish” metabolism is often the first thing we blame when we struggle to lose weight.

As a result, a US$33 billion industry offers thousands of products promising to speed up our metabolic rate for weight-loss success.

But rather than reaching for a supplement, there are things you can do to speed your metabolism up.

Read more:
Ever wonder how your body turns food into fuel? We tracked atoms to find out

What is metabolism and how does it work?

Metabolism is the term describing all the chemical reactions in our bodies that keep us alive. It provides the energy needed for essential functions like breathing and digestion.

When we refer to metabolism in the context of our weight, we’re actually describing our basal metabolic rate – the number of calories the body burns at rest, determined by how much muscle and fat we have.

Many factors can affect your metabolism, including gender, age, weight and lifestyle. It naturally slows down as we age and becomes dysfunctional after dieting.

Why does our metabolism slow with age?

As our bodies age, they stop working as efficiently as before. Around the age of 40, our muscle mass starts naturally declining, and the ratio of body fat to muscle increases.

Because muscle mass helps determine the body’s metabolic rate, this decrease in muscle means our bodies start to burn fewer calories at rest, decreasing our metabolic rate.

Why does our metabolism become dysfunctional after dieting?

When you lose large amounts of weight, you’re likely to have lowered your metabolic rate, and it doesn’t recover to the level it was pre-dieting – even if you regain weight.

This is because, typically, when we diet to lose weight, we lose both fat and muscle, and the decrease in our calorie-burning muscle mass slows our metabolism.

We can account for the expected decrease in metabolic rate from the decrease in body mass, but even after we regain lost weight our metabolism doesn’t recover.

Research shows that for every diet you attempt, the rate at which you burn food slows by a further 15% that can’t be accounted for.

Read more:
Is it true the faster you lose weight the quicker it comes back? Here’s what we know about slow and fast weight loss

3 ways to speed up our metabolism (and 1 thing to avoid)

1) Pay attention to what you eat

Consider the types of food you eat because your diet will influence the amount of energy your body expends to digest, absorb and metabolise food. This process is called diet-induced thermogenesis, or the thermic effect of food, and it equates to about 10% of our daily energy expenditure.

Research shows the thermic effect of food is highest for protein-rich foods because our bodies need to use more energy to break down and digest proteins. Eating protein-rich foods will increase your metabolic rate by about 15% (compared to the average of 10% from all foods). In contrast, carbs will increase it 10% and fats by less than 5%.

But this doesn’t mean you should switch to a protein-only diet to boost your metabolism. Rather, meals should include vegetables and a source of protein, balanced with wholegrain carbs and good fats to support optimum health, disease prevention and weight loss.

2) Get moving

Regular physical activity will boost muscle mass and speed up your metabolism. Increasing your muscle mass raises your basal metabolic rate, meaning you’ll burn more calories at rest.

You can achieve this by incorporating 30 minutes of physical activity into your daily routine, supplemented with two days of gym or strength work each week.

Read more:
Does exercise help you lose weight?

It’s also important to mix things up, as following the same routine every day can quickly lead to boredom and exercise avoidance.

Neglecting exercise will just as quickly result in a decline in muscle mass, and your lost muscle will slow your metabolism and hamper your efforts to lose weight.

3) Get enough sleep

A growing body of research confirms sleep deprivation can significantly impact your metabolism.

A lack of sleep disturbs the body’s energy balance. This causes our appetite hormones to increase feelings of hunger and trigger food cravings, while altering our sugar metabolism and decreasing our energy expenditure.

If you want to boost your metabolism, set yourself a goal of getting seven hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.

A simple way to achieve this is to avoid screens for at least one hour before bed. Screens are a big sleep disruptor because they suppress melatonin production in the brain, telling us it’s daytime instead of nighttime.

4) Don’t waste your money on diet pills and supplements

Thousands of products promise to activate your metabolism and speed up your weight loss. While some may have ingredients that will boost your metabolism immediately after you take them, such as caffeine and capsaicin (the component which gives chillies their heat), research confirms the effect is temporary – they don’t support long-term weight loss.

Most products promising to help you speed up your metabolism to help you lose weight don’t offer any scientific evidence to back their efficacy. Two extensive reviews published recently examined around 120 studies of weight-loss supplements and found they just don’t work, despite the bold marketing claims.

So leave the pills, potions and powders on the shelf and focus on the things that work. Your metabolism – and your hip pocket – will thank you.

Read more:
It’s time to bust the ‘calories in, calories out’ weight-loss myth

At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.

Dr Nick Fuller works for the University of Sydney and has received external funding for projects relating to the treatment of overweight and obesity. He is the author and founder of the Interval Weight Loss program.

– ref. What can you do to speed up your metabolism? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-you-do-to-speed-up-your-metabolism-204811

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tonia Gray, Professor, Centre for Educational Research, Western Sydney University

There is ongoing concern about the impact of “helicopter parenting” on children’s growth and development.

Keen to ensure the best outcomes for their children, helicopter parents tend to hover over their kids, constantly trying to prevent misadventure or harm.

But child experts say this can lead to a lack of resilience and tenacity in children. Children can also struggle with problem-solving and initiative.

How can we overcome this?

We are educators who study risky environments. Our new research looks at parent’s perceptions of an outdoor play park. It shows how outdoor parks provide opportunities for children to engage in risky play and develop independence and problem-solving skills.

The importance of risk

Risk taking means engaging in any behaviour or activity with an uncertain physical, social, emotional or financial outcome.

Risk is an everyday part of life, from driving a car to buying a house at auction or climbing a ladder.

We cannot eliminate risk, so we need to learn how to navigate it. This means taking responsibility for assessing potential consequences and taking necessary precautions. For example, crossing the road carries risk, but we learn how to look for cars or cross at traffic lights if the road is very busy.

Recognising and appropriately responding to risk taking is an integral aspect of children’s growth and development. In 1998, US educator and wilderness guide Jeff Liddle observed risk was instrumental to lifelong learning.

Outdoor experiences are particularly good places to develop skills around risk because they are not a controlled environment. For example, no two trees are the same to climb and conditions can vary depending on the weather.

Read more:
This new ‘risky’ playground is a work of art – and a place for kids to escape their mollycoddling parents

Our study

In a new study we surveyed parents and caregivers about children’s risk taking in the Boongaree nature play park in Berry, New South Wales.

The park includes fixed equipment such as slides and climbing ropes as well as natural elements such as water, stone, timber, sand and greenery.

We chose Boongaree after it became the focus of media and social media debate due to a spate of injuries, including broken bones. The Daily Mail suggested it was Australia’s “most dangerous playground”. Following community concerns, the park’s tunnel slide was replaced in May this year with another slide with less “momentum”.

Over multiple visits to the park in June 2023, we recruited 302 adults to complete a survey about their children’s park use. We then followed up with a closed Facebook group of 56 parents from the same group.

The benefits of risk

We asked parents to share their views about the park and they told us risky park play had many benefits. These included allowing children to:

• be challenged and solve problems

• connect to the outdoors

• direct their own play

• be physically active

• be creative and curious

• demonstrate confidence and independence and

• build social capacity, by sharing equipment and taking turns.

As one parent told us:

The look on children’s faces as they reach the top of climbing ropes and start walking across the bridges is fabulous – grit and determination, followed by a big deep breath […]

Another parent spoke of the importance of giving kids the opportunity to

make their own decisions about the risk they want to take, how high or how fast they will go.

Yet another parent described how the park gave children the “freedom to play in any way they feel comfortable”.

Read more:
Five ways parents can help their kids take risks – and why it’s good for them

How to support your child in outdoor, risky play

So next time you go to the park, how can you support your child to take appropriate risks? Here are some tips, based on our work on children, risk and outdoor play:

Start with a positive mindset: playgrounds are designed to develop physical and social skills. So be prepared for your child to try new things at the park (rather than just play it safe with the same old equipment).

Be ready to support – and to stand back: there are times when it is best to stand back and let children experience the equipment or the area for themselves. There are others where parents are needed. So keep a monitoring eye on things. But don’t assume you will be helping all the time.

Language matters: try to steer away from language such as “be careful”. This can set children up to be afraid of a situation. Reframe your language to something more supportive, such as “is there a stronger piece of wood to put your foot on?” or “have you seen the hole over there?”

You could also say something like, “look around, do you want to explore left or right?”. This prompts your child to think about the best approach for them and builds self confidence and problem-solving skills.

Give useful advice: help children with specific guidance on how to use equipment safely. For example, when climbing you could say, “use three points of contact, two hands and one foot on that ladder”.

Let the child decide: allow your child to decide what pieces of equipment they use and how far they climb. Do not push them to complete activities they are not comfortable with. And by the same token, intervene only when the equipment is clearly above their skill development level.

Have fun: show excitement, join in the imaginative games and reinforce the message that it is acceptable to say no or yes to challenge – both choices are OK!

The authors wish to acknowledge Amanda Lloyd, who contributed to the research on which this article is based.

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

– ref. Stand back and avoid saying ‘be careful!’: how to help your child take risks at the park – https://theconversation.com/stand-back-and-avoid-saying-be-careful-how-to-help-your-child-take-risks-at-the-park-212969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Finnane, Professor (honorary), The University of Melbourne

In August 2022 a young woman wearing a yukata – a simple, summer-weight kimono – was having her photo taken on a street in picturesque Suzhou, China, when she was accosted by a police officer. Following an angry exchange, partly captured on her phone, she was arrested for disturbing the public peace.

The Suzhou Kimono Incident, as it came to be known, sparked an internet debate over the propriety of wearing kimonos and the legality of the policeman’s actions.

This was not the first time wearing a kimono in China had caused a furore, and it would not be the last. Another broke out in March this year, after a visitor to Nanjing, site of an infamous massacre by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937, reported seeing a woman in a white kimono posing amidst the cherry blossoms in a Buddhist temple. He complained to the attendants but they said it was merely a matter of ethics: after all, people were free to wear what they like.

That may soon change. A new draft law on public security published online at the beginning of this month includes a clause criminalising the wearing of clothes that might be “hurtful to the spirit and sentiments of the nation”. If the law is passed, offenders will face penalties of up to 5,000 yuan (A$1,000) and up to 15 days jail.

Draft laws, routinely posted for comment, rarely attract many responses. The response to this one has been huge, with around 100,000 submissions to date. Legal scholars in China have weighed in, pointing out the fuzziness of this clause and its openness to abuse by local law enforcers.

And as one Beijing lawyer intimated, the legislation seems directly aimed at the kimono.

A ‘hurtful’ kimono?

Half a century ago, the target of sartorial struggle in China was “strange clothing and outlandish dress” – tight pants were the example par excellence in the 1960s, succeeded by flares in the 1970s.

Such clothing was associated with the United States, the Soviet Union and Hong Kong, all sink-holes of decadence and natural enemies of China under Mao.

Things have changed. Soviet revisionists have morphed into Russian allies; Hong Kong has been swallowed up by the mainland; and with jeans and t-shirts now ubiquitous in China, the US is no longer open to attack on the sartorial front.

Enter Japan, with its spectacular array of distinctive cultural products, strong youth following across East Asia and a wartime history that since the 1980s has been leveraged to foment nationalism in China.

In 1980, Japanese movie star Nakano Ryoko received a rapturous welcome when she visited China. Over the next few years, Japan inspired and provided training for the first generation of post-Mao fashion designers, who helped lay the foundations for a now-flourishing industry.

In the mid-1980s, a fully accessorised kimono as a symbol of excellence in Japanese design was perfectly acceptable for publication in a Chinese magazine.

Simultaneously, however, a “new remembering” of Japanese wartime atrocities – specifically the Nanjing massacre – was emerging, soon to be endorsed by the ruling Communist Party. By the 1990s, a history that had been buried in the Mao years was being given full play.

All this helps explain the visceral responses to young Chinese women wearing kimonos today.

In April 2009, two high-impact films about the Nanjing massacre were released. Images of Japanese soldiers raping Chinese women were fresh in people’s minds when, in September, young model Ding Beili posted a photo of herself online wearing a kimono. She attracted a storm of criticism.

“With so many countries in the world to pick from,” asked one blogger, “why did she have to pick Japan?”

Why indeed? The answer lies in something else that came to China from Japan: cosplay, popular across East Asia. The girl of the Suzhou Kimono Incident was a cosplayer, performing a role from the Japanese anime Summer Time Rendering. Naturally, cosplayers view Japanese-inspired dress differently from their critics.

Among the great occasions for Chinese cosplay until recently were Japanese-style “summer festivals”, or matsuri. It was for a matsuri in Shanghai that Ding Beili donned a kimono in 2009. Increasingly popular in China in recent years, summer festivals were cancelled in at least seven cities in August 2022 under rising anti-Japanese sentiment.

Read more:
How the kimono became a symbol of oppression in some parts of Asia

Adding the US to the mix

The ultra-nationalist Hu Xijin, former editor of the Global Times, has dismissed the issue of the kimono in China as a matter of no consequence. “Little Japan,” in his view, is just “a lackey of the US”.

The US-Japan alliance undoubtedly exacerbates Chinese hostility towards Japan, a country that like Australia is an easier target for payback than the US. China’s response to the new tripartite agreement between Japan, South Korea and the US was to slap a ban on Japanese seafood imports, on stated grounds of health security.

The new draft law against “hurtful” dress was posted soon after the implementation of the seafood ban, leaving observers with a distinct impression of China as a place where people can neither eat Japanese fish nor wear Japanese clothes.

Older people must be reminded of a time half a century ago, when young people wearing “strange clothing and outlandish dress” were attacked on the streets, while seafood was hardly available at all.

Read more:
The Communist Party claims to have brought prosperity and equality to China. Here’s the real impact of its rule

Antonia Finnane has received funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. China is criminalising clothing ‘hurtful to the spirit and sentiments of the nation’ – could this mean a kimono ban? – https://theconversation.com/china-is-criminalising-clothing-hurtful-to-the-spirit-and-sentiments-of-the-nation-could-this-mean-a-kimono-ban-213153

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Massey University

Christopher Luxon is no slouch on the dance floor, it seems. As his wife Amanda told the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, the two prepared for their university ball with a ballroom dancing class.

The teacher said he had rhythm and I couldn’t believe she was saying that about him when I had done ballet for years. But that’s what clinched it for me!

As the pace increases in the campaign for New Zealand’s 2023 general election, and regardless of polls showing the National Party ahead of Labour, Luxon will need to find some of that rhythm in the weeks leading up to and after the election.

As a recent, unimpressive TV performance defending his party’s tax package demonstrated, he’ll need stamina and skill to make up for being a comparative newcomer to the political dance.

But this may be even more important after the election than during the campaign. If National leads the next government – and even if it doesn’t – the landscape on the right of New Zealand politics is changing.

In particular, ACT’s success in stitching together a coalition of urban low-tax-loving liberals and disaffected farmers is driving a wedge between National and voters it has long seen as its own.

The party Luxon leads is facing not just an election, but a generational realignment.

Rebranding an airline, as Luxon did in a former life, is one thing. Steering the National Party through what lies ahead may require more than fancy footwork.

The political unknown

This is no small task for a political novice. Luxon only entered parliament as the MP for Botany at the 2020 election. National lost the party vote to Labour in that Auckland constituency, and the 50% of the candidate vote he gained was lower than the 60% National’s Jami-Lee Ross had won in 2017.

If it was a baptism by fire, he fared better than a lot of National’s other candidates in that election, which gave Labour the first single party majority government since the adoption of the MMP electoral system in 1996.

That seismic defeat saw the end of Judith Collins’ leadership, and the search for a new face. A little over a year later, Luxon was installed as the party’s fifth leader in just four years.

It’s been less than two years since then, but much has changed. Most notably, former prime minister Jacinda Ardern has gone – as have all of the COVID restrictions and many of the policies with which she was associated.

Read more:
Taxing questions: is National glossing over the likely cost of administering its new ‘revenue measures’?

During that time, Luxon has been working hard to construct a political persona, but routinely faces claims he is an unknown quantity.

His previous careers at Unilever and Air New Zealand are well known, as is the fact he’s a conservative Christian. Some might know he likes waterskiing and country music. Some may even rate his credentials on the climate crisis, gender pay equity and opposition to human trafficking.

Yet Luxon still lacks political definition in a way John Key – the former National Party leader and prime minister, whose political success it is Luxon’s job to reprise – did not.

The two things most people knew about Key were that he was born in a state house and grew up to become an international man of finance.

The first fact allowed Key to promote himself as an ordinary bloke, the second notwithstanding. Luxon – who earned NZ$4.4 million a year at Air New Zealand and owns seven houses – has yet to pull off that political sleight of hand.

Brand Luxon

Earlier in the campaign, that slight sense of fuzziness – the feeling that people are not quite sure who Luxon is or what he stands for – was a concern for National’s strategists, forcing them to distinguish the leader from the party on the campaign trail.

There were worries, too, about the gap between Luxon’s personal polling and those of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins (and, for different reasons, those of the ACT Party leader David Seymour). However, the head-to-head contest for preferred prime minister between Luxon and Chris Hipkins has since tightened considerably.

But the concerns about the extent to which “brand Luxon” has achieved cut-through with voters have not entirely abated. For one thing, the same poll which had Luxon just a couple of percentage points behind Hipkins as preferred prime minister suggested he is less popular among undecided voters – who often determine the outcome of elections.

Read more:
How to read the political polls: 10 things you need to know ahead of the NZ election

Furthermore, in another relatively recent poll, only 25% of women respondents felt well disposed towards Luxon, whereas 39% expressed some degree of negativity towards him – which may speak to his socially conservative views on (among other things) abortion.

In 2020, National lost significant support among women to Ardern. It needs those votes back if it is to prevail this time, which goes some way to explaining the composition of National’s party list, even if Luxon was less than keen to acknowledge gender was a factor in drawing it up.

The ACT factor

It is worth recalling, however, that this time three years ago, National’s figures were in free-fall. Luxon has turned that around, calming a querulous caucus and ending National’s leadership musical chairs.

He has also made sure the party’s list more closely resembles the wider population, with fewer middle-aged white males per capita than previously.

That said, reflecting on the views held by a number of those on that list, one journalist suggested a National victory could produce “an unruly rump of zealots championing Christian identity politics” and pose “a significant risk to National’s cohesiveness and its ability to hold that power”.

But unlike Ardern in 2020, if Luxon is in a position to lead the next government, he will not be dancing with himself. He is going to need at least one parliamentary partner. This may be where the skills developed in his previous careers will be most severely tested.

Read more:
70 years of road-based policies created today’s problems – does National’s transport plan add up?

For one thing, the polls suggest Luxon will have to negotiate some form of governing arrangement with ACT. That is unlikely to be a straightforward process, given the extent to which the parties diverge on various policy issues.

Luxon would also find the day-to-day management of a National-ACT administration a challenge – much less a minority National government reliant on ACT for parliamentary support, as ACT leader David Seymour has suggested could happen.

ACT’s own experience in office is limited to Seymour’s brief tenure – a decade ago – as minister of regulatory reform and parliamentary undersecretary to the minister of education. And some of its candidate selection choices raise concerns about the sorts of views held within a party that could shortly find itself in – or propping up – a government.

To lose one candidate might be put down to misfortune. To lose several, as ACT has during this campaign, speaks to something more than carelessness.

Read more:
Tougher donation limits and funding fixes would make future NZ elections fairer for all

The post-election dance

Such difficulties would be partly of National’s own making. Since the 2002 election, ACT has cleared MMP’s 5% threshold for parliamentary representation just once (in 2020). For survival, it has relied on National either standing aside in the seat of Epsom or encouraging its supporters to give their vote to ACT’s Epsom candidate.

National is playing neither game this year, but may come to regret ever having done so. Because right now, Seymour’s party has the political breeze behind it.

A seemingly resurgent New Zealand First (NZF) also poses a threat. These days NZF is as much a populist party seeking to “take the country back” from sundry “elites” and “a small unelected cabal of opinionated virtue signallers” as it is a vehicle for economic nationalism.

But just as he did with Brian Tamaki’s Freedoms NZ Party, Luxon is equivocating on the question of whether or not he would countenance working with NZF leader Winston Peters after the election.

For now, National’s leader can keep his potential governing options open. But in a month’s time – assuming present polling trends apply on the big day – we may find out who on his political dance card will get the nod.

Christopher Luxon just has to avoid tripping over his own feet before he gets there.

Richard Shaw 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. After the election, Christopher Luxon’s real test could come from his right – not the left – https://theconversation.com/after-the-election-christopher-luxons-real-test-could-come-from-his-right-not-the-left-209393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

The run of extreme weather events around the world seems to be never-ending. After the northern summer of extreme heat and disastrous fires, we’ve seen more exceptional autumn weather over Europe with record-breaking heat in the UK.

Meanwhile, record-breaking rain and intense flash floods struck Greece before the same storm devastated Libya, with thousands dead.

Almost 20% of Africa is estimated to be in drought, and drought conditions are returning to parts of Australia. To top it off, we’ve seen several hurricanes intensify unusually quickly in the Atlantic.

We know climate change underpins some of the more extreme weather we’re seeing. But is it also pushing these extreme events to happen faster?

The answer? Generally, yes. Here’s how.

Flash droughts

We usually think of droughts as slowly evolving extreme events which take months to form.

But that’s no longer a given. We’ve seen some recent droughts develop unexpectedly quickly, giving rise to the phrase “flash drought”.

How does this happen? It’s when a lack of rainfall in a region combines with high temperatures and sunny conditions with low humidity. When these conditions are in place, it increases how much moisture the atmosphere is trying to pull from the land through evaporation. The end result: faster drying-out of the ground.

Flash droughts tend to be short, so they don’t tend to cause the major water shortages or dry river beds we’ve seen during long droughts in parts of Australia and South Africa, for example. But they can cause real problems for farmers. Farmers in parts of eastern Australia are already grappling with the sudden return of drought after three years of rainy La Niña conditions.

As we continue to warm the planet, we’ll see more flash droughts and more intense ones. That’s because dry conditions will more often coincide with higher temperatures as relative humidity falls across many land regions.

Flash floods and extreme rainfall

Climate change can cause increased rainfall variability. Some parts of the world will get a lot wetter, on average, while others will get drier, increasing the variation in rainfall between different regions. For Australia, most locations are generally expected to have intensified downpours of rain, as well as intensified droughts. So we might be saying more often ‘it doesn’t rain, it pours!

We’re seeing exceptionally extreme rainfall in many recent events. The recent floods that submerged villages in Greece came from a sudden downpour of over 500 millimetres in a single day. Hong Kong was hit last week by the heaviest rains in 140 years, flooding subway stations and turning streets into rivers.

But why does it happen so quickly?

Sudden extreme rains fall when we have very moist air coupled with a weather system that forces air to rise.

We’ve long known human-caused climate change is increasing how much moisture the air can hold generally, rising by about 7% per degree of global warming. That means storms now have the potential to hold and dump more water.

Notably, the impact of climate change on rain-bearing weather systems can vary by region, which makes the picture more complicated. That means, for instance, climate change may lead to more extreme rain in some places, while other places may only see an intensification in really short extreme rain events and not for longer timescales.

We can safely say, though, that in most parts of the world, we’re seeing more intense storms and sudden extreme rainfall. Sudden dumps of rain drive flash floods.

More moisture in the air helps fuel more intense convection, where warm air masses rise and form clouds. In turn, this can trigger efficient, quick and intense dumps of rain from thunderstorms.

These short-duration rain events can be much larger than you’d expect from the 7% increase in moisture per degree of warming.

Read more:
Think storms are getting worse? Rapid rain bursts in Sydney have become at least 40% more intense in 2 decades

Flash cyclones? Hurricanes are intensifying faster

Last month, Hurricane Idalia caused major flooding in Florida. As we write, Hurricane Lee is approaching the US.

Both tropical storms had something odd about them – unusually rapid intensification. That is, they got much stronger in a short period of time.

Usually, this process might increase wind speeds by about 50 kilometres per hour over a 24-hour period for a hurricane – also known as tropical cyclones and typhoons. But Lee’s wind speeds increased by 129km/h over that period. US meteorological expert Marshall Shepherd has dubbed the phenomenon “hyperintensification”, which could put major population centres at risk.

Rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones are strong and can be very hazardous, but they aren’t very common. To trigger them, you need a combination of very high sea surface temperatures, moist air and wind speeds that don’t change much with height.

While still uncommon, rapid intensification is potentially getting more frequent as we heat the planet. This is because oceans have taken up so much of the heat and there’s more moisture in the air. There’s much more still to learn here.

Australia’s El Niño summer in a warming world

Spring and summer in Australia are likely to be warmer and drier than usual. This is due to the El Niño climate cycle predicted for the Pacific Ocean. If, as predicted, we also get a positive Indian Ocean Dipole event, this can heighten the hotter, drier weather brought by El Niño. After three wet La Niña years, this is likely to be a marked shift.

Read more:
When the Indian Ocean and El Niño join forces, things can get hot and dry

If it arrives as expected, El Niño would lower the risk of tropical cyclones for northern Australia and reduce chances of heavy rain across most of the continent.

But for farmers, it may help trigger flash droughts. Prevailing warm and dry conditions may rapidly dry the land and reduce crop yields and slow livestock growth.

Drier surfaces coupled with grass growth from the wet years could worsen fire risk. Grass can dry out much faster than shrubs or trees, and grass fires can start and spread very rapidly.

Climate change loads the dice for extreme weather. And as we’re now seeing, these extremes aren’t just more intense – they can happen remarkably fast.

Read more:
‘Flash droughts’ can dry out soil in weeks. New research shows what they look like in Australia

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

Andrew Dowdy receives research funding from the University of Melbourne.

– ref. Faster disaster: climate change fuels ‘flash droughts’, intense downpours and storms – https://theconversation.com/faster-disaster-climate-change-fuels-flash-droughts-intense-downpours-and-storms-213242

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

I’m not sure whether I’ve got any unclaimed Qantas flight credits.

I haven’t looked, either because I’m too busy or can’t be bothered. Which is exactly what Qantas wants. And not only Qantas. Separating out those people who are desperate or determined to get their money from those who give up is a standard business practice.

It’s called price discrimination, although Qantas appears to have added a twist.

Washing machine, fridge and computer manufacturers all do it. They sell their products for a standard price, and then offer a $200 or $400 “cash back” to buyers who fill in and send off a form when they get home.

The manufacturers know time-poor, lazy or well-off customers won’t bother, so they won’t need to send them cash. But the customers who do bother will really need the cash, and probably wouldn’t buy the products without it.

That way they can sell to people who otherwise wouldn’t have bought, while at the same time charging a high price to people prepared to pay it. They’ve arranged things so the two groups sort themselves out.

A tax on the time-poor

Qantas (and Virgin) could have easily refunded money to people who bought flights during the first years of COVID and had to cancel because of lockdowns. In most cases, Qantas had their credit card numbers. It still has them. It could refund the best part of A$500 million right now.

Instead, it makes it really difficult to get money back. It requires phone calls, waiting on the line and fishing out old emails and customer codes.

For a while, until it backed down days ahead of its chief executive bringing forward his retirement, Qantas said those credits would expire unless they were reclaimed, knowing full well many would not be.

But it’s not only Qantas imposing a tax on the time-poor.

A tax on those who won’t pick up the phone

News Corporation will allow you to subscribe to its papers with a click and a card. But when you hit “unsubscribe”, you get given a phone number.

When (and if) you get around to ringing it, you are subjected to an ordeal in which the operator gives you reason after reason not to unsubscribe, instead of acting on your request. You can insist, of course, but it takes time and effort.

The (NewsCorp-owned) Wall Street Journal also makes it impossible to unsubscribe without a phone call… unless you live in California. There, and only there – not in Australia, not in the rest of the United States – you are allowed to unsubscribe online because of a law forcing providers to offer the option.

Australia’s banks are experts at separating lazy customers from diligent shoppers, as are electricity companies.

They routinely offer customers who switch (or say they are about to switch) better rates than customers who stay, turning a time-poor tax into a loyalty tax.

Read more:
When the price is not right: technology price gouging in Australia

A tax on loyal customers

You might think a tax on those who don’t chase the best deals is effectively a tax on the better-off, as they are the least likely to need savings.

Yet an array of evidence across a wide range of industries assembled by David Byrne and Leslie Martin finds loyalty taxes hit the poorest the hardest.

In an intriguing and expensive experiment in 2017, Byrne and Martin attempted to find out why this was.

They staffed a call centre at The University of Melbourne in which actors phoned electricity companies, provided or let slip a few details, and said they were thinking of switching.

Among those details was eligibility for Victoria’s low-income energy subsidy.

Byrne and Martin found no discrimination against low-income callers because they said they had low incomes. But they did find that where the callers sounded as if they lacked information, they got offered lower discounts.

A premium price dispute

Disturbing evidence tendered in the Federal Court suggests some Australian insurance companies may be systematising discrimination against Australians who lack access to information.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has alleged some insurers set premiums not only on the basis of risk, but also on the basis of what a computer model tells them about the likelihood of each customer tolerating a price hike.

ASIC says the alleged practice is known internally as “renewal optimisation”.

Those claims are disputed, with insurer IAG telling The Australian Financial Review: “We don’t agree with how ASIC has characterised the process by which we calculate renewal premiums, and the impact on our customers.”

Enough for a government inquiry

Where immorality starts and standard business practice stops will be a question for a newly-established taskforce on competition. It will be headed by the Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood (who will also head the Productivity Commission) and the former head of the Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims.

One thing they might be able to agree on immediately is that something else Qantas has been accused of doing with flight credits is beyond the pale.

Evidence supplied to the ABC in 2022 suggests that not only has Qantas been hanging on to customers’ money by directing them to use credits for flights rather than refunds, it has been jacking up the price of flights when they do – by 50-300%, imposing what amounts to an extra (enforced) loyalty tax.

If Qantas and others have taken standard business practices just that little bit further in recent years, there’s a small chance they’ve done us a favour. They’ve given the taskforce something to sink its teeth into.

Read more:
Booking customers on cancelled flights – how could Qantas do that?

Peter Martin 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. How Qantas might have done all Australians a favour by making refunds so hard to get – https://theconversation.com/how-qantas-might-have-done-all-australians-a-favour-by-making-refunds-so-hard-to-get-213346

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yanyan Hong, PhD Candidate in Communication and Media Studies, University of Adelaide

In the ever-evolving landscape of Indian cinema, where movie stars rise and fall, one name has remained etched in the hearts of millions for more than three decades – Shah Rukh Khan, also known as “SRK”.

Fondly known as the King of Bollywood, Khan’s cinematic influence on Indian cinema is a story that transcends borders and generations.

As people celebrate his remarkable return to the silver screen in 2023 after a four-year hiatus, marked by the resounding global success of Pathaan, it’s the perfect time to embark on a journey through his illustrious career.

Here, I explore the timeless Indian classics that catapulted him to stardom and look at the excitement surrounding his latest release, Jawan (in cinemas now), and the highly awaited Dunki.

So, for those who may not be familiar, what is Bollywood?

Bollywood, India’s cinematic powerhouse based in Mumbai, is where the majority of Hindi-language films are made. It’s like India’s own Hollywood.

But Indian cinema isn’t just about Bollywood. Regional film production centres across India like Kollywood (the Tamil film industry) and Tollywood (Telugu film industry) add their unique colours. India is now the global leader in film outputs, with an astonishing 1,500 to 2,000 films released each year in more than 20 different languages.

And the 57-year-old King Khan has been a pillar of Bollywood ever since he broke through with the 1992 film Deewana.

SRK’s cinematic influence on Indian cinema

To truly grasp SRK’s impact on Indian cinema, let’s rewind to the 1990s – a golden era of Bollywood brimming with iconic Indian films and unforgettable performances.

During this time, a young man without any industry connections in a world built on family ties was about to shape the future of Indian cinema.

In 1995, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge hit the screens. Directed by the legendary Aditya Chopra, this film told a captivating love story transcending all boundaries.

SRK’s portrayal of Raj wasn’t just a character, it was emotion.

With its enchanting music and a storyline that captured the essence of young love and tradition, the film became a sensation within and beyond India, uninterruptedly running for more than two decades (it’s still running today!) in Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir theatre.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’s staggering success made SRK a star, or perhaps it was the other way around: SRK made DDLJ.

His later films like Dil Se (1998), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and others solidified his status as the king of romance. These timeless classics not only tugged at heartstrings, but also paved the path for his incredible cinematic journey.

In the 2000s, he continued to shine with family and romantic hits like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001) and Kal Ho Na Ho (2003). He experimented with versatile roles in films like Swades (2004) and Chak De India (2007), while venturing into film production with his own Red Chillies Entertainment Limited.

As the years rolled on, SRK represented Indian cinema globally with films such as Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) and Chennai Express (2013). However, he faced a challenging period in the late 2010s when his films Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Zero (2018) failed miserably at the box office, leading many to wonder if his time had passed.

Read more:
Bollywood and Australia: worth making a song and dance about

The return of the king

Jump to 2023. After a four-year hiatus from the big screen, the king returned with three promised films in one year, and audiences worldwide eagerly awaited to see if his magic still held sway.

Pathaan, with its phenomenal dance, didn’t just meet expectations – it smashed them. It broke box office records and earned global acclaim, showcasing SRK’s unparalleled star power.

This action thriller has become India’s highest-grossing Hindi film ever, and the first Bollywood film to earn more than US$100 million (A$155 million) without a release in China.

Pathaan’s success was a testament to the love fans hold for SRK, reaffirming his charisma as irresistible as ever.

Anticipation for Jawan and Dunki

Jawan, which premiered in Australia on Sept. 7, became the first Indian film ever to claim the top spot in both the Australian and neighbouring New Zealand box offices on its first day. Trailers for the film amassed millions of views, and fans dissected every snippet, making the buzz around it electrifying.

And then there is Dunki, directed by the acclaimed Indian director Rajkumar Hirani (whose 2009 film 3 Idiots happens to be my personal favourite). The mere announcement of this collaboration sent ripples through the industry.

Love beyond borders

Beyond the box office figures and his countless film awards, SRK’s films carry a profound cultural significance. They often delve into deeper social and emotional themes, resonating not just with Indian audiences, but worldwide.

Dear Zindagi (2016) explores mental health and personal growth, breaking stereotypes about therapy and self-discovery.

My Name Is Khan (2010) addresses the complexities of racial profiling and discrimination in the post-9/11 world. Its iconic line “My Name is Khan, but I am not a terrorist” transcended national borders and touched hearts across the globe.

In Swades (2004), SRK’s heartfelt portrayal of a NASA scientist’s return to his homeland mirrors the Indian diaspora’s yearning for roots and ignited a dialogue on the duty of reconnecting with one’s homeland.

Calling himself a dream seller who peddles love to millions of people in his 2017 TED talk, Khan’s influence is proof to the enduring power of storytelling, and the ability of cinema to connect people across cultures.

He is one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2023. His fans even set a Guinness World Record for the most people performing his iconic pose.

Many have labelled SRK’s 2023 as a comeback, but the superstar himself seems not to believe in this notion. Quoting a line from the Hollywood film Gattaca (1997), SRK tweeted, “I never saved anything for the swim back”.

As fans eagerly flock to see Jawan and await Dunki, it’s a reminder he continues to “move forward” and redefine what it means to be a superstar, not just in Bollywood, but on the globe stage. He shows us the magic of cinema knows no boundaries, and neither does the allure of Bollywood’s king.

Yanyan Hong 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 Deewana to the success of Pathaan: the global impact of Bollywood’s enduring king, Shah Rukh Khan – https://theconversation.com/from-deewana-to-the-success-of-pathaan-the-global-impact-of-bollywoods-enduring-king-shah-rukh-khan-213146

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

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has committed to holding another referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition (without a Voice to Parliament), if the upcoming Voice referendum fails.

What does history tell us about the repeat of referendums on the same or similar subjects?

Hope springs eternal for a government that wants more power

In the first half of the 20th century, Commonwealth governments tended to bring referendums that sought to expand Commonwealth legislative power over commercial and industrial matters.

This included holding referendums on:

• trade and commerce in 1911, 1913 and 1919
• corporations in 1911, 1913, 1919, 1926 and 1944
• monopolies in 1911, 1913, 1919 and 1944
• trusts in 1913, 1919, 1926 and 1944
• marketing in 1937, 1944 and 1946
• industrial relations in 1911, 1913, 1919 and 1946.

In some cases, the referendums were intended to be temporary measures for postwar reconstruction. But regardless of the context, all these referendums failed. They even failed when they had bipartisan support. This was usually because they were opposed by state premiers or affected groups, such as unions, primary producers and business organisations.

Amendments about political arrangements rarely win

In the second half of the 20th century, referendums tended to focus more on political and voting arrangements.

For example, there were referendums to require simultaneous elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives in 1974, 1977, 1984 and 1988. Improving the fairness of elections was also put to referendums in 1974 and 1988.

The constitutional recognition of local government was considered in referendums in 1974 and 1988, and almost went to a third referendum in 2013, before it was pulled by then prime minister Kevin Rudd.

All of these referendums also failed. It seems Australian voters are not only suspicious about giving the Commonwealth parliament greater powers, but are also wary about altering the political and electoral rules set out in the Constitution.

Read more:
Australians will vote in a referendum on October 14. What do you need to know?

The rare cases where a second go succeeds

The one case that bucked the trend was the amendment of the referendum process itself.

In 1901, there were no Commonwealth territories. So when the Constitution was passed, it provided that a referendum had to be put to voters in each state and would succeed when it was approved by a majority of voters nationally and a majority of voters in a majority of states.

This meant that when the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory were established, their electors could not vote in federal referendums at all.

In 1974, a referendum proposed to change this, so residents in the territories would be counted in the overall national vote in a referendum. But this referendum question also proposed to alter the majority requirement, so that success was only needed in half of the states (three out of six), rather than a majority of states (four out of six).

The referendum failed. It was most strongly opposed in the least populous states.

In 1977, there was a second attempt, but this time it only proposed giving territorians the right to vote in a referendum and be counted in the overall majority. It succeeded in every state and overall.

So, it is possible to alter the terms of a failed referendum and achieve success – but it is very rare.

Another example goes back to federation itself. In 1898, referendums were held in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania to approve federation. But while the NSW referendum achieved a majority, it did not meet the threshold requirement of 80,000 “yes” votes that was set out in the legislation for the referendum to succeed.

As there was no compulsory voting in those days, a minimum threshold had been put in place to ensure federation did not occur as a result of the votes of a small minority of those enfranchised.

But the vote was enough to tell the politicians that the voters actually wanted federation. This caused them to meet in a premiers’ conference in January 1899 to make some tweaks to the draft Constitution, including a compromise requiring Australia’s capital to be in NSW, but at least 100 miles from Sydney – which is how we got Canberra.

When a fresh referendum was held in June 1899, it succeeded, with a “yes” vote of 107,420 against a “no” vote of 82,741. The other states then also approved federation, and the Constitution was enacted by the British Parliament.

Read more:
The history of referendums in Australia is riddled with failure. Albanese has much at risk – and much to gain

The factors needed for success

While most “second runs” of referendums fail, it is possible to succeed if the referendum proposal is altered or untethered from an unpopular element. The key factor in success, however, is having no organised group that opposes it. Bipartisan support at the Commonwealth level is therefore extremely important, as is support at the state level.

For example, the 1928 referendum on financial agreements between the Commonwealth and states succeeded, despite containing a radical clause that allowed these agreements to override state and federal laws and the Constitution itself.

It succeeded because the terms of the amendment had already been agreed to by every state parliament, as well as both sides in the Commonwealth parliament, before being put to the people. There had been an awful lot of advance groundwork done, so voters could be reassured by all sides and all levels of government that the amendment was safe and sensible.

But it is also important to capture the support of those who are particularly affected by the referendum, as any concerted campaign of opposition is likely to sow enough doubt to cause defeat. In the past, campaigns by religious organisations, unions, employers and primary producers have sunk referendum proposals.

If a second referendum were to be held on the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution, substantial support by Indigenous Australians would be essential for its success.

Anne Twomey has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and sometimes does consultancy work for governments, Parliaments and inter-governmental bodies. She was a member of the Constitutional Expert Group, which advised the Commonwealth Government’s Referendum Working Group on the wording of the proposed referendum. She is also a part-time consultant for Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers.

– ref. What does history tell us about the Coalition’s proposal for a second referendum? – https://theconversation.com/what-does-history-tell-us-about-the-coalitions-proposal-for-a-second-referendum-212773

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jay Daniel Thompson, Lecturer and Program Manager, Professional Communication program, RMIT University

In January this year, the federal government proposed legislation that seeks to curb the online spread of false and misleading information.

Since then, a range of experts and groups have accused the draft Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill of being vaguely worded and encouraging censorship.

Is this bill really an affront to free speech and, therefore, to democracy itself? And if so, how might it be strengthened to protect online expression?

An overview of the bill

The bill aims to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to grant the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) “powers to combat online misinformation and disinformation”.

Specifically, ACMA would be given the power to make platforms report back on the measures they are taking to combat what is sometimes called “fake news”. Should ACMA determine that “stronger protections for Australians are required”, it can then alter the existing media codes of practice and introduce new codes.

ACMA will also have the power “to make an enforceable standard for all digital services providers in the relevant section[s] of the industry”.

The federal government has emphasised ACMA will not remove content from platforms.

The government has also stated the bill “seek[s] to strike a balance between the public interest in combating the serious harms that arise from the propagation of misinformation and disinformation, with freedom of speech”.

But some critics – including constitutional law expert Anne Twomey and the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) – have argued the bill doesn’t successfully strike this balance, and may have a chilling impact on online expression.

Combating fake news, or silencing expression?

The bill’s problems stem largely from the definitions it uses. Both misinformation and disinformation are defined as “information that is false, misleading or deceptive” and that “is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm”.

But there is a key difference between these two terms: disinformation is information that is distributed with the express purpose of deceiving others, whereas misinformation isn’t necessarily spread with deceptive intent.

The Law Council of Australia warns the broadness and imprecision of key terminology in the bill may result in confusion in its application. Similarly, the AHRC has said:

The broad definitions used here risk enabling unpopular or controversial opinions or beliefs to be subjectively labelled as misinformation or disinformation, and censored as a result.

Put simply, the bill could threaten freedom of speech: the ability to speak one’s mind in a public forum without the unreasonable threat of being silenced (such as via lawsuits or incarceration).

Freedom of speech has been heralded as a bulwark of any robust democracy; for a democracy to function, citizens must have the right to have their say on the issues of the day.

In the United States, free speech is protected by the First Amendment. No such formal protection exists in Australia. Nevertheless, the AHRC notes:

the High Court has held that an implied freedom of political communication exists as an indispensable part of the system of representative and responsible government created by the Constitution.

Read more:
No, Twitter is not censoring Donald Trump. Free speech is not guaranteed if it harms others

Risk of ‘double standards’

The risk to free speech is further heightened by the bill’s interpretation of what constitutes harm. Historically, the potential of speech to cause harm (either physical or psychological) has been understood as one of the few reasons that speech should ever be censored.

The bill identifies one harm as being the “disruption of public order or society in Australia” – but does not clarify what such a disruption would actually entail.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance argues this concept of “harm” is especially vulnerable to misuse. It notes “there is a long history of important social movements being considered ‘disruptive’ by governments and powerful interests”.

It’s easy to imagine online campaigns opposing Australian refugee policy, taxation laws or institutionalised racism being labelled as “misinformation” – even if they have a factual basis.

The bill does feature a list of exemptions, including authorised government content. This could include press releases and social media posts.

The Victorian Bar posits this exemption creates a “double standard” that “disadvantages critics of government in comparison with a government’s supporters”.

There is also the patently false implication that government information can’t be incorrect.

What happens now?

Despite its faults, the bill is well intentioned. As Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland rightly says:

Mis- and disinformation sows divisions within the community, undermines trust and can threaten public health and safety.

The bill is yet to be debated in parliament, which means there’s still time for amendments to be made. In particular, the imprecision of key terminology is ripe for amendment.

Should the bill pass into law as it is, it could lead to censorship – endangering the very democracy it purports to defend.

Jay Daniel Thompson receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a collaborative study entitled ‘Addressing online hostility in Australian Digital Cultures’ (DP230100870). Dr. Thompson is also the recipient of a 2023 Herbert & Valmae Freilich Project ECR Small Grant for a project entitled ‘Digital citizenship and ethical journalistic representations of online hostility directed at women and girls’.

– ref. Yes, Labor’s misinformation bill could jeopardise free speech online – https://theconversation.com/yes-labors-misinformation-bill-could-jeopardise-free-speech-online-213241

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Koval, Associate Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

Apple’s iOS 17 operating system is expected to drop any day. The software update comes with several new features, including a tool for daily mood and emotion logging – a technique known to emotion researchers as “experience sampling”.

Although there are caveats, certain mental health studies have shown that regularly recording one’s feelings can be useful. However, given the vast amount of health data Apple already harvests from customers, why does it also want to record their subjective feelings? And how helpful might this be for users?

How it works

With the latest software update, Apple’s in-built Health app will allow iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch users to record how they feel on a sliding scale from “very unpleasant” to “very pleasant”.

Users will then select from a list of adjectives to label their feelings and indicate which factors – including health, fitness, relationships, work, money and current events – have most influenced how they feel.

The goal is to give users daily and weekly summaries of their feelings, alongside data on factors that may have influenced them. Apple claims this will help users “build emotional awareness and resilience”.

Why does Apple care about our feelings?

Apple already collected copious amounts of health data prior to this update. The iPhone is equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, light meter, microphone, camera and GPS, while the Apple Watch can also record skin temperature and heart rate. Why does Apple now want users to log how they feel as well?

Driven by a range of potential applications – from fraud detection to enhanced customer experience and personalised marketing – the emotion detection and recognition industry is projected to be worth US$56 billion (A$86.9 billion) by 2024. And Apple is one of numerous technology companies that have invested in trying to detect people’s emotions from sensor recordings.

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Imagine if technology could read and react to our emotions

However, scientists are divided over whether emotions can be inferred from such bodily signals. Research reviews suggest neither facial expressions nor physiological responses can be used to reliably infer what emotions someone is experiencing.

By adding self-report to its methodological toolkit, Apple may be recognising that subjective experience is essential to understanding human emotion and, it seems, abandoning the goal of inferring emotions solely from “objective” data.

The science behind experience sampling

Emotions versus moods

Apple’s new feature allows users to record their feelings “right now” (labelled emotions) or “overall today” (designated moods). Is this a valid distinction?

Although scientific consensus remains elusive, emotions are typically defined as being about something: I am angry at my boss because she rejected my proposal. On the other hand, moods are not consciously tied to specific events: I’m feeling grumpy, but I don’t know why.

Apple’s two reporting methods don’t neatly distinguish emotions from moods, even though they rely on different cognitive processes that can produce divergent estimates of people’s feelings.

If the new feature allowed users to independently select both the time frame (momentary or daily) and type of feeling (directed emotion or diffuse mood) being experienced, this could help make users more aware of biases in how they remember feelings. It may even help people identify the often obscure causes of their moods.

Dimensions of feeling

Apple’s feeling slider asks people how pleasant or unpleasant they feel. This captures the primary dimension of feeling, known as valence, but neglects other essential dimensions.

Moreover, scientists debate whether pleasantness and unpleasantness are opposite sides of a continuum, as the feature assumes, or whether they can co-occur as mixed emotions. Measuring pleasant and unpleasant feelings separately would allow users to report mixed feelings, which are common in everyday life.

Some research also suggests knowing how pleasant and unpleasant someone is feeling can be used to infer the second fundamental dimension of their feelings, namely their level of arousal – such as how “tense” or “calm” they are.

Feeling categories

After they have rated the valence of the feelings, Apple’s feature asks users to label their feelings using a list of adjectives such as “grateful”, “worried”, “happy” or “discouraged”.

Do these options capture the breadth of human feelings? The number of unique emotion categories – or whether discrete emotion categories exist at all – is a topic of ongoing scientific debate. Yet, Apple’s initial list of feeling categories provides pretty decent coverage of this space.

What are the benefits?

Apple’s claim that mood and emotion tracking may improve users’ wellbeing is not unfounded. Research has shown monitoring and labelling feelings enhances people’s ability to differentiate between emotions, and helps them cope with distress. Both of these are key ingredients for healthy psychological functioning.

Beyond that, emerging research suggests that patterns of moment-to-moment fluctuations in people’s everyday feelings may be useful in predicting who is at risk of developing depression or other mental illnesses.

Apple’s history of research collaboration offers hope that tracking people’s feelings on a massive scale may lead to scientific breakthroughs in our understanding, treatment and prevention of common mental health disorders.

What are the risks?

At the same time, Apple is asking users to hand over yet more of their personal data – so we can’t overlook the potential pitfalls of the new feature.

Apple assures users the Health app is “designed for privacy and security” with a range of safeguards, including data encryption and user control over data sharing. It guarantees health data “may not be used for advertising, marketing, or sold to data brokers”.

This may sound encouraging, but Apple’s data privacy record is far from perfect. The company was recently fined by French authorities for using customers’ data for targeted advertising without consent.

Detailed data on users’ self-reported moods and emotions could also potentially be used for advertising products and services. The potential for misuse and commodification of sensitive mental health data is real, suggesting a need for stricter regulation over how companies collect, store and use customers’ data.

Before you dive into using Apple’s new mood and emotion-tracking feature, we’d urge you to consider whether the risks outweigh the potential benefits for you.

Peter Koval has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Greg Wadley receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Benjamin Tag et Xanthe Lowe-Brown ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.

– ref. Apple wants to know if you’re happy or sad as part of its latest software update. Who will this benefit? – https://theconversation.com/apple-wants-to-know-if-youre-happy-or-sad-as-part-of-its-latest-software-update-who-will-this-benefit-210789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, Art Gallery NSW

The weather is warming up and that means more time in the backyard. It also means more mosquitoes.

Here are five ways you can mosquito-proof your backyard that don’t rely on spraying insecticides.

1. Get rid of water

Mosquitoes need water to complete their life cycles. They need blood – but water and warmth are just as important.

Getting rid of water around your backyard will go a long way to keeping mosquitoes away. Water trapped in blocked roof gutters, drains and tarpaulin covering boats and trailers can be a great home for mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes can exploit the tiniest of water sources too. It may just be the upturned lid of a discarded plastic drink bottle. If it traps water, mosquitoes will find it and lay eggs in it.

Read more:
How can the bite of a backyard mozzie in Australia make you sick?

Flush out your bird bath once a week to disrupt the mosquito’s life cycle.

If you have a pond, installing a fountain will discourage mosquitoes. If you can’t keep water clean and circulating, consider filling it with sand and gravel to create an interesting garden bed for succulents or other plants.

Mosquitoes will avoid clean and chlorinated swimming pools but will quickly move into “green pools”. If you’re not using your pool, consider converting it to a “pond” so that fish can help keep mosquito numbers down.

2. Screen up – windows, doors and rainwater tanks

If you can’t get rid of permanent water, at least stop mosquitoes getting to it (or you).

Ensure rainwater and septic tanks have screens to stop mosquitoes entering.

Screen windows and doors to stop mosquitoes entering the home. There are plenty of flexible screening options for windows, doors and balconies.

If you live in a mosquito-prone area, creating a screened outdoor area (such as a pergola, courtyard, or balcony) will give you the opportunity to spend time outdoors without being hassled by mozzies.

3. Choose your garden plants carefully

Some plants contain essential oils and other chemicals that, when extracted and concentrated, provide protection against biting mosquitoes. But there isn’t a lot of evidence that the whole plant will keep mosquitoes away from your garden.

Some types of plants are even marketed as “mozzie blockers” or “mosquito repelling”. But there isn’t any evidence of effectiveness. In fact, some of these plants, such as melaleucas, also happen to be associated with hot spots of mosquito breeding in coastal Australia.

The plants to avoid around the home are those that help mosquitoes breed, such as bromeliads, which trap water.

4. Encourage the animals that eat mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are food for a range of animals including birds, bats, fish, frogs, lizards, insects, spiders and dragonflies. But don’t expect them to eat enough to keep all mosquitoes away.

Bats are often promoted as a good “biological control” options but studies have shown mosquitoes are more likely to be a snack food for small bats, not an irresistible staple of their diet.

For garden ponds, frogs will eat a few adult mosquitoes but tadpoles of Australian frogs generally don’t eat many mosquito “wrigglers”.

Australian native fish will readily eat mosquitoes and may be useful for backyard ponds.

But not all fish are good. While “mosquitofish” (aka “plague minnow”) is distributed overseas to assist in mosquito control, it’s a disaster for local wildlife and, along with other exotic fish species, should not be released into local waterways.

Healthier habitats promote fewer mosquitoes so the best thing you can do is create habitats for the animals that eat mosquitoes.

Read more:
You can leave water out for wildlife without attracting mosquitoes, if you take a few precautions

5. Avoid traps and other gadgets

There are lots of devices purported to catch, kill, or repel mosquitoes from your garden. Some may catch a mosquito or two but they’re not very effective in knocking out big numbers.

“Bug zappers” with bright lights will collect lots of flying insects. It’s just that mosquitoes make up a very small proportion of collections.

Electrocuting devices, again, don’t seem to attract a lot of mosquitoes.

Devices that emit high frequency sounds won’t help either.

The best devices are typically those that are baited with carbon dioxide. These are a mainstay of state and territory mosquito and arbovirus surveillance programs. For a mosquito, the C0₂ tricks them into thinking the trap is a warm-blooded animal. The only problem is these can be expensive to run and don’t seem quite as effective for mosquito control unless used in large numbers.

Yes, you’ll still need repellent

Perhaps the best way to avoid mosquito bites is to pick an insect repellent recommended by health authorities and apply it to ensure all exposed areas of skin are covered. These products and safe, affordable and effective.

Read more:
Mozzies biting? Here’s how to choose a repellent (and how to use it for the best protection)

Cameron Webb and the Department of Medical Entomology, NSW Health Pathology, have been engaged by a wide range of insect repellent and insecticide manufacturers to provide testing of products and provide expert advice on mosquito biology. Cameron has also received funding from local, state and federal agencies to undertake research into mosquito-borne disease surveillance and management.

– ref. It’s warming up and mozzies are coming. Here’s how to mosquito-proof your backyard – https://theconversation.com/its-warming-up-and-mozzies-are-coming-heres-how-to-mosquito-proof-your-backyard-212711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Cornwall, Lecturer, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Years of almost non-stop marine heatwaves are stressing New Zealand’s kelp forests. But as we show in our new research, ongoing ocean warming is only one of several threats to these unique and important coastal seaweed ecosystems.

Many seaweed species are sensitive to changes in the ocean’s acidity and coastal “darkening” – changes in colour and clarity – is forcing some to retreat to shallower waters. All these stress factors combined place these crucial habitats in peril, with consequences for all species that depend on them.

New Zealand has the ninth longest coastline in the world (at about 15,000 kilometres). This is almost twice the length of Australia’s great southern reef, which has been valued at AUS$10 billion annually.

No equivalent valuation has been calculated for New Zealand’s seaweed-dominated rocky reefs, but we know they provide crucial habitat for economically and culturally important species such as pāua (abalone), kina (sea urchins), rock lobster and near-shore finfish.

Our ability to predict the future impacts on these species depends on our understanding of how the coastal habitats they require are changing.

Rising heat and dimming light

New Zealand’s seaweed ecosystems include canopy-forming large brown algae as well as several understorey species. Driven by rising ocean temperatures, more frequent, intense and longer marine heatwaves already place these kelp forests under thermal stress.

We predict that marine heatwaves will change the range and basic physiology of many seaweed species, removing sensitive ones from the northern edges of their ranges and slowing growth rates of most.

Seaweeds require sunlight to photosynthesise and grow. But increasingly frequent erosion events from extreme weather like cyclone Gabrielle raise sediment levels in coastal seawater, leading to coastal darkening.

Sediment running off the land, made worse by storm events, has already lowered photosynthetic rates of seaweeds in several regions. New Zealand’s geologically young landmass is eroding rapidly in some areas and research shows seaweed communities are creeping further up the reef into shallow waters. They can no longer survive in deeper reefs because of low light.

This darkening will intensify if we don’t halt erosion and remediate lands. The effects of sedimentation have likely already limited the distribution of some seaweeds and will continue to do so in future.

When the sea becomes more acidic

Ocean acidification, which makes seawater more acidic because of the excess carbon dioxide it is absorbing, threatens the ability of calcareous seaweeds to grow. It puts the survival of sensitive coralline algae (the pink algae covering coastal rocky reefs) at risk, slowing their growth and ability to spread to new space.

These red seaweeds form skeletons made of calcium carbonate and represent the seaweed group most sensitive to ocean acidification. Within coralline algae, some species are more sensitive than others.

In New Zealand, coralline algae provide important surfaces for larval settlement of many species, including pāua and kina. Whether the species of coralline algae that provide vital settlement substrates are sensitive or robust to ocean acidification remains unknown.

Read more:
Ocean acidification will increase the iodine content of seaweeds – and the billions of people who eat them

Ecological impacts on seaweed ecosystems

Seaweed communities provide enormous benefits to New Zealand. They provide food and habitat for several marine invertebrates and finfish species of both cultural and commercial value, including pāua, kina, moki, snapper, rocklobster, blue cod and butterfish.

If seaweed ecosystems are altered, these species will experience changes in food supply and habitat availability.

Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) and bull kelp (Durvillaea spp.) are important habitat formers and food suppliers for other species. But they are also extremely sensitive to the impacts of temperature stress.

Marine heatwaves and ongoing ocean warming likely threaten them throughout their ranges, especially at their northern limit.

Shifting population ranges and invasions

Warming oceans also facilitate the spread of Australian long-spined urchins (Centrostephanus rodgersii) which will threaten seaweed communities in northern New Zealand.

Populations of this warm-water species have already expanded in some parts of New Zealand, similar to Tasmania where it invaded during the 1950s and caused widespread “urchin barrens” where the urchins graze through kelp beds, leaving few seaweeds.

Read more:
Sea urchins have invaded Tasmania and Victoria, but we can’t work out what to do with them

New Zealand is home to around 1,100 species of seaweeds. Many are poorly documented and with unknown ranges.

The combined effects of climate change will likely result in the extinction of some species with very narrow ranges. This is especially true for species that are sensitive to changes in light or temperature and currently live near the edges of their physiological limits.

To add to all of this, we don’t know how the impacts of the invasive caulerpa seaweeds Caulerpa brachypus and Caulerpa parvifolia will interact with climate change.

The degradation of coastal ecosystems is another reminder that we must move to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, as well as limiting overfishing and sedimentation.

There is potential to breed high-temperature, low-light and low-pH resistant strains of major species to help restore these ecosystems in the future, but we need strategic government investment in integrated coastal management and climate adaptation to save them in the first place.

Christopher Cornwall receives funding from The Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington, The French Embassy in New Zealand, Mountains to the Sea Wellington, and Te Apārangi The Royal Society of New Zealand.

Wendy Nelson 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. NZ’s vital kelp forests are in peril from ocean warming – threatening the important species that rely on them – https://theconversation.com/nzs-vital-kelp-forests-are-in-peril-from-ocean-warming-threatening-the-important-species-that-rely-on-them-212956

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin Klein, Professor, School of Philosophy, Australian National University

In June 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headlines by claiming the company’s LaMDA chatbot had achieved sentience. The software had the conversational ability of a precocious seven-year-old, Lemoine said, and we should assume it possessed a similar awareness of the world.

LaMDA, later released to the public as Bard, is powered by a “large language model” (LLM) of the kind that also forms the engine of OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot. Other big tech companies are rushing to deploy similar technology.

Hundreds of millions of people have now had the chance to play with LLMs, but few seem to believe they are conscious. Instead, in linguist and data scientist Emily Bender’s poetic phrase, they are “stochastic parrots”, which chatter convincingly without understanding. But what about the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and the one after that?

Our team of philosophers, neuroscientists and computer scientists looked to current scientific theories of how human consciousness works to draw up a list of basic computational properties that any hypothetically conscious system would likely need to possess. In our view, no current system comes anywhere near the bar for consciousness – but at the same time, there’s no obvious reason future systems won’t become truly aware.

Finding indicators

Since computing pioneer Alan Turing proposed his “Imitation Game” in 1950, the ability to successfully impersonate a human in conversation has often been taken as a reliable marker of consciousness. This is usually because the task has seemed so difficult it must require consciousness.

However, as with chess computer Deep Blue’s 1997 defeat of grandmaster Gary Kasparov, the conversational fluency of LLMs may just move the goalposts. Is there a principled way to approach the question of AI consciousness that does not rely on our intuitions about what is difficult or special about human cognition?

Read more:
A Google software engineer believes an AI has become sentient. If he’s right, how would we know?

Our recent white paper aims to do just that. We compared current scientific theories of what makes humans conscious to compile a list of “indicator properties” that could then be applied to AI systems.

We don’t think systems that possess the indicator properties are definitely conscious, but the more indicators, the more seriously we should take claims of AI consciousness.

The computational processes behind consciousness

What sort of indicators were we looking for? We avoided overt behavioural criteria – such as being able to hold conversations with people – because these tend to be both human-centric and easy to fake.

Instead, we looked at theories of the computational processes that support consciousness in the human brain. These can tell us about the sort of information-processing needed to support subjective experience.

“Global workspace theories”, for example, postulate that consciousness arises from the presence of a capacity-limited bottleneck which collates information from all parts of the brain and selects information to make globally available. “Recurrent processing theories” emphasise the role of feedback from later processes to earlier ones.

Each theory in turn suggests more specific indicators. Our final list contains 14 indicators, each focusing on an aspect of how systems work rather than how they behave.

No reason to think current systems are conscious

How do current technologies stack up? Our analysis suggests there is no reason to think current AI systems are conscious.

Some do meet a few of the indicators. Systems using the transformer architecture, a kind of machine-learning model behind ChatGPT and similar tools, meet three of the “global workspace” indicators, but lack the crucial ability for global rebroadcast. They also fail to satisfy most of the other indicators.

So, despite ChatGPT’s impressive conversational abilities, there is probably nobody home inside. Other architectures similarly meet at best a handful of criteria.

Read more:
Not everything we call AI is actually ‘artificial intelligence’. Here’s what you need to know

Most current architectures only meet a few of the indicators at most. However, for most of the indicators, there is at least one current architecture that meets it.

This suggests there are no obvious, in-principle technical barriers to building AI systems that satisfy most or all of the indicators.

It is probably a matter of when rather than if some such system is built. Of course, plenty of questions will still remain when that happens.

Beyond human consciousness

The scientific theories we canvass (and the authors of the paper!) don’t always agree with one another. We used a list of indicators rather than strict criteria to acknowledge that fact. This can be a powerful methodology in the face of scientific uncertainty.

We were inspired by similar debates about animal consciousness. Most of us think at least some nonhuman animals are conscious, despite the fact they cannot converse with us about what they’re feeling.

A 2021 report from the London School of Economics arguing that cephalopods such as octopuses likely feel pain was instrumental in changing UK animal ethics policy. A focus on structural features has the surprising consequence that even some simple animals, like insects, might even possess a minimal form of consciousness.

Our report does not make recommendations for what to do with conscious AI. This question will become more pressing as AI systems inevitably become more powerful and widely deployed.

Our indicators will not be the last word – but we hope they will become a first step in tackling this tricky question in a scientifically grounded way.

Colin Klein receives funding from The Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF-2020-20539)

– ref. Why ChatGPT isn’t conscious – but future AI systems might be – https://theconversation.com/why-chatgpt-isnt-conscious-but-future-ai-systems-might-be-212860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan St John, Honorary Associate Professor, Economic Policy Centre, Auckland Business School, University of Auckland

Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking the National Party’s recently released Working for Families tax policy had been cut and pasted from the Labour Party’s own policy. The similarities are certainly striking.

Both parties pledge to increase the “in-work tax credit” (IWTC) by NZ$25, to $97.50 a week from April next year. They also promise to raise the Working for Families (WFF) household income abatement threshold (above which payments start reducing at 27%) from $42,700 to $50,000 in 2026.

In this strange pre-election coalescence, there is no longer even a pretence of delivering on Labour’s stalled Working for Families review that promised “fundamental” changes to the system.

The major WFF tax credit remains the Family Tax Credit. It costs $2.3 billion a year, and is worth $137 weekly for the first child, and $111.60 for each extra child. This payment goes to all low-income children, whether or not parents are on welfare benefits, and is the major income tool to address child poverty.

But nearly one fifth of the two main WFF tax credits are made up by the IWTC, costing $500 million annually. Only children in families with some paid work (and not on any benefit) are eligible. Thus around 200,000 of the poorest children are excluded, disproportionately affecting Māori, Pacific and disabled children.

Poverty and paid work

The current IWTC is a flat $72.50 a week for families with one to three children, with an extra $15 added for each additional child. Parents or caregivers (if eligible) receive both child-related tax credits in one weekly payment.

But the IWTC can quickly disappear if their employment status changes due to illness, redundancy or some other cause. Unless they struggle on without a welfare benefit and have “some” paid work, they can keep the IWTC for only two weeks.

The problem lies in the way the IWTC conflates two different things: an incentive to seek and find paid work, and a mechanism for reducing child poverty. By withholding a payment that reduces poverty – when a household loses paid work or is on a benefit – child poverty is perpetuated.

Until now, the IWTC has tended to be an issue within obscure tax debates. But with both major parties effectively proposing the same policy, the political origins of the IWTC and the worrying implications of the current consensus are out in the open.

A brief history of tax credits

In 1996, the then-National government could not ignore the rapid increase in child poverty that followed its “mother of all budgets” in 1991, and increased weekly “family support” payments by $20 per child.

Of that increase, $15 comprised what became known as the Child Tax Credit. It was only available for children whose parents were “independent from the state”. The poorest children received only the remaining $5 from the increase, not nearly enough to match inflation.

Read more:
NZ is finally making progress on child poverty – but a ‘no frills’ budget puts that at risk

The opposition Labour Party vowed to remove what it saw as discrimination. Finance spokesperson Michael Cullen spoke in parliament of National’s “simplistic tangle of bigotry and ignorance”:

Children are children are children, no matter who their parents are. To draw distinctions between what the state says should go to low-income families on the basis of the source of that income, rather than on the level of that income, is obscene.

But when Labour returned to power in 1999 it changed nothing for five years, until 2005 when it turned the old family support payment into the Family Tax Credit. Then in 2006, it transformed the Child Tax Credit of $15 per child into the IWTC.

Debt and distress

The IWTC became a flat $60 per week for a family with one to three children, and $15 for each additional child. But to qualify, sole parents had to perform at least 20 hours of paid work each week, and a couple 30 hours.

In 2016, the National government left the Family Tax Credit unchanged and instead favoured those in paid work by raising the IWTC to $72.50 per week, where it sits today.

The current Labour government removed the fixed hours of paid work requirement in 2020 due to COVID’s employment effects. But “some” paid work is still required, and a family cannot be on any benefit.

Read more:
Taxing questions: is National glossing over the likely cost of administering its new ‘revenue measures’?

Furthermore, any alleged “overpayment” of WFF (due to unexpected extra income, or when the vague rules around paid work, benefits or relationship status are not met) must be repaid to Inland Revenue.

For families already struggling with other debt, this only adds to their distress. Inland Revenue reported a 26% increase in WFF debt for the year to June 2022.

And yet, due to the way the Family Tax Credit is calculated, the IWTC may be paid in full well up the income scale. Under the proposed election policies, for example, the weekly $25 increase to the IWTC will mean a five-child family can earn nearly $160,000 before their IWTC of $102.50 starts to reduce.

Those families would not appear to need any work incentive. But the worst-off children in struggling families who do not qualify will fall even further behind.

Read more:
NZ’s housing market drives inequality – why not just tax houses like any other income?

A fairer system

Better strategies to reduce child poverty and help low-wage families are needed. Why not simply give the full WFF package to families that currently miss out on the $72.50 (more for larger families), regardless of their household’s employment status?

This would meaningfully reduce child poverty in a cost-effective way. After all, both parties have signed up to the Child Poverty Reduction Act, but their election policies do little to address these issues.

All of the new spending would go to the worst-off, and none of it to higher-income families. Yes, it would be expensive at $500 million. But the policy to retain and enlarge the IWTC is expensive already.

Finally, many low-income families find they are hardly better off if they earn over the $42,700 abatement threshold. Each extra dollar earned may end up as only a few cents in the hand after 17.5 cents in tax, 27 cents in WFF, and often 25 cents in housing assistance and 12 cents in student loan repayments, are all taken out.

The Labour-National proposed increase to only $50,000 by 2026 is too little, too late. Today it should be $53,000 just to match inflation.

As it stands, both Labour and National will preside over deepening family poverty among beneficiaries, while ignoring the huge work disincentives faced by the working poor.

Susan St John is affiliated with the Child Poverty Action Group.

– ref. The Labour-National consensus on family support means the election won’t change much for NZ’s poorest households – https://theconversation.com/the-labour-national-consensus-on-family-support-means-the-election-wont-change-much-for-nzs-poorest-households-212450

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josephine Chau, Senior Lecturer in Public Health, Macquarie University

In modern life, many of us spend the majority of our waking hours sitting. A recent review of the research has reiterated the harmful health impacts of prolonged, unbroken periods of sitting.

Many workplaces have adopted sit-stand desks, which allow you to sit down or stand up with the push of a button or lever, to reduce the harms of prolonged sitting.

But how much better is standing? And are there risks of too much standing? Here’s what the research says about the risks of too much sitting and standing, and whether it’s worth investing in – or ditching – a sit-stand desk.

Read more:
COVID saw us sitting longer – and diabetes rose globally by 16% in 2 years. Time to get moving

What are the hazards of too much sitting?

People who sit a lot have higher chances of developing chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers, and having a shorter lifespan. Prolonged sitting can also lead to musculoskeletal complaints, particularly in the neck and back.

Excessive sitting is even more harmful to health among people who do very little exercise or who do not meet the recommended levels of physical activity.

Being physically active is important for reducing the health risks linked to being sedentary, but it may not fully cancel out the negative effects of spending long hours sitting each day.

Prolonged standing can be harmful too

Extended periods of standing can be harmful to musculoskeletal health. Prolonged standing may lead to musculoskeletal symptoms such as muscle fatigue, leg swelling, varicose veins, and pain and discomfort in the low back and lower extremities (hips, knees, ankles and feet).

Recent research suggests limiting standing to about 40 minutes at a time, without a break, would reduce the chances of developing muscle and joint aches and pains due to prolonged standing. This applies to people who may or may not have had symptoms before.

Not everyone who stands for prolonged periods will experience these musculoskeletal symptoms, and some people may be more resilient to the effects of prolonged standing than others.

However, even if you take a break from standing, if you have previously developed standing-related aches and pains, you’re more likely to experience them again when you resume standing.

Read more:
How the media oversold standing desks as a fix for inactivity at work

Break up extended periods of sitting

Reducing or interrupting sitting by standing up or moving around can improve your blood circulation, metabolism, heart health, mental health and lifespan.

Modelling studies show that swapping one hour of sitting each day for one hour of standing leads to improvements in waist circumference, fat and cholesterol levels.

The benefit is even greater when sitting is replaced with walking or moderate-to-vigorous activity.

Interrupting prolonged sitting time with as little as two minutes of walking every 20 minutes or five minutes of walking every 30 minutes can improve blood glucose, fat, and cholesterol levels.

Other research shows breaking up prolonged sitting time with three minutes of light walking or simple resistance exercises, such as squats and calf raises, every 30 minutes is also effective.

The evidence on sit-stand desks

Sit-stand desks can effectively reduce sitting time during the workday among desk-based workers. Sit-stand desk users tend to alternate between sitting and standing postures, instead of standing up for extended periods.

However, the extent of developing a new habit of working while standing up varies, and many users revert to their previous way of working sitting down in the longer term.

Sit-stand desks alone are not sufficient to reduce desk-based workers’ sitting time. Employers and organisations must factor this into their workplace policies, environment and culture to ensure “sit less and move more” initiatives are effectively delivered and sustained.

Should I ditch my sit-stand desk?

If you already have a sit-stand desk, whether you should keep or get rid of it will depend on a range of factors.

Think about your usage patterns. Do you use your desk regularly in a standing position, or do you mainly use it sitting down?

Consider your comfort. Does standing or sitting for prolonged periods while working lead to any discomfort or fatigue in your body? If so, you may need to adjust your sit-stand routine or include extra supports, such as a floor mat for more comfortable standing or a foot rest for safer sitting, to avoid injury.

Read more:
Get a proper chair, don’t eat at your desk, and no phones in the loo – how to keep your home workspace safe and hygienic

Assess your desk ergonomics. Is your sit-stand desk set up ergonomically safe for working in both sitting and standing positions? Proper ergonomics are essential to ensure you work in a safe and comfortable way in the office and from home.

Reflect on your health needs. Will reducing and breaking up prolonged sitting time with standing alleviate discomfort due to sitting or contribute to improving your metabolic and heart health? Standing up and moving around regularly throughout the workday will achieve similar benefits regardless of your desk type.

If you have an existing health condition or ongoing musculoskeletal symptoms, seek advice from a health care professional or ask your employer about organising an assessment with an ergonomics specialist. Expert guidance can help you make an informed decision about your sit-stand desk.

Finally, weigh up the cost and space requirements of your sit-stand desk. If you are not using it in a standing position much, maybe it’s just taking up space and not providing a return on your investment?

Ultimately, the decision to keep or ditch your sit-stand desk will come down to a balance of these considerations.

Being physically active is most important

Physical activity guidelines from governments and health-related agencies, such as those from Australia and the World Health Organization, recommend adults limit the amount of time spent sitting. Interrupting and replacing sitting time with physical activity of any intensity – even light intensity – has health benefits.

The WHO further recommends adults “aim to do more than the recommended levels of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity” to reduce the harmful health effects of high levels of sitting.

In other words, just standing is not enough to reduce the harms of prolonged sitting. We need to sit less and move more.

Read more:
Research Check: will binge-watching TV increase your risk for Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes?

Josephine Chau uses a sit-stand desk at work. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any standing desk company or organisation that would benefit from this article. Josephine’s current research that is relevant to this article receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. In the past, she has received funding from the National Heart Foundation of Australia and the World Health Organization. Josephine is co-President of the NSW-ACT Branch of the Australian Health Promotion Association.

– ref. Is standing at your desk actually better than sitting? Here’s what the evidence says – https://theconversation.com/is-standing-at-your-desk-actually-better-than-sitting-heres-what-the-evidence-says-212618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David M Watson, Professor in Ecology, Charles Sturt University

Until recently, mistletoes were regarded as problematic pests across Australia. They were seen as having been introduced from elsewhere, exploiting helpless trees and driving their premature demise.

Around the world, arborists and plantation managers used to be trained to remove mistletoes as part of routine maintenance. They went to extraordinary lengths to rid trees of these dense parasitic clumps, using flamethrowers, high-powered rifles, even herbicide-spritzing drones.

But just as we now know that hollows are essential for wildlife, including many threatened species, awareness of the positive side of parasitic plants is growing. Mistletoes have been shown to boost biodiversity and increase resilience of wildlife populations to drought, habitat loss and predators.

However, unlike other plants that can be grown as seedlings and planted out, mistletoes rely on animals to plant their seeds on the branches of host trees. This means they aren’t included in revegetation efforts, and it was unclear whether it would even be possible.

We set out on a world-first trial to attempt to reintroduce mistletoe to the trees of Melbourne. As our recently published research shows, we succeeded. Some of the mistletoes are now even bearing fruit.

The only factor that stood in the way of success was the bane of many gardeners’ lives – hungry brushtail possums.

Read more:
‘WA’s Christmas tree’: what mungee, the world’s largest mistletoe, can teach us about treading lightly

Productive parasites

Mistletoes provide many benefits for local biodiversity. Their flowers provide reliable nectar that encourages pollinators to linger longer. They then boost the populations of other plant species they visit.

The nutrients in mistletoe leaves boost soil health and dramatically increase insect numbers when they fall to the forest floor.

The ripples of these interactions spread right through woodland food webs. One study demonstrated the most significant impacts on ground-feeding insect-eating birds, whose numbers have declined across eastern Australia.

Many birds nest in mistletoes. Their dense evergreen foliage provides cover from predators.

All of Australia’s mistletoes are native species. Most hail from ancient lineages dating all the way back to Gondwanaland.

The knowledge we have gained about mistletoes has led to an about-face in natural resource management. Managers are rethinking mistletoe removal and embracing these native plants as ecological keystones.

In some areas where mistletoes no longer occur, restoration practitioners have suggested reintroducing them. It had been unclear if this was feasible.

Read more:
Mistletoe: the kiss of life for healthy forests

Making Melbourne even more marvellous

Working closely with City of Melbourne staff, research scientists from the Gulbali Institute undertook a world-first trial of the reintroduction of a native mistletoe to street trees. Rather than eucalypts or other native trees, we decided to use plane trees, a European species that is a feature of city streets the world over. In Australia, very few things interact with plane trees — nothing eats them, which is one reason they’re popular street trees.

Rather than replace these established trees with more fitting local species and waiting a few decades for them to grow, we tried something a little different. We added a native mistletoe to their canopies to boost the resources available to urban wildlife.

We chose creeping mistletoe (Muellerina eucalyptoides), which is now scarce in Melbourne, but is just as happy growing on exotic deciduous trees as the evergreen eucalypts this species depends on as hosts in the bush.

Our research paper summarises the outcomes of the trial. Almost 900 seeds were carefully wiped on the branches of 28 plane trees. We were replicating the efforts of mistletoebirds, which usually spread these sticky seeds.

Five years after inoculation, we found mistletoes had established on five trees. Even better, two of these plants were full of fruit. There is now a ready-made seed source in the heart of Melbourne for further expansion of these beneficial native plants.

Read more:
Australia’s unusual species

The problems with possums

Rather than establishment depending on the size of the branch, the age of the tree or which direction it faced, the only factor that emerged as a significant determinant of success was whether or not the tree was fitted with a possum collar. These acrylic or metal sheets wrapped around the trunk are too slippery for possums to climb. The city’s tree management team routinely uses these collars to grant a reprieve to trees whose canopies have been badly damaged by these marsupials.

Previous work has found possums love to eat mistletoe foliage. This is likely due to their high concentration of nutrients and lack of chemical defences that eucalypts have.

Our study is the first to provide direct evidence of the effect of common brushtail possums on mistletoe recruitment. Its findings reinforce reports from New Zealand, where introduced brushtail possums have devastated three mistletoe species and been implicated in the extinction of a fourth, the only mistletoe known to have gone extinct worldwide.

Read more:
Why sweet-toothed possums graze on stressed, sickly-looking trees

Beautiful butterflies are returning

Time will tell how the addition of these plants to the urban forest will affect Melbourne wildlife. Already, gorgeous imperial jezebel butterflies have been spotted emerging from creeping mistletoes in Princes Park.

Even better, our work has inspired three other urban mistletoe reintroductions elsewhere in Melbourne. In New South Wales, Birdlife Australia and Mindaribba Local Aboriginal Land Council are working together to restore mistletoe to woodlands on Wonnarua Country. The mistletoe will supply missing nectar resources for the critically endangered regent honeyeater.

Collectively, this work is helping to shift the public perception of these native plants – from pernicious parasites to ecological keystones.

Read more:
Regent honeyeaters were once kings of flowering gums. Now they’re on the edge of extinction. What happened?

David M Watson receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Hermon Slade Foundation, and Chris and Gina Grubb.

Rodney van der Ree has received funding from the Australian Research Council and worked for the City of Melbourne when this research commenced. He now consults to industry and all levels of government in Australia

– ref. How we brought mistletoes back to the trees of Melbourne – while warding off hungry possums – https://theconversation.com/how-we-brought-mistletoes-back-to-the-trees-of-melbourne-while-warding-off-hungry-possums-211742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education, University of New England

Parents have no doubt heard all the classic grumbles from children and teenagers. From “It’s not fair!” to “Not spinach again!” and our personal favourite, “Why do I have to do all the work?”

All children are prone to being disgruntled and complaining in certain situations. But frequent grumbling can stretch adults’ patience and make them see their kids as ungrateful and unappreciative.

If children are grumbling, they are likely doing it for a good reason. So it is important not to just dismiss it outright. It is also important for kids learn to express themselves in more helpful ways.

Learning how to respectfully express dissatisfaction and call out unfairness can support a child’s mental health, foster respectful relationships at school, and a positive transition into adulthood.

So, how can we support children to have a voice, while turning their grumbles into more respectful communication?

Why are kids grumbling?

Grumbling, whingeing and complaining behaviour is annoying but it means something – children are doing it to communicate. Children are hardwired from birth to cry to get their parent’s attention.

As they grow up, children’s crying often develops into whining and grumbling. This generally reduces with age – although, when stressed, adults can still grumble and cry!

To help reduce grumbling, start by observing the patterns and triggers. Does it happen at a particular time of day or around a particular activity?

Children may grumble because they are trying to share their perspective, express a frustration, or address a perceived unfairness. Children may also grumble to seek attention from an adult, or to test limits and boundaries.

In younger children, grumbling may mean they are tired, hungry, disappointed, frustrated or overwhelmed. They might be responding to changes in their lives, such as a change at school or something different in a parent’s work routine.

In older children, grumbling may also be linked to fatigue, stress and boredom. Teenage grumbling can be particularly aggravating if it is accompanied by eye-rolling or shoulder shrugging – which can really push a parent’s buttons.

A whingey kid is annoying … but

It can be hard to empathise with grumbling. Adults may question the child’s reason to be upset, feel a problem has been wildly exaggerated, that a child is trying to avoid a job or is just being plain irritating.

Because grumbling is so annoying, especially if it is frequent and done in a whingey voice, adults may be inclined to make it go away by giving in to the child.

The inadvertent long-term effect of this strategy is to teach children their needs will be met through grumbling.

In moments of exasperation, instead of responding crossly or giving in, try and give yourself a break and step away. When feeling calmer, think about what your child is actually trying to say.

Read more:
Stressed about managing your child’s behaviour? Here are four things every parent should know

Model positive communication

Adult-child and adult-teen communication can be tricky, especially if adults focus on the negative tone rather than the message behind. it. But adults can break this cycle.

The key is to listen calmly. Avoid being dismissive, raising your voice, or labelling children as “whingers”.

Give your full attention, nod to show you are listening and check you understand their concerns and opinions (even if you don’t agree).

Listening in this way helps children feel valued, eventually reducing grumbles.

Here’s how you can respond

Having listened – and heard – try to formulate a reasonable response, prompting the child to find a potential solution. This is showing your child how to communicate constructively.

For example, a child might say, “I’m alwaaaaays emptying the bins”. This might mean, “I don’t think the jobs are fairly distributed”, or “I’m getting bored doing the same job”. So adults could ask, “How can the jobs be allocated in a fairer way?” This supports independence and problem solving.

A child might also say, “It took me ages to clean that up”. This might mean, “I want to be thanked and acknowledged”. So you might respond by saying how much better the area looks and thank them for their time and effort.

Or you might hear, “Having those chairs in the hallway is dumb”. This might actually mean “I’ve got some ideas about how we organise our house”.

Parents could say they are interested in alternative ideas, but only if they are expressed with respect. Once they speak politely, if a small change is reasonable, you could ask the child to help adjust the space using a mix of both of your ideas (teaching teamwork). This helps them learn they have a right to be heard, but it is their responsibility to speak politely.

Parents could also say something like, “It’s tricky, but using kind words means people are more likely to listen and respond to you”.

Read more:
‘Just leave me alone!’ Why staying connected to your teenager is tricky but important

Times and places

It’s not possible for adults to respond reasonably to every random grumble. We can teach children and teenagers there are times and places to raise complaints and concerns.

For example, your child might say, “We never get enough TV before dinner” right as you are taking the roast out of the oven. In response, you could say, “I can see this issue is really important to you” (acknowledging their concerns). You could add, “It’s late, so let’s chat about this for ten minutes over breakfast tomorrow” (making a time and setting limits).

Grumbling is a fact of life with children. But shutting down grumbles without addressing the underlying cause is likely to provoke more grumbles, and do little to teach children about useful communication.

However hard it may be for a tired, harassed parent, taking the time to deal with complaints and whinges constructively can be beneficial in the long run.

Marg receives funding from the Commonwealth-funded Manna Institute, which aims to improve place-based mental health research for regional, rural and remote Australia. The Child and Family Resilience Programs project she leads has received funding from The Ian Potter Foundation and the Foundation of Graduates of Early Childhood Studies.

Cassy Dittman receives funding from the Commonwealth-funded Manna Institute, which aims to improve place-based mental health research for regional, rural and remote Australia. She holds an Honorary Research Fellowship with the Parenting and Family Support Centre, which is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioral Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by UniQuest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. Cassy Dittman has no share or ownership of TPI, however as an author on Triple P Programs, she receives royalties from TPI.

Govind Krishnamoorthy works for the University of Southern Queensland. Govind receives funding from the Commonwealth-funded Manna Institute, which aims to improve place-based mental health research for regional, rural and remote Australia. Govind has also received research funding from Rotary Health Australia for child mental health research. Govind is a member of the Clinical College of the Australian Psychological Soceity.

– ref. ‘It’s not fair!’ Kids grumble and complain for a reason, here’s how to handle it – https://theconversation.com/its-not-fair-kids-grumble-and-complain-for-a-reason-heres-how-to-handle-it-212621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Douglas, Honorary Senior Lecturer, UNSW Aviation and Fellow of the University of Wollongong, UNSW Sydney

Federal Transport Minister Catherine King has offered several explanations for the decision to deny the Qatari government’s request to fly extra flights into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

None of them amounts to a clear rationale for the decision, which has been criticised by airlines, airports, tourism bodies consumer advocates and state governments.

The big question is why such decisions are even up to the minister, rather than being left to the market.

It stems from an outdated international treaty on commercial aviation, from a time when national security was the prime concern. There is, however, a workaround, which other nations have been using, known as open-skies agreements.

Read more:
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An outdated convention

King’s right to rule on international flights is based on the
Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in December 1944 in Chicago – and hence known as the Chicago Convention.

Representatives from 54 nations attended the convention. All agreed they should have sovereignty over the airspace above their territory. The resulting framework prohibited international commercial flights unless expressly permitted. Thus, for an airline to fly internationally there must first be a government-level agreement to permit it.

For example, no Australian airline can operate scheduled commercial services or even sell codeshare flights to the Maldives, because Australia has no air service agreement with the South Asian archipelago.

While the level of demand today may not justify direct services, the framework effectively ensures there never will be that demand.

Turning to open-skies deals

Changing this bilateral-treaty system has proven difficult. Many countries have, since the 1990s, taken the next best approach: open-skies agreements.

An open-skies agreement is a deal between two or more nations that allows for unlimited commercial services without the need for explicit ministerial approval.

Nations can still intervene, so sovereignty is preserved, and intervention is typically limited to safety and security grounds.

The United States has open-skies agreements with more than 100 nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Singapore has open-skies agreements with more than 60 nations. Canada has open-skies agreements with 23 nations.

The US, Singapore and New Zealand are parties to an eight-nation multilateral open-skies agreement (the Multilateral Agreement on the Liberalization of International Air Transportation), which does not include Australia.

Australia has open-skies agreements with just seven nations: China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore (which is why Singapore Airlines is expanding services to Australia without controversy), the US and the United Kingdom. This makes Australia a relative outlier among developed nations.

The federal government’s Aviation Green Paper 2023 spends only 2 of 224 pages discussing international aviation competition. It proposes no change in approach.

Redundant rationale

Because Australia is separated by great distances from major population centres, governments historically wanted to ensure Australia had air services that were secure, reliable and economically viable.

However, aviation has moved on. The emergence of major hubs, first in South-East Asia, then in the Middle East, altered the structure of international aviation.

Treaties that Australia negotiated long ago have become redundant. Direct flights by Australian or European airlines are largely uncompetitive against midpoint hubs, where the carriers connect more than 50 cities in Europe to Australian gateways.

Non-stop flights to other regions are now widely available, and are offered by an increasing number of airlines from various countries. There is enough redundancy in the system that if one or more airlines stopped serving Australia, the security and reliability of air services would still be maintained.

Read more:
What will putting the interests of Qantas ahead of Qatar Airways cost? $1 billion per year and a new wave of protectionism of legacy carriers

Open skies in Australia’s national interest

Australia would experience a net benefit from more international flights. As an island nation, aviation is essential for two of our largest export industries: education and tourism. The persistence of demand for air travel despite record high fares illustrates this.

Australian carriers have not flagged meaningful international service expansion beyond pre-COVID levels. Indeed, they have consistently neglected to use existing traffic rights to major markets such as Malaysia. The introduction of low-cost services, such as 67 weekly flights by the Air Asia group, from such markets has demonstrated that new air services stimulate new demand and do not necessarily harm incumbent operators AirAsia Xpanding Services To China And Australia.

Protecting a stagnant Australian-based international operation is unnecessary and even harmful to the broader economy.

It’s also in Australia’s national interest to ensure adherence to international obligations and adoption of values that Australia promotes. As a nation that has long espoused liberal economic values, it’s in Australia’s interest to commit to healthy competition in the aviation industry and reduce arbitrary decision-making.

Read more:
Grattan: Albanese’s government has questions to answer on competition

A key obligation of signatories to the Chicago Convention is to ensure civil aviation is used for purposes consistent with the convention’s aims. One aim is that “international air transport services may be established on the basis of equality of opportunity”.

Protecting the profit of Australian airlines, when no such reason has been cited in other similar cases, risks breaching this obligation. The inability of Australia’s transport minister to provide a clear rationale for the decision is precisely why the decision is best left to the market.

Ian Douglas is affiliated with the Air Transport Research Society and the German Aviation Research Society. He holds an honorary Fellow appointment at the University of Wollongong and an honorary Senior Lecturer appointment at UNSW. He lectures from time to time as an external contributor to the Civil Aviation Management Program at the Singapore Aviation Academy..

Ian Douglas is a former Chair of the Australian International Air Services Commission

Seena Sarram is affiliated with UNSW’s School of Aviation as a casual academic. He previously worked for Qantas from 2018 to 2021 and Qatar Airways from 2013 to 2018.

– ref. Under ‘open skies’, the market, not the minister, would decide how often airlines could fly into Australia – https://theconversation.com/under-open-skies-the-market-not-the-minister-would-decide-how-often-airlines-could-fly-into-australia-213214

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dee Ninis, Earthquake Scientist, Monash University

As locals continue to mourn the loss of more than 2,100 people, a mammoth search and rescue effort is underway in quake-struck Morocco.

The 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck at 11:11 pm on Friday night, local time, with an epicentre in the Atlas Mountains about 75km southwest of Marrakech. The quake shook the northeast African and southwest Mediterranean region, with reports of shaking felt as far away as Oran in Algeria, and Porto in Portugal, at a distance of more than 1,000km.

At a relatively shallow depth of about 20km, “severe” ground-shaking intensities were reported around the quake’s epicentre, where several remote villages are located.

The ground shaking associated with the earthquake resulted in the total collapse of many dwellings near its epicentre, a great number of which were traditional mud brick constructions. Rockfalls and landslides have buried villages in the remote, mountainous region.

There has also been substantial damage to buildings further away, including in Marrakech – a city which houses close to a million people. At the time of publishing this article, at least 2,122 people had been killed and more than 2,421 injured.

Sadly these numbers will probably increase. Significant aftershocks are possible in the weeks and months following an earthquake of this magnitude. These may result in the collapse of buildings which were damaged – but remained standing – during the main shock.

Brittle buildings crumbled from the impact

The earthquake in Morocco occurred as a result of the collision between two tectonic plates: the Nubian tectonic plate (which the country itself sits on top of) and the Eurasian tectonic plate, about 500km north of the epicentre. These two plates converge at a grinding pace of about 4mm-6mm per year.

Slower tectonic rates are naturally more difficult to observe, and produce less frequent earthquakes. And since earthquake hazard estimates are strongly influenced by historical records, it’s often difficult to predict the hazard level in regions which have “low seismicity” and no record of strong earthquakes.

In fact, the recent earthquake is the largest on record for Morocco. Near the epicentral region, the second-largest event on record is the magnitude 5.8 Agadir earthquake which struck in 1960, and during which at least 12,000 lives were lost. It showed that even moderate earthquakes can result in devastating loss of life if buildings aren’t made to withstand intense shaking.

Sobering photos and videos have emerged from Morocco, showing a level of structural damage and destruction that’s hard to comprehend. Close to the epicentre in the mountains, villages with rural dwellings, largely constructed from mud brick and stone, seem to have been pulverised. These types of structures are extremely brittle and essentially provide little, if any, seismic resistance.

In more densely populated areas, including the city of Marrakech, various types of damage can be observed, from small local failures to complete building collapses. Much of this can be linked to structures made from stone and masonry – materials known for their brittleness and limited resistance to the strong horizontal shaking generated by a major earthquake.

Although it’s too early to gauge the full extent of the impact, initial reports suggest some of the city’s historical treasures, including the 12th-century Koutoubia Mosque and the renowned red walls, may have suffered some damage.

Much of the damage observed to new construction appears to be attributed to reinforced concrete frame buildings infilled with brittle, hollow red clay bricks. The mortar holding the bricks together quickly cracks, which greatly reduces the stiffness of the overall structure.

To compensate, the reinforced concrete frame will attempt to resist the large horizontal loads. But without an abundance of carefully-placed reinforcing steel embedded in the concrete (particularly where the beams meet the columns) it’s unlikely such a structure will survive a large earthquake. Other lateral load-resisting systems could be employed, such as walls, but these also require careful steel reinforcements – which increases the cost of construction.

A lack of building codes and regulations

Other reasons behind the extensive damage include poor-quality residential construction and ineffective enforcement of building codes and regulations.

These are the same issues we saw earlier in the year following the Turkey-Syria earthquakes. Unfortunately, poor construction is a recurring theme in places where building materials are generally more expensive than labour costs.

Areas that have more stringent building codes and regulations, and that enforce the use of appropriate building materials, generally weather seismic events better. This is particularly true for regions that also apply simple design philosophies, such as the “capacity design” approach.

In essence, this approach compels engineers to carefully consider how and where damage will occur, enabling certain components of a building to absorb and dissipate energy, while ensuring structure doesn’t collapse. It was this simple design philosophy that can be credited for the impressive performance of most reinforced concrete buildings constructed after the 1980s in Christchurch, New Zealand, during and after the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake.

Some engineers advocate even stricter performance goals, such as aiming for buildings that remain nearly undamaged after an earthquake. But the recent events in Morocco and Turkey serve as a stark reminder there are much more pressing needs – particularly in regions with limited economic growth and an insufficient enforcement of standards.

Read more:
Why are shallow earthquakes more destructive? The disaster in Java is a devastating example

Dee Ninis is employed by the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University, and the Seismology Research Centre. She is Vice President of the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society.

Dr Ryan Hoult is a research fellow at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Belgium. He is a recent recipient of a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to investigate new reinforcement materials for improved seismic performance of concrete structures.

– ref. Morocco earthquake: experts explain why buildings couldn’t withstand the force of the 6.8 magnitude quake – https://theconversation.com/morocco-earthquake-experts-explain-why-buildings-couldnt-withstand-the-force-of-the-6-8-magnitude-quake-213245

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

The government has provided another $1 billion for public and community housing to secure a deal with the Greens to finally pass the Housing Australia Future Fund.

After months of stalling, the Greens agreed to pass the legislation through the Senate this week, despite the government refusing to give ground on the minor party’s demand for controls on rents.

During the battle over the fund, a core Labor promise, there were suggestions from the government that its blocking could end up in its eventual use as a double dissolution bill.

The $10 billion fund will provide an annual $500 million for social and affordable rental housing.

The government earlier this year announced $2 billion for social and affordable housing in an unsuccessful effort to secure the Greens’ backing for the legislation. It also gave a guarantee the annual amount from the fund would be at least $500 million, rather than being able to be variable.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said: “Pressure works. Labor said there was no more money for housing this year and we pushed them to find $3 billion”. He said the Greens would continue to push Labor to put an end to what it called “unlimited rent rises”.

“Renters are on the march, and the Greens will be fighting alongside them all the way,” Bandt said.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said: “Renters have a national voice for the first time”.

“Greens power secured six times what Labor wanted to spend on social housing in a single year for public and community housing, and now we are going to use that power to win a freeze and cap on rent increases.”

The government used question time in parliament to spruik the coming passage of the bill, which already has the support of some of the other Senate crossbench.

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. Government provides another $1 billion to finally win Greens’ support for long-delayed housing bill – https://theconversation.com/government-provides-another-1-billion-to-finally-win-greens-support-for-long-delayed-housing-bill-213248

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erica Mealy, Lecturer in Computer Science, University of the Sunshine Coast

Late last week, Google announced something called the Privacy Sandbox has been rolled out to a “majority” of Chrome users, and will reach 100% of users in the coming months. But what is it, exactly?

The new suite of features represents a fundamental shift in how Chrome will track user data for the benefit of advertisers. Instead of third-party cookies, Chrome can now tap directly into your browsing history to gather information on advertising “topics” (more on that later).

In development since 2019, this change has attracted a great deal of controversy, as some commentators have deemed it invasive in terms of privacy.

Understanding how it works – and whether you want to opt in or out – is important, since Chrome remains the most widely used browser in the world, with a 63% market share as of May 2023 (Safari is in second place with 13%).

Wait, what is a cookie?

In 1994, computer engineer Lou Montulli at Netscape revolutionised the way we browsed the internet with his invention of the “cookie”. For the first time, web pages could remember our passwords, preferences, language settings and even shopping carts.

This method was supposed to be a private exchange of information just between a user and a website – what’s known as a first-party cookie. But within two years, advertisers worked out how to “hack” cookies to track users. These are third-party cookies.

You can think of a first-party cookie like a shop assistant who listens to your preferences and is happy to hold your bags or clothes while you make your selection – but only while you are inside their store.

A third-party cookie is like a bug from an old spy movie. It listens to everything in your room, but only shares the info with its allies. The “spy” can place this cookie on other people’s sites, to record what you visit and what data you enter. If you’ve ever wondered how Facebook has served you an ad about something related to a news story you just read, chances are it’s because you have third-party cookies enabled.

Unregulated online tracking and surveillance via cookies were the default until 2018, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) were introduced. If you have noticed more pop-ups notifying you of cookies and asking for your informed consent, you have the GDPR and CCPA to thank.

Read more:
Cookies: I looked at 50 well-known websites and most are gathering our data illegally

The first browsers to turn off support for third-party cookies were Apple’s Safari in 2017 and Mozilla’s Firefox in 2019.

But Google is also a major online advertising company, with ads making up 57.8% of Google’s revenue as of 2023. They have been slowest off the mark in turning off third-party cookies in Chrome. With the introduction of the Privacy Sandbox, they now hope to start turning cookies off sometime in 2024.

How is the Privacy Sandbox different from cookies?

The details on how the Privacy Sandbox collection of features works are rather technical. But here are a few of the most important aspects.

Instead of using third-party cookies to serve you ads across the internet, Chrome will provide something called advertising Topics. These are high-level summaries of your browsing behaviour, tracked locally (such as in your browsing history), that companies can access on request to serve you ads on particular subjects.

Additionally, there are features such as Protected Audience that can serve you ads for “remarketing” (for example, Chrome tracked you visiting a listing for a toaster, so now you will get ads for toasters elsewhere), and Attribution Reporting, that gathers data on ad clicks.

In short, instead of third-party cookies doing the spying, the features these cookies enable will be available directly within Chrome.

Is user tracking necessarily bad?

While Google pitches the Privacy Sandbox as something that will improve user privacy, not everyone agrees.

If these features are switched on, Google – one of the world’s biggest advertising companies – is essentially able to listen to you everywhere on the web.

Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum.

Offloading cognitive effort, such as reminders like these, is a great way automation can assist humanity. When used in situations where pinpoint accuracy is required, it can make our lives easier and more pleasant.

However, if you are not comfortable with surveillance, the alternative to third-party cookies may not necessarily be the new Privacy Sandbox in Chrome.

The alternative is to completely disable tracking altogether.

What can you do?

If you don’t want your online activities to be tracked for advertising purposes, there are a few straightforward choices.

By far the most private browsers are specialist non-tracking browsers that prioritise no tracking, such as DuckDuckGo and Brave. But if you don’t want to get that nerdy, Safari and Firefox already have third-party cookies blocked by default.

If you don’t mind some useful targeted advertising, you can leave the Chrome Privacy Sandbox settings on.

If you want to adjust these settings or switch them off, click the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. It’s unclear if toggling these features off will stop Chrome from collecting these data altogether, or if it just won’t share the data with advertisers. You can find out more details about each feature on the Google Chrome Help page.

Lastly, it’s good to remember nothing truly comes for free. Software costs money to develop. If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product. We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds.

Read more:
The ugly truth: tech companies are tracking and misusing our data, and there’s little we can do

Erica Mealy is member of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Information Security Association (AISA).

– ref. Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads. Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/google-chrome-just-rolled-out-a-new-way-to-track-you-and-serve-ads-heres-what-you-need-to-know-213150