Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noam Peleg, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law and Justice; Associate, the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW Sydney

Climate change is not just an environmental crisis, it’s a human rights crisis. And the humans to be most affected by climate catastrophe are the youngest ones: children.

We have seen children directly impacted in the Northern Hemisphere’s unprecedented heatwaves this year. In Greece, 1,200 children were evacuated when a wildfire threatened their holiday camps.

In the United States, children were swept away by floodwaters in Kentucky after torrential rain, while an extreme heatwave swamped the West Coast. In Australia, this summer is expected to be hot, dry and dangerous but that’s nothing compared to what is to come.

So what are the responsibilities of governments to reduce the harm climate change will wreak on the lives of children?

A statement from the United Nations (UN) released today seeks to clarify this. It clearly stipulates why and how the rights of children are compromised by climate change – including the very basic right to life. It also details the steps necessary to mitigate this catastrophe.

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A practical guide to help children

The statement comes from a UN body of 18 experts that monitors how national governments are implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is an international agreement on a broad range of human rights as they relate to children, including their health, education, development, best interests and living standards.

From time to time, UN human rights committees publish a new interpretation of the treaty they oversee. These are known as “general comments”.

General comments are significant because they provide authoritative guidance to the governments of the 196 countries that have ratified the convention, with Australia being one of them. They also provide a globally agreed standard against which governments and businesses can be assessed.

This new comment follows nearly two years of consultation with more than 7,000 children from 103 countries, as well as governments and relevant experts.

It’s not merely an aspirational statement. Rather, it’s a practical “how-to” guide to action. This document will help children, young people and their advocates hold governments and others accountable for their decisions.

So what does the document say?

The general comment says governments have obligations to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights. It states the “adverse effects of climate change” on the enjoyment of children’s rights “give rise to obligations of states to take actions to protect against those effects”. It adds the committee overseeing the convention aims to:

i) Emphasise the urgent need to address the adverse effects of environmental harm and climate change on children;

ii) Promote a holistic understanding of children’s rights as they apply to environmental protection;

iii) Clarify the obligations of States parties to the Convention and provide authoritative guidance on legislative, administrative and other appropriate measures to be undertaken with respect to environmental issues, with a special focus on climate change.

The general comment also identifies children as agents in their own lives. By extension, this means children have a right to participate in the drafting of environmental policies or laws that will affect them.

Here are the committee’s points that are most relevant to Australia.

1. Best interests of the child

A key principle of the treaty is the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration when making decisions on their behalf. These decisions include laws, regulations, budgets and international agreements. The general comment expands on this, saying:

the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration in the adoption and implementation of environmental decisions affecting children.

It says this process should take into account “the specific circumstances that make children uniquely vulnerable in the environmental context”.

This “best interests” approach stands in stark contrast to that taken by the full bench of the Federal Court in Australia. In 2022, the court accepted the federal government’s argument that it has no duty of care for children, and that the best interests principle is not something it ought to consider when making decisions about the environment.

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2. Protecting Indigenous children

Indigenous children and their communities are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

For example, a recent study found Indigenous communities in New South Wales were disproportionately exposed to a range of climate extremes such as heat, drought and flooding. They also experienced higher rates of climate-sensitive health conditions and socioeconomic disadvantages.

The comment says states are obliged to ensure the right to life, survival and development of Indigenous children. They are also expected to “engage with Indigenous children and their families in responding to climate change by integrating, as appropriate, Indigenous cultures and knowledge in mitigation and adaptation measures”.

In Australia, it means the state, territory and federal governments have the duty to listen to Indigenous communities – especially to their younger members – and to take their perspective into account when crafting any policy or law that might have an impact on their livelihood and culture.

3. Actions of the business sector

The general comment says governments should require businesses to conduct “due diligence” to assess how their current and future actions might affect the climate and the rights of children.

Where the impacts of a business cross national boundaries, governments are expected to ensure businesses operate at “environmental standards aimed at protecting children’s rights from climate-related harm”.

The comment also expects governments to encourage investment in and use of zero-carbon technologies, particularly when the assets are publicly owned or funded. Governments should also protect the rights of children when implementing tax regimes and procuring goods and services from the private sector.

Facing up to the challenge

The general comment makes it clear states should no longer ignore the impacts of the climate crisis on children and future generations because they have legal duties to rectify it.

The UN committee articulates the responsibilities of states and details how children’s rights should be protected by all levels of government. Despite the fact the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted decades before environmental rights became a topic of discussion, the new general comment is a good reference for everyone from on-the-ground, grassroots local advocacy groups to international non-government organisations and UN organisations like UNICEF.

In this bold new statement, the committee has pushed the interpretation of the convention almost to the maximum, and like other international treaties, the real test will be in its implementation.

Read more:
Thinking of having a baby as the planet collapses? First, ask yourself 5 big ethical questions

Noam Peleg 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. Climate change threatens the rights of children. The UN just outlined the obligations states have to protect them – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-threatens-the-rights-of-children-the-un-just-outlined-the-obligations-states-have-to-protect-them-209587

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

At the weekend a V-22 Osprey aircraft crashed on Melville Island north of Darwin. Of the 23 US Marine Corps personnel onboard, three died, five were taken to Darwin hospital in a serious condition, and some others had more minor injuries.

The craft was part of the Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, a unit of up to 2,500 US marines that has been based in the Northern Territory from April to October each year since 2012. This is the most serious accident in that 11-year period.

The Osprey is a relatively new type of aircraft, with a patchy track record for safety. But the advantages it offers for the military – and perhaps for civilians – mean we will only be seeing more of it in the future.

What is the V-22 Osprey?

The Osprey has long been controversial, initially for its high cost and long development time, and in recent years for safety concerns.

These issues reflect the revolutionary design of the craft: it is a kind of plane–helicopter hybrid called a tiltrotor, which means the wing tilts upward for takeoff and landing and back down again for level flight. If this sounds complex, it is.

The Osprey is at the leading edge of aviation technology, with nothing else in operational service like it. The aircraft was built to replace helicopters and is used by the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force.

Why is the Osprey so useful?

The Marine Corps is by far the largest user, being attracted to the aircraft’s much longer range, much higher speed and good carrying capacity compared to conventional helicopters.

The Marine Corps is famous for landing soldiers across beaches during combat but in the modern era this is difficult. Potential adversaries now have excellent beach defences, and bringing ships close enough to shore to land soldiers via traditional naval landing craft or conventional helicopters is becoming unrealistic.

The Osprey solves this by allowing amphibious ships to remain hundreds of kilometres at sea and launch assaults onto the beach “from over the horizon”. A landing can now surprise an enemy, while the Osprey’s range allows many more possible landing sites to be accessed.

The Marines first brought the Osprey into service in 2007, and it has been central to the adoption of a whole new way of war. They have dispensed with heavy mechanised forces like tanks in favour of rapid manoeuvres, light vehicles, long-range missile technology and island hopping.

This approach of so-called Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) is the Marine Corps answer to China’s growing assertiveness in East Asia and to keeping the Corps relevant in the modern era. The Marines in Darwin now practise EABO.

Why is the Osprey’s safety record so patchy?

That’s the upside. The downside of being leading-edge technology is having little historical experience of similar aircraft to fall back on.

Every Osprey flight is a learning event for the pilots, the maintenance personnel and the aircraft’s manufacturer.

For example, the US Air Force grounded their Ospreys for two weeks last year over worries about gearbox matters. This has been an ongoing problem that seems to get worse the more an aircraft is flown and the gearbox used; technical fixes are in the works.

The central concern today is flying safety and here the Osprey has a mixed record. The aircraft had four crashes and 30 deaths during its initial development.

Since entering operational service in 2007 there have been an additional ten crashes and 24 deaths.

Two of these ten were on combat operations where the cause was uncertain. The others were due to pilot error or technical problems.

A fatal crash off Rockhampton in 2017 can be seen in a terrifying video that also shows operating the Osprey is a complicated business.

Will the Osprey get safer?

As the Osprey has flown more, more knowledge has been gained and the accident rate has declined. However, its accidents have tended to come in bunches. In the eight months from December 2016 to September 2017 there were three crashes; in the 18 months from March 2022 to now, there have been another three.

This all compares very unfavourably with American civil aviation, which has a much better safety record. In 2020, a report by the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety said the main culprits for the US military’s air accidents were insufficient flying hours to keep aircrew proficient, inadequate personnel training, inconsistent funding for spare parts supply and risky maintenance practices.

The implication is that safety can be improved. It just needs to be properly addressed.

Historically, the safety record of revolutionary aircraft like the Osprey improves as more operating experience is gained and unknown technical problems are found and addressed. That was certainly the Australian experience with the F-111 strike aircraft, which had an early run of crashes followed by many years of safe operation.

Will we see more tiltrotors like the Osprey in future?

This is important as the Osprey looks set to be the first of its type, not the last. The US Army has chosen a new generation tiltrotor, the V-280 Valor, to replace its ageing Blackhawk helicopters.

Over time, the Valors will inevitably be deployed to Australia on training exercises. Meanwhile, Australia is acquiring Blackhawks to replace the Australian Army’s Taipan helicopters, which are apparently difficult to maintain.

When those new Blackhawks eventually are themselves replaced, it is likely Australia will go the way of the US and buy tiltrotors too. Civil aviation is getting interested in tiltrotors as well.

Tiltrotors like the Osprey and its successors are likely to fly in Australian skies well into the future.

Peter Layton 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. ‘Every flight is a learning event’: why the V-22 Osprey aircraft won’t be grounded despite dozens of crashes and 54 fatalities – https://theconversation.com/every-flight-is-a-learning-event-why-the-v-22-osprey-aircraft-wont-be-grounded-despite-dozens-of-crashes-and-54-fatalities-212358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noel Morada, Director (Regional Diplomacy and Capacity Building) Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, The University of Queensland

At the end of last week, 1,200 Australian troops took part in a joint military exercise in the Philippines with hundreds of Filipino and American forces. Their mission: simulating the retaking of an island by a hostile force, presumably in the South China Sea.

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles joined Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to observe the drills, reportedly the largest ever between the two nations. Marles then announced Australia would begin joint maritime patrols with the Philippines in the contested South China Sea very soon.

Next week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will also visit the Philippines, with maritime issues, defence and security on the agenda.

Although Marles was careful not to reference China directly during a press conference in the Philippines, Australia’s push to deepen its strategic ties with Manila comes at a time of heightened tensions with Beijing in the South China Sea. (It’s known as the West Philippine Sea in the Philippines).

In early August, a Chinese coast guard vessel used a water cannon against a Filipino coast guard boat that was attempting to deliver supplies to soldiers manning a grounded naval vessel on Second Thomas Shoal (or Ayungin in the Philippines).

Manila maintains the shoal is in its exclusive economic zone. China, meanwhile, claims it falls within its sovereign territory.

The incident is just the latest in a series of aggressive, harassing actions by the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia in the area since the beginning of the year.

So, with tensions running so high in the sea, why is Australia getting involved by deepening its military ties with the Philippines? What impact could this have on the region?

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

Marcos solidifies defence commitments from the US

The Philippines is among five other competing claimants in the South China Sea, along with Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and China. Unlike China, which claims sovereignty over the entire South China Sea using the so-called “nine-dash line”, the others assert only limited sovereignty in the area.

In 2016, the Philippines won a landmark case against China in an international tribunal in The Hague that declared the “nine-dash line” invalid and a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China did not recognise the ruling and has been continuing its military build-up in the sea and harassment of Philippine vessels.

Although the Philippines gained widespread international support with the ruling, it remains militarily weak and limited in its ability to thwart Chinese incursions in its exclusive economic zone.

This has been a main focus of the Marcos administration since taking office in June 2022. During a visit to the White House in May, Marcos and US President Joe Biden agreed to new guidelines on the countries’ 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty.

This treaty commits both parties to respond in the event of an attack on either one “anywhere in the South China Sea”. Notably, the guidelines also acknowledge the threats posed by “grey zone tactics”, such as blockades, intimidation and harassment.

This year, the Philippines also agreed to add four more military bases the US can access under a separate defence agreement.

Due to China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea and adamant refusal to recognise the tribunal ruling on the “nine-dash line”, public opinion in the Philippines now shows a high level of distrust towards China (67%). In contrast, there is a high level of trust towards the US (89%), Australia (79%) and Japan (78%).

This lack of trust towards China is shared by many in the Philippine government, defence establishment and legislature.

Why deeper ties with Australia matter

At the same time it has re-pivoted towards the US, the Philippines government has also been busy enhancing its defence and diplomatic ties with Australia.

In May, Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited Manila and announced Australia’s readiness to elevate their relationship to a “strategic partnership”. She also reiterated Australia’s commitment to continue its presence in the South China Sea to promote peace and stability, as well as freedom of navigation.

Marles pointed out last week that much of Australia’s trade goes through the South China Sea and Australia is committed to upholding the international rules-based order in the region.

Albanese’s upcoming visit to Manila will build on these diplomatic overtures. The two countries are expected to sign agreements that will formalise their strategic partnership. These will cover defence and maritime security cooperation, as well as enhanced economic, trade and cultural ties.

These stronger ties don’t come out of nowhere. While Australia doesn’t have the same kind of mutual defence treaty with Manila, it has a deep defence relationship with the Philippines dating back to the second world war.

Australia and the US are also the only two countries with a “visiting forces” agreement with the Philippines, which provides a legal framework for Australian and American troops to be in the country.

Given Australia has recently sought to steady its rocky relationship with China, this cooperation with the Philippines could come at a cost. As expected, China voiced its displeasure over last week’s military drills.

Over the long term, both Australia and the Philippines should also be aware of the risks posed by their security alliances with the US, which could potentially involve them both in a conflict with China over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

As the military drills last week make clear, Australia seems prepared to take that risk and step up its cooperation with a key regional ally nonetheless. As Marles pointedly said in Manila, the global rules-based order is “deeply connected to our respective national interests” and “collective security”.

Noel Morada is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, which receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

– ref. As Australia strengthens its ties with the Philippines, it’s wading even further into the dangerous South China Sea – https://theconversation.com/as-australia-strengthens-its-ties-with-the-philippines-its-wading-even-further-into-the-dangerous-south-china-sea-212111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Shackell, Sessional Academic and Visitor, School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology

As generative AI settles into the mainstream, growing numbers of courses and certifications are promising entry into the “hot job” of prompt engineering.

Having skills in using natural language (such as English) to “prompt” useful content out of AI models such as ChatGPT and Midjourney seems like something many employers would value. But is it as simple as doing a short course and riding the wave to a six-figure salary?

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The prompt engineering hype

A Washington Post article published in February did a lot to seed the notion that prompt engineers are “AI whisperers” who “program in prose”. It dropped some big salary numbers and quoted a job ad by Silicon Valley company Anthropic calling for people who have “a creative hacker spirit and love solving puzzles”.

Similar articles in Time, Forbes and Business Insider further fuelled the frenzy.

And to complete the transition from geek to chic, several influencers jumped on board to portray prompt engineering as a gold rush open for anyone willing to study and learn a few tricks.

Are there really that many jobs?

That Anthropic ad is still hanging around. Six months later, it seems more like a corporate publicity stunt than a search for talent.

As many commentators predicted, prompt engineering hasn’t exploded as a standalone career. At the time of writing this article, there wasn’t a single advertisement for a “prompt engineer” role on the main job sites in Australia. And only four listings mentioned prompt engineering in the job description.

The situation seems better in the United States. But even there, the new profession has largely been subsumed into other roles such as machine learning engineer or AI specialist.

There are few reliable statistics on the growth (or lack of growth) in prompt engineering. Most data are anecdotal. The reality is further clouded by consulting firms such as Deloitte promoting it as “the dawn of a new era” as part of their AI business drive.

What’s the reality?

A lot of the confusion about whether prompt engineering is useful comes from not recognising that there are two different types of value creators: domain experts and technical experts.

Domain experts

The germ of truth in the “anyone can do it” narrative is that experts in a particular subject are often the best prompters for a defined task. They simply know the right questions to ask and can recognise value in the responses.

For example, in branding and marketing, generative AI is taking off for what I have dubbed generic or “G-type” creative tasks (such as making the Pepsi logo in the style of Picasso). When advertising experts start hacking away at prompting, they quickly invent ways to do things even the most skilled AI gurus can’t. That’s because technical gurus often don’t know much about copyrighting or marketing.

Technical experts

On the other hand, tech gurus who grapple “under the hood” with the enormous complexity of AI models can also add value as prompt engineers. They know arcane things about how AI models work.

They can use that knowledge, for example, to improve results for everyone using AI to obtain data from a company’s internal documents. But they typically have little domain knowledge outside of AI.

Both domain expert and technical expert prompt engineers are valuable, but they have different skill sets and goals. If an organisation is using generative AI at scale, it probably needs both.

Why is prompting hard?

Generative AI ultimately produces outputs for people. Advertising copy, an image or a poem is not useful or useless until it succeeds or fails in the real world. And in many real-world scenarios, domain experts are the only ones who can judge the usefulness of AI outputs.

Nonetheless, these evaluations are ultimately subjective. We know 2 + 2 = 4. So it’s simple to test prompts that stop AI from hallucinating that the answer is 5. But how long does it take to work out if an AI-designed ad campaign is more or less effective than a human-designed one (even if you do have a domain expert on hand)?

In my past research, I have suggested the evaluation of generative AI should move closer to semiotics – a field that can connect natural language to the real world. This could help narrow the evaluation gap over time.

Is prompt engineering worth learning?

Beyond playing with some tips and tricks, formally learning how to write prompts seems a bit pointless for most people. For one thing, AI models are constantly being updated and replaced. Specific prompting techniques that work now may only work in the short term.

People looking to get rich from prompt engineering would be better advised to focus on pairing AI and problem formulation in their area of expertise. For example, if you’re a pharmacist you might try using generative AI to double check warning labels on prescriptions.

Along the way you’ll sharpen your expository writing, acquire the basic generative AI skills (which employers might appreciate), and maybe strike gold with a killer application for the right audience.

Eventually, boasting that you know how to prompt AI will become resumé furniture. It will be comparable to boasting you know how to use a search engine (which wasn’t always so intuitive) – and may paint you as a dinosaur if mentioned.

Read more:
How to perfect your prompt writing for ChatGPT, Midjourney and other AI generators

Cameron Shackell 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. Prompt engineering: is being an AI ‘whisperer’ the job of the future or a short-lived fad? – https://theconversation.com/prompt-engineering-is-being-an-ai-whisperer-the-job-of-the-future-or-a-short-lived-fad-211833

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Dutton-Regester, Lecturer, Veterinary Science, The University of Queensland

Many of us love seeing an echidna. Their shuffling walk, inquisitive gaze and protective spines are unmistakable, coupled with the coarse hair and stubby beak.

They look like a quirky blend of hedgehog and anteater. But they’re not related to these creatures at all. They’re even more mysterious and unusual than commonly assumed.

Australia has just one species, the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), which roams virtually the entire continent. But it has five subspecies, which are often markedly different. Tasmanian echidnas are much hairier and Kangaroo Island echidnas join long mating trains.

Here are four things that make echidnas remarkable.

1: They’re ancient egg-laying mammals

Short-beaked echidnas are one of just five species of monotreme surviving in the world, alongside the platypus and three worm-eating long-beaked echidna species found on the island of New Guinea.

Our familiar short-beaked echidnas can weigh up to six kilograms – but the Western long-beaked echidna can get much larger at up to 16kg.

These ancient mammals lay eggs through their cloacas (monotreme means one opening) and incubate them in a pouch-like skin fold, nurturing their tiny, jellybean-sized young after hatching.

Scientists believe echidnas began as platypuses who left the water and evolved spines. That’s because platypus fossils go back about 60 million years and echidnas only a quarter of that.

Remarkably, the echidna still has rudimentary electroreception. It makes sense the platypus relies on its ability to sense electric fields when it’s hunting at the bottom of dark rivers, given electric fields spread more easily through water. But on land? It’s likely echidnas use this ability to sense ants and termites moving through moist soil.

It probably got its English name in homage to the Greek mythological figure Echidna, who was half-woman, half-snake, and the mother of Cerberus and Sphinx. This was to denote the animal’s mix of half-reptilian, half-mammal traits. First Nations groups knew the echidna by many other names, such as bigibila (Gamilaraay) and yinarlingi (Warlpiri).

Read more:
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2: From deserts to snow, echidnas are remarkably adaptable

There are few other creatures able to tolerate climate ranges as broad. You can find echidnas on northern tropical savannah amid intense humidity, on coastal heaths and forests, in arid deserts and even on snowy mountains.

The five subspecies of short-beaked echidna have distinct geographic regions. The one most of us will be familiar with is Tachyglossus aculeatus aculeatus, widespread across Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. You can think of this as “echidna classic”.

Then there’s Kangaroo Island’s T. aculeatus multiaculeatus, Tasmania’s T. aculeatus setosus, the Northern Territory and Western Australia’s T. aculeatus acanthion and the tropical subspecies T. aculeatus lawesii found in Northern Queensland and Papua New Guinea.

You might think subspecies wouldn’t be too different – otherwise they’d be different species, right? In fact, subspecies can be markedly different, with variations to hairiness and the length and width of spines.

Kangaroo Island echidnas have longer, thinner, and paler spines – and more of them, compared to the mainland species. Tasmanian echidnas are well adapted to the cold, boasting a lushness of extra hair. Sometimes you can’t even see their spines amidst their hair.

3: Mating trains and hibernation games

Remarkably, the subspecies have very different approaches to mating. You might have seen videos of Kangaroo Island mating trains, a spectacle where up to 11 males fervently pursue a single female during the breeding season. Other subspecies do this, but it’s most common on Kangaroo Island. Scientists believe this is due to population density.

Pregnancy usually lasts about three weeks after mating for Kangaroo Island echidnas, followed by a long lactation period of 30 weeks for the baby puggle.

But Tasmanian echidnas behave very differently. During the winter mating season, males seek out hibernating females and wake them up to mate. Intriguingly, females can put their pregnancy on hold and go back into hibernation. They also have a shorter lactation period, of only 21 weeks.

What about the echidna subspecies we’re most familiar with? T. aculeatus aculeatus has a similarly short lactation period (23 weeks), but rarely engages in mating train situations. After watching the pregnancies of 20 of these echidnas, my colleagues and I discovered this subspecies takes just 16–17 days to go from mating to egg laying.

4: What do marsupials and monotremes have in common?

Marsupials bear live young when they’re very small and let them complete their development in a pouch. Despite this key difference with monotremes, there’s a fascinating similarity between Australia’s two most famous mammal families.

At 17 days after conception, the embryo of the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) hits almost exactly the same developmental milestone as echidna embryos. Both are in the somite stage, where paired blocks of tissue form along the notochord, the temporary precursor to the spinal cord, and each have around 20 somites.

What’s remarkable about this? Monotremes branched off from other mammals early on, between 160 and 217 million years ago. Marsupials branched off later, at around 143–178 million years ago.

Yet despite millions of years of evolutionary pressure and change, these very different animals still hit a key embryo milestone at the same time. This striking parallel suggests the intricate process has been conserved for over 184 million years.

In echidnas, this milestone is tied to egg-laying – the embryo is packaged up in a leathery egg the size of a grape and laid into the mother’s pouch. The baby puggle hatches 10–11 days later. In tammar wallabies, the embryo continues to develop in-utero for another 9–10 days before being born.

So the next time you spot the humble echidna, take a moment to appreciate what a remarkable creature it is.

Read more:
Dig this: a tiny echidna moves 8 trailer-loads of soil a year, helping tackle climate change

Kate Dutton-Regester is affiliated with the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland.

– ref. They sense electric fields, tolerate snow and have ‘mating trains’: 4 reasons echidnas really are remarkable – https://theconversation.com/they-sense-electric-fields-tolerate-snow-and-have-mating-trains-4-reasons-echidnas-really-are-remarkable-210556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dorina Pojani, Associate Professor in Urban Planning, The University of Queensland

With the nation feeling the pressures of a housing crisis, some believe the Australian government needs to ease housing demand by limiting international migration.

To others, this sentiment comes across as xenophobic. They dismiss it outright, based on moral grounds. How can a nation of settlers, built on unceded Indigenous land, contemplate the notion of closing its borders to new migrants?

Leaving the moral arguments aside, it is worth looking at the data to find out if there is any merit to the idea of limiting housing demand by curbing migration – as opposed to increasing housing supply to make housing more affordable.

The evidence from pandemic-era data and longer-term migration and housing trends provides little support for the idea that curbing migration is a solution. And the future impacts on the economy and an ageing population would be costly for Australia, as the latest Intergenerational Report reminds us.

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

Why does Australia take in migrants?

First off, it is crucial to understand that Australia’s international migration program is not driven by charity. For a start, the percentage of humanitarian migrants is minuscule, about 10% of Australia’s permanent migrant intake. And, compared to other OECD countries, it is very difficult for migrants to bring family members, such as parents or siblings, to Australia.

Among non-refugees, younger and highly skilled migrants dominate the lot. They provide much-needed labour skills and sustain the economy. Migrants help Australia as much as Australia helps them achieve their life goals.

Clearly, limiting international migration is not a realistic policy option.

Read more:
When we open up, open up big: economists say we need more migrants

What’s the level of international migration?

The level of overseas migration is very high at present so, yes, migrants are contributing to housing demand in the short term.

However, this situation is only temporary. Much of it is so-called “recuperation migration” to make up for border closures that all but halted immigration during the pandemic. In 2020-21, Australia experienced a veritable exodus, with a net population loss of 85,000 people. Very few migrants were allowed in until late 2022.

The annual overseas migration intake is expected to peak at 400,000 people in 2022-23 before returning to 260,000 in 2024-25. This will be close to the long-term average before the pandemic. It will not fully make up for the lost population growth during the pandemic.

Read more:
What’s behind the recent surge in Australia’s net migration – and will it last?

Housing supply is the long-term problem

The housing crisis has been decades in the making. Housing prices were on an upward trend while the annual overseas migration intake remained constant in the decade leading to COVID-19.

Tellingly, even as Australia lost population during the pandemic, the real estate industry estimates that “from September 2020 to April 2022, the nation experienced the sharpest recorded upswing in home values (28.6%)”.

This shows that factors other than migration have been at play.

Let’s look beyond international migration numbers and compare the net population growth to the housing supply. According to former senior Reserve Bank economist Tony Richards, the national dwelling stock stopped expanding in line with overall population growth in 2001. That’s also when the number of property investors began to increase.

Since 2001, the demand for housing has far exceeded the supply. The shortfall has been especially marked in the most populous states – New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. By 2021, the national dwelling shortfall was more than 1.3 million units.

Read more:
The market has failed to give Australians affordable housing, so don’t expect it to solve the crisis

Is most population growth due to migrants?

Yes, but not by much. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, about 40% of population growth in Australia was through natural increase and 60% through international migration. Recuperation migration means migrants are contributing a bit more to the mix now.

Overall in Australia, the average number of children per woman reached a historical low of 1.58 in 2021. Birth rates among international migrants are similar to the national average. This is because migrants tend to be highly skilled, particularly in cities, and people in that group are more career-focused and have fewer children.

Low birth rates might be good news for those holding pro-extinctionist views. Others may see it as an economic disaster in the making.

However, the nation is recording about 300,000 births a year. This figure has been constant for a decade. Our population is youthful relative to other OECD countries, with a median age of 42. This means housing demand is not about to stop.

What about internal migration?

In some regions, like South-East Queensland, the internal migration of Australian residents is compounding the impact of immigration. This is not new.

The graph below shows data from 2021-22. At the time, Brisbane and its surroundings were particularly attractive as other states struggled to contain the pandemic.

But historic data from the 1980s onward show Queensland has long been a net population receiver. The state owes its longstanding popularity to its warmer climate and lower housing prices.

The recent spike in interstate migration to South-East Queensland combined with international migration to create a perfect storm. While Sydney’s and Melbourne’s housing markets have been notoriously unaffordable for a while, Brisbane is the latest arrival on the front lines of the housing affordability battle.

Read more:
The post-COVID crisis hit Queensland hardest. With 100,000 households needing low-cost housing, here’s how it can recover

The bottom line

International migration contributes to the housing demand but it’s hardly the only, or even the main, cause of the housing crisis. The problem cannot be solved by curbing migration.

To make Australian housing affordable again, we need to increase housing supply in line with demand. We also need to stop inflationary investments in existing housing by abolishing tax rules such as negative gearing and capital gains tax.

Read more:
Australia’s housing crisis is deepening. Here are 10 policies to get us out of it

Dorina Pojani has received research grant funding from a variety of domestic and international organisations, including the Australian Research Council.

Aude Bernard currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Think curbing overseas migration will end the housing crisis? It won’t – and we can’t afford to do it – https://theconversation.com/think-curbing-overseas-migration-will-end-the-housing-crisis-it-wont-and-we-cant-afford-to-do-it-211120

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, The University of Western Australia

Professor Bruce Bonyhady is often described as the architect of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and is co-chair of the panel reviewing it. He spoke last week about the sustainability challenges faced by the scheme.

Among the key issues identified was that 20% of Australian children experience learning difficulties, developmental concerns, developmental delay or are found to have disability. Bonyhady said this made it a “mainstream issue”. He added the NDIS was never designed to be the main support system for the majority of these children.

With the NDIS review due to report to state and federal ministers in October, the comments signal a re-calibration of the scheme.

This presents another challenge: which government systems outside the NDIS will embrace the large number of children who need developmental support?

What is a developmental delay?

Developmental delay is a general term that refers to young children who are slower to develop communication, physical, social, emotional and cognitive skills than typically expected. The pace of a child’s development can be measured in many ways, one of which is comparing their development to established milestones, such as when they learn their first word or when they learn to walk.

Many things can cause developmental delay. These include biological differences (such as genetic conditions), environmental challenges (including deprivation) or a combination of both. In many cases, the causes of a child’s developmental delay remain unknown.

Developmental delay is a term commonly used in clinical practice, but not included in official diagnostic manuals like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This is because developmental delay is viewed as a temporary state in child development. It is most often used for children under five.

As children grow older, some developmentally catch up with their peers. Others continue to lag behind. At a certain point in development – typically around five – children in the latter group will start to be referred to having a developmental disability.

Developmental disabilities are included in official diagnostic manuals and include autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), intellectual disability, specific learning disorders, communication disorders and developmental coordination disorder.

Read more:
New national autism guideline will finally give families a roadmap for therapy decisions

Developmental delay and the NDIS

The NDIS has a specific definition of developmental delay which encompasses three areas. Children are considered to have a developmental delay if their delay is:

• due to mental or physical impairments
• substantially reduces functional capacity
• requires specialist services.

Around 11% of all NDIS participants are classified as having a developmental delay. There are also a significant number of children with developmental delay who are not within the NDIS. Taken together, these groups make up about 20% of Australian children under five.

While there is a general community view that developmental delay is an increasing issue in Australia, there is a lack of data tracking over time to understand if this view is accurate.

Our clearest indication comes from Australian Early Development Census, which surveys more than 300,0000 children entering primary school.

The latest available data indicate there are now slightly fewer children who are “developmentally on track” (down from 55.4% in 2018 to 54.8% in 2021) and an increase in the number of children who are “developmentally vulnerable” in any one area of development (up from 21.7% in 2018 to 22% in 2021).

Read more:
A decade on, the NDIS has had triumphs, challenges and controversies. Where to from here?

Supporting children with developmental delay

There has always been a large number of children experiencing developmental delay. But the fragmentation across state/territory and Commonwealth health and disability systems has meant the true scale of children struggling with development has not been clear. The unified system of the NDIS has made the percentage of children with delays clearer.

But, as Bonyhady notes, the NDIS was not designed to support all these children. The NDIS was meant to complement existing systems such as health and education, and to provide additional support to children with the most significant disability impacts. This figure is estimated to be a small proportion of the 20% of children who meet criteria for developmental delay.

Read more:
What is ‘early intervention’ for infants with signs of autism? And how valuable could it be?

Meeting children and families where they are

The NDIS is rightly described as a policy miracle, and has benefited hundreds of thousands of Australians – with millions more to come. Its future thriving is highly dependent on how our community supports children with developmental delay.

The NDIS has accelerated a trend for the medicalisation of development supports. Children with developmental delays receive supports within clinics, rather than in the natural settings in which they live and function every day.

This has weakened major protective factors known to support child development, such as community connection and parental empowerment.

Building capacity to support children with developmental delay in their everyday contexts – at home, in childcare, kindergartens or preschools, in the local community – will be crucial to ensuring children with developmental delay and their families thrive into later childhood.

And it will help the NDIS remain the life-changing system it is.

Read more:
Babies crawl, scoot and shuffle when learning to move. Here’s what to watch for if you’re worried

Andrew Whitehouse is the Director of CliniKids, which is the community health arm of the Telethon Kids Institute. Children accessing CliniKids may be supported through the NDIS. Andrew receives research funding from NHMRC, ARC, the Autism CRC, and the Angela Wright Bennett Foundation

– ref. 20% of children have developmental delay. What does this mean for them, their families and the NDIS? – https://theconversation.com/20-of-children-have-developmental-delay-what-does-this-mean-for-them-their-families-and-the-ndis-212097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Agnew, Senior Lecturer of Economics, University of Canterbury

Even as an economics student at university, I remember heading into town on a Friday night knowing what I needed to pay the bills before I could spend on socialising. But despite having the financial literacy to know better, Monday could still sometimes begin with a trip to the bank to ask for an overdraft extension.

So it was encouraging to hear that financial education has become a political talking point ahead of this year’s election. Both Labour and National are promising to deliver compulsory financial literacy classes as part of the school curriculum.

Labour’s proposed financial literacy programme would include the basics of budgeting, financial concepts and how to be good with money. It would also include explanations of interest rates, retirement savings, insurance, debt and borrowing.

And when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said “it shouldn’t matter what circumstances you were born into, you should still be able to learn concepts to help you”, he was right. Improved financial literacy can only be a good thing for New Zealand.

With the country in a recession, New Zealanders are facing both ballooning debt and a legacy of poor saving. The average household debt in New Zealand is now more than 170% of gross household income. This is higher than the United Kingdom (133%), Australia (113%) or Ireland (96%).

And yet, researchers remain divided over whether financial education can actually have a positive impact on financial behaviour in the long term. In New Zealand and elsewhere, it seems factors closer to home have a greater influence on a person’s financial literacy than anything learned at school.

Education, borrowing and debt

One 2014 meta-analysis of 188 research papers and articles concluded financial literacy interventions had a positive impact on increasing savings, but had no impact on reducing loan defaults.

A second analysis of 126 studies, published in 2017, found financial education positively affected financial behaviour – but this had limits for lower-income families. Much like the earlier study, the researchers found borrowing behaviour was more difficult to change with formal education than saving behaviour.

Read more:
Are you financially literate? Here are 7 signs you’re on the right track

An important caveat is that these analyses measured the short-term response to hypothetical questions, not long-term behaviour.

But even when examining the impact of financial education on short-term behaviour, researchers found it was difficult to influence how people handled debt. Compulsory financial education did not improve the likelihood of getting into debt, or the likelihood of defaulting on loans.

Home and financial knowledge

In his famous work on social learning theory, psychologist Albert Bandurra proposed that observation and modelling play a primary role in how and why people learn. They are particularly relevant to the development of financial attitudes, confidence and behaviour.

Specifically, young people learn from the financial behaviour modelled by their parents, discussions about money in the home, and from receiving pocket money.

Read more:
Financial literacy is a public policy problem

It has been suggested the differences in how money and finances are dealt with in the home are linked to why women generally score lower on financial literacy quizzes, as do people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Parents’ education and their financial sophistication – whether they have stocks, for example – have been shown to affect their offspring’s financial literacy. Women are also found to have lower financial confidence, even when they have the right knowledge.

In a New Zealand study of over 1,200 young people aged 14 and 15, the age of the first financial discussion between parent and child was found to be an important influence on future financial knowledge, attitudes and intentions.

The study found boys, on average, had their first financial discussion in the home at a younger age than girls. The age at which these initial discussions happen influence a person’s financial literacy levels at tertiary education age and beyond, even accounting for other demographic variables.

Read more:
There are serious problems with the concept of ‘financial literacy’

These findings suggest the way parents talk and manage finances in the home may be subject to a gender bias, contributing to different levels of financial literacy – and confidence – between girls and boys.

So, as we consider adding financial education to New Zealand’s curriculum, it’s important to consider all of the factors that will feed into a student’s money literacy – and not just focus on test results in a classroom setting.

Stephen Agnew 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. Financial education has its limits – if we want New Zealanders to be better with money, we need to start at home – https://theconversation.com/financial-education-has-its-limits-if-we-want-new-zealanders-to-be-better-with-money-we-need-to-start-at-home-212098

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

The more people take up private health insurance, the less pressure on the public hospital system, including shorter waiting lists for surgery. That’s one of the key messages we’ve been hearing from government and the private health insurance industry in recent years.

Governments encourage us to buy private hospital cover. They tempt us with carrots – for instance, with subsidised premiums. With higher-income earners, the government uses sticks – buy private cover or pay the Medicare Levy Surcharge. These are just some of the billion-dollar strategies aimed to shift more of us who can afford it into the private system.

But what if private health insurance doesn’t have any meaningful impact on public hospital waiting lists after all?

That’s what we found in our recent research. Our analysis suggests if an extra 65,000 people buy private health insurance, public hospital waiting lists barely shift from the average 69 days. Waiting lists are an average just eight hours shorter.

In other words, we’ve used hospital admission and waiting-list data to show private health insurance doesn’t make much difference.

Read more:
Private health insurance is set for a shake-up. But asking people to pay more for policies they don’t want isn’t the answer

What we did

Our work looked at data from 2014-2018 on hospital admissions and waiting lists for elective surgery in Victoria.

The data covered all Victorians who were admitted as an inpatient in all hospitals in the state (both public and private) and those registered on the waiting list for elective surgeries in the state’s public hospitals.

That included waiting times for surgeries where people are admitted to public hospitals (as an inpatient). We didn’t include people waiting to see specialist doctors as an outpatient.

The data was linked at the patient level, meaning we could track what happened to individuals on the waiting list.

We then examined the impact of more people buying private health insurance on waiting times for surgeries in the state’s public hospitals.

We did this by looking at the uptake of private health insurance in different areas of Victoria, according to socioeconomic status. After adjusting for patient characteristics that may affect waiting times, these differences in insurance uptake allowed us to identify how this changed waiting times.

What we found

In our sample, on average 44% of people in Victoria had private health insurance. This is close to the national average of 45%.

We found that increasing the average private health insurance take-up from 44% to 45% in Victoria would reduce waiting times in public hospitals by an average 0.34 days (or about eight hours).

This increase of one percentage point is equivalent to 65,000 more people in Victoria (based on 2018 population data) taking up (and using) private health insurance.

The effects vary slightly by surgical specialty. For instance, private health insurance made a bigger reduction to waiting times for knee replacements, than for cancer surgery, compared to the average. But again, the difference only came down to a few hours.

Someone’s age also made a slight difference, but again by only a few hours compared to the average wait.

Given the common situation facing public and private hospitals across all states and territories, and similar private health insurance take-up in many states, our findings are likely to apply outside Victoria.

Read more:
Getting an initial specialists’ appointment is the hidden waitlist

Why doesn’t it reduce waiting lists?

While our research did not address this directly, there may be several reasons why private health insurance does not free up resources in the public system to reduce waiting lists:

• people might buy health insurance and not use it, preferring to have free treatment in the public system rather than risk out-of-pocket costs in the private system

• specialists may not be willing to spend more time in the public system, instead favouring working in private hospitals

• there’s a growing need for public hospital services that may not be available in the private system, such as complex neurosurgery and some forms of cancer treatment.

Read more:
With surgery waitlists in crisis and a workforce close to collapse, why haven’t we had more campaign promises about health?

Why is this important?

Government policies designed to get more of us to buy private health insurance involve a significant sum of public spending.

Each year, the Australian government spends about $A6.7 billion in private health insurance rebates to reduce premiums.

In the 2020-21 financial year, Medicare combined with state and territory government expenditure provided almost $6.1 billion to fund services provided in private hospitals.

There might be an argument for this public spending if the end result was to substantially take pressure off public hospitals and thereby reduce waiting times for treatment in public hospitals.

But the considerable effort it takes to encourage more people to sign up for private health insurance, coupled with the small effect on waiting lists we’ve shown, means this strategy is neither practical nor effective.

Given the substantial costs of subsidising private health insurance and private hospitals, public money might be better directed to public hospitals and primary care.

In addition, people buying private health insurance can skip the waiting times for elective surgery to receive speedier care. These people are often financially well off, implying unequal access to health care.

What’s next?

The Australian government is currently reviewing private health insurance.

So now is a good time for reforms to optimise the overall efficiency of the health-care system (both public and private) and improve population health while saving taxpayer money. We also need policies to ensure equitable access to care as a priority.

When it comes to reducing hospital waiting lists, we’ve shown we cannot rely on increased rates of private health insurance coverage to do the heavy lifting.

Read more:
Do you really need private health insurance? Here’s what you need to know before deciding

Yuting Zhang receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Victorian Department of Health, and National Health and Medical Research Council. In the past, Professor Zhang has received funding from several US institutes including the US National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth fund, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has not received funding from for-profit industry including the private health insurance industry.

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

– ref. Does private health insurance cut public hospital waiting lists? We found it barely makes a dent – https://theconversation.com/does-private-health-insurance-cut-public-hospital-waiting-lists-we-found-it-barely-makes-a-dent-211680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rohan Fisher, Information Technology for Development Researcher, Charles Darwin University

Even though it’s still winter, the fire season has already started in Australia’s arid centre. About half of the Tjoritja West MacDonnell National Park west of Alice Springs has burnt this year.

The spread of buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) has been seen as a key factor. This invasive grass has been ranked the highest environmental threat to Indigenous cultures and communities because of the damage it can do to desert Country.

Widespread rains associated with the La Niña climate cycle trigger a boom in plant growth. When the dry times come again, plants and grasses dry out and become potential fuel for massive desert fires.

These fires often don’t get much notice because nearly all Australians live near the coast. But they can be huge. In 2011, over 400,000 square kilometres burnt – about half the size of New South Wales.

After three years of La Niña rains, we’re in a similar situation – or potentially worse. Fire authorities are warning up to 80% of the Northern Territory could burn this fire season.

That’s why dozens of Indigenous ranger groups across 12 Indigenous Protected Areas have been hard at work in an unprecedented collaboration, burning to reduce the fuel load before the summer’s heat. So far, they’ve burned 23,000 square kilometres across the Great Sandy, Tanami, Gibson and Great Victoria Deserts.

Burning the arid lands

Australia now has 82 Indigenous Protected Areas, covering over 87 million hectares of land. That’s half of the entire reserve of protected lands, and they’re growing fast as part of efforts to protect 30% of Australia’s lands and waters by 2030. These areas are managed by Indigenous groups – and fire is a vital part of management.

The goal is to protect against devastating summer bushfires, which are more destructive. Without Indigenous rangers expertly managing the deserts through landscape-scale fire management, these protected lands would be at risk of decline.

Read more:
We are professional fire watchers, and we’re astounded by the scale of fires in remote Australia right now

As Braeden Taylor, Karajarri Ranger Coordinator, says:

A big wildfire just destroys everything, it destroys Country. The first aim is to do a bit of ground burning and then aerial burning, that way we know everything is protected. Using the helicopter and plane, we can access Country that’s hard to get to in a vehicle. It might not have been burnt in a long time and we can break it up

It’s good working with other groups. Fires that start on their side might come over to us and fires on ours might go to them. Working together we protect each other, looking after neighbours.

So how do the rangers cover such distances? These protected areas are extremely remote. There is often no or very limited road access. So rangers work from the sky – and, where possible, the ground. The ranger fire program relies on helicopters and incendiaries [fire starting devices]. This year, rangers have spent 448 hours in the air, covering 58,457 kilometres and dropping 299,059 incendiaries.

When the incendiaries hit the ground, they begin burning. Not every incendiary hits the right spot, so it takes time to guarantee a good burn is under way. These arid lands tend to have more grass than trees, so the fires move along the ground and don’t get too intense.

Rangers couple aerial burning with fine-scale ground burning using drip torches around sensitive areas. That’s to ensure protection of cultural sites and threatened species like the bilby, night parrot and great desert skink.

This is vitally important, given about 60% of desert mammal species have already gone extinct over the last 250 years, while many others have seen their range reduce. Changes to fire regimes are a major factor in these declines.

Fire can forge community

These desert-spanning fire projects give Traditional Owners the ability to see remote Country, practice culture and transfer knowledge down the generations.

As Ronald Hunt, Ngaanyatjarra Ranger, says:

When we burn it cleans up all the spinifex grass and when the rain comes it all grows up fresh. It’s good for the animals, the bushfood and all. Its good using the helicopter, going places that it’s hard to get to. It’s good to work together with other groups, sharing stories and looking after the Country. They have their stories, and we have ours, and then we come together to work.

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in Indigenous fire management – especially after the devastation of the Black Summer fires of 2019–2020.

The goal is to shift from wrong-way fire – where fuel builds up until large, damaging bushfires ignite – to right-way fire, culturally informed fire regimes led by Traditional Owners.

These fires are done regularly, with small fires of varying intensity producing a fine-scale mosaic of vegetation at different stages of recovery and maintaining long-unburned vegetation as safe harbours for wildlife and plants.

Recent research shows the return to these right-way fire regimes at a landscape scale is having a real effect. In areas where this is done, the desert landscape is returning to a complex, pre-colonisation pattern of mosaic burns.

These large-scale efforts should make Country healthier and bring reprieve from dangerous fire.

Read more:
The buffel kerfuffle: how one species quietly destroys native wildlife and cultural sites in arid Australia

Rohan Fisher has consulted for the Indigenous Desert Alliance.

Boyd Elson is a director of the Indigenous Desert Alliance

– ref. Indigenous rangers are burning the desert the right way – to stop the wrong kind of intense fires from raging – https://theconversation.com/indigenous-rangers-are-burning-the-desert-the-right-way-to-stop-the-wrong-kind-of-intense-fires-from-raging-211900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucas Walsh, Professor and Director of the Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice, Monash University

As we pass the half way mark in term 3, many students in Year 12 will be thinking more and more about their future.

Universities and TAFEs are having open days and no doubt, teachers, friends and family will be asking, “what are you going to do next year?”

As educators, parents and carers, we know these are difficult questions. But if anything, they are becoming more difficult for young people in an unpredictable and competitive job market

Our research shows young people are uncertain and worried about next steps after school. So we have also developed a questionnaire to help parents and teachers talk to school leavers and understand their thoughts and feelings about careers and life after school.

Our research

We recently analysed survey data collected in 2018 from nearly 2,800 Victorian school students in Years 10 to 12. This asked about their career aspirations, decision-making processes and intentions following school.

More than one third (33.8%) “agreed” or “strongly agreed” they “did not know what careers best suited them”. Another 40.5% often felt they “had no career direction”.

Just under half (41.5%) worried their studies would not lead to a “real” career, with 34.3% worried they would not be employable when they had completed their studies. Meanwhile 29% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” they often felt down or worried about selecting a career. This increased to 59.3% of respondents when “not sure” responses were included.

‘Overwhelming’

To further understand these findings, we asked four young people who had recently finished school to explain their decision making around this time.

Riana*, who studied at university before working with a non-government organisation, said thinking about the next step beyond Year 12 “felt overwhelming”. She spoke of indecision about her career choice.

Meanwhile, Candice said she was aware of needing to make a pragmatic decision but also stay true to her interests.

[…] there were so many things to consider. I would like to pick a major I like but at the same time I need to consider whether it is easy to find a job after I graduate or will it lead to a well-paid job.

Andrew said he made a clear goal of getting into two, specific different degrees (and a certain ATAR) to combat his feelings of overwhelm.

I knew I needed to have a goal before beginning Year 12. Otherwise it would be too difficult to maintain momentum and motivation.

Andrew also told us he sought advice from parents, teachers, university open days and student recruitment officers at universities. Riana also spoke of the importance of getting advice, of exploring options and being “curious different career pathways”.

Read more:
‘Thinking about my future is really scary’ – school leavers are not getting the careers support they need

Reaching for the familiar

But even when goals are in place, students grapple with uncertainty. This leads many students to reach for what is familiar.

After completing Year 12, Yasmin, lacked “a clear vision for my future career” and chose teaching “simply because it was a familiar job to me”.

Yasmin’s experience is echoed in OECD research, which shows teenagers tend to confine their choices to ten occupational fields (law, engineering, psychology, medicine, teaching, veterinary science, physiotherapy, nursing, business management, architecture). This is despite the emergence of new fields in the digital economy, as well as growth in areas such as health services.

Yasmin now said she would have benefited from “having a deeper understanding of what choosing a major and a career path truly means to me”.

Read more:
Our research shows how students can miss out on their preferred uni degree – but there’s a simple fix

How to have a supportive conversation

Having supportive, thorough career conversations is important for young people. This helps them express their true feelings and make sense of all the information and choices.

When young people have these conversations with parents, teachers and career advisers, they have lower levels of career uncertainty and anxiety.

So we have developed the short questionnaire below to stimulate careers conversations and help teenagers become more aware of their feelings around next steps.

This can be the starting point of a conversation covering young people’s awareness of their own interests and strengths, career goals and preferences, knowledge of the requirements of different pathways, as well as their ideas about transitioning from education to work.

These conversations can be challenging. They might exacerbate personal issues, such as existing mental health conditions, that need to be considered.

If you work together with your child or student to create goals and plans, this will allow them to feel as if the conversations are both purposeful and productive.

The aim is for conversations to be safe and positive for young people, where their responses are respected, and they feel heard in the discussions.

*Names have been changed.

If you are a child, teenager or young adult who needs help and support, you can call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

Lucas Walsh currently receives funding from The Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Australian Research Council. He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article.

Joanne Gleeson 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. ‘So many things to consider’: how to help school leavers decide what to do next – https://theconversation.com/so-many-things-to-consider-how-to-help-school-leavers-decide-what-to-do-next-211189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janneke Blijlevens, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, RMIT University

These shoes are perfect, made for me! I have to get them! But really, I should be paying off my car loan instead. I can’t justify this purchase. Or can I …?

We all know this feeling, this tension between what you really want to do and what you really should, or shouldn’t, do. What you are experiencing is cognitive dissonance.

It’s a psychological discomfort we feel when our behaviours and our values or beliefs do not match. Not to worry, we can make that discomfort simply disappear with a good dose of #GirlMaths!

So what is #GirlMaths?

GirlMaths recently became a viral phenomenon on TikTok after New Zealand FVHZM radio hosts Fletch, Vaughan and Hayley used #GirlMaths to justify one host’s mother’s expensive dress purchase as basically free because the dress was going to be worn at least four times.

Since then, influencers have added to the #GirlMaths trend with gems such as “If I buy it for $100, wear it, and then resell it for $80 then I basically wore it for free”, “If I pay with cash, it means it’s free”, and “If I just returned something, then purchase something new for the same amount of money, then it’s free”.

The reason #GirlMaths resonates so well with everyone and allows it to go viral is that we are very familiar with this type of thinking. The mental gymnastics of #GirlMaths needed to justify cost-per-wear or cash-is-free is a perfect display of behavioural biases and heuristics, such as confirmation bias and denomination bias, being applied to everyday consumption decisions.

The psychology of decision-making

Behavioural biases and heuristics are shortcuts in our thinking that help us make decisions quicker and easier, and are great for reducing the cognitive dissonance we sometimes experience.

Our brain has a lot of decisions to make in a day and simply doesn’t have the power to scrutinise every little detail of every decision. These shortcuts in our thinking may facilitate the decision making process, but they don’t always mean we make the most optimal decisions.

Confirmation bias is a bias where you justify your decisions by considering only the evidence that supports what you want and ignore the evidence that would mean you’d have to make a different decision. Cost-per-wear does sound quite financially savvy. It is just like bulk-buying pantry essentials, right?

The issue is you are ignoring the facts such as: 1) your disposable income does not match this expense in light of your utility bills, 2) you could rewear a cheaper dress all the same, and 3) by spending money on a fancy dress, you lose the opportunity to spend the money on other better investments for wealth accumulation, or to pay off your car loan.

The financial and social costs

But it’s all a bit of innocent fun, right? Surely people won’t take #GirlMaths that seriously? We beg to differ.

First, the term is unnecessarily gendered. Gendered language operates to reinforce societal expectations with a particular gender and can promote stereotypes, biases and binary categories.

In this case, the term “girl maths” reinforces problematic stereotypes that equate women with consumption, frivolity and extravagant spending. When stereotypes are reinforced within our own social circles, we are more likely to internalise these as part of our identity.

By representing women in a less favourable way, the term operates to both demean and discriminate on a gendered basis. This is heightened by the use of “girl” as opposed to “woman”, which implies someone is childlike or lacking in knowledge or experience. It also begs the question what “boy maths” – set up as something opposing and different – might connote.

Second, the #GirlMaths trend reminds us of the power of “finfluencers” – social media content creators amassing huge online followings by sharing advice on anything from budgeting to buying a house, to investing.

These online gurus appeal to Gen Z and millennials, simplifying complex financial concepts into digestible nuggets, much like #GirlMaths simplifies purchases based on cost-per-wear or cash-as-free.

Read more:
Are you financially literate? Here are 7 signs you’re on the right track

Just as regulators such as ASIC repeatedly warn us of the dangers of buy-now-pay-later services, we must caution the #GirlMaths trend as a dangerous cocktail for young women who are susceptible to the “advice” of finfluencers.

The trend resembles BNPL by breaking down expenses into smaller, more palatable portions, making purchases seem justifiable and affordable at the moment.

Denomination bias describes this tendency to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts rather than large amounts. We find it much easier to spend $50 four times than $200 all at once.

However, the convenience of these shortcuts in our thinking can obscure the hidden financial risks. You may overlook the bigger picture of your financial health, and spend more than what you can afford. That’s why a large number of BNPL users find themselves ending up in a modern debt trap.

The perils of #GirlMaths

The danger of #GirlMaths to young women lies in the cocktail of feeling oddly familiar and reinforced in this biased thinking, the problematic stereotypes that shape identities, and the the power of finfluencers, who wield increasing influence over the financial choices and decision-making of young women.

While the term may initially come across as innocent fun, it’s crucial not to underestimate its potential harms. Instead, let’s champion the use of inclusive language in finance that doesn’t perpetuate gender biases.

And if you’re a staunch supporter of #GirlMaths, we strongly urge you to take into account the possible adverse financial consequences of these quick-fix spending habits.

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. #GirlMaths: a seemingly innocent and fun way to justify expenses that can have serious financial consequences – https://theconversation.com/girlmaths-a-seemingly-innocent-and-fun-way-to-justify-expenses-that-can-have-serious-financial-consequences-211903

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University

After seven decades as a visual satirist provoking Australia as it is and might be, Bruce Petty passed away at 93 on April 6 this year.

His career as a political cartoonist started with a trip to London in the late 1950s, then a stint at young Rupert Murdoch’s afternoon paper in Sydney, the Mirror.

He had a lead role as The Australian’s political cartoonist during the newspaper’s radical first decade, until it turned right during the Whitlam dismissal and Larry Pickering was promoted to favoured cartoonist.

Petty then moved to The Age in its glory days, where he was the acknowledged godfather of the troupe of brilliant cartoonists there at the time. He stayed until 2016, with Malcolm Turnbull his last prime minister, by which time the collapse of the broadsheet model was well advanced.

Throughout the decades, he moonlighted as an animator and author of books we might now call graphic essays or even novels, always at the cutting edge of thought and technology.

Inevitably, profiles stress he won an Academy Award for animation with Leisure (1976), but his deepest cultural intervention in the story of post-Menzies Australia came during the Vietnam War years. Australia changed and he was one of the major prophets of change.

With a handful of others like Les Tanner and George Molnar, he woke editorial cartooning from a sleepy period telling fairly anodyne jokes and turned it into a mode of serious – if also often hilarious – satirical commentary on politics and society.

Read more:
The Australian helped political cartoonists sharpen their edge

In the vanguard

Flinders University Museum of Art has a remarkable collection of 73 cartoon originals and sketches from Petty’s most formative period. They were a characteristically generous gift by the artist, for a university then only three years old, and solicited by inaugural fine arts lecturer Robert Smith.

Among them are these five particularly vivid cartoons published in The Australian between May 1966 and September 1967.

These fragile objects, sometimes stuck together with glue when he changed a line of thought, take us straight into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War before the moratorium marches, when Prime Minister Harold Holt won the 1966 election in a landslide.

Petty was in the vanguard of a small but vocal opposition, drawing the war as a deep tragedy for the Vietnamese and a reckless farce perpetrated by the West.

One cartoon, Getting there is half the fun, about President Lyndon B. Johnson’s imperial triumph of a visit to Australia, marks the contrast.

The jagged black blob, which covers about half of the box, colours the movement from farce to tragedy arrestingly black.

Petty’s busy line attracted more than its fair share of the “my grandchild could draw better than that” sort of criticism, but it was entirely deliberate and brilliantly expressive. He doesn’t aim to please visually. He wants to stop readers with a shock of the unfamiliar and make them think. He is also a humane but stern critic of fools and villains.

Look at Hospitals – regrettable, but in the name of democracy, don’t hit a polling booth.

Are Johnson and his adipose generals conscious villains, or merely fools being driven by murderous ideas and scarcely sublimated self-interest?

I think Petty gives them the benefit of the doubt, just. But then he drives home the fact that being venal fools does not excuse them from the crime of bombing innocent people.

Read more:
The forgotten Australian veterans who opposed National Service and the Vietnam War

Intimate sympathy

Something similar happens with the privileged women under the hairdryers in the cartoon, Who says we women aren’t interested in politics?

Is this the moral fecklessness of consumer society projected onto women, or is it the dawn of concern for the people ravaged by a needless imperial war? As so often for Petty, it is both.

A large part of the power of these cartoons comes from Petty’s deep engagement with people forced to live with the war. His first book, Australian Artist in South East Asia (1962), is a graphic account of his journey through seven countries. He went to Vietnam again during the war as a cartoonist-correspondent.

He is drawing the Other – how could it be otherwise for a still White Australian audience? – but he is doing it with an intimate sympathy born of real knowledge.

I must say, I’ve found the first day of democracy a little disappointing is a wry and ironic cartoon about the debauched South Vietnamese election then under way, but it takes you to the people actually affected.

Finally, Peace Feeler, published in 1967.

Johnson talked peace with South Vietnamese generals in Honolulu, even while continuing to bomb the Viet Cong with huge and brutal firepower.

Publish this cartoon unchanged today, and everyone would see it as about the war in Ukraine. Sadly, great satire like Petty’s keeps finding its moment.

Read more:
Friday essay: political cartooning – the end of an era

Robert Phiddian receives funding from the Australian Research Council for “Cartoon Nation: Australian Editorial Cartooning – Past, Present, and Future” DP230101348.

– ref. How cartoonist Bruce Petty documented the Vietnam War – and how his great satire keeps finding its moment – https://theconversation.com/how-cartoonist-bruce-petty-documented-the-vietnam-war-and-how-his-great-satire-keeps-finding-its-moment-208952

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John White, Associate Professor in Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Deakin University

There’s nothing quite like having a rodent problem in your home. Most people will do anything to get rid of them.

Australians usually reach for rat poison, without a second thought. Most of these poisons – sold at supermarkets and hardware stores – are “second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides” (SGARs) also known as single-dose anticoagulants. These extremely powerful poisons stay in the body for many months. It takes only a single feed to kill a rodent, usually within a week.

With the rodent problem solved, our house is once again our castle, and all is well. Right?

Unfortunately, use of rat poison is leading to the wide-scale poisoning of Australia’s nocturnal predatory birds, including the crowd favourite tawny frogmouth and Australia’s largest owl, the majestic powerful owl. Our new research reveals the alarming extent of the problem.

Read more:
How to control invasive rats and mice at home without harming native wildlife

Poisoning in tawny frogmouths and owls

Anticoagulant rat poisons are effective at killing rodents, but they also accumulate in the liver and muscle tissues of predators that eat the poisoned animals.

The SGARs do not kill immediately, it can take many days. During that time, the rodent – or any other animal that eats the poison – can keep eating more. The poison does not leave the body but continues to accumulate in tissues while attacking the body’s capacity to clot blood. Eventually the poisoned animal dies from internal bleeding.

While still alive, the poisoned animal makes easy prey because it becomes lethargic and doesn’t behave in a normal, cautious manner.

Eating a single poisoned rodent probably won’t kill a predator, but what happens when predators are exposed to poisoned prey all the time? This is probably what is happening in our cities, suburbs and farms, every day of the year.

Here’s what we found

Our new research reveals alarming levels of rat poisons in our nocturnal predatory birds. Across four species, we found a staggering 92% of the 60 dead birds we tested had been exposed to these poisons. The concentration of SGARs in the liver was such that toxic or lethal impacts were likely to have occurred in 33% of powerful owls we tested, 68% of tawny frogmouths, 42% of southern boobooks and 80% of barn owls.

Testing for rat poison is not a pretty job. The only accurate way is to test the animal’s liver. Over the last two years, our team had the gruesome job of collecting and dissecting the livers of 60 dead owls and tawny frogmouths (24 powerful owls, 19 tawny frogmouths, 12 southern boobooks, and five eastern barn owls). Most birds were from Victoria. We were aided by concerned citizens who found and reported these dead birds to us, often collecting the bodies themselves and keeping them in their fridges.

Of the 55 birds found to have rodenticides in them, every one contained brodifacoum. Brodifacoum is the most widely available SGAR in Australia. It is highly potent and can stay in the body for more than 100 days. That means animals can accumulate more in their bodies as they continue to eat poisoned prey.

Read more:
Mouse plague: bromadiolone will obliterate mice, but it’ll poison eagles, snakes and owls, too

Are we also poisoning other native animals?

Our research shows poisoning rodents is poisoning our predators, in large numbers. This is widespread across urban areas, agricultural areas and forests on the edge of suburbia.

Given the high rate of exposure to rat poisons, it is likely predator populations will decline. Losing our predators to poisoning will have widespread consequences, for natural systems and urban environments. Birds of prey help to keep rodents (and other species prone to reaching high numbers) in check.

We are probably inadvertently poisoning other native animals. Powerful owls do not eat many rats, they prefer to dine on native possums and gliders. The common brushtail possum, with its broad diet and penchant for living in roof cavities, is no doubt directly feasting on rat poison.

So the high level of rat poison we found in nocturnal predators is likely the tip of a poisoned iceberg.

Is this a new ‘Silent Spring’ moment?

In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring introduced the world to the impacts of pesticides on humans and non-target species. This catalysed investigations into pesticides such as DDT, which were being passed up the foodchain and “bio-accumulating” in raptors, decimating populations. Now, the devastating impacts of SGARs are becoming more widely recognised.

Our research, along with a growing body of international evidence, highlights the need to introduce restrictions on the availability of SGARs in Australia.

As with DDT in the 1980s, many countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom are moving to ban public access to SGARs or substantially restrict how they can be used.

But Australia is lagging on the effective regulation on the use of SGARs. Currently, SGARs are approved for use “in and around domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural buildings”. They are not approved for use in crops, in the open, or in other areas accessible to non-target animals or children. But these restrictions are not sufficient. It is also likely many people do not follow instructions when they use rat poisons.

Read more:
Spooky, stealthy night hunters: revealing the wonderful otherworld of owls

What are the alternatives to rat poison?

Next time you reach for the rat poison, consider the consequences. There is a very strong likelihood you will poison more than rodents – you could be poisoning a tawny frogmouth or owl.

Try to approach the problem without using poisons. In particular, avoid any SGAR-based products (those containing brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, difethialone and flucoumafen as the active ingredients).

There are ways to control rats and mice without harming native wildlife. Trapping technology has come a long way and the latest methods are far more effective, humane and efficient than the old-fashioned spring-loaded mouse trap.

We can also make our homes less attractive to vermin, by clearing vegetation close to the house, reducing the availability of food sources such as pet food and compost, and blocking access to the building. And of course, we can support our natural predators to do what they do best, without putting themselves in harm’s way.

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. Rat poison is killing our beloved native owls and tawny frogmouths – and that’s the tip of the iceberg – https://theconversation.com/rat-poison-is-killing-our-beloved-native-owls-and-tawny-frogmouths-and-thats-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-212184

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Starling, Postdoctoral Researcher in Veterinary Science, University of Sydney

Dogs are important to a lot of humans, but what makes them so?

Apart from being warm, soft and capable of inspiring our unconditional love, there are a number of unique characteristics that set dogs apart from other animals.

As a dog researcher, animal behaviour consultant and canophile (which means I love dogs), let me share five traits that I think make dogs so special.

Dogs are hypersocial

We all know those golden retriever-type dogs that appear absurdly delighted to meet any new social being. It’s hard not to be taken in by their infectious friendliness. These furry, hypersocial creatures have some key genetic differences even to other domestic dogs.

Most fascinatingly, these genetic differences are in the area of the genome associated with hypersociability in people with a genetic condition called Williams-Beuren syndrome. Although people with this syndrome experience negative health effects, they also tend to be very open, engaging and sociable.

Not all dogs fall into this hypersocial category – but even those that don’t are unusually accepting of unfamiliar people and dogs.

Unlike other social wild canids such as wolves, domestic dogs can quite happily live in harmony with different species, as well as individuals of their own species that aren’t from their family. This is what makes it so easy to slot dogs into our lives.

Dogs are wired to understand us

Humans have selectively bred dogs for many generations. And in many cases, we’ve bred them to take direction to help us in a wide variety of jobs – including being companions to us. This has led to domestic dogs being born with an interest in humans.

From an early age, puppies are attracted to human faces. While dogs are as co-operative as wolves, they tend to be submissive towards humans and follow our directions – whereas wolves are bolder and more likely to lead when co-operating with humans.

Dogs also learn to follow our gaze, and show a left-gaze bias when looking at human faces. This means they spend more time looking at the left side of our faces (which would be the right side from our perspective). This bias emerges in several species when they are processing emotional information, which shows that dogs are reading our faces to figure out how we’re feeling.

For a while it was also thought dogs were particularly attentive to human gestures such as pointing – but recent research suggests many domestic species and some wild animal species can also follow pointing.

Dogs come in countless shapes and sizes

No other species comes in such a huge variety of shapes and sizes as domestic dogs. Not even cats or horses display the same diversity.

The largest dogs may be close to 25 times the size of the smallest! Beyond that, we have dogs with drop ears and prick ears and everything in between, tails and no tails, or bob tails, short legs and long legs, long noses and short noses – and a huge variety of coat colours, lengths and textures.

For dogs, this huge variation might mean they have more to learn than other animals when it comes to understanding their own kind. For example, owners of herding breed dogs may find their dog a bit confused, or even defensive, when meeting a very different short-faced breed such as a bulldog.

For us, it means we should appreciate how the size and shape of dogs can influence their behaviour and experiences. For instance, dogs with longer noses have sharper vision, while dogs with a lighter build tend to be more energetic and fearful.

Dogs form deep emotional bonds

Domestic dogs have been shown to form attachment bonds with human caregivers that are very similar to those formed between children and parents.

This may partly explain why they can read our emotional signals, why they become distressed (and try to help us) when we are distressed, and why MRI studies show dogs are happy when they smell their owners.

It may also be why they panic when separated from us. Dogs’ attachment to humans goes beyond being hypersocial. To them, we are a lot more than the food we provide and the balls we throw. We are an attachment figure akin to a parent.

Read more:
Dogs can smell people’s stress – new study

Dogs can help us be our best selves

Most dog owners would agree their dog brings out the best in them. They can confide in their dog and love them unconditionally – sometimes more easily than they can another human.

Dogs are playing important roles in animal-assisted therapy, where their nonjudgmental presence can be a calming influence and facilitate social interactions. They can even help children learn to read and alleviate anxiety.

Although assisting humans with their emotional problems can be a difficult task for such an emotionally sensitive species, research suggests the right dogs can rise to the task if their workload is managed carefully.

Horses are also used in animal-assisted therapy, as are some smaller furry animals. However, dogs are more portable and can remain at ease in stimulating environments such as courtrooms, schools and airports. They are uniquely placed to accompany us wherever we go.

Paws for thought

We might like to think dogs are special for some of the traits we value in humans, such as intelligence, selflessness or a loving nature. But really dogs are exceptional for simply being dogs.

They are social acrobats that can find social harmony wherever they go. They have rich emotional lives in which they co-exist with different species and can even forge bonds outside of their own species.

They are also generally tolerant of our primate ways – and good at receiving our love. And for me that’s enough.

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

– ref. An expert’s top 5 reasons why dogs can be considered exceptional animals – https://theconversation.com/an-experts-top-5-reasons-why-dogs-can-be-considered-exceptional-animals-211832

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gail Iles, Senior Lecturer in Physics, RMIT University

In 2019, India attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon – and ended up painting a kilometres-long streak of debris on its barren surface. Now the Indian Space Research Organisation has returned in triumph, with the Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touching down near the south pole of Earth’s rocky neighbour.

India’s success came just days after a spectacular Russian failure, when the Luna 25 mission tried to land nearby and “ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface”.

Read more:
India’s Chandrayaan-3 landed on the south pole of the Moon − a space policy expert explains what this means for India and the global race to the Moon

These twin missions remind us that, close to 60 years after the first successful “soft landing” on the Moon, spaceflight is still difficult and dangerous. Moon missions in particular are still a coin flip, and we have seen several high-profile failures in recent years.

Why were these missions unsuccessful and why did they fail? Is there a secret to the success of countries and agencies who have achieved a space mission triumph?

An exclusive club

The Moon is the only celestial location humans have visited (so far). It makes sense to go there first: it’s the closest planetary body to us, at a distance of around 400,000 kilometres.

Yet only four countries have achieved successful “soft landings” – landings which the spacecraft survives – on the lunar surface.

The USSR was the first. The Luna 9 mission safely touched down on the Moon almost 60 years ago, in February 1966. The United States followed suit a few months later, in June 1996, with the Surveyor 1 mission.

China was the next country to join the club, with the Chang’e 3 mission in 2013. And now India too has arrived, with Chandrayaan-3.

Missions from Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Russia, the European Space Agency, Luxembourg, South Korea and Italy have also had some measure of lunar success with fly-bys, orbiters and impacts (whether intentional or not).

Crashes are not uncommon

On August 19 2023, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that “communication with the Luna 25 spacecraft was interrupted”, after an impulse command was sent to the spacecraft to lower its orbit around the Moon. Attempts to contact the spacecraft on August 20 were unsuccessful, leading Roscosmos to determine Luna 25 had crashed.

Despite more than 60 years of spaceflight experience extending from the USSR to modern Russia, this mission failed. We don’t know exactly what happened – but the current situation in Russia, where resources are stretched thin and tensions are high due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, may well have been a factor.

Read more:
Russia has declared a new space race, hoping to join forces with China. Here’s why that’s unlikely

The Luna 25 failure recalled two high-profile lunar crashes in 2019.

In April that year, the Israeli Beresheet lander crash-landed after a gyroscope failed during the braking procedure, and the ground control crew was unable to reset the component due to a loss of communications. It was later reported a capsule containing microscopic creatures called tardigrades, in a dormant “cryptobiotic” state, may have survived the crash.

And in September, India sent its own Vikram lander down to the surface of the Moon – but it did not survive the landing. NASA later released an image taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the site of the Vikram lander’s impact. Debris was scattered over almost two dozen locations spanning several kilometres.

Space is still risky

Space missions are a risky business. Just over 50% of lunar missions succeed. Even small satellite missions to Earth’s orbit don’t have a perfect track record, with a success rate somewhere between 40% and 70%.

We could compare uncrewed with crewed missions: around 98% of the latter are successful, because people are more invested in people. Ground staff working to support a crewed mission will be more focused, management will invest more resources, and delays will be accepted to prioritise the safety of the crew.

Read more:
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We could talk about the details of why so many uncrewed missions fail. We could talk about technological difficulties, lack of experience, and even the political landscapes of individual countries.

But perhaps it’s better to step back from the details of individual missions and look at averages, to see the overall picture more clearly.

The big picture

Rocket launches and space launches are not very common in the scheme of things. There are around 1.5 billion cars in the world, and perhaps 40,000 aeroplanes. By contrast, there have been fewer than 20,000 space launches in all of history.

Plenty of things still go wrong with cars, and problems occur even in the better-regulated world of planes, from loose rivets to computers overriding pilot inputs. And we have more than a century of experience with these vehicles, in every country on the planet.

So perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect spaceflight – whether it’s the launch stage of rockets, or the even rarer stage of trying to land on an alien world – to have ironed out all its problems.

We are still very much in the early, pioneering days of space exploration.

Monumental challenges remain

If humanity is ever to create a fully fledged space-faring civilisation, we must overcome monumental challenges.

To make long-duration, long-distance space travel possible, there are a huge number of problems to be solved. Some of them seem within the realm of the possible, such as better radiation shielding, self-sustaining ecosystems, autonomous robots, extracting air and water from raw resources, and zero-gravity manufacturing. Others are still speculative hopes, such as faster-than-light travel, instantaneous communication, and artificial gravity.

Read more:
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Progress will be little by little, small step by slightly larger step. Engineers and space enthusiasts will keep putting their brainpower, time and energy into space missions, and they will gradually become more reliable.

And maybe one day we’ll see a time when going for a ride in your spacecraft is as safe as getting in your car.

Gail Iles 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. Almost half of Moon missions fail. Why is space still so hard? – https://theconversation.com/almost-half-of-moon-missions-fail-why-is-space-still-so-hard-211914

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lise Ludwig Mogensen, Associate professor, Medical Education, Research and Evaluation, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University

Leaving school and figuring out what’s next is challenging for young people. For those with disability, it is even harder. It is often a time when supports are withdrawn as they leave the heavily structured school environment.

We asked young people with intellectual disability about their experiences of transitioning from school and starting adult life. Our newly published research suggests pre-transition planning for school leavers with disability is inconsistent or lacking. Most participants felt excluded from making decisions for life after school and needed support to access and navigate the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

After school, most participants longed to find a paid job, friends, and a life partner but felt they were missing out on these typical adult milestones. They told us it was difficult to find service providers to help them reach their goals. Many felt isolated and in a perpetual state of transition.

Read more:
Part-time work is valuable to people with disability – but full time is more likely to attract government support

The promise of ‘choice and control’

Transition-from-school policies and guidelines exist in all states of Australia.

Shared characteristics between these guidelines include early planning, being person-centred, and ensuring collaboration between the family, school and services.

A decade ago, Australia changed from a social welfare model of disability support to a consumer-focused, market-based system. The NDIS promised to be the cornerstone of this, offering participants increased “choice and control” over new skills, jobs, greater independence, quality of life and improved social participation.

We wanted to understand the lived experiences of today’s young Australians with intellectual disability in planning to leave school and transition into adult life.

Through individual and group interviews, 27 young people with intellectual disability (15 female and 12 male participants, aged 19 to 33) told us their views and experiences of leaving school in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

Their stories highlight how much more work should be done to empower young people with intellectual disability.

What they told us

Firstly, many young people told us they felt left out of transition planning at school, with most decisions being made for them. There were limited, if any, opportunities for them to explore post-school options. As one participant said,

I don’t want people that are, like, like, you know, just making choices for me.

Secondly, all participants found accessing NDIS funding complicated. They relied on parents or other advocates to navigate the process, to ask the right questions, and help with difficult jargon – or, as stated by one young person, knowing how to “bark the right way”.

After leaving school, many felt lonely, lost and uncertain about their adult role and identity. Some felt “left behind” by friends and siblings without disability who had jobs and life partners, intimate relationships and were raising families of their own.

It’s hard to find a partner […] or to know someone and be with someone.

There was a shared sense among participants that most disability services did not prioritise activities to support reaching their goals. A young woman explained how finding a service with a good fit had been very difficult. She talked about how her first service provider had “tried to like take us for money” without providing a service.

Other participants felt “stuck” with a life in disability services locked into the role of “disability person”, while wanting to do and be more.

you know […] I want to do some more in life and […] I want to be out there. Know what I mean?

Participants felt they needed better support with finding and keeping employment, even from agencies that had been contracted to do so. Getting help with finding a paid job seemed especially frustrating and out of reach. One young man called it a “total nightmare” explaining,

So they’re basically, you know, not very well, um, structured […] you’re just waiting here for that lottery ticket to draw your name out.

Read more:
Young people with disability have poorer mental health when they are unemployed – funding should tackle job barriers

The same goals as young people without disability

This study shows transition planning processes remain inconsistent and there is insufficient collaboration between school systems, adult disability services and the workforce.

Participants in our study had the same goals as young people without disability for meaningful work, independence and social connection – but need better support to contributing meaningfully to their communities.

The sense of “feeling stuck” with life in disability services or in “perpetual transition” may be caused by conflicting beliefs and values between service providers and consumers.

Young people expect to take on adult roles after leaving school. But disability service providers often see these young people merely as service receivers. Standardised processes and procedures may create “institutionalised identities”.

The highly standardised nature of the NDIS leaves it inaccessible for people with intellectual disability, so the promise of choice and control in adult life is far from reality.

Read more:
Australia is lagging when it comes to employing people with disability – quotas for disability services could be a start

How it should be

Australia needs nationally consistent policies backed by systematic actions and oversight that truly supports the transition from school into meaningful adult lives for young people with intellectual disability.

People with disability must be actively involved in developing transition and service plans, with goals for growth and for moving between or beyond disability services once milestones are met.

Strategies must include steps for fostering social identities through friendships, casual to ongoing employment, intimate relationships, parenting or caring for others.

Further shifts in the NDIS model are also needed to foster individualised and supported planning for people with intellectual disability.

Read more:
‘On my worst day …’ How the NDIS fosters a deficit mindset and why that should change

This project was funded by the Endeavour Foundation Disability Research Grant.

– ref. More than a ‘disability person’. What finishing school is like for youth with intellectual disability – https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-disability-person-what-finishing-school-is-like-for-youth-with-intellectual-disability-183223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Coffey, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Newcastle

Gender-based violence, particularly sexual harassment, is a serious and persistent problem across the workforce.

But our new research paints a concerning picture of the extent of the problem in the hospitality industry.

We interviewed 124 hospitality workers in Melbourne and Newcastle from a range of different bars, restaurants and cafes.

We found young women, queer and gender diverse workers are on the front line in responding to and managing the threat of gender-based violence in their venues.

Women bar workers were also routinely seen as “better suited” to manage the threat of violence.

Read more:
Welcome to your first job: expect to be underpaid, bullied, harassed or exploited in some way

‘The line is clear’

Gendered dynamics are particularly stark in service labour.

Enduring sexual harassment was described as a routine “part of the job” for young people, particularly in women in bar work.

Workers insisted the line between friendliness and harassment from patrons in bar work is “very clear”. Karen*, a bar worker from Melbourne, said

The line is very clear. I think it’s as soon as you feel unsafe in a situation, it’s like ‘don’t say to me, anything explicit about what you want to do with me’. That’s obviously, deeply inappropriate. I’m serving you a drink.

Read more:
72% of Australians have been sexually harassed. The system we have to fix this problem is set up to fail

Ben, a barista in Newcastle, wanted management to clearly designate “the line” for what is “acceptable” or “unacceptable” behaviour, rather than placing responsibility on the individual to “speak out”.

Why is it not standardised across venues? I feel like that line [calling out bad behaviour] is dictated by your superiors.

Workers like Ben, whose managers didn’t have processes for protecting staff, meant risks had to be assessed and navigated by workers on their own. Learning how to manage harassing or abusive customers was considered a normal and essential part of the job, particularly impacting women, gender diverse and queer workers.

Women routinely expected to manage violence

In our study, women bar workers were regularly called upon to defuse violent or aggressive patrons. Women were expected to be “calmer” and “kinder”, creating significant risk of harm for them.

Felicity, a Melbourne bar worker, said:

If a guy is in for a bit of argie [looking to fight], the absolute worst thing you can do is send a male bar member to deal with it […] Women can deescalate that situation far better, nine times out of ten.

A pub worker from Newcastle, Stan, said:

Some guys just want to kick off and will start a fight over anything […] It doesn’t matter what you do in those situations, you’re pretty much fucked. Unless you’re a female [staff member], to be honest.

This expectation to manage violence is an unrecognised extra form of gendered labour which women are primarily expected to undertake.

Women, queer and gender diverse workers also described instances of being spat at, followed home, and threats of physical and sexual violence.

Given the scale and breadth of gendered violence against women, the normalised position that women are “better suited” to manage violence is risky and exploitative.

Five recommendations to change the industry

We suggest five recommendations targeting employers, policy and resourcing to create change in the industry.

1. new policies for addressing sexual harassment in front-of-house service labour are needed. This includes processes for registering and resolving complaints, investigations and outcomes, which should be developed by government and industry in consultation with workers

2. the hospitality industry should develop tailored approaches, in line with the new positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act, to support businesses and venues to prevent and respond to sexual harassment. This should address key areas such as effective education and training. It should also focus on recording all instances of gender-based violence so the true scale of the problem can be better understood and monitored over time

3. hospitality management strategies should implement a “zero tolerance” approach to account for, and reduce the risk of, sexual and gender-based harassment. Behavioural expectations between workers, and workers and employers, should be discussed and agreed upon

4. hospitality venues must continue to improve gender equity across all staffing positions to support developing skills and the value of diverse experience in hospitality

5. increased state and federal funding is needed for local organisations to deliver training, resources and campaigning tailored for hospitality workers based on their experiences. This will lead to better outcomes in the industry.

These changes can create safer and more respectful workplaces for all.

*All names attributed to quotes from participants in this study are pseudonyms.

Julia Coffey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

David Farrugia receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Lena Molnar works for Women with Disabilities Victoria.

Steven Threadgold received funding from the Australian Research Council for this project.

Megan Sharp 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. Gender-based violence is a big concern in hospitality – and women bear the brunt of managing it – https://theconversation.com/gender-based-violence-is-a-big-concern-in-hospitality-and-women-bear-the-brunt-of-managing-it-212107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hayley O’Neill, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University

Your nose is running, your head hurts and you feel like you’re coming down with a cold. You’re settling in on the couch for a sick day. Then you reach for the snacks.

When you’re sick, your appetite often decreases. So why, at other times, do you crave sugary treats and carbohydrate-loaded comfort foods?

A food craving goes beyond a mere desire to eat, it encompasses a complex mix of emotional, behavioural, cognitive and physiological processes. Whether it’s the need for a quick energy source or a temporary relief from discomfort, our bodies and minds work in tandem to drive our food preferences.

Here we’ll explore the science behind why our bodies crave sugar and carbs – especially when we’re sick.

Read more:
3 reasons you feel hungrier and crave comfort foods when the weather turns cold

Fuelling the immune system

When sickness strikes, our immune system springs into action, requiring additional energy to combat invaders.

This heightened activity often leads to an increase in our metabolic rate, energy demands and nutritional requirements.

Sugary treats and carbs are quick sources of energy, satisfying this increased demand.

But while a high sugar diet during times of illness may help meet increased metabolic demands, it could also exacerbate the immune and inflammatory response, potentially impeding recovery.

In the longer term, high-sugar diets promote chronic inflammation, alter gut microbiota composition, and are associated with chronic disease. For a well-functioning immune system, aim for a balanced intake of fruits, vegetables, fibre, protein, and low-glycaemic carbohydrates.

The stress response

Being sick is stressful for the body. Acute mild or intense stress, like we’d see if we’re sick, boosts the “flight or fight” hormones adrenaline and cortisol. This mobilises stored energy to meet increased demands, but it can also curb appetite.

Prolonged stress can disrupt energy balance, and cause nutritional deficiencies and alterations in gut and brain functions. This can reduce a person’s threshold for craving sugar and salt, increasing their preferences towards energy-dense foods.

The stress hormone cortisol can also increase your preference for high-calorie, comfort foods, which can temporarily alleviate stress.

Read more:
What happens in our body when we encounter and fight off a virus like the flu, SARS-CoV-2 or RSV?

The brain’s reward system

Comfort foods trigger your brain’s reward system, releasing feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.

But “sugar rushes” are often short-lived and can lead to decreased alertness and heightened fatigue within an hour of consumption.

The link between carbohydrates (which the body converts to sugar) and serotonin can be traced back to 1971 when researchers found elevated tryptophan levels (serotonin’s precursor) in rats’ plasma and brains after a carbohydrate-rich diet.

Subsequent studies in humans established connections between carbohydrates and mood, especially in relation to obesity, depression and seasonal affective disorder. Therapies enhancing serotonin have since been shown to reduce carbohydrate intake.

Remarkably, around 90% of serotonin production occurs in the gut. The vast microbial population in our gut exerts a potent influence on immunity, metabolism and appetite.

Recent mouse studies have even identified specific microbes linked to sugar binges after antibiotic treatment.

Some people eat less when they’re sick

Not everyone craves sugar and carbs when they are sick. Some people eat less for a few reasons:

• they have less of an appetite. While ghrelin (the “hunger” hormone) levels might initially rise, prolonged illness can suppress appetite due to nausea, fatigue and discomfort. Critically ill patients have reduced food intake and are at risk of malnutrition

• metabolic adaptation. The body might slow specific metabolic processes to conserve energy, reducing overall calorie requirements

• altered taste perception. Taste is an important component that affects both appetite and energy intake. Alterations in taste and smell is a common symptom when we are sick and was common with COVID

• consuming fluids like water, tea or broths might be more appealing and manageable than solid foods. These fluids provide hydration but contribute minimally to calorie intake.

Read more:
What to eat when you have COVID – and why reaching for the chicken soup is not a bad idea

Hayley O’Neill is a wellness coach for Hayley M O’Neill Enterprises.

– ref. Why do I crave sugar and carbs when I’m sick? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-crave-sugar-and-carbs-when-im-sick-210565

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

Our cities are complex places of work, industry and residential activities. This often makes it hard to pin down the spread of different contaminants throughout them.

This can be a concern, especially given mounting evidence there is no “safe” limit of exposure for many of the chemicals we use in our daily lives. The connections between contamination, food, water and human health add to these concerns.

Measuring contamination in soil or dust is a good start. But this can only tell us the level of a contaminant at the place it was sampled. Our two new studies have used backyard bees to better monitor contamination in urban environments.

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

The buzz behind biomonitoring

When it comes to understanding contamination, honey bees can do the hard work for us. While foraging for nectar, pollen and water, bees are constantly picking up contaminants from their environment. Because we know their lifespan and approximate foraging range, chemical analysis can provide a snapshot of the levels of contaminants in their foraging area at that time.

With the help of backyard beekeepers, our two studies traced toxic metals and antimicrobial resistance genes across two urban centres: Sydney, Australia, and Nouméa, New Caledonia.

European honey bees have long been used as sentinel species to monitor for pests and diseases, including Varroa mites and chemicals at airports. Bees can also be used as biomonitors to understand contaminants across our urban environments.

As the popularity of urban beekeeping has grown, there has been more research on honey bee biomonitoring of a range of contaminants, including metals, pesticides and so-called “forever chemicals”, known as PFAS, in honey.

Read more:
Controversial ‘forever chemicals’ could be phased out in Australia under new restrictions. Here’s what you need to know

How bees help us map pollution

Honey bees can reveal patterns of contamination that might otherwise go unnoticed.

In Nouméa, we used honey bees to map impacts from the local nickel smelter. We found levels of metals associated with the smelter – nickel, chromium and cobalt – were elevated next to the smelter and decreased farther away.

This might not sound surprising given the smelter is a major source of pollution. However, comparing the data from bees to soil and dust samples revealed bees were the most sensitive and effective marker of smelter contamination.

By mapping trace metals in honey bees in Sydney we could look at the specific factors contributing to metal pollution within their foraging range. For the neurotoxic metal lead, we found residential and industrial activity were key influences, especially in heavily populated inner-city areas.

In contrast, less populated locations and larger areas of parks or farms had higher levels of manganese. This likely came from natural soil sources and pesticide use.

We also examined how bees can help us understand emerging concerns such as the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes. It’s a key concern in urban areas, driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics.

We found these AMR genes were common across Sydney – 83% of bees examined had ingested one or more of the genes we looked for. The source was not strongly linked to industrial activity, but rather the area of water bodies available for the bees to drink from. This may be because these genes can enter the environment through human wastewater and runoff and then be absorbed by foraging bees.

Read more:
Gutter to gut: How antimicrobial-resistant microbes journey from environment to humans

How do contaminants affect bees?

We also wanted to know if bees that contained contaminants were actually ingesting them. Our analyses showed contaminants build up within the bee over time and were not present on their exterior. We compared metal concentrations in matched samples of washed and unwashed bees and they were no different, indicating contaminants were inside the bee. Further, metal concentrations were higher in older, dead bees at the end of their lives than in the younger bees.

Using high-resolution imaging, we found only organic non-metal particles on the outside of bees. This may be because bees have very good self-cleaning habits. These behaviours also keep hives free from parasites and fungi brought in by foraging bees.

Research has shown exposure to contaminants including metals and neonicotinoid insecticides can impair honey bee development, foraging ability and survival.

Read more:
How clean is your city? Just ask the bees

And what’s in their honey?

Both honey producers and consumers want to know if their honey is safe to eat. While we previously identified some commercial honeys are adulterated with sugar syrups, this new work focused on potentially toxic trace metals in the honey.

The good news is we found trace metals in honey at very low levels that do not pose a concern. In Nouméa, the main smelter element, nickel, was more than 30 times lower in honey than in the bees.

We found similar outcomes in the mining town of Broken Hill, Australia where lead levels in honey were ten times lower than in the bees themselves.

Read more:
‘Honeygate’ deepens as new tests reveal 27% of brands are adulterated

Bees aren’t the only biomonitors

The lessons from this work have led the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria, with which we are all affiliated, to explore the use of biomonitors (honey bees, house sparrows and birds of prey) in its ongoing environmental contaminant research. As a science-based regulator, the EPA uses these types of studies to better understand the presence, uptake and dispersal of contaminants and protect environmental and human health.

Earth is facing a multitude of interlacing environmental challenges including biodiversity loss, climate change, population growth and pervasive chemical pollution. More comprehensive monitoring, including surveillance using bees, will allow us to respond more quickly and effectively to environmental health challenges.

Mark Patrick Taylor received funding via an Australian Government Citizen Science Grant (2017-2020), CSG55984 ‘Citizen insights to the composition and risks of household dust’ (the DustSafe project). The VegeSafe and DustSafe programs are supported by publication donations to Macquarie University. He is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist.

Kara Fry is a Senior Health Risk Adviser at EPA Victoria. This research was completed for her Master of Research and supported by a Macquarie University Research Excellence stipend.

Max M Gillings is involved in research affiliated with and funded by EPA Victoria.

– ref. How bees can monitor pollution for us – everything from toxic metals to antimicrobial resistance – https://theconversation.com/how-bees-can-monitor-pollution-for-us-everything-from-toxic-metals-to-antimicrobial-resistance-211739

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura de Zwaan, Lecturer, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, Griffith University

This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining Australia’s cost of living crisis. Read the other articles in the series here.

It’s no secret that the cost of living has increased substantially over the last year, with rises of between 7.1 and 9.6 per cent for all households. So what can households do to manage these increases?

It might sound simple, but starting with a budget is the best approach. Even if you already have a budget, price increases mean it will need to be updated. For those new to budgeting, it is just a list of your income and expenses.

Make sure you match the frequency of these so you are working out your budget over a week, or a fortnight, or a month. There are plenty of budgeting apps and websites that can help, such as the Moneysmart budget planner.

Once your budget is up to date, you can see your financial position. Do you have a surplus of cash – congratulations! You can save that money to help you in an emergency.

But what about if you have less income than expenses? You need to work through a process of figuring out where you can cut back.

Some expenses are easy to cut back on:

• If you have multiple streaming services, drop back to one at a time. Check for any other subscriptions you might be paying for – if you are not using them frequently, now is the time to cancel. You can always resubscribe when money isn’t tight.

• If you are spending a lot of money on take out or paying for lunch, find cheaper alternatives such as eating at home and packing a lunch using cheaper ingredients. Switch to tap water for normal drinks, and take a travel cup of coffee with you.

• Check and see if public transport is cheaper for you. If you are using a lot of fuel and paying for parking, public transport could be a better option.

• Groceries can be a huge cost for families. It is always worth shopping around to not pay full price. Understand unit pricing and buy the products you use when they are on special. It might be necessary to switch to cheaper products.

• Check if you are paying too much for your utilities like internet, electricity and gas. There are comparison websites you can use, including the Energy Made Easy website. You can also make simple changes such as turning off lights and using a saucepan lid when boiling water that will reduce your usage.

• Check other products you might be paying for, such as car, home and health insurance to see if you can save money by switching. Be careful with any life or disability policies. It is best to speak to a financial adviser before changing those as there can be implications for cover.

Other expenses, like housing, can be a lot harder to manage.

Rising interest rates have pushed up mortgage repayments for homeowners. Mortgage interest charges have risen by 78.9% over the year to March 2023. For many homeowners, their repayments are unaffordable compared to when they first took out their mortgage.

If you are struggling to afford your mortgage, the first step is to talk to your lender as soon as possible. Moneysmart has useful information on what to do when you can’t meet your mortgage payments.

You may also be able to access some of your superannuation so you don’t lose your home, however bear in mind that this is a temporary solution and uses your retirement savings.

Increased demand for rentals has seen average rents across Australia increase by 27.4% since the COVID pandemic. Supply of rental properties is low, which means many people may not be able to find a suitable alternative if their rent increases and becomes unaffordable.

It might be necessary to take on a housemate, or move to a cheaper location (make sure to consider additional costs such as transport). If your circumstances have changed suddenly and you cannot pay your rent, contact your landlord or property manager.

If you are paying a lot in credit card or other personal debt repayments such as numerous Afterpay-style accounts, it could be a good idea to speak to a bank about consolidating.

This can help move some expensive debt, such as that from credit cards, into lower interest debt and simplify your budgeting as there is only one payment. If debt is making your budget unmanageable, then you can call the National Debt Helpline or for First Nations Australians there is Mob Strong Debt Help.

A final option could be to increase your income by taking on more work. This can be a good solution, but if you already work full time it might be unsustainable. Two common side hustles to boost income are gig work, such as Uber driving, and multi-level marketing, which is selling goods like Doterra and Herbalife to family and friends.

However, both are low paid and in most cases you would be better off earning minimum wage as a casual employee.

Laura de Zwaan has received funding from Ecstra Foundation and the Financial Basics Foundation. She is a member of the Financial Planning Academic Forum and has previously been a member of the Wealth Academy Advisory Board.

– ref. Shop around, take lunch, catch the bus. It is possible to ease the squeeze on your budget – https://theconversation.com/shop-around-take-lunch-catch-the-bus-it-is-possible-to-ease-the-squeeze-on-your-budget-210895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace Russell, Lecturer from the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University

I’ve been talking to my film students lately about the way that viewing contexts affect how we receive a film – whether this means different hardware, locations, moods and modes of engaging.

While many of these conversations have been around the value that can be found in any kind of viewing, the perceived ideal still seems to be the darkened theatre, with a fellow audience. The Melbourne International Film Festival gives such a fantastic opportunity for coming together like this for two weeks of really concentrated cinema experiences, a welcome retreat from winter.

While the dozen or so films I managed to see can’t be fully representative, they offer a sample of some of the different kinds of cinema experience MIFF 2023 had on offer. Here’s a rough top five:

Walk Up (Hong Sang-Soo, South Korea, 2022)

Hong Sang-Soo has directed 28 features since 1996, and they are nearly always a festival highlight for me in that their effects last a lot longer than my immediate reception. I’m always thinking about these films days, weeks, months later.

Part of the difficulty in writing about Hong’s work is that conversations among fans can feel exclusionary, heading immediately into auteurist gushing about form and repeated character types. This repetition is one of the real pleasures of encountering his work.

If you’ve never seen a Hong film, you can expect slow, realist plots about relationships (romantic, familial). Austere cinematography (locked-off mid shots are a favourite). Protagonists who are barely veiled Mary-Sues, usually filmmakers themselves, sometimes novelists or film professors. Expect excessive drinking, the tables packed with empty soju bottles.

The “puzzle film” is usually used to refer to a director like Christopher Nolan, but Hong could not be further from that (a common, facile comparison is made between him and Woody Allen, a more robust one for me is Eric Rohmer).

Nevertheless, his movies are a delightful, abstruse puzzle box, where getting to know a character requires careful observation of not only what they say but how they behave.

In Walk Up, the filmmaker protagonist Byung-Soo (Hong regular Kwon Hae-Hyo), adult daughter in tow, visits an old girlfriend who owns a four-storey apartment building. Over a four-part structure, we make occasional jumps forward in time, from the evening with the friend and daughter, to a growing relationship with the proprietor of the second-floor restaurant, to our hero’s occupancy of the top floor with a new girlfriend possibly years later. The final part returns us to the beginning, with the filmmaker again encountering his daughter on the evening where the first chapter ended.

It’s so satisfying to slowly see commonalities unfold across the four parts. How, late in each chapter, a character leaves the building and the others spend the remainder of that chapter awaiting their return. How entitled, pompous Byung-Soo is looked after by the women around him, all of whom, in very different ways, are concerned about his health.

I note how poorly Barbie performed in South Korea, and how despite their strength and power, Hong’s women are often still beholden to his comically self-assured, quixotically dreamy – or just deluded? – men.

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt, US, 2022)

It’s fascinating how the most interesting hot teen actresses of my adolescence now play frumps in films by female auteurs. Beautiful Michelle Williams’ dowdiness here rivals even Kirsten Dunst’s in The Beguiled or The Power of the Dog. You would never believe this croc-clad, slouching woman was playing Marilyn Monroe 12 years ago.

A ceramicist slogging away at administrative work for an art centre, Lizzy’s (Williams) life is the series of dismissals and microaggressions that plague anyone made invisible by a shy manner and complete dearth of pizzazz in appearance or personality. As she prepares for her own exhibition, Lizzy is overshadowed by the success of her charismatic but flaky colleague and landlord Jo (a brilliant turn by Hong Chau). Jo’s popularity is even more galling because she is weeks behind on fixing Lizzy’s water heater and keeps saddling her with caring for an injured pigeon.

This film manages to make a joke out of the po-faced ludicrousness of the art world, while never (for me at least) making fun of art or artists themselves. It’s a fine line to walk, but one that I found tethered by Lizzy’s ability to subtly, gracefully, if unwillingly shoulder the worry, responsibility and labour that is necessary for making creativity bear fruit.

This is the funniest of Williams and Reichardt’s collaborations, but still grounded in their usual quietness and honesty.

Femme (Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, UK, 2023)

The moment Femme ended, the stranger to my right turned to me and said, “Wow, that was intense hey? My friend edited that!”, and all I could reply was “Kudos to your friend!”

This film is complete white-knuckle suspense through its brief runtime, though the homophobic violence that prompts its revenge narrative is really hard to stomach.

I was reminded of how many rape-revenge films don’t seem to understand that revenge is only satisfying if the survivor gets away with it. In Femme, the satisfaction at the end is knowing that beautiful, tender hero Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), has the love of his community, and all the things that made a closeted, abusive bigot want to hurt him are also his strength and grace.

And that sometimes we don’t want to see bullies learn the error of their ways – we just want to see them left out in the cold.

Gush (Fox Maxy, US, 2023)

This was the only festival screening I went to that was sparsely attended, and I think this is partly because the program seemed confused on how to describe it – it’s an experimental film, which they appropriately describe as “maximalist”.

The editing is unrelenting, with layers of sound collage and grainy digital shots of nature overlaid with MySpace-aesthetic animations, auto-tune, scenes of live theatre and TV clips of Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell. There’s also director Maxy dancing with friends or chatting to them in the car about men they know on Instagram, and I feel like the impulse – in a festival context – is to tell you what all this is ABOUT, some decisive statement that makes the whole film cohere.

Read more:
The best films at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival

This feels anathema to experimental film, which does sometimes intersect with the essay film (with an argument and something to say), but doesn’t have to. My reception of Gush was primarily aesthetic – I got a very tactile impression of the life Maxy was living at particular points while making this, and while the film is informed by relation to land, the digital era, indigeneity, trauma and gender it didn’t feel like it was making laboured statements about any of those things, as such. Rather, they give it its form.

Also – as I see someone clever on Letterboxd saying, it reads like “a series of bitchy Jonas Mekas TikToks”. A very funny comparison!

Phenomena (Dario Argento, Italy, 1985)

This was part of the festival’s Argento retrospective – new restoration prints of the horror and giallo master’s classics. And 1985’s lurid hallucination Phenomena is a total blast. It concerns a teenager (Jennifer Connelly) arriving at a foreign boarding school and encountering a serial killer targeting young women (well, the latter is a feature of nearly every Argento film).

There’s also a discovery that she can communicate with bugs telepathically, a sleepwalking affliction and a kindly wheelchair-bound etymologist (Donald Pleasance) and his support chimpanzee. The ludicrous plot is barely the point, though, as the film is primarily governed by a sense of dream logic, with one event linked to the next in the most tenuous fashion, and aided by an operatic 1980s rock soundtrack that completely knocks.

Phenomena culminates in a long set-piece where Connelly descends into a nightmarish underground complex, falls into a pit of maggots and decaying bodies (this scene actually made me retch), is chased by a deformed child, escapes via a boat which catches fire, summons a protective swarm of insects, and seems to have been saved only to have the antagonists fall and rise again in true slasher style.

The final minute involves a rescue so ridiculous the whole audience burst into celebratory laughter and applause. You can watch a film nearly anywhere, but you need to be in the cinema for that kind of delightful experience.

Grace Russell 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 five best films at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival – https://theconversation.com/the-five-best-films-at-this-years-melbourne-international-film-festival-210965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rafal Chomik, Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), UNSW Sydney

The Australian government has just released the latest iteration of its Intergenerational Report, the sixth since the first was published in 2002.

Each provides a snapshot of the sort of Australia in which future generations will find themselves in 40 years’ time, should current government policies continue.

Previous reports have dealt mainly with the impact of an older age profile on government budgets and our way of life. This one also made space for the impact of climate change.

1. Increasing optimism about ageing

The good news for future budgets in this report is that, although Australia’s population will still age rapidly, it is expected to age more slowly than previously thought.

The chart below shows the projections in each of the six reports for the proportion of the population aged 65 and over.

In 2002, the first intergenerational report predicted that by 2023 the share of the population aged 65 and over would have climbed from 12.5% to nearly 19%, and then would rise to 24.5% by 2042.

Yet, in the intervening years, Australia saw an unanticipated migration boom, which slowed that rate of ageing so that today only 17.3% of the population is aged 65 and over, and the projection for 2063 is 23.4%, less than the 24.5% originally expected for 2042.

These updated projections suggest that by 2063 Australia’s population will be younger than that of Italy now, or Japan a decade ago.

And ageing will slow further if net migration climbs higher than the 235,000 per year assumed in the latest report. A more reasonable migration assumption might be that it will in fact increase alongside increases in the total population.

2. Increased optimism about willing workers

The projections for labour force participation (the proportion of the adult population who are either working or making themselves available for work) have become more optimistic with each intergenerational report.

While participation is still expected to drop, the latest projection is for more of a glide than a dive, leaving participation higher in 2063 than it was in 2002.

As the report puts it, participation is projected to decline from a record high of 66.6% in 2023 to 63.8% by 2063.

The gentle slope of the decline reflects offsetting forces. More of us will be older and less able to work, but within most age groups, more of us will be in work.

3. Increased optimism about the cost of the pension

More optimistic demographic projections and sensible policy choices have resulted in less extreme increases in age-related spending.

Spending on pensions is projected to fall rather than climb as a share of the economy, falling from 2.3% to 2% of GDP. This is by design.

While in other countries pensions are more generous and increase with earnings, in Australia the age pension is more modest and reduces with means.

By pairing the age pension with superannuation, which increases people’s means in retirement, pension spending falls.

By the 2060s, pension spending in Australia will be less than half the rate of the next lowest-spending OECD country (though admittedly that comparison ignores tax expenditures on super).

4. Increased optimism about spending on health

Government spending on health as a proportion of GDP is still projected to increase, from 4.6% now to 6.2% in 2063, but is expected to remain well short of the first intergenerational report’s projection of more than 8% by 2042.

Only 40% of this projected increase in health spending is due to ageing, which ought not to be the least bit surprising.

As people and societies grow richer and satisfy more of their basic needs, they naturally want to spend more of what they have on extending their lives and improving their health, demanding more and better healthcare from government.

5. Increased pessimism about the cost of aged care

Spending on aged care is set to grow more than many other types of spending, albeit from a low base.

The Intergenerational Report has it doubling from 1.1% of GDP in to 2.5% in 2063.

The projection may well be an underestimate. Governments are yet to fully respond to demands for greater quality of care set out in the report of the royal commission into aged care quality and safety.

6. Increased pessimism about living standards

When it comes to resources for meeting the needs we need to meet, the Nobel prizewinning economist Paul Krugman famously noted in 1994 that productivity wasn’t everything, but in the long run it was “almost everything”.

Productivity growth, and assumptions about future productivity growth, have continued to decline with almost every intergenerational report.

The assumption for long-term productivity growth in this report is 1.2%, down from 1.75% in the 2002 intergenerational report.

The difference this makes is enormous. The 2002 intergenerational report had living standards (GDP per person) climbing 90% in 40 years. This latest intergenerational report has them climbing only 57% in the next 40 years.

7. A deteriorating Commonwealth budget

While slower ageing means this report predicts the government’s future budget deficits will be lower than those projected in all previous reports bar one, the budget is expected to be in a deepening deficit for much of the next 40 years.

Naturally, this can be fixed with more tax, but the projected lower rate of productivity growth means there will be relatively less to tax than was expected in the first intergenerational report in 2002.

Launching the report at the National Press Club, Treasurer Jim Chalmers talked about the need for action now on multiple fronts, saying there would “never be a quiet time to think about the future”.

But on raising more tax he was silent, suggesting it was a question for the future.

Read more:
The intergenerational report sets the scene for 2063 – but what is it?

Rafal Chomik works for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research which receives funding from the ARC.

– ref. Slower ageing, but slower economic growth: the Intergenerational Report in 7 charts – https://theconversation.com/slower-ageing-but-slower-economic-growth-the-intergenerational-report-in-7-charts-211695

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Crellin, PhD Student / FNRS Aspirant, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)

As the world warms and the climate changes, people are experiencing more frequent and intense extreme weather events. Just this year, heatwaves blasted southern Europe, the United States and China; wildfires lit up Greece, Canada and Maui in Hawaii; and winter storms froze large parts of the US.

Our new research explores the connection between extreme weather events in Australia and public interest in climate change or global warming between 2009 and 2020. We found that bushfires, storms and floods tended to focus attention on climate change. But, crucially, the effect was short-lived and varied depending on the type of weather event.

In between extreme events, the level of interest in climate change does not appear to be increasing over time. This is despite developments in the science attributing extreme weather events to climate change, and the growing
tendency of the media to make these connections.

Climate activists and policymakers may be able to use these “focusing events” to raise awareness and harness support for stronger action.

Read more:
Why are so many climate records breaking all at once?

Do bushfires, storms and floods garner attention?

We collected data on extreme weather events from the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub, which is managed by the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience.

We concentrated on the bushfires, storms and floods that occurred in Australia between 2008 and 2020.

Using the Google Trends intensity index to measure people’s attention, we analysed the use of the search terms “climate change” and “global warming” in the months following each event.

We found more searches for climate change and global warming during the month of, and immediately after, an extreme weather event.

However, such heightened attention was rather short-lived. And there were differences in the intensity and duration of this attention, depending on the type of weather event.

Read more:
Yes, climate change is bringing bushfires more often. But some ecosystems in Australia are suffering the most

Major bushfires generated intense and sustained interest. During the month of a major bushfire, attention to climate change increased. The level of attention was higher still one month after the bushfire, and remained elevated for about four months.

Extreme storms prompted the most intense search activity but the effect did not last long. Attention to climate change dissipated one month after the storm.

Major flooding events did not appear to generate significant attention to climate change. This suggests Australians are more likely to think of climate change in terms of its tendency to cause hotter, drier weather, and less inclined to appreciate how it can cause wetter weather as well.

Although there is a growing trend within the media to underscore the connection between extreme weather events and climate change over the past decade, this does not seem to be generating more climate attention. For instance, while the Black Summer bushfires drove an exceptional uptick in climate attention, the same occurred during the Black Saturday bushfires a decade earlier.

Read more:
Here’s why climate change isn’t always to blame for extreme rainfall

It’s worth paying attention to attention

Australia has been described as “the petri-dish of climate change”. Our continent is prone to a variety of severe climate impacts such as droughts, floods, fires, storms and coral bleaching, and yet we’re also one of the world’s worst climate laggards.

Understanding how Australians respond to extreme weather events could serve as a much-needed catalyst for national climate progress.

But increased climate ambition is not guaranteed to flow from these destructive events. That’s because climate attention is quite short-lived, and not always as intense as one might hope.

We believe our research can help activists and policymakers capitalise on the increased intensity and duration of public interest in climate change following extreme events and translate that attention into a sustained appetite for climate policy action.

Read more:
Fear and Wonder podcast: how scientists attribute extreme weather events to climate change

Christopher Crellin receives funding from Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique.

Robert MacNeil 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. Bushfires focus public attention on climate change for months, but it’s different for storms and floods – https://theconversation.com/bushfires-focus-public-attention-on-climate-change-for-months-but-its-different-for-storms-and-floods-212096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University

The Y chromosome is a never-ending source of fascination (particularly to men) because it bears genes that determine maleness and make sperm. It’s also small and seriously weird; it carries few genes and is full of junk DNA that makes it horrendous to sequence.

However, new “long-read” sequencing techniques have finally provided a reliable sequence from one end of the Y to the other. The paper describing this Herculean effort has been published in Nature.

The findings provide a solid base to explore how genes for sex and sperm work, how the Y chromosome evolved, and whether – as predicted – it will disappear in a few million years.

Making baby boys

We have known for about 60 years that specialised chromosomes determine birth sex in humans and other mammals. Females have a pair of X chromosomes, whereas males have a single X and a much smaller Y chromosome.

The Y chromosome is male-determining because it bears a gene called SRY, which directs the development of a ridge of cells into a testis in the embryo. The embryonic testes make male hormones, and these hormones direct the development of male features in a baby boy.

Without a Y chromosome and a SRY gene, the same ridge of cells develops into an ovary in XX embryos. Female hormones then direct the development of female features in the baby girl.

A DNA junkyard

The Y chromosome is very different from X and the 22 other chromosomes of the human genome. It is smaller and bears few genes (only 27 compared to about 1,000 on the X).

These include SRY, a few genes required to make sperm, and several genes that seem to be critical for life – many of which have partners on the X.
Many Y genes (including the sperm genes RBMY and DAZ) are present in multiple copies. Some occur in weird loops in which the sequence is inverted and genetic accidents that duplicate or delete genes are common.

The Y also has a lot of DNA sequences that don’t seem to contribute to traits. This “junk DNA” is comprised of highly repetitive sequences that derive from bits and pieces of old viruses, dead genes and very simple runs of a few bases repeated over and over.

This last DNA class occupies big chunks of the Y that literally glow in the dark; you can see it down the microscope because it preferentially binds fluorescent dyes.

Read more:
We discovered a missing gene fragment that’s shedding new light on how males develop

Why the Y is weird

Why is the Y like this? Blame evolution.

We have a lot of evidence that 150 million years ago the X and Y were just a pair of ordinary chromosomes (they still are in birds and platypuses). There were two copies – one from each parent – as there are for all chromosomes.

Then SRY evolved (from an ancient gene with another function) on one of these two chromosomes, defining a new proto-Y. This proto-Y was forever confined to a testis, by definition, and subject to a barrage of mutations as a result of a lot of cell division and little repair.

The proto-Y degenerated fast, losing about 10 active genes per million years, reducing the number from its original 1,000 to just 27. A small “pseudoautosomal” region at one end retains its original form and is identical to its erstwhile partner, the X.

There has been great debate about whether this degradation continues, because at this rate the whole human Y would disappear in a few million years (as it already has in some rodents).

Read more:
Men are slowly losing their Y chromosome, but a new sex gene discovery in spiny rats brings hope for humanity

Sequencing Y was a nightmare

The first draft of the human genome was completed in 1999. Since then, scientists have managed to sequence all the ordinary chromosomes, including the X, with just a few gaps.

They’ve done this using short-read sequencing, which involves chopping the DNA into little bits of a hundred or so bases and reassembling them like a jigsaw.

But it’s only recently that new technology has allowed sequencing of bases along individual long DNA molecules, producing long-reads of thousands of bases. These longer reads are easier to distinguish and can therefore be assembled more easily, handling the confusing repetitions and loops of the Y chromosome.

The Y is the last human chromosome to have been sequenced end-to-end, or T2T (telomere-to-telomere). Even with long-read technology, assembling the DNA bits was often ambiguous, and researchers had to make several attempts at difficult regions – particularly the highly repetitive region.

So what’s new on the Y?

Spoiler alert – the Y turns out to be just as weird as we expected from decades of gene mapping and the previous sequencing.

A few new genes have been discovered, but these are extra copies of genes that were already known to exist in multiple copies. The border of the pseudoautosomal region (which is shared with the X) has been pushed a bit further toward the tip of the Y chromosome.

We now know the structure of the centromere (a region of the chromosome that pulls copies apart when the cell divides), and have a complete readout of the complex mixture of repetitive sequences in the fluorescent end of the Y.

But perhaps the most important outcome is how useful the findings will be for scientists all over the world.

Some groups will now examine the details of Y genes. They will look for sequences that might control how SRY and the sperm genes are expressed, and to see whether genes that have X partners have retained the same functions or evolved new ones.

Others will closely examine the repeated sequences to determine where and how they originated, and why they were amplified. Many groups will also analyse the Y chromosomes of men from different corners of the world to detect signs of degeneration, or recent evolution of function.

It’s a new era for the poor old Y.

Jenny Graves receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The ‘weird’ male Y chromosome has finally been fully sequenced. Can we now understand how it works, and how it evolved? – https://theconversation.com/the-weird-male-y-chromosome-has-finally-been-fully-sequenced-can-we-now-understand-how-it-works-and-how-it-evolved-212112

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Director, Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre; Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University

There is increasing attention on the lack of progress around sexual harassment and assault on Australian university campuses. On Wednesday, Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledged community concerns, saying “we’re just not doing enough”.

Much of the focus so far has been on students. A 2022 report found one in 20 students had been sexually assaulted, and one in six had been sexually harassed, in a university context since starting their studies.

But staff are also at risk.

Last month, the Universities Accord interim report said sexual assault and harassment on campus are “affecting the wellbeing of students and staff, and their ability to succeed”.

Earlier this week, the National Tertiary Education Union launched a national survey of university staff experiences of workplace sexual harassment.

Our research on workplace sexual harassment in Australia sheds light on university staff experiences of harassment and the inadequacy of responses.

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‘More obviously needs to be done’: how to make Australian universities safe from sexual violence

Our study

In 2022 we conducted a national survey of victim-survivor experiences of workplace sexual harassment in Australia. We received 1,412 responses from a diverse range of industries.

Within this, there were 100 respondents who had experienced workplace sexual harassment while working at an Australian university.

University staff experiences of workplace sexual harassment

Almost all (90%) of the victim-survivors in our survey identified as a woman or female, with 7% identifying as a man or male and 3% as non-binary.

This reflects the gendered nature of workplace sexual harassment.

Almost 80% of our respondents believed their gender contributed to the harassment, while 47% believed their age was a contributor. Revealing well-known patterns of power and control, 40% of perpetrators were identified as being more than 55 years old, and were often in more senior positions compared with the victim-survivor.

No victim-survivors were harassed by a more junior colleague.

Workplace sexual harassment is frequent and ongoing

We invited victim-survivors to detail the frequency and duration of their experience of workplace sexual harassment. Among university staff, we found:

• 23% experienced sexual harassment on a weekly basis

• 21% experienced sexual harassment on a monthly basis

• 31% experienced sexual harassment for more than a year.

These findings point to the ongoing nature of this abuse. Few victim-survivors experienced workplace sexual harassment as a one-off incident.

Witnesses rarely intervene

Among these victim-survivors, incidents of sexual harassment were well known in the university and often involved the same perpetrators. Almost half (46%) said there were witnesses to their experience, with 18% noting four or more people had witnessed the incident. Of those whose victimisation was witnessed, in only 15% of cases did a witness intervene.

Of those surveyed, 71% of the victim-survivors knew someone else who had experienced sexual harassment in the same workplace. And 72% of those also knew their harasser had harassed someone else in that workplace.

This highlights the importance of improving bystanders’ responses, and tackling the underlying culture of silence.

The role of job security

Recent debates have suggested the high numbers of casual staff in universities prevents victim-survivors from coming forward, because they are worried about losing their jobs.

But our research suggests any type of university employee can be at risk.

Half of the university staff who responded to our survey felt their employment was insecure at the time they were sexually harassed. These respondents were not just casual staff, but had both fixed-term and full-time positions.

À lire aussi :
Australian unis could not function without casual staff: it is time to treat them as ‘real’ employees

A lack of consequences

Of those surveyed, 24% of victim-survivors had lodged a formal report or complaint with their university. More than 80% of those victim-survivors were dissatisfied with the response received, and more than 70% said the university did not change anything in an attempt to detect, prevent or better respond to future workplace sexual harassment.

Numerous victim-survivors said they were not aware of any consequences for the perpetrator. But to manage their own safety or as a result of the impacts of the experience, they left the university.

What now?

The union’s survey will increase transparency of the problem, which is a key step. But it is crucial this issue does not become politicised. We have a national plan with a target of eliminating gender-based violence in one generation. Tackling gender-based violence in workplaces will be key to achieving this.

Clare has appointed a working group to provide advice on how universities can “create safer campuses” for students and staff. State and federal education ministers are expecting recommendations before the end of the year. The final Universities Accord report is also due in December.

Peak body Universities Australia has also noted “much more is required of us collectively” when it comes to sexual harm on campuses.

Universities need to take the lead on this issue. They need to create cultures of accountability for perpetrators and processes that support and validate victim-survivors’ experiences. They also need to implement clear actions to prevent sexual harassment and drive cultural change to ensure universities are safe and respectful places for staff and students.

À lire aussi :
The Universities Accord draft contains ‘spiky’ ideas, but puts a question mark over the spikiest one of all

Kate has received funding for family violence related research from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Victorian Government and the Department of Social Services. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her capacity as Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and is wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as Chair of Respect Victoria.

Nicola Helps currently receives funding for family violence related research from the Victorian Government.

Stefani Vasil has received funding from Respect Victoria and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

– ref. Sexual harassment impacts university staff – our research shows how – https://theconversation.com/sexual-harassment-impacts-university-staff-our-research-shows-how-211996