The Albanese government has promised extra funding for health and to extend its top-up of the GST, in exchange for the states undertaking more of the heavy lifting on disability to help curb the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s cost blowout.
Ahead of Thursday’s release of the review into NDIS, the states have agreed to provide more and expanded services for people with disability, both those on the NDIS and those not eligible for it.
These would include, for example, services for children with mild developmental issues, the number of whom on the NDIS has ballooned, contributing to its unsustainable cost escalation.
These services would be delivered through, among other avenues, child care and schools. The changes would be phased in.
Additional costs are to be split on a 50-50 basis between the federal and the state and territory governments.
The Commonwealth has agreed to cap extra spending for states and territories on the new and expanded disability services to ensure the combined package of health and disability reforms would see all states and territories better off.
The federal government aims to limit the rate of growth of the NDIS to 8% a year by 2026. The scheme is expected to cost about $42 billion in 2023–24. Its cost is growing more than 14% annually.
Under the trade off struck at Wednesday’s national cabinet, the Commonwealth will provide $1.2 billion to strengthen Medicare to take some pressure off hospitals.
This will include extra funds for Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said would increase the number of clinics beyond the 58 due to be delivered by the end of the year. The money will also go to reforms in regulatory settings and professional development in the health sector and to support elderly people to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and to be discharged sooner when they are hospitalised.
In a major health move, the Commonwealth contributions under the National Health Reform Agreement will be boosted to 45% over a maximum of 10 year “glide path” from July 1 2025, with 42.5% achieved before 2030. The present contribution is under 40%.
The current 6.5% funding cap will be replaced by a more generous cap. This will be a cumulative cap over 2025-30, which will include a first year “catch up” growth premium.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the extra cost of the new hospitals agreement, which begins in 2025, would be about $13.2 billion from then until the end of the decade.
Stephen Duckett, from the University of Melbourne, welcomed the initiatives, especially the reversal of the downward trend in federal hospital funding. “This means states can expand hospital services to meet the demand,” he said.
The federal government has undertaken to extend the top-up of the GST in its present form for three years from 2027-28. This will cost an extra about $3.5 billion a year.
Chalmers said other aspects of the GST deal legislated in 2018 would remain in place, including reforms that provide Western Australia “with a fair share of GST revenues”.
There have been repeated calls from other states for WA to receive less generous treatment. But with Labor trying to hold on to the extra WA seats it won in 2022, it has every reason to keep the present allocation.
Appearing at a news conference with state and territory leaders, Albanese said: “We end 2023 showing that federal-state relations can truly be harmonised and harnessed in a way that benefits our entire constituency, no matter which state or territory you live in”.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In recent days, three Israeli-linked commercial vessels were targeted by ballistic missiles and drones launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, marking a clear escalation in maritime attacks in the critical Bab el Mandab strait between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
On Sunday, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree reemphasised that all Israeli-affiliated vessels travelling along the Yemeni coast would be fair game if Israel does not cease its attacks on Gaza, which have claimed the lives of at least 15,500 Palestinians since October 7.
The Iranian-backed Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, are insurgents that control most of Yemen’s north, including the nation’s capital, Sana’a.
The group emerged in the 1980s as a political-religious revivalist movement out of the Zaydi sect from Yemen’s northern highlands, namely the ancient city of Saada. The movement’s broad motivations emerged from longstanding grievances that left many Zaydis feeling like second-class citizens within the wider Yemeni social and political order.
Many in the Houthi leadership received religious education in Iran before returning to Yemen in the early 2000s and becoming more politically active. The Houthis are not mere Iranian “proxies”, however. Attempts to portray them as such tend to overemphasise this connection and ignore the indigenous nature and causes of the movement and its ideology.
The group engaged in ongoing struggles against the Ali Abdullah Saleh-led Yemeni government throughout the 2000s, ultimately contributing to its collapse following the 2011 Arab revolts.
Following the Arab Spring and increasing chaos in Yemen, the Houthis gained significant momentum. In 2014, they were able to oust the Saudi-backed transitional government and seize power over much of Yemen, rapidly blitzing into the country’s south – a move that shocked international onlookers in its brazenness and efficacy.
In response, a Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition launched a military intervention, which they believed would rapidly overwhelm the insurgents with their technological superiority.
The operation went awry, however. Thanks to their own tenacity, along with increasing support from Iran, the Houthis were able to bog down the coalition forces into a bloody stalemate. This brought untold misery to the wider Yemeni population, but allowed the Houthis to hold onto power over much of the country’s north. A series of backchannel negotiations led to a halt in the fighting in 2022.
Although peace talks officially commenced in April, Yemen remains in a state of precarious peace. Because this is such a critical time for the Houthis, it begs the question: why are they risking their hard-won gains over a conflict thousands of kilometres away that doesn’t directly involve them?
Why Israel?
The Houthis are part of the so-called “axis of resistance”, an alliance of proxy militant and insurgent groups that Iran has built throughout the region, including in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.
Within this wider context, Israel has attempted to implicate Iran in Red Sea attacks, but Tehran denies it.
To interpret the Houthi attacks on Israel as solely an extension of Iran’s wider geopolitical manoeuvring would be overlooking a crucial Houthi political strategy. The group’s support of the Palestinians is also a way of garnering domestic and regional support for its own position in Yemen.
While many countries in the region have sought a detente with Israel in recent years, it’s clear that support for the Palestinians remains high among the wider Arab population. As such, the Houthis clearly see an opportunity to step into the vacuum and generate positive public opinion for their cause.
This not only strengthens the Houthis’ authority at home, but is also critical to reinforcing the legitimacy of the Houthis as Yemen’s governing authority in the eyes of the international community.
Why is the Bab el Mandab Strait important?
Yemen has always been at the centre of regional geopolitics due to its strategic location on the Bab el Mandab Strait, also known as the “Gate of Tears,” which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond.
Because vessels need to traverse the 30-kilometre-wide strait to travel between Europe and Asia (via the Suez Canal), it serves a pivotal role in global trade and energy security. Oil and natural gas shipments pass through the strait from the Middle East to Europe and North America.
Historically, the strait is no stranger to conflict. In 1973, for instance, Egypt blockaded the strait to prevent ships from reaching Israel during the October war.
The Houthis are aware of how critical this waterway is. And its attacks on the vessels, which may seem to be a nuisance for now, could potentially cause larger problems for Israel and its allies.
For Israel, diverting its shipments to Asia around the southern tip of Africa – instead of through the Red Sea – would significantly increase shipping costs and transit times.
Any disruption to this trading route would have serious global economic costs, as well. Global maritime insurance companies are already hiking their prices and limiting their coverage of high-risk shipping as a direct result of the Houthi attacks.
The Houthi threat also serves to ratchet up the wider tensions in the region, potentially changing the calculus of the US and Israel, who might become more cautious in their actions as a result.
For the Houthis, these provocations are ultimately low cost and high return. Given the insurgent, battle-hardened and dispersed nature of the group, for example, it would be difficult for Israel or its allies to try to respond to the attacks. So, as long as the war in Gaza drags on, the Houthis will likely continue to play a disruptive role and look for new ways to create uncertainty and risk in the region.
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.
The national accounts released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show economic growth slid to a measly 0.2% in the last quarter.
That’s well down from a low 0.4% in the June quarter.
Of course, economic growth is not everything. The national accounts don’t measure, for example, unpaid work at home or caring work, volunteering work, or the state of Australia’s environment.
That said, other things being equal, it is better to have economic growth than a recession. Economic growth creates jobs and opportunities.
The miserably low rate of economic growth unveiled on Wednesday is cause for concern.
GDP per head is shrinking
Among the many reasons for the collapse, the most obvious is high interest rates.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the slump was an “inevitable consequence” of higher interest rates and international uncertainty.
For individual Australians, it was even worse – growth per head went backward, in what some economists call a “per capita recession”.
GDP per capita fell 0.5% in the quarter to be down 0.3% over the year.
Applied specifically to households, the statistics show disposable income per head falling for the second consecutive quarter.
In the September quarter, it slid 1.4% after sliding 1.7% in the June quarter.
Disposable income is buying power adjusted for inflation, net of tax. For households coming off fixed mortgages, the collapse is much greater.
The slide in ready income has forced households in aggregate to as good as stop saving in order to make ends meet.
The household saving ratio has dropped from a peak of 20.4% of income during the COVID lockdowns to just 1.1% – the least in 16 years.
The ultra-low aggregate rate means that while some households are saving, many are using up what they had previously put away.
The real value of household spending grew not at all in the September quarter and climbed only 0.4% over a year in which Australia’s population grew by more than 2.4%.
The Bureau of Statistics said some of the restraint in recorded household spending was a statistical anomaly, caused by the treatment of government measures including electricity rebates and expansion of the childcare subsidies, which saw increased government spending on behalf of households.
The one bright spot identified by the bureau was “large-scale events including the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup” (go Matildas!). This helped push up spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants 0.9% and transport 3.9%.
Productivity turns back up
One positive from the depressing national accounts is that they will cause the Reserve Bank to think harder about whether further interest rate rises are needed.
Chalmers said the figures showed consumption was flat before the bank’s November rate rise, and it was open to the bank to explain “what if anything today’s outcome means for their own forecasts”.
Another bright spot is productivity. After falling for five consecutive quarters, GDP per hour worked climbed 0.9% in the September quarter, allowing the bank to feel more relaxed about wage rises above its inflation target.
The drivers of productivity are complex, with skills and training, management quality, investment, competition and innovation all part of the picture. The Australian treasury published a good overview of what is involved late last year.
In bad news for incomes, Australia’s terms of trade fell 2.6%.
The terms of trade measure the price we get for exports compared to the price we pay for imports. They are down 9% from their peak last year.
Export prices fell by 1.4% in the quarter due to lower prices for coal and gas exports. Import prices climbed 1.2%.
The changed trading environment helped push Australia’s current account back into deficit after five years in which it has been mostly in surplus.
The current account records the value of the flow of goods, services and income between Australian residents and the rest of the world. In the September quarter we sent more money out of Australia than came in.
The current account is volatile. While we have grown used to surpluses, we cannot expect the odds to be ever in our favour.
A more dynamic economy would help. That would mean more creation (and destruction) of companies. More investment in skills and training would help this along.
Greater dynamism is a challenge for everyone – one we have to meet to improve our chances of better news in future national accounts.
Stephen Bartos 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.
Australians woke up this morning to discover they had a nature repair market, after the legislation passed late last night.
Except it won’t be called a market, after amendments by the Greens, and it won’t include biodiversity offsets.
Many experts have been highly sceptical of using market forces to reverse the damage we’ve done to nature. There is some truth to this. Markets seek to find the point of exchange between sellers (here, farmers and landholders) and buyers (fund managers, government and philanthropic organisations). When a government invents a market, it can try to make it appealing to politics, principles and buyers, while buyers work to drive prices and standards down, and volumes up.
But as someone who has run nature-based market mechanisms in Australia for 20 years, I regard the passing of this legislation as a tentative step forwards. Market mechanisms can work, if done right. The sheer scale of what we have done to nature means we need large-scale action. Giving nature repair projects a tradeable value and government-backed quality assurance could help – if it works for both nature and investors.
Even though the bill has passed, there is much detail we are yet to see. And as we all know, the devil is in the detail.
Can a bill like this work without offsets?
When first proposed, conservationists criticised the nature repair bill’s allowance of offsets – essentially, if you clear land for a development in one place, you have to revegetate or protect a similar amount of land elsewhere. That’s because offsets can be seen as an easy solution – pay money and you can still trash nature. Or a developer might rip out scarce threatened species habitat and replant acacias, of which we have a vast amount.
Now the offsets are gone. Or are they? This bill is not the end of the line. The harder debate is yet to come as the government prepares reform of the far bigger Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – the main environmental protection laws we have at federal level, and widely regarded as not currently up to the task.
The government is likely to include offsets in this act rather than the Nature Repair Act. Why? Because development of any kind involves making changes to nature – and we will need a lot of new infrastructure as we work towards net zero, such as transmission lines for renewable energy projects.
The government will want to use offsetting to compensate nature for losses from new infrastructure. If there are no offsets available, you either do the development without trying to repair nature, or don’t do the development at all. The fight over offsetting may only have been kicked down the road.
We will now have a market framework that will make it possible to buy and sell certificates generated by certified nature repair projects.
For example, for koala habitat this could include reducing stock grazing, managing weeds and pest animals and agreeing to a covenant on the land to prevent future habitat loss due to development.
This isn’t the first time we’ve tried to use market forces for nature. Auctions for biodiversity gains, for instance, have worked well in the past and are working now in New South Wales.
There are lessons to learn from the problems the carbon credit market has faced around integrity. But we don’t have to make the same mistakes for a biodiversity market.
A recent review I coauthored of pilots for the previously proposed biodiversity market points to important lessons from earlier efforts. These include the vital importance of reducing upfront costs for landholders who want to get involved and building trust and confidence in the supporting arrangements.
This will require some public investment to support landholders to meet the measurement and planning costs to participate in the market.
Australia needs to act and act quickly to protect and restore nature where further degradation would be difficult or impossible to reverse. We have recognised the need for action and signed up to international commitments to protect and restore 30% of the continent’s lands and waters by 2030.
Many reasons. The main one is the growing recognition of how the health of nature underpins the global economy and traditional investment assets such as agriculture. The World Economic Forum estimates biodiversity credit values could reach A$3 billion by 2030 and $104 billion by 2050.
Demand is rising, driven by regulation, corporate reputation and mission, market edge and attractiveness to investors. Organisations like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures are driving work on nature-related risks and opportunities for finance globally.
Agriculture and other sectors rely on the health of the natural world. Shutterstock
While there has been scepticism about whether the market really exists for nature repair in Australia, there are some signs investors are ready. For instance, Western Australia’s first green bond was greatly oversubscribed at its launch this year, promising to invest in projects with environmental benefits such as energy transition.
We won’t see investing in nature repair ramp up until all necessary laws and regulations are in place, projects begin to generate credits and the risks and opportunities are clear. This could take a couple of years, but could take longer if the reforms to the environment act are held up.
The design of the new market remains unclear and its success in channelling private funds into genuine nature repair will depend on the standards and rules still to be set.
We should set the standard high and make the most of our expertise in good governance, technology and innovation to make Australia’s natural world an attractive place to invest.
Patrick O’Connor has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the South Australian, Victorian, New South Wales and Australian governments including the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust. He is a board director of the Nature Conservation Society of SA, a committee member of the Restoration Decade Alliance and a councillor of the Biodiversity Council.
Australia is braced for a hot, dry summer. El Nino is back, and this year it will occur alongside an Indian Ocean dipole, a climate pattern which will further amplify this hot and dry effect.
Hot weather can place great stress on our bodies. When the environmental conditions exceed the limit at which we can adequately cope, we can suffer from heat-related illnesses.
Heat illnesses can vary, from relatively mild heat exhaustion to the potentially life-threatening condition of heat stroke.
If you’re suffering from heat exhaustion, you may feel weakness, nausea, headaches or dizziness.
Mild symptoms of heat exhaustion can often be treated at home by reducing your levels of physical activity, finding shade, removing excess clothing, hydrating with water and perhaps even taking a cool shower.
If left unchecked, heat exhaustion can progress to the far more serious condition of heat stroke, where your core temperature climbs upwards of 40°C. Symptoms can develop rapidly and may include confusion, disorientation, agitation, convulsions, or it could even result in a coma.
Heat stroke is a medical emergency and requires urgent treatment. Call an ambulance and start rapid, aggressive cooling by immersing the person in cold water (such as a cold bath). If this isn’t possible, apply ice packs to their neck, armpits and groin and cover the skin with lots of cool water.
When it comes to cooling someone with suspected heat stroke, the quicker the better: cool first, transport second.
Why do we overheat?
Environmental conditions play an important role in determining our heat stress risk. If the air temperature, humidity and levels of sun exposure are high, we are much more likely to dangerously overheat.
When the body gets hot, the heart pumps more warm blood to our skin to help lose heat. As air temperature rises, this way of shedding heat becomes ineffective. When air temperature is higher than the temperature of the skin (normally around 35°C), we start gaining heat from our surroundings.
Sweating is by far our most effective physiological means of keeping cool. However, it is the evaporation of sweat from our skin that provides cooling relief.
When the air is humid, it already contains a lot of moisture, and this reduces how efficiently sweat evaporates.
Our physical activity levels and clothing also impact heat stress risk. When we move, our bodies generate metabolic heat as a by-product. The more intense physical activity is, the more heat we must lose to avoid dangerous rises in core temperature.
Finally, clothing can act as an insulator and barrier for the evaporation of sweat, making it even more difficult for us to keep cool.
Who is most vulnerable in the heat?
Some people are at greater risk of developing heat illness than others. This can result from physiological limitations, such as a decreased capacity to sweat, or a reduced capacity to adapt our behaviour. When these two risk factors coincide, it’s a perfect storm of vulnerability.
Take, for example, an elderly outdoor agricultural worker. Being aged over 60, their physiological capacity to sweat is reduced. The worker may also be wearing heavy safety clothing, which may further limit heat loss from the body. If they don’t slow down, seek shelter and adequately hydrate, they become even more vulnerable.
When a person dies of heat stroke – which is relatively easy to diagnose – heat will be listed as a cause of death on a death certificate. Between 2001 and 2018 in Australia, 473 heat-related deaths were officially reported.
However, the true association between heat and death is thought to be far greater, with an estimated 36,000 deaths in Australia between 2006 and 2017.
This is because most people who die during extreme heat events do not die from heat stroke. Instead, they they die of other medical complications such as cardiovascular or renal collapse, as additional strain is placed on essential organs such as the heart and kidneys.
People with underlying health conditions are more likely to succumb to heat-associated complications before they develop critical core temperature (over 40°C) and heat stroke.
In such cases, while the additional physiological strain imposed by the heat probably “caused” the death, the official “cause of death” is often listed as something else, such as a heart attack. This can make understanding the true health burden of extreme heat more difficult.
James Smallcombe receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Wellcome Trust.
Ollie Jay receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, NSW Health, NSW Dept of Planning, Industry and Environment, and the NSW Reconstruction Authority (formerly Resilience NSW), Tennis Australia.
Lily Hospers 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.
The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder in the Western Australian desert.CSIRO
Supermassive black holes reside in some of the biggest galaxies in the universe. They tend to be billions of times more massive that our Sun, and not even light itself can escape a black hole once it gets too close.
But it’s not all darkness. Supermassive black holes power some of the most luminous celestial objects in the universe – active galactic nuclei, which shine across the spectrum of light, including radio waves.
The active galactic nucleus in nearby galaxy Messier 87 is a prodigious emitter of radio waves, 27 orders of magnitude more powerful than the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth.
But not all galaxies blast radio waves like Messier 87. Some very massive nearby galaxies have gone undetected in the radio spectrum despite containing supermassive black holes. Are they switched on in the radio at all, or are they – and therefore their black holes – totally silent?
It may seem odd that black holes can power anything. After all, no matter – not even light – can escape a black hole. But a lot can happen before the point of no return, known as the event horizon.
As matter falls towards the black hole, it picks up tremendous speed. Particles can end up travelling close to the speed of light, and when particles smash at that speed, they can release a staggering amount of energy.
Several percent of the mass that falls towards a black
hole – “feeds” it – can get released as light. Feed a black hole, and it can be a big engine that blasts out radio waves.
So, supermassive black holes are in all the biggest galaxies, but are they always being fed? That question motivated our study. To listen for radio waves from these enormous objects, we used the ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia, owned and operated by CSIRO – Australia’s national science agency.
Tuning in on the radio
Way back in the 1940s, astronomers started detecting radio waves from some massive galaxies using the first radio telescopes. This includes galaxies familiar to amateur astronomers, including Messier 87 in the Virgo constellation and NGC 5128 in Centaurus.
Very powerful celestial sources of radio waves were detected back in the 1940s, thanks to radio telescopes like this one at Dover Heights, Sydney. CSIRO Radio Astronomy Image Archive
As technology advanced, more very massive galaxies were detected in radio waves. In the early 2000s, astronomers found that about a third of very massive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey were detectable in the radio data from the Very Large Array, located in New Mexico.
A decade ago, our team also used data from the Very Large Array to search for radio emissions from the most massive nearby galaxies. Some were easily detected while others were indistinguishable from noise.
However, there was a strong hint. While the radio signals from the most massive galaxies were sometimes not distinguishable from noise individually, we always found a positive signal.
If some galaxies were not emitting radio waves, we would expect random noise to produce a mix of positive and negative signals. Getting a positive signal every time suggested all massive galaxies are radio sources. But digging into the noise left us unsure, until now.
New telescopes and a new view
There have been major advances in radio telescopes during the past decade, both in radio receivers and computing power. New radio telescopes include the ASKAP radio telescope and the Murchison Widefield Array, both located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory on Wajarri Yamaji country in Western Australia. There is also the Low Frequency Array (Lofar) in Europe.
These telescopes can survey the sky with greater sensitivity and speed than the previous generation of radio telescopes. For example, the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey is just a preliminary radio survey of 83% of the entire sky, but is already three times more sensitive than comparable surveys with the previous generation of radio telescopes.
For our new study, we no longer needed to look for mere hints of the noise. We detected radio waves from all 40 of the most massive galaxies in our survey area.
So, it now looks like all very massive galaxies are emitting radio waves, but are all of their black holes being fed? Most are, but probably not all.
Studies with Lofar suggest some radio sources in massive galaxies are afterglows from earlier activity. It is likely these are temporary pauses, and these black holes will fire up again.
Another piece of the puzzle is the radio power. Two galaxies of the same mass can differ in radio power by a factor of 10,000. Why does this happen?
We don’t know the answer yet, but there are some clues. Our work and a recent study with Lofar find that, on average, the galaxies that rotate the least are the strongest radio wave emitters. Some of the exceptions to this trend are curious, with evidence of mergers with other galaxies.
Galaxy NGC 6876 emits radio waves, but is thousands of times fainter than Messier 87. Legacy Imaging Surveys/D. Lang (Perimeter Institute), CC BY
There is much to learn about very massive galaxies and their black holes, but data from the new generation of radio telescopes has revealed a great deal.
All very massive galaxies emit radio waves, but their power varies. Determining how all this works will be a challenge, but there are clues for astronomers to now follow.
Michael J. I. Brown receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University.
It was scarcely mentioned during the election campaign, but we will undoubtedly be hearing more about “social investment”.
As the National Party’s election platform stated, it will be the “organising framework” for funding and delivering social services. The finance minister, Nicola Willis – who is also public service minister and minister for social investment – will be central to delivering on the policy.
At its core, social investment is about the “productive” potential of public spending on social programmes – spending that yields gains in the future, rather than simply supporting consumption or remedying problems in the present.
But it’s also a policy from the past, with National promising to “bring the social investment approach back to life”. It is resuscitating work started under the previous National government led by the then prime minister John Key and finance minister Bill English.
Their embrace of social investment marked a change in National’s typically sceptical view of social spending and some of its recipients, particularly welfare beneficiaries.
Yet it was still resolutely focused on the budget bottom line. It prioritised funding that would achieve positive social outcomes while reducing future public spending, or “forward fiscal liabilities”. As Bill English put it, “What works for communities works for the government’s books.”
There was criticism at the time of the policy’s unreliable forecasts of fiscal liability. And it was questioned whether long-term fiscal savings were even compatible with achieving positive social outcomes.
Political opponents wondered whether the kinder face of social investment was simply a cover for cutting back social services.
It remains to be seen whether the new government has adapted its social investment approach to address those doubts. The small amount of detail available suggests there may be a stronger emphasis on attracting private investors – with two initiatives deserving close scrutiny.
The social investment fund
According to National’s campaign promises, a social investment fund will support social services that “intervene earlier and more effectively”. The government will provide initial funding and will reallocate money from services that receive “disappointing social impact evaluations”.
But the most radical idea is to open the fund to private investors: “If private capital can be better deployed to help change the lives of more New Zealanders, we will not be afraid to use it.”
Without more detail, it is hard to know how private investors might be motivated to contribute, beyond simply wanting to make a philanthropic donation. The non-profit Share My Super scheme already does exactly this.
But why would the government pay investors – even socially minded ones willing to accept below-market rates – a return on money it could borrow more cheaply itself?
In Canada, for example, the Social Finance Fund does not fund services directly. It pools government and private investor money, which is then lent to non-profits and other “social purpose organisations” on favourable terms. This is fundamentally different to National’s proposal.
Social impact bonds
National is also pledging to revive social impact bonds (SIBs), last implemented by the Key-English government. The bonds will be used to fund and deliver social services, beginning with transitioning families from emergency housing.
SIBs are financial instruments involving investors, service providers and the government. Investors provide upfront funding. If the service provider achieves specified outcomes, the government repays the investors, plus a profit margin.
A recent meta-analysis of 32 SIBs found that, for all the talk of being innovative, there is “little evidence that outcomes from SIB-funded programs are significantly different compared to more traditional programs”.
After 13 years of intense global policy experimentation and evaluation, this should be a serious concern for those advocating for new SIBs in New Zealand.
In the early stages of SIB development, I spoke with around a hundred professionals implementing them across the English-speaking world, including those involved in the previous National government’s SIB pilot programme.
The first local SIB pilot needed to be restarted after its launch, then lasted only 18 months out of a planned six-year term.
The second pilot, which recently completed its six-year term, reportedly achieved positive outcomes for its clients. It enrolled 607 of the 1,000 clients it was projected to serve, and the development process started in December 2013.
By any measure, this is a huge amount of time and effort for relatively few clientele.
Internationally, this experience is more the norm than the exception. What was clear from my interviews several years ago is now increasingly public knowledge: SIBs are a tremendously complicated way to procure social services and they are difficult to scale up.
Those involved, including investors, regularly conclude there are easier ways to achieve their respective goals.
There is a lot to recommend National’s focus on social investment: attention to preventive social services that deliver tangible outcomes could do much good.
But there is a risk the new government may not heed the lessons of its predecessor.
Focusing its social investment agenda on narrow fiscal outcomes, and courting private investors, could undermine National’s stated goal of “doing what works” to “change the lives of New Zealanders with the greatest needs”.
Given Christopher Luxon’s preference for leading a “back to basics” government, there may be a simpler solution: a properly resourced public sector to fund, monitor and evaluate the delivery of social services. That just might do the trick.
Tom Baker receives public funding from the Marsden Fund, administered by Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Why do some farts smell and some don’t, and some feel hot? – Kian, age 6, from Maleny in Queensland
Hi Kian, thanks for your interesting questions!
Let’s start with the smell. Whether or not farts smell depends on what you’ve been eating and whether or not you have an upset tummy.
Having a tummy bug can also change the smell of your poo, especially if you have diarrhoea (runny poo). This is because of the smell of undigested food and the bugs, too.
When you digest food your intestines produce gas as part of the normal process of breaking food down.
Most gasses produced – like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen and methane – don’t smell at all. That is why you can fart sometimes and nobody really notices.
But there is one gas found in some farts that is reallyreally smelly. It’s called hydrogen sulphide and has the nickname “rotten egg gas” because that is exactly what it smells like.
This is why sometimes you can do a small fart but everyone has to hold their nose. These smelly farts contain more hydrogen sulphide.
Food and farts
If you eat foods that have a lot of sulphur, your gut will produce more hydrogen sulphide.
Some vegetables have a lot of sulphur, such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, turnips and Asian greens.
Meat does too. If you eat a really huge piece of meat, your body can have trouble digesting it all at once.
Food moves from our stomach, through our intestines, and out through the anus. Shutterstock
As you digest food, it moves from your stomach into the large intestine or colon. Once the foods with sulphur get there, bugs in your gut break them down and produce the hydrogen sulphide gas.
If a lot of it builds up and gets released in a fart, it will be very, very smelly.
Farts sometimes feel hot because of the temperature difference between inside your body, which is a very warm 37 degrees, and the air temperature outside, which is usually cooler.
This means that fart gas feels hot as it moves from your large intestine, leaves through the opening in your bottom called the anus, and touches the cooler skin.
You’re not as likely to notice the temperature if farts comes out really fast because speedy ones don’t have as much contact with your bottom.
There is another reason why farts can feel hot. Sometimes people get a hot or burning feeling in their bottom after they eat really spicy food. This is due to a spicy food chemical called capsaicin.
Sometimes farts feel hot after eating spicy foods. Shutterstock
If you eat food that has chilli or hot spices in it, the capsaicin makes your mouth feel hot. When you eat lots and lots of spicy food, some of the capsaicin travels all the way to your large intestine and gets passed out in your poo.
The capsaicin then gives you a hot feeling in your bottom when you go to the toilet. The reaction is the same as that burning feeling in your mouth after eating spicy food, except it happens at the other end.
Did you know there are fart-proof undies?
Researchers did some experiments to test whether they could catch fart smells by getting people to wear special undies that can absorb hydrogen sulphide gas.
And the experiments worked!
Now a company in Australia sells these undies to help people who have gut problems. Their company says it wants to help people “fart with confidence”.
Clare Collins AO is a Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, NSW and a Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) affiliated researcher. She is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, HMRI, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute, Dietitians Australia and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.
The inner workings of magazines, television stations and newspapers have been rich fodder for film and television for decades.
From All the President’s Men (1976) to Frontline (1994–7), Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011) and The Newsreader (2022–3), we remain fascinated by stories of how our media are made. These kinds of films and series immediately immerse viewers in a precise historical setting and allow commentary on it. This year’s series of The Newsreader reminded us of the divide in Australian culture over the bicentenary commemorations of 1988.
Set around 2012 (when Tinder was a “new app”), Strife is a fictionalised adaptation of Mia Freedman’s 2017 memoir, Work Strife Balance, which told the story of starting her hugely successful women’s website Mamamia in her lounge room in 2007.
By 2014, the site was attracting 2 million to 4 million women a month and Freedman was famous. In the mid-2010s she was one of Australia’s most highly visible feminist faces, dropping soundbites on Sunrise and writing confessional essays about her life.
Freedman was relatable yet highly successful, a “busy mum” who was open about her shortcomings and the moments where the “wheels fall off”.
Strife’s Evelyn Johnson (Asher Keddie) is a spikier, colder figure than Freedman appears to be. She is running Eve, a new women’s website, but she’s two months behind on the rent. She has left her marriage and is living alone in a city apartment; she is co-parenting two teenage children with her estranged husband (Matt Day).
Evelyn is singularly focused on making her website work. She is tough on her writers, a bit forgetful about her children’s activities, and doesn’t really know how to cook. Here, the series treads a fine line between making Evelyn relatable and simply foolish: turning up to her daughter’s hockey game with the halftime oranges still in their string bag, or trying to make a last-minute family meal with a slow cooker.
The art of the confessional
As the series begins, Evelyn is struggling with writer’s block – not great timing for an editor running a site that is losing money. But by the end of the first episode, she writes a piece called “I ended my marriage over a flat white”.
It goes viral, and Eve has found its formula.
Evelyn tells one of her writers who is nervous about exposing her personal life for clicks “it can be empowering to share if you’re the one telling the story”.
Strife has an impeccable pedigree for a bingeable women’s drama: it was produced by Bruna Papandrea, whose credits include Big Little Lies, and it stars Asher Keddie, one of Australia’s most bankable television stars. Eve’s writers are a diverse bunch, oversharing and endlessly scrambling for story ideas. The series is set in the world of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, full of well-dressed women dropping their kids at private schools in 4WDs.
In other words, it is aspirational – and more than a little oblivious about the privileged world it depicts.
Evelyn is singularly focused on making her website work. Kane Skennar/Binge
Despite claiming to be a “feminist publisher”, Evelyn shoots down most politically and socially aware story ideas because they won’t “get clicks”. The success of Eve is measured entirely in page views, clicks and advertising deals. Hiring young women to work as unpaid interns also seems at odds with Evelyn’s feminist credentials: indeed, one tells Evelyn she “can’t work for free”.
Evelyn’s relationships with her family and friends are the other main subject of the drama. A quick check of her browser history reveals her son is watching porn; she tries to broach the subject of buying a first bra with her daughter; a friend has put a profile of her husband on Tinder because she doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore.
While all of these topics would work for an Eve confessional essay, the series breezes over them far too quickly to capitalise on their dramatic potential.
Strife’s brand of feminism – where empowerment comes from telling personal stories online – is very much of the mid-2010s, when women’s online media were on the rise.
As gender studies academic Kath Kenny points out, confessional story-telling emerged at the same time media budgets were being cut: after all, confessions don’t require research or reporting. While this kind of writing can raise awareness of important issues, it’s not enough to solve them. “Girlboss feminism” is still with us, unfortunately, but I think we know now that we won’t solve the gender pay gap or domestic violence with mere “empowerment”.
Keddie’s performance is excellent – but the show is uneven. Kane Skennar/Binge
Keddie’s brittle performance here recalls her outstanding work in Love My Way, where she wasn’t afraid to make her character unlikeable. Tina Bursill is cool as ever as Evelyn’s mother, and Maria Angelico is terrific as Eve’s editor.
But despite some wry jokes, the series’ tone is uncertain, and Evelyn’s confessions are largely of other people’s experiences. Perhaps if Evelyn was more willing to confront her own shortcomings we’d have the making of real drama.
Strife left me with the jittery feeling you get after spending too many hours in an office in front of a computer screen. Which, considering that’s probably how Eve’s writers feel, might be quite the achievement.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted November 29 to December 3 from a sample of 1,605, gave Labor 35% of the primary vote (steady since November), the Coalition 34% (up four), the Greens 12% (down one), One Nation 5% (down two), the UAP 1% (down one), independents 9% (steady) and others 3% (down one).
Resolve doesn’t give a two party estimate until near elections, but an estimate based on 2022 election preference flows gives Labor a 55–45 lead, a two-point gain for the Coalition since November.
In my November article on Resolve, I said the big Labor lead was not supported by other recent polls, and this still applies. Last week’s Newspoll had a 50–50 tie with the Coalition seven points ahead of Labor on primary votes, while Resolve has Labor one point ahead on primaries.
On Anthony Albanese’s performance, 48% said it was poor and 37% good, for a net approval of -11, down five points. Peter Dutton’s net approval was down four points to -8. Albanese led Dutton as better PM by 42–28 (40–27 in November).
Immigration has been in the news recently, and the Liberals led Labor on the immigration and refugees issue by 33–22, out from 28–25 in November. On keeping the cost of living low, the Liberals led by 26–21, the same margin as in November (29–24). On economic management, the Liberals led by 35–27, virtually unchanged from November (34–27).
By 43–18, voters supported the government limiting spending growth on the NDIS to 8% a year (37–17 in May). On how to limit spending, 38% thought restrictions should be placed on who is given support, 26% didn’t want any spending restrictions and 18% wanted a cap on the amount of money paid to each participant.
Morgan poll and upcoming Dunkley byelection
A federal Morgan poll, conducted November 27 to December 3 from a sample of 1,730, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, a 1.5-point gain for the Coalition since last week. Primary votes were 37.5% Coalition (up 2.5), 32.5% Labor (up 0.5), 12.5% Greens (down one), 5% One Nation (steady), 8.5% independents (down 0.5) and 4% others (down 1.5).
Labor’s federal MP for the Victorian seat of Dunkley, Peta Murphy, died from breast cancer on Monday. In 2022, Murphy defeated the Liberals by 56.3–43.7. A byelection will be needed in Dunkley in the new year.
It’s close in a Queensland Resolve poll
The Queensland state election will be held in October 2024. A Resolve poll for The Brisbane Times, conducted over four months from September to December from a sample of 940, gave the Liberal National Party 37% of the primary vote (down one since May to August), Labor 33% (up one), the Greens 12% (up one), One Nation 8% (steady), independents 7% (down one) and others 3% (steady).
The Poll Bludger says the primary votes suggest a “fairly even split on two-party preferred”. However, the clearly better results for Labor in Resolve’s federal polls than in other polls makes me more sceptical of this poll. The last Queensland YouGov poll, in early October, gave the LNP a 52–48 lead.
Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s net likeability was down two points since August to -17, while LNP leader David Crisafulli’s net likeability was up two to +9. Crisafulli led Palaszczuk as preferred premier by 39–34 (37–36 previously).
It looks as if Crisafulli is doing much better than expected given voting intentions. It’s rare for an opposition leader to be ahead on preferred premier. There has been recent speculation that Palaszczuk could be replaced as Labor leader and premier before the next election.
Labor has governed in Queensland since 2015. Although this poll is more positive for Labor, the overall trend this year has been to the LNP. I believe the LNP is the clear favourite to win the next Queensland election.
Tasmania, WA and the NT
A Tasmanian state EMRS poll, conducted November 20–27 from a sample of 1,000, gave the Liberals 39% (up one since August), Labor 29% (down three), the Greens 12% (down two) and all Others 19% (up three). Tasmania uses a proportional system for its lower house, so a two party estimate is not applicable.
In May the Liberals slumped to a 36–31 lead over Labor from 42–30 in February, but have since recovered. Incumbent Liberal Jeremy Rockliff led Labor’s Rebecca White as preferred premier by 42–35 (42–39 in August).
The Western Australian state redistribution has been finalised. These boundaries will apply to lower house seats contested at the March 2025 WA election. The Poll Bludger said the draft redistribution’s plan to merge two rural seats and create a new urban seat has been maintained.
Very large notional Labor margins in many seats reflect Labor’s record 69.7–30.3 landslide at the 2021 WA election, in which they won 53 of the 59 lower house seats. Labor is virtually certain to lose many seats in 2025.
A Redbridge Northern Territory poll, conducted November 16–18 from a sample of 601, gave the Country Liberal Party 40.6% of the primary vote, Labor 19.7%, the Greens 13.1%, the Shooters 9.4% and independents 14.9%. No two party estimate was provided.
If these results were replicated at the next NT election in August 2024, the incumbent Labor government would be defeated. There were similar results for federal NT voting intentions.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
We’re now sadly used to seeing toxic exchanges play out on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and TikTok.
But Wikipedia is a reference work. How heated can people get over an encyclopedia?
Our research, published today, shows the answer is very heated. For example, one Wikipedia editor wrote to another:
i will find u in real life and slit your throat.
That’s a problem for many reasons, but chief among them is if Wikipedia goes down in a ball of toxic fire, it might take the rest of the internet’s information infrastructure with it.
And what happens to Wikipedia matters beyond the platform itself because of its central role in online information infrastructure.
Google search relies heavily on Wikipedia and the quality of its search results would decrease substantially if Wikipedia disappeared.
But it’s not just an increasingly authoritative source of knowledge. Even though we don’t always lump Wikipedia in with other social media platforms, it shares some common features.
It relies on contributors to create the content that the public will view and it creates spaces for those contributors to interact. Wikipedia relies solely on the work of volunteers: no one is paid for writing or editing content.
Moreover, no one checks the credentials of editors — anyone can make a contribution. This arguably makes Wikipedia the most successful collaborative project in history.
However, the fact that Wikipedia is a collaborative platform also makes it vulnerable.
A 2015 survey found 38% of surveyed Wikipedia users had experienced harassment on the platform.
What if the collaborative environment deteriorates, and its volunteer editors abandon the project?
What effect do toxic comments have on Wikipedia’s editors, content and community?
Abusive comments lead to disengaging
To answer this question, we started with Wikipedia’s “user’s talk pages”. A user’s talk page is a place where other editors can interact with the user. They can post messages, discuss personal topics, or extend discussions from an article’s talk page.
Every editor has a personal user’s talk page, and the majority of toxic comments made on the platform are on these pages.
We collected information on 57 million comments made on the user’s talk pages of 8.5 million editors across the six most active language editions of Wikipedia (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian) over a period of 20 years.
We then used a state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm to identify toxic comments. The algorithm looked for attributes a human might consider toxic, like insults, threats, or identity attacks.
We compared the activity of editors before and after they received a toxic comment, as well as with a control group of similar editors who received a non-toxic rather than toxic comment.
We found receiving a single toxic comment could reduce an editor’s activity by 1.2 active days in the short term. Considering that 80,307 users on English Wikipedia alone have received at least one toxic comment, the cumulative impact could amount to 284 lost human-years.
Moreover, some users don’t just contribute less. They stop contributing altogether.
We found that the probability of leaving Wikipedia’s community of contributors increases after receiving a toxic comment, with new users being particularly vulnerable. New editors who receive toxic comments are nearly twice as likely to leave Wikipedia as would be expected otherwise.
Wikipedia is just as vulnerable to toxic commentary as other popular websites. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Wide-ranging consequences
This matters more than you might think to the millions who use Wikipedia.
First, toxicity likely leads to poorer-quality content on the site. Having a diverse editor cohort is a crucial factor for maintaining content quality. The vast majority of Wikipedian editors are men, which is reflected in the content on the platform.
There are fewer articles about women, which are shorter than articles about men and more likely to centre on romantic relationships and family-related issues. They are also more often linked to articles about the opposite gender. Women are often described as wives of famous people rather than for their own merits, for example.
While multiple barriers confront women editors on Wikipedia, toxicity is likely one of the key factors that contributes to the gender imbalance. Although men and women are equally likely to face online harassment and abuse, women experience more severe violations and are more likely to be affected by such incidents, including self-censoring.
This may affect other groups as well: our research showed that toxic comments often include not just gendered language but also ethnic slurs and other biases.
Finally, a significant rise in toxicity, especially targeted attacks on new users, could jeopardise Wikipedia’s survival.
Following a period of exponential growth in its editor base during the early 2000s, the number has been largely stable since 2016, with the exception of a brief activity spike during the COVID pandemic. Currently about the same number of editors join the project as leave, but the balance could be easily tipped if the people left because of online abuse.
That would damage not only Wikipedia, but also the rest of the online information infrastructure it helps to support.
There’s no easy fix to this, but our research shows promoting healthy communication practices is critical to protecting crucial online information ecosystems.
Ivan Smirnov ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Carruthers, Co-president, Australian Science Communicators, and Adjunct Lecturer, Science Communication, The University of Western Australia
As experts in science communication, we think the article got a few things right but also a lot wrong. As science communication researchers have recognised for decades, some people who communicate science don’t really take their audiences into account. Instead they rely on the “deficit model”, which wrongly suggests you can change people’s beliefs and behaviours simply by giving them facts to fill perceived gaps in their knowledge.
However, this isn’t the whole story. Science communicators are not evangelists for the science-only worldview of scientism. Many science communicators think very deeply about what values matter to people, and how to reach their audiences.
Good science communicators put a lot of work into understanding audiences. Sometimes we undertake research programs to understand attitudes, values and worldviews so we can communicate empathetically with audiences, not just transmit information. Yet much of this work is invisible to the public – and clearly it isn’t widely recognised.
What is science communication?
Science communication is sometimes characterised as science marketing, but many of us would reject that label. We love to share our passion for science, but we are not uncritical cheerleaders for it.
We see science as part of humanity’s grand project to solve many challenges. We are not ignorant of the broader social context. Most of us do not believe science is everything, and we talk about its limitations. We also recognise the need to provide hope even in the face of catastrophic predictions.
Many of us would agree some science popularisers (we use the term deliberately) should stop telling people their values-based intuitive beliefs are proved pointless by science. For one thing, telling people their beliefs are wrong is a thoroughly ineffective way to communicate science, especially in a crisis.
Science has a crucial role to play in informing the public and decision makers. Vlad Tchompalov
Most science communicators work behind the scenes, supporting scientists to share their work, or running campaigns to counter misinformation. Some of us are translators, making information more accessible to decision-makers. Others are interpreters, helping define meaning and relevance of scientific ideas. Some of us are professional storytellers of science.
Being influential behind the scenes means we sometimes struggle to be recognised as experts in our own right, to have our qualifications and specialist training valued, and to have a seat at the table when governments and other organisations make decisions involving science communication.
There is some debate over whether science communication is a discipline in its own right. Regardless, we know through practice and research that fact-bombing by experts has never been an effective way to engage communities in science.
What makes a science communicator?
For some, the key to what makes one a competent science communicator lies in education and training in “threshold concepts” which include
audience-centred communication (which relies on understanding your audience)
shifting from deficit model-based communication to engagement.
Scientists themselves may not have been exposed to these concepts. While some universities teach these skills within science degrees, the depth and orientation of these courses vary.
In Australia, there are only two Masters-level programs in science communication (compared with the Netherlands, which has seven). These programs aim to develop professional skills but are also informed by the history, philosophy and sociology of science, so communicators can reflect deeply and critically on the choices they make.
Values-based communication requires communicators to recognise that audiences have a range of knowledge bases, attitudes, perceptions, experiences and values. All of these influence how they relate to different scientific issues.
A science communication professional will take their audiences’ value systems into account when considering the purpose of their communication.
A science communicator might decide to point out to some audiences that a virus doesn’t care who we are, so as to emphasise personal risk and responsibility. A different approach may be needed for an audience who believe illness is due to the will of a god.
It’s the communicator’s responsibility to balance the potential harm their communication may cause with the benefit in supporting various audiences. One size definitely does not fit all.
Good communicators understand human values
Many people working in science communication do not have an education or qualifications in science communication. However, the vast majority do communicate with empathy and transparency about their own values. They acknowledge the limitations of science and its interplay with politics, culture, history and economics.
We reflect deeply on the ethical issues arising from our activities and, for those of us working with particularly controversial or contentious sciences, only time will tell whether we have been effective.
There is no doubt some sections of the science community do communicate without taking people’s values in mind. However, this is counter to current scholarship and best practice.
Most science communication professionals carefully take these things into account. We do it because that is the best way to get better societal outcomes, and to do better science that actually reflects the needs of the communities we live in.
Tom Carruthers is a freelance communications specialist working with clients including Science in Public. He is the co-president of the Australian Science Communicators, and adjunct lecturer in science communication at UWA.
Heather Bray is the Coordinator of the Master of Science Communication at the University of Western Australia and is involved in both teaching and research in science communication. She is a current member of Australian Science Communicators.
Matthew Nurse is an associate lecturer of science communication at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU. He has previously received Research Training Program funding from the Commonwealth Government. He is a current member of Australian Science Communicators.
School cantina damages in Ivanivka village, Chernihiv region, Ukraine.”Anastasiia Chupis, Author provided
In a village in the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine, activists documenting evidence of potential war crimes in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year interviewed a witness whose relative went missing during the early days of the war. The relative’s phone had ended up in the hands of the Russian military, who forgot to deactivate the owner’s Google Photos account.
Russian soldiers then used the phone to take photos of their weapons and equipment, the belongings of Ukrainian civilians that had likely been stolen, and Russian military positions in the area. These were then uploaded to the phone owner’s cloud storage, allowing the Ukrainian war crimes trackers to access them.
With the assistance of their collaborators and specialised open-source intelligence tools, the activists managed to identify more than 20 Russian soldiers – their surnames, positions, ranks, military units and even mobile phone numbers.
This information was then passed to Ukrainian law enforcement officials for possible further investigation.
These activists work for the Educational Human Rights House Chernihiv (EHRHC), a non-governmental human rights organisation. In March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion, the group became a part of two coalitions with significant experience documenting suspected war crimes and human rights violations committed in Ukraine since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Their main task has centred on collecting and documenting evidence of attacks and other suspected crimes on Ukrainian educational facilities. Their work is dangerous – even life-threatening – as these activists must visit areas near the front lines that are exposed to daily shelling and littered with landmines and missile debris.
So far, the activists have organised more than 60 field missions and documented more than 3,000 incidents involving attacks on educational facilities.
As of this month, nearly 3,800 educational institutions across Ukraine have been partially destroyed or severely damaged from bombing and shelling, with another 365 destroyed completely, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education.
A destroyed house in Kolychivka village, Chernihiv Region, Ukraine. Anastasiia Chupis/Author provided
How war crimes evidence is collected
As part of our research into the human cost of war and grassroots activism in Ukraine, we have been interviewing activists and organisers from EHRHC to learn about their work documenting suspected war crimes.
The organisation has two main goals. First, it wants to help hold suspected perpetrators of crimes to account by passing evidence to law enforcement agencies. It also wants to preserve people’s memories and experiences during the war for future generations.
Its recruits come from a variety of backgrounds – some have worked for police, others in education. And they are trained from the ground up, as most have never done this kind of work before.
Groups of six are typically sent out on missions to gather evidence and document suspected attacks. This work typically involves recording video and audio testimonies of witnesses with informed consent. These can include school administrators, teachers, technicians, parents and neighbours.
Damage of the house of culture in Ivanivka village, Chernihiv region, Ukraine. Anastasiia Chupis/Author provided
One of the first things the activists try to establish is whether the Russian soldiers involved in an attack discussed their unit affiliation or had any special insignia on their uniforms. Sometimes, soldiers accidentally leave behind military documents or other items, making it possible to identify their unit.
The activists also try to determine the nature of the attack, the type of weapon used, and whether the school was a military target due to the presence of soldiers or concealed weapons used for military purposes.
In addition, the teams sometimes gather physical evidence. This might include taking videos or photos of damage to facilities or recording craters from rockets or holes in buildings and fences. Usually this happens after Ukrainian soldiers or police have inspected a site due to the danger of unexploded debris.
Training for documenting war crimes by EHRHC. Anastasiia Chupis/Author provided
What happens with the information next?
When activists return from the field, they transcribe their testimonies and write analyses of the suspected war crimes they believe occurred, in accordance with international humanitarian law.
As Serhii Burov, the head of the EHRHC, explained:
Schools and educational institutions receive special protection under international humanitarian law. These are treated as special civilian objects, together with the medical facilities. This is what makes them distinctive from other civilian objects.
According to the laws of war, schools and other educational facilities are protected from attack unless they become legitimate military targets. However, if a school is being used for a military purpose – such as a barracks for soldiers – then it may no longer be protected from attack.
The evidence collected by activists is passed to Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, who will decide whether to pursue further investigations. Some cases may go nowhere, as many agencies lack the capacity to do this work.
Looking at a map with a witness. Anastasiia Chupis/Author provided
However, the EHRHC is often approached by foreign legal experts who can use the principle of universal jurisdiction to launch war crimes investigations in their countries. Lithuanian prosecutors, for instance, have identified 90 victims of war crimes in their investigations thus far.
The evidence collected by EHRHC is also shared with their partners in the two larger Ukrainian justice coalitions, which have connections with the International Criminal Court and other institutions involved in investigating war crimes.
As Yaroslav Kyryienko, manager of the EHRHC documentation program, told us:
At the beginning of our documentation efforts, we were more focused on international institutions […] as we believed it was the most effective mechanism for bringing war criminals to justice. However, most civil society organisations in Ukraine have now come to realise that the most promising approach is to cooperate with national law enforcement agencies, as they will bear the primary responsibility for prosecuting war crimes.
‘All of this is for the future’
Even after the EHRHC trains its recruits how to document attacks, they still have to deal with the psychological part of the job, which can take a toll.
They also encounter witnesses who do not want to speak with them. People may be afraid of condemnation from fellow villagers. Or they might be wary of communicating with the police because they do not believe in the possibility of holding suspected Russian perpetrators to account. There is also a lack of trust in civil society organisations and their ability to bring justice to victims.
Traces of explosions on fences. Kolychivka village. Anastasiia Chupis/Author provided
Many witnesses may also be in a state of shock, making it difficult to share their stories. As Burov told us:
The most significant challenge for me personally is communicating with people who have experienced trauma or witnessed traumatic events, and the risk of re-traumatising them. Care must be taken in these situations.
We also strive to protect ourselves because, as interviewers, we can become traumatised when talking to witnesses.
The other main challenge is the lack an immediate, tangible result for the team. Kyryienko says:
Knowing that the war criminals we have identified are being investigated by law enforcement agencies, punished or included in sanctions lists, or will be in the near future, keeps us motivated to continue our work.
All of this is for the future. Preserving the history of the war is about the future. Bringing justice is about the future.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne
National Cabinet meets today to discuss three big issues in Commonwealth-state financial relations: GST allocation, National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) funding, and a Commonwealth government proposal to kick-start negotiations on a new National Health Reform Agreement, to take effect in July 2025.
So what is the reform agreement? What are the chances it could result in better access to hospital care when Australians need it? And what does the GST have to do with it?
State and territory governments are responsible for running public hospitals, but about 40% of public hospital funding comes from the Commonwealth government.
The National Health Reform Agreement is front and centre of any discussion about health funding. Negotiated every five years or so, it was originally designed to:
increase the Commonwealth’s share of public hospital funding
introduce more transparency about how states spend this extra Commonwealth funding
drive efficiency in public hospital care.
Its performance on all three objectives has been mixed.
Efficiency initially improved, but there has been back sliding and, even in the pre-COVID years, the average cost of a public hospital admission increased faster than inflation.
Transparency has been a double-edged sword, causing a heightened focus on the agreement and its formula, but de-emphasising the broader GST context.
The previous Commonwealth Liberal government reduced the planned increase in the Commonwealth share of public hospital funding in its first budget, and its share has now declined to 41%.
Tight state budgets and increasing costs per patient mean hospitals’ capacity has not expanded in line with population growth, resulting in poorer access and longer waiting times.
Working out the Commonwealth’s fair share
Under the National Health Reform Agreement, total Commonwealth funding to the states collectively will increase in line with total public hospital “activity” growth across all states.
“Activity” includes hospital admissions and outpatient activity (seeing a specialist in an outpatient clinic, for example) and is measured in “activity units” with a “national efficient price”. The price for each unit is currently set at $6,032.
The current formula is that the Commonwealth funds 45% of the costs of increases in hospital admissions, emergency department visits or outpatient attendances but only paid at the “national efficient price”. Total Commonwealth funding growth is capped at 6.5% each year.
Commonwealth hospital funding has declined. Shutterstock
But it’s often misunderstood
Many commentators and government officials assume the same model applies for funding to each state. It doesn’t. Funding to each state is determined by a separate process (which we’ll get to in a moment).
This false assumption about the way the National Health Reform Agreement works for each state leads to complaints the agreement constrains good policy initiatives, rewards “volume not value” and encourages unnecessary hospitalisations.
Worse, it allows states to blame the agreement for their own mismanagement of their hospitals.
And it encourages fruitless discussions between Commonwealth and state officials about “reform projects” that typically go nowhere but can be used by politicians to hoodwink the public that big issues in the health sector are being addressed.
Funding from the Commonwealth to the states must be considered at two levels: the National Health Reform Agreement and the GST.
If you look at the national health funding body’s website, you can see tables purporting to show how Commonwealth funding is allocated to health services across Australia, down to the last dollar. This reflects the transparency objective of the National Health Reform Agreement.
These numbers are real. The dollars reported actually end up in state bank accounts.
However, the big picture is somewhat different, and this is where the GST comes in.
Money collected through the GST is allocated among the states based on need. The aim is to ensure each state has the capacity “to provide services and the associated infrastructure at the same standard”.
An independent body, the Commonwealth Grants Commission, assesses need, including the need for public hospital spending by states. It also assesses how states can raise money through taxes to meet their needs.
A state’s GST allocation is based on the gap between its spending needs and its assessed revenue raising capacity.
Importantly, most Commonwealth grants, including the National Health Reform Agreement, are taken into account by the Grants Commission in a similar way to how it assesses the state’s ability to raise payroll tax or stamp duty.
The result is that a state’s funding under the National Health Reform Agreement is effectively reallocated back to the state, with a lag, not in line with the agreement’s formula, but rather in line with the GST formula (this is essentially based on the state’s population, weighted for factors such as age, the proportion living in remote locations, and the proportion of First Nations Australians).
The National Health Reform Agreement formula, although impressively precise, is somewhat of a fiction, providing a funding flow which is effectively overridden a few years later.
The reality therefore is that the principal impact of the National Health Reform Agreement is to determine the total national contribution the Commonwealth makes to public hospitals.
However, because states often assume the National Health Reform Agreement formula is real, it has a life of its own which can shape the health and hospital system for good or ill.
What to watch for out of National Cabinet
The entrails of today’s National Cabinet decision need to be examined carefully. The words may obscure what is really happening, but there are two factors to look for.
Most importantly, will the 6.5% cap be increased? If so, by how much? This determines the total amount of money the Commonwealth might be required to pay states.
Funding commitments for specific “reform projects” send signals about what governments collectively think are important issues in the public hospital system such as joint commitments to improve efficiency or to expand access to digital services, such as telehealth.
For patients, an increase in the Commonwealth share and in the cap, provided it is coupled with tighter accountability for access (such as commitments to reducing waiting times for planned procedures), could lead to a much improved public hospital system.
Stephen Duckett 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.
Millions of homes were built before Australia introduced housing energy efficiency standards in 2003. They’re leaky. Gaps around windows, doors and between building materials allow air to move in and out. So people tend to compensate, with more heating and cooling. It’s costly and damaging for the environment.
Using a national sample of 102,000 Australian homes across all 69 climate zones, we identified the most common housing types. Then we worked out how to make them “climate ready” and what benefits would flow.
Our new report released today makes a strong case for a renovation wave across Australia.
By combining thermal upgrades with electrifying hot water and cooking appliances, households can shave up to $2,200 a year off their energy bills. And the nation will be closer to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
Paying for poor performance
Australians are paying for low-performing homes through their energy bills, and the cost extends well beyond the kitchen table.
Low-performing homes draw more energy from the grid as heating and cooling systems work in overdrive to keep indoor temperatures safe or even comfortable.
Home interiors often look stylish, which contributes to making us feel comfortable. But there’s more to it than that.
A home’s performance, and its energy bills, comes down to just a few appliances. That is, those used to heat the hot water, and to heat or cool individual rooms.
In summer, air conditioners need to run for long periods if the ceilings, floors, walls and windows cannot stop the cool from escaping or the Sun’s heat from building up inside.
Multiply poor energy performance across Australia’s housing stock of nearly 11 million homes, and you start to see the scale of inefficiency before us.
We clearly need to improve the energy performance of all low-performing homes.
To reach net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier, all sectors of the economy need to rapidly cut emissions. According to the latest Climateworks Centre modelling, decarbonising buildings – responsible for 10% of national emissions – is vital if Australia is to uphold its commitments under the Paris Agreement.
In 2050, most Australians will be living in homes that already exist today, making renovations an essential part of achieving net zero.
We worked together for more than a year to understand Australia’s residential building stock, how these homes perform and what it would take to get them to a zero-carbon standard.
With 69 separate climate zones and millions of homes, Australia’s housing profile looks different depending on the city or town you live in. Townhouses in Brisbane, freestanding houses in Darwin and apartments in Perth can all be made climate-ready, but they can get there in very different ways.
We analysed data from 102,000 homes, examining floor, wall and building materials that are key to energy performance. We found just 16 types of homes make up most Australian housing stock.
The most common “archetypes” can be turned into net zero carbon homes with either a quick fix, modest or full climate-ready upgrade. The Renovation Pathways project allows us to show how 80% of houses and townhouses, and most apartments, across Australia’s climate zones can be made climate-ready.
Our analysis shows a “thermal-first” approach – improving air tightness and insulation in roofs, walls and floors – optimises benefits from rooftop solar and electrification.
For example, freestanding houses represent 70% of Australian homes. Houses with lightweight walls such as weatherboard or brick veneer – along with a framed roof and either a concrete slab or suspended timber floor – make up nearly half of the total housing stock and are among the worst performing.
Upgrading the thermal performance of such houses across the country offers the biggest opportunity to reduce emissions, as well as significant household savings.
When combining thermal upgrades with electrifying hot water and cooking appliances, people living in detached houses could save on average between $1,850 and $2,200 a year off their energy bills.
Occupants of townhouses could save between $1,270 and $1,480 a year, and occupants in apartments between $1,030 and $1,200 a year.
As well as much-needed emissions savings for Australia, zero-carbon homes would deliver much-needed savings to residents as living costs continue to rise.
Even low levels of insulation combined with the switch from gas to electric space conditioning can save more than two tonnes a year of CO₂-equivalent per house, compared with a low-performing home built to pre-energy efficiency standards.
Improving home energy performance also has positive effects for Australia’s energy grids. Efficient homes that reduce the need to turn on heating and cooling appliances for long stretches during heatwaves and cold snaps also reduce demand on the energy grid. Each low-performing home upgraded to climate-ready would contribute to reducing peak demand by between 1.4 and 3.5 kilowatts.
Multiple benefits
As more energy sources become electrified under the net zero transition, reducing peak demand will both help to prevent brownouts, blackouts and unexpected power outages, and reduce electricity network costs for consumers.
The catch is that at today’s energy prices, it would takes more for residents to break even on climate-ready upgrades. But it is an area ripe for government support.
Two key planning documents the federal government has committed to releasing – an update to its Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings and a sectoral plan for the built environment – provide the government with the opportunity to embed policy that will support a wave of energy performance upgrades.
If policy supports a “go fast and go all-out” approach to energy performance upgrades in homes, a self-sustaining renovation wave will ensure more and more households live in resilient, climate-ready homes.
Gill Armstrong works for Climateworks Centre, Monash University. She receives funding from four philanthropic organisations for the Renovation Pathways program. These are: Boundless Earth, Energy Consumers Australia, Paul Ramsay Foundation, Lord Mayors’ Charitable Trust.
Michael Ambrose receives funding from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).
Ask anyone about how Australian students are doing in school and they will likely tell you our results are abysmal and, more importantly, getting progressively worse.
This narrative has been reinforced by sustained reporting within academia and the media. It has only grown with the release of the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results on Tuesday evening.
But is this accurate and fair?
This year we independently both published papers looking at Australian students’ results. These papers both reached the same conclusions: students’ scores on the vast majority of standardised assessments were not in decline.
Australian students sit multiple standardised tests. These are tests that are set and scored in a consistent manner. Importantly, scores from one assessment round are statistically “matched” with those from previous rounds, meaning comparisons of average scores over time are possible.
Australian students do NAPLAN in Year 3, Year 5, Year 7 and Year 9. This is a national test that looks at literacy and numeracy skills.
Australian students also sit several international tests. PISA aims to measure 15-year-old students’ application of knowledge in maths, science and reading.
Sally’s research documented average scores in the four major standardised assessments in which Australia’s students have participated since 1995.
All but one assessment program (PISA) showed improvements or minimal change in average achievement.
In particular, primary school students’ scores in some of the standardised literacy and numeracy tests, including NAPLAN, PIRLS and TIMSS, have notably improved since the start of testing in each program.
For example, for PIRLS, which tests Year 4 reading skills, the average score for Australian students increased from 527 in 2011 to 544 in 2016 and 540 in 2021 (the difference between 2016 and 2021 is negligible).
Since NAPLAN testing began in 2008, average Year 3 reading achievement has increased by the equivalent of a full year’s progress.
In high school, students’ NAPLAN and TIMSS results have stayed largely the same over the same time span.
Helen’s research
Helen’s research explores the assumption there is a real and significant decline in Australian students’ achievement in science. It looks at assessments of students’ science literacy, including PISA, TIMSS, NAP-SL and VALID.
NAP-SL has no historical data but between the other three assessments, there is only a decline for PISA.
For both TIMSS and VALID, average scores remain stable, though TIMSS reveals improvements during the period PISA scores appreciably decline. Analysis on PISA scores for NSW public school students also reveals no decline.
What does this mean?
So when we talk about a “decline” for Australian results, we are really just talking about a decline in PISA results. While these do indeed show a decline, there are other important factors to consider.
First, PISA is one of many assessments taken by Australian students, each providing important but different information about achievement. As 2023 research also shows, PISA receives a lot more attention than other international tests. While there is no definitive reason for this, researchers suggest
the OECD purposefully set out to [give it more attention], branding and marketing the study in such a way to maximise media, public and policy attention.
A 2020 paper also noted the “growing body” of criticism around PISA.
This includes doubts over whether PISA actually measures the quality of education systems and learning, or if it measures something distinct from existing tests.
Comparing scores and ranks is also highly problematic because countries’ scores are not exact. For example, in 2018, Australia’s reading literacy score (503) was considered “not statistically different” from ten other countries, meaning its rank (16th) could potentially be as high as 11 or as low as 21.
Australia needs to be cautious about an over-reliance on PISA results.
For example, last month a widely publicised report from educational consultancy Learning First called for an overhaul of Australia’s science curriculum. In part, it based its argument on “deeply disturbing trends” around “sliding performance” on declining PISA results.
So we need to be careful about what these results are used for and how they may be used to justify big changes to policy.
Perhaps most importantly, however, is that the decline narrative diminishes and minimises the difficult and amazing work teachers do. While improvement should always be on the agenda, we should also celebrate our wins whenever we can.
Helen Georgiou currently receives funding from the NSW Department of Education and The Australian Government (Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources)
Sally Larsen 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.
The release of Napoleon unleashed a torrent of objections to historical errors in the movie.
Social media platforms were inundated with outrage – particularly from military historians – objecting from everything from details on uniforms to military formations.
These heated responses highlighted a more fundamental question: how should historians respond to creative works about history? Do historians have a public responsibility to apply their specialist knowledge to contest spurious claims about the past? Or should they simply respect creative licence, and let moviegoers have their fun?
Historical accuracy matters. But more important for historians should be whether creative works pass the test of authenticity: whether a creative work “rings true” to the historical context as a whole.
Whatever the cinematic opulence of Ridley Scott’s battle scenes and of the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine in 1804, historians have railed against a plethora of shortcomings and silences.
Careful makeup could not disguise 49-year-old Joaquin Phoenix as the 24-year-old lieutenant who first came to notice at the battle of Toulon in 1793. The portly, middle-aged Robespierre (Sam Troughton) bears no resemblance to the young revolutionary in appearance or style. Napoleon was not at the execution of Marie-Antoinette, nor did he order his troops to open fire on the Pyramids when in Egypt.
There are many more serious objections one could make – notably of silences about Napoleon’s failure to suppress guerilla resistance in Spain and his disastrous attempt to reimpose slavery in French colonies in the Caribbean after its abolition in 1794.
But historical inaccuracies are nothing new. Similar, if less strident, objections may be made about all historical recreations on film or in theatre.
In the celebrated Australian movie The Dish (2000), Rob Sitch and his team located the first reception of news of the Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong’s famous words about his “one small step” at the iconic Parkes Observatory rather than, as in reality, at the NASA stations at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra and in California. Cinematic attraction trumped accuracy.
Far more controversial was the scintillating musical Hamilton (2015) created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the prize-winning 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
Hamilton cast people of colour as the Founding Fathers. Disney
Miranda explicitly recognised the musical was his interpretation of the founding of the United States from today’s perspective, deliberately cast non-white actors as the Founding Fathers and drew on musical styles ranging from R&B to soul and hip hop.
Despite his candour, historians rushed to point out errors, exaggerations and elisions. Hamilton’s contributions to the battlefield during the American War of Independence are exaggerated for effect. The Schuyler sisters articulate feminist ideas far from those they would have had at the time. While Miranda makes much of Hamilton’s opposition to slavery, Hamilton was personally involved in purchasing slaves and his wife came from a wealthy slave-owning family.
But artists create works within different genres to that of professional history. They are not creating documentaries that can be evaluated according to the historical conventions of the careful use of available evidence, and respect for ambiguity and uncertainty. These need to be considered, first and foremost, as creative works.
As Scott snapped, the fact-checkers should “get a life!” and join the crowds enjoying his interpretation.
Instead of nitpicking the historical details of entertainment, perhaps historians should celebrate the fact that a long historical drama has been an immediate box office success, including in France – home to some of the film’s most vocal critics.
People who attend Napoleon, or any historically-based work of art, are more likely to be curious to know more rather than be gullible about its historical accuracy.
Jacques-Louis David’s 1810 portrait highlighted the Napoleonic law code on his desk. National Gallery of Art
Of course, historians should not fall silent on failings of historical accuracy, but the central issue for historians should be authenticity. That is, a creative work should be evaluated by historians not so much on whether specific details are accurate but on whether the producer’s imagination captures the essence of the historical moment.
“Poetic licence” permits selectivity and exaggeration in the interests of evoking a deeper meaning. (Of course, that cannot excuse deliberate distortion unless, as in Miranda’s case, it is openly acknowledged.)
The real weakness of Napoleon is Scott’s failure to ground the Emperor’s motivations in the principles underpinning his 1804 legal code – which he saw as his greatest legacy. Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s brutality and megalomania means the explanation for his behaviour boils down to a mixture of murderous territorial greed and a pathetic need to impress Josephine, instead of a more complex impulse to also impose revolutionary reforms.
In their public comments, historians might focus more on the level of contextual veracity in creative works and leave their long lists of errors of detail to professional journals. The problem with the Napoleon movie is not so much its errors of detail as its lack of authenticity about what we know of the man and his world view.
Peter McPhee 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.
When the new government lodged an urgent “reservation” against adopting amendments to World Health Organization regulations, it baffled some expert observers but signalled an early win for the NZ First party.
Under the heading “Strengthening Democracy and Freedoms” in its coalition agreement with the National Party, NZ First negotiated to:
Ensure a “National Interest Test” is undertaken before New Zealand accepts any agreements from the UN and its agencies that limit national decision-making and reconfirm that New Zealand’s domestic law holds primacy over any international agreements.
Why any of this should be needed is not clear – other than to support the implication New Zealand is being dictated to by the United Nations and is not in control of its own destiny.
In fact, detailed rules and processes governing how New Zealand applies international laws and treaties already exist, as does the requirement for a national interest analysis.
It’s important to remember, too, that New Zealand participates in creating new international legal rules because some of its (or any nation’s) most pressing problems cannot be solved unilaterally.
Domestic versus international law
The need for a collective response to contagious and dangerous diseases was one of the earliest examples of global cooperation. Today, the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organization (WHO) set out how this should happen. But individual governments are primarily responsible for implementing those regulations.
The COVID pandemic has triggered the negotiation of a new WHO treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. New Zealanders can participate in the process being run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
New Zealand governments have a long history of negotiating the wording of international treaties. They can also control the local impact of international agreements or treaties by entering “reservations”.
These mean a country will not be bound by specific parts of an agreement. This mechanism can make it more likely that countries will agree to a treaty overall, but it can also run the risk of creating different rules for different countries.
Many legal agreements have built-in mechanisms that allow for regulatory changes without requiring a formal revision of the entire treaty. The WHO’s International Health Regulations are a good example.
And ultimately, governments – including New Zealand’s – have the power to enter into, or withdraw from, any treaty.
Measuring the national interest
Of course, no government should sign up to anything not in its country’s best interests. But New Zealand has already developed clear, detailed rules governing how and to what extent international agreements become part of domestic law.
Cabinet must approve any proposal to sign or take binding action under a treaty. Significant changes in the operation of a treaty are also subject to careful oversight, with members of parliament playing an important role.
The NIA process considers the reasons for becoming a party to the treaty, the advantages and disadvantages to New Zealand, and how the treaty will be implemented. Cabinet can then authorise the signing of the final text of the agreement, thereby approving it.
Signed agreements – either multilateral or bilateral – and their NIAs then go to the House of Representatives. From there they are referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, which can look at the treaty itself or send it to a more appropriate select committee.
Affirming New Zealand sovereignty
The requirement to send the agreement and the NIA to select committee acts as a further brake. The government can’t do anything for 15 sitting days or until the select committee responds, whichever happens first.
The select committee can make recommendations, including asking for more time to examine the treaty and the NIA, and seek public submissions. The government has 60 working days to respond to the select committee’s recommendations.
It’s also open to MPs to debate the treaty. While the government may decide no action is required, sometimes the proposed new treaty obligation means new laws are needed, or existing ones amended or repealed.
New or changed laws give a government and parliament plenty of scope to influence if and how a treaty forms part of domestic law.
After these international and domestic processes are concluded, ratification can take place. Formal documents confirm that domestic procedures have been completed and the treaty is in force, along with any reservations that have been adopted.
The entire process affirms New Zealand’s sovereignty.
New Zealand has always been an active global citizen. It is party to over 1,900 treaties with multiple countries.
From direct participation in the formation of new agreements, through to assessing their impact, New Zealand has robust systems in place – all of which confirm domestic law holds primacy over any international agreements.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australian high school students have achieved steady results in a new round of international tests.
The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, released on Tuesday night, show 15-year-olds have recorded similar results to 2015 and 2018 in mathematics, science and reading.
But when looked at over the past 20 years, Australian students’ performance has dropped significantly. PISA also shows about one in eight Australian students is a “high performer”, while one in every four or five is a “low performer”.
What is PISA?
PISA is an international test of 15-year-olds’ knowledge and skills as they near the end of compulsory education.
It looks at maths, science and reading. In 2022, for the first time, it also assessed creative thinking. The creative thinking results will be released in 2024.
Since 2000, PISA has been conducted every three years but the assessment planned for 2021 was postponed until 2022 because of COVID. About 690,000 students across 81 countries participated in the test. Almost 13,500 students from 743 schools did the test in Australia.
Students complete a computer-based test and a background questionnaire. In the test, students are presented with stimulus material, such as a brief text, sometimes accompanied by a table, graph or diagram, and a series of questions. Students have to select the correct response or provide a written response, ranging from a word or a number, to an explanation.
In the questionnaire, students are asked about their family background, school life and attitudes about learning.
While other national and international assessments (such as NAPLAN) assess what students have learned in school, PISA assesses how students apply what they have learned to real-world situations.
The PISA 2022 results show Australia was equal tenth in maths, and equal ninth in science and reading.
Australian students’ performance in maths and reading has not changed significantly over the past seven years, and their performance in science has not changed significantly over four years.
However, Australian students’ performance has declined significantly since PISA results were first reported. There has been a decrease of 37 points in maths, 20 points in science and 30 points in reading.
The test does not tell us the reasons for this drop. Other countries whose performance in maths, reading and science have also declined significantly include Canada, Finland, Greece, New Zealand and Sweden.
Other countries drop
Australia’s standing compared with other countries has improved since the last PISA test because the performance of other countries has declined.
In maths, 11 countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom) that outperformed Australia in 2018 are now on par with Australia. We are now outperforming six countries that were on par with Australia in 2018 (France, Iceland, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and the Slovak Republic).
In Australia, male students performed significantly higher in maths (with an average score of 493 compared to the female average of 481). Female students performed significantly higher in reading (with an average of 509 compared to the male average of 487). Male and female students performed at similar levels for science.
Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds performed significantly higher than students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and students in major cities performed significantly higher than students in regional or remote areas.
Australia sits around tenth in maths compared to OECD countries. The Conversation. OECD, PISA, CC BY-SA
What about high and low performers?
About one in every eight Australian students is a “high performer” according to the test. This means they show high levels of skills and knowledge in reading, mathematics and science.
In reading and science, about one in every five of Australian students is a low performer, showing limited skills and knowledge in the relevant subject area, while in maths one in every four students is a low performer.
More than half of Australian students attained the (Australian-set) National Proficient Standard. This meet this, students must “demonstrate more than elementary skills expected at that year level”. In maths, 51% attained the proficient standard, 58% attained it for science and 57% for reading.
Between 2018 and 2022 there was no significant change in the proportion of students who attained the National Proficient Standard. But there has been a significant decline since PISA results were first reported. This includes a 16 percentage point drop in mathematics, nine percentage points in science and 12 percentage points in reading.
Next steps
While it is encouraging to see Australia’s results remain steady, we need to look at the bigger picture.
This includes a long-term decline in results and the reality that a significant proportion of students still aren’t meeting national standards.
Clearly, we are failing some of our 15-year-old students – because they lack basic literacy and numeracy skills and the ability to apply them to real-world situations.
To move forward, we need to ask how our education system can lift their performance. We also cannot forget our high performers – how can our education system support them to extend their learning further?
PISA not only provides us with an opportunity to compare how Australia’s education system fares against other countries. We can also to look at high-performing countries and learn how their curriculum and teaching practices could improve the education of young Australians on the cusp of adulthood.
Lisa De Bortoli 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.
It’s always a rush at the end of the year to push out announcements, but the Albanese government, with an overloaded work program, is finding itself jammed as Christmas bears down.
Several major items are still to come: the revamp of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the new migration policy, the review of aged care funding, and the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (the update of budget figures).
The changes to the NDIS are out on Thursday, after they go formally to Wednesday’s National Cabinet. They have triggered a row between federal and state governments.
The federal government is determined to trim the unsustainable rate of growth in the NDIS’s costs in part by shifting more of the disability funding to the states. The states have both protested and demanded payoffs in the form of more hospital funding, and a continuation of GST top-up payments. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the premiers were due to discuss a deal over dinner at The Lodge on Tuesday night.
It’s a typical example of fractious federalism; we’ve yet to see where a deal lands. We can anticipate, however, that any change the government makes to put the NDIS on a more sustainable basis will bring angry reaction from the sector.
The much-anticipated migration review will be controversial, whatever its content. Given the housing and other shortages, the government has to find ways to curb the larger-than-expected inflow.
But the options are limited. Employers want more workers. The education sector will be up in arms if student numbers are substantially squeezed, and that’s hard to do anyway.
The review needs to be released before the budget update, due next week, because the update will contain a number for net immigration.
The government mightn’t be too worried about having the aged care task force report, which canvasses how to make the sector more financially sustainable, released as the news cycle winds down for the holidays.
The report will be about people paying more for care, which is never good news. Aged care, as both the Howard and Hawke governments found, can be treacherous ground electorally.
The task force’s last meeting is on December 15, with the report to be finalised the following week. While the plan is for the report to be out in that pre-Christmas week, it could be pushed into the new year.
Most immediately, the government’s attention is still consumed by the political imbroglio over handling the immigration detainees it has been forced to release.
The news of the arrest of one of these on two charges of indecent assault – a 65-year-old man previously convicted of violent sexual offences – has particularly inflamed the issue, playing into Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s hands. Two others have also been arrested: one for allegedly possessing drugs (believed to be cannabis), and a 33-year-old registered sex offender after allegedly breaching his reporting obligations multiple times.
The Coalition this week will pass the government’s latest tranche of legislation, which enables some of those released to be re-detained. But Dutton has plenty of ammunition to continue to exploit the issue.
The legislation provides two hurdles for someone to be re-detained – a decision made by a court on an application by the immigration minister. First, the person must have previously been convicted of a crime carrying a penalty of at least seven years (note: that doesn’t mean they must have served seven years).
Second, the court has to be satisfied “to a high degree of probability” that the person poses an “unacceptable risk of committing a serious violent or sexual offence”.
The legislation is based on the model applying to those who pose a terrorism threat. However, UNSW constitutional law expert George Williams points to the inherent differences between the two regimes, which could increase the danger of a successful High Court challenge.
The government has done as much as it can to help it survive a challenge, Williams says. But it had to go beyond the terrorism law in some respects, and therein lies the risk.
Unlike those potentially falling under the terrorism law, the detainees have already been released and are out in the community. Also, the terrorism legislation covers people who have been convicted in Australia – some of the ex-detainees were convicted overseas.
Williams says terrorism poses the highest-level threat to the community at large, which may be seen differently from the crimes committed by some of these people.
The terrorism offence applies to anyone convicted of that offence, but this legislation applies only to a particular group of people. Williams says that could make the High Court more concerned that it is a form of “punishment” rather than a matter of “community safety”, making it constitutionally problematic.
The opposition might want to further strengthen the bill. But Williams warns the tougher it is made – that is, the further it departs from the model of the terrorist legislation – the greater the risk of the High Court throwing it out.
Another issue is now being canvassed. Once the legislation is passed, what then?
How many people will Immigration Minister Andrew Giles seek to have detained? How hard will it be to collect the evidence to convince a court a person should be detained? And how long will that process take?
These questions are presently unanswerable, to the discomfort of embattled Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Giles.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you’re looking for clues about whether the Reserve Bank has any interest rate rises left, Governor Michele Bullock offered several in her statement after Tuesday’s board meeting, saying:
the latest monthly figures showed inflation “continuing to moderate”
inflation expectations remained “consistent with the inflation target”
wages growth was “not expected to increase much further”.
The statement reads not only as an account of why the board kept rates on hold this month – as expected, after increasing them in November – but also an account of why it might not need to lift rates again.
Much will depend on “data and the evolving assessment of risks”. The board will make that assessment at its first meeting for the year in February.
Here’s why that next meeting matters so much.
Inflation’s headed in the right direction
The monthly measure of annual inflation has been falling since it peaked in December. Last week we learned that in October it fell from 5.6% to 4.9%, meaning it’s now closer to the Reserve Bank’s target of 2-3% than to the December peak of 8.4%.
A few special government measures helped push it down.
An increase in Commonwealth rent assistance decreased recorded rents; energy bill rebates decreased recorded electricity prices; and changes to the childcare subsidy decreased recorded childcare prices.
Those government measures won’t depress future inflation readings, suggesting that from here on inflation might bounce back.
But on the other hand, from here on the very large inflation outcomes recorded at the end of last year will drop out of the 12-monthly figures.
The mathematics of falling inflation
Simple maths suggests that if this year’s November and December readings are like the average of the other readings this year, annual inflation will fall to 3.1%.
The November figure will be released on January 10 and the December figure on January 31. Both will be available to the Reserve Bank board when it meets on February 5 and 6, along with the latest quarterly measure of inflation.
If that e quatelymeasure is the same as the average of the past two quarters, it will show annual inflation of 4%.
Such outcomes – which are likely if inflation continues along its present trajectory – would see inflation closing in on the Reserve Bank’s target band and relieve it of any need to further lift rates.
Of course, it mightn’t happen. But there’s a lot driving down inflation.
Prices we don’t much notice are falling
The prices we pay attention to are those we see in the supermarket, what we fork out on mortgage payments and household bills, and what we pay at the petrol pump. (Petrol prices have been falling for weeks now.)
Prices we notice less are far less troubling than they were.
During 2022, the price of household appliances climbed 8.2%. So far this year it has fallen 2%.
The price of furnishings climbed 5.3% during 2022. So far this year it has fallen 1.6%. The price of clothing climbed 5.4%. So far this year it has fallen 2.6%.
All sorts of prices are coming down, partly because the supply bottlenecks driving them up last year are being reversed and partly because – thanks to 13 near consecutive interest rate rises – we are not buying at anything like the rate we used to.
Retail spending grew by just 1.2% over the year to October – the least since the COVID lockdowns.
Likely population growth of 2.4% and what Westpac believes to be retail price growth of 3.6% means the amount bought per person actually fell 4.5%.
Even this year’s more hyped Black Friday spending was up only 0.6% to 1% compared to Black Friday in November last year. Given our population growth was higher than that, it suggests we spent less on those sales per person this year.
Dentistry and haircuts are more expensive
What about the prices that are climbing strongly?
With the exception of rents – up 7.6% over the year – it’s hard to find many.
Dentistry is becoming more expensive. Shutterstock
In a speech after the last Reserve Bank board meeting, Governor Bullock said inflation was increasingly being driven by the price of services, which stands to reason given inflation in the price of goods has been ebbing away.
She nominated increases in the prices charged by hairdressers and dentists, as well as restaurants. And there’s definitely something to see there, for dentists.
During 2022, the statistician’s measure of the price of dentistry climbed 3.9%.
In the first three quarters of this year, it climbed by that much again, meaning the pace picked up. But the increase is not that much more than the overall increase in wages, suggesting dentistry is not being priced much further out of reach.
Haircuts climbed in price a hefty 6% during 2022 and continued to climb at that pace during the first three quarters of 2023, which is uncomfortable, but at least not accelerating.
The price of restaurant meals climbed 6.7% during 2022 but only 3.8% in the first three quarters of 2023, meaning the pace is easing.
Wage growth a risk, but not yet a worry
The governor is concerned high wage growth will become embedded in the price of services. But at 3.9%, wage growth isn’t particularly high.
About a third of workers are covered by enterprise agreements. Jeff Borland of the University of Melbourne points out the increases in most of the newly-lodged enterprise agreements are flat or trending down. Many of us got a top-up at the start of our three-year agreements, which won’t be continued.
Borland’s statistical analysis suggests individual agreements aren’t pushing up wage growth either, but increases granted by the Fair Work Commission to the 20% of workers on awards are. Yet, by design, these increases reflect, rather than drive, inflation.
If inflation does accelerate over the holiday season, the Reserve Bank probably will push up rates further. But as the governor seemed to acknowledge on Tuesday, it’s not looking likely.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suman Majumdar, Associate Professor and Chief Health Officer – COVID and Health Emergencies, Burnet Institute
Evidence is continuing to accumulate on the burden and frequency of chronic effects after a COVID infection, which fall under the umbrella term “long COVID”.
At least 5%–10% of people who contract COVID experience long COVID. This can include symptoms (for example, fatigue, brain fog and breathlessness) or conditions (for example, heart conditions, neurological conditions and diabetes) after the initial infection that may be persisting, new or relapsing.
Studies show the symptoms and increased risk of chronic conditions can persist for up to two years after infection. The individual impact of long COVID can range from temporary to severely disabling, and the societal cost – for example due to reduced workforce and increased health-care costs – is enormous
So where are we at with reducing the risk of, and treating, long COVID?
Could antivirals reduce the risk of long COVID?
COVID antiviral drugs, taken orally, continue to play an important role in reducing acute severe disease after infection. In Australia, they’re available to those at highest risk from COVID.
Observational research has suggested taking antivirals during a COVID infection can reduce the risk of long COVID in people with at least one risk factor for acute severe COVID.
In one study, nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, known as Paxlovid, was associated with a 26% reduced risk of developing long COVID. It was also linked to a 47% reduced risk of death and a 24% reduced risk of hospitalisation after the acute infection phase.
A similar 14% reduction in long COVID risk has been reported for molnupiravir (Lagevrio).
Some research suggests taking Paxlovid during a COVID infection could reduce the risk of long COVID. J.A. Dunbar/Shutterstock
Ensitrelvir – a COVID antiviral available in Japan – could also reduce the risk of long COVID, preliminary analyses suggest.
More research is needed, but this data indicates antiviral medications may be a key approach to lessening the risk of long COVID.
The population most at risk of long COVID (often working-age adults) differs from those most at risk of severe disease from a COVID infection (older adults or those with chronic medical conditions). Eligibility criteria to access antivirals do not currently include consideration of long COVID.
Meanwhile, one randomised trial found metformin, a commonly prescribed diabetes medication, could also reduce long COVID risk. The study offered people with symptomatic COVID who were overweight or obese metformin for two weeks (beginning within a week of symptoms starting). This group was 41% less likely to develop long COVID compared with a placebo group that didn’t take metformin.
The way this works might involve an effect on the powerhouses of our cells, mitochondria, or directly on the virus. Whatever the precise mechanism, further research should be priortised to fast-track this potential.
We’re understanding more about long COVID
There are no effective or approved treatments for long COVID at present. Currently about 12 clinical trials are testing potential drugs. A number of candidate treatments exist for certain components of long COVID that may be useful in subgroups of patients.
An Australian parliamentary inquiry into long COVID stressed the best way to avoid the condition is to lower the risk of getting infected with COVID in the first place (through protective behaviours such as vaccination, mask wearing and cleaner indoor air).
While these are all important measures, we would benefit from having more tools at our disposal to prevent and treat long COVID. After all, COVID is still evolving rapidly and vast numbers of people are likely to be reinfected in the months and years ahead.
Overall, the quantity and speed of clinical trials into long COVID treatments has been insufficient. And most public health policy approaches are focused on preventing severe disease from a COVID infection, rather than the long-term effects.
Given what we now know about long COVID, and the additional concern of what we don’t know (for example, could organ damage reveal itself many years down the track?), we desperately need diagnostic tools, clinical care pathways coupled with health worker training, and treatments to prevent and cure long COVID.
Unaddressed, long COVID may well lead to a new and substantial health and societal burden for many years to come. The response must involve prioritisation of research, such as that which led to the fast development of COVID vaccines and antivirals.
While there are some positive signs in the policy and research space, we need to see stronger recognition of long COVID and a greater sense of urgency around finding solutions.
Suman Majumdar, through the Burnet Institute receives grant funding from the Australian Governemnt via the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia, the Medical Research Future Fund and DFAT’s Centre for Health Security.
Brendan Crabb and the Institute he leads receives research grant funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia, the Medical Research Future Fund, DFAT’s Centre for Health Security and other Australian federal and Victorian State Government bodies. He is the Chair of The Australian Global Health Alliance and the Pacific Friends of Global Health, both in an honorary capacity. And he serves on the Board of the Telethon Kids Institute, on advisory committees of mRNA Victoria, the Sanger Institute (UK), the Institute for Health Transformation (at Deakin University), The Brain Cancer Centre (Australia), the WHO Malaria Vaccine Advisory Committee; MALVAC, and is a member of OzSAGE and The John Snow Project, all honorary positions.
Michelle Scoullar received funding from the RACP Foundation in 2018 and 2020 as part of her PhD. She is the lead paediatrician with Clinic Nineteen, a clinic specialised in the care and treatment of people with long COVID.
Ziyad Al-Aly consulted for Pfizer (uncompensated) and Tonix pharmaceuticals. He receives funding from the US government.
Emma Pakula 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.
Sydney-based Pinchgut Opera is internationally praised for research-driven revivals of baroque opera gems with an acute attention to historically-informed interpretation of the music.
In this production of Rinaldo, composed by Handel in 1711, they deliver a rare synergy of historical and contemporary elements, bringing to the stage a story about how conflicts can be resolved without bloodshed.
When the company embarked on producing Rinaldo in 2020, little did they anticipate the narrative they wanted to bring to the stage would coincide with another escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
Although there are no explicit references to the current conflict, the dramatic text originally set in the area around Jerusalem during the First Crusade, offers a valuable perspective on fostering empathy by acknowledging the shared humanity in our adversaries.
The plot does not commence with combat but with lengthy elaborations on the inner world of the characters. In their opening arias, the warriors on opposing sides eloquently express their love and dedication to the women they hold dear. This display of intimate sentiment humanises them.
Jake Arditti charms the audience from the start with Ogni indugio d’un amante (To a lover every day) as the Italian hero Rinaldo on a crusade to reclaim Jerusalem from the Saracens.
In his opening aria Sibillar gli angui d’Aletto (All around I seem to hear), the Saracen king of Jerusalem Argante sings not of the precarious situation. Portrayed by Adrian Tamburini with a warm bass voice and commanding presence on stage, this aria sets in motion a complex character who turns away from violence.
Combat occurs only toward the end, where a twist in the story leads to an unexpected resolution through good will – and not divine intervention as usually happens in baroque opera.
Rinaldo integrates historically informed baroque music of the highest standard into a contemporary performance. The acting is emotionally charged and grounded in detailed discernment of the dramatic text.
Directed by Louisa Muller, the singer-actors achieve an internalised characterisation and organic bodily movement authentic to the emotion and intention of each character.
The set allows the music to take centre stage. Cassandra Hannagan/Pinchgut Opera
Muller’s production is set in today’s world anywhere there could be military conflict. The contemporary staging and costumes by Simone Romanuik – mostly in black, grey, blue and white – and lighting design by Verity Hampson exude a subtle splendour and allow the voices and acting to take centre stage.
Ascending steps lead to a blue-sky mountain top. Lighting and mirror effects create the uncanny world of the sorceress and set in motion her magic spells. Birdsong and baskets of flowers bring to life a pastoral love scene between Rinaldo and Almirena.
Conducted by Erin Helyard, the Orchestra of the Antipodes features baroque experts who deliver the most exciting turn of phrases and sonorities in a dramatic interplay between voices and orchestra.
Erin Helyard conducts the Orchestra of the Antipodes. Cassandra Hannagan/Pinchgut Opera
The vocal mastery and fresh ornamentation are not mere display. The vocal performances are centred in believable and enchanting emotions.
Such a balance between visual and auditory elements, both honouring and overcoming the generic specifics of baroque opera and the strong rapport with the audience, sets a new standard in Australian baroque opera performance.
Magical moments
Each scene is flawlessly executed, progressing towards its individual climax and sustaining the emotional tension until the stylised sword battle at the end.
Jake Arditti (Rinaldo) and Alexandra Oomens (Almirena) wear very simple modern costumes (an innocent white singlet for Almirena and white T-shirt for Rinaldo), their bodies somewhat vulnerable yet free to move.
The two lovers are portrayed more realistically that we normally see in opera. Cassandra Hannagan/Pinchgut Opera
They portray the attraction between the two lovers more realistically that we normally see in opera with passionate kisses, romantic teasing and sexual tension, as well as silent acting and outcries of anguish. Their vocal prowess allows them to mould and shape the complex phrases and convey even the smallest of inflections with ease.
Arditti and Oomens both stop the clock and the breaths of the audience as they give full expression to the desperation of their characters in the two famous arias, Cara sposa (My dear betrothed) and Lascia ch’io pianga (Let me weep).
Oomens’s Almirena enchants Argante with evocative pleading in Lascia ch’io pianga, rendering her soft strength irresistible. Highly anticipated, both arias offer novel musical interpretations underscored by authentic connection to the text.
Novel musical interpretations are underscored by authentic connection to the text. Cassandra Hannagan/Pinchgut Opera
Arditti’s full-bodied countertenor triumphs in the final Or la tromba in suon festante (The jubilant sound of the trumpet), complemented by Lianne Sullivan’s exuberant baroque trumpet playing.
Soprano Emma Pearson performs Son vinta (I am conquered) with nuance and human fragility prompting a burst of applause. Her rendition of Armida is magically powerful, and the stylised movement of her arms and hands adds an effective touch to the representation of the supernatural.
Randall Scotting as Goffredo, the leader of the first crusade and father of Almirena, emanates nobility and dignity through effortless singing and serene demeanour that are very difficult to achieve.
Emotionally charging, believable and thought provoking, Pinchgut Opera’s Rinaldo brings to the stage a spectacle of war and magic where love prevails, delivers great aesthetic pleasure and achieves a rare organic connection between musical and visual storytelling.
Rinaldo is at the City Recital Hall, Sydney, until December 6.
Daniela Kaleva ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Australians love their coffee, and many can barely live without it. According to Statista, we consumed an average of about 2kg of coffee per person in 2022. Yet it’s estimated less than 1% of this coffee is grown in Australia.
Our new research, published in the Journal of Sensory Studies, introduces a world-first coffee character wheel which can be used to describe the unique “terroir” of Australian coffee.
We pored over published literature, online materials and coffee sensory panels to collate a list of 679 unique sensory terms describing coffee’s acidity, mouthfeel and aftertaste. We then narrowed this down to 95 terms, which were arranged onto our wheel.
We hope our research will help Australian growers become more competitive in the wider coffee market, and establish a brand identity beyond “Grown in Australia”.
A history of growing coffee
Many people don’t think of Australia as a coffee-growing country – probably because coffee cultivation is typically associated with tropical high-altitude areas.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t produce a good cup of coffee here. In fact, coffee has been successfully grown on Australia’s east coast for more than 100 years. Today, there are about 50 growers scattered throughout the coast’s tropical and subtropical areas.
During the course of our research, coffee farmers told us Australia’s cool temperature, high rainfall and zero-frost microclimates are perfect for producing high-quality Arabica coffee.
At the same time, coffee is an expensive crop to produce because of high labour and land costs. As such, Australian-grown coffee remains the secret of a small number of speciality coffee drinkers.
But our research has found there is potential for it to meet national demand.
Working with producers
Southern Cross University’s Northern Rivers campus borders the Byron Bay hinterland in New South Wales, a major coffee-producing area in Australia. For decades, our university’s researchers have worked with local coffee farmers to improve production and quality.
Our team recently received funding from AgriFutures Australia, as part of its AgriFutures Emerging Industries Program, to find the unique “terroir” of Australian-grown coffee.
Terroir, a word often associated with wine, can be thought of as the “taste of place” of a product being consumed. Although a product’s terroir is specific to a location, the exact definition can vary for different crops.
Looking at the literature on coffee, we found the definition of coffee terroir would need to be clarified. We compared it to the well-defined wine terroir, and found post-harvest processing should also be included, as it is specific to the location.
Finding the terroir of Aussie coffee
The quality of coffee is often assessed and scored following industry-standard guidelines.
Australian-grown coffees have very high scores similar to, or above, other international coffees such as those from Brazil, Columbia or Ethiopia.
However, these scores can’t differentiate between terroirs – so we assessed and differentiated between the terroirs of 100 Australian-grown single-origin coffee samples and 50 international ones.
The samples were anonymised and given to 138 panellists who provided thousands of descriptions. For aroma and flavour, we standardised the descriptions to the well-known coffee taster’s flavour wheel.
We then isolated descriptions related to acidity, mouthfeel and aftertaste, which we were able to summarise using our coffee character wheel.
What does our coffee taste like?
Our results found Australian-grown coffee is sweeter, nuttier and fruitier in flavour than others. This pleasant terroir is probably due to the cooler temperatures and longer ripening periods in our coffee-producing areas.
It also has a low-medium intensity in acidity, smooth textural mouthfeel, and a medium-long aftertaste.
In addition, we observed slight differences between the terroirs of coffee from Australia’s two primary growing regions. The tropical north had a more nutty and roasted flavour profile, while the subtropical presented a sweeter and fruitier profile.
Growing Australia’s coffee industry and brewing the perfect cup.
Waiting to be discovered
In collaboration with World Coffee Research, we’ve conducted trials to find new high-quality coffee varieties that can be grown in Australia. These will help reduce the cost of production and provide more resilience against climate change.
Locally produced coffee also has a lower carbon footprint and transport time compared with imported coffee. This means a fresher, cleaner and greener product. And as Australia is free of coffee pests and diseases, most of it is grown without the use of pesticides.
For now, Australian-origin coffee remains a niche product waiting to be discovered – but it might just end up in your morning cup yet.
Lei Liu receives funding from AgriFutures Australia for the research project ‘The Defining terroir of Australian coffee to increase demand and investment’. The project is lead by Southern Cross University and funded by AgriFutures Australia’s Emerging Industries Program.
Simon Williams receives funding from AgriFutures Australia for the research project ‘The Defining terroir of Australian coffee to increase demand and investment’. The project is lead by Southern Cross University and funded by AgriFutures Australia’s Emerging Industries Program.
Tobias Kretzschmar receives funding from AgriFutures Australia for the research project ‘Assessing the performance of international coffee cultivars in Australia’. The project is lead by Southern Cross University and funded by AgriFutures Australia’s Emerging Industries Program.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Harrison, Director, Master of Business Administration Program (MBA); Co-Director, Better Consumption Lab, Deakin University, Deakin University
In 2019, a travel insurance company held a secret contest in which they included a line in the fine print of their policy promising $10,000 to the first person who spotted it.
Seventy-three policies were bought before the award was finally claimed. But those 73 who had obviously not read the policy, would not have been alone.
It seems most of us don’t read the terms and conditions of some relatively important, legally binding contracts before signing up.
In one study only 8% of people read a bank account contract, 19% a car rental contract and 25% a dry-cleaning contract before committing to a deal. Similarly, more than 80% of participants in a different study reported “not reading at all” or “not really” reading click through agreements.
A good reason to read a contract
Even more confrontingly, 98% of participants in another study effectively agreed to give up their first born child after supposedly having read the fictional terms and conditions of an agreement online.
The number of people who do actually read the terms and conditions may be even lower with another study finding only 0.1% of shoppers accessed the licence agreement and most only read a small portion.
Studies show very few people read contracts, let alone read them in full. Ralf Geithe
Despite our best intentions, most of us simply sign terms and conditions, rarely read the fine print, and fail to appreciate the consequences.
However, once we are presented with a particular problem arising from or related to the contract, our attitude alters. Studies have shown the number of people who return to their contracts after a problem more than doubles for car rentals, triples for dry-cleaning issues and rises nearly seven times for a bank account.
Unsurprisingly though, most people don’t believe it’s their fault. Rather, they assume it’s to do with something they weren’t made aware of at the time of purchase or they believe it is easily fixed.
So, why don’t we read the fine print?
Like all things in human behaviour, it’s complicated.
Some reasons given by consumers include terms and conditions are too long and time-consuming, they are full of legal jargon, they seem all the same, they are irrelevant and they have no choice but to accept them if they want the particular product.
They also believed if there was something wrong with the agreement somebody else would have pointed it out (and fixed it before them) and vendors are usually reputable so they wouldn’t be put at risk.
The last two reasons point to a rational tendency to equate low probability risks with zero probability risks, as well as to use mental shortcuts that simplify decision-making and align with a person’s beliefs. There are also social norms and signals for us not to read the contract, such as the expectation to “sign the form and keep moving”.
Problems arise in markets where it appears easy to switch from one contract to another, but where there are complex agreements, including telecommunications, banking, health insurance and gyms. These sectors might use strong marketing tactics, such as bundling offers, along with apparently easily accessible customer service, which can cause consumers to be overconfident in their dealings with businesses.
Sometimes it is simply the length and complexity of contracts that puts people off reading them. For example, assuming a reading rate of 240 words a minute, Spotify’s terms of service is estimated to take about 36 minutes, while TikTok’s would take 31. Microsoft would take over an hour. For comparison, reading all of Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu’s The Art of War would take only 50 minutes.
These extremely long policies, coupled with the fact individuals feel most information is unimportant, influence willingness to read the fine print. Realistically, failure to read the terms and conditions, particularly because contracts are rarely negotiable, seems like a perfectly rational response. This is made even more likely if we thinks the costs of reviewing a dense document outweighs its benefits.
Agreements are binding (kind of)
Legally, though, terms and conditions are enforceable and allow businesses to reduce costs that might otherwise be associated with bargaining.
Getting us to agree to the terms and conditions upfront also provides an opportunity for businesses to pass on certain risks to the consumer. Clearly this should be a concern for lawmakers. The idea of a well-informed consumer who understands their obligations and the rights under an agreement is a foundation of consumer law.
The Australian Consumer Law does help reduce some risk by deeming terms of a standard consumer contract unfair if they have been presented unclearly or disadvantage one party, regardless of whether they have been accepted by the consumer.
However, it is unlikely most consumers read consumer law or use it given the complexity of challenging a vendor who is unwilling to abide by them.
Dealing with reality
If we are serious about the concept of the informed consumer, then we have to accept some realities.
We have to acknowledge consumer attention is limited and information overload and assymetry prevents people from comprehending what is and isn’t important.
We also have to accept the type of information and the way it’s presented does have an impact on whether people understand the consequences of signing an agreement.
Critically, most terms and conditions currently seem to be designed to protect the seller more than they are to help the consumer to make an informed choice.
Research does suggest consumers are more inclined to read terms and conditions before committing when the product or service cost is significant, the contract is perceived as short, and there is a belief they will be able to change or influence contract terms.
Indeed, if businesses seriously do want their customers to be informed, shorter, less abstract and more focused terms and conditions that highlight the critical information related to potential harm is one solution. Another might be to quiz participants with a short knowledge test as they sign the document to see if they have actually understood the agreement.
Or perhaps they could hide surprise $10,000 “Easter eggs” in their terms and conditions and create a culture of reward for effort, instead of the current deficit approach.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO
Global emissions of fossil carbon dioxide (CO₂), in yet another year of growth, will increase by 1.1% in 2023. These emissions will hit a record 36.8 billion tonnes. That’s the finding of the Global Carbon Project’s 18th annual report card on the state of the global carbon budget, which we released today.
Fossil CO₂ includes emissions from the combustion and use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and cement production. Adding CO₂ emissions and removals from land-use change, such as deforestation and reforestation, human activities are projected to emit 40.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023.
The world’s vegetation and oceans continue to remove about half of all CO₂ emissions. The rest builds up in the atmosphere and is causing increasing warming of the planet.
At current emission levels, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit warming to 1.5°C will likely be exceeded in seven years, and in 15 years for 1.7°C. The need to cut emissions has never been so urgent.
Emissions from every fossil source are up
Fossil CO₂ emissions now account for about 90% of all CO₂ emissions from human activities. Emissions from every single fossil source increased this year compared to 2022:
Although global emissions have increased, the picture for individual countries is more diverse. There are some signs of progress towards decarbonisation.
China’s emissions (31% of the global total) increased by 4% with growth in all fossil fuel sources. The highest relative growth was from oil emissions. This was in part due to the transport sector’s recovery after COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.
The United States’ emissions (14% of global) are down by 3%. The rapid retirement of coal-fired power plants drove most of this decline. US coal emissions are the lowest since 1903.
India’s emissions (8% of global) increased by 8.2%. Emissions for all fossil fuels grew by 5% or more, with coal the highest at 9.5%. India is now the world’s third-largest fossil CO₂ emitter.
European Union emissions (7% of global) are down by 7.4%. This decline was due to both high renewable energy penetration and the impacts on energy supply of the war in Ukraine.
During the decade of 2013-2022, 26 countries had declining fossil CO₂ emission trends while their economies continued to grow. The list includes Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Romania, South African, United Kingdom and USA.
While fossil CO₂ emissions continue to increase, net emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation (CO₂ source), minus CO₂ removals, such as reforestation (CO₂ sink), appear to be falling. However, estimates of emissions from land-use change are highly uncertain and less accurate overall than for fossil fuel emissions.
Our preliminary estimate shows net emissions from land-use change were 4.1 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2023. These emissions follow a small but relatively uncertain decline over the past two decades.
The declining trend was due to decreasing deforestation and a small increase in reforestation. The highest emitters are Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These three countries contribute 55% of net global CO₂ emissions from land-use change.
When we combine all CO₂ emissions from human activities (fossil and land use), we find very little trend in total emissions over the past decade. If confirmed, this would imply global CO₂ emissions from human activities are not growing further but remain at very high record levels.
Stable CO₂ emissions, at about 41 billion tonnes per year, will lead to continuing rapid CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere and climate warming. To stabilise the climate, CO₂ emissions from human activities must reach net zero. This means any residual CO₂ emissions must be balanced by an equivalent CO₂ removal.
Nature’s a big help, with a little human help
Terrestrial vegetation and ocean absorb about half of all CO₂ emissions. This fraction has remained remarkably stable for six decades.
Besides the natural CO₂ sinks, humans are also removing CO₂ from the atmosphere through deliberate activities. We estimate permanent reforestation and afforestation over the past decade have removed about 1.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year.
This is equivalent to 5% of fossil fuel emissions per year.
Other non-vegetation strategies are in their infancy. They removed 0.01 million tonnes of CO₂.
Machines (direct air carbon capture and storage) pulled 0.007 million tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Enhanced weathering projects, which accelerate natural weathering processes to increase the CO₂ uptake by spreading certain minerals, accounted for the other 0.004 million tonnes. This is more than a million times smaller than current fossil fuel emissions.
The remaining carbon budget
From January 2024, the remaining carbon budget for a one-in-two chance to limit global warming to 1.5°C has been reduced to 275 billion tonnes of CO₂. This budget will used up in seven years at 2023 emission levels.
The carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.7°C has been reduced to 625 billion tonnes of CO₂, with 15 years left at current emissions. The budget for staying below 2°C is 1,150 billion tonnes of CO₂ – 28 years at current emissions.
Reaching net zero by 2050 requires total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions to decrease on average by 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year. That’s comparable to the fall in 2020 emissions resulting from COVID-19 measures (-2.0 billion tonnes of CO₂).
Without additional negative emissions (CO₂ removal), a straight decreasing line of CO₂ emissions from today to 2050 (when many countries aspire to achieve net zero CO₂ or the more ambitious net zero for all greenhouse gases) would lead to a global mean surface temperature of 1.7°C, breaching the 1.5°C limit.
Renewable energy production is at a record high and growing fast. To limit climate change fossil and land-use change, CO₂ emissions must be cut much more quickly and ultimately reach net zero.
Pep Canadell receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program – Climate Systems Hub.
Corinne Le Quéré receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 821003 (4C), from the UN Natural Environment Research Council under grant NE/V011103/1 (Frontiers), and from the UK Royal Society under grant RPR1191063 (Research Professorship). Corinne Le Quéré Chairs the French High council on climate and is a member of the UK Climate Change Committee. Her position here is her own and does not necessarily reflect that of these groups.
Glen Peters receives funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nos. 821003 (4C) and 958927 (CoCO2), and Horizon Europe grant agreement No 101056306 (IAM COMPACT).
Judith Hauck receives research funding from the Helmholtz Association, European Commission, and German ministry for science and education (BMBF). She is affiliated with Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar- and Marine Research.
Julia Pongratz receives funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the CDRterra program and from the Horizon Europe projects ForestNavigator and RESCUE.
Philippe Ciais receives funding from the BNP Paribas Foundation (philanthropic gift for the Global Carbon Altas), the 4C EU Horizon2020 funded project, and the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative project.
Pierre Friedlingstein receives funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nos. 821003 (4C)
Robbie Andrew receives funding the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nos. 821003 (4C) and 958927 (CoCO2).
Rob Jackson receives funding from the CA Energy Commission, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, UNEP, and HT LLC.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Indigo Willing, Social Science Fellow, The Sydney Social Science and Humanities Advanced Research Centre, The University of Sydney. Adjunct Research Fellow, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University
PUMA X RIME NYC Luxe Sky Wedge (2013), Ed Reeve, Design Museum London.
Sneakers were once traditionally associated with what fashion academic Naomi Braithwaite describes as “athleticism”: they were only considered in their relationship to sports.
But things have changed in one of the most significant yet overlooked style revolutions of our times. In the late 20th century, sneakers became the footwear of choice for youth and subcultures. In the 21st century, they are the defining footwear of our era.
Sneakers are ubiquitous: on the feet of elite athletes, icons of street cultures, super models on prestigious runways, and ordinary people for exercise, leisure and work. Global sales hit US$79 billion in 2021.
With such diverse consumer identities and needs, how have designers responded over the years? And what stories are behind the success of certain sneakers?
Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street at HOTA, Home of the Arts, attempts to answer these questions with an impressive collection curated by Ligaya Salazar from the Design Museum in London, with some local additions.
An engaging journey
This exhibition offers an engaging journey of exploration in two parts. The first is Style. We step into a gallery of aeroplane hanger proportions. Sneakers are in glass cases with text highlighting their importance as historical pieces; there are giant photographs of youth cultures and icons wearing fashionable “kicks” on the walls; a basketball court with bean bags to watch short films.
There is no one “sneaker culture”. Subcultures are often hyper-fashion conscious and brand obsessed.
A timeline of sneaker history traces their rising status in youth cultures in New York during the 1970s, then in the basketball and hip-hop worlds where sneakers transformed from sports shoe to fashion statement.
Converse All Star (1930). Ed Reeve, Design Museum London.
Shiny white runners worn by Run-DMC are set side-by-side with Michael Jordan’s famous shoes. Icons and the shoes they made famous are given a good dose of reverence, but in a way that is accessible. You can get up close and admire the shoes, read some of the history through the wall texts, and absorb the historical significance of the shoes through the photographs accompanying each case.
There is an impressive section on skate culture including VANS, which was founded in 1966 and one of the leading shoes for skateboarders. The exhibition perceptively understands the culture as well as the shoes.
Photographs of well-known skaters from the 1970s and 1980s sit alongside a nod to Thrasher magazine and insight into how skaters “destroy” shoes as part of their practice. Deteriorating and ripped shoes can be a badge of honour, as one demolished pair of VANS once worn by a seasoned skater in the exhibition shows.
Installation view, Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street at HOTA Gallery. Credit Milk and Honey Creative. HOTA
Scientific advances
The second part of the exhibition is Performance, detailing the scientific research – from shoes that measure temperature to ones designed to be more sustainable.
There is a chance to better understand how the feel and performance of sneakers have been developed, and how basketball sneakers have benefited from input by Chuck Taylor.
Onitsuka Tiger TG4 Marathon (1968 – 72). Ed Reeve, Design Museum London.
There are interesting concept-driven shoes by Puma, including self-lacing shoes, and shoes designed to read biological information of the wearer.
However scientifically advanced these shoes are, they are not always aesthetically appealing – some by Puma remind me of fancy Crocs.
The exhibition features a photo of Tommie Smith and John Carlos with Norman Williams from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. While Smith and Carlos wore only black socks in the most famous photo of their Black Power salute, they wore Puma shoes in the race that won them the medals, later infamously stripped from them.
Beside the famous podium photograph are a pair of the same style of Puma shoes, an example of how sneakers are embedded with social meanings and sometimes politically shape tensions beyond their intended purpose for high performance sport.
Adidas NMD HU Pharrell Human Race ‘Yellow’ (2016). Ed Reeve, Design Museum London.
Sneakers Unboxed aims to celebrate the cultural vibrancy and design milestones of the sneaker world, rather than ddress its failures and shortcomings. But there is an effort to acknowledge issues. A Women in Sneakers panel (which I spoke at) looked at how the industry can improve gender equity and social inclusion. Short films highlighting scenes in the Global South highlight voices that rarely get a platform.
Sneakers have a global appeal and different communities and locations shape the culture. A section on grime – a rap movement from the early 2000s predating the harder hitting drill music from Chicago that spread to the United Kingdom ten years later – highlights how Black youth in the UK are creating their own forms of pride, identity and belonging.
The sneaker industry has ties to many social issues including colonialism and labour exploitation. None of the big brands are without serious critique. More conversations like the ones in the panel and short films are valuable and needed to keep up the momentum to push brands to improve and do better.
Sneaker Archaeology. 2021. Artist: Helen Kirkum. Ed Reeve, Design Museum London.
If you love sneakers and are a die-hard fan, this is the exhibit for you. However, those totally oblivious to the cultural relevance of sneakers will also enjoy learning about the history of sneakers in music and subcultures, fashion, the world of collectors and high-performance sport.
This exhibition opens the door on the sneaker world and our love of this footwear. It is up to all of us – but especially industry – to commit to finding ways to be more responsive to local and global issues and ongoing efforts to move forward towards kicks with ethics.
Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street is now on at HOTA on the Gold Coast.
Humanity’s emissions of greenhouse gases have caused rapid global warming at a rate unprecedented in at least the past 2,000 years. Rapid global warming has been accompanied by increases in the frequency and intensity of heat extremes over most land regions in the past 70 years.
While human activities cause emissions of a number of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO₂) stands out as the leading culprit. This is because of its relatively long atmospheric lifetime and because human activities cause much higher emissions of CO₂ than other greenhouse gases.
To avoid reaching unsafe global temperatures, climate scientists have concluded we can’t prevent continued global warming without reaching a state of net zero CO₂ emissions.
But how might climate extremes change after net zero CO₂? There is limited research on this. Our new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, uses a collection of models to address this gap. We found temperatures would respond very differently in various parts of the world, and heat extremes might continue to disproportionately affect vulnerable populations.
The greenhouse effect and net zero emissions
The world’s land and oceans have taken up most of the carbon humanity has emitted over the past six decades. However, land and oceans are incapable of absorbing 100% of CO₂ emissions.
The remaining CO₂ emissions over the past 60 years have been absorbed by the atmosphere, leading to an enhanced greenhouse effect. This has caused the especially rapid warming we’ve observed in the recent past.
To stop the continued enhancement of the greenhouse effect, we need to reach net zero CO₂ emissions. Achieving net zero means reaching an overall balance between the CO₂ emissions humans produce and the CO₂ humans remove from the atmosphere.
The urgency of reaching net zero CO₂ emissions has sparked the use of state-of-the-art climate modelling techniques to answer the question – how does our climate change after net zero?
To try and answer this question, we used climate simulation models with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Then, CO₂ emissions are “turned off” and simulations continue for 100 years more. This simple experimental setup allows us to compare the climate before net zero to climate patterns we might see after a transition to net zero.
There are regions where projected climate change patterns after net zero CO₂ are very uncertain. However, we saw several strong patterns:
land cools after net zero CO₂ is achieved, while the ocean takes a bit more time to respond with some areas cooling and others warming;
the Southern Ocean continues to warm after net zero CO₂;
global temperature change (-0.23°C) is not always a good representation of regional temperature changes.
Change in regional temperature after net zero carbon dioxide emissions. Cross-hatching indicates areas where we are confident that regional temperatures increase (red hues) or decrease (blue hues). Author provided
Heat extreme patterns after net zero CO₂
Currently, less economically developed regions experience disproportionate loss and damage from climate extremes. Should we expect this to persist after net zero CO₂ emissions, or will the inequality of climate change be resolved by net zero?
We explored this issue by investigating if there are any changes in how often local heat extremes occur 100 years after net zero compared to how often they occur before net zero.
We then compared our results to maps of the Human Development Index – a measure of socioeconomic development where regions with a high rank have higher incomes, more access to education and longer life expectancy. Other similar development indicators include the Multidimensional Poverty Index.
Although there are widespread decreases in how often heat extremes occur after net zero CO₂ emissions, regions with a relatively higher human development index such as North America and western Europe experience larger reductions in heat extremes than regions with a lower rank, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia.
Top: change in how often heat extremes occur regionally after net zero. Cross-hatching indicates areas where we are confident that heat extremes become more frequent (green hues) or less frequent (purple hues). Bottom: human development index in 2015. Author provided
Preparing for a post net zero world
We need to reach and sustain net zero CO₂ emissions to halt continued global warming. Models that emulate the transition to net zero CO₂ project large-scale cooling over land, and widespread reduction in land-based heat extremes.
However, post-net zero reductions in heat extremes favour regions with a higher human development index over regions with a lower index. This means the inequality of climate change may persist even after net zero CO₂.
Our study represents a step toward understanding climate extremes after net zero CO₂ emissions are achieved. For now, it is imperative that humanity works without delay to achieve net zero emissions to avoid the most severe climate change impacts affecting future generations.
Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.
Josephine Brown receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.
Tilo Ziehn receives funding from the Australian Government under the National Environmental Science Program.
Liam Cassidy 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.
Takahē are a striking bird and a national treasure in Aotearoa New Zealand. But the history and origin story of this flightless swamp hen have become a point of scientific debate.
Our latest research uncovered the significant impact of humans and past climate change on takahē. Genetic analysis has also revealed that takahē are closely related to their extinct North Island cousin, the moho, contrary to previous research and established ideas.
So what is the story behind this large, prehistoric bird, once believed to be extinct? And how might this new knowledge improve efforts to protect the unique species?
A debated origin story
The evolutionary history of takahē and moho has long puzzled scientists. Previous genetic analysis of small fragments of DNA suggested they were not close relatives. Instead, it was believed they descended from two separate arrivals to New Zealand by an ancient species of swamp hen.
This evolutionary history has become conventional wisdom. But it’s different to the origin story of the majority of New Zealand’s birds with related species in the North and South Islands (such as tīeke and kōkako). Most New Zealand birds descend from a single colonisation event, not two.
Our new research has upended the takahē origin story. Using palaeogenetic techniques we sequenced takahē and moho DNA from fossil, archaeological, historical and living individuals to reconstruct their evolutionary history.
Our findings suggest the Australian or Pacific swamp hen ancestor of takahē and moho arrived in New Zealand four million years ago, as the previously forested landscape began to open up with a cooling climate.
Around 1.5 million years ago, a land bridge between the North and South Islands allowed the now possibly flightless swamp hen to evolve into takahē in the south, and the taller and slighter moho in the north. This land bridge eventually eroded with the development of Cook Strait around 500,000 years ago.
Ice ages and human arrival
Our genetic analyses and the fossil records show takahē were restricted to isolated areas in the northwestern and perhaps southern South Island at the height of the last ice age – 29,000 to 19,000 years ago.
As the climate warmed, takahē shifted their distribution to eastern and southern regions. The takahē in the northwest South Island (where the Heaphy Track is today) went locally extinct.
However, the biggest impact on takahē came with the arrival of East Polynesian colonists in the late 13th century. Over-hunting, habitat destruction and predation from kiore (Polynesian rats) and kurī (Polynesian dogs) resulted in the loss of takahē everywhere except Fiordland.
This dramatic contraction and population bottleneck resulted in a small and inbred population with little to no genetic variation. There is no evidence of the genetic lineage (a series of mutations or changes in the genetic code which connect an ancestor to its descendants) of living takahē in any archaeological or fossil specimens we examined.
This lineage may have only occurred in Fiordland, or was extremely rare in takahē and swept to dominance in this small population.
Another possibility suggests this lineage occurred spontaneously – much like the genetic mutation in Queen Victoria that gave rise to haemophilia in members of Europe’s royal families.
We know from historical records that the arrival of Europeans and their furry companions no doubt resulted in further restriction of already rare takahē to the Murchison Mountains in Fiordland. However, we don’t see any further genetic bottleneck at this point, as the damage had already been done by earlier human activity.
The moho suffered the same fate as takahē, with the last probable sighting in the late 1800s. The demise of moho and the near extinction of takahē opened up a job vacancy in the ecosystem, allowing the pūkeko to colonise New Zealand from Australia around 500 years ago.
Improving conservation management
The growing field of conservation palaeontology uses the fossil record to inform conservation management decisions. It is especially important for endangered animals where human impact has masked their true biological heritage.
Kea, despite appearances, are not an alpine bird. Likewise, the ideal habitat of takahē is not tussock. Rather, the fossil record suggests takahē preferred border habitats such as the edges of forests, grasslands and shrublands, where one habitat transitions to another.
Conservation palaeontology can and should be used to determine the range of suitable habitats across the country, based on the preferences of prehistoric takahē. This can be married with effective predator control to support takahē populations.
It has long been known that takahē underwent a population bottleneck upon human arrival, but what surprised us was its scale. Our research highlights the need for conservation efforts to maximise the amount of genetic variation passed down to each generation, and to minimise the amount and consequent impacts of inbreeding.
Although threats to our native wildlife exist in the here and now, the past can be a key to future efforts to conserve our precious biodiversity.
Nic Rawlence receives funding from Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
Alexander Verry 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.
In 1963, six years after the first satellite was launched, editors from the Encyclopaedia Britannica posed a question to five eminent thinkers of the day: “Has man’s conquest of space increased or diminished his stature?” The respondents were philosopher Hannah Arendt, writer Aldous Huxley, theologian Paul Tillich, nuclear scientist Harrison Brown and historian Herbert J. Muller.
Sixty years later, as the rush to space accelerates, what can we learn from these 20th-century luminaries writing at the dawn of the space age?
The state of space 60 years on
Much has happened since. Spacecraft have landed on planets, moons, comets and asteroids across the Solar System. The two Voyager deep space probes, launched in 1977, are in interstellar space.
A handful of people are living in two Earth-orbiting space stations. Humans are getting ready to return to the Moon after more than 50 years, this time to establish a permanent base and mine the deep ice lakes at the south pole.
There were only 57 satellites in Earth orbit in 1963. Now there are around 10,000, with tens of thousands more planned.
Satellite services are part of everyday life. Weather prediction, farming, transport, banking, disaster management, and much more, all rely on satellite data.
Despite these tremendous changes, Arendt, Huxley and Tillich, in particular, have some illuminating insights.
A brave new world
Huxley is famous for his 1932 dystopian science fiction novel Brave New World, and his experimental use of psychedelic drugs.
In his essay, he questioned who this “man” who had conquered space was, noting it was not humans as a species but Western urban-industrial society that had sent emissaries into space.
This has not changed. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says space is the province of all humanity, but in reality it’s dominated by a few wealthy nations and individuals.
Huxley said the notion of “stature” assumed humans had a special and different status to other living beings. Given the immensity of space, talking of conquest was, in his opinion, “a trifle silly”.
Tillich was a theologian who fled Nazi Germany before the second world war. In his essay he wrote about how seeing Earth from outside allowed us to “demythologise” our planet.
In contrast to the much-discussed “overview effect” which inspires astronauts with a feeling of almost mystical awe, Tillich argued that the view from space made Earth a “large material body to be looked at and considered as totally calculable”.
An image of the lunar surface taken by the US Ranger 7 spacecraft in 1964. NASA/JPL-Caltech
When spacecraft began imaging the lunar surface in the 1960s, the process of calculation started for the Moon. Now, its minerals are being evaluated as commodities for human use.
Have humans changed, or is it how we view Earth?
Like Tillich, Arendt left Germany under the shadow of Nazism in 1933. She’s best remembered for her studies of totalitarian states and for coining the term “the banality of evil”.
Her essay explored the relationship between science and the human senses. It’s a dense and complex piece; almost every time I read it, I come away with something different.
In the early 20th century, Einstein’s theory of special relativity and quantum mechanics showed us a reality far beyond the ability of our senses to comprehend. Arendt said it was absurd to think such a cosmos could be “conquered”. Instead, “we have come to our present capacity to ‘conquer space’ through our new ability to handle nature from a point in the universe outside the earth”.
The short human lifespan and the impossibility of moving faster than the speed of light mean humans are unlikely to travel beyond the Solar System. There is a limit to our current expansion into space.
When that limit is reached, said Arendt, “the new world view that may conceivably grow out of it is likely to be once more geocentric and anthropomorphic, although not in the old sense of the earth being the center of the universe and of man being the highest being there is”. Humans would turn back to Earth to make meaning of their existence, and cease to dream of the stars.
This new geocentrism may be exacerbated by an environmental problem already emerging from the rapid growth of satellite megaconstellations. The light they reflect is obscuring the view of the night sky, cutting our senses off from the larger cosmos.
The far future
But what if it were technologically possible for humans to expand into the galaxy?
Arendt said assessing humanity from a position outside Earth would reduce the scale of human culture to the point at which humans would become like laboratory rats, studied as statistical patterns. From far enough away, all human culture would appear as nothing more than a “large scale biological process”.
Arendt did not see this as an increase in stature:
The conquest of space and the science that made it possible have come perilously close to this point [of seeing human culture as a biological process]. If they ever should reach it in earnest, the stature of man would not simply be lowered by all standards we know of, but have been destroyed.
Sixty years on, nations are competing to exploit lunar and asteroid mineral resources. Private corporations and space billionaires are increasingly being touted as the way forward. After the Moon, Mars is the next world in line for “conquest”. The contemporary movement known as longtermism promotes living on other planets as insurance against existential risk, in a far future where humans (or some form of them) spread to fill the galaxies.
But the question remains. Is space travel enhancing what we value about humanity? Arendt and her fellow essayists were not convinced. For me, the answer will depend on what values we choose to prioritise in this new era of interplanetary expansion.
This article developed from a panel discussion at the Wheeler Centre. You can listen to it here.
Alice Gorman is a Vice-Chair of the Global Expert Group for Sustainable Lunar Activities and a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor and Director of the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith Business School, Griffith University
Shutterstock
2023 has shattered climate records, accompanied by extreme weather that has left a trail of devastation and despair, according to the World Meteorological Organization at COP 28. Some of the most significant extreme heat events were in southern Europe and North Africa, especially in the second half of July. Temperatures in Italy reached 48.2°C, and record-high temperatures were reported in Tunis (Tunisia) 49.0°C, Agadir (Morocco) 50.4°C and Algiers (Algeria) 49.2°C.
Heat-related deaths are on the rise globally. In 2019, a study in The Lancet attributed 356,000 deaths to extreme heat. A recent study puts the excess deaths due to last year’s heatwaves in Europe at more than 70,000. The death toll of this year’s heat waves is as yet unknown, but likely to be much worse.
Extreme heat events are without doubt the greatest risk to the right to life caused by climate change. And this has major implications for those providing key social services to lessen inequality.
An extreme heat event occurs when temperatures sit at roughly 5°C above average for three days or more – and particularly when this is coupled with high levels of humidity. These conditions pose serious health risks for older people, outdoor workers, people with chronic conditions, pregnant women, children, people living in poorly insulated housing or remote communities, people with reduced mobility, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, refugees, and people experiencing energy poverty and/or social isolation.
Australia finally has a national climate health strategy, launched on December 3, and not a moment too soon. It points to the development of a National Heat Health Action Plan that we needed in place at least five years ago. Some states also have strategies, the most comprehensive being South Australia, with its useful guide Healthy in the Heat. Melbourne, too, now has two Chief Heat Officers, one of six cities globally that are participating in an international movement to improve how cities handle heat in a warming world.
But we still haven’t done the deep thinking and planning required to get communities ready – and the next El Nino driven southern summer is here. We need to take a human rights approach to assessing its potential impact.
How will access to health be affected?
In 2016, a Climate Council report used existing data from the 2009 heatwaves in Australia to map increases in ambulance call outs, emergency department presentations as well as heat related deaths to indicate additional pressures on health system during hotter months.
This report found emergency call-outs jumped by 46%; cases involving heat-related illness jumped 34-fold; and cardiac arrests almost tripled in Victoria. In total, 374 excess deaths were recorded, a 62% increase on the previous year.
It also reported that
although many states have taken significant steps to upgrade their heat and health warning systems since the deadly heatwaves of 2009, strategies vary considerably from state to state and focus primarily on reactive rather than long-term planning.
However, there are things we can learn from various Western European countries that had “already taken significant strides in preparing their cities, industries and people for the threat of extreme heat”. There will be more lessons from this summer too.
What is the impact on homeless populations?
Homeless people need adequate shelter during a heatwave to avoid fatal consequences. Access to food is more difficult and food spoils more easily, plus there is additional need for increased amounts of water. Triggers for mental health and exposure to trauma increase as does the underlying issue that homeless people may have limited access to safe spaces during any extreme weather event.
In Australia, many air-conditioned spaces require people to undertake a commercial transaction to remain there. This begs an important question: do places like public libraries take on the role of “cool banks”, as they did in the UK during last year’s heatwaves there?
Heatwaves are also implicated in increasing rates of homelessness among those at risk. And while there are exciting examples of strategies from the City of Melbourne that could build resilience among homeless populations exposed to extreme weather events like free access to lockers and indoor pools, cinema tickets, maps of drinking fountains and support to homelessness support agencies for pop-up accommodations, more needs to be done – both on the ground, and in terms of modelling and planning.
Current strategies in Australia include:
a South Australian intervention using trauma informed extreme weather resilience education
a city-wide plan for heatwaves and homelessness put in place by the City of Melbourne.
Will heatwaves worsen mental health?
Increased heatwaves have implications for mental health in terms of social connectedness, particularly among vulnerable groups. But extreme heat also affects mental health more broadly: it is already known to lead to increased aggression and increased suicide rates.
And what about the mental health of those responding to these crises? Ongoing emergencies, placing ever-growing pressure on stretched social service responders, pushes people and systems to breaking point.
What will be the impact on decent work?
The idea of “decent work” is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO), and is, in the description of the UNHCR’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, employment that “respects the fundamental rights of the human person as well as the rights of workers in terms of conditions of work safety and remuneration” with “respect for the physical and mental integrity of the worker in the exercise of his/her employment”.
Some jobs will be far more affected by heat than others. A recent ILO report had already targeted agricultural jobs, construction, sport and tourism as sectors affected by heat stress. The Treasurer’s latest Inter-generational Report devotes a whole section to the productivity losses that will be caused by extreme heat.
So should the government provide JobKeeper-type payments to outdoor workers during heatwaves? What about those in the informal sector, such as workers who are delivering food by bicycle? Will companies accept the need for extreme heat labour safeguards? Should Centrelink suspend mutual obligations during periods of extreme heat?
Should governments make special provisions in heatwaves for those who work outdoors? Shutterstock
What about electricity bills?
Should utility companies be able to cut off power during an extreme heat event – even if all processes have been followed?
This has been hotly debated in the United States. While many US states have policies preventing power shutdown during the colder months, there are fewer clear policies in place in terms of summer.
In Australia, there is no accurate picture of just what the lack of any coherent cooling strategy costs the public. Some low-income consumers have to choose between turning on the air-conditioning or buying food. For some, it means utilities have cut off their power for falling behind on an unpaid bill, even in life-threatening heat.
Renters, who cannot easily install, upgrade or fix air-conditioning are also at threat. And should people be evicted during a heatwave?
Crucially, we need to have these debates now, not during a heatwave.
Is there a right to air-conditioning or cooler spaces?
On April 19 2022, the Queensland government reported that air-conditioning had been delivered for “every single classroom, library and staffroom in every single state school”.
Should the state bear the cost of air-conditioning for early childcare centres, aged care homes, prisons and schools? Should swimming pools be free in towns without free air-conditioned spaces?
We know that green spaces can significantly reduce heat, especially in cities. Do we have a right to green space and shade in our streets and towns?
Finally, will there be parts of Australia that are already difficult places to live and work in the summer months that tip over to become uninhabitable on a seasonal basis? If so, what happens to summer sport or agricultural activities, or tourism?
Governments need to think carefully about all these issues now and – most importantly – take action.
Susan Harris Rimmer receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with UNAA Qld and Foundations for Tomorrow as a volunteer board member.
The last two summers have been swarming with mosquitoes thanks to near constant rain and flooding brought on by La Niña.
With the return of El Niño, and a hot, dry summer in store, what’s the outlook for Japanese encephalitis and other mosquito-borne diseases?
First, let’s look back at the last two summers
The boom in mosquitoes over the last two springs and summers didn’t just bring an increased annoyance of buzzing and bites but also outbreaks of potentially fatal mosquito-borne disease.
This was followed by the return of Murray Valley encephalitis in early 2023, which turned out to be the biggest outbreak in the southern states since 1974.
These outbreaks were the result of more than just more mosquitoes. Floodwaters provided ideal breeding conditions for waterbirds, the key “reservoirs” of these viruses.
Mosquitoes pick up the infection after feeding on the birds and then subsequently spread the viruses to people when they bite.
What’s different about Japanese encephalitis?
Outbreaks of Japanese encephalitis virus in temperate regions of Australia in 2022 came as a surprise. There had been activity in northern Australia and the Torres Strait, but it was generally only considered a risk to overseas travellers.
In India, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific, Japanese encephalitis is considered one of the most dangerous mosquito-borne diseases, with tens of thousands of cases of severe infection each year.
While the majority of people infected suffer no or very mild symptoms, some will experience neck stiffness, fever, headache and, in the most severe cases, permanent neurological complications or death.
However, a vaccine is available that can significantly limit serious illness.
The discovery of Japanese encephalitis virus in Australia’s southern states triggered a declaration of a “communicable disease incident of national significance”. This was in place from March 2022 through June 2023. A total of 45 people were infected, seven of whom sadly died.
It wasn’t just people who were at risk. The impact on commercial piggeries, which farm pigs for pork production, was devastating and required urgent strategies to control mosquitoes.
Piggeries weren’t the source of the outbreak, they were the “canaries in the coalmine” – signalling the spread of the virus early on and the need to protect the broader community.
What caused outbreaks in piggeries?
Our researchinvestigated how different landscapes and weather patterns influence interactions between wildlife, mosquitoes, and outbreaks of Japanese encephalitis virus.
We looked at 62 piggeries where the virus had been detected and some locations where the virus had also been detected in mosquitoes, along with waterbird and feral pig habitats, rainfall and temperature.
Some of the results were unexpected. Piggeries were at highest risk of an outbreak when the number of different waterbird species in their location was “just right”. If there were too few or too many, the risk of an outbreak was reduced.
High rainfall and flooding provided excellent conditions for mosquitoes, with temporary wetlands and flooded areas posing a greater risk than permanent wetlands.
Temporary wetlands may have provided habitat for waterbirds whose normal habitat and movement patterns were disrupted due to the extensive La Niña flooding.
Or perhaps permanent wetlands support a greater diversity of aquatic life (including animals that eat mosquitoes) that helped keep mosquito numbers lower than temporary waterbodies.
Mosquito populations are expected to decline sharply. Surveillance programs of state and territory health authorities, such as New South Wales and Victoria, are already reporting mosquito populations far lower than previous seasons.
So we may not see as much Japanese encephalitis this season. But that doesn’t mean it will disappear completely.
It doesn’t matter how hot and dry it gets, mosquitoes are resilient and will persist. They’ll seek out the same environments where water remains. So too will waterbirds and feral pigs.
Authorities are also on alert for the return of Ross River virus along the coast. Despite the lower rainfall, the mosquitoes that live in saltwater wetlands will thrive following flooding by high tides, especially “king tides”.
Combined with extreme weather, even during hot and dry summers, outbreaks of Ross River virus can occur.
Cameron Webb and the Department of Medical Entomology, NSW Health Pathology and University of Sydney, have been engaged by a wide range of insect repellent and insecticide manufacturers to provide testing of products and provide expert advice on mosquito biology. Cameron has also received funding from local, state and federal agencies to undertake research into mosquito-borne disease surveillance and management.
Michael Walsh has received funding from the Australian Research Council to investigate zoonotic diseases associated with Australian produce and from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to investigate antimicrobial resistance.
Victoria Brookes 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.
It has taken decades, but the complex and increasingly urgent issue of “climate mobility” has gradually become central to international climate negotiations.
At the COP28 summit currently taking place in Dubai, there are around 25 sessions or side events devoted to the needs and rights of people and communities displaced by climate change.
Day one saw a major breakthrough, with agreement on a “loss and damage” fund to compensate “particularly vulnerable” countries. While questions remain over the long-term sustainability of funding sources and how the fund will be administered, it still represents progress.
But it is unclear how the fund will be integrated with the Global Stocktake – the report card on progress toward Paris Agreement goals. Only clear targets will help ensure meaningful outcomes that “leave no one behind”, in line with the proposed COP28 roadmap to accelerate progress through inclusive climate action.
Embedding the specific issue of climate mobility within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has never been easy. No consensus has been reached on protecting the citizens of states threatened by the impacts of climate change.
Nor is there much apparent political will to change the definition of “refugee” in the 1951 Refugee Convention to include those affected by climate change – or to develop new international law that would protect them.
With the world beginning to witness some of the consequences of this failure, it is important COP28 maintains momentum on an issue that is not going away.
Questions over the Australia-Tuvalu deal
The recently signed Falepili Union between Australia and Tuvalu provides a clear example of how thorny the question of climate mobility has already become.
The agreement provides a “pathway” for citizens of Tuvalu affected by climate change to gain citizenship in Australia. But it comes with a series of serious trade-offs for Tuvaluan national sovereignty, making its viability as a model of climate mobility justice questionable.
While claiming to offer Tuvaluan people the ability to “move with dignity”, the Falepili agreement also requires Tuvalu to “mutually agree with Australia” any security and defence-related arrangements with other countries.
This is broadly defined to include defence, policing, border protection, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure; all key areas of geopolitical tension with China in the Pacific.
As such, the agreement has been criticised for breaching the good faith obligations of states undertaking climate mobility agreements with vulnerable partners. One commentator argued the Falepili Union was:
dressed up as a bilateral treaty – meaning it works for both countries – [but] should really have been called the Australia Defence Treaty in Tuvalu.
Staying with dignity
Countries at the forefront of climate change – low-lying island states vulnerable to sea level rise, in particular – have long put principles of dignity and equity at the centre of their calls for climate justice.
A significant gap in the Australia-Tuvalu agreement was the lack of consultation with Tuvaluan citizens. Debate in Tuvalu’s parliament raised serious questions about this, as well as the agreement’s approval by cabinet, widespread public confusion, and the lack of an officially released version from the government.
Research has consistently shown communities hit by climate change need not just the opportunity to move with dignity, but also the option to stay with dignity. This is particularly true for Pacific peoples and nations, where displacement, planned relocation and migration are becoming stark realities.
Successful strategies for remaining in place when and where possible are already in place around the Pacific. Communities in Samoa, for example, have found ways to adapt that minimise both physical risk and cultural harm.
With many other climate-vulnerable nations seeking sustainable solutions to their problems, the Australia-Tuvalu agreement risks setting the wrong precedent for bargained, bilateral visa arrangements.
If and when such agreements involve larger, possibly more politically volatile countries, what might be the trade-offs? And what will be the implications for regional and global security?
The “climate refugee” question is already highly political, and has been a challenge to bring into formal agendas since the Paris Agreement in 2015. And while economic loss and damage tends to dominate discussions, non-economic and less tangible loss and damage also needs to be a focus.
This encompasses everything from mobility, sovereignty and culture, to health, dignity and social cohesion. All have serious implications for Indigenous peoples – and all communities – whose sense of belonging to their lands is a vital part of identity and wellbeing.
International climate negotiations now need to concentrate on protecting the sovereignty of vulnerable states, and ensuring geopolitical calculations do not trump climate justice for those affected.
Small island states and Pacific peoples have contributed very little to the causes of climate change. But they are at the forefront of the crisis and are among the first to feel the full impacts.
The right of people to decide their own adaptation future, including options to adapt in place, may be addressed at COP28. But these now need to translate into the mechanisms that will support and empower that self-determination.
Dalila Gharbaoui 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.
It’s that time of year when it seems the more school fees parents pay, the less time their children spend in school.
For example, within a few kilometres of each other in Melbourne are an independent school whose last day is December 6, a Catholic school whose last day is December 15, and a government school going through until December 20.
Why the differences? To a casual observer, it seems reasonable every school should have the same start and finish dates.
Unfortunately, like so much across the diverse Australian education landscape, it is more complicated than that. It also prompts serious questions about how well we are doing as a nation, educationally speaking.
Long holidays equal long juggles
With parents needing to balance work commitments (and only having so much annual leave), it is not surprising some non-government school families get frustrated their children’s summer holidays are so long.
However, judging by enrolment demand, this does not seem to dissuade them from sending their children to these kinds of schools. And, granted, public school parents also feel the organisational pain of their six-week breaks.
Children can also feel an “unfairness” when they see students from some schools getting a longer break than others. A half-full bus is a stark reminder of this.
There are some historical reasons why some non-government schools have longer breaks.
Schools that break up earliest – at the start of December – are almost invariably elite, high-fee (think A$30,000-45,000 per year) schools. Typically, these are schools that would either have had, or still have, boarders.
In the early days of these schools, they needed an earlier finishing date so rural students could return home. And the tradition has stuck.
Many are also likely to have extensive and compulsory co-curricular programs. This can involve compulsory weekend sport and before/after school training during the week, as well as music, drama productions or other commitments.
This means “school” extends well beyond a typical 9am to 3pm day. This places a different time demand on students and their families. So there is argument to say an early mark at the end of the year is a fair trade-off.
Curiously, newer day-only schools without these histories and extensive programs have also shortened their terms, and some even give mid-term breaks. Without these older traditions, the reasons why seem less clear.
Private school students often have compulsory sport on the weekends as well as weekday training. Patrick Case/Pexels, CC BY-SA
School holidays are not consistent
For those who want consistency across the nation, aligning end-of-year dates is not the only issue. There is significant variety across different states, including in public schools.
Finishing dates are similar, with Western Australia finishing on December 12, 2024, and Victoria and New South Wales carrying on until December 20.
It’s just another of those quirks of a federated nation in which each state and territory dances to its own educational tune.
And spare a thought for families in border communities who live these differences in very practical ways. Consider the parent who is a teacher and lives in Wodonga (Victoria) yet works just across the border in Albury (NSW). They will finish teaching for Term 1 on April 12, a full two weeks after their children finish on March 28.
While there is a general pattern of 190-195 school days per year for government schools, public holidays create their own localised interruptions.
Victoria, for example, gives an extra public holiday for the Melbourne Cup. In the ACT, there is Canberra Day in March.
Then there are extra pupil-free days when teachers do professional development. This also varies between states.
Inconsistency of start and finish dates is only one part of a bigger issue, though. The larger question of total time spent in schools is also worth asking.
Recent OECD analysis found Australian students spend more hours in school than any other OECD country. Across primary and lower secondary years, Australian students are in school for more than 11,000 hours, compared with the OECD average of just over 7,600.
Despite this, our PISA (an international test for 15-year-olds) literacy and numeracy results continue to decline. So more time doesn’t seem to be delivering better results.
A 2018 pre-COVID PISA survey of 15-year-old Australian students found 37% disagreed or strongly disagreed that “my life has meaning and purpose”. A 2023 survey of young Australians found only 52% felt their education prepared them for post-school life.
A shorter school year creates challenges for some families and poses ongoing questions about equity. But if we take a broader look we can also see extended time spent in class, on its own, isn’t producing the results.
Shorter time in school could be beneficial, but only if the quality of the time actually spent in school is engaging and valued by students.
Paul Kidson 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.
As you make your way towards the Art Gallery of New South Wales, you will come across the giant sinewy bronze legs of the artist’s monumental sculpture Maman (“mum” in French) looming near the entrance.
As large to us as humans appear to spiders, Maman borrows the form of a daddy longlegs, but through its title switches both parent and gender. The artist replaces our fear of spiders with the love and protection associated with motherhood.
Despite a life and career mostly spent in New York City, where she moved in 1938 and remained until her death in 2010, the artist, born and educated in France, insisted on her “right to defend her Frenglish”. Titles of her works and her extensive body of writings move seamlessly from her native tongue to English to a deeply personal intermixing of both languages.
London’s Tate acquired the original Maman in 2008, but six other versions also exist. One now stands in the Domain, marking the arrival of Louise Bourgeois in Sydney and the opening of the first large scale show in the new Sydney Modern.
First opened to the public just over a year ago, the Sydney Modern promised “a 21st-century gallery providing one of the world’s great art museum experiences”. This exhibition matches this ambition with a deeply thoughtful and sensuous show.
Bourgeois’s career as an artist started in the late 1930s in France. In the first three decades of her life in New York City, Bourgeois pursued her artistic practice – drawing, painting, etching, sculpting, writing – while raising her three children.
In 1976, one of her Femme Maison paintings (a literal translation of housewife in French) was reproduced on the cover of Lucy Lippard’s From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art.
Bourgeois’s work gained a wider recognition through its association with feminist art, and in 1982, at the age of 71, she was introduced to a global audience with a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
She continued to produce new works throughout her life, until her death at the age of 98. Her oeuvre has been shown across the world, including blockbuster exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre, the Guggenheim and the Hayward Gallery.
Now in Sydney, Bourgeois’s groundbreaking and masterful art is clearly celebrated, but room is also made for fresh discoveries.
Downstairs in the Tank is her phallus-shaped sculpture Fillette Sweeter version (1968–1999). A hanging sculpture about half a metre tall, made of latex over plaster, it relates to a larger group of sculptures the artist conceived in the 1960s that concern the human body.
Like her Janus sculptures (1968), also in the Tank, it plays on the ambivalence of sexual identity and manages to represent both female and male anatomy in a single form. Both Fillette and Janus hover delicately above the ground, their fragility and gender-bending ambiguity highlighted by the vastness and semi-obscurity of the room in which they hang.
Exquisite lighting and sound effects give viewers a rarely experienced intimacy with the works on display.
As we find our bearings in relative darkness, sculptures and installations suddenly appear, as if for our eyes only. Upon approaching the works, we suddenly perceive reflected shadows that often merge with our own. A cat is hiding in one corner; a spider is just above us.
In the middle of the Tank a giant mirror, Has the Day Invaded the Night or the Night Invaded the Day? (2007), returns our gaze, and a projected moving image of the artist can be seen on one of the walls. As you come closer, the sound of the artist’s voice lands directly into your ears.
In the day
Upstairs, in the “day” section, the exhibition is more straightforward, but it offers welcome context and contrast to the sensory immersion of the underground.
Bourgeois famously declared “everything I do was inspired by my early life”. The exhibition provides the context of the complexities of the artist’s life and emotions, and how they relate to her body of work.
The 2007 Ode à la Bièvre, a fabric illustrated book, is an homage to the Bièvre river, for centuries Paris’s second waterway which sustained many industries, including her family’s tapestry repair business. The Bièvre and the spider are related to Bourgeois’s mother, a skilled weaver who died when the artist was a young adult.
Ode à la Bièvre captures written evocations of her childhood gardens and its fruit trees. Pearls and buttons are stitched onto delicate handkerchiefs in Eugénie Grandet (2009), a reference to a novel by French 19th-century writer Honoré de Balzac.
In the tiny but gorgeous Topiary IV (1999), the tree trunk is a human body covered in a delicate lace garment and propped up on a clutch. The figure is missing a leg, and it evokes both an homage to the artist’s older sister, Henriette, who had a physical disability, and Bourgeois’s oft evoked memory of wounded soldiers coming back home from the first world war fronts.
References to French language and the cultural landscape it carries abound in the exhibition and in her oeuvre. They can be seen in the titles of works, in the writings that feature abundantly inside and alongside Bourgeois’s artworks, and they can be heard in the Gallic accentuations of her voice.
This presence of French fuels the autobiographical nature of her art but also participates in its lasting cross-cultural appeal.
Just like Fillette, Bourgeois’s oeuvre magically hangs in a suspended state of translation and transformation, reshaping personal memories into forms and words that we can all understand and relate to in the end.
Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until April 28 2024.
Léa Vuong has previously received funding from The Leverhulme Trust to carry out her research on Louise Bourgeois (Early Career Fellowship, The Leverhulme Trust, 2014-2017)
After three La Niña summers many of us would have been expecting much hotter and drier conditions this spring and summer after the arrival of El Niño. Instead, in many parts of eastern Australia it’s rained and rained over the last few weeks.
El Niño hasn’t gone away. It’s expected to continue into 2024. Why the rain? Because even with an El Niño, eastern Australia can still experience significant rain events.
Despite the recent rain, Australia’s summer is much more likely than normal to be a hot one.
Has it been unusually wet?
Much of eastern Australia has seen wetter than normal conditions over November. Vigorous low-pressure systems and thunderstorms brought record rain totals and flooding to parts of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.
Overall, this meant November was wetter than average across the continent. But as we had a record dry September and a dry October (apart from in eastern Victoria), spring was actually drier than average for Australia as a whole.
Should the recent rain come as a surprise?
When Australians think of El Niño, we usually think of parched soils and blazing sunshine. But this is not guaranteed.
The El Niño of 1997-98, for instance, was one of the strongest on record. Even so, the spring of 1997 was actually a bit wetter than normal over parts of South Australia, NSW and southern Queensland.
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation describes changes in the tropical central and east Pacific. These changes can swing between El Niño, neutral and La Niña events. Think of poet Dorothea Mackellar’s description “of droughts and flooding rains” – that’s the type of contrasting extremes that El Niño and La Niña often cause.
It’s not as simple as El Niño hot and dry, La Niña cool and rainy. The influence of this phenomenon is complex and non-linear.
Scientists are more confident in saying La Niña causes unusually wet conditions over eastern Australia than we are in saying El Niño causes unusually dry conditions. That’s because Australia is typically a dry place and just a few wet days can make a big difference to whether a month or season is wetter or drier than average.
When El Niño events are coupled with a second climate driver, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole – where colder water comes up from the deep in the eastern Indian Ocean – we typically see fewer low pressure weather systems causing heavy rainfall over southeastern Australia.
But again, nothing is certain, as we’ve seen. Despite these two climate cycles suggesting less rain was likely, the rain returned.
Why? One reason is the unusually high sea surface temperatures to the south and southeast of Australia, which can drive more moisture into the air and trigger more rain in the region.
Sea surface temperatures are unusually high around southern Australia as well as in the central and eastern tropical Pacific where the El Niño event is continuing. Bureau of Meteorology, CC BY-ND
Many of us were shocked by how intense late November’s rainfall was. But this is a feature of how variable and fickle Australia’s weather can be.
During El Niño events we should still be prepared for floods even if droughts are more likely on average. You might think we would see more thunderstorms during, say, a La Niña event. In fact, that’s not true. Thunderstorms do not have a strong relationship to either of these climate cycles. That matters, because it’s thunderstorms which can drive many of these heavy rain events we see during spring in Australia.
What does the summer hold?
During spring, El Niño in the Pacific and conditions in the Indian Ocean typically have their strongest effect on Australia. In December, these influences start to wane as Indian Ocean Dipole events usually begin to decay as we move into summer.
In the summer, more rain falls in small-scale weather systems such as thunderstorms which makes seasonal outlooks less accurate compared to other times of the year. At present, our seasonal prediction models have a limited ability to simulate thunderstorms.
But we can still make some predictions about the summer ahead. We usually see fewer tropical cyclones during El Niño summers, noting that tropical cyclones can cause extreme rainfall in northern Australia. The seasonal outlook reflects this, with an 80% chance of a below-average number of tropical cyclones.
What about fire? The recent rains are good news in that they should help reduce the chance of major forest fires in parts of southeast Australia for a while at least, while noting many other factors also contribute to fire risk. However, grass fires could become more likely in some regions, as grass grows fast after rain and can dry out quickly if hot and dry weather returns.
Our overall bushfire outlook points to a heightened fire risk through much of the east of Australia. There have already been severe fires near Perth leading to loss of property. It’s very early in the fire season for southern Western Australia to see major fire damage like that.
Earlier in spring we saw flash droughts start to form. That’s where soils rapidly dry out under hot and sunny conditions.
Where sustained dry conditions return, we could see flash drought conditions follow soon after.
Our high water storage levels mean major droughts and water restrictions like those seen in the 2001-2009 Millennium Drought won’t return for a while longer in the southeast.
As with every summer in Australia, we must be prepared for extreme weather including fire, floods and intense heat. Human-caused climate change is supercharging our extreme weather events and making our summer weather more dangerous than it used to be.
Imagine brain scanning technology improves greatly in the coming decades, to the point that we can observe how each individual neuron talks to other neurons. Then, imagine we can record all this information to create a simulation of someone’s brain on a computer.
This is the concept behind mind uploading – the idea that we may one day be able to transition a person from their biological body to a synthetic hardware. The idea originated in an intellectual movement called transhumanism and has several key advocates including computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, philosopher Nick Bostrom and neuroscientist Randal Koene.
The transhumanists’ central hope is to transcend the human condition through scientific and technological progress. They believe mind uploading may allow us to live as long as we want (but not necessarily forever). It might even let us improve ourselves, such as by having simulated brains that run faster and more efficiently than biological ones. It’s a techno-optimist’s dream for the future. But does it have any substance?
The feasibility of mind uploading rests on three core assumptions.
first is the technology assumption – the idea that we will be able to develop mind uploading within the coming decades
second is the artificial mind assumption – the idea that a simulated brain would give rise to a real mind
and third is the survival assumption – the idea that the person created in the process is really “you”. Only then does mind uploading become a way for you to live on.
Trying to simulate the human brain would be a monumental challenge. Our brains are the most complex structures in the known universe. They house around 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells, with an estimated one million billion neural connections. For comparison, the Milky Way galaxy is home to about 200 billion stars.
Where are we on the path to creating brain simulations? Right now, neuroscientists are drawing up 3D wiring diagrams (called “connectomes”) of the brains of simple organisms. The most complex comprehensive connectome we have to date is of a fruit fly larva, which has about 3,000 neurons and 500,000 neural connections. We might expect to map a mouse’s brain within the next ten years.
The human brain, however, is about 1,000 times more complex than a mouse brain. Would it then take us 10,000 years to map a human brain? Probably not. We have seen astonishing gains in efficiency in similar projects, such as the Human Genome Project.
It took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to map the first human genome about 20 years ago. Today, the fastest labs can do it within hours for about $100. With similar gains in efficiency, we might see mind-uploading technology within the lifetimes of our children or grandchildren.
That said, there are other obstacles. Creating a static brain map is only one part of the job. To simulate a functioning brain, we would need to observe single neurons in action. It’s not obvious whether we could achieve this in the near future.
The artificial mind assumption
Would a simulation of your brain give rise to a conscious mind like yours? The answer depends on the connection between our minds and our bodies. Unlike the 17th-century philosopher Rene Descartes, who thought mind and body are radically different, most academic philosophers today think the mind is ultimately something physical itself. Put simply, your mind is your brain.
Still, how could a simulated brain give rise to a real mind if it’s only a simulation?
Well, many cognitive scientists believe it’s your brain’s complex neural structure that is responsible for creating your conscious mind, rather than the nature of its biological matter (which is mostly fat and water).
When implemented on a computer, the simulated brain would replicate your brain’s structure. For every simulated neuron and neural connection there will be a corresponding piece of computer hardware. The simulation will replicate your brain’s structure and thereby replicate your conscious mind.
Today’s AI systems provide useful (though inconclusive) evidence for the structural approach to the mind. These systems run on artificial neural networks, which copy some of the brain’s structural principles. And they are able to perform many tasks that require a lot of cognitive work in us.
The survival assumption
Let’s assume it is possible to simulate a human brain, and that the simulation creates a conscious mind. Would the uploaded person really be you, or perhaps just a mental clone?
This harks back to an old philosophical puzzle: what makes it the case that when you get out of bed in the morning you’re still the same person who went to bed the night before?
Philosophers are divided broadly into two camps on this question. The biological camp believes morning-you and evening-you are the same person because they are the same biological organism – connected by one biological life process.
The bigger mental camp thinks the fact that we have minds makes all the difference. Morning-you and evening-you are the same person because they share a mental life. Morning-you remembers what evening-you did – they have the same beliefs, hopes, character traits, and so on.
So which camp is right? Here’s a way to test your own intuition: imagine your brain is transplanted into the empty skull of another person’s body. Is the resulting person, who has your memories, preferences and personality, you – as the mental camp thinks? Or are they the person who donated their body, as the biological camp thinks?
In other words, did you get a new body or did they get a new mind? A lot hangs on this question.
If the biological camp is right, then mind uploading wouldn’t work, assuming the whole point of uploading is to leave one’s biology behind. If the mental camp is right, there is a chance for uploading, since the uploaded mind could be a genuine continuation of one’s present mental life.
Wait, there’s a caveat
But wait: what happens when the original biological-you also survives the uploading process? Would you, along with your consciousness, split into two people, resulting in two of “you” – one in a biological form (B) and one in an uploaded form (C)?
No, you (A) can’t literally split into two separate people (B ≠ C) and be identical with both at the same time. At most, only one of them can be you (either A = B or A = C).
It seems most intuitive that, after a split, your biological form would continue as the real you (A = B), and the upload would merely be a mental copy. But that makes it doubtful that you could survive as the upload even in the case where the biological-you is destroyed.
Why would destroying biological-you magically elevate your mental clone to the status of the real you? It seems strange to think this would happen (although one view in philosophy does claim it could be true).
Unfortunately, the artificial mind assumption and the survival assumption can’t be conclusively empirically tested – we would actually have to upload ourselves to find out.
Uploading will therefore always involve a huge leap of faith. Personally, I would only take that leap if I knew for certain my biological hardware wasn’t going to last much longer.
Clas Weber receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Bowen, Professor – Environment, Climate and Global Health at Melbourne Climate Futures and Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, The University of Melbourne
As global leaders gather in Dubai for COP28, health has finally landed firmly on the climate change agenda, with the first “health day” at the annual UN climate summit taking place yesterday (December 3).
Including health in discussions on climate change has never been more important. Extreme weather threatens human health in a variety of ways, and this intersection is only getting worse as extreme weather events become more likely with climate change.
Two of us (Kathryn and Arthur) attended the health day. It represents a pivotal moment for climate and health on the global stage – but there’s still much work to do.
How climate change affects our health
The Lancet recently published its latest report on the health effects of climate change, and the news isn’t good.
The report reaffirms that substantial deaths and injuries due to climate change are already happening around the world. For example, heat-related deaths in people aged over 65 increased by 85% in 2013-2022 compared to 1991-2000.
The effects of climate change on health are wide-ranging. As well as harm from extreme heat, disasters such as droughts, floods and bushfires can lead to the spread of infectious diseases, exposure to bushfire smoke, food insecurity and more.
Events like these are also increasing mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder.
This year has seen promising progress towards addressing the impact of climate change on health. In May, the World Health Assembly for the first time had a strong focus on health and climate change, including a roundtable on the role of the health community in climate action and the need for dedicated financing mechanisms.
In August, the G20 health ministers made climate and health a priority issue and agreed to the first ever high-level principles for health and climate action. These included building sustainable and low-carbon health systems that deliver high-quality health care, and decarbonising health-care supply chains.
Now, this inaugural health day at COP has sought to raise the profile of the health impacts of climate change, and to mobilise finances for effective action so countries can prepare and respond.
The day was focused around key topics including the avenues through which climate affects health, the health benefits of emissions reductions, as well as the needs, barriers and best practices for strengthening climate-resilient health systems.
A ministerial roundtable closed out the day, with many of the 50 health ministers who attended allocated two minutes to talk about why and how they are taking action on health and climate change.
For example, the representative for Vanuatu noted the country faces an uncertain future due to climate change, and highlighted their hope this health day would allow for continued support to countries at highest risk.
Japan noted the importance of strengthening universal health coverage as a key way to respond to the health impacts of climate change.
Notably, this COP has seen more than 120 countries, including Australia, sign the COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health. The declaration focuses on gathering support, galvanising action and mobilising finances to improve the resilience of health systems.
Along with this, the United Arab Emirates announced an “aggregated” funding commitment of US$1 billion for strengthened implementation of health-focused climate activities. This is facilitated by agencies including the Green Climate Fund, the Asian Development Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation.
However, scarce detail is available on whether this money will be additional to current commitments, will be considered a loan or a grant, or will be shifted from other health priorities.
In terms of Australian action, COP28 hosted the launch of the first National Health and Climate Strategy, which sets out a plan to decarbonise the country’s health system, as well as build resilience in the health system and communities to protect against the effects of climate change on health.
As WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday, after 27 COPs without a serious discussion of health, the focus on health at COP28 is well overdue.
Undoubtedly, health stands as the most compelling reason for taking climate action […] For too long, health has been a footnote in climate discussions.
But while the health day and other recent developments are encouraging, there’s much more to be done to meaningfully protect the health of communities around the world.
Notably, the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels is vital if climate-related health impacts are to ease. And the global declaration mentioned above doesn’t set out any plan for this or address the urgency of fossil fuel phase-out.
The health sector can and must contribute to this endeavour given it’s responsible for 4.4% of global carbon emissions.
We know the health benefits of climate action far outweigh the costs. Without ambitious cross-sectoral action that considers health outcomes, human health and wellbeing will continue to suffer. This is the first health day at COP, but it must not be the last.
Kathryn Bowen has received funding for climate and health research, policy advice and technical assistance from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, World Health Organization, Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, United Nations Environment Program, USAID, German Development Ministry, European Union, Future Earth, City of Melbourne, Victorian Department of Health. She is affiliated with the Australian Climate and Health Alliance as a member of the Advisory Board and sits on the Science Committee of the World Adaptation Science Program.
Annabelle Workman received a Strategic Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship from the Australian Government to complete her PhD. She is affiliated with the Climate and Health Alliance.
Arthur Wyns is a climate change advisor to the World Health Organization, and is a climate and health advisor to COP28.
Rebecca Patrick has previously received funding from state government and not-for-profit organisations. She is a former Board member and Past President of the Australian Climate and Health Alliance.
Sophie Robinson 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.
Our commitment under the Paris Agreement is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 43% relative to 2005 levels by 2030, and to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Unfortunately, a closer look at the statement suggests Australia is unlikely to achieve net zero by 2050 in the absence of radical policy changes. The problem can be seen in the following charts, included in the statement.
The devil in the detail
At first sight, the picture looks encouraging. Total emissions, represented by the yellow line, have declined greatly since the peak just after 2005. The trajectory looks consistent with net zero by 2050. The red dotted line, taking account of additional measures planned by the government, but not yet committed, lowers emissions a bit further.
A closer look leads to a gloomier conclusion. Nearly all of the reduction arises from just two categories: electricity and “LULUCF”, which stands for “land use, land-use change and forestry”.
This can be seen by turning to the original source of the data. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water provides a graph showing the same data, but with the different sources of emissions shown separately, rather than being stacked as they were in the previous graph.
The decline in electricity emissions reflects the rapid replacement of coal and gas-fired electricity by renewables (mainly solar power, wind and hydro, firmed by battery storage). This transition is well underway, and likely to continue.
The bad news is the transition to renewable electricity will be complete around 2035, after which there can be no further reductions.
The other main source of declining (in fact, negative) emissions is a grab bag of measures such as reductions in land clearing. There is debate over whether reductions from this source are genuine and sustainable. But the big decline in emissions from land use, land use change and forestry was over by 2015. As with electricity, there is little hope of future emissions reductions from this source.
The biggest remaining sources of emissions are transport, stationary energy (heating and burning fuel for industry), “fugitive” emissions from coal and gas production, and agriculture.
All of these are projected to remain roughly constant between now and 2035, and there is little reason to expect sharp declines after that, at least under current policies. So, on our current trajectory, we are unlikely to get much below 50% of 2005 emissions, let alone net zero, by 2050.
Looking at the sectors individually, emissions from agriculture are difficult to reduce, unless we also reduce production, particularly of meat. There have been lots of proposals to reduce emissions of methane from ruminants (mostly belches), but none has appeared practical so far. That means deeper reductions will be needed in other sectors.
In the case of transport and stationary energy, there are few technological obstacles to the achievement of drastic emissions reductions. The technology to electrify land transport, heating and most industrial processes is readily available. But there seems to be little government urgency to implement this technology.
As far as households are concerned, the crucial requirements are to replace internal combustion engine vehicles with electrics, and to replace gas for home use with electricity. Both are entirely feasible and, if we made a determined start today, the transition could be complete before 2050.
But that would require a rapid end to the purchase of new vehicles with internal combustion engines and of new gas connections for households. Neither seems likely.
Unless the standard is considerably more stringent than appears likely at present, the dominant position of polluting vehicles in new sales is likely to persist for some time.
The government rejected the recommendations of the Climate Change Authority in this area. The authority proposed a standard for heavy vehicles, and an end to polluting light vehicle sales by 2040. On this basis, there will be millions of dirty cars and trucks with internal combustion engines still on the road by 2050.
The same pattern of inaction applies to electrification of home energy. The Victorian government has taken the lead on banning gas connections, and the Authority recommended adopting a national approach. But Bowen declined, saying “the government does not support a national ban on gas connections to new homes”.
Even more concerning are projections for fugitive emissions from coal and gas production. These are effectively flat, implying the government expects production to continue at current levels indefinitely into the future. In turn, this implies that, as well as failing to deliver on its own 2050 net zero pledge, the government is betting the world as a whole will fail at this. Sadly, they may be right.
At the End of the Land, a world premiere production by Western Australian interdisciplinary theatre makers Too Close to the Sun, is an experiential encounter with the liminal space between life and death and other unknowable things.
Performed, written and co-devised by Talya Rubin with co-devisor and director Nick James, At the End of the Land integrates Rubin’s live, amplified voice, delivered via direct address, with Samuel James’ luscious, seemingly three-dimensional video.
Working in concert with the soundscape (composed by Rachael Dease with sound design by Daniel Herten and Hayley Forward), the performance is a parade of images – aural, live and projected – that hold for a moment to imprint on our retinas, but then are gone as quickly as they appeared.
Rubin’s spoken text, sometimes heightened and poetic, other times direct and specific, has multiple narratives. The most recurring throughline references a story of the deaths of 18 young women in a Victorian-era boarding house. Speaking as one of these vanished women about “the day we all died” and what it’s like to be dead, Rubin guides the audience into this in-between place. There is a slightly disembodied quality to her presence, anchored by the serious sincerity of her deliberate delivery.
The stage is variously zoned, with miniature rooms and landscapes enlarged via projection that plays with perspective, as the performer manipulates the tiny scenes.
One of the zones features a red velvet armchair, with a small side table and lamp, on a black and white checked floor, reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. This space places Rubin in her Peter Pan-collared outfit as a sort of Alice in the underworld.
The Red Monkey is a sort of demonic oracle. Aaron Claringbold/PICA
Sometimes accompanied by the recurring figure of the Red Monkey, the narrator’s sidekick who acts as a sort of demonic oracle, the overall effect is of a surreal, painterly dreamscape.
At one point Rubin narrates a verbatim interview with American filmmaker and painter David Lynch talking about his ideas and process, particularly with regards to his first feature Eraserhead. It works to position the performance in the highly visual “dreamlike logic” of a Lynchian landscape.
Our own memories
At The End of The Land creates a very specific, sustained introspective mood, twice deliberately broken by Rubin when the house lights are raised and the audience directly engaged.
There is a relief in this direct connection, momentarily unfiltered by technology. Rubin invites us to embrace the living and the dead, to contemplate and embrace the inevitability of our own death and the invisible threads that guide (and sometimes abandon) us all.
Rubin becomes an Alice in the underground. Aaron Claringbold/PICA
These moments of suspension create space and self-reflection leaving us alone with our own memories.
Operating in a non-linear surreality, Rubin’s text gives us hooks and signposts, but ultimately the density of images create a sensory overload that washes over you. It works to open the viewer up to the varied associations that accord with their own experience, ensuring At the End of the Land will land differently for each person.
For my companion, the references to the 18 dead women, provoked an association with 16 Days in WA, a family and domestic violence campaign currently running in the state. Amid the myriad associative possibilities, Rubin’s endeavour is personal but also invitational as she finds ways to bring us together.
It is a seamless performance, which is pretty remarkable considering the work is really all seam: an avalanche of images knitted together with visible seams that invite the audience to sit alone in time and space together.
At the End of the Land played at PICA, Perth. Season closed.
Leah Mercer 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.
