Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Lesh, Lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, Deakin University

Heritage conservation has been blamed for making the housing crisis worse by standing in the way of new, higher-density housing. But protecting heritage and increasing housing should be complementary objectives. Heritage suffers when not enjoyed by our growing communities. Housing suffers when not shaped by our communal heritage.

YIMBYs and NIMBYs are usually on opposing sides of this debate. Yet what they agree on is the desirability of heritage areas. People in both the Not In My Back Yard and Yes In My Back Yard camps want to live in established suburbs, often in the inner city, with attractive historic urban landscapes.

Unfortunately, NIMBYs have exploited heritage loopholes to prevent development. There is a problem with how overly cautious practitioners and under-resourced authorities are applying heritage protections. So, YIMBYs wrongly blame heritage itself for housing issues.

Empirical evidence that heritage is a barrier to housing supply is practically non-existent. It’s not a talking point among housing experts. The real issues are urban policy, the tax system and housing supply.

Read more:
Why heritage protection is about how people use places, not just their architecture and history

In support of both heritage and housing

Heritage should be seen as part of the housing solution. Advocates for both heritage and housing can and have been allies.

In Victoria, for example, architect and politician Evan Walker introduced the first comprehensive local protections in the mid-1980s. He was ably supported by David Yencken, who had been the first chairman of the Australian Heritage Commission and a developer of innovative suburban housing. These city visionaries recognised that we could keep the best of the past and complement it with new, higher-density builds.

Heritage protections were created at a time when our historic neighbourhoods were at risk of widespread demolitions for inferior new buildings. High-rise towers threatened areas like The Rocks in Sydney and Carlton in Melbourne. A surge in ad-hoc redevelopment put valued homes at risk in suburbs such as Brisbane’s New Farm, North Adelaide and Perth’s Subiaco.

Our heritage suburbs were not desirable like today. We only have our fabulous cities of villages because people fought hard for heritage protections.

Read more:
Our cities owe much of their surviving heritage to Jack Mundey

Heritage is about what we find significant. Eroding protections risks the social, physical and historic fabric of heritage neighbourhoods, the very reasons so many of us – including both YIMBYs and NIMBYs – want to live in them. These areas have vibrant high streets, excellent services such as schools and hospitals, and many transport options.

It’s notable, too, that the smaller block sizes in older suburbs already produce high levels of density by Australian standards. Their walkability and infrastructure also make them more liveable. This heritage of urban vitality is worth conserving and replicating.

We can build more housing in heritage areas

A more palatable and sustainable solution is to build well-designed homes, hapartments and townhouses in and around heritage areas. There are architects and developers who do this. It may be a case of adapting obsolete historical buildings or constructing new buildings on appropriate sites.

When done well, new builds and incremental change improve our historic urban landscapes. Good examples include Perth’s Northbridge, Melbourne’s Collingwood and Sydney’s Chippendale.

Importantly, the best-designed new homes respect local history, prevailing design forms and neighbourhood character. That is a great strength of heritage: it allows us to embrace the most significant and beautiful aspects of our existing built forms and social lives.

Read more:
Preserving cities: how ‘trendies’ shaped Australia’s urban heritage

Heritage is not just about protecting grand monuments along Spring or Macquarie streets. It is also about everyday aspects of our suburbs: the sturdy stone street kerb, the intricate iron and lacework terrace, the worker’s timber cottage, the subdivided Federation home, the industrial warehouse turned apartment block and, of course, uplifting gardens, parks and trees.

The precincts, places and features that are heritage-protected reflect decades of community efforts. Today, residents still must have a right to have a say in planning and to see their heritage protected. Conservation is enshrined in planning and heritage legislation and widely supported by the community.

Overcoming barriers to densifying heritage areas

Authorities too often say “no” to appropriate housing in heritage areas. It happens for many reasons, though so-called NIMBYism is a factor.

Many local councils have also had funding for conservation cut, while federal and state leadership in urban heritage is minimal.

Some traditional approaches to conservation do tend to prevent rather than promote reasonable change to heritage places. This is also unsustainable: adapting existing buildings is good for the environment.

Read more:
Frozen in time, we’ve become blind to ways to build sustainability into our urban heritage

Many authorities lack the knowledge and resources to ensure new housing is consistent with heritage. We need to equip them with the innovative heritage approaches and creative design outlook they need to make better decisions. Planning and design panels with wide-ranging skills, including heritage, could work with communities to increase housing supply and choice where people want to live.

It’s essential to address the housing crisisc. More people should be able to enter the housing market and enjoy living in established suburbs. We have the heritage, planning and design tools to achieve both objectives.

Heritage strategies for increasing housing supply can include subdivision, adaptive reuse and infill development in and around heritage areas. It’s about designing the best housing for the specific context. Heritage policies should be reviewed and updated across Australia to support these kinds of outcomes.

The urban heritage of Australia’s cities is what makes them among the world’s most liveable. Heritage should not be about blocking housing, but rather about asking “how can we build housing better?”. Let’s embrace our urban past to shape our urban future.

Read more:
War on the demolishers? Probably not, and timing of NSW heritage review is curious

James Lesh has consulted in the area of heritage conservation.

– ref. YIMBYs and NIMBYs unite! You can have both heritage protection and more housing – https://theconversation.com/yimbys-and-nimbys-unite-you-can-have-both-heritage-protection-and-more-housing-206765

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Garlett, Legal Academic and Industry Fellow, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of Queensland

There has been a flurry of scaremongering recently about Western Australia’s new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, which came into effect on July 1.

The act aims to better reflect the aspirations of Aboriginal people in government and business decisions that impact their cultural heritage. The views of Indigenous people have not been given equal weight in WA on these matters before, which has led to disastrous consequences.

The state’s outdated Aboriginal Heritage Act from 1972 failed to prevent Rio Tinto from legally destroying ancient and sacred rock shelters in Juukan Gorge in 2020 to expand an iron ore mine, demonstrating the need for legal reform.

The new act in WA is a step towards alignment with laws in other states, too. So, why is there so much concern about it?

Why was this new law instituted?

Past changes to WA’s cultural heritage law have disadvantaged Indigenous people. Those reforms narrowed the definition of Aboriginal heritage, weakening the protection of sacred sites to enable mining projects and other developments.

The new act aims to rectify this situation and better protect Australia’s 60,000 years of precious Aboriginal heritage. The law was developed over a period of five years and involved extensive consultation with many groups from all over WA.

What does the new act try to do?

While development and heritage protection can sometimes co-exist, it is not always possible – notably in mining regions. Once tangible pieces of cultural heritage are destroyed, they are gone forever. This is why the act aims to strike a better balance between the interests of different land users and stakeholder groups.

The new law includes stronger protections for significant sites and broader definitions of Aboriginal cultural heritage. It also requires developers to consult with Traditional Owners via new governance structures.

And it includes a positive duty to exercise due diligence – which means actively avoiding harm to Aboriginal heritage – and stronger penalties for breaking the law.

The law also considers cultural landscapes such as ancestral journeys through song lines – not just individual cultural sites. This approach means that both tangible and intangible cultural heritage can be protected.

There are now opportunities to establish protected cultural heritage areas in the state, too, which haven’t existed before.

Is all of the concern justified? Why is there so much confusion?

Despite the aim of striking a better balance between different stakeholder interests, many groups remain concerned about the act.

Farmers say the changes may delay their normal operations and impede their ability to work the land. Some fear they might be unduly prosecuted or fined.

Mining companies say the introduction of the law has been shambolic with exploration companies concerned it will slow the discovery of the minerals we need for the energy transition away from fossil fuels, such as lithium, copper and iron ore.

It has also been reported that sales of residential properties over 1,100 square metres have now started including disclosure statements that the buyer understands there may be new legal obligations to consider.

This may be adding to the fearmongering, similar to the introduction of the Native Title Act in the 1990s, when people feared they could lose ownership of their suburban backyards. That never came to pass.

Read more:
From crumbling rock art to exposed ancestral remains, climate change is ravaging our precious Indigenous heritage

The Shire of Carnarvon in WA says the new law may trigger community disputes about who is the appropriate Traditional Owner or knowledge holding group for a particular area of land. But this is not a new issue.

While there may be some uncertainty about the act, it does not mean the changes are unworkable. What will be required is adequate resourcing for the new local Aboriginal cultural heritage services and the new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Council.

To allay fears, the WA government says for the first 12 months it will focus on implementation of the act, not punishing stakeholders for breaches of the more rigorous requirement to conduct Indigenous heritage surveys.

Public workshops and education sessions will be offered for anyone who is uncertain about the new requirements, as well.

Is the new law strong enough?

While it may be a step in the right direction, the law does not go far enough from an Indigenous perspective and for other professionals who work with Indigenous people.

A major point of contention is that the state minister for Aboriginal affairs can still have the final say in situations where traditional owners and developers do not agree on the destruction of cultural heritage. In the past, the minister has routinely prioritised mining and other developments over Aboriginal heritage protection.

The First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance has called for overarching federal legislation to ensure Indigenous self-determination and consent rights on cultural heritage are codified into Commonwealth law.

Read more:
Juukan Gorge inquiry: a critical turning point in First Nations authority over land management

In addition, the Dhawura Ngilan vision, which was developed by Australia’s peak Indigenous heritage bodies, outlines best practice standards for cultural heritage management and legislative protections.

It calls for Aboriginal heritage to be acknowledged and valued as central to Australia’s national heritage and recognised for its global significance. The vision sees Aboriginal people as the custodians of their own heritage, supported by strong and consistent heritage management policies across all states.

This issue of how we make decisions that balance competing interests is going to be more pressing in the future. Much of the mining required for the crucial minerals to fuel the renewable energy transition overlaps with Indigenous peoples’ lands.

Despite some improvement to the cultural heritage law in WA, more needs to be done. There needs to be protections for water resources and managing the cumulative impacts major developments (such as mining) can have on cultural heritage over time.

There is a lot more work to do to ensure our laws are not only fair, but also comprehensive. The next 12 months will hopefully allay fears the new state Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act will cause chaos and take us backwards.

Emma Garlett is an Indigenous consultant. She receives research funding at The University of Queensland. She is a columnist for The West Australian and the Host of Paint it Blak on YouTube. Emma is an Adjunct Professor and Advisory Board Member at the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth and Justice at Federation University.

Deanna is chief investigator of an ARC Linkage grant on public-private inquiries in mining; member of the International Council of Mining and Metals independent expert review panel; and trustee and member of the international advisory council for the Institute of Human Rights and Business. She is Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at The University of Queensland.

Sarah Holcombe is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at the University of Queensland. CSRM undertakes applied research for NGOs and civil society organisations, government and industry. Sarah is a member of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) expert working group on FPIC.

– ref. Why is there so much confusion and fearmongering over WA’s new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-there-so-much-confusion-and-fearmongering-over-was-new-aboriginal-cultural-heritage-act-208752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Baker, Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Auckland

The ink was barely dry on the Green Party’s recently unveiled “Pledge to Renters” – which included annual rent increase limits, a rental warrant of fitness and a national register of landlords – before others were consigning it to the policy dustbin.

By Tuesday morning, the prime minister had emphatically ruled out rent controls as part of a potential Labour-Greens coalition after this year’s election: “International experience suggests […] a constraining effect on the number of rentals available,” he said.

The ACT Party housing spokesperson claimed the policy “attacks landlords”, while the vice-president of the Property Investors Federation said it would lead to a “black market” in rental deals.

Labelling the policy “economically illiterate”, National’s housing spokesperson Chris Bishop said: “Economists don’t agree on much but almost all agree rent controls […] are counterproductive.”

And it is true – social science research, and economics in particular, can be marshalled to argue against rent controls. One meta-analysis of 60 studies, for example, found “economic research quite consistently and predominantly frowns on rent control”.

These arguments tend to converge around the notion that controls result in the opposite of their commonly stated objectives: reducing supply and lowering rather than increasing housing standards.

But some perspective is needed. Another international analysis found the “strongly held but highly polarised views” about rent control are “rarely strongly evidence-based”. In fact, there is much more to the debate than many of the partisan arguments suggest.

The generation gap

The research that exists tends to quibble with so-called “first generation” rent controls. These involve freezing rents, akin to the temporary measures put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

First generation rent control was especially popular in Europe and, to some extent, the United States during and shortly after the second world war. Some rent control dwellings from that time live on to this day, but they are rare.

Importantly, these measures involve sustaining rent freezes well below market levels – which is not something entertained by the Greens.

However, because the economic literature tends to focus on first generation rent controls – and because this highly partial focus comes to stand for all rent controls in public discussion – the Greens policy has been implicitly lumped in with only one kind of control.

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

Research on second and third generation rent controls is less plentiful. But it contains more diversity of disciplinary perspectives – including public policy, sociology, geography and other research fields – and is more equivocal in its findings.

Mainstream economics is famously enamoured with formal models based on assumptions that lead to good theory, but which often run into trouble when applied to the complex social and political systems that shape us.

When we begin to incorporate those complexities in our analysis, the world of rent control looks more varied. As the same comparative study that found a lack of evidence-based perspectives put it: “the impact of rent control depends on its form and economic context […] plus crucially the nature of the welfare system in place”.

Not a blunt instrument

The Greens’ proposal most closely resembles second generation rent controls. These allow for rent increases, but within specified limits (a maximum 3% annual increase under the Greens’ proposal). And only under certain circumstances (such as making significant improvements to the dwelling) can landlords increase rents beyond those limits.

Third generation rent controls, by comparison, only apply within a single tenancy, whereas second generation controls apply within and between tenancies. So, a landlord cannot opportunistically increase the rent, above the specified limit, before a new tenancy begins.

Rent control need not be a blunt instrument. It can include any number of provisions to overcome or ameliorate anticipated perverse outcomes.

Around the world, there’s a range of locally tailored variations of rent control policies. Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands, for example, each have different approaches to stabilising rent increases for part of their rental housing stock.

Read more:
The coming storm for New Zealand’s future retirees: still renting and not enough savings to avoid poverty

More informed debate needed

A big part of the problem with New Zealand’s rent control “debate” is that it misses these kinds of nuance. A better discussion would involve looking at what kind of rent control might work, for what purpose, and with what trade-offs.

This is especially important in the context of the country’s rental affordability problem and wealth distribution disparities underpinned by the current housing system.

As was reported earlier this year, Stats NZ figures show renters are experiencing the housing affordability crisis worse than homeowners. In the year to June 2022, one in four renting households were spending more than 40% of their disposable income on housing costs, compared with one in five mortgaged households.

Read more:
Housing is both a human right and a profitable asset, and that’s the problem

Average weekly rents also increased faster than mortgage payments over the past 15 years – by 93%, compared with 48.8%. Given these realities, some kind of policy response is surely logical.

A modest proposal such as the Greens’ policy deserves more than blank rejection. As a recent study of the “mythology” of rent control put it, we ought “to take the trouble to look closely at different kinds of rent control”.

If it is understood as multidimensional, not monolithic, such a policy might at least be seen as one legitimate approach to improving renters’ lives.

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

– ref. Not all rent control policies are the same – the Green Party proposal deserves an open-minded debate – https://theconversation.com/not-all-rent-control-policies-are-the-same-the-green-party-proposal-deserves-an-open-minded-debate-209039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Barron, Professor, Macquarie University

The animal world is full of different types of intelligence, from the simple bodily coordination of jellyfish to the navigation abilities of bees, the complex songs of birds and the imaginative symbolic thought of humans.

In an article published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we argue the evolution of all these kinds of animal intelligence has been shaped by just five major changes in the computational capacity of brains.

Each change was a major transitional point in the history of life that changed what types of intelligence could evolve.

The coordination problem

The first intelligence transition was the development of animals with a nervous system. Some have argued single-celled organisms show adaptive and complex behaviour and forms of learning, but these are limited to life at tiny sizes.

Multi-cellular bodies allowed animals to get big and exploit entirely new physical domains. However, a multi-cellular body need to be coordinated to actively move as a single entity. A nervous system solves that coordination problem.

The simplest nervous systems look something like the kind of diffuse neural networks we see in jellyfish. This is great for coordinating a body, but it is not so good at putting information together.

Growing a brain

The second transition was to a centralised nervous system. With this came a brain, and the capacity to combine information from different senses.

A brain can be the master coordinator of the whole body, and this let new types of bodies evolve: bodies with specialised limbs and special sensory structures.

We see these very simple brains in modern worms, leeches and tardigrades. With these brains animals can integrate senses, learn from sensory input, coordinate and orient their movements.

Simple brains transform sensory input to motor output. We can think of the information flow as a “feed forward” from information to action.

A feedback loop

The third transition was to more complex brains, specifically ones with feedback. When the output of a process is fed back into the process, we call it “recurrence”.

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Bees can learn the difference between European and Australian Indigenous art styles in a single afternoon

Insects have recurrent brains. The brilliance of bees – their ability to quickly learn different types of art, to recognise abstract concepts and to navigate to goal locations – is all enabled by their recurrent brains.

Parallel processing

The fourth transition is to brains constructed from multiple recurrent systems each in recurrent connection to each other. Here information flow iterates through recurrent systems. We see brains like this in birds, dogs, reptiles and fish.

This allows massive parallel processing of information. The same information can be used in multiple different ways at the same time, and relationships between different types of information can be recognised.

These networks of recurrent systems are why birds are so good at learning complex sequences in songs; why birds, rats and dogs are great at learning what, where and when things happen; and why monkeys can learn new ways to manipulate objects to solve problems and make rudimentary tools.

The brain that modifies itself

The fifth transition was to brains that can modify their own computational structure according to what is needed. In computer science this is called reflection.

A reflective brain can learn the best information flow for a specific task and modify how it processes information on the fly to complete the task in the fastest and most efficient way.

The human brain is reflective, and this capability has enabled our imagination, our thought processes and our rich mental lives. It also opened the door for the use of symbolic language, which expanded our minds even further as it helped us communicate and coordinate so efficiently with each other.

Different brains for different lifestyles

Each of these transitions is a a set of evolved changes in the structure of information flow through the nervous system. Each transition changed in fundamental ways what the nervous system could do and opened up new possibilities for cognition.

The transitions build on each other. For example, you cannot have recurrence without first evolving centralisation. But this story is not a ladder with Homo sapiens at the top.

Our story describes five fundamentally different types of brain. One is not better than another, each is just different.

We might like to claim we are the smartest animal and depending how you measure it, perhaps we are. But a bee can do things a human simply cannot.

Our intelligence demands an extended childhood, in which we can’t even walk for a year; a bee is fully functional from the moment its wings dry as it emerges from its cell. A bee can learn to navigate for kilometres around its hive with less than 20 minutes of flight time; I still get lost walking home from the train.

And a jellyfish or a worm might not be Einstein, but they can tolerate a level of damage that would kill or paralyse a mammal.

Different types of brains suit animals to different lifestyles, and support different types of animal minds. These five transitions help us make sense of our place among the stunning diversity of animal intelligences.

À lire aussi :
Why do animals living with humans evolve such similar features? A new theory could explain ‘domestication syndrome’

Andrew Barron receives funding from Templeton World Charity Foundation Project Grant TWCF-2020-2539

– ref. All animal intelligence was shaped by just 5 leaps in brain evolution – https://theconversation.com/all-animal-intelligence-was-shaped-by-just-5-leaps-in-brain-evolution-208753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren O’Donovan, Senior Lecturer in Administrative Law, La Trobe University

On Friday, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme will submit its final report to the federal government, which is expected to release it to the public shortly thereafter.

The report will be the culmination of years of suffering and work by victims to hold their government to account.

So what can we expect?

Conspiracy or ‘stuff up’?

The headline questions the commission will adjudicate are confronting:

• Did officials at one Commonwealth department deceive another when removing key legal and policy warnings from the cabinet submission that launched robodebt?

• Even worse, did two departments collude to remove references to the unlawful method of averaging?

• Did department officials mislead the Commonwealth ombudsman in its 2017 investigation?

• Why was damning legal advice left unactioned by officials?

The whistleblowing of true public servants like former Centrelink employee Colleen Taylor means the report’s release will not be a dark day for the whole public service.

It will, rather, collapse the established worldview of its senior executive class. A worldview that denies Australians the facts about their government and fobs off independent oversight.

Adverse findings against individuals will not be lightly reached. Hearings, however viral they go, only explore possibilities, but reports make careful findings. Shockingly poor record creation practices in Commonwealth agencies may limit the character of what can be found.

If it recommends further investigation into individuals’ conduct, the report’s release will be tailored to avoid prejudicing any future proceedings.

Standards in political life

Coverage surged for politicians’ appearances at the commission, with many holding out for “who knew what when” moments. In giving evidence, politicians often relied on public servants’ failure to deliver warnings at key moments in the scheme. Ministers who oversaw robodebt consistently used this lack of frank advice to defend their failure to stop it.

The final report will spend time reacquainting our political class with basic expectations of responsible government and standards in public life.

Our public representatives emerged as utterly insubstantial figures, consumed by marketing political images like “welfare cop” and party political combat. They displayed a striking lack of curiosity towards key questions. Adverse information flowed around, rather than through them.

The final report will reflect on standards in our public life and the ethical lows that are plumbed for party political ends: for example, the leaking of private information by the office of then-Human Services Minister Alan Tudge to “correct the record” and discourage people speaking out.

It will tackle warped ideas of ministerial responsibility and cabinet solidarity that see facts or views suppressed in the name of defending a position.

Read more:
The Robodebt scheme failed tests of lawfulness, impartiality, integrity and trust

This commission was fiercely independent, despite misdirected efforts by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to portray it as a “witchhunt”.

It painstakingly examined the history of unlawful income averaging (which was used to calculate robodebts), setting out the fundamental differences in investigation approaches over time. It found 2010 documents describing the use of averaging as a last resort to close files where evidence was not available.

It uncovered the corners cut in remediation, as debts such as these were never paid back. These are the invisible spaces no political slogans ever address, where unapproved practices take root against people who can’t argue back.

Access to justice at the frontline

The governance dynamics that sustained robodebt are not limited to a certain time or place. Consider the unlawfully crude use of bank statements by Services Australia when reprocessing robodebts, which was called out by an appeals tribunal in May.

Our social security system is still failing to provide people with disability adequate reasons for life-changing pension decisions.

Robodebt used behavioural economics approaches to engineer feelings of shame and prevent legal consciousness from forming.

It gamed our administrative law system to overwrite or rapture the debts of those who did complain, while nothing changed on the frontline.

It imposed an administrative burden on those unable to carry it, confident they would triage the trauma and cop the debt.

We must have legal reform to oblige Centrelink to implement tribunal standards of decision-making where it matters: right at the frontline.

Building a culture of accountability

The early signs are that Australian Public Service leaders are pursuing a robodebt response that centres on non-binding, internal cultural reforms put forward by themselves.

When it comes to careerism or the pursuit of power, history tells us human nature will not be changed by refreshed seminars on ethics. You need to change the underlying relationships of power and accountability.

Change is always hard. But we know what stops it. Consider a freedom of information appeal handed down in the last week of the royal commission.

Six long years ago, transparency advocate Justin Warren sought the weekly manager reports on robodebt’s disastrous launch. Services Australia refused to hand them over. About 2,220 days later, the information commissioner (who resigned in protest recently) had to order their release. He found the basis Services Australia thought they could even try denying the documents was “not readily apparent”.

Beware those who offer “cultural” fixes and non-binding reassurances to self-correct. The Albanese government should not fall back on the very institutions who never fully investigated or acted until the political fluke of an exceptional royal commission.

Future scandals will be prevented by the things that stopped robodebt: access to facts, firm legal rights and enforceable remedies for injustice.

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

– ref. ‘The culmination of years of suffering’: what can we expect from the robodebt royal commission’s final report? – https://theconversation.com/the-culmination-of-years-of-suffering-what-can-we-expect-from-the-robodebt-royal-commissions-final-report-202337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel Howard, Research associate, Flinders University

Last week, The Australian newspaper reported some parents have been prompted to start their own schools to give their children the type of education they want.

One of these is Hartford College in Sydney, a new Catholic school with an emphasis on the liberal arts, including classical literature, languages and philosophy. It has about 22 students enrolled and the founding parents say they want to engage the “whole” child and will have mentors for each student.

Previously when we think of parents taking their child’s education into their own hands, we may think of homeschooling (which is certainly growing in Australia).

But there is a long tradition of parents and local communities starting their own schools if they feel what’s on offer is not suiting their families’ needs.

Ragged schools

Before compulsory schooling, Ragged schools appeared in Melbourne as early as 1859.

The idea for these community-funded schools came from England, and provided a free moral education for poor and homeless children roaming the streets of Melbourne and Sydney.

In the 20th century, parents of children with a disability, established schools to meet the specific needs of their children. For example, in 1945 Adelaide parents set up the Cora Barclay Centre for children who were deaf from the post-war measles pandemic.

Read more:
Why do I find my child’s school report so hard to understand?

The community schools movement

In the 1970’s parent and community-initiated schools had their heyday.
Coalitions of parents and teachers set up community schools as alternatives to a narrow, paternalistic, exclusionary education.

This was influenced by American education philosopher John Dewey’s ideas about democratic schools and the freedom given to students in Scottish educator A.S. Neill’s Summerhill school. Australian parents and teachers were also emboldened by the civil and children’s rights movements.

But the boom in small, humanist schools was short-lived as state education departments moved to centralisation and standardisation. By the end of the century, community schools had either disappeared or had evolved into places for students who were not progressing in mainstream schools.

Read more:
Australia has a new online-only private school: what are the options if the mainstream system doesn’t suit your child?

Low-fee, faith-based schools

In the 1980s and 1990s Australia saw an increase in faith-based parent and community-initiated schools.

After a 1981 High Court decision, the federal government began to fund a wider range of schools, including religious schools. Rules that limited the establishment of new schools were also scrapped, further opening up new parent and community-initiated schools.

These schools were “low fee”, mainly Christian schools and usually in growth areas. In the 1990s, parents and leaders from refugee communities also banded together to develop schools that reflected their faith and community.

New, specialist schools

Since 2012, the Gonski education reforms have made it even more economically feasible for parents, and communities to establish new independent schools.

The federal government now funds 80% of each non-government school’s schooling resource standard. This is an estimate of how much public funding a school needs to meet its students’ educational needs.

This has seen small schools that cater to a specific parent or community need become more common. The largest growth area of these is Special Assistance Schools, that are primarily for students who have dropped out of mainstream school.

But there are also new schools for students with high academic potential, bush schools, sports schools, performing arts and music schools, science-based schools and sustainable schools.

Read more:
20% of Australian students don’t finish high school: non-mainstream schools have a lot to teach us about helping kids stay

How do parents create a new school?

Not every vision for a new school is successful. Setting up a new school takes leadership, time, commitment, determination and money.

The school must be able to satisfy the state’s schools accrediting authority they have premises, a governance structure with a board, will be able deliver a curriculum and meet safety and protection requirements for staff and students.

For the last four years, we have been researching the development of a new Adelaide school, Ngutu College. It was established by former state school principal and Kamilaroi Man, Andrew Plastow, in response to teacher and community concern.

It describes itself as having:

Aboriginal cultures as its soul, children as its heart and the arts as it spine.

It took 18 months, from the initial discussions with community, to open its classroom doors to students in 2021.

Ngutu has 230 students of which 44% are Indigenous. As it expands to Year 12, it will be capped at 350 students to retain its community focus.

Hartford College and Ngutu College are worlds apart in their vision of education but both are small schools, driven by communities wanting to do the best for its children.

What does this mean for the mainstream system?

Parents and communities are setting up their own schools because they feel their needs are not being met in the mainstream system, which has increasingly been tied to narrow ideas of “success”.

The strength of public education is the interaction between children, young people and their wider community. The more separate, specialised schools that are set up, the more the public loses these students, parents and communities.

In an ideal world, the local public school is able to provide for diverse students and communities. This means schools need to be open and responsiveto the needs of students. This means parents and communities also need to be involved in shaping how their schools are run and their children are educated.

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.

– ref. Parents have just started their own school in Sydney – this is part of a long tradition in Australia – https://theconversation.com/parents-have-just-started-their-own-school-in-sydney-this-is-part-of-a-long-tradition-in-australia-208656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie E. Brice, Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology, California State University, Fullerton

There’s little doubt the FIFA Women’s World Cup will deliver spectacle and significant financial rewards when it kicks off in a fortnight. The longer-term rewards, however, are harder to predict.

Tens of thousands of visitors will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to follow the matches across Australia and New Zealand – the first FIFA women’s football tournament to be hosted across two countries and two football confederations.

Following the recent success of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, the financial benefits of co-hosting this tournament have been estimated to be worth NZ$200 million to New Zealand and A$460 million to Australia.

But the event’s legacy can’t be measured in dollars alone. The trans-Tasman bid to co-host the Cup – dubbed “As One” – emphasised its potential to supercharge football in the region and promote women and girls in the sport.

The bid drew heavily on the Sport New Zealand Strategy for Women and Girls in Sport and Active Recreation, a government-led initiative to improve opportunities for girls and women to participate in sport, active recreation and play, and to improve conditions for women as athletes and leaders.

All noble goals, but research has repeatedly shown it isn’t possible to draw a straight line between major sporting events and wider societal benefits. And there is clear evidence of longstanding inequities in women’s football, both in New Zealand and around the world.

Making up for these historic inequalities in opportunity, pay, and representation will require sustained focus and investment. The challenge, therefore, is to genuinely leverage interest in the Women’s World Cup to effect real, measurable, and positive change.

Promise versus reality

Politically, the “As One” bid aligned well with FIFA’s own recent goals and objectives, including its FIFA 2.0 initiative and women’s football strategy.

In response to recent claims of major corruption, FIFA has been working to rebrand its image and reform the federation. Part of this has seen a commitment to support and grow the women’s game at both professional and recreational levels.

Just how much mega-events, like World Cups and Olympics, contribute to real social and economic legacies, however, has long been questioned. In fact, many of the promises made during bids and later promotion of the events – increased participation, more investment in leagues – go unrealised.

Read more:
World Cup 2023 will be a massive boost for women’s sport – but does it make financial sense?

This is particularly so when short-term event strategies aren’t matched by longer-term investment planning. There is little evidence to support claims of trickle-down or “inspiration” effects, whereby people are motivated to participate in a sport or physical activity simply by watching a major event.

The so-called “legacies” of football tournaments, more specifically, have also been found wanting, particularly where improving gender equity has been a focus. One study of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2005 Championship found that:

Despite record crowds and unprecedented media attention, an increase in participation by women after the event was neither significant, nor sustained.

Similarly, despite FIFA’s promises of equality, there remain vast disparities within sporting organisations. There has also been a lack of sustained commitment to end gender inequalities and sexism across the sport. The “As One” bid itself has also been criticised for its superficial engagement with gender equality.

Read more:
‘The moment needs to carry on’ – why the Black Ferns’ success must be a game-changer for women’s sport in NZ

Leveraging the World Cup

Sporting bodies in New Zealand are aware of these issues. Across government and sporting agencies, there are a range of strategic steps being made towards achieving a genuine social legacy from the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Beyond increased media attention and FIFA-sponsored “fan festivals” in the host cities, the Ministry for Women and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have developed grants and funding for organisations committed to empowering young girls and women, and increasing physical activity levels.

New Zealand Football (NZF) has addressed the challenge head on, tagging its “Aotearoa United” initiative with the byline “Legacy Starts Now”. It aims for an “enduring impact on our game and diverse communities in the years that follow the tournament”.

Read more:
Women’s football: record crowds and soaring popularity – here’s how to keep it this way

To that end, NZF’s FanTails programme capitalises on World Cup excitement to introduce the game in a fun way to girls aged 4-12. NZF has also partnered with Māori Football Aotearoa and Sport New Zealand to develop the Kōtuitui nationwide school programme, with a focus on supporting participation by girls and young women from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds.

But while such programmes should be applauded, they may not address the larger systemic issues within football. Recently, players from Auckland’s Western Springs AFC expressed concerns about alleged gender inequities and feeling “disrespected” by club leadership, resulting in many players threatening to leave the club.

With long histories of male dominance in football clubs and organisations, changing a sporting culture does not happen overnight.

Playing the long game

On the other hand, great strides are being made for women’s football across New Zealand and internationally.

Participation rates for women and girls have increased over 35% since 2011, according to NZF. At the same time, the profile of the women’s game has grown globally.

Clearly, the two are related. With the significant investment in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the efforts being made to inspire and connect with girls, women and families across the country, a further surge in participation rates is on the cards.

How long this interest lasts, however, depends on longer term investment strategies. And that means building opportunities for girls and young women to participate in safe, supportive, and truly inclusive sporting environments.

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.

– ref. Long-range goals: can the FIFA World Cup help level the playing field for all women footballers? – https://theconversation.com/long-range-goals-can-the-fifa-world-cup-help-level-the-playing-field-for-all-women-footballers-205213

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Someone’s got to say it: it’s just not cricket!

Prime ministers current and former have stepped up to the crease. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is delivering spinners. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s playing it with a straight bat. No-one is letting anything through to the keeper. I could go on.

The already febrile sporting pages of the English press have gone into overdrive about Jonny Bairstow’s controversial dismissal. It’s obviously more than just a game.

The reason this is not just cricket is that the political furore over the Ashes playing out in England expresses old and new elements of the Australia-UK relationship. The old elements are that Anglo-Australian rivalries and tensions play out in the safety of social forms understood by both sides, in this case cricket.

The first Test ended in an exciting win for Australia. Much of this had to do with England’s questionable decision-making about when to declare, and a new approach to the game known as “Bazball”. There’s been a lot of focus on questionable decision-making in England recently, given that June 23 marked the seventh anniversary of the UK’s referendum to leave the European Union.

Polls now show many regret leaving, including those who voted to leave. The buccaneering spirit that Brexit was supposed to unleash has not materialised.

This is doubly bad news for the Conservatives, whose 2019 election-winning support, built on aggrieved leave-voting former Labour suporters in the north of England, has fallen away like a tail-order collapse. There’s a year and a half until the next general election is due, but trailing badly in the polls, the run chase for the Conservatives is daunting.

A cynic might say Sunak is using this Ashes contretemps as a distraction – weighing in makes the multi-millionaire prime minister look more like one of the people. He has steadied the Conservative government after the disastrous Boris Johnson and Liz Truss moments, but his wealth plays against him in a cost-of-living crisis, and that mud has stuck. Bread and circuses might help.

Last week, a UK Court of Appeal deemed Sunak’s “stop the boats” policy – the most obvious instance of contemporary Australia-UK policy transfer – unlawful, halting plans to send asylum seekers arriving by boat to Rwanda. This was one of Sunak’s five policy pledges to the electorate when he became prime minister last year. Now that policy is on hold pending a government appeal to the supreme court.

The MCC altercation also taps into Australian defensive insecurities about being told how things work by posh English people. In fairness, lots of English people don’t like being told what to do by posh people either – another element in the Conservative’s poor polling at the tail-end of their government.

The last time things were this tense in the cricketing sense was during the Bodyline tour in 1932. This occurred in the context of UK-Australia rivalries during the Great Depression, and financial tensions between the City of London and “Langite” Labor in New South Wales.

But today the relationship has not been better since the UK joined the forerunner of the European Union 50 years ago. AUKUS has locked Australian security into UK nuclear submarine manufacturing capabilities. On the Labor left, this has revived memories of the last time Australian and British security was so closely aligned. Memories of the disaster at Singapore in 1942, or nuclear testing at Maralinga in the 1950s, don’t bring much comfort.

And then there’s the Australia-UK free trade agreement that came into force this year. This is largely seen as a win for Australia, because the UK needed a political symbol to make Brexit look like a success. Some of the fears of British sheep farmers about the unequal nature of the FTA appear to be well-founded. It turns out the largest sheep station in Australia is slightly larger than Wales.

Mention of Wales draws attention to the fact that the Anglo-Australian cricketing rivalry is not a British thing. The Scots appear to be enjoying the moment and generally support two teams – Scotland, and anyone playing against England.

Sport and identity politics are never far apart. It is refreshing to see Sunak come out to bat for England so unselfconsciously. Some of his forebears in the Conservative Party would not have been so relaxed about this – the infamous “Tebbit Test” rated support for the England cricket team as a determinant of being English.

The visual symbolism of Sunak’s support fits into the Conservatives’ culture-war position and magical thinking that there is no such thing as institutional racism in modern Britain. This conclusion sits uncomfortably with the Independent Commissions for Equity in Cricket’s report, released last week, that found racism, sexism and elitism were endemic in the English game.

Read more:
There’s something wrong with British politics. It’s called the Conservative Party

Fortunately, the MCC is not representative of the current UK-Australia relationship. People-to-people links remain very strong. Australia has a presence in the UK that other Commonwealth countries, with the possible exception of India, cannot match – and that’s even though we thought Neighbours had ended.

On Thursday, the sound of leather on willow will resume for the third Test. The Headingley crowd may still be smarting from the Bairstow incident, and confirmed in their views of how Australians play the game.

However, the UK-Australia relationship will go on much as it has boosted by this latest chapter: friends, allies and sporting rivals whose tensions are mitigated by the shared formats of deep historical connections.

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

– ref. Cricket’s wicket ways: what the furore over a stumping tells us about Anglo-Australian relations (spoiler: they’ll survive) – https://theconversation.com/crickets-wicket-ways-what-the-furore-over-a-stumping-tells-us-about-anglo-australian-relations-spoiler-theyll-survive-209026

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

The Reserve Bank decided to keep interest rates on hold at 4.1% because it thinks there’s a chance – just a chance – it has lifted them all it needs to.

In his statement released after Tuesday’s board meeting, Governor Philip Lowe said while inflation was still too high and set to remain so for some time yet, it had “passed its peak”.

Growth in the Australian economy had slowed and labour market conditions had eased, although they remained tight.

After 12 near-consecutive rate hikes, and in light of the “uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook”, it had decided to wait at least a month before hiking again until it knew more about the impact of what it has done on inflation and the health of the economy.

And when you compare Australians’ experience of rising rates with other countries, the Reserve Bank has already done more than many people realise.

Rising rates have hit Australian borrowers harder

Criticism of Australia’s Reserve Bank for not pushing up its cash rate as far as other countries overlooks an important difference between Australian borrowers and borrowers in those countries.

Canada has lifted its central bank rate from close to zero to 4.75%, Britain to 5%, the US to just above 5% and New Zealand to 5.5%.

Yet Australia’s increase – from close to zero to 4.1% – has caused Australian borrowers much, much more pain than borrowers in those other countries.

That’s because an exceptionally large proportion of Australian mortgage holders are on variable rates: roughly 70%. That’s compared to 35% in Canada, 15% in the UK, 12% in New Zealand and less than 5% in the United States.

Read more:
Why the Bank of England’s interest rate hikes aren’t slowing inflation enough and what that means for mortgages

In the words of Australia’s Reserve Bank: “interest rates on loans with very
long fixed-rate terms tend to be less sensitive to changes in the short-term rates”.

Back in February, the Reserve Bank’s estimate was that the interest rates actually paid on Australian mortgages had climbed two percentage points since it began pushing up rates.

In contrast – as this Reserve Bank chart shows – the rates actually paid in New Zealand had climbed by one and half percentage points, the rates in the UK by just half a percentage point, and the rates in the United States by very little at all.

Increases in mortgage rates actually paid

Months since the official rate began climbing. 100 = one percentage point

And because mortgages themselves are so much bigger than they used to be, the dramatic increase in rates actually paid costs a lot more than it would have.

Modelling by Ben Phillips at the ANU’s Centre for Social Research and Methods suggests that in the past two years, the average share of mortgaged households’ post-tax income devoted to payments has jumped from 17% to 25% – the biggest share in an awfully long time.

And it’s set to get worse, whatever the bank does to its cash rate.

The looming mortgage cliff

Usually, Australians take out very few fixed-rate mortgages. But in 2020 and 2021, we took out lots with fixed two- and three-year rates, when fixed rates were low.

As many as 880,000 of those fixed-rate terms are about to expire, pushing those borrowers from rates of around 2% (which might cost $2,100 per month to service) to rates nearer 5.5% (which might cost $3,000 to service).

The Reserve Bank itself expects 15% of borrowers to find themselves with negative cash flows in the coming months – meaning their incomings won’t match their outgoings and they’ll have to run down savings, work more hours, or tighten belts.

We’re already winding back spending. Although total retail spending has climbed 4.2% over the past year, prices have probably climbed 7% while the population has climbed 2%. This means the amount bought per person has shrunk sharply.

Recession is increasingly likely

Anything that makes us cut back even more runs the risk of bringing on a recession, something that’s already happened in New Zealand and may be about to happen in the United Kingdom.

At the start of this week, The Conversation’s expert forecasting panel assigned a 38% probability to a recession in Australia, much more than at the start of the year, but still less than 50% – meaning we might escape it.

The panel’s central forecast is for two more rate hikes this year, which it expects to be quickly unwound. If that happens, and if we escape a recession, the panel expects unemployment to climb only modestly over the year ahead while inflation glides down to 3.9% – within spitting distance of the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% target.

Lowe says getting things right means staying on a narrow path.

The case for living with higher inflation

That path might mean accepting a slower glide down in inflation than some would like, or even a higher end point – something closer to 3% than 2-3%.

Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman this week suggested quietly abandoning the US inflation target (of 2%) once inflation dropped to a point where people no longer noticed it all the time, which he thought would be about 3-4%.

There would be a case for doing that here, so long as inflation was stable, predictable and no longer causing alarm. It’d help keep unemployment low.

Read more:
Going down: the 6 graphs that show economic growth shrinking

In any event, we’re nowhere near there yet. The March quarter figure (the most recent quarterly inflation figure) put the annual inflation rate at 7%. The update due in four weeks will show how quickly we are moving toward 4%.

When we get there, Lowe or his successor (Lowe’s term expires in September) will have time to think about how important ultra-low inflation of 2-3% really is, and whether it is worth the cost to Australians of getting there.

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

– ref. The RBA has kept interest rates on hold. Here’s why it’ll be cautious from here on – https://theconversation.com/the-rba-has-kept-interest-rates-on-hold-heres-why-itll-be-cautious-from-here-on-208917

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Clift, Lecturer, The University of Melbourne

The Hong Kong government has extended its efforts to suppress political dissent overseas, issuing arrest warrants for eight exiled pro-democracy figures and offering bounties of HK$1 million (around A$191,000) each.

The targeted pro-democracy figures, who now live in Australia, the US and UK, were selected from a longer list of wanted dissidents. There is a curated feel to their profiles – three ex-legislators, three activists, a unionist and a lawyer – that suggests the list is symbolic, as well as pragmatic.

It is reminiscent of the infamous “Umbrella Nine” trial that capped years of prosecutions after Hong Kong’s 2014 “Umbrella Movement” protests. Three academics, three politicians and three activists were tried and convicted together to send a message to “troublesome” sectors of civil society.

The mugshots of those issued with arrest warrants this week depict not gun-slinging outlaws, but amiable-looking intellectual types.

Their “very serious crimes”, according to police, consist mostly of calling for sanctions to turn the tide of political repression in Hong Kong. In the terms of the controversial national security law under which the warrants were issued, this is considered “subversion of state power”, an offence punishable by up to life imprisonment.

How extradition with Hong Kong works

Hong Kong is nominally a self-governing region of China under the “one country, two systems” model agreed to when the UK handed the territory back in 1997.

However, the national security law was drafted in Beijing and applied to Hong Kong after the tumultuous, protracted protests that gripped the city in 2019. These were prompted, ironically, by fears the region’s autonomy was breaking down.

A curious feature of the national security law is its purported extraterritorial effect. It claims jurisdiction over any person of any nationality who has committed any of its offences anywhere in the world.

Read more:
Hong Kong activists now face a choice: stay silent, or flee the city. The world must give them a path to safety

Whether the Hong Kong government can realistically bring these people to trial is another matter entirely.

The international law of extradition (technically, in Hong Kong’s case, the surrender of fugitive offenders, as only states engage in extradition) includes certain safeguards. The act must be a sufficiently serious crime in both places, and it must not be a political offence.

The warrants in question fail both of these tests, notwithstanding the Hong Kong government’s hyperbolic claims about national security.

Moreover, extradition is guided by bilateral agreements between jurisdictions. Numerous Western countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong when the national security law was imposed, foreseeing the politicisation of criminal justice.

China’s never-ending mission to muzzle its critics

The pro-democracy figures targeted this week knew which way the wind was blowing when they left Hong Kong. They will probably never return there, a sad fact to which they may already be reconciled.

However, they may also need to reconsider their travel to jurisdictions which do maintain extradition agreements with Hong Kong or China.

The risk goes beyond formal arrest and extradition. The bounties on offer may encourage vigilantism, and sympathetic governments may turn a blind eye to or even facilitate extra-legal rendition of the eight exiled activists.

This is illustrated by the 2015 case of the five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared from various locations, including Thailand, and later showed up in China where they “confessed” to crimes in the state media.

The existence of overseas dissidents has long rankled Beijing – as the lifetime of spats with the Dalai Lama illustrates – but in recent years it has shown increased determination to monitor and influence the overseas Chinese diaspora.

The government has even set up secret “overseas police offices” in Europe, North America and elsewhere, as bases for information-gathering and harassment.

Read more:
Succession on the Tibetan plateau: what’s at stake in the battle over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation?

Hong Kong’s society brought to heel

In the past, China and Hong Kong could be regarded as distinct political entities, but over the last decade, the “firewall” between the mainland and the region has gradually collapsed. Hong Kong’s government and political system have been stripped of democratic elements, and its national security and law enforcement apparatus are now dictated by the mainland.

Compared with its mainland counterpart, the Hong Kong government goes to greater pains to paper over its actions with a veneer of law and legal process.

However, this tactic is increasingly transparent as it ramps up its pursuit of authoritarian goals. The co-option of Hong Kong’s once-celebrated legal institutions undermines their already-damaged legitimacy.

Read more:
Hong Kong democracy protester’s sentencing sets a harsh precedent for national security law

Hong Kong’s civil society has been brought to heel via a suite of repressive reforms spanning the legal, political, education and media sectors. These new warrants are the latest sign that China will never stop trying to muzzle its critics, so long as they are willing to speak out.

Ultimately, these warrants may be futile overreach – for the sake of their targets, we can only hope that is so – but the intention behind them remains condemnable. They are a threat to freedoms that lie at the core of our democratic society.

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

– ref. Bounties on exiled Hong Kong activists show the ambitious reach of China’s political repression – https://theconversation.com/bounties-on-exiled-hong-kong-activists-show-the-ambitious-reach-of-chinas-political-repression-209029

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Seyedali Mirjalili, Professor, Director of Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimisation, Torrens University Australia

AI image produced using the prompt ‘hyper-realistic ten hands on a picture with text saying hello’. Midjourney, Author provided

Generative AI tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 have astounded us with their ability to produce remarkable images in a matter of seconds.

Despite their achievements, however, there remains a puzzling disparity between what AI image generators can produce and what we can. For instance, these tools often won’t deliver satisfactory results for seemingly simple tasks such as counting objects and producing accurate text.

If generative AI has reached such unprecedented heights in creative expression, why does it struggle with tasks even a primary school student could complete?

Exploring the underlying reasons helps sheds light on the complex numerical nature of AI, and the nuance of its capabilities.

AI’s limitations with writing

Humans can easily recognise text symbols (such as letters, numbers and characters) written in various different fonts and handwriting. We can also produce text in different contexts, and understand how context can change meaning.

Current AI image generators lack this inherent understanding. They have no true comprehension of what any text symbols mean. These generators are built on artificial neural networks trained on massive amounts of image data, from which they “learn” associations and make predictions.

Combinations of shapes in the training images are associated with various entities. For example, two inward-facing lines that meet might represent the tip of a pencil, or the roof of a house.

But when it comes to text and quantities, the associations must be incredibly accurate, since even minor imperfections are noticeable. Our brains can overlook slight deviations in a pencil’s tip, or a roof – but not as much when it comes to how a word is written, or the number of fingers on a hand.

Read more:
Both humans and AI hallucinate — but not in the same way

As far as text-to-image models are concerned, text symbols are just combinations of lines and shapes. Since text comes in so many different styles – and since letters and numbers are used in seemingly endless arrangements – the model often won’t learn how to effectively reproduce text.

The main reason for this is insufficient training data. AI image generators require much more training data to accurately represent text and quantities than they do for other tasks.

The tragedy of AI hands

Issues also arise when dealing with smaller objects that require intricate details, such as hands.

In training images, hands are often small, holding objects, or partially obscured by other elements. It becomes challenging for AI to associate the term “hand” with the exact representation of a human hand with five fingers.

Consequently, AI-generated hands often look misshapen, have additional or fewer fingers, or have hands partially covered by objects such as sleeves or purses.

We see a similar issue when it comes to quantities. AI models lack a clear understanding of quantities, such as the abstract concept of “four”.

As such, an image generator may respond to a prompt for “four apples” by drawing on learning from myriad images featuring many quantities of apples – and return an output with the incorrect amount.

In other words, the huge diversity of associations within the training data impacts the accuracy of quantities in outputs.

Will AI ever be able to write and count?

It’s important to remember text-to-image and text-to-video conversion is a relatively new concept in AI. Current generative platforms are “low-resolution” versions of what we can expect in the future.

With advancements being made in training processes and AI technology, future AI image generators will likely be much more capable of producing accurate visualisations.

It’s also worth noting most publicly accessible AI platforms don’t offer the highest level of capability. Generating accurate text and quantities demands highly optimised and tailored networks, so paid subscriptions to more advanced platforms will likely deliver better results.

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

– ref. If AI image generators are so smart, why do they struggle to write and count? – https://theconversation.com/if-ai-image-generators-are-so-smart-why-do-they-struggle-to-write-and-count-208485

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Harris, Senior Research Fellow, Acting Director, CHETRE, UNSW Sydney

The Minns government’s approach to planning Sydney is troubling in terms of direction and substance.

The announcement that it will “fold” the Greater Cities Commission back into the Department of Planning raises several red flags for planning in New South Wales. Staff will also be transferred to the department from the Western Parkland City Authority, which was overseeing the building of a “third CBD” called Bradfield near Western Sydney Airport.

The Greater Sydney Commission (as it was originally known) was created to resolve a series of tricky planning problems. Sydney was growing and an institution to manage this growth city-wide was deemed desirable.

The approach to the city’s development had been top-down and siloed. The Department of Planning made decisions in isolation from other departments and especially local councils. This approach was not delivering a healthy, liveable, growing city.

Understanding why planning works the way it does in NSW has been part of our research agenda for ten years. What we have found, consistently, is a failure to invest real power and trust in those with the skills and mandate to make Sydney work.

The commission was not perfect, but it did make some progress towards breaking the silos between various authorities. Without a similar body that spans departments to deliver on the promise of more housing (or transport or hospitals or parks), the government is setting itself up to fail.

To demonstrate why, let’s unpack some of the challenges Sydney faces today.

Read more:
Bold and innovative planning is delivering Australia’s newest city. But it will be hot – and can we ditch the colonial name?

Housing

Providing more affordable housing for Sydney is more complex than simply setting targets and building houses. Blaming lack of progress on local councils is similarly simplistic.

Removing proper assessment processes and rushing through residential rezonings is guaranteed to create poorly designed and built housing. Speed will not increase affordability. It will, however, result in housing that is isolated, car-dependent, poorly insulated and under-serviced.

It is time the state government questioned its creed that “the market” will solve our housing crises. It needs to pay due attention to the inherent complexities of housing a growing population of more than 5 million people.

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

The City of Sydney is not Sydney!

The one upside of the pandemic for cities is that people began to look at the neighbourhoods around them. Suburbs started to be seen as places to be, rather than viewed from the window of the family car.

This shift could finally lead to the entrenched, monocentric view of Sydney being challenged. Questioning of the supremacy of the CBD creates an opportunity for this city’s middle and outer suburbs to thrive.

Pushing this vision forward has always been an aspiration. The true realisation of decentralisation needs more than centralised decision-making.

Transport planning

Sydney grew up with the assumption of a universal need for access to the private car, and it shows.

While other cities in our position have started to challenge the car’s supremacy, our governments have continued to build freeways. We have invested in public transport infrastructure that goes places, but nowhere anyone really needs to go. The A$26.6 billon Sydney West Metro, for example, connects Sydney’s two central business districts, but bypasses the residential hot spots just west of the Parramatta CBD.

Transport planning consistently fails to respond to the needs of the community it’s meant to serve. It is based on outdated notions such as the value of travel time, ignoring the fact people travel the way they do for multiple reasons. Comfort, convenience and habit will often come before a rational evaluation of whether it’s better to take the bus or the family car.

Furthermore, cost-benefit analyses fail to factor in the true costs and benefits of a sustainable transport system. The business case for investment in a bike network, for example, should includes savings to the health system from increased physical activity. And more investment in roads adds to health costs resulting from diseases related to physical inactivity, such as heart disease.

Read more:
To get people out of cars we need to know why they drive

Climate change

Underpinning our housing, transport and connectivity woes is the fact that our planet is heating. The way we live today in cities like Sydney is both contributing to the problem and preventing the adaptations that need to happen.

Since being elected, the Minns government has stayed silent on the risks of climate change for Sydney. Yet making the transition to a more resilient city will require skill across layers of society, including active engagement with the community and business.

Read more:
Why Western Sydney is feeling the heat from climate change more than the rest of the city

So, what next?

All of these problems will only be resolved when we delve deeply into complexity. We need to respond to the diversity of urban fabrics that together form the whole vast city.

Sydney matters – as a place to live, do business and visit. It needs to be cared for by a body with its interests as its mandate. The housing shortage, car dependency, entrenched monocentricity and the climate challenge demand more than top-down, simple solutions. Middle ground is needed, and that ground is rapidly being lost.

The solution is to take the politics and functions of city planning seriously. We need to better understand that the way our cities are planned and managed determines our ability to deal with the urgent problems we face.

Planning can help us adapt to hotter climates by ensuring we have well-insulated homes powered by renewable electricity and accessible green spaces nearby. Our cities can keep us healthy by providing clean environments and local opportunities for keeping physically active and making social connections. And, of course, we depend on our planning system to collaborate on solving the housing crisis.

But none of these things happen without investments – effective planning takes time, power and funding. And these resources are best allocated to city-wide institutions that know and care about Sydney as a whole.

Patrick Harris receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council

Jennifer Kent receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. By gutting the Greater Cities Commission, the NSW government is setting up itself and Sydney for failure – https://theconversation.com/by-gutting-the-greater-cities-commission-the-nsw-government-is-setting-up-itself-and-sydney-for-failure-208934

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University

A new survey of 126 women and non-binary punters and artists working the music industry in Melbourne has found 60% of respondents feel unsafe in music spaces.

The survey found sexual violence disempowers female music workers, deters non-binary communities from working in the industry, and discourages punters from going to gigs.

This is a marked increase on previous surveys. In the 2018 Victorian Live Music census, only 8% of respondents did not believe “most Victorian venues provide a safe and inclusive environment”.

The 2022 census didn’t even ask about safety or sexual violence.

As Melbourne beats Sydney to became the nation’s most populated city in 2023, the epidemic of sexual violence may intensify in its urban music spaces.

Read more:
Is sexual abuse and exploitation rife in the music industry?

The #meNoMore awakening

In 2017, an open letter was signed by over 1,000 women who work or participate in the Australian music industry, calling out abuse and harassment in the industry under the hashtag #MeNoMore.

This is a global problem. Studies have found grassroots venues and promoters in the United Kingdom need to implement changes to tackle sexual violence and work towards gender equality. Music festivals are rife with structural sexism, inequalities and gendered power dynamics.

In music education women “face disadvantages in terms of income, inclusion and professional opportunities”.

In music media, women deal with discrimination, harassment and sexist abuse.

In late 2022, the Raising Their Voices industry report about the contemporary Australian music scene found unacceptably high rates of sexual harassment, sexual harm, bullying and systemic discrimination.

The report called for an industry-wide approach to respond to the findings.

In January, it was announced the federal government’s new Revive cultural policy would establish a centre to address sexual harassment in the arts and entertainment industry.

Read more:
Pay, safety and welfare: how the new Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces can strengthen the arts sector

A frequent violence

In our survey, we found groping and harassment were normalised in clubs and venues.

Respondents reported street harassment to and from venues, or were assaulted in commercially shared vehicles.

The majority of perpetrators were men.

One third of the music punters reported an incident to venue staff or festival management.

“In the last incident of assault I reacted by punching the guy, and I was thrown out by security after I explained what happened […] ” one punter said. “I want to call it out now […] I am sick of this shit”.

Music workers were less likely to report these incidents than punters: 80% of music workers told us they had not reported these incidents to venue staff, festival authorities, music management or to police.

Fearing unemployment in a highly competitive industry, they remain stoic victim-survivors in the boy’s club.

“As someone who has worked in the music industry for 40 years, I feel I have a thicker skin when it comes to sexual harassment… [but] I feel that it really is time for change,” one music worker told us.

What’s next

More than one-third of the music workers we spoke to had considered leaving the industry due to sexual harassment. Some punters told us they were reluctant to go to gigs.

If Melbourne wants to be considered a global music city, then the music talent and audience drain related to the epidemic of sexual violence requires critical attention.

The 2018 Melbourne Music Census found only 49% of staff in venues were trained in-house to deal with sexual harassment or assault.

Our study suggests all security staff should be provided with bystander training to prevent, detect and address perpetrators’ behaviour, and to refer victim-survivors to relevant authorities. Too often, security staff have a reluctance to change routine practices, and many venues have a lack of female security staff. There is poor collaboration between security companies and music staff, and limited funding for grassroots venues to conduct this training.

Less than 10% of the women and non-binary people we spoke to had reached out for counselling support following an experience of sexual violence. More needs to be done to spread the awareness of phone counselling hotlines, such as The Support Act Wellbeing Helpline for people working in music or the arts.

There are international models we can look towards. The not-for-profit Good Night Out began in Leeds, UK, in 2014. The organisation runs accredited sexual violence response training programs for licensed venues and live music events. Its workers put up campaign posters in venues and encourage trained staff to wear badges to alert people that help is available. The program was established in Melbourne in 2021, and an evaluation of the program will be conducted in August this year.

Our report also suggested music venues and organisations should be achieving gender and ethnic diversity among their leadership and staff to be eligible for government funding.

Changes also need to happen beyond the music industry.

Changes in the school curriculum and how we talk about consent more broadly in society will also impact on music spaces. Movements like Teach Us Consent advocate for sex education in schools to include an understanding sexual violence is an unacceptable behaviour, and what it means to have consent.

A 2022 bill in the Victorian parliament adopted an affirmative consent model to provide better protections for victim-survivors of sexual offences, shifting the scrutiny onto their perpetrators.

This bill will help break the code of silence and encourage women and non-binary people to speak out about their experiences of sexual violence.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.

Read more:
Camp Cope leaves the Australian music industry forever changed by their fearless feminist activism

Andrea Jean Baker received funding from the Victorian State government and the City of Melbourne.

– ref. 60% of women and non-binary punters and artists feel unsafe in Melbourne’s music spaces – https://theconversation.com/60-of-women-and-non-binary-punters-and-artists-feel-unsafe-in-melbournes-music-spaces-205399

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrine Del Villar, Postdoctoral research fellow, Queensland University of Technology

The ACT Labor-Greens government is currently considering legalising voluntary assisted dying, as has recently occurred in all six Australian states. But the results of community consultation on the topic suggest the ACT’s proposed legislation may differ in significant respects from the model adopted by other Australian states and territories.

One controversial difference is the proposal to allow people under 18 to access voluntary assisted dying if they have a terminal illness.

The ACT proposes not setting a minimum age requirement for access to voluntary assisted dying. Instead, as is the case with other areas of medical treatment, the decision-making capacity of people under the age of 18 would be assessed on a case-by-case basis by medical practitioners.

If they are assessed as having the maturity to understand the nature of their medical condition, and the nature of a decision to seek assistance to end their life, they would be able to be considered for voluntary assisted dying.

ACT could be the first

There appears to be some support within the ACT for this proposal. In a survey of almost 3,000 ACT residents conducted in February this year, some 32% of respondents supported a minimum age of 18 for people to be able to access voluntary assisted dying – suggesting the majority don’t see it as required.

However, it has already elicited impassioned commentary, debate and expressions of concern.

If passed, the ACT would become the first Australian jurisdiction to allow access to voluntary assisted dying by people under 18.

Internationally, only three countries – the Netherlands, Belgium and Colombia – permit minors to access voluntary assisted dying or euthanasia. Canada is currently considering a proposal to expand its assisted dying law to “mature minors” deemed to have decision-making capacity.

Read more:
Voluntary assisted dying is legal in Victoria, but you may not be able to access it

Suffering doesn’t discriminate by age

During community consultation, many ACT residents felt an age requirement would be arbitrary.

Young people, just like adults, may also be suffering intolerably from an incurable terminal illness. Age limits are only an approximation of a person’s capacity to make one’s own decisions in important matters of life and death.

However, the absence of age limits can also lead to significant variations in access, depending on the views of the medical practitioners involved in making the decision as to a young person’s capacity.

In Belgium, where no minimum age is stipulated (provided children understand the decision they are making), children as young as 9 and 11 have been granted access to euthanasia.

In the Netherlands, children must be aged 12 or over to request euthanasia. In Colombia, in most cases a child must be aged 12 or over, although in extraordinary cases children aged between 6 and 12 may demonstrate “exceptional neurocognitive and psychological development” and an advanced concept of death appropriate for a 12-year-old child.

Checks and balances required

The ACT government noted allowing young people to access voluntary assisted dying requires extra safeguards to balance the autonomous rights of young people against their right to special protection and the rights of families.

Parental consent is required in addition to the child’s consent for all children in Belgium (except emancipated minors), and for children aged under 16 in the Netherlands and under 14 in Colombia.

For children aged 16 to 17 in the Netherlands, and 14 to 17 in Colombia, parents are informed and consulted about the young person’s decision. But ultimately the decision is that of the child.

If the ACT proceeds down this path, legislation will need to address difficult questions, including whose wishes prevail if a young person and their parents are in conflict.

Some jurisdictions, including Belgium and Columbia, require extra consultations above those required for adults, to confirm a young person’s capacity to make the decision to end their life.

Other supports may include access to child and family counselling throughout the voluntary assisted dying request and assessment process, or independent review of the child’s eligibility assessment.

Read more:
Voluntary assisted dying will soon be legal in all states. Here’s what’s just happened in NSW and what it means for you

How many young people could choose voluntary assisted dying?

There is not likely to be a great need for young people to access voluntary assisted dying in the ACT.

In Belgium, only four children are reported to have accessed euthanasia in nine years. In the Netherlands, 17 cases have been reported over a 20-year period. Although cases of terminally ill young people seeking access to VAD are likely to be exceptional, they will occasionally arise.

Read more:
Dutch government to expand euthanasia law to include children aged one to 12 – an ethicist’s view

How else could ACT laws be different?

Some other departures from the Australian model proposed by the ACT government are likely to have a far greater impact than the inclusion of minors.

The proposal not to specify a timeframe to death will open the door for people diagnosed with a terminal illness to seek voluntary assisted death several years before their anticipated passing. In other countries, such as Canada, this has been interpreted to allow people to access voluntary assisted dying in the early stages of dementia, before a person loses capacity.

Another proposal with far-reaching ramifications is whether a request for voluntary assisted dying can be made in an advance directive. If enacted, this would allow for the euthanasia of a person with advanced dementia, in compliance with their previous request.

Under consideration

At this stage, these proposals simply summarise the views of the ACT community. The next step is for the ACT government to develop its preferred model law to legalise voluntary assisted dying in the territory.

A bill is likely to be introduced in late 2023. It will then be considered by a parliamentary committee, before being debated in the ACT Legislative Assembly some time next year. That gives the ACT government time to consider what safeguards and supports should be included if children or young people are to be permitted to access voluntary assisted dying there.

Katrine Del Villar was a member of the team from the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at QUT which was commissioned by the Queensland and Western Australian governments to prepare mandatory training for medical practitioners on the voluntary assisted dying laws in those states.

– ref. Should terminally ill young people be able to choose voluntary assisted dying? The ACT is considering it – https://theconversation.com/should-terminally-ill-young-people-be-able-to-choose-voluntary-assisted-dying-the-act-is-considering-it-208837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Fitzpatrick, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney

Ella never knew when her credit card was going to be declined.

It happened when she was shopping for groceries with her kids, or refuelling the car. That’s when she would discover her partner had cancelled the card or lowered the limit so she couldn’t buy essentials. Again.

Ella* (not her real name) is one of about 1.6 million Australian women and 745,000 men who have experienced economic or financial abuse.

Perpetrators of such abuse use money to control their victims, with devastating impact including stopping or limiting access to money, creating insurmountable debt and damaging a credit history.

Read more:
Higher unemployment and less income: how domestic violence costs women financially

The direct costs to victim-survivors of financial abuse have been estimated at $5.7 billion a year, with impact on the economy estimated at $5.2 billion a year.

The highly disruptive tactics used by abusers

Perpetrators use a range of tactics, some of which are inadvertently enabled by bank products and services. For example:

• credit cards are opened in the name of victim-survivors without their knowledge, potentially damaging credit scores

• all cash is withdrawn from joint accounts or redraw facilities without the consent of the other account holder

• legally binding property settlement orders to refinance home loans are ignored, forcing one party to seek help with repayments while trying to disentangle from their ex-partner

• payment descriptions are used to send threatening, abusive messages.

Banks typically respond to these issues case-by-case, tailoring solutions for each customer. However, it may be possible to eliminate or reduce the need for these interventions with improved product design to prevent and disrupt abusers.

Taking action against perpetrators

My first Designed to Disrupt discussion paper for the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES) proposes a new “financial safety by design” framework that tailors the eSafety Commissioner’s work with the technology sector and provides greater protection for victim-survivors.

It outlines steps banks can take to prevent their products being used as a weapon in domestic and family violence.

Recommended measures include setting up every joint account with separate passwords, logins, and portals for each person so it’s simpler and safer to separate if the relationship ends or is abusive.

Two of Australia’s big four banks, the National Australia Bank (NAB) and the Commonwealth (CBA) have already agreed to adopt the primary recommendation – to include financial abuse in product terms and conditions as a reason for suspension or closure of accounts.

It’s likely other banks will follow suit, with Westpac signalling last November it would consider ensuring its terms and conditions reflect its no tolerance approach to financial abuse.

Read more:
Women who suffer domestic violence fare much worse financially after separating from their partner: new data

Evidence shows that challenging the acceptance of violence against women is essential to respond to specific gendered drivers of violence.

In banking, this means spelling out the bank’s rules and its expectations of customer behaviour in its terms and conditions. These rules are the foundation of the contractual relationship with the customer and are relied on where there is a dispute.

Banks taking the lead

National Australia Bank NAB and CBA will change their terms and conditions to make it clear that financial abuse is unacceptable – just like financial crime or threatening call centre staff.

They will be the first Australian banks to signal to millions of bank customers they have a choice: abuse other customers and potentially lose access to their bank account, or behave with respect.

This will make it harder for people to misuse financial products as a means of coercive control.

Implementation will be complex and the banks will need to proceed with caution. Financial abuse is hard to detect and there may be risks to the abused partner if perpetrators blame them for the bank’s action.

Consequences for abusers who fail to stop

An abuser may continue their behaviour at another bank. In this instance, there is the option of “de-banking” the customer which is not only a major inconvenience but also denies them access to an essential service.

That’s why it’s important the whole industry moves on this. It is instructive to examine the collective approach the banks have already taken to disrupt technology-facilitated abuse through payment descriptions.

Notably, my research found two banks reported more than 90% of customers discontinued abuse following a warning letter.

Implementation of the new terms and conditions should be guided by the experience of victim-survivors. It could also be informed by the Council of Financial Regulators’ de-banking policy recommendations on transparency and fairness measures.

These measures include providing documented reasons to the customer with 30 days’ notice before closing services and giving them access to internal dispute resolution.

Getting the public on board

There also needs to be a public conversation about what this means. Airlines make it clear jokes about terrorism are not okay, and patrons are ejected from sporting events for violence.

If every bank in Australia makes it clear there is a minimum expectation of respectful behaviour to be a customer, it would be a game changer.

The widespread adoption of financial abuse terms and conditions and broad public communication will send a strong message to everyone with a bank account that financial abuse is unacceptable and has consequences.

Catherine Fitzpatrick consults to Westpac and owns shares in Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. She received funding from the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety to write the Designed to Disrupt report and continues to be affiliated. She is a former bank executive and established and led specialist customer vulnerability teams at CBA and Westpac.

– ref. Banks put family violence perpetrators on notice. Stop using accounts to commit abuse or risk being ‘debanked’ – https://theconversation.com/banks-put-family-violence-perpetrators-on-notice-stop-using-accounts-to-commit-abuse-or-risk-being-debanked-208575

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda Stalker, Senior principal research scientist, CSIRO

Hydrogen comes in an ever-increasing range of colours. Green hydrogen, made by cracking water into oxygen and hydrogen. Blue hydrogen, made from natural gas with the carbon emissions captured and stored. Grey hydrogen, using natural gas with carbon dioxide emissions released to the atmosphere.

But there’s one type few people have heard of – white or gold hydrogen, produced by natural processes that occur deep underground.

The main methods of producing hydrogen uses an energy source to convert methane, coal or water to hydrogen, with byproducts such as oxygen or carbon dioxide.

But this natural hydrogen could mean an easier route. Viacheslav Zgonnik, a researcher and head of a natural hydrogen company, has told Science he believes “it has the potential to replace all fossil fuels”.

Is that really possible? And why are we only just finding out about it? Here’s what we know.

Read more:
What is hydrogen, and can it really become a climate change solution?

The race for lots of hydrogen

Hydrogen has long been touted as a way to help us get to net zero. It’s energy-dense and able to be used in vehicles, for electricity generation and industrial processes.

But some experts are sceptical, given the current costs to produce it and challenges for adoption, to say nothing of the emissions created with the most common production method – blue hydrogen from natural gas.

That’s why natural hydrogen is getting so much attention, given it would have very low emissions.

So where’s it found? Often, underground alongside other gases such as methane and helium. It’s a lot like oil and natural gas, in that sense.

But unlike oil and gas, we haven’t had anywhere near the same experience in exploring for hydrogen.

What we know so far is that natural hydrogen can be produced in many different ways as different rocks and minerals interact underground.

Ancient, iron-rich rocks can produce hydrogen. So can minerals such as serpentinite, and basalt produced from magma emerging in the deep ocean, or from organic-rich rocks such as coals or shales. And life, too, can be involved. Deep in the earth live microbes which can eat – or produce – hydrogen.

Our research has suggested finding sources of hydrogen isn’t likely to be the main issue for extraction. Over the last decade, natural hydrogen experts have exponentially increased their estimates of how much of this useful gas there is out there.

So where could we extract it?

Hydrocarbons such as oil tend to float up from the deeper rocks where they are produced until trapped in porous rocks called reservoirs.

But what about much lighter hydrogen? It moves upwards wherever possible – but it’s so mobile, it can easily slip through many rocks and escape to the atmosphere. It may only be worth recovering if there are big enough reservoirs where it has accumulated under, say, an impermeable rock layer like shale or salt. Salt caverns are already being explored as a way to store green hydrogen.

Researchers are working to figure out what actually acts as a barrier to hydrogen flowing underground.

At present, it’s early days. The industry has just one known example of hydrogen accumulating in commercial amounts. It was found by accident in Mali, West Africa, in the 1980s, when drilling for water uncovered shallow but significant volumes of hydrogen.

Public production and pressure monitoring suggest the Mali gas field has seen no depletion to date. By contrast, oil and gas reservoirs tend not to refill themselves on a timeframe that matters to us.

Will prospecting for hydrogen be like the oil rush?

When prospectors realised the importance of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, they turned first to surface seeps. Seeping oil and gas at the surface meant a source rock like shale was expelling hydrocarbons.

Backtracking from surface seeps is one way to look for naturally occurring hydrogen. Already, researchers have used high-resolution satellite imagery to look for enigmatic features often referred to as fairy circles.

For decades, researchers have debated what causes these circles. Termites? Rain? Plants? One answer might be – hydrogen seeps.

Natural hydrogen exploration companies in South Australia are already using fairy circles to identify possible sites. Others are turning to the history books – one borehole on Kangaroo Island drilled in 1921 produced up to 80% hydrogen.

Why are we only finding this now?

We weren’t looking. Until recently, the world’s vast reserves of shale and tight gas went unobserved for decades. But as technology progressed with new drilling, well logging and recovery methods such as fracking, extraction was possible.

From the 1960s onwards, geologists looking for hydrocarbons in sedimentary basins have used gas chromatography to figure out what was present in a gas mix. Previous methods could spot a broader range of gases, but the most common and simplified method left hydrogen and helium undetectable. So hydrogen may have been there the whole time.

When we drill looking for oil and gas, we drill deep to take samples – often 1,500 to 3,000 metres. But as the Mali find shows us, hydrogen can exist much shallower at under 500 metres and in different rock types. That means our current data sets are skewed.

Are we going to see a hydrogen rush?

It’s possible. A new generation of explorers are already scouring South Australia, looking for good prospects. That’s because the state is currently the only Australian jurisdiction with laws in place to enable hydrogen exploration.

That’s not to say natural hydrogen is a guaranteed winner. There’s much we don’t know, such as how common it is and how easy it is to extract. It’s also one of many potential pathways being explored to help us toward decarbonisation and net zero milestones.

What we do know is that to make this a reality will mean an open mind – and a willingness to try new approaches.

Read more:
Why don’t rocks burn?

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

– ref. The earth might hold huge stores of natural hydrogen – and prospectors are already scouring South Australia for it – https://theconversation.com/the-earth-might-hold-huge-stores-of-natural-hydrogen-and-prospectors-are-already-scouring-south-australia-for-it-204904

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney

According to our best understanding of physics, the fact space is expanding should influence the apparent flow of time, with the distant Universe appearing to run in slow motion.

But observations of highly luminous and variable galaxies, known as quasars, have failed to reveal this cosmic time dilation – until now.

In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, we use two decades of observation to untangle the complex flickering of almost 200 quasars. Buried within this flickering is the imprint of expanding space, with the Universe appearing to be ticking five times slower when it was only a billion years old.

This shows quasars obey the rules of the cosmos, putting to bed the idea they represented a challenge to modern cosmology.

Time is a funny thing

In 1905, Albert Einstein, through his special theory of relativity, told us the speed of clocks’ ticking is relative, dependent on how the clocks are moving. In his 1915 general theory, he told us gravity too can influence the relative rates of clock ticks.

By the 1930s, physicists realised the expanding space of the cosmos, which is described in the language of Einstein’s general relativity, also influences the universe of ticks and tocks.

Read more:
Timeline: the history of gravity

Due to the finite speed of light, as we look through our telescopes, we are peering into the past. The further we look, the further back into the life of the Universe we see. But in our expanding Universe, the further back we look, the more time space has had to stretch, and the more the relative nature of clock ticks grows.

The prediction of Einstein’s mathematics is clear: we should see the distant universe playing out in slow motion.

Tick-tock supernova clock

Measuring this slow-motion universe is difficult, as nature does not provide standard clocks across the cosmos whose relative ticks could be compared.

It took until the 1990s for astronomers to discover and understand the tick of suitable clocks: a particular kind of exploding star, a supernova. Each supernova explosion was surprisingly similar, brightening rapidly and then fading away over a matter of weeks.

Supernovae are similar, but not identical, meaning their rate of brightening and fading was not a standard clock. But by the close of the 20th century, astronomers were taking another look at these exploding stars, using them to chart the expansion of the Universe. (This expansion turned out to be accelerating, leading to the unexpected discovery of dark energy.)

Read more:
From dark gravity to phantom energy: what’s driving the expansion of the universe?

To achieve this goal, astronomers had to iron out peculiarities of each supernova, putting them on an equal footing, matching them to a standard intrinsic brightness and a standard clock.

They found the flash of more distant supernovae was stretched precisely in line with Einstein’s predictions. The most distant observed supernovae, exploding when the Universe was half its present age, brightened and faded twice as slowly as more recent supernovae.

The trouble with quasars

Supernovae are not the only variable objects in the cosmos.

Quasars were discovered in the 1960s, and are thought to be supermassive black holes, some many billions of times more massive than the Sun, lurking at the hearts of galaxies. Matter swirls around these black holes on its journey to oblivion inside, heating up and glowing brightly as it does so.

Quasars are extremely bright, some burning furiously when the Universe was an infant. Quasars are also variable, varying in luminosity as matter turbulently tumbles on its way to destruction.

Because quasars are so bright, we can see them at much greater distances than supernovae. So the impact of expanding space and time dilation should be more pronounced.

However, searches for the expected signal have turned up blank. Samples of hundreds of quasars observed over decades definitely varied, but it seemed that the variations of those nearby and those far away were identical.

Some suggested that this demonstrated that the variability of quasars is not intrinsic but is instead due to black holes scattered through the Universe, magnifying some quasars by the action of gravity. More outlandishly, others have claimed that the lack of the expected cosmological signal is a clear sign that we have cosmology all wrong and need to go back to the drawing board.

New data, new approaches

In 2023, a new set of quasar data was published. This presented 190 quasars originally identified in the highly successful Sloan Digital Sky Survey but observed over two decades in multiple colours – green, red and infrared light.

The data sampling was mixed, with lots of observations over some times, and less over others. But the wealth of this data meant the astronomers, led by graduate student Zachary Stone at the University of Illinois, could statistically characterise each quasar’s variability as what is known as a “damped random walk”. This characterisation assigned a time scale, a tick, to each quasar.

Like each supernova, each quasar is different, and the observed variability can depend upon their intrinsic properties. But with this new data, we could match similar quasars with each other, removing the impact of these differences. As had been done for supernovae before, we had standardised the tick-tock of quasars.

The only remaining influence on the observed variability of quasars was the expansion of space, and we unambiguously revealed this signature. Quasars obeyed the rules of the Universe exactly as Einstein’s theory predicted.

Due to their brightness, however, the influence of this cosmic time dilation could be seen much further. The most distant quasars, seen when the Universe was only a tenth of its present age, were ticking away time five times more slowly than today.

At its heart, this is a story about how Einstein is right again, and how his mathematical description of the cosmos is the best we have. It puts to rest ideas of a sea of cosmic black holes, or that we truly inhabit a static, unchanging universe. And this is precisely how science advances.

Geraint Lewis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Astronomers see ancient galaxies flickering in slow motion due to expanding space – https://theconversation.com/astronomers-see-ancient-galaxies-flickering-in-slow-motion-due-to-expanding-space-208621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Lecturer in Social and Global Studies, RMIT University

The day he launched his bid for the Republican nomination for the 2024 US presidential election, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned Fox News viewers “the woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism.”

With his trademark subtlety, DeSantis was pitching himself to the Republican base that still supports Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the nomination.

For those in the know, it was a signal. With a President DeSantis, there would be no more critical race theory. There would be fewer protections for LGBTQIA+ people. And there would be no more troubling ambiguity in textbooks or any suggestion the United States is anything other than the greatest country on earth, and always has been, and is going to be made great again. Or even greater.

Welcome to the “War on Woke”.

On Fox, DeSantis was trying to claim that he, not Trump, is the leading general in this war. But he is far from alone. Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are unleashing a tidal wave of laws intended to enforce white conservative mores on the broader population.

The “war on woke” has involved brazen attacks on academic freedom in universities and schools; on the rights of transgender people, particularly children, to gender-affirming health care; and on any person, group or business deemed too liberal – even Mickey Mouse.

These shifting battlefronts are underpinned by a concerted effort to erase any form of American history that considers the racism and inequity of the country’s past and present. The teaching of “critical race theory” is being banned in many states, “divisive concepts” are no longer allowed in school curricula and any history that explores inequality is being expunged from school textbooks.

Though it may seem it, this war on woke is not new.

In the 1950s, William Faulkner, the American novelist whose Southern Gothic fiction was haunted by the legacy of slavery, wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Zealous conservatives have banned Faulkner’s books from school curricula on multiple occasions for obscenity and blasphemy.

Today’s “war” is part of a much longer fight – one that has dominated America’s past, and continues to shape the possibilities of its future.

What is the “war on woke”?

In Iowa last month, Trump lamented the constant repetition of “woke, woke, woke,” complaining that “it’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t define it; they don’t know what it is.”

As he so often does, Trump inadvertently highlighted the confounding and contradictory nature of American politics today.

The term “woke” can be either an insult or a marker of pride – it can shift depending on the context. Both those broadly aligned with “woke” aims and those in bitter opposition to them appear to find it equally difficult to define the term.

As the journalist and author Michael Harriot has explained, the term “woke” emerged from the African American maxim “stay woke”. That is, a call to stay aware of the lived reality of racism in the United States. More recently, the meaning has drifted and now signifies broad commitment to social justice awareness and activism.

It’s not surprising it has drawn the opprobrium of a conservative right that is obsessed with entrenching its moral coda as not just the dominant ethic, but the law of the land.

So how do conservatives define “wokeness” and articulate the terms of their opposition? The simple answer is they don’t. Many conservatives instead compare “wokeness” with a sickness, which is a way of associating those seeking to ameliorate social injustices with degradation, decay and moral turpitude.

The slippery nature of the term “woke” is useful to those wishing to prosecute a war against anything that strays outside the rigid confines of conservative ideology. Its adaptability and malleability are crucial to its pervasiveness.

From civil war to civil rights

But this is hardly the first time in American history that states have passed regressive laws seeking to wind back social gains made at the federal level.

The United States has never been one country. The dispersed, state-level battlefronts of the “war on woke” reflect this historical reality.

The country was born as an uneasy alliance of settler-colonies based on imperial expansion and dispossession. The white establishment in both the north and south benefited from slavery, but there was a crucial difference: the south’s entire economic foundation and social structure was built on it. The north’s was not.

This created a fundamental tension between the two social systems that in the mid-19th century erupted into outright conflict.

Depicting themselves as the victims of northern aggression, white southerners insisted they were simply seeking to protect their way of life. This meant not just the maintenance, but the expansion, of slavery.

The “carpetbaggers” from the north, meanwhile, were imposing an unjust and unwanted way of life on the south. This was a cultural construction that would endure long after the Civil War.

After losing the war, white southern leaders found new ways to assert power, through Jim Crow laws and the continued brutal oppression of African Americans and other racial minorities.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement began to challenge these discriminatory laws. The backlash was swift. And it was, again, about a white minority population seeking to utilise the unequal mechanisms of the American constitutional order to maintain their authority.

Loudly proclaiming “states rights”, they inveighed against the white northern elite once again interfering, so they alleged, with their way of life.

Conservatism was cohering into a new social movement, premised on the rejection of the advances of the civil rights movement. Its adherents despised all those they perceived as a threat to the social order they sought to (re)create: mobilised Black Americans, feminists, lesbians and gays, migrants and anybody else who could be broadly described as “liberal”.

Read more:
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A new social movement is born

In a 1964 speech supporting the presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, a rising star in the Republican Party gave voice to this emerging politics:

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

Generations of free marketers proudly repeat Reagan’s words. What they neglect to mention is this was not a simple appeal for hearty and virtuous Americans to draw on their own resources and dictate their destinies, rather than rely on ineffective government bureaucracy.

In the climate of the civil rights movement, it was a repetition of the racially coded southern call to assert the right to local self-government over interference from the central government, which was daring to support aspirations for genuine racial equality.

This was the culture war of the time. Conservatives mobilised in presidential campaigns, in student groups such as the Young Americans for Freedom, and in more insidious places, such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan.

Most significant of all was the mobilisation in churches, as a new, white, Christian evangelical movement discovered and embraced its power.

Reagan sought to identify himself with this conservative social mobilisation sweeping the country, against the Republican establishment of the day. The tactic elevated him to the governorship of California and later, the White House.

This right-wing mobilisation included a forceful campaign against educational materials provided by the government to school students that sought to capture the complexities of American history.

Conservative Christians also campaigned against depictions of Black oppression and assertions of non-white culture, sex education and anything that might challenge their carefully prescribed social coda.

Read more:
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The past is never dead

The “war on woke” is the most recent incarnation of this ongoing culture war.

The war on woke is a means of mobilisation, but also of cultural definition. By being against “wokeness”, this movement is able to construct a coherence it otherwise lacks. Devoid of a clear vision of what it stands for, this mobilisation (like other right-wing movements before it) is focused on opposition.

The starting point of this mobilisation is, and has always been, race. The white supremacist “Great Replacement Theory” posits that non-white populations are replacing whites through migration and demographic changes. Once a fringe conspiracy theory, it is now being openly espoused on Fox News.

Electoral laws are also being passed to disenfranchise Black voters, and bans are being placed on teaching the history of how southern states maintained white power through systems of racial disenfranchisement.

Trump and DeSantis are now fuelling and feeding off this agenda as they seek to build their political careers. But they can only do so because there is a large existing social constituency for such actions, built on generations of opposition to progressive social gains.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Emma Shortis is a member of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).

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

– ref. Why ‘wokeness’ has become the latest battlefront for white conservatives in America – https://theconversation.com/why-wokeness-has-become-the-latest-battlefront-for-white-conservatives-in-america-207122

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Townsend, Lecturer, School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland

Researchers at the Australian Sports Brain Bank have today reported the world’s first diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a female athlete.

With the consent of her family, the diagnosis was made on the brain of Heather Anderson, a 28-year-old AFLW athlete who died last November. Heather’s family donated her brain to the Australian Sports Brain Bank hoping to better understand why she died.

The findings, which Professor Alan Pearce co-authored with the Australian Sports Brain Bank, raise questions about how a lifetime of contact sport may have contributed to her death. They come as Australia’s Senate inquiry works on its report into concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sport, due in August.

Given how hard women have fought to participate in football codes and contact sports in recent years, this diagnosis has major implications for women’s sport in Australia. It also highlights the significant lack of research about women athletes in sport science and medicine.

What is chronic traumatic encephalopathy?

CTE is a devastating form of dementia which causes a decline in brain functioning and increased risk of mental illness. It is increasingly associated with athletes who play contact sports, such as football, boxing and martial arts.

It is incurable and can only be diagnosed post-mortem. Recently, a number of high-profile former Australian footballers were found to have been suffering from CTE when they died, including former AFL stars Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck, and former NRL player and coach Paul Green.

Concussions in contact sports have long been associated with long-term neurodegeneration in Australia and internationally. While the public and researchers are rightly concerned about serious concussions, a study published last month in Nature Communications confirmed that repetitive brain trauma over time – even seemingly mild head knocks or whiplash – is the strongest predictor for an athlete developing CTE. Athletes with long careers in contact sport are at particular risk, especially if they play from an early age.

Read more:
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A sporting life

Heather Anderson began playing rugby league at age five before transferring to Australian rules football in her early teens. She played representative football in the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory before being drafted into the inaugural season of the AFLW in 2017.

Anderson played a single season with the Adelaide Crows, during which she won a premiership and suffered a career-ending shoulder injury. She then returned to her role as a medic with the Australian Army, a physical career which also carries a heightened risk of brain injury.

Anderson’s family donated her brain in the hope of knowing whether a lifetime of exposure to repetitive head trauma contributed to her death.

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Was this diagnosis expected?

Concussion researcher Anne McKee predicted earlier this year it was a matter of time before CTE was found in the brain of a woman athlete.

The Australian Sports Brain Bank team believe Anderson is a “sentinel case” we can learn from. She is the first female athlete diagnosed with CTE, but she will not be the last.

Although Australian women have historically been excluded from the sports most associated with repeated head injuries, this is changing. In 2022, there were almost one million women and girls playing some form of contact sport in Australia. As women’s participation in contact sport continues to grow, so too does their risk of repetitive brain trauma.

Are women more prone to CTE than men?

There is emerging evidence that women are at significantly higher risk of mild traumatic brain injury (concussion) and may suffer more severe symptoms.

Concussion alone does not cause CTE, but an athlete’s number of concussions is a reliable indicator of their cumulative exposure to brain trauma, which is the biggest predictor of CTE.

While knowledge on the topic is still developing, researchers propose a mix of physiological and social explanations for women’s increased concussion risk. These include

[…] differences in the microstructure of the brain to the influence of hormones, coaching regimes, players’ level of experience and the management of injuries.

More research is needed to understand sporting brain injuries specifically in women and girls. Given their growth in participation and the enhanced risks they face in sport, it is concerning that women and girls are underrepresented in concussion research.

This is representative of a broader trend in sport and exercise science research to exclude women from studies because their bodies are perceived as more complex than men’s and thus more difficult to accommodate in testing.

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A disease that does not discriminate

This world-first report of CTE in a female athlete is proof the disease does not discriminate and lends urgency to calls for greater representation of women in brain injury studies.

Efforts to reduce concussion in women’s sport must first address resource inequalities between men’s and women’s sport. This includes giving women access to quality training and coaching support, as well as greater attention from sport science and medical research.

The health of women athletes and women’s sport will only progress if researchers, policymakers and sport governance bodies ensure the attention and resources required to address concussion and brain disease are not focused solely on men.

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

Alan Pearce is currently unfunded. Alan is a non-executive unpaid director for the Concussion Legacy Foundation. He has previously received funding from Erasmus+ strategic partnerships program (2019-1-IE01-KA202-051555), Sports Health Check Charity (Australia), Australian Football League, Impact Technologies Inc., and Samsung Corporation, and is remunerated for expert advice to medico-legal practices.

Rebecca Olive receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. Australian researchers confirm world’s first case of dementia linked to repetitive brain trauma in a female athlete – https://theconversation.com/australian-researchers-confirm-worlds-first-case-of-dementia-linked-to-repetitive-brain-trauma-in-a-female-athlete-208929

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ricky Spencer, Associate Professor of Ecology, Western Sydney University

Amid the controversy surrounding preliminary flight paths for Western Sydney’s new airport, another potential challenge is looming: turtles on the tarmac.

The land surrounding Sydney’s newest airport is prime nesting area for native turtles. This may create problems for the airport’s operations.

Turtle invasions at airports are not unprecedented. In recent years, a freshwater turtle was found wandering around Sydney Airport, which is built on Botany Bay. In 2021, a turtle strolling across a runway in Japan delayed five planes. A few years earlier, a passenger plane aborted takeoff because a 1.5m leatherback turtle was on the runway. And at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, employees carried 1,300 turtles off the tarmac in one nesting season alone.

Our expertise spans zoology, conservation biology and ecology. We know individual freshwater turtles can wander well beyond their wetland habitat into areas where they pose a risk to aviation safety, if proper planning is not in place. We urge authorities to incorporate turtle-friendly features into the airport’s design and make contingency plans for these remarkable reptiles.

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Western Sydney airport is turtle nesting habitat

Freshwater turtles face an uncertain future. Their numbers in Australia are declining. Globally, more than half of all freshwater turtle species face extinction.

Collisions with vehicles are a main cause of death for adult freshwater turtles across south-eastern Australia. And data collected through the 1 Million Turtles citizen science tool TurtleSAT reveals Western Sydney is a roadkill hotspot.

Wetlands, including the area around the new airport at Badgerys Creek, serve as prime nesting habitat. Citizen science data also feeds into our world-first predictive nest mapping tool, which confirms Sydney’s newest airport is prime nesting area for both long- and short-neck turtles.

Turtles nest throughout the airport district from November to January. Given the number of wetlands and the extent of cleared, open vegetation, turtles can be expected to emerge from the water and traverse the entire area during this period.

Between nesting seasons, eastern long-necked turtles often move between wetlands on rainy days.

Redirecting turtles away from runways (and roads) is a challenging but feasible task. It requires proactive planning, integration of turtle-friendly design elements, and recognition of their significance in environmental impact assessments.

Construction of the Western Sydney airport involved filling in streams and farm dams. The Environmental Impact Statement for the project, released in 2016, recognised the threat to turtles. To mitigate the impact on aquatic animals generally, the proponents planned to salvage and relocate them to nearby habitats deemed suitable.

A spokesperson for Western Sydney airport, contacted for comment on this story, said all of the required wildlife and risk management procedures would be in place when the airport opens in late 2026. She said the turtle habitat was well outside of the airport site, so the risk of turtles on the runway was negligible.

But around the airport, many streams and wetlands remain. So we believe there’s still a chance turtles will enter the airport grounds and, potentially, walk onto runways.

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Turtles at the crossroads

Turtles are often little more than an afterthought in hectic construction plans and timetables. Wetlands are often filled in and roads built without any thought to wildlife crossings.

Our study of the wetlands of Western Sydney, and the corridor between north-western and south-western Sydney, found up to 25% of wetlands were lost in the last decade alone.

While groups such as Turtle Rescue NSW can relocate wildlife such as turtles, eels and fish, many animals die when streams and wetlands are drained and filled during development.

Western Sydney’s new airport offers an opportunity to break this pattern. Construction has passed the half-way mark but it’s not too late to incorporate turtle-friendly infrastructure such as specialised underpasses and fencing to guide these slow-paced wanderers away from high-risk areas. We also need monitoring programs to check interventions are working and identify any problems along the way.

Our research emphasises education and awareness campaigns foster a culture of understanding and respect. This is important to ensure the long-term survival of turtles in the region.

It’s not too late for Western Sydney’s turtles

We must prioritise turtle-friendly design and integrate turtles into environmental impact assessments for major developments.

The likely presence of turtles on runways at Western Sydney’s new airport warrants immediate attention. The project and its network of major roads are a chance to demonstrate how major urban infrastructure and wildlife can coexist harmoniously.

We acknowledge the vital contribution of Western Sydney University masters student Harriet Gabites to research on the turtles of Western Sydney and this article.

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Ricky Spencer receives funding from Australian Research Council, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Aussie Ark and WIRES.

Deborah Bower works for the University of New England and receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, NSW Northern Tablelands Local Land Service, SA Department of Environment and Water, and the Australian Federal Citizen Science Program.

James Van Dyke receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Federal Citizen Science program.

Michael B. Thompson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. Turtles on the tarmac could delay flights at Western Sydney airport – https://theconversation.com/turtles-on-the-tarmac-could-delay-flights-at-western-sydney-airport-208930

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Boccabella, Associate Professor of Taxation Law, UNSW Sydney

The start of the Australian tax year is an opportunity to reflect on the way in which children – some of them very young – are being used to minimise their parents and grandparents’ tax, and the message that will send them.

Children are mainly used as taxpayers of convenience by controllers of discretionary trusts (often called “family trusts”), although there are other means as well.

The way in which it is done is to take advantage of childrens’ tax-free thresholds.

Each Australian resident gets a tax-free threshold of A$18,200 meaning the first $18,200 earned is untaxed. The Low Income Tax Offset boosts this threshold further for low income earners ensuring some can earn up to $21,884 tax-free.

Unused tax-free thresholds are valuable for taxpayers who want to avoid tax. They can divert income to the holder of an unused threshold thereby turning what would otherwise be a high marginal tax rate into a marginal tax rate of zero.

Some taxpayers accumulate tax-free thresholds

Probably the most high-profile example of using the tax-free thresholds of others was a case over three decades ago in 1989 known as East Finchley Pty Ltd versus the Commissioner of Taxation.

It made use of the tax-free thresholds of foreigners who at the time were allowed to receive $585 tax-free.

What happened was that the trustee allocated the trust’s taxable income to 126 non-residents in India who were relatives of the people behind the trust.

Each non-resident was allocated $585, which was the exact amount of his or her tax-free threshold.

The court heard a director of the trustee company travelled to India to request that each beneficiary loan back the income they had received.

Children are a source of tax-free thresholds

It works much the same way for children.

Young people over the age of 18 get the full tax-free threshold, meaning that if they have no other income, a trust can purport to hand them up to $21,884 on which zero tax will be paid.

While young people under the age of 18 get the same tax-free threshold for income from employment and some other sources, their tax-free threshold for distributions from trusts is limited to $416 per year in an attempt to curtail their use as taxpayers of convenience.

Yet Australia’s law reports are replete with examples of $416 per year being allocated to children under 18, some from when they are a few months old.

And there are exceptions that allow for children under 18 to receive up to $21,884 per year tax-free, including from a trust created by a grandparent’s will.

In many of these cases, the child never gets the money – it is used by the parents.

In many of these, the child doesn’t know they have been allocated the money.

The parents treat it as their own, with the “payment” to children being viewed as “just for tax purposes”.

When, and if, these children find out, it is likely to colour their views about the extent to which it is important to be truthful when complying with the tax law.

As it happens, it isn’t clear these parents are complying with the law.

Some of the arrangements artificial and contrived

Section 100A of the Tax Act applies specifically to trusts.

It says where a beneficiary is allocated income but the benefit actually goes to someone else, the beneficiary is not taxed but a penalty rate of tax (45%) is imposed on the trustee.

There is an exception for an “ordinary family dealing”, but it does not extend to dealings that are “artificial, contrived, or overly complex”.

Some parents are testing the “ordinary family dealing” exception. Among the claims being made by parents is that children need not get the benefit of money allocated to them because they need to reimburse their parents for the costs of their upbringing. Yes, you read that correctly.

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A strong case can be made that the Australian Tax Office hasn’t been tough enough in using Section 100A against taxpayer-of-convenience arrangements.

A strong case can also be made that if young adults aren’t able to meet their own expenses because they don’t earn their own income, they should be viewed as a dependant. And in turn, the $21,884 tax-free threshold should not be available to them.

And a case can even be made that treating children as taxpayers of convenience breaches their rights and child welfare laws. It certainly isn’t good for them if it encourages them to adopt the ethics of their parents.

The best approach would be to review and strengthen tax laws in order to remove the temptation for parents to even think about using their children in this way.

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

– ref. What are we teaching our children when we use them as taxpayers of convenience? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-we-teaching-our-children-when-we-use-them-as-taxpayers-of-convenience-206987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tets Kimura, Adjunct Lecturer, Creative Arts, Flinders University

Maneki-neko, translated as beckoning cat but also known as lucky cat or welcome cat, is recognisable internationally, often found behind cash registers of restaurants and retail outlets – and also in your phone.

But how did the cat come to be, and what does it mean in Japan?

Cats, great companions and pets, probably arrived in Japan as early as a few thousand years ago, and by the eighth century appeared in literature and mythology.

As in the rest of the world, cats were useful in catching rats and mice.

The population of domesticated cats, however, was relatively small. Because they were precious, some cats were kept on leashes to keep them close, rather than letting them run wild.

During the Edo period (1603-1868), paintings of cats were sold to silkworm farmers. These images were believed powerful enough to scare off silkworm predators: rats and mice.

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A symbol of good fortune

Maneki-neko style Japanese cat dolls can be traced back to the Edo period (1603-1868), or shortly beforehand. They probably first appeared in the Buddhist temples Gotokuji, Saihoji, or Jishoin, all located in Edo, today’s Tokyo.

Because the dolls have roots in the new eastern capital – instead of the traditional Japanese centre of Kyoto and its surrounding area of western Japan – we know maneki-neko is relatively new in Japanese history.

Each Edo temple has a different story about how maneki-neko came to be.

At the Gotokuji temple, the legend is based on the story of Ii Naotaka (1590-1659), the lord samurai of the Hikone domain. While passing Gotokuji, Naotka was beckoned by a cat at the temple gate. As he came inside he was saved from an unexpected heavy thunderstorm.

Out of gratitude, the samurai decided to provide continuous donations to the temple that had been struggling financially. The cat became the temple’s symbol and brought them continuous good fortune. Today, the temple attracts tourists from all over Japan and the world.

Economic prosperity

When and where the ceramic cats began to be sold remains a mystery, but by the late Edo period they found appeal with urban consumers.

Clear evidence of this is found in Utagawa Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e print from 1852, which depicts a stall selling numerous doll cats. But these cats look slightly different from many cats we see in the 21st century; they hold no koban gold coins.

These cats, as seen in today’s Gotokuji cats, wore a bell around their necks, and were said to bring good luck to the owner.

In the Meiji era (1868-1912) mass production by using plaster moulds made the cat a popular figure nationwide. The cat came to represent material rather than emotional happiness.

By then, bells around cats’ necks were typically replaced with coins – perhaps linked to Japan’s increasing economic prosperity.

The earlier ceramic cats looked like cats rather than cartoon characters.

In the 1950s, makers in Aichi Prefecture adapted the form of its local dolls, Okkawa Ningyo, onto the dolls of cats. The head became as big as the body and eyes became widely opened.

Later in the century, maneki-neko gained popularity in the Chinese-speaking world through Hong Kong and Taiwan. Altars in Hong Kong tea houses had traditionally been dedicated to legends such as the 3rd century Chinese military general Guan Yu, but these days the pretty cats are also featured.

The cats then spread globally through a diffusion of Asian culture by Asian migrants.

Today, turn on your phone and launch the Pokemon app. You might soon capture Meowth, a maneki-neko pokemon with a koban (gold coin) on its forehead.

‘Cool Japan’

While in the English-speaking world, it is commonly held that “money doesn’t buy happiness,” it is permissible under Japan’s spiritual code to pray for personal material desires.

In contemporary Japan, you are free to ask for and seek what you want – even if what you want is just as simple as meeting the cat.

In addition to the Tokyo temples mentioned above, there are many places where you can meet the cat. Seto City in Aichi Prefecture, an area where ceramic cats have been produced over 100 years, is home to the Maneki-Neko Museum.

You can paint your own original cat at the Manekineko Art Museum in Okayama.

At the Hikone Castle, you can meet Hikonyan, a mascot created by the local government in 2007 to celebrate the castle’s 400th anniversary. The mascot is a model of the Gotokuji cat that welcomed Ii Naotaka.

The Japanese equivalent of the phrase “cast pearls before swine” is “cast coins before cats”.

And so maneki-neko, the pretty cat, welcomes you – and your money.

This feline welcome nicely reflects Japan’s soft power policy known as “Cool Japan”. Japan wants to use its cultural assets to attract international consumers and visitors to contribute to its economic revitalisation in the era when the county’s population is declining. We are most welcome to spend money in Japan.

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

– ref. What is the story of maneki-neko, the Japanese beckoning cat? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-story-of-maneki-neko-the-japanese-beckoning-cat-203906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Curtin, Professor of Politics and Policy, University of Auckland

In 1865, my Irish-born great great grandparents travelled from Dunedin to Sydney to marry in St Mary’s Cathedral. Some 63 years later, my grandmother Mary also travelled to Australia to marry my grandfather Ted. He was a clerk with the Bank of New Zealand and had been posted to Melbourne in the 1920s.

Ted and Mary lived in St Kilda and played cards in the evening with Australians, Mr and Mrs Shaw, who lived in Ivanhoe and barracked for Collingwood. My father was born there in 1929 and moved back to New Zealand with his family at the age of five.

In 1962, my father visited Australia to watch their Test cricket side play the touring English team. He stopped in to visit the Shaws and met their daughter, my mother, whom he married not long after. They settled in the foggy city of Hamilton and, given both were Australian by birth, registered their four children as dual citizens.

Much later, my parents returned to Australia to enjoy their retirement years in the warmth of Queensland. Mum came back to New Zealand ten years ago, but continues to go back and forth across the Tasman, as my siblings and some of her grandchildren are there.

This is not a novel New Zealand story. But the long history of trans-Tasman cross-pollination took a wrong for New Zealanders from around the mid-1990s as access to social services and citizenship was incrementally tightened by both Labor and Coalition governments in Australia.

As of last weekend, however, New Zealand citizens who have been living in Australia for four years or more will be eligible to apply directly for Australian citizenship. And they will no longer need a permanent visa to qualify. In one sense, the trans-Tasman relationship is back on track.

Two-way traffic

Although the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand was not wholly synchronous, the earlier settlement of Australia led to relationships between traders and whalers and Māori.

Historian Judith Binney writes that some Māori chiefs travelled to New South Wales to advance their tribes’ political and commercial interests and broader trans-Tasman trade in the early 1800s. At that time, New Zealand’s exports comprised flax, timber, whale products and foodstuffs, and were in high demand by Australia.

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From the 1880s on, steady two-way people movement became a feature of the Australia and New Zealand bond. It was in part fuelled by growing institutional connections in banking, commerce and insurance, as well the less formal ties between organised religion, education, farming and party politics.

Social historian Rollo Arnold calls this a “perennial trans-Tasman interchange”. In these early years, clerks and salesmen left metropolitan Australia to take up business opportunities in small-town New Zealand, while entrepreneurial types left New Zealand for the opportunities available in the larger cities of Australia.

The gentler New Zealand climate attracted Australians seeking a farming life, while journalists and artists went the other way to expand their horizons and careers. New Zealand’s 1901 census showed 26,961 were Australian-born, making up 3.5% of the population. Five years later it was closer to 5.5%.

Inextricably linked

Even New Zealand’s political elite comprised Australian-born politicians. Premier Richard Seddon was born in Victoria, while six of the 13 members of the first Labour cabinet in 1935 were former Australians, including the prime minister, Michael Savage.

New Zealand gave Australia Mike Rann, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Barnaby Joyce. Although Robert Muldoon is remembered for his pejorative comment that the “brain drain” to Australia improved the average IQ in both countries, it’s probably fairer to say the likes of John Clarke, Russell Crowe and Split Enz forged a genuine cultural connection.

As well, there are numerous regular and routine links, from the Five Eyes security relationship and prime ministerial and ministerial meetings, to common food standards, policy coordination and information sharing.

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The Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum, established in 2004, meets annually, bringing together business leaders, politicians, policymakers and (more recently) Indigenous organisations for strategic discussions and policy sharing.

This year’s forum on July 19 is likely to focus on streamlining digital trade, regional responses to future pandemics, research, development and innovation, and Indigenous collaborations on constitutional, cultural, economic and data sovereignty issues.

Although the absolute number of New Zealanders in Australia is now much higher (670,000) than Australians in New Zealand (70,000), proportionally the gap is not huge: we make up about 2.5% of Australia’s population while they comprise 1.5% of ours.

Return to the ‘fair go’

Since the adoption of the Closer Economic Relations (CER) Agreement in 1973 (considered the gold standard of trade agreements), trade has increased by an annual average of 8%. Australia remains New Zealand’s second-largest trading partner (we are their ninth-largest) and has a 30% stake in our total foreign investment.

Traditional measures of the trans-Tasman relationship will always appear asymmetric due to differences in geographic, economic and population size, and our respective military alliances and capacities. At various times, political leaders on both sides of the Tasman have chosen to accentuate the differences in policy interests to suit their own agendas.

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But it was a perceived imbalance in the cost of welfare services for New Zealanders in Australia that triggered the citizenship and residency rule changes for New Zealanders in 2001.

The unfairness and even absurdity of the old rules was perhaps best exemplified by the case of rugby star Quade Cooper last year. Born in New Zealand, he moved to Australia aged 13 and debuted for the Wallabies in 2008. Yet it took him five years (and four rejections) to be finally granted citizenship.

At the personal level, the new citizenship pathway should make such travesties a thing of the past. More broadly, it reinstates a fair way forward – otherwise known as a “fair go” – for people in both countries to build and grow the historic trans-Tasman relationship.

Jennifer Curtin and Dominic O’Sullivan are the authors of the chapter ‘Legacies of a Trans-Tasman Relationship: The Evolution of Asymmetry between New Zealand and Australia’, in Asymmetric Neighbors and International Relations: Living in the Shadow of Elephants (Routledge, 2023).

Jennifer Curtin is a partner investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project titled “Understanding the Antipodean ‘Fair Go’” led by Cosmo Howard at Griffith University.

Jennifer Curtin and Dominic O’Sullivan are co-authors of the chapter from which some of the material included here is drawn.
The full reference is: Curtin and O’Sullivan, Legacies of a Trans-Tasman Relationship: The Evolution of Asymmetry between New Zealand and Australia. In I. Roberge, N. Park and T.R. Klassen (eds). Asymmetric Neighbors and International Relations. Living in the Shadow of Elephants. New York: Routledge, pp. 54-69. (2023).
Jennifer is also

– ref. As new Aussie citizenship rules kick in, the ‘fair go’ finally returns to trans-Tasman relations – https://theconversation.com/as-new-aussie-citizenship-rules-kick-in-the-fair-go-finally-returns-to-trans-tasman-relations-208739

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marnee Shay, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Australian universities are calling on the federal government to uncap university places for all Indigenous students.

This would mean any Indigenous applicant, provided they met the entrance requirements, could go to university. Currently, places are only uncapped for Indigenous Australians living in regional and remote areas.

The proposal is part of a broader push by peak body Universities Australia to increase Indigenous participation in higher education.

Is it a good idea? What is needed to boost Indigenous participation at university?

Australian universities and Indigenous students

On Sunday night, Universities Australia released a progress report on their Indigenous Strategy.

This explicitly recognises the presence and impact of racism in Australian universities. And emphasises universities’ responsibility for Indigenous advancement, addressing racism and cultural safety and embedding Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into university systems and structures.

It shows how universities are still heavily focused on recruitment of Indigenous students. These strategies are working at some level. The report noted Indigenous student enrolments more than doubled between 2008 and 2021.

But Indigenous student enrolment is still only at 2.08% and bachelor degree completion rates remain low compared to non-Indigenous students.

Almost one in two Australians in their 20s have a university degree compared to only 7% cent of young Indigenous Australians.

Uncapped places

Universities Australia wants to see a new push to improve Indigenous participation through uncapped places for all Indigenous Australians, irrespective of their postcode.

With 75% of Indigenous people living in urban areas, Universities Australia say the current policy needs to change.

The call comes as a time when big changes are expected for higher education. The Universities Accord review team has prepared a draft report on reshaping Australian universities. Increasing participation and access to university for disadvantaged group is a key priority. The government is expected to release it later this month.

Read more:
‘I would like to go to university’: flexi school students share their goals in Australia-first survey

Is this a good idea?

This proposal certainly provides a tangible pathway for any Indigenous person wishing to undertake university study, regardless of their location.

However, as with many policies affecting Indigenous peoples, it need to be part of a holistic approach. Encouraging more Indigenous Australians to enrol in a university degree will not be as simple as just uncapping places.

For any university student to be successful, they must have foundational academic skills to support their learning. Closing the Gap data in education shows there is also still a long way to go in addressing schooling educational outcomes. For example, in 2021, 68% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had achieved Year 12 or higher, compared with 91% of non-Indigenous Australians.

It is vital Indigenous peoples wanting to undertake university study come equipped with the skills they need for success. Many mob come with invaluable knowledge, perspectives and experiences connected to their identities as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. In addition to these strengths, academic preparedness for university study that results from quality schooling will support their educational trajectories over the long term.

Culture must change

Indigenous students also need to be supported when they get to university. The Universities Australia report showed almost all Australian universities have activities or programs for recruitment of Indigenous students.

Although, when surveyed, less than half of the 39 Australian universities made reference to an anti-racism statement or policy. The report also notes:

member universities’ responses were generally not focused on equipping students with an awareness of Indigenous values and knowledges.

Along with more evidence-based interventions to support schooling outcomes (so students can take advantage of an uncapped place), universities must embrace the challenges outlined in the report and take real action to address them.

If the culture and environment of universities don’t change, providing more numbers or even other methods such as scholarships are unlikely to change the overall outcome.

Urgent action is required and uncapping Indigenous student numbers is only one small part of a larger picture.

Read more:
‘Once students knew their identity, they excelled’: how to talk about excellence in Indigenous education

Marnee Shay receives funding from the Australian Research Council, AIATSIS and Edmund Rice Education Australia.
She is a member of QATSIETAC Department of Education Queensland and is a non-executive Director on the Edmund Rice Education Australia National Flexi School Board.

Maria Raciti works for the University of the Sunshine Coast. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education.

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

– ref. Uncapping uni places for Indigenous students is a step in the right direction, but we must do much more – https://theconversation.com/uncapping-uni-places-for-indigenous-students-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction-but-we-must-do-much-more-208918

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Effie Karageorgos, Lecturer, University of Newcastle

Recent sustained anti-coal action by Blockade Australia in the Hunter Valley has brought public protest back into the news cycle. Activists have occupied trains, railway lines and machinery in an attempt to obstruct coal production and broadcast their message about the climate crisis.

Under recent anti-protest legislation in New South Wales, which has been matched by similar laws in other states, some protesters have been charged by police for their activism.

Internationally, protesters faced with arrest have devised new ways to protest. Recently, Iranian activists have started engaging in “micro-protests”, which are small-scale protests over a shorter period of time, to evade arrest.

My historical research into the infrastructure of protest, using the anti-Vietnam War campaign in New South Wales as a case study, has found that many Australians who did not or could not actively or publicly protest similarly found “quieter” ways to express their opposition to the conflict.

The youth are revolting

In the popular Australian imagination, it seems the protester is a young person creating a public spectacle – holding up a sign, occupying a building or marching down a city street, even though older activists regularly play a part in protest movements.

Many might think of figures like Lidia Thorpe disrupting the 2023 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade or ongoing protests by School Strike 4 Climate, which have shown how willing young people are to agitate for their collective futures.

But, in fact, one of the two anti-coal activists charged on last month for occupying a train in Singleton, New South Wales, is 64 years old.

My research shows our public memory of protest doesn’t come close to capturing everyone who used their energies to protest Australian involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, so we need to shift our idea of both protest and the protester to understand the potential scope of activism.

Quiet protest

Vietnam War-era protest organisations, such as the Association for International Cooperation and Disarmament, Save Our Sons, Youth Campaign Against Conscription and the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign, were aware of how important “quiet protest” was to the wider movement.

They continually appealed to supporters for help selling buttons, putting up posters, selling raffle tickets, filling envelopes, leafleting and other clerical work. These were all carried out by people who were opposed to the war, and are all considered acts of protest.

Social movement theorists agree that time and availability are crucial in drawing people to protest. As far back as 1974, the sociologist Anthony Orum wrote:

Without people who have time on their hands, great revolutions would probably never get off the ground.

Time and capacity

But what of those who did not have the time or capacity to march on streets, but who still saw themselves as part of the anti-Vietnam War movement?

The administrative records of protest organisations held in the State Library of New South Wales let us into the lives of such people.

These include Ian Robertson, a full-time Macquarie University student, whose parents had banned political activity because they feared it would disrupt his studies. Another silent protester was a Mrs Thomson, who was too busy organising her daughter Sue’s wedding to participate in anti-Vietnam protest activities. Public servants were also not permitted to publicly support the movement.

Most such records come from elderly members of the movement. In November 1969, Mabel Wilson, who in her words was “six years an octogenarian,” sent $5 to the Committee in Defiance of the National Service Act, writing:

I admire your courage and am completely in sympathy with your ideals. Alas! I am very old […] As you can see I can be of practically no use to you – or anyone […] My heart is with you all the way.

Similarly, on March 21 1970, Doris J Wilson of Asquith sent a donation to the Northern Districts Vietnam Moratorium Group with a letter saying:

I am past the age where I can do very much more than be just a voice.

On September 14 1970, L.T. Withers sent the same group a letter saying:

Congratulations for what you have accomplished. I feel rather guilty at being so useless […] myself and my wife are not as energetic as we used to be as the years are catching up on us a bit. I have enclosed a small donation to your local funds […] I would also be grateful if you could keep me informed of your activities.

Ruth Fryer of Hornsby sent a letter on February 9 1971 with a $3 donation:

Sometimes you wish you were young & strong again! But the hard work seems to be left to the young ones.

These Australians, among many others, were interested in the anti-Vietnam campaign and wanted to be involved as much as they could, given their limitations.

Read more:
Lidia Thorpe’s Mardi Gras disruption is the latest in an ongoing debate about acceptable forms of protest at Pride

The infrastructure of historical protest

Studying the infrastructure of historical protest organisations shows us that we need to expand our idea of what a protest movement is and who it includes if we want to achieve the present-day goals of activist campaigning.

These findings are exciting because they capture a larger group of Australians in the protest tradition, and move past a limited, and often ableist and ageist, vision of protest to incorporate many others who feel just as strongly about the issues governing their lives.

Effie Karageorgos received funding from the State Library of New South Wales for this project.

– ref. Not just a youth movement: history too often forgets older protesters – https://theconversation.com/not-just-a-youth-movement-history-too-often-forgets-older-protesters-208472

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Ellerton, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Education; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

Educators involved in curriculum design know one hard truth: you can’t fit in everything. Whatever the finished product, there will always be someone who thinks something important has been missed or something unnecessary has been included.

This is what happened in the recent redesign of the Australian Curriculum, for example, where the emphasis on Western civilisation became politicised.

When it comes to science curriculums, the amount of potential content that can be included is staggering.

In the case of physics in primary or middle schools, we may or may not see the inclusion of topics such as wave theory, acoustics, electronics or relativity. Some may lament these exclusions, but most agree physics at this level can be taught without them.

Similarly, there are areas of biology that may be considered optional at this level, such as botany, entomology or marine ecosystems. Evolution, however, is a concept that underpins and integrates all facets of biological study.

Read more:
What exactly is the scientific method and why do so many people get it wrong?

The central role of evolution in biology

As evolutionary biologist Theodosius Zobzansky noted in the title of his seminal essay, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.

Without evolution, the living world is a kaleidoscope of disconnected form and colour. With evolution, it is breathtakingly coherent. In terms of its simplicity and explanatory power, the theory of evolution by natural selection is arguably one of our most successful scientific achievements.

Because of evolution’s centrality to biology, its omission in any substantive course seems a matter of serious neglect.

Today many countries in the world, predominantly Islamic ones, do not teach evolution, as it is said to contradict religious teachings.

Recently, India also removed evolution from the formal education of students up to Year 10. This decision was supposedly related to its right-wing government’s commitment to promoting Hindu-nationalist perspectives.

These examples do not represent simple oversight. They are serious attempts to restrict people thinking about evolution and, ultimately, to delegitimise science for ideological gain.

Excluding evolution is a moral concern

Omitting evolution from educational curriculums isn’t just educationally fraught, it’s also a serious moral issue.

Morally speaking, at least four related points present themselves in favour of the inclusion of evolution in any biology curriculum.

1. Equality of opportunity

John Rawls, one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, set equality of opportunity as a key social justice principle.

Many scientists have been inspired towards their work by understanding the grand narrative of evolution, which provides a coherent and effective framework to understand biological systems and their relationships.

Depriving students of this educational experience means they could be disadvantaged in further study or work. Or, worse, they might be dissuaded from it.

2. Free inquiry

Deliberate attempts to exclude serious rational inquiry are anathema to most philosophical schools of thought. Philosopher and scientist C.S. Peirce expressed this powerfully:

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: do not block the way of inquiry.

To stifle inquiry is also to inhibit the development of important traits in students – especially curiosity, one of our most powerful tools for knowledge creation.

3. Fairness and public reasoning

Philosopher Immanuel Kant, expressing the essence of the Enlightenment as he saw it, set public reasoning through an individual commitment to rational inquiry as its cornerstone.

If we value the freedom to inquire and freedom of religious belief, it follows that no particular ideology should have unquestioned authority over others.

It’s naive to think science is a value-free arena. Yet it represents the most effective means of rational inquiry into the world we currently possess.

We can certainly allow for (and indeed need) explanations that the methodologies of science can’t provide. But rational inquiry needs to be accommodated, rather than usurped, by religious or political ideologies.

As the late author and journalist Christopher Hitchens elegantly stated:

We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.

4. Intellectual honesty, integrity and a commitment to scientific truths

An extended biology course that doesn’t contain evolution represents a promise made and broken.

To present something as scientific means it should embrace the methodologies and dispositions of scientific inquiry, including open-mindedness, scepticism and fallibility.

Ideologically driven censorship is therefore intellectually dishonest and, in these cases, results in a misrepresentation of science.

The bottom line

A moral stance is not something simply held dogmatically. It is one that can be reasoned in a way that’s rationally accessible to others.

Education in a cosmopolitan world – in as much as it is social, collaborative and cooperative – should be characterised by morality and rationality. Excising our best ideas from curriculums is both immoral and irrational.

Read more:
Guide to the classics: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

Peter Ellerton is affiliated with the Rationalist Society of Australia.

– ref. 4 reasons not teaching evolution in schools is immoral – https://theconversation.com/4-reasons-not-teaching-evolution-in-schools-is-immoral-208653

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maryanne Macdonald, Lecturer, Indigenous Education, Edith Cowan University

As Australia prepares for the Voice referendum later this year, some commentators struggle to create a respectful space for all sides of politics. Especially to discuss the proposed constitutional change.

Debates with wide-ranging opinions have the potential to distract from the real issues at hand, becoming divisive and harmful. This can lead to spreading misinformation and worsen a lack of understanding across political views.

The way Australia debates the Indigenous Voice to Parliament matters. We saw the 2017 plebiscite on marriage equality, while resulting in a clear “yes” vote, considerably impacted the
mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ people in Australia.

The referendum is a national event, which requires conversations with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia. These conversations should bear in mind Indigenous people will be impacted the most by the referendum and the debate around it. Yet, effective national engagement on the Voice also requires non-Indigenous people to see this as important to their lives.

We conducted research examining how to help facilitators make these conversations easier, well-informed and fruitful. This research could be used to inform how the wider public have constructive and sensitive discussions about Indigenous affairs.

À lire aussi :
Regional communities were central to Uluru Statement, and they must also be for the Voice to Parliament

What our research found

We work in collaborative teaching spaces where Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators provide space for non-Indigenous students to learn about Australia’s history, Indigenous identities, and future. The students we teach are a diverse group across ages, ethnicities, social backgrounds, and genders.

In our recent publication, we explain effective ways for facilitators to engage non-Indigenous people in discussions about Indigenous affairs. We discuss how we created a safe teaching space where students felt they had learned accurate and relevant information, heard Indigenous peoples’ viewpoints and were confident they could work collaboratively with Indigenous people in the future. The findings from our research can easily be applied to discussion around the Voice.

Our study showed these students engaged with Indigenous issues when they had access to:

• clear evidence of Australia’s history and public policy as told by Indigenous people, relaying their experiences

• examples of successful and respectful collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within education

• a requirement for participants to consider their own contribution and future engagement with Indigenous peoples and perspectives

• space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to engage in respectful and informed discussion of issues by establishing ground rules. These rules include knowing appropriate and inappropriate terminology, having a willingness to listen and paying attention to evidence rather than stand-alone stories.

We provided examples of effective collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, such as school-community partnerships, health services and environmental management collaborations. We also discussed the approaches that made these collaborations work well. This made most students feel eager and confident to follow these approaches in their future careers.

Most of the students expressed positive attitudes towards Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. However, they also commented that prior to this learning, they had been unaware of how little they knew of Indigenous histories, perspectives, and issues.

These students also had the chance to listen to Indigenous people discuss their experiences and family stories. Many students found they learned a great deal and better understood the depth of ongoing pain from Australia’s racist history. They were then able to think about how this could inform their professional engagement with Indigenous people and themes in schools.

À lire aussi :
What can we learn from the marriage equality vote about supporting First Nations people during the Voice debate?

So what could the wider public learn from this?

Indigenous people make up approximately 3% of the population in Australia. So the support of the broader community is vital on Indigenous affairs such as the Voice.

The first step is knowledge. Non-Indigenous people need the opportunity to understand the political journey for Indigenous people in the lead up to the referendum, including the Uluru Statement. This could contextualise the importance of addressing longstanding injustices and help create better futures for Indigenous peoples.

Secondly, people need to understand how this referendum will affect Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. We can turn to the words of the many Indigenous voices who have made their thoughts a matter of public record.

Thirdly, safe space for respectful and informed dialogue is essential. The threat of being labelled “racist” can shut down meaningful discussion and prevent non-Indigenous engagement on important issues. But at the same time, Indigenous people having to manage fragility in non-Indigenous people can be exhausting.

Indigenous people need to be able to express their own positions on the Voice in a space that enables constructive dialogue, regardless of which political side they are on. Again, this requires that listeners understand the histories, and contemporary realities, at the heart of the Uluru Statement. It also means recognising that within any group of people, there will always be diverse perspectives on political matters.

Discussion spaces need to be informed by Indigenous peoples’ perspectives and knowledge about the realities which have brought us to this referendum. They should allow all people in Australia the opportunity to consider the part they will play in the future of our nation.

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

– ref. How to have informed and respectful conversations about Indigenous issues like the Voice – https://theconversation.com/how-to-have-informed-and-respectful-conversations-about-indigenous-issues-like-the-voice-206093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben White, Professor of End-of-Life Law and Regulation, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology

Voluntary assisted dying is legal in five Australian states with the sixth, New South Wales, following in November 2023. The territories are now permitted to legalise voluntary assisted dying, with the Australian Capital Territory intending to do so by the end of 2023.

Victoria was the first state to implement voluntary assisted dying in 2019. After four years, its legislation requires a formal review. Western Australia’s legislation, which started in 2021, requires a review after just two years. Both reviews are due to start soon.

Patients’ experiences of seeking voluntary assisted dying will be central to these reviews. In today’s Medical Journal of Australia, we report on the first study of patients’ voluntary assisted dying experiences in Victoria, as described in interviews with family caregivers.

We found five key barriers to accessing voluntary assisted dying in Victoria.

Read more:
Voluntary assisted dying will soon be legal in all states. Here’s what’s just happened in NSW and what it means for you

First, patients had difficulty finding doctors willing and qualified to assess eligibility for voluntary assisted dying.

Second, the voluntary assisted dying application process often took a long time and sometimes delays occurred. This was especially hard for very sick patients who had little time left.

Third, some hospitals, aged care facilities and other health-care institutions objected to being involved in voluntary assisted dying. Often, patients could not be assessed for voluntary assisted dying in these facilities, nor receive or take the voluntary assisted dying medication there.

The final two barriers were legal ones. The Victorian law prohibits health practitioners from raising voluntary assisted dying with patients. Patients needed to know they had to be the one to ask about voluntary assisted dying.

Legal concerns also mean health practitioners in Victoria cannot use telehealth for voluntary assisted dying consultations. This required some patients to travel to appointments, sometimes over great distances, causing pain, distress and hardship.

These five barriers meant patients were sometimes unsure about how to seek voluntary assisted dying and where to get information. They also caused suffering for patients and families, and led to delays in accessing voluntary assisted dying.

Access was more difficult for people in regional areas or with neurodegenerative conditions, such as motor neurone disease.

Who provides help and support?

Statewide voluntary assisted dying care navigators are government-funded health professionals who help patients navigate the system. Some hospitals and health services also appointed local voluntary assisted dying coordinators. Described as the “jewel in the crown”, their guidance was especially helpful when patients started the voluntary assisted dying process and were unsure what to do.

Finding a supportive doctor willing and qualified to assess eligibility for voluntary assisted dying was often a turning point for patients. But this sometimes depended on luck.

Read more:
Voluntary assisted dying will be available to more Australians this year. Here’s what to expect in 2023

The statewide pharmacy service’s education and support when providing the voluntary assisted dying medication was very reassuring for patients and families.

These facilitators helped patients navigate a complex and rigorous voluntary assisted dying assessment process and to feel more supported and confident. Participants repeatedly commended the commitment and compassion of doctors, navigators and pharmacists.

Aside from some logistical challenges in the system’s early days (which improved over time), once patients contacted a willing doctor or navigator they generally felt well-supported.

How can voluntary assisted dying systems be improved?

We propose the following steps to improve patient access:

• ensure patients have clear and readily available information about voluntary assisted dying so they can make earlier contact with care navigators

• encourage more doctors to be involved, including by offering adequate remuneration

• require doctors who don’t want to provide voluntary assisted dying to refer patients to a willing doctor, or provide navigators’ contact details

• allow doctors to raise voluntary assisted dying as an option and to use telehealth when appropriate

• regulate objections by institutions so access to voluntary assisted dying is not blocked

• adequately resource and support integral system roles including navigators and the statewide pharmacy service.

A safe system that allows only patients who meet the strict eligibility criteria to choose voluntary assisted dying is critical. However, our research shows significant barriers impede access and limit choice.

Some of these barriers are specific to Victorian law, such as doctors not being able to raise voluntary assisted dying. But others, such as limits on using telehealth, have implications for the rest of Australia.

For states reviewing their system, and jurisdictions implementing voluntary assisted dying or considering passing laws permitting it, access must be an important consideration too.

Read more:
What happens if you want access to voluntary assisted dying but your nursing home won’t let you?

A summary of our research is available here. Information about contacting voluntary assisted dying care navigators in your state is available here.

Ben White receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and Commonwealth and State Governments for research and training about the law, policy and practice relating to end-of-life care. In relation to voluntary assisted dying, he (with colleagues) has been engaged by the Victorian, Western Australian and Queensland Governments to design and provide the legislatively-mandated training for doctors involved in voluntary assisted dying in those States. He (with Lindy Willmott) has also developed a model Bill for voluntary assisted dying for parliaments to consider. He is a part-time member of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which has jurisdiction for some aspects of this state’s voluntary assisted dying legislation. Ben is a recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project number FT190100410: Enhancing End-of-Life Decision-Making: Optimal Regulation of Voluntary Assisted Dying) funded by the Australian Government. This research is funded by that Future Fellowship project.

Eliana Close is currently appointed on an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project number FT190100410: Enhancing End-of-Life Decision-Making: Optimal Regulation of Voluntary Assisted Dying) funded by the Australian Government. She was employed on projects funded by the Victorian, Western Australian, and Queensland Governments to develop legislatively-mandated training for medical practitioners and nurse practitioners providing voluntary assisted dying.

Lindy Willmott receives or has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and Commonwealth and State Governments for research and training about the law, policy and practice relating to end-of-life care. In relation to voluntary assisted dying, she (with colleagues) has been engaged by the Victorian, Western Australian and Queensland Governments to design and provide the legislatively-mandated training for doctors involved in voluntary assisted dying in those States. She (with Ben White) has also developed a model Bill for voluntary assisted dying for parliaments to consider. Lindy Willmott is also a member of the Queensland Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board and the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, but writes this piece in her capacity as an academic researcher. She is a former Board member of Palliative Care Australia.

Ruthie Jeanneret is a PhD Candidate on an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project number FT190100410: Enhancing End-of-Life Decision-Making: Optimal Regulation of Voluntary Assisted Dying) funded by the Australian Government. She was employed on projects funded by the Victorian, Western Australian, and Queensland Governments to develop legislatively-mandated training for medical practitioners and nurse practitioners providing voluntary assisted dying.

– ref. Voluntary assisted dying is legal in Victoria, but you may not be able to access it – https://theconversation.com/voluntary-assisted-dying-is-legal-in-victoria-but-you-may-not-be-able-to-access-it-208282

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Hewitt, Associate Professor, Law, University of Adelaide

Many people, at some stage in their search for a career, have worked for free in return for some much valued experience. But it’s surprisingly hard to find exact numbers.

A 2016 national survey of 3,800 Australians found more than half (58%) of respondents aged 18 to 29 and more than a quarter (26%) aged 30 to 64 had done unpaid work at least once in the previous five years.

There is also data suggesting more than a third (37.4%) of Australia’s university students are doing courses which involve real work as part of their tertiary studies. In 2017 that amounted to 451,263 work-related learning experiences.

This is not uniquely Australian. In 2013 an EU survey of 12,921 people found 46% aged from 18 to 35 had done at least one internship, with more than half of those being unpaid.

Read more:
During NAIDOC Week, many Indigenous women are assigned unpaid work. New research shows how prevalent this is in the workplace

So why are so many people around the world signing up to do unpaid jobs, in the guise of traineeships, internships or work experience.

One reason must be the strong promotion of internships as a step from education to employment. Employers have frequently identified practical experience as an important factor in deciding who to hire.

Internships have also been enthusiastically endorsed by many universities plus industry and government as a way to help students develop relevant skills to move into the graduate labour market.

With these groups backing internships, is it any wonder so many students and graduates believe an internship is essential to securing graduate employment?

But there’s a downside to internships stakeholders are reluctant to discuss.

When internships are either a prerequisite for professional accreditation or pseudo mandatory – you can’t get a job without one – then only those who have completed a placement can enter the profession.

Those who can’t afford to do unpaid work or lack the connections to secure a placement, may be left behind. This can be a tragedy for the individual, whose dreams of work in a particular industry might be dashed.

As well, the proliferation of unpaid (or low-paid) internships has the potential to have a much broader impact. It risks entrenching existing disadvantage and limiting diversity in professions.

It may also displace paid employment and undermine labour standards, as employers replace paid workers with a revolving door of interns who are treated as “cheap dead-end labour”.

This is not a theoretical concern, there is evidence some of Australia’s tertiary students face obstacles which limit their capacity to secure or complete internships.

This includes disadvantaged students, including those from low socio-economic backgrounds, rural areas, those who are Indigenous and others who cannot do work placements required to get professional accreditation.

These poor outcomes are driving calls for reform. The European parliament recently endorsed a proposal to amend the 2014 Quality Framework for Traineeships requiring all trainees in EU countries be fairly remunerated.

On top of this, a growing number of countries have increasingly tough regulations regarding internships. For example, France banned open market internships in 2014, and now only allows regulated internships which are completed by a university student as part of their studies.

The French regulation sets out stringent supervision requirements from both workplace host and university and obligations for payment when the internship exceeds a set period. Belgium, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia have also implemented specific laws requiring payment for open market traineeships.

The EU’s response to concerns about unpaid internships highlights the need for Australia to consider its position.

Currently, Australian regulations fail to regulate internships in any comprehensive way.

Instead, there are piecemeal rules dealing with isolated issues such as protecting interns against discrimination or harassment or ensuring universities’ internship courses meet set standards.

While these issues are important, dealing with them in isolation does not resolve the broad and complex issues internships raise.

Read more:
Graduates beware, don’t fall for that unpaid job advert

Most stakeholders value internships so they are likely to continue. Therefore, we need to consider how they can be regulated to reduce negative outcomes and maximise the benefits. This will require a national debate to answer a range of difficult questions, including:

• what do we think the value of work is, and what is the impact of allowing unpaid work on individuals and society? Are we prepared to accept this impact?

• who should pay for training and skills development: individuals, employers, or society?

• who in our workplaces should be protected by labour laws and who should be excluded?

Once we have these answers, we can decide what the role of internships in Australia should be, and craft a regulatory regime to achieve that. Perhaps our conclusion should be, as articulated by the EU parliament, that it’s time we stopped exploiting interns and paid them a fair day’s pay.

Anne Hewitt has received funding to conduct research on the regulation of internships (2016 Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant ‘Regulating Post-secondary Work Experience: Labour Law at the Boundary of Work and Education’ DP150104516 with Professor Rosemary Owens, Professor Andrew Stewart and Dr Joanna Howe) and the risks of payments made to student interns (2020 Australian Collaborative Education Network Research Grant ‘Risks associated with studentships’ with Dr Craig Cameron, Griffith).

– ref. It’s time we stopped exploiting interns and paid them for the hours worked – https://theconversation.com/its-time-we-stopped-exploiting-interns-and-paid-them-for-the-hours-worked-208025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Smit, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney

The need to cut the emissions driving climate change is urgent, but it’s proving hard to decarbonise road transport in Australia. Its share of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions doubled from 8% in 1990 to 16% in 2020. New vehicles sold in Australia have barely improved average emissions performance for the last decade or so.

The federal government publishes emission forecasts to 2035 – 15 years short of 2050, the net-zero target date. Our newly published study forecasts road transport emissions through to 2050. The estimated reduction by 2050, 35–45% of pre-COVID levels in 2019, falls well short of what’s needed.

Our findings highlight three obstacles to achieving net zero. These are: Australia’s delay in switching to electric vehicles; growing sales of large, heavy vehicles such as SUVs and utes; and uncertainties about hydrogen as a fuel, especially for freight transport. These findings point to policy actions that could get road transport much closer to net zero.

How was this worked out?

Emissions and energy use vary from vehicle to vehicle, so reliable forecasting requires a detailed breakdown of the on-road fleet. Our study used the Australian Fleet Model and the net zero vehicle emission model (n0vem).

The study focused on so-called well-to-wheel emissions from fuel production, distribution and use while driving. These activities account for about 75–85% of vehicle emissions. (Life-cycle assessment estimates “cradle-to-grave” emissions, including vehicle manufacture and disposal.)

Working with European Union colleagues, our emissions simulation drew on an updated EU scenario (EU-27) showing the changes in the EU vehicle fleet needed to meet the latest (proposed) CO₂ targets. Our study assumed Australia will be ten years behind the EU across all vehicle classes.

We further modified the scenario to properly reflect Australian conditions. For instance, the EU has a much higher proportion of plug-in hybrid vehicles than Australia, where buyers are now bypassing them for wholly electric vehicles.

Energy use is shifting, but too slowly

Using this modified scenario, the simulation produces a forecast fall in total wheel-to-wheel emissions from Australian transport from 104 billion tonnes (Mt) in 2018 to 55-65Mt in 2050. Within the range of this 35–45% reduction, the outcome depends largely on the balance of renewable and fossil-fuel energy used to produce hydrogen.

The modelling nonetheless predicts a large shift in energy use in road transport in 2050, as 2019 was basically 100% fossil fuels.

The on-road energy efficiency of battery electric vehicles is roughly twice that of fuel cell electric (hydrogen) vehicles and roughly three times that of fossil-fuelled vehicles of similar type.

The modelling results make this clear. In 2050, battery electric vehicles account for about 70% of total travel, but 25% of on-road energy use and only about 10% of total emissions.

In contrast, fossil-fuelled vehicles account for about 25% of total travel in 2050, 60% of energy use and 75-85% of emissions. That’s even allowing for expected efficiency improvements.

This means the shift to a mostly electric fleet by 2050 plus the use of hydrogen is predicted to fall short of what’s needed to get to net zero. It will require aggressive new policies to increase the uptake of electric vehicles across all classes.

Lighter vehicles make a big difference

But that is not the whole story. One neglected issue is the growing proportion of big, heavy passenger vehicles (SUVs, utes). This trend is very noticeable in Australia. The laws of physics mean heavier vehicles need much more energy and fuel per kilometre of driving, and so produce more emissions.

Currently, a large diesel SUV typically emits a kilogram of CO₂ for every 3 kilometres of driving, compared to 15km for a light electric vehicle and 200 kilometres for an e-bike. An average electric vehicle currently emits 1kg of CO₂ every 7km.

This distance is expected to be around 60km in 2050, when renewables power the electricity grid. A lightweight electric car will more than double the distance to 125km per kilogram of CO₂. Reducing vehicle weights and optimising energy efficiency in transport will be essential to meet emission targets.

The study modelled the impacts of lightweighting passenger vehicles while keeping buses and commercial vehicles the same. If Australians had driven only small cars in 2019 for personal use, total road transport emissions would have been about 15% lower.

The reduction in emissions from simply shifting to smaller cars is similar to emissions from domestic aviation and domestic shipping combined. Importantly, lightweighting cuts emissions for all kinds of vehicles.

The uncertainties about hydrogen

Fuel cell electric vehicles using hydrogen account for only a few percent of all travel, but most will likely be large trucks. As a result, in our scenarios, they use a little over 10% of total on-road energy and produce 5-20% of total emissions, depending on the energy source used for hydrogen production and distribution.

The modified EU scenario includes a significant uptake of hydrogen vehicles by 2050. That’s by no means guaranteed.

The uptake in Australia has been negligible to date. That’s due to costs (vehicle and fuel), the need for new hydrogen fuel infrastructure, less mature technology (compared to battery electric vehicles) and limited vehicle availability. Unresolved aspects of hydrogen in transport include lower energy efficiency, the need for clean water, uncertainty about leakage, fuel-cell durability and value for consumers.

How do we get back on track?

Our study suggests Australia is on track to miss the net-zero target for 2050 mainly because of the large proportions of fossil-fuelled vehicles and large and heavy passenger vehicles.

These two aspects could become targets for new policies such as public information campaigns, tax incentives for small, light vehicles, bans on selling fossil fuel vehicles and programs to scrap them. Other options to cut emissions include measures to reduce travel demand, optimise freight logistics and shift travel to public transport, to name a few.

The study confirms the scale of the challenge of decarbonising road transport. Australia will need “all hands on deck” – government, industry and consumers – to achieve net zero in 2050.

Robin Smit is the founder and director at Transport Energy/Emission Research Pty Ltd (TER) and an Adjunct Associate Professor at University of Technology Sydney.

– ref. Too big, too heavy and too slow to change: road transport is way off track for net zero – https://theconversation.com/too-big-too-heavy-and-too-slow-to-change-road-transport-is-way-off-track-for-net-zero-208655

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Schoone, Senior Lecturer in Education, Auckland University of Technology

It wasn’t surprising when last week’s Education Review Office (ERO) report found New Zealand’s alternative education (AE) system suffers from inadequate facilities, a lack of qualified teaching personnel and poor long-term outcomes.

After all, alternative education funding had remained static for its first decade of operation, after which it received only minor increases until this year’s government budget.

This is despite around 2,000 young people each year accessing alternative education as a school of last resort, having been excluded or disengaged from mainstream secondary schools.

For many, behavioural and learning difficulties, and a cultural disconnection between school and home, have made schooling challenging. These young people have not received the help they needed earlier in their school years.

But beyond the immediate headlines that alternative education is failing students, a closer reading of the report also reveals how successful the system has been, despite the challenges. Young people in AE told the ERO they:

• greatly preferred learning in the alternative system to their previous schools

• receive help from their educators (97% of the time, compared to 44% in their old school)

• feel safe (93% compared to 59% in their old school)

• almost never feel lonely (81% compared to 56% in their old school)

• feel cared for (84%) and that their culture is respected (87%).

These young people also reported they had developed their own learning goals, and that their schoolwork was set at the right level. Surely those are things we would wish for all young people, whether in alternative education or not.

A system under pressure

Time and time again, the caring and dedicated AE workforce has been shown to be central to these successes.

Many staff are not qualified teachers, but are tutors with community and youth work experience and training. They artfully mentor young people to develop prosocial skills. The success of their work was further highlighted in the Youth19 AE report also released last week.

Read more:
Mainstream schools need to take back responsibility for educating disengaged students

While the ERO report found fewer than one in ten AE students attain NCEA level 2, alternative education’s focus has to be elsewhere. As the report stated, students arrive in AE centres with large gaps in their basic education. They have to catch up on schooling as well as work on developing life and social skills.

Until only recently, students couldn’t stay in alternative education beyond the age of 16. Due to a lack of transitional support, many end up languishing in their later adolescent years.

At the same time, pressures on the system are growing, with more students entering alternative education with high and complex needs. Without adequate funding, others simply cannot get in.

Out of sight, out of mind

The problems in the AE system are in many ways a product of its origins. To begin with, it was never a government initiative.

In 1989, when the “Tomorrow’s Schools” reforms introduced competition between schools, vulnerable students soon became seen as liabilities because most struggled to meet the academic standards schools were judged on.

The 2019 Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce found competition had exacerbated ethnic and socioeconomic segregation. Students suspended or excluded from their schools began turning up on the doorsteps of youth organisations, churches and iwi groups.

Read more:
Millions of kids get suspended or expelled each year – but it doesn’t address the root of the behavior

These communities established alternative education as a makeshift response. In 1996, there were 500 young people being educated in at least 60 AE centres nationwide – effectively educational facilities without government approval, so technically illegal.

Systematic government funding was finally made available in 2000. The fledgling sector became legitimate by virtue of young people being able to remain on a school roll while attending an alternative education centre somewhere else.

It was hailed at the time as a community-school partnership, but as the ERO has found in the past, once young people enter alternative education they have been largely out-of-sight, out-of-mind for referring schools.

Focus and funding needed

Alternative education is not unique to New Zealand. Most Western countries have some system of catering for young people who need a different way of schooling. But New Zealand can do a lot better.

We need to consider how schools can best serve all young people to give them the best chance to stay engaged. Current research investigating critical turning points in the education journeys of AE students, due to be released later this year, will give us more insights.

But alternative education is here to stay. So we need to better support young people transitioning into and out of the system.

Read more:
Schools need to teach pupils skills to maintain good mental health – here’s how

That means we need a bigger workforce of qualified teachers to work alongside tutors in alternative education. In turn, this will require increased funding and support from the Teachers Council of New Zealand to register teachers in this setting.

AE tutors also need to build and extend their expertise. New Zealand is behind other countries in offering qualifications to social educators – a unique profession that works alongside people to develop civic and life skills.

We might look to Denmark, for example, where tertiary-qualified social educators are highly skilled at working with young people within and beyond mainstream schools.

But most importantly, we need to increase the focus on alternative education. It represents the last, best opportunity to make a sustained difference to the lives of these young people. The significant investment required now will pale in comparison to the future cost to society of failing them.

Adrian Schoone was a member of the Expert Advisory Group for ERO’s Alternative Education report. He also advises the Alternative Education National Body, of which he was a past chairperson.

– ref. School of last resort: how to fix NZ’s vital but ignored alternative education system – https://theconversation.com/school-of-last-resort-how-to-fix-nzs-vital-but-ignored-alternative-education-system-208741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rowena Christiansen, Lecturer and Topic Coordinator, The University of Melbourne

Why do humans undertake journeys of personal exploration, or subject themselves to challenging conditions for long periods of time? What might we learn from their experiences?

British mountaineer George Mallory undertook his fatal attempt to summit Mount Everest in 1924 simply “because it’s there”. While such quests may have deeply personal motivations, research carried out during expeditions in extreme conditions can contribute to our understanding of how humans respond to environmental challenges.

The research outcomes can potentially be applied to a variety of settings, including remote locations here on Earth and even human space exploration.

Searching for extreme environments

Many explorers seek out “extreme environments”. This term describes harsh and unusual environmental conditions where it is difficult for life forms like humans to survive and thrive.

Examples include places that experience extremes of temperature, pressure, altitude, rainfall, breathable air, natural light, or hazardous chemical concentrations.

In recent years, humans have undertaken many extreme experiments, either alone or in groups.

In June 2023, Joseph Dituri, a biomedical engineer at the University of South Florida, completed a record-breaking 100 days living 9.15 metres underwater in a special habitat. At this depth, the pressure is approximately double what we experience on land. As he stated afterwards:

The human body has never been underwater that long. This experience has changed me in an important way, and my greatest hope is that I have inspired a new generation of explorers and researchers to push past all boundaries.

From November 2021 to April 2023, Spanish mountaineer Beatriz Flamini spent 500 days alone in a dark subterranean cave. She aimed to “learn more about how the human mind and body can deal with extreme solitude and deprivation”. When asked why she looked happy on emerging from the cave, she replied: “How would you feel if you had a dream and you fulfilled it? Would you come out crying?”

In 2021, a so-called Deep Time project in France isolated 15 volunteers in a cave underground for 40 days and nights without access to sunlight, clocks, or telephones. The project aimed to explore human adaptation to isolation and extreme conditions, together with the absence of the normal stimuli that provide a sense of time.

Training for space

As part of its astronaut training program, the European Space Agency holds a three-week course in an underground cave system. This work prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively in multicultural teams in a place where safety is critical.

Extreme environments can be useful not just for training and simulations. Places with physical similarities to space environments can also serve as locations for so-called analog missions.

These field tests are less expensive and more convenient than space-based research. They allow for the testing of technology, equipment, and experimental concepts alongside assessment of human physical and psychological responses to challenging conditions.

An additional goal of analog missions is to research possible safeguards, or countermeasures, against what NASA terms the “five hazards of human spaceflight”.

These are:

1. radiation – exposure to high levels of space radiation beyond Earth’s magnetic field
2. isolation and confinement – being far away from all that is familiar on Earth and confined in a relatively small and unchanging space can impact wellbeing, behaviour, and performance
3. distance from Earth – the farther away from Earth, the greater the communication delays and challenges, and thus the need for autonomy and self-sufficiency
4. gravity – astronauts could face up to four different gravitational environments. There is “normal gravity” or 1g on Earth; microgravity (“weightlessness”) in Earth orbit and in deep space transit; and partial gravity of 0.17g on the Moon and 0.38g on Mars. All of these have differing effects on the human body
5. hostile and closed environments – life support systems aim to provide a controlled environment, but problems can occur. Microbial lifeforms are a further consideration for both astronauts and the spacecraft.

There are many different types of analog missions, including in Antarctic, Arctic, underwater and desert settings. There are also closed small-group habitats such as NASA’s HERA module at Johnson Space Center and the privately owned Hi-Seas habitat on Hawai‘i island.

What we learn in extreme environments can be helpful closer to home, too.

Read more:
NASA is launching the 1st stage of the Artemis mission – here’s why humans are going back to the Moon

We’re all in this together

Research into isolation and confinement provided helpful advice for people experiencing lockdowns during the peak of the COVID pandemic.

Telehealth research already benefits people living in isolated and remote areas. The United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs runs a Space4Health initiative aimed at assisting countries in leveraging space infrastructure for better global health outcomes. NASA’s Spinoff archive documents the rich history of how space research has benefited life on Earth.

Through pushing the boundaries of human exploration in challenging environments, people not only learn more about themselves and their place in the world, but also make a unique contribution to a better understanding of human boundaries.

This knowledge can help us in various ways, both here on Earth and in humanity’s ultimate quest to reach for the stars.

Read more:
Why is extreme ‘frontier travel’ booming despite the risks?

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

– ref. Alone in a dark cave: what can we learn from extreme survival experiments? – https://theconversation.com/alone-in-a-dark-cave-what-can-we-learn-from-extreme-survival-experiments-208300