Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Archie Thomas, Chancellor’s Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people.

This week at Parliament House during Barunga Festival, four NT Land Council representatives presented Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the Barunga Declaration.

Signed by the four NT Land Council representatives, the declaration calls on Australians to vote “yes” in the upcoming referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

NT Land Council representatives Dr Samuel Bush-Blanasi (Northern Land Council), Matthew Palmer (Central Land Council), Gibson Farmer Illortaminni (Tiwi Land Council) and Thomas Amagula (Anindilyakwa Land Council) brought the Barunga Declaration to Parliament House.

This is significant because the leaders of the Central and Northern land councils, artist Wenten Rubunjta and activist Galarrwuy Yunupingu presented then prime minister Bob Hawke with the Barunga Statement in 1988. The statement called on Hawke to honour his earlier promises to deliver national land rights legislation and a treaty.

Hawke signed the statement and promised a treaty by 1990.

Treaty ’88 and the Barunga Statement

The Barunga Statement was the outcome of years of careful deliberation and discussion. Its presentation was carefully designed to capture symbols and painted representations significant to both desert and saltwater people. It was delivered from “the Indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia”, requesting the Australian government legislate for national land rights and begin treaty negotiations.

The statement also demanded compensation for land loss, protection of sacred sites, the return of ancestral remains, linguistic and cultural rights, and the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It also called for laws for a national elected Aboriginal body, and recognition of customary law by police and justice systems. It concluded by urging the Australian government to support international law-making upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The Barunga Statement was presented during a time where there were increasing calls for a treaty. The Treaty ’88 campaign declared that Australia was invaded by a foreign power with no treaty. As Wiradjuri activist and writer Kevin Gilbert argued, in Australia, “the thief is the judge”.

In the 1970s, there were two major legal challenges – the Gove land rights judgement and the 1979 Coe case. These cases had reinscribed terra nullius by rejecting Indigenous peoples rights to land that existed outside the norms of European landholding. They ultimately denied Indigenous sovereignty to uphold Australian settler rights to land.

Fast forward to 1988, and Hawke’s government poured billions into the bicentenary celebrations (or a “birthday for white people”, as activist and Palawa man Michael Mansell called it). The opening to Hawke’s “celebration of the nation” was an Australia Day event in Sydney Harbour, featuring a re-enactment of the First Fleet.

This was met by protest “Don’t Celebrate ‘88”, led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from across the continent. The protest began at dawn, and ran into the night.

The demand for a treaty had been gaining momentum since the National Aboriginal Conference called for a Makarrata, a Yolngu word referring to the negotiation of peace after a dispute, in 1979. But in 1983, a Senate committee rejected the idea that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had sovereignty and could enter into a treaty with Australia.

Shortly after, Hawke dismantled the National Aboriginal Conference. A national land rights response was developed, but a poorly conceived draft proposal from Hawke was rejected by Aboriginal Land Councils in 1984.

Read more:
What actually is a treaty? What could it mean for Indigenous people?

‘Treaty by 1990’

Hawke progressed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, a 25-member group charged with the task of raising awareness in the general public of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island cultures and history.

This council achieved significant traction over the next decade, leading to the walk for reconciliation in 2000, which still stands as a moment demonstrating significant national sentiment in support of Indigenous rights.

However, others have highlighted the reconciliation movement’s departure from treaty. Playwright Wesley Enoch and actress Deborah Mailman’s play 7 Stages of Grieving includes a poem emphasising instead the “wreck”, “con” and “silly” in reconciliation.

Hawke’s last official act as Prime Minister was to hang the Barunga Statement in Parliament House. Even though by 1991 little progress had been made towards the statement’s goals. The idea of a treaty had largely been replaced with the notion of “reconciliation”.

In 2006, Yunupingu called for the return of the Barunga Statement to Barunga. Yunupingu said governments had betrayed reconciliation, and he called for the statement to be traditionally buried. This would symbolise the burial of hopes for a treaty, saying

Sovereignty became treaty, treaty became reconciliation and reconciliation turned into nothing.

The Statement remains in Parliament House, despite Yunupingu’s request.

To properly consider the Voice, we need to look to how we got here

Critics of the Voice to Parliament often choose to focus on First Nations peoples’ struggles, the repeated experience of disadvantage – the persistent “gap”.

However, the Voice aims to address a key problem that recreates disadvantage: First Nations’ political power. First Nations peoples have long sought representation to seek particular rights to land, culture and heritage, language, self-determination and self-governance.

As with the Uluru Statement from the Heart and now the Barunga Declaration, the Barunga Statement emerged during a time when Indigenous activists were seeking new mechanisms to secure a lasting political settlement between Indigenous nations and the Australian government.

The referendum for a Voice is the first of a three-part sequence of reforms, outlined in the 2017 Uluru Statement, followed by treaty and truth-telling. Some states and territory governments are already advancing their own treaty processes or agreement-making processes.

The Barunga Statement experience tells us that political relations between Australian and Indigenous people can bring rising hope, optimism and near always disappointment as political will wanes.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart and the Barunga Declaration both demonstrate enduring aspirations for a worthwhile and meaningful political agreement between Indigenous people and government.

Archie Thomas receives funding from Aboriginal Affairs NSW. They are a member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).

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

– ref. Before the Barunga Declaration, there was the Barunga Statement, and Hawke’s promise of Treaty – https://theconversation.com/before-the-barunga-declaration-there-was-the-barunga-statement-and-hawkes-promise-of-treaty-206613

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amirali Popat, Associate Professor and Director of Research, The University of Queensland

3D-printed medicine could be the future of personalised healthcare, with research now suggesting printed tablets have reached a sufficient quality to match the standards set for conventionally manufactured tablets.

Our new study, published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics, highlights the promise 3D-printed medicines hold for patients.

If we can scale 3D printing to everyday use, the near limitless potential to have medicines customised to your specific health needs may become a reality sooner than you think.

One size doesn’t fit all

For a long time, medicines have been produced with what you might call a “one-size-fits-all” approach, whereby tablets and capsules come in only a set number of doses. But what if those exact doses don’t work for you?

Taking too much or too little of your medication can be hard to avoid when it only comes in set doses. This can have serious consequences when taking important medications such as antidepressants that trigger side effects when the dose is changed too quickly.

The traditional solution to these scenarios has been to try and break the tablet into halves or quarters to get a dose in-between. But this isn’t possible for every tablet, and even if it is, research shows it often ends up with an inaccurate dose.

3D printing can take away the guesswork and provide flexibility for health professionals to truly personalise medicine suited to you.

Read more:
Health Check: is it OK to chew or crush your medicine?

Layer by layer

You may have seen 3D printers producing toys, medical devices and even food.

The printing of medicines uses the same technology, building a tablet one layer at a time by melting the medication combined with other approved ingredients to help it dissolve in the stomach. Importantly, the tablet can be 3D printed at any required dose by giving instructions to the machine to print it bigger or smaller.

In our proof of concept study we were able to 3D print tablets containing very accurate doses of caffeine, in a way that would be exceedingly difficult with conventional manufacturing methods.

Rather than choosing a dose based on limited commercial options, we selected the dose first and then designed and printed the tablet accordingly.

While not often thought of as a medicine, the choice of caffeine in this research is important because it is the most widely used behavioural drug worldwide. Trying to cut down on caffeine often causes headaches and nausea because of the challenges in lowering the dose correctly. This is one of many scenarios where a one-size-fits-all approach would fall short.

Compared to attempts to split a conventional caffeine tablet into the same doses, the 3D-printed tablets proved to have far more accurate dosage.

Our results demonstrate a straightforward process for producing “the right medicine for the right patient at the right time”. This is one of the guiding principles of personalised medicine.

Read more:
How cancer doctors use personalised medicine to target variations unique to each tumour

A healthcare evolution

Although 3D printing has been around for decades, its use for producing medicines – especially in a hospital or pharmacy environment – is very new.

Australia has rigorous quality control standards for medicines thanks to regulation by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and it is too early to tell how it will regulate 3D printed medicines.

The United States already has one 3D-printed seizure medication, Spritam, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The printing process helps the resulting tablet rapidly disintegrate in the mouth for patients who have trouble swallowing, but does not offer dose customisation.

However, it seems we are on the brink of customised approaches in the clinic, with three new 3D-printed medications receiving FDA investigational new drug approval over 2021-22, and several other clinical trials completed in the last few years.

We envision 3D printers in pharmacies and hospitals for on-site and true personalisation. However, at this stage that doesn’t necessarily mean replacing or even competing with conventional medicines.

The production speed of current 3D printing technologies is much slower than conventional manufacturing. The greatest benefits will likely be for patients with particularly complicated medication regimens, or those taking certain types of medicines like antidepressants. Thus, the people who need it most could have their own tailor-made medicine.

In fact, the possibilities extend further than just choosing the right dose. The practice of pharmaceutical 3D printing could potentially include combining multiple drugs into a single “polypill”, and fully customising features like shape, size, colour, or texture.

We envision an evolution of digital healthcare where 3D printing is combined with technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data, taking our next big step towards truly personalised medicine.

This future will require a collaborative effort between researchers, health professionals, and regulatory bodies to define the place of 3D printing in healthcare, but could see us picking up our personalised medicine from a local pharmacy or hospital with the touch of a button.

Amirali Popat receives funding from The University of Queensland.

Jared Miles receives funding from The University of Queensland.

Liam Krueger 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. We are closer than ever to being able to 3D print medicines. Here’s why that’s important – https://theconversation.com/we-are-closer-than-ever-to-being-able-to-3d-print-medicines-heres-why-thats-important-208026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Meldrum, Lecturer, Speech Pathology, Edith Cowan University

As a speech pathologist, university lecturer and parent of young children, I often get asked a version of the following:

My child isn’t talking yet. Is that a problem? And is it my fault?

There is never a simple “yes” or “no” response, as more information is always needed. But by the end of the conversation, I nearly always end up saying “it’s worth looking into”.

The “wait-and-see” approach for late talkers – those who seem to be lagging behind the spoken communication of their peers – recommended by previous generations has shifted as we learn more about early childhood and how intervention can help.

Who are late talkers?

Late talkers are children who do not speak by the usual time that others are off and chattering. They do not have a diagnosis or “primary cause” such as autism spectrum disorder, an intellectual disability or hearing loss.

Late talking is not an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so clinical cut-offs vary. The most common definition is that late talkers do not have 50 words and/or do not use two-word combinations by two years of age. Others believe this definition is inadequate.

Research tends to divide this population into two categories, those children who only have issues using words (that is, they understand words) and those who have issues with both expression and comprehension.

Late talking is fairly common, with 13–20% of two-year-olds meeting the criteria. Children are generally assessed for late talking between two and three years via observation by a speech pathologist and parent reports. Parents are asked to provide details of any speech or language disorders in the family, how their child communicates and checklists of the words they understand or speak.

This information is then compared to a large sample of children, to see if they fall within the “normal range” for the number of words they know and use.

Read more:
Talking to babies may contribute to brain development – here’s how to do it

Will my late talker grow out of it?

Around 50% of children will “out-grow” their language difficulties. This explains why the “wait-and-see” recommendation has been popular for many years. But there are several problems with this approach.

Firstly, late talkers may not fully catch up. “Late bloomers” have been found to underperform in language and literacy measures in the later primary school years and beyond. So, while a late talker may improve, they may face ongoing but perhaps more subtle difficulties at a later age, when language skills are critical to academic success and socialisation. Seeking early treatment may mitigate this risk.

Secondly, late talking can have negative impacts for the child during their toddler years. A child who has few words may seem frustrated, withdrawn or aggressive. Such behaviours are more common among late talkers, likely because they lack the words to express feelings or wants. Parents may feel their children’s participation in family life and school or day care is being limited. Treatment may help the child to catch up to their peers and/or find alternate ways to communicate, which can improve participation.

Lastly, but most importantly, the presence of early language difficulties is a significant risk factor for ongoing language difficulties, often diagnosed as developmental language disorder.

This disorder occurs in at least one in five late talkers and can have substantial lifelong impacts on everyday functioning. Academic performance at school, self-esteem, mental health and employment opportunities are all negatively associated with a developmental language disorder diagnosis.

The tricky part is we cannot accurately predict which late talkers will go on to develop typical language skills, and which ones will later be diagnosed with developmental language disorder.

Read more:
What is DLD – the most common disorder you have ‘never heard of’?

What are the risk factors for ongoing language problems?

While is no single predictor that allows us to know for sure which children will face ongoing language problems, potential factors include being born male, a family history of language disorders, socioeconomic status, low birth weight and vocabulary size (both speaking and understanding). Disorders of speech and language cluster in families with genetic inheritance a significant factor.

Reading disorders such as dyslexia are often associated with language difficulties. Other factors often mentioned by parents, such as a history of ear infections or having older siblings (who might “do the talking for them”) do not increase the likelihood of language disorder.

Socioeconomic status and how parents interact with their children are risk factors found in research, but they are difficult to separate from the intergenerational impacts of language disorders. Parents with language problems may interact or communicate differently with their children and pass on an increased likelihood of the same traits. In most cases, not all the children in one family will be late talkers, so the environment may be one part of the puzzle. Parents should feel reassured they haven’t “caused” a language delay by speaking too little to their child.

Read more:
Why being bilingual can open doors for children with developmental disabilities, not close them

Encouraging early talk

Speech pathologists now take an active but cautious view: intervene rather than watch and wait.

Intervention can be very helpful, consisting of training for parents.

Techniques can include:

• recognising and encouraging the other ways a child might be communicating (such as eye gaze, pointing, vocalising)
• following the child’s interest during play
• pausing more to notice and encourage the child’s communication
• reducing frequent questioning (“What’s that?” “Who’s talking?”)
• instead, using more language when interacting, such as describing play (“I’ve got the green playdoh. I might make a snail”).

Importantly, a recent systematic review examined the results from 34 different intervention studies and found that 93% of them reported improvements in expressive vocabulary for late talkers.

So, when I am asked if late talking is a problem, I stress there is no evidence parents are the cause of their children’s difficulties and there is help available. If your child isn’t speaking as much as other children of the same age, it’s worth looking into it.

Suzanne Meldrum is a certified practising member of Speech Pathology Australia.

– ref. Lots of kids are ‘late talkers’. Here’s when to take action – https://theconversation.com/lots-of-kids-are-late-talkers-heres-when-to-take-action-206609

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Fusil, Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Adelaide

The four day-long search for the missing Titan submersible has come to a tragic end. Reports have confirmed the vessel was subject to a “catastrophic implosion” at some point during its voyage towards the Titanic shipwreck, which would have killed all five passengers instantly.

A debris field comprising “five different major pieces of debris” of various sections of the submersible was found on the sea floor about 500 metres away from the bow of the Titanic by a remotely operated vehicle, officials said.

These findings are in line with previous news that an acoustic signature “consistent with an implosion” was detected by the US Navy on the same day the Titan began its descent.

The navy’s seabed sensors detected the signature in the general area the vessel was diving when it lost communication with its mothership. At the time it was considered “not definitive”.

Read more:
An expert explains what safety features a submersible should have

What is a ‘catastrophic implosion’?

We can assume the implosion actually happened on the first day of the dive – but perhaps not exactly at the same time communication was lost with the mothership. But why did it happen?

Most, if not all, submersibles and submarines operating at depth have a pressure vessel made of a single metallic material with high yield strength. This is typically steel for relatively shallow depths (roughly less than 300m), or titanium for deeper depths.

A titanium or thick steel pressure vessel is usually a spherical shape that can withstand the crushing pressures you might expect at 3,800m – the depth at which the Titanic wreck lies.

The Titan, however, was different. It is pressure vessel made of a combination of titanium and composite carbon fibre. This is somewhat unusual from a structural engineering perspective since, in a deep diving context, titanium and carbon fibre are materials with vastly different properties.

Titanium is elastic and can adapt to an extended range of stresses without any measurable permanent strain remaining after the return to atmospheric pressure. It shrinks to adjust to pressure forces, and re-expands as these forces are alleviated. A carbon-fibre composite, on the other hand, is much stiffer and does not have the same kind of elasticity.

We can only speculate about what happened with the combination of these two technologies, which do not dynamically behave the same way under pressure.

But we can say almost certainly there would have been some kind of loss of integrity due to the differences between these materials. A composite material could potential suffer from “delamination”, which leads to a separation of the layers of reinforcement.

This would have created a defect which triggered an instantaneous implosion due to underwater pressure. Within less than one second, the vessel — being pushed down on by the weight of a 3,800m column of water — would have immediately crumpled in from all sides.

The final moments

When everything is designed, manufactured and tested perfectly, you’ve got a shape close enough to perfection that it can withstand the overall pressure being applied from all directions. In this scenario, the material can “breathe” – shrink and expand as needed with depth. The Titan’s implosion means this was not happening.

The implosion itself would have killed everyone within less than 20 milliseconds. In fact, the human brain can’t even process information at that speed. As much as this news is devastating, perhaps it is somewhat reassuring the Titan’s passengers would not have suffered a terrifying and drawn-out end.

Read more:
Why is extreme ‘frontier travel’ booming despite the risks?

Eric Fusil is affiliated with the Royal Institution of Naval Architects and Engineers Australia

– ref. What was the ‘catastrophic implosion’ of the Titan submersible? An expert explains – https://theconversation.com/what-was-the-catastrophic-implosion-of-the-titan-submersible-an-expert-explains-208359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Khoo, Associate Professor of International Politics, University of Otago

It’s not every day that a New Zealand prime minister takes China’s side in a disagreement between Washington and Beijing over whether the leader of China is a dictator.

But these are extraordinary times.

At a fundraising event on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden found himself talking about the Chinese espionage balloon incident in February. The president was in full voice, claiming, “The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it was he didn’t know it was there.”

He then went on to say, “That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened. That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course.”

At a press briefing in Beijing the next day, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, called Biden’s comments “irresponsible” and said they “go totally against facts and seriously violate diplomatic protocol, and severely infringe on China’s political dignity”.

But from a strictly factual point of view, Biden’s “dictator” comments were spot on. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a dictator as “an absolute ruler of a state”. Xi Jinping would seem to fit the bill.

He is general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the 2022 CCP constitution states that the party is committed “to uphold the people’s democratic dictatorship”.

‘Democratic dictatorship’ in theory and practice

The people’s democratic dictatorship concept was formally advanced for the first time in a landmark speech in 1949 by Mao Zedong, who led China from 1949 to 1976.

The concept is a cornerstone of the Chinese political system, and establishes the theoretical basis by which the CCP historically led the various “classes” of people in China – the working class, the peasant class, the petty bourgeoisie and the national capitalists:

to maintain dictatorship over the lackeys of imperialism – the landlord class, the bureaucratic capitalist class and the Kuomintang reactionaries and their henchmen representing these classes – to oppress them, to enable them to behave properly and not permit them to talk and act wildly.

Read more:
To understand what Xi Jinping’s concentration of power really means, we must turn to history

It also serves as one of the CCP’s “Four Cardinal Principles”. According to the CCP constitution:

The Four Cardinal Principles – to keep to the path of socialism, to uphold the people’s democratic dictatorship, to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and to uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought – form the foundation for building the country.

So far, so theoretical. But how does the people’s democratic dictatorship concept operate in the real world?

In essence, it legitimises Xi’s rule over China (from 2012 to the present). Indeed, it is widely recognised both in and out of China that he is the country’s most powerful leader since Mao.

Dictatorship by any other name

This is where Prime Minister Chris Hipkins comes into the picture. On Thursday he was asked by a reporter in Lower Hutt if he agreed with Biden’s “dictator” comment.
His response was: “No, and the form of government that China has is a matter for the Chinese people.”

The obvious response is to observe that, as a matter of law in China, Xi is the leader of a political system where there are no competitive multiparty elections. The seven members of the standing committee of the CCP select the general secretary of the CCP, not the citizens.

Read more:
China and the US are locked in struggle — and the visit by Secretary of State Blinken is only a start to improving relations

Careful planning by the CCP ensures there is zero uncertainty as to who will be selected as leader of China at every party congress, held every five years. If that is not a dictatorship, then what is?

We may debate whether the country has a benign or a malign dictatorship. But a dictatorship it is.

Hipkins was also asked how the Chinese people could actually change the way they are governed. He replied, “That would be a matter for them.” But precisely because China is run by the CCP through the mechanism of a “people’s democratic dictatorship”, the matter is not up to them.

‘Bourgeois liberalisation’

One hopes the prime minister gives serious thought to these issues before his visit to China and meeting with Xi next week. After all, history clearly demonstrates that dictatorships have had an adversarial relationship with liberal democracies.

Former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping characterised liberal democracy as an example of “bourgeois liberalisation” and launched a campaign in 1987 against such unwanted influences.

Read more:
New Zealand has just joined an overtly anti-China alliance – are the economic risks worth it?

And the CCP constitution states that the party must not just “uphold the people’s democratic dictatorship” but “oppose bourgeois liberalisation”.

The tangle the prime minister got himself into in Lower Hutt underlines the complex realities of heightened ideological differences underpinned by great-power rivalry in the 21st century.

It also reinforces the point that, in the third decade of the century, New Zealand must have a foreign policy to match those challenges.

Nicholas Khoo has received funding from the Asia New Zealand Foundation, the Australian National University, Columbia University, the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, and the University of Otago.

– ref. Sorry prime minister, Joe Biden was right – Xi Jinping really is a ‘dictator’ – https://theconversation.com/sorry-prime-minister-joe-biden-was-right-xi-jinping-really-is-a-dictator-208358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Lassaline, PhD Student, University of Adelaide

Shacking up with tarantulas, scorpions, and ants would be a nightmare for most people. But for others, these creepy-crawlies are welcome companions and collectables.

Global demand for exotic pets is rising, fuelled by social media and a shift from traditional brick-and-mortar pet stores to online marketplaces. The pet trade now extends beyond well known species such as parrots, reptiles and fish to a wide variety of invertebrates (animals without backbones) – from both land and water.

In our new research, we explored the rapidly growing trade in land-based invertebrates across 23 Australian online pet stores and one popular classifieds website. We found an astonishing 264 species traded online – from spiders and scorpions, to beetles and snails. The most commonly advertised species were stick insects, tarantulas and ants – we found a staggering 57 species of ant for sale.

While most of the invertebrates were native to Australia, we also exposed trade in three highly invasive alien species. The white garden snail, the Asian tramp snail and the African big-headed ant all pose serious threats to Australia’s biosecurity. They threaten agriculture, forestry and even public health.

Our research is the first to reveal the scale and diversity of the invertebrate pet trade in Australia. It’s a fascinating insight into how a hobby or private passion can become both a biosecurity and conservation threat.

Read more:
‘Astonishing’: global demand for exotic pets is driving a massive trade in unprotected wildlife

The threat of invasive species trade

Occasionally, exotic pets escape captivity, or are released by their owners.

Examples include the Mexican Red Rump Tarantula, now an established alien species in Florida, and the giant African land snail, which causes millions of dollars’ worth of damage to native plants and agricultural crops in many countries all over the world.

To avoid similar cases in Australia, we need better regulation and preventative measures. But why do people want to trade these species in the first place?

We found that some of the most sought-after species are considered “dangerous” and not recommended to be handled. Many of these species could inflict a painful bite or sting. Several are potentially lethal to humans.

Invertebrates are traded across the internet, including the dark web – where we found species such as goliath beetles and Chinese golden scorpions for sale. We also found native Australian invertebrates being traded at European wildlife expositions.

Invertebrates clearly make unique and fascinating pets. Now that we have a better understanding of the scale of the invertebrate pet trade, we must ensure it is managed appropriately.

We need to protect our native invertebrates

Invertebrates are thought to make up almost 95% of animal species, yet they are often neglected in research and conservation. Most invertebrate extinctions go unnoticed.

In the face of limited knowledge on population status and distribution, evaluating conservation risk for individual species is challenging.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species is the most comprehensive global database on the conservation status of wildlife. But almost all of the species (>90%) traded in our study had not had their conservation status evaluated by the IUCN.

Some species were advertised as “wild harvested”, meaning they were taken from the wild rather than bred in captivity. This is an immediate conservation concern for native Australian species, especially those with small population sizes and limited distribution.

Encouraging people to learn more about the invertebrate species in their area is essential for the conservation of global biodiversity. However, it is equally important to regulate their trade, in order to mitigate the associated risks to biosecurity and their conservation.

Read more:
They might not have a spine, but invertebrates are the backbone of our ecosystems. Let’s help them out

Is this trade legal or illegal?

The invertebrate trade in Australia is poorly regulated, and the line between what is considered legal or illegal is often unclear. However, collecting species from protected areas (such as national parks) without a permit is definitely illegal across Australia.

Almost half of all threatened species’ also range across privately owned land in Australia.

The extent of wild harvesting on both public and private land is largely unknown. But it is highly likely that illegal activity is occurring within Australia’s invertebrate trade.

Legislation concerning the import and export of invertebrates across state borders exists to some extent, but varies, across all Australian states and territories. The number of species declared as pests and the level of penalties for transporting these species differs considerably. This reduces the credibility and effectiveness of biosecurity efforts.

Overall, the Australian legal system governing the domestic trade of invertebrates largely ignores the pet trade. The focus of compliance is almost exclusively on crop pests, ignoring the broader invertebrate pet trade. We think this has to change.

Read more:
Lickable toads and magic mushrooms: wildlife traded on the dark web is the kind that gets you high

Barely scratching the surface

There are still many unknowns about the invertebrate pet trade. Our findings have only begun to scratch the surface of what is actually being traded in Australia.

Ongoing research will further explore the trade of invertebrates within Australian brick-and-mortar pet stores, at wildlife trade expositions, and within international wildlife seizure data.

Vital steps towards ensuring the preservation of Australia’s unique invertebrate biodiversity include strengthening regulations, encouraging responsible practices, and fostering collaboration – between researchers, hobbyists, and environmental biosecurity agencies.

Managing Australia’s online invertebrate trade is a delicate balancing act. We hope Australia’s growing trade in invertebrates can be managed to support best-practice conservation while promoting a greater connection to nature.

Phill Cassey is an inaugural ARC Industry Laureate Fellow. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.

Charlotte Lassaline 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. Buying bugs and beetles, or shopping for scorpions and snails? Australia’s pet trade includes hundreds of spineless species – https://theconversation.com/buying-bugs-and-beetles-or-shopping-for-scorpions-and-snails-australias-pet-trade-includes-hundreds-of-spineless-species-207932

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

Bitcoin boosters like to claim Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, are becoming mainstream. There’s a good reason to want people to believe this.

The only way the average punter will profit from crypto is to sell it for more than they bought it. So it’s important to talk up the prospects to build a “fear of missing out”.

There are loose claims that a large proportion of the population – generally in the range of 10% to 20% – now hold crypto. Sometimes these numbers are based on counting crypto wallets, or on surveying wealthy people.

But the hard data on Bitcoin use shows it is rarely bought for the purpose it ostensibly exists: to buy things.

Little use for payments

The whole point of Bitcoin, as its creator “Satoshi Nakamoto” stated in the opening sentence of the 2008 white paper outlining the concept, was that:

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.

The latest data demolishing this idea comes from Australia’s central bank.

Every three years the Reserve Bank of Australia surveys a representative sample of 1,000 adults about how they pay for things. As the following graph shows, cryptocurrency is making almost no impression as a payments instrument, being used by no more than 2% of adults.

Payment methods being used by Australians

By contrast more recent innovations, such as “buy now, pay later” services and PayID, are being used by around a third of consumers.

These findings confirm 2022 data from the US Federal Reserve, showing just 2% of the adult US population made a payment using a cryptocurrrency, and Sweden’s Riksbank, showing less than 1% of Swedes made payments using crypto.

The problem of price volatility

One reason for this, and why prices for goods and services are virtually never expressed in crypto, is that most fluctuate wildly in value. A shop or cafe with price labels or a blackboard list of their prices set in Bitcoin could be having to change them every hour.

The following graph from the Bank of International Settlements shows changes in the exchange rate of ten major cryptocurrencies against the US dollar, compared with the Euro and Japan’s Yen, over the past five years. Such volatility negates cryptocurrency’s value as a currency.

Cryptocurrency’s volatile ways

There have been attempts to solve this problem with so-called “stablecoins”. These promise to maintain steady value (usually against the US dollar).

But the spectacular collapse of one of these ventures, Terra, once one of the largest cryptocurrencies, showed the vulnerability of their mechanisms. Even a company with the enormous resources of Facebook owner Meta has given up on its stablecoin venture, Libra/Diem.

This helps explain the failed experiments with making Bitcoin legal tender in the two countries that have tried it: El Salvador and the Central African Republic. The Central African Republic has already revoked Bitcoin’s status. In El Salvador only a fifth of firms accept Bitcoin, despite the law saying they must, and only 5% of sales are paid in it.

Read more:
One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a spectacular failure

Storing value, hedging against inflation

If Bitcoin’s isn’t used for payments, what use does it have?

The major attraction – one endorsed by mainstream financial publications – is as a store of value, particularly in times of inflation, because Bitcoin has a hard cap on the number of coins that will ever be “mined”.

As Forbes writers argued a few weeks ago:

In terms of quantity, there are only 21 million Bitcoins released as specified by the ASCII computer file. Therefore, because of an increase in demand, the value will rise which might keep up with the market and prevent inflation in the long run.

The only problem with this argument is recent history. Over the course of 2022 the purchasing power of major currencies (US, the euro and the pound) dropped by about 7-10%. The purchasing power of a Bitcoin dropped by about 65%.

Speculation or gambling?

Bitcoin’s price has always been volatile, and always will be. If its price were to stabilise somehow, those holding it as a speculative punt would soon sell it, which would drive down the price.

But most people buying Bitcoin essentially as a speculative token, hoping its price will go up, are likely to be disappointed. A BIS study has found the majority of Bitcoin buyers globally between August 2015 and December 2022 have made losses.

The “market value” of all cryptocurrencies peaked at US$3 trillion in November 2021. It is now about US$1 trillion.

Bitcoins’s highest price in 2021 was about US$60,000; in 2022 US$40,000 and so far in 2023 only US$30,000. Google searches show that public interest in Bitcoin also peaked in 2021. In the US, the proportion of adults with internet access holding cryptocurrencies fell from 11% in 2021 to 8% in 2022.

Read more:
What is Bitcoin’s fundamental value? That’s a good question

UK government research published in 2022 found that 52% of British crypto holders owned it as a “fun investment”, which sounds like a euphemism for gambling. Another 8% explicitly said it was for gambling.

The UK parliament’s Treasury Committee, a group of MPs who examine economics and financial issues, has strongly recommended regulating cryptocurrency as form of gambling rather than as a financial product. They argue that continuing to treat “unbacked crypto assets as a financial service will create a ‘halo’ effect that leads consumers to believe that this activity is safer than it is, or protected when it is not”.

Read more:
Crypto trading: politicians who say it should be treated like gambling are completely wrong

Whatever the merits of this proposal, the UK committtee’s underlying point is solid. Buying crypto does have more in common with gambling than investing. Proceed at your own risk, and and don’t “invest” what you can’t afford to lose.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Bank for International Settlements.

He has neither a long nor short position in any cryptocurrency.

– ref. Almost no one uses Bitcoin as currency, new data proves. It’s actually more like gambling – https://theconversation.com/almost-no-one-uses-bitcoin-as-currency-new-data-proves-its-actually-more-like-gambling-207909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jemma Skeat, Senior Lecturer, Health Professions Education (Assessment), School of Medicine, Deakin University

When ChatGPT burst onto the scene in November last year, there was intense speculation about the implications of this technology for university teaching and learning.

There was panic about what it would mean for cheating as well as some excitement about helping students learn and academics teach.

But what has actually happened as universities have gone back to teaching and study?

Our new study looks at how Australian students and academics found ChatGPT in the first semester of university under this new technology.

The story so far

When ChatGPT was released in late 2022, academics were left “stunned” by the ease with which it could write university-level essays and pass some exams. And do so in ways that were largely indistinguishable from a human student.

This immediately prompted concerns about cheating and academic integrity, although some hoped ChatGPT and similar technologies may improve teaching, learning and assessment. Experts have suggested generative AI tools could support deeper learning for students and save time for academics, preparing lessons.

Amongst this, there have been calls for more attention to be paid to students’ perspectives. After all, they are at the centre of this change.

Our study

Between late April and late May 2023, we surveyed Australian academics and university students via an online questionnaire.

The 110 respondents (78 students and 32 academics) represented all states and territories, and a range of university courses and areas of study.

This article just speaks about the student results.

Read more:
We need to change the way universities assess students, starting with these 3 things

At this point, many students are NOT using ChatGPT

At this early stage, almost half of all student respondents had not yet tried or used generative AI.

Of this group, 85% did not intend to use the technology at university this year. Our findings suggest students may be worried it will be seen as cheating.

This group of non AI-using students strongly related the use of generative AI within assessment to cheating (85%). This was significantly more than those who had used AI (41%).

In their written responses some students also suggested they were avoiding it because it felt unethical. As one student told us:

Although current AI is harmless, I think there are serious questions about whether future advancements will be safe for humanity.

Students also listed other worries, such as unreliable information:

Information given may be biased. [It’s] very difficult to fact check – as generative AI can often not properly say where it got its information from. For similar reasons, plagiarism and breaches of copyright.

‘It’s super useful’

Students who used generative AI talked about it as a “launch pad”, to brainstorm ideas, get a better understanding of a topic or write an essay structure.

I use it to summarise lengthy articles […] I use it for feedback and suggestions for improvement.

They highlighted the interactive nature of programs such as ChatGPT. They said it was like having a “partner” in learning. As one student said:

I feel like it’s super useful (especially with COVID impairing face-to-face learning, peer study groups etc). It’s a nice study partner or support.

Another told us:

It leads to a more efficient use of time and energy. It makes me feel less stressed and anxious about assessments, as I almost feel as though I have a study buddy or friends to help me through.

In this way, we can see generative AI being used as a way to help manage stress. This is significant, as research has previously suggested increased stress can increase a student’s desire to cheat.

But students are confused

Students reported confusion about how the technology can and “should” be used.

For example, they were divided about whether universities should allow generative AI to be used for assessment, with 46% agreeing, 36% disagreeing and 16% unsure. Almost a quarter of students reported feeling unsure about the use of generative AI in university contexts generally, and only 8% felt very positively about it.

This confused response is not surprising – many universities are yet to provide clear guidance about this. Less than one third of the top 500 universities in the world had a clear response (be it positive or negative) to the availability of ChatGPT when their policies were reviewed in May this year.

What happens now?

As generative AI continues to evolve, it presents an opportunity to explore new frontiers in higher education. The early indications are it is not all scary or bad.

However, our research shows some students may not want to engage with the technology unless the “right” way to do this is very clear, and access and use is equitable and ethical.

As we move forward, employee voices will be important as university graduates enter the workforce in the era of AI. But we also need to keep listening to students.

Our study will continue to monitor how students and academics use generative AI as we move into semester 2.

We invite students and academics to contribute their perspectives. Our survey is anonymous and can be accessed here.

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. ‘A study buddy’ that raises ‘serious questions’: how uni students approached AI in their first semester with ChatGPT – https://theconversation.com/a-study-buddy-that-raises-serious-questions-how-uni-students-approached-ai-in-their-first-semester-with-chatgpt-207915

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Doug Drury, Professor/Head of Aviation, CQUniversity Australia

Mobile phones are not allowed to be used while on a plane because they can interfere with the aeroplane’s navigation instruments and cause various safety and social issues.

As soon as the plane lands, we’re permitted to turn off flight mode, but at some airports we can’t get much of a signal. That’s because airports are known as mobile signal “dead zones” due to a lack of mobile towers – they can’t be placed at the airport itself due to height restrictions.

Any nearby mobile towers would be located away from the airport’s runway systems to avoid interfering with the aeroplane’s flight path, especially take-off and landing direction. Most airports put up indoor repeater antennas within the airport terminal; these help increase the mobile signal strength coming from the nearest mobile tower somewhere near the airport.

But you won’t be allowed to make calls while walking away from the plane, anyway.

Read more:
Here’s the real reason to turn on aeroplane mode when you fly

Why can’t I use my phone on the tarmac?

As we are taxiing in, the cabin crew remind us not to smoke outside of designated areas at the terminal and not to use our mobile phones until we are inside the terminal building.

If you exit the plane down the rear stairs, why aren’t you allowed to use your phone once away from the aeroplane, if you can get a signal? Surely it won’t affect navigation.

The answer is manifold, and regulations aren’t the same across the world.

In Australia, a government regulation prohibits the use of mobile phones on the tarmac – the aeroplane movement and parking area of the airport.

You won’t be fined if you whip your phone out while walking to the terminal, but the airline may admonish you for not following the rules. However, if you decide to (run around on the tarmac, you could get arrested by federal police.

The airport tarmac is very busy not just with aircraft, but also baggage carts, catering trucks, aeroplane waste removal trucks, and fuel trucks. Getting passengers off the tarmac and into the terminal building quickly and safely is a priority for the staff.

If you are distracted while walking to the terminal building because you’re talking on your phone, it can be highly dangerous and even deadly if you end up too close to an operating plane. An operating jet engine is extremely hot and has a strong exhaust. Additionally, the front of the engine has a low-pressure area called an ingestion zone that can suck in a person. Ground staff are trained to stay at least ten metres away from this area. However, this information is not shared with the passengers.

A myth about fuel

You may have heard that mobile phones are a fire hazard near fuel, and aeroplanes are, of course, refuelled on the tarmac.

However, the chances of fuel catching fire during this process are extremely low, because the refuelling truck is bonded and “grounded” to the plane: the operator attaches a wire to the aircraft to move built-up static electricity to the ground to prevent any chance of a spark.

There have been stories in the press about mobile phones sparking fires at petrol stations in Indonesia and Australia, but these turned out to be inaccurate. There is no evidence a phone can spark a fire at a fuel pump, despite the warning labels you might see.

Either way, the chances of a mobile phone causing this on the tarmac with a refuelling truck that is grounded to the aeroplane are extremely low, not least because the passenger permitted areas and refuelling areas are completely separated.

Why are we told not to take photos on the tarmac?

This rule varies from airport to airport depending on their security processes.

Such restrictions are carryovers from the changes to airport security following the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. The now federalised security teams, TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in the United States and the Department of Home Affairs in Australia, change their processes frequently to prevent having any identifiable patterns that could be used to create a security breach.

The increased security measures also mean new technologies were introduced; airport security sections do not want photos taken of how they operate.

The airport security process is a major choke point in the flow of passenger movement due to the screening process. If a passenger is perceived to be slowing the process down by taking photos or talking on their phone, they will be reminded to turn off their device and/or stop taking photos of security personnel and equipment.

If you refuse to follow the rules of the screening process, you will be denied entry into the airport terminal gate area and miss your flight. Can you also get arrested for using your phone? Depends on the airport and country. I, for one, do not want to find out.

Doug Drury 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 can’t I use my phone or take photos on the airport tarmac? Is it against the law? – https://theconversation.com/why-cant-i-use-my-phone-or-take-photos-on-the-airport-tarmac-is-it-against-the-law-207926

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paula Gerber, Professor of Human Rights Law, Monash University

The newly passed Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda has made a country that was already dangerous for LGBTQ+ people truly treacherous.

The new law includes the death penalty for the so-called offence of “aggravated homosexuality”, defined as same-sex relations involving someone who is HIV positive or under the age of 18.

Many countries around the world are moving towards decriminalising same-sex relations (most recently Barbados, Singapore and the Cook Islands). Others, however, are seeking to impose harsher laws.

For example, in Tanzania, the leader of the women’s wing of the government has called for the castration of men convicted of same-sex related offences. Ghana, meanwhile, appears to have watered down a draconian anti-gay bill, but only after US Vice President Kamala Harris expressed concerns about it ahead of her visit.

This increasing hostility towards LGBTQ+ people in some African nations is causing many to flee. But gay and gender-diverse people have historically faced enormous obstacles finding refuge abroad. Today, they remain among the most vulnerable and marginalised of all asylum seekers.

Read more:
There’s a growing gap between countries advancing LGBTQ+ rights, and those going backwards

LGTBQ+ Ugandans have few options

For LGBTQ+ Ugandans, finding a safe haven is not easy when four of the five countries that border Uganda also criminalise same-sex sexual conduct (South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Kenya is the most common destination for asylum seekers fleeing Uganda. However, there’s been a backlash against LGBTQ+ people in that country after the Supreme Court recently ruled that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation violated the constitution.

LGBTQ+ Ugandans in one Kenyan refugee camp reported facing daily hostilities, saying the situation there is “as terrible as you can imagine”.

There are now increasing calls in western countries to open their doors to LGBTQ+ refugees from Uganda, but even in countries with progressive gay rights laws, the process is not so simple.

In Australia, for example, just 1,100 asylum seekers were granted a protection visa because of their sexual orientation from 2018-23. This is barely a drop in the ocean of the reported need. The LGBTQ+ advocacy group Rainbow Railroad says it receives an average of 10,000 requests for assistance a year from LGBTQ+ people fleeing persecution.

Read more:
Rwanda: LGBT rights are protected on paper, but discrimination and homophobia persist

What international refugee treaties say

The 1951 Refugee Convention is the leading international treaty governing the rights of people seeking asylum. When it was drafted, however, homosexuality was still a crime in a majority of countries. As a result, LGBTQ+ people are not explicitly protected by the convention, even today.

The convention defines a refugee as a person who has a well-founded fear of persecution based on

• race
• religion
• nationality
• membership of a particular social group
• political opinion.

In the 1990s, many western countries such as the US, Canada and Australia began recognising LGBTQ+ people as a “particular social group” under this treaty, who could seek asylum if they have a reasonable fear of persecution.

Finally, in 2008, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued guidance on refugee claims relating to sexual orientation and gender identity.

This should have streamlined the process for those seeking asylum. But many refugee claims made by LGBTQ+ people are still unsuccessful. Why is this the case?

Reasons LGBTQ+ refugees are turned down

Let’s look at Australia as a specific example. Even though Australia recognised LGBTQ+ people as a persecuted group under the Refugee Convention, many claims were still being rejected until 2003 on the basis that gay people could be safe in their home countries if they were discrete about their sexuality.

Then, in December 2003, the High Court ruled it is fundamentally wrong to expect a person to hide their sexual orientation in order to be safe from persecution.

This, however, did not result in the expected increase in successful asylum seeker applications. Many LGBTQ+ people found themselves facing a new obstacle – officials questioning whether they were, in fact, members of the LGBTQ+ community.

For example, in 2020, the Federal Court considered a decision of the Refugee Review Tribunal rejecting the asylum applications of two Pakistani men who feared persecution in their home country because of their relationship.

The tribunal said it did not believe the men were gay or in a relationship. It questioned the men’s credibility for various reasons. These included the fact the men visited gay venues in Melbourne when they said they wanted to keep their relationship a secret and because of how they responded to questions about their first sexual encounter.

On appeal, the Federal Court found the tribunal’s conclusions about the men’s credibility to be flawed and irrational. The court sent the case back to the tribunal to be heard again.

It is difficult to understand how such assessments are still being made when there are comprehensive resources available to assist government decision-makers to avoid such mistakes.

The high rate of rejection of LGBTQ+ asylum claims is not unique to Australia. A recent study found that across Europe, one in three claims by LGBTQ+ asylum seekers were denied because officials did not believe the claimants’ assertions about their sexual orientation.

And four in ten were turned down because officials didn’t believe they were at risk of persecution in their home countries.

Read more:
Homosexuality and Africa: a philosopher’s perspective

Is there a path forward?

Many western countries have opened their arms to refugees fleeing war in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and most recently, Ukraine. But armed conflict is not the only reason people need to flee their countries. Uganda is waging war against its LGBTQ+ citizens, and they need to urgently escape.

It is up to countries that respect the rights of LGBTQ+ people to offer them a safe haven. Canada provides a useful illustration of how this can be done. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this month his government is partnering with Rainbow Railroad to “help LGBTQI+ people start a new, safe chapter here in Canada.”

For LGBTQ+ people fleeing Uganda, one can hope this is not the only door open to them.

Paula Gerber is President of Kaleidoscope Human Rights Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for the rights of LGBTIQ+ people in the Asia Pacific region.

– ref. LGBTQ+ people are facing increasing persecution globally, but refugee status is still extremely hard to get – https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-people-are-facing-increasing-persecution-globally-but-refugee-status-is-still-extremely-hard-to-get-207119

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arthur Grimes, Professor of Wellbeing and Public Policy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Whether it be repression of free speech under authoritarian regimes or instances of
“cancel culture” in various countries, the importance of freedom of expression is being is as hotly contested as ever. But does freedom of speech benefit all groups equally?

In recently published research, we tackled the question of who actually benefits the most from having freedom of speech. Is it people with the most resources – either income or education – who benefit more, or is it people with few resources?

The idea that those with resources benefit most falls in line with the “hierarchy of needs” developed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. He argued that people would seek to meet their most pressing needs – such as food and shelter – before looking to achieve “luxuries” such as freedom of speech.

But the view that freedom of speech most benefits those with few resources is consistent with the idea that marginalised people have less scope to influence decisions in society through their spending or networks. They require freedom of speech to influence societal decisions.

The right to say anything

The principle of free speech was perhaps best illustrated in 1906 by the writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, paraphrasing French philosopher Voltaire. She wrote:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Free speech was entrenched as a right by the United Nations in Article 19 of its 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

But it is recognised that even in countries with a high degree of free speech there may be restrictions against hate speech, terrorism and treason. Following the Christchurch massacre, for example, the terrorist’s manifesto and video were classified as objectionable and banned from distribution in New Zealand.

And, while the right to freedom of expression is enshrined in most constitutions, people in many countries face restrictions on their speech. During the recent coronation of King Charles, for example, 52 protesters in the United Kingdom were arrested before their protest even started. This was criticised as an assault on their free speech.

Free speech and wellbeing

Our research tested whether changes in countries’ restrictions on free speech were associated with rises or falls in the wellbeing of well-resourced people relative to poorly-resourced people in those countries.

The analysis included 300,000 individuals from more than 90 countries over a 40-year period. It used wellbeing and other individual data from the World Values Survey and the Latino Barometer survey. Wellbeing was measured by how people rate the overall quality of their life.

We supplemented the individual wellbeing data with measures of country-level free speech and human rights, sourced from two independently compiled databases (CIRIGHTS and VDEM). Many countries in the surveys had marked changes in their free speech levels over the study period.

The research produced two key findings.

First, people with more resources place greater stated priority on freedom of speech (when asked to rank its importance).

Read more:
Oath Keepers convictions shed light on the limits of free speech – and the threat posed by militias

Second, it was actually the people with fewer resources who benefited most from free speech. The results indicated that free speech empowered those with fewer resources, providing a greater lift to the wellbeing of more marginalised people.

The two results are not incompatible: people with fewer resources may need to prioritise basic needs more than “luxuries” such as free speech but, being in marginalised populations, they may still benefit most from having freedom of expression.

We also found that people who said they valued free speech benefited from living in countries with free speech. And, preferences towards free speech varied according to certain characteristics within the population (in addition to income and education).

Groups more likely to prioritise free speech included the young, students, non-religious people and those on the left of the political spectrum. Preferences also reflected country circumstances, with people in the West being more supportive of free speech than people in other regions of the world.

In defence of the marketplace of ideas

In a world in which freedom of speech is increasingly being placed at risk, it may become important to protect the “marketplace for ideas”. As 19th century thinker John Stuart Mill argued, ideas should “compete” in an open marketplace and be tested by the public to determine which ideas will prevail.

Read more:
There are differences between free speech, hate speech and academic freedom – and they matter

Notwithstanding current risks with social media “echo-chambers”, this basic insight still has much to recommend it. People must be able to express their views and receive the views of others openly.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights emphasises this two-way aspect of freedom of expression – that is, people have “the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas”.

Countries’ laws should reflect Hall’s insistence about freedom of expression – at a national level we should defend people’s right to say what they want. At a personal level, we should also respect the importance of being a good listener, even when, to paraphrase Hall, we disapprove of what is being said.

Arthur Grimes received funding from Victoria University of Wellington and from Motu Research for this work.

– ref. Who benefits most from the protection of free speech – the haves or the have-nots? – https://theconversation.com/who-benefits-most-from-the-protection-of-free-speech-the-haves-or-the-have-nots-207706

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacques Raubenheimer, Senior Research Fellow, Biostatistics, University of Sydney

Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.

Don’t we all want to do what we can to reduce the impact of age-related decline on our memory?

A new study suggests a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement is a simple and inexpensive way to help older adults slow the decline in some aspects of memory function.

The new study, which comes from a long-running clinical trial, shows there may be a small benefit of taking a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement for one type of cognitive task (immediate word recall) among well-functioning elderly white people. At least in the short term.

But that doesn’t mean we should all rush out and buy multivitamins. The results of the study don’t apply to the whole population, or to all types of memory function. Nor does the study show long-term benefits.

Read more:
How much memory loss is normal with ageing?

How was the study conducted?

The overarching COSMOS study is a well-designed double-blind randomised control trial. This means participants were randomly allocated to receive the intervention (a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement) or a placebo (dummy tablet), but neither the participants nor the researchers knew which one they were taking.

This type of study is considered the gold standard and allows researchers to compare various outcomes.

Participants (3,562) were older than 64 for women, and 59 for men, with no history of heart attack, invasive cancer, stroke or serious illness. They couldn’t use multivitamins or minerals (or cocoa extract which they also tested) during the trial.

Participants completed a battery of online cognitive tests at the start of the study (known as baseline), then yearly for three years, of which only three were reported in this paper:

• ModRey, measuring immediate recall. Participants were shown “a list of 20 words, one at a time, for three seconds each,” and then had to type the list from memory

• ModBent, measuring object recognition. Participants were given 20 prompts with a shape and then had to select the correct match from a pair of similar prompts. After this, they were prompted with 40 shapes in turn, and had to indicate whether each was included in the original 20 or not

• Flanker, measuring “executive control”. Participants had to select a coloured block that corresponded to an arrow in a matrix of arrows, which could have the same (or different) colour to the surrounding arrows, and the same (or different) direction as the prompt block.

What did the researchers find?

Of all the tests the researchers performed, only immediate recall (ModRey) at one year showed a significant effect, meaning the result is unlikely to just be a result of chance.

At two and three years, the effect was no longer significant (meaning it could be down to chance).

However they added an “overall estimate” by averaging the results from all three years to arrive at another significant effect.

All the effect sizes reported are very small. The largest effect is for the participants’ immediate recall at one year, which was 0.07 – a value that is generally considered very small without justification.

Also of note is that both the multivitamin and placebo groups had higher immediate word recall scores at one year (compared to baseline), although the multivitamin group’s increase was significantly larger.

In the researchers’ prior study, the increase in word recall scores was described as a “typical learning (practice) effect”. This means they attributed the higher scores at one year to familiarisation with the test.

For some reason, this “learning effect” was not discussed in the current paper, where the treatment group showed a significantly larger increase compared to those who were given the placebo.

What are the limitations of the study?

The team used a suitable statistical analysis. However, it did not adjust for demographic characteristics such as age, gender, race, and level of education.

The authors detail their study’s major limitation well: it is not very generalisable, as it used “mostly white participants” who had to be very computer literate, and, one could argue, would be quite well-functioning cognitively.

Another unmentioned limitation is the advanced age of their sample, meaning long-term results for younger people can’t be assessed.

Additionally, the baseline diet score for their sample was abysmal. The researchers say participants’ diet scores “were consistent with averages from the US population” but the cited study noted “the overall dietary quality… [was] poor.”

And they didn’t measure changes in diet over the three years, which could impact the results.

Read more:
How to make your diet more sustainable, healthy or cheap – without giving up nutrients

How should we interpret the results?

The poor dietary quality of the sample raises the question: can a better diet be the simple fix, rather than multivitamin and mineral supplements?

Even for the effect they observed, which micronutrient from the supplement was the contributing factor?

The researchers speculate about vitamins B12 and D. But you can find research on cognitive function for any arbitrarily chosen ingredient, including selenium, which can be toxic at high levels.

So should I take a multivitamin?

Health authorities advise daily multivitamin use isn’t necessary, as you can get all the nutrients you need by eating a wide variety of healthy foods. However, supplementation may be appropriate to meet any specific nutrient gaps an individual has.

Using a good quality multivitamin at the recommended dose shouldn’t do any harm, but at best, this study shows well-functioning elderly white people might show some additional benefit in one type of cognitive task from using a multivitamin supplement.

The case for most of the rest of the population, and the long-term benefit for younger people, can’t be made.

Blind peer review

Clare Collins writes:

I agree with the reviewer’s assessment, which is a comprehensive critique of the study. The key result was a small effect size from taking a daily multivitamin and mineral (or “multinutrient”) supplement on memory recall at one year (but not later time points) and is equivalent to a training effect where you get better at taking a test the more times you do it.

It’s also worth noting the study authors received support and funding from commercial companies to undertake the study.

While the study authors state they don’t believe background diet quality impacted the results, they didn’t comprehensively assess this. They used a brief diet quality assessment score only at baseline. Participants may have changed their eating habits during the study, which could then impact the results.

Given all participants reported low diet quality scores, an important question is whether giving participants the knowledge, skills and resources to eat more healthily would have a bigger impact on cognition than taking supplements.

Read more:
Can taking vitamins and supplements help you recover from COVID?

Clare Collins AO is a Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, NSW and a Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) affiliated researcher. She is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, HMRI, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute, Dietitians Australia and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.

Jacques Raubenheimer 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. Can a daily multivitamin improve your memory? – https://theconversation.com/can-a-daily-multivitamin-improve-your-memory-208114

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gretta Pecl, Professor, ARC Future Fellow & Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania

If you take a plunge in the sea this winter, you might notice it’s warmer than you expect. And if you’re fishing off Sydney and catch a tropical coral trout, you might wonder what’s going on.

The reason is simple: hotter water. The ocean has absorbed the vast majority of the extra heat trapped by carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. It’s no wonder heat in the oceans is building up rapidly – and this year is off the charts.

That’s even without the likely arrival of El Niño, where the Pacific Ocean gets warmer than usual and affects weather all over the world. Our coastal waters are forecast to be especially warm over the coming months, up to 2.5℃ warmer than usual in many places.

Many marine species live within a narrow temperature range. If the water heats up, they have to move, and if they don’t, they might die. So those that can move, are moving. In Australia, at least 200 marine species have shifted distributions since 2003, with 87% heading south.

This pattern is happening all around the world, both on land and in the ocean. This year, the warmer ocean temperatures during winter mean Australia’s seascapes are likely to be more like summer. So, the next time you go fishing or diving or beachcombing, keep your eyes peeled and your camera ready. You may glimpse the enormous disruption happening underwater for yourself.

Here are eight species on the move

1. Moorish idol (Zanclus cornutus)

Historic range: northern Australia

Now: This striking fish can now be seen south of Geraldton in Western Australia and Eden in New South Wales.

This is a great fish for divers to spot on hard-bottomed habitats.

2. Branching coral (Pocillopora aliciae)

Historic range: northern NSW

Now: Look out for this pale pink beauty south of Port Stephens, not far from Sydney.

Seemingly immovable species like coral are fleeing the heat too. They’re already providing habitat for a range of other shifting species like tropical fish and crab species.

3. Eastern rock lobster (Sagmariasus verreauxi)

Historic range: common in NSW

Now: South, as far as it can get. It’s now found in Tasmania and even in South Australia.

This tasty greenish crustacean doesn’t like heat and has moved south into the territory of red southern rock lobsters (Jasus edwardsii).

4. Gloomy octopus (Octopus tetricus)

Previous range: common in NSW

Now: As far south as Tasmania.

Look out for this slippery, smart invertebrate in Tasmanian waters this winter. You might even spot the octopus nestled down with some eggs, as this looks to be a permanent sea change.

5. Whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus)

Previous range: northern Australia

Now: South of K’gari (formerly known as Fraser Island).

Classed as vulnerable in parts of the world, this tropical shark is a slow swimmer and never sleeps. It poses very little danger to humans.

6. Dugongs (Dugong dugon)
Previous range: northern Australia

Now: As far south as Shark Bay in WA and Tweed River in New South Wales.

Our waters are home to the largest number of dugong in the world. But as waters warm, they’re heading south. That means more of us may see these elusive sea-cows as they graze on seagrass meadows.

Some of the most adventurous have gone way out of their normal range – in 2014, a kitesurfer reported passing a dugong at City Beach, Perth. As a WA wildlife expert says, dugongs may occasionally stray further south of Shark Bay but “given the recent warming trend […] more dugong sightings might be expected in the future”

7. Red emperor (Lutjanus sebae) and other warm water game fish

Previous range: northern Australia

Now: Appearing much further south – especially in WA.

Look for red, threadfin, and redthroat emperors in southwest WA as the Leeuwin current carries these warm water species south. As WA fisheries expert Gary Jackson has said, this current is a warming hotspot, acting like a warm water highway for certain marine species.

These fish are highly sought after by fishers.

8. Long-spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii)

Historic range: NSW and Victoria

Now: Tasmania

Look out for these spiky critters in southern and western Tasmania. The larvae of these urchins have crossed the Bass Strait and found a new home, due to warming waters. Urchins are grazers and can scrape rocks clean, creating urchin barrens where nothing grows. That’s bad news for kelp forests and the species which depend on them. In response, Tasmanian authorities are working to create a viable urchin fishery to keep numbers down.

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

You can help keep watch

For years, fishers, snorkellers, spearfishers and the general public have contributed their unusual marine sightings to Redmap, the Australian citizen science project aimed at mapping range extensions of species.

If you spot a creature that wouldn’t normally live in the waters near you, you can upload a photo to log your sighting.

For example, avid spearfisher Derrick Cruz logged a startling discovery with Redmap in 2015: A coral trout in Sydney’s waters. As he told us: “I’ve seen plenty of coral trout in tropical waters, where they’re at home within the coral. But it was surreal to see one swimming through a kelp forest in the local waters off Sydney, much further south than I’ve ever seen that species before!”

How does tracking these movements help scientists? Many hands make light work. These vital observations from citizen scientists have helped researchers gain deeper understanding of what climate change is doing to the natural world in many places, from bird migrations to flowering plants to marine creatures.

So, please keep an eye out this year. The heat is on in our oceans, and that can mean sudden change.

Read more:
Sydney’s waters could be tropical in decades, here’s the bad news…

Gretta Pecl receives funding from the Australian Research Council, CSIRO, FRDC, DCCEEW, Department of Agriculture Water and the Environment, and Department of Primary Industries NSW.

Curtis Champion receives funding from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. He works for NSW Department of Primary Industries.

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

– ref. Marine species are being pushed towards the poles. From dugong to octopuses, here are 8 marine species you might spot in new places – https://theconversation.com/marine-species-are-being-pushed-towards-the-poles-from-dugong-to-octopuses-here-are-8-marine-species-you-might-spot-in-new-places-207115

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

It’s that time of the year when reports on student learning come home. Anxiety for students and their parents and caregivers often tags along.

Long gone are the days when a school report was handwritten page, with wisdom like “tried hard, but needs to try harder”, along with percentages or letter grades.

Now students get multi-page reports, with a dazzling array of verbal and sometimes graphical data. Most require significant time to digest and interpret.

But despite all the effort schools make to produce these documents, parents can finish a report and have little idea whether their child is doing OK.

How did we get here?

A major part of the problem is Commonwealth regulation on education.
This requires schools to provide a report to “each person responsible” for a student “at least twice a year”. It must also be “readily understandable” to a parent or caregiver.

For students from Years 1 to 10, the report must give “accurate and objective assessment” of the student’s progress and achievement, including an assessment of the student’s achievement:

• against any available national standards

• relative to the performance of the student’s peer group

• reported as A, B, C, D or E (or on an equivalent five-point scale) for each subject studied, clearly defined against specific learning standards.

Read more:
How to talk to your child about their school report

Information gets swamped

We see the well-intentioned desire to provide parents and caregivers with timely and useful information becoming swamped by the rest of the requirements around reports.

The combination of the regulation’s demand for accurate, objective standards, relative to the peer group, and on a five-point scale is a recipe for communicating a lot of words and overwhelming data. The language used can also be inconsistent or not clearly defined.

Both a 2019 Australian Council of Education Research review and anecdotal reports suggest parents do not find reports particularly clear or helpful. Or as some described them to The Sydney Morning Herald in 2018, “sterile and technical” and “next to useless”.

Focus is also on achievement at certain points (say, the half-year mark), rather than learning progress. And that doesn’t take into account the increasing number of Australian households where English is not the language spoken at home.

Read more:
Report cards’ report card: showing potential, but with room for improvement

How does this fit with other ideas about school?

This highly standardised approach also conflicts with other trends in education. There is a growing understanding we need to take a more individualised and flexible approach to support all kinds of learners at school.

This includes the move towards personalised learning, flexible curriculum progression, and using online assessment tools that show students’ ongoing progress.

But don’t hold your breath the regulations will change any time soon.

The government is consulting with parents, schools and communities about the next National School Reform Agreement, which is due to begin in 2025, but this does not specifically ask about reports.

Read more:
What is the National School Reform Agreement and what does it have to do with school funding?

Some schools do it differently

However, some schools are already doing reports about student learning very differently, albeit with very different philosophies and practices.

Some Australian schools are using personalised curricula and reporting through practical projects such as an album of recorded music to demonstrate a student’s progress.

Others schools focus on “dispositions towards learning” that prioritise entreprenurial skills and innovative thinking that will set them up for post-school life.

Other schools get students to draw evidence from their
curricular and co-curricular achievements that build towards a microcredential mapped to the Australian Skills Quality Authority. Microcredentials are short skills-based courses, that can be counted as part of a larger certificate or diploma.

Non-profit education organisation Learning Creates Australia has developed a “new metrics” framework for the senior years of high school. This redesigns the current focus on tests and scores, that (incorrectly) assumes the goal for all secondary students is to go to university. They suggest a broader student profile which includes learning progress in areas of particular interest and relevance to students.

Other schools are taking a classical approach. Students study classical literature, mathematics, and science along with philosophy and aesthetics. Assessment relies on the teacher’s judgement about the student’s progress, rather than prescribed “predicted outcomes”.

Reporting includes formal documents, but also regular conversation between parents, teachers, mentors and students.

Schools and parents can create alternatives

All these alternative approaches place critical thinking and creativity at the core of their learning philosophy, assessment, and reporting. Each prioritise evidence of student learning that is meaningful to them and their community.

This suggests standardised reporting on a five-point scale leaves a lot to be desired. But until regulatory constraints change, they’re here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps it’s better, then, for school communities to create better solutions for themselves. Each of the examples here show how powerful learning can be when parents and caregivers are meaningful partners with the school, rather than passive recipients of predetermined outputs.

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

– ref. Why do I find my child’s school report so hard to understand? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-find-my-childs-school-report-so-hard-to-understand-207831

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

Bitcoin boosters like to claim Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, are becoming mainstream. There’s a good reason to want people to believe this.

The only way the average punter will profit from crypto is to sell it for more than they bought it. So it’s important to talk up the prospects to build a “fear of missing out”.

There are loose claims that a large proportion of the population – generally in the range of 10% to 20% – now hold crypto. Sometimes these numbers are based on counting crypto wallets, or on surveying wealthy people.

But the hard data on Bitcoin use shows it is rarely bought for the purpose it ostensibly exists: to buy things.

Little use for payments

The whole point of Bitcoin, as its creator “Satoshi Nakamoto” stated in the opening sentence of the 2008 white paper outlining the concept, was that:

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.

The latest data demolishing this idea comes from Australia’s central bank.

Every three years the Reserve Bank of Australia surveys a representative sample of 1,000 adults about how they pay for things. As the following graph shows, cryptocurrency is making almost no impression as a payments instrument, being used by no more than 2% of adults.

Payment methods being used by Australians

By contrast more recent innovations, such as “buy now, pay later” services and PayID, are being used by around a third of consumers.

These findings confirm 2022 data from the US Federal Reserve, showing just 2% of the adult US population made a payment using a cryptocurrrency, and Sweden’s Riksbank, showing less than 1% of Swedes made payments using crypto.

The problem of price volatility

One reason for this, and why prices for goods and services are virtually never expressed in crypto, is that most fluctuate wildly in value. A shop or cafe with price labels or a blackboard list of their prices set in Bitcoin could be having to change them every hour.

The following graph from the Bank of International Settlements shows changes in the exchange rate of ten major cryptocurrencies against the US dollar, compared with the Euro and Japan’s Yen, over the past five years. Such volatility negates cryptocurrency’s value as a currency.

Cryptocurrency’s volatile ways

There have been attempts to solve this problem with so-called “stablecoins”. These promise to maintain steady value (usually against the US dollar).

But the spectacular collapse of one of these ventures, Terra, once one of the largest cryptocurrencies, showed the vulnerability of their mechanisms. Even a company with the enormous resources of Facebook owner Meta has given up on its stablecoin venture, Libra/Diem.

This helps explain the failed experiments with making Bitcoin legal tender in the two countries that have tried it: El Salvador and the Central African Republic. The Central African Republic has already revoked Bitcoin’s status. In El Salvador only a fifth of firms accept Bitcoin, despite the law saying they must, and only 5% of sales are paid in it.

Read more:
One year on, El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has proven a spectacular failure

Storing value, hedging against inflation

If Bitcoin’s isn’t used for payments, what use does it have?

The major attraction – one endorsed by mainstream financial publications – is as a store of value, particularly in times of inflation, because Bitcoin has a hard cap on the number of coins that will ever be “mined”.

As Forbes writers argued a few weeks ago:

In terms of quantity, there are only 21 million Bitcoins released as specified by the ASCII computer file. Therefore, because of an increase in demand, the value will rise which might keep up with the market and prevent inflation in the long run.

The only problem with this argument is recent history. Over the course of 2022 the purchasing power of major currencies (US, the euro and the pound) dropped by about 7-10%. The purchasing power of a Bitcoin dropped by about 65%.

Speculation or gambling?

Bitcoin’s price has always been volatile, and always will be. If its price were to stabilise somehow, those holding it as a speculative punt would soon sell it, which would drive down the price.

But most people buying Bitcoin essentially as a speculative token, hoping its price will go up, are likely to be disappointed. A BIS study has found the majority of Bitcoin buyers globally between August 2015 and December 2022 have made losses.

The “market value” of all cryptocurrencies peaked at US$3 trillion in November 2021. It is now about US$1 trillion.

Bitcoins’s highest price in 2021 was about US$60,000; in 2022 US$40,000 and so far in 2023 only US$30,000. Google searches show that public interest in Bitcoin also peaked in 2021. In the US, the proportion of adults with internet access holding cryptocurrencies fell from 11% in 2021 to 8% in 2022.

Read more:
What is Bitcoin’s fundamental value? That’s a good question

UK government research published in 2022 found that 52% of British crypto holders owned it as a “fun investment”, which sounds like a euphemism for gambling. Another 8% explicitly said it was for gambling.

The UK parliament’s Treasury Committee, a group of MPs who examine economics and financial issues, has strongly recommended regulating cryptocurrency as form of gambling rather than as a financial product. They argue that continuing to treat “unbacked crypto assets as a financial service will create a ‘halo’ effect that leads consumers to believe that this activity is safer than it is, or protected when it is not”.

Read more:
Crypto trading: politicians who say it should be treated like gambling are completely wrong

Whatever the merits of this proposal, the UK committtee’s underlying point is solid. Buying crypto does have more in common with gambling than investing. Proceed at your own risk, and and don’t “invest” what you can’t afford to lose.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Bank for International Settlements.

He has neither a long nor short position in any cryptocurrency.

– ref. New data proves almost no one uses Bitcoin as currency. It’s actually more like gambling – https://theconversation.com/new-data-proves-almost-no-one-uses-bitcoin-as-currency-its-actually-more-like-gambling-207909

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

Special Minister of State Don Farrell, who’s also minister for trade and tourism and the government’s deputy leader in the Senate, is a numbers man from way back.

A powerbroker of the right, in 2012 Farrell (only a parliamentary secretary at the time) had the numbers to be placed top of the South Australian Senate ticket, relegating the left’s Penny Wong, who was a senior minister, to the second spot for the 2013 election.

Sometimes, however, the numbers don’t prevail. Amid the ensuing controversy, Farrell stepped down to second place.

As a result he lost his seat at the 2013 election. He turned his hand to establishing a vineyard, before being returned at the 2016 election and becoming deputy opposition leader in the Senate. Then he had to cede that position to Kristina Keneally after the 2019 election.

Farrell and Anthony Albanese were long-time factional opponents. But under Albanese’s government, Farrell is prospering. With the thaw in China-Australia relations, it’s a very good time to be trade minister.

Now Farrell is set to wrangle sweeping changes to the donation and spending rules for federal elections. Those changes have the potential to affect parliamentary numbers in future elections.

This week the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) recommended broad reforms: a drastic lowering of the threshold for disclosing donations, and “real time” disclosure; caps on donations and spending, including for “third parties” (such as Climate 200, founded by Simon Holmes à Court) and associated entities (primarily bodies raising money for parties); and increased public funding for elections. The committee also said there should be legislation for truth in advertising.

The recommendations were made in the committee’s majority report, with the Coalition members dissenting on key issues. JSCEM didn’t spell out fine detail, and its final report won’t come until late in the year.

Farrell is not waiting for JSCEM’s last word. Unsurprisingly, the recommendations from the Labor-dominated committee are in line with Labor’s policy, and Farrell is already off and running. He’ll have negotiations with the players over the next few months, although legislation would wait until after the final report. He says he wants to get consensus if possible – a challenge, given the opposition’s position, but not necessarily out of the question.

A central aim of the proposals is to reduce the power of “big money” to influence elections.

“Big money” donations from business and unions have long been a concern. Clive Palmer elevated this to a new level with his spending in the 2019 and 2022 elections. Palmer spent $83.6 million in the 2019 campaign. In 2022, he spent an extraordinary $117 million (albeit to minimal effect – only one senator from his United Australia Party was elected, and he had little influence on the overall result).

Read more:
Sweeping election donation and spending reforms recommended by parliamentary committee

Few would defend the Palmer cash splash as being appropriate in a good electoral system.

But dig deeper and the spending argument becomes a lot more complicated, with the pros and cons of caps nuanced, and decisions requiring fine judgments.

Teals elected in 2022 had expensive campaigns. Allegra Spender (Wentworth) spent more than $2 million, as did Monique Ryan in Kooyong. Without large amounts of money, some of the teal candidates could have struggled to get the name recognition that helped them win. Without Climate 200, a number of candidates would have had substantially less resources.

The teals might be dubbed the high end of the wider “community candidate” movement, which has gained increasing public support and given voters more choice and thus, arguably, more agency in our democracy.

Electoral reform is all about having a “level playing field”. But many factors influence that playing field, including whether the person is already on the field as a sitting member (or has advantaged access, as a candidate backed by an established political party).

Kate Chaney, a teal who holds the Western Australian seat of Curtin, was a member of JSCEM. In her “additional comments” in the report she says, while agreeing with the principle of curbing “big money”, it’s important the system is open to new entrants.

“Caps” need to be “structured to recognise the additional barriers to entry faced by independents or new entrants”, Chaney argues. “Donation caps must not be set too low […] new entrants are dependent on ‘seed capital’ to reach critical mass in campaign viability.”

Chaney is also hesitant about extra public funding, saying it’s “unhelpful” to replace private “big money” with “state dependency/taxpayer funding”. “State dependency is the opposite of community funding and engagement which should be promoted by changes to our system.”

Read more:
Australians’ feelings towards China are thawing but suspicion remains high: Lowy 2023 poll

Holmes à Court claims “poorly implemented” caps would actually weaken democracy rather than enhance it. He says the changes that have been made in Victoria and NSW “give the majors a free ride and effectively handicap outside competition”.

While superficially the odds might seem against an agreement between government and opposition, they both stand to gain from pushing towards it (there would be less chance on truth-in-advertising legislation). The two main parties share the serious problem of a falling primary vote, which they want to protect from further erosion.

Certainly, Holmes à Court has fears. “We wholeheartedly support reform if it’s fair, but we should all be suspicious because major parties have a track record of changing election laws to rig the game for their own benefit,” he tells The Conversation.

“Let’s be frank, Labor would like to see the back of Palmer, and the Coalition would like to kill the independents movement.

“While the Libs are saying they oppose Labor’s changes, ultimately they have only two ways to get back into government: change their culture, or change the rules, the latter being much easier.

“The devil is very much in the details. If we’re not careful it’ll be a big step backwards for Australia’s recently reinvigorated democracy.”

One person’s “consensus” can be another’s dirty deal, it seems. Different players have distinct interests.

Before the last election Graham Richardson, himself a former Labor right-wing powerbroker, wrote of Farrell, “the Godfather brings traditional common sense to Labor’s decision-making processes”.

Principle, pragmatism and common sense will all be needed to find the combination of reforms most attuned to reflecting the country’s democratic will and giving voters maximum agency. Farrell says it’s a matter of finding the right balance, between restricting the ability to “buy” elections and finding ways to improve access to democracy. “My job in the next six months […] will be to try and find that balance.”

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Labor’s ‘Godfather’ seeks deal on electoral reform – but some fear changes could disadvantage community candidates – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-labors-godfather-seeks-deal-on-electoral-reform-but-some-fear-changes-could-disadvantage-community-candidates-208285

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn discuss the free-for-all between Coalition, government and Greens in the final sitting fortnight before the winter break.

The Coalition’s offensive on Katy Gallagher over the Higgins saga backfired when Liberal Senator David Van was accused of inappropriate behaviour and kicked out of the Liberal party room (he later quit the party).

The government announced an extra $2 billion for social and affordable housing, hoping to win Greens’ support for its $10 billion signature Housing Australia Future Fund. To the government’s fury, the Greens held out, leading to angry accusations between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Greens spokesman Max Chandler-Mather.

The politicians are now returning to their electorates, where they are likely to face plenty of talk from constituents about those rising power prices and other bills.

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

– ref. Word from The Hill: A wild and badly behaved parliamentary fortnight – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-a-wild-and-badly-behaved-parliamentary-fortnight-208299

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Hardy, Associate Professor, Tourism and Society, University of Tasmania

The world has watched in shock as rescue crews feverishly search for the Titan submersible vehicle, which disappeared while attempting to take tourists to view the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.

The horror of the incident raises questions as to why people engage in risky tourism activities in remote locations and whether there should be more restrictions to what adrenaline-seeking tourists can do.

What is frontier tourism?

This type of travel, known as “frontier tourism”, is becoming big business.

The wider adventure tourism industry is already worth billions of dollars – and is growing quickly. Frontier tourism is an exclusive and extreme form of adventure travel. The trips are very expensive, aim to overstimulate the senses and go to the outer limits of our planet – the deep oceans, high mountains, polar areas – and even space.

Frontier tourism is not new; humans have explored remote locations for millennia. Pasifika people used the stars to navigate the oceans for migration and trade. Europeans sailed to the edges of what they believed to be a flat Earth.

In recent years, however, frontier tourism has attracted widespread attention thanks to the common occurrence of long queues on Mount Everest, the trending TikTok phenomenon of crossing the #DrakePassage in Antarctica and the rapid development of space tourism for the wealthy.

The rise of travel content sharing on social media and revenge travel following COVID-19 have contributed to the surge in its popularity.

Read more:
More than 100,000 tourists will head to Antarctica this summer. Should we worry about damage to the ice and its ecosystems?

Why are we so obsessed with extreme forms of tourism?

Risky activities release chemicals in the brain that can be addictive. Research suggests engaging in risky tourism activities, such as scaling a high mountain, can bring about feelings of accomplishment and euphoria. Travellers report feeling alive and experiencing a sense of transformation.

Some are also attracted to the pristine, untouched and remote aspects of the locations that they visit. Furthermore, the element of fantasy associated with imagining certain places or stories, like the movie Titanic, can be alluring.

Besides physical frontiers, there is also the thrill people get at pushing the human body to its limits and facing one’s fears. Base-jumping, skydiving, bungee jumping and polar plunges are common examples of this.

In a slightly more mundane way, even tasting “scary food” pushes tourists outside of their comfort zone and helps them feel alive.

Still others make extreme tourist journeys to follow in the footsteps of their heroes, such as those who travel to Antarctica to pay homage to explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Extreme and risky activities not only make participants feel euphoric, but they also convey status. When bucket lists are ticked off and experiences shared on social media, this brings bragging rights. Research suggests many travellers seek recognition for undertaking the first, longest or most extreme experiences possible.

But frontier tourism is clearly not for all. It is usually only accessible to a privileged few, as the tragic circumstances of the Titan highlight. Passengers onboard the vessel reportedly paid US$250,000 for the voyage.

Read more:
70 years after the first ascent of Everest, the impact of mass mountaineering must be confronted

What are the impacts of frontier tourism?

Beyond the unspeakable angst that friends and family must endure when things go wrong, there are many other impacts of this form of tourism.

This type of travel can create environmental harm and negatively impact local communities. For example, after decades of mass mountaineering, the environmental impact on Mount Everest must be addressed.

And when mishaps do occur, the cost of search and rescue efforts can be massive and put rescue teams at great risk. The plight of frontier tourists are usually the focus of media reports, while emergency responders are often overlooked.

Recent efforts by sherpas such as Nimsdai Purja are trying to overcome this issue. Through the Netflix documentary, 14 Peaks, he publicises the behind-the-scene preparations and heavy lifting work done by sherpas who guide and rescue tourists up Everest and other mountains.

Frontier tourism is not going away

Despite tragedies like the Titan disappearance, tourists remain attracted to the quest for the most unique experiences in the most remote, uncharted places.

Tourists also increasingly feel able to embark on trips once perceived as too dangerous because technology and other innovations have ostensibly made them safer and more accessible.

In many instances that danger remains, but the commercial transaction strips away the perceived risks involved. Marketing materials aim to sell “safe” adventures, with the risks are often listed in the fineprint. A polar plunge in Antarctica, for instance, is often marketed as safe because participants are attached to a tether and the swim time is limited to prevent hypothermia.

Two decades ago, in forecasting the growth of space tourism, anthropologist Valene Smith said what tourists want, the industry will provide. This has become a truism, as the Titan voyages demonstrate.

The massive growth of frontier tourism could lead to even greater problems if the industry doesn’t respond in the right way. If travellers are going to expose themselves to extreme risks, whose responsibility is it, then, to ensure their safety and recovery should accidents occur?

Many tourism businesses and travel insurance companies make risks known to their guests. But regulations on disclosing risks differ between countries. These means travellers may have to evaluate the risks themselves, and this is fraught with danger if company standards are low.

One solution is frontier tourism might be best experienced in controlled and safe environments through digital storytelling or augmented and mixed reality. However, this may not be enough to satisfy the adrenaline junkies out there.

As the Titan incident illustrates, the unpredictable nature and unintended consequences of frontier tourism are very real things. While money can allow us to travel almost anywhere, it’s worth considering whether some places should just remain untouched, sacred and off limits completely.

Anne Hardy receives funding from the Australian Research Council to (LP 190101116) and the Dutch Research Council (NWA 1435.20.001) and Hurtigruten Australia who provide in-kind support for fieldwork.

Can Seng Ooi presently receives funding from the Australian Research Council to (LP 190101116).

Hanne E.F. Nielsen receives funding from the Australian Research Council LP190101116, which also includes funding from partner organisation Intrepid Travel, and DP220103005; the Dutch Research Council (NWA.1435.20.001); and the Australian Antarctic Division. Hurtigruten Australia provide in-kind support for fieldwork.

Joseph M. Cheer presently receives funding from the Australian Research Council (LP190100367) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences (22K12588). He is also empanelled to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Private Sector Development Initiative (PSDI) for the Pacific Islands from which he receives funding. Joseph is Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council for the Future of Sustainable Tourism and board member of PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association).

– ref. Why is extreme ‘frontier travel’ booming despite the risks? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-extreme-frontier-travel-booming-despite-the-risks-208201

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristie Patricia Flannery, Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University

The question on many minds this week is why did some of the world’s richest men risk death to venture to the bottom of the sea in a cold and cramped “experimental” submersible for a chance to glimpse the wreck of the Titanic?

The “unsinkable” ship that sunk on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg is arguably the world’s most well-known boat. The Titanic is recognisable to more of the world’s population than, say, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria (Christopher Colombus’s fleet that launched the Spanish conquest of the Americas), or Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour (the tall ship that set in motion the British conquest of Australia). The Endeavour’s long-forgotten wreck was found scuttled off the coast of Rhode Island just last year.

The Titanic’s maiden voyage and calamitous end was one of the biggest news stories of 1912, and has continued to fascinate us ever since. The disaster inspired songs and multiple films in the twentieth century, including James Cameron’s 1997 epic romance, which long reigned as the highest-grossing film of all time. More recently, Titanic exhibitions that invite visitors to examine relics and explore the ship’s recreated rooms have attracted huge crowds in New York, Seville and Hong Kong.

Opulence and immigrants

There are two reasons why we are so drawn to the Titanic, and why the super-rich are apparently willing to part with their money and even risk their lives to catch a glimpse of its broken hull.

The first is its opulence. The White Start Line that built the Titanic advertised the ship as the most luxurious ever to set sail. Wealthy passengers paid up to £870 for the privilege of occupying the Titanic’s most expensive and spacious first-class cabins. To put this 110-year-old money in perspective, when the first world war broke out in 1914, infantry soldiers in the British army were paid a basic salary of around £20 per year.

Titanic movies and exhibitions are popular because audiences enjoy the voyeurism of gazing on the ship’s beautiful furnishings, the stunning clothes worn by its rich and beautiful passengers, and their elaborate meals in fancy restaurants. First-class passengers feasted on multi-course dinners with salmon, steak, and pâté de foie gras. Chefs in Australia and around the globe occasionally recreate Titanic meals for curious clients.

Hundreds of poor immigrant passengers, represented by Jack (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) in Cameron’s movie, were also aboard the Titanic. They lived in crowded quarters and enjoyed less thrilling meals such as boiled beef and potatoes. If their ilk were the only people on board the Titanic, the ship would arguably have faded quickly from memory.

The power of the sea

The fact the Titanic was touted as unsinkable also adds to its allure. The ship, whose name evoked its massive size, was engineered to cheat the ocean. When it departed England it symbolised man’s domination over nature. At the bottom of the Atlantic, it serves as a visceral reminder of the indomitable sea’s awesome power.

The same two factors – the excess of the voyage, and its defeat by the sea – are now driving the current global interest in the Titan submersible disaster. Few world events garner so much attention, including statements from Downing Street and the White House, and live news blogs from The New York Times and the Guardian.

Read more:
Titanic submersible: The Titan search-and-rescue effort shows that risky undertakings need to consider any potential rescue needs

The Titan, like the Titanic, commands our attention because of its obscenely rich passengers, who each reportedly paid US$250,000 (or between four and five times the average US salary) to visit the wreck of the famous ship that battled the sea and lost.

And then there is the intriguing mystery and power of the sea. News outlets are publishing helpful graphics that try to teach our terrestrial brains to comprehend just how deep the ocean is, and how far below the sea’s surface the Titanic and possibly the Titan lie.

The limits of human knowledge

Last night I spied Neal Argawal’s Deep Sea website circulating on social media. The site allows viewers to scroll from the sea surface to the sea floor, diving down past images of various marine animals that inhabit different oceanic depths.

At 114 metres is an orca, and 332m marks the the deepest depth a human has ever reached using SCUBA gear. It takes a lot of scrolling to descend to the Titanic almost 4,000m below the waves.

Read more:
Has Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour been found? Debate rages, but here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a shipwreck

Besides gross income inequality, reflecting on the Titan and the Titanic invite us to confront just how little we can “see” of the sea in this age of mass surveillance. Not even the powerful US navy, assisted by the Canadian, UK and French governments, can muster the resources and technology required to locate, let alone rescue, the missing submersible.

As the sea seems to have swallowed yet another ship, we are reminded of limits of human knowledge and mastery over the ocean.

Kristie Patricia Flannery receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Disaster, opulence, and the merciless ocean: why the Titanic disaster continues to enthral – https://theconversation.com/disaster-opulence-and-the-merciless-ocean-why-the-titanic-disaster-continues-to-enthral-208200

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian A Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

Are you ever tempted to pour used cooking oil down the sink? Just turn on the tap and flush it all away. What about that half-used tin of paint in the cupboard? It would be so easy just to wash it down the drain, wouldn’t it?

Well, please don’t! Not just because these bad habits cause problems in your house, backyard, apartment block or neighbourhood (and these products do lead to huge blockages and other issues for household pipes).

It’s also because pouring these things down the sink triggers society-wide problems for the entire sewerage system and the workers who maintain it.

For the sake of all of us, please dispose of these liquids properly. Here’s what you need to know.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Where does my poo go when I flush the toilet? Does it go into the ocean?

A disaster for our sewerage systems

The smooth day-to-day operation of our wastewater collection, treatment and disposal relies on the cooperation of people to “do the right thing”.

I’ve contacted many of our water utilities across Australia for this article. They are in broad agreement: please don’t put oil, fats, grease or paint or other chemicals down the sink.

They all offer advice on far better alternatives. But the water industry has no control over what we do in the privacy of our homes. It really is up to us.

The worst culprits

Canberra’s water utility, Icon Water, gives advice on what you can and can’t flush down the sink. They rate “fats, oils and grease” as the worst culprits.

When still hot, oils are often liquid and easily pour. But down in the sewer pipes they rapidly cool and solidify.

This is a serious and common problem. Western Australia’s Water Corporation estimates 30% of sewer blockages are due to fats, oils and grease.

All sewerage systems are vulnerable to blockages from unsafe materials tipped down the sink, or flushed down the toilet.

Oils, fats and grease can combine with other materials flushed down the toilet. These particularly include hair and so-called “flushable wipes” (which, despite the name, should not be flushed down the loo).

These can build up over time, creating giant monstrosities known as “fatbergs”: horrible clumps of wipes, hair, hardened oils and other waste.

Fats and oils act as the glue that helps fatbergs build up at choke points in sewer systems.

Thames Water engineers in the United Kingdom worked in underground sewers for two weeks during 2021 to remove one the size of a small house. I’m claustrophobic and cannot imagine a more horrible job.

Uncontrolled release of raw sewage

Blocked sewers are not just a smelly problem for the water industry; they are bad for all of us. They can trigger the uncontrolled release of raw and untreated sewage into the environment.

As Sydney Water explains, these can be health and environmental nightmares.

I have seen raw sewage flowing in public places, parks, people’s backyards, shopping centres, thanks to blocked pipes. Raw sewage is a serious public and environmental health hazard.

So what am I supposed to do instead with oils?

Cooking oils can actually be recycled and used to make stockfeeds, cosmetics and biofuels.

With some careful preparations diesel engines can run on cooking oil.

It is particularly important the food industry carefully manage their waste as it can generate very large volumes of fats, oil and grease.

Small amounts of cooking oil can safely be composted. But be careful; too much can disrupt the flow of oxygen. This can trigger anaerobic decomposition of compost, which smells unpleasant and can also attract unwanted pests.

Even just disposing of fats, oils and grease into the rubbish and landfill is much better than tipping it down the sink. Remember, you may need to cool hot oil down before putting it in the bin.

What about tipping that old paint down the sink?

Many people are unsure what to do with unused housepaint.

GWM Water, the water service for regional western Victoria, says paint, oils, lubricants, pesticides and thinners should not go down the sink. They can damage sewer pipes, cause pollution and create fumes which can be dangerous for maintenance workers.

Sewer maintenance workers have to work underground in incredibly demanding environment; squeezing into tight, enclosed spaces in sewerage system is part of the job.

The quality of air that they breathe reflects what people flush down the sink. Some chemicals can even create explosive conditions in sewer pipes. Sadly, sewer workers have even been killed from dangerous fumes.

What should I do instead with old paint?

Contact your local council or refer to this helpful guide from the ACT government.

The paint industry encourages all people to take unwanted paints to a “Paintback” dropoff centre. This industry-funded scheme aims to reduce the risks of unsafe disposal of unwanted paint products and maximise recycling.

Please try to thoughtfully dispose of all waste products. And please try to resist the temptation to quickly flush away oils or paint that could damage or block the sewerage system.

Read more:
I’ve always wondered: can I flush cat poo down the toilet?

Ian A Wright receives funding from industry, as well as Commonwealth, NSW and local governments. He formerly worked for Sydney Water Corporation.

– ref. Why shouldn’t I pour oil or paint down the sink? And what should I do instead? – https://theconversation.com/why-shouldnt-i-pour-oil-or-paint-down-the-sink-and-what-should-i-do-instead-206604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian A Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

For the past 15 months, I have been helping residents living near the massive Cadia gold and copper mine in NSW to verify their concerns about pollution from the mine. The findings of alarming levels of heavy metals in their water tanks, as well as in blood and hair samples, prompted the NSW Environmental Protection Agency to investigate. Yesterday it ordered the mine to stop releasing an “unacceptable level” of dust that carries these metals through the air.

The EPA is advising that the water from tanks in the area is safe to drink. This advice is based on the results of NSW Health tests of residents’ kitchen tap water in March 2023. The EPA is also helping to organise water testing for locals, many of whom rely on rainwater tanks for their drinking water.

I remain unconvinced the water is always safe to drink. Metals accumulate in the bottom layers of tanks, so when water levels fall, people could be drinking water with a higher metal content.

These developments also do little to reassure residents who have similar concerns about other recently approved metal mines in NSW.

What forced the EPA to act?

I first heard of complaints of dust blowing from the mine, particularly from its tailings disposal area, in 2021. Locals expressed concerns about the impacts on their health of inhaling the dust.

Over the past year, many people in the area have sent me water samples from their home water tanks. These are fed by roof runoff, which they were concerned could carry metal-rich dust into the tanks.

I sent the water samples to a commercial testing laboratory. The results have been very confronting. Many samples failed to meet Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.

This prompted a community group to run their own citizen science survey of local drinking water quality. They systematically collected water samples from the bottom of household rainwater tanks on dozens of properties surrounding the mine. They sent the samples to a commercial testing laboratory.

I reviewed the results of their study, conducted in February and March this year. Coupled with a previous study, we had results for 47 water samples, and 32 (68%) exceeded the drinking water guidelines for lead (less than 10 micrograms per litre). Alarmingly, 13 samples (27.6%) recorded concentrations of more than ten times (100µg/L of lead) the recommended limit.

Read more:
Not all of us have access to safe drinking water. This clever rainwater collector can change that

Many community members also reported elevated levels of metals in blood and hair samples.

Lead is a major health issue in water supplies across the United States. It’s a neurotoxin that builds up in the body and can cause lifelong brain impairment.

Yet the community was struggling to be heard – by the EPA in particular. On May 12 this year, I was invited to meet with NSW EPA CEO Tony Chappel. I brought two members of the Cadia community.

They talked about their concerns about drinking water. They also broke the news about excessive metals in local residents’ blood results. That meeting changed everything.

In the following weeks the EPA has acted swiftly to stop this pollution and help the community. The agency is focusing on a major potential source of the contamination from the mine: dust.

The EPA has now ordered the mine to take all necessary steps to immediately stop releasing excessive amounts of dust, which may include reducing production.

Read more:
Children continue to be exposed to contaminated air in Port Pirie

Why is dust such a critical problem?

The Cadia gold and copper mine has been operating for more than 25 years. It includes an open-cut mine and more recently an underground mine, the largest in Australia. It is the underground mining that now seems central to the contamination.

The EPA issued a “prevention notice” on May 29 this year. The agency pointed to a ventilation vent (vent rise 8) that was releasing more than seven times the permitted dust content. Also known as the “crusher vent”, it has caused other serious air quality concerns, with emissions of cancer-causing crystalline silica recorded at 18 times the legal limit.

In August 2022 and July 2020, the EPA had fined the mine the maximum $15,000 for dust pollution and is clearly frustrated by its unacceptable impacts. It has just issued the mine with revised environmental regulations.

The EPA press release yesterday said: “Additional reports will also be required on lead dust fingerprinting research.” This “fingerprinting” analysis of lead helps trace its transport pathways and geological origins.

In a statement in response to the EPA’s latest action, the mine operator, Cadia Valley Operations, said: “We take our environmental obligations and the concerns raised by the EPA seriously and will take action to comply with the licence variation notice.”

Read more:
Mount Isa contamination ‘within guidelines’ but residents told to clean their homes

What does this mean for residents near other mines?

This case might not be isolated. Gold and silver mining in NSW is booming.

Approved in March, McPhillamys gold mine near the town of Blayney is about 20 kilometres from Cadia mine. And the Bowdens silver mine near Mudgee was approved the following month, despite many submissions expressing concern about the impacts of lead dust on human health.

Read more:
Gold mining is one of the world’s most destructive and unnecessary industries – here’s how to end it

Can people be safe and healthy living near a large metal mining operation? Based on Cadia, I’m not sure.

Mines and regulators might need to work more closely together with communities. The public needs to be able to make sure government agencies are doing their job and every mine operates in an environmentally clean and safe manner. The mining industry has to do better to earn the trust of the community and its “social licence” to operate.

Ian A Wright has received funding from industry, as well as Commonwealth, NSW and local governments. He has assisted the Environmental Defenders Office in several matters involving pollution associated with mining activity.

– ref. Huge Cadia gold mine ordered to reduce polluting dust. Is it safe to live near a mine like this? – https://theconversation.com/huge-cadia-gold-mine-ordered-to-reduce-polluting-dust-is-it-safe-to-live-near-a-mine-like-this-208111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Fusil, Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Adelaide

The oxygen supply of the missing Titan submersible is expected to run out today around 10am GMT, or 8pm AEST.

A frantic search continues for the Titan and its five occupants, with sonar buoys having recorded “banging” noises in the search area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

With the vessel’s fate yet to be determined, the general public is asking questions about the safety of such touristic endeavours.

Read more:
Missing Titanic sub: what are submersibles, how do they communicate, and what may have gone wrong?

The context

The context in which the Titan has disappeared is disturbing. Reports have come out detailing court documents from a 2018 case that show OceanGate, the company responsible for the Titan, fired employee David Lochridge after he expressed concerns about the submersible’s safety.

Lochridge disagreed with OceanGate about the best way to demonstrate the asset’s seaworthiness, and objected to OceanGate’s decision to perform dives without prior “non-destructive testing” to the vessel’s hull to prove its integrity.

Also in 2018, a letter sent to OceanGate by the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee of the Marine Technology Society, signed by 38 experts, expressed reservations about the submersible’s safety. They said the “[…] experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry”.

As we can see from these exchanges, the engineering and regulation of deep-sea submersibles remains somewhat uncharted territory. And since the Titan operates in international waters, it is technically free from governance by any single nation’s regulations.

In this case, most submersible designers would elect to have a classification society certify the vessel’s design. OceanGate made the conscious decision to refuse to do this for the Titan.

Seaworthiness of submersibles

When we talk about the “seaworthiness” of a marine vessel, we are essentially asking if it is fit for purpose, safe to operate, and compliant with the protection of the environment.

For the Titan, fitness for purpose could be summarised by the ability to safely launch from a mothership on the water’s surface, operate autonomously down to 4,000m (the approximate depth of the Titanic shipwreck), and resurface for recovery by the mothership after a dive of a few hours.

Safety to operate would mean no equipment is damaged and no passengers are prone to injury (or worse) while onboard. And protection of environment means the submersible would not have any significant impact on its surroundings, such as through pollution or disturbing the ecosystem.

However, this is the blue-sky scenario. Deep-sea submersibles operate in a hostile environment, and things can go wrong.

Pressure resistance

Submersibles and submarines are shaped the way they are because spheres and cylinders are geometrically more resistant to crushing pressures.

Instead of operating in a breathable atmosphere of 1 bar, the Titan would have to withstand 370 bars of pressure in seawater at the depth of the Titanic. Any defect in the hull could result in instantaneous implosion.

So what is the threshold below which an “out-of-circularity” geometry becomes a defect?

Industries using underwater vessels at depths of a few hundred metres will often use steel hulls, which usually have an out-of-circularity threshold below 0.5% of the vessel’s diameter. Would that criterion be safe enough for the pressure hull of the Titan at 4,000m?

The Titan is made of a composite carbon fibre-titanium hull. It is extremely complicated to design and structurally assess these materials, compared to metallic material only. One can assume this is why OceanGate equipped the Titan with a “real-time hull health monitoring system”.

It’s unclear if the system actually measures the stresses with strain gauges in the hull, or if it is (as Lochridge warned) an acoustic analysis that would only alert people about imminent problems “often milliseconds before an implosion”.

Safety for pressure hull integrity requires analysing various failure modes, before determining a safety coefficient for each mode, depending on the deep diving depth aimed at.

After the design is verified (through calculations), real-world validation should occur in two steps.

Non-destructive testing should be done on the manufactured pressure hull, to check the preciseness of its geometry and any out-of-circularity aspects.

Then, actual dives (ideally unmanned) should be carried out at progressively increasing depths, with stress gauges used to measure actual values against predictions. We don’t know whether the Titan underwent such tests.

Back-ups and redundancy

In designing the functional architecture and selecting equipment, a designer would consider a number of “what if” scenarios to recover from:

• what if main power sources fail?
• what if my computer crashes and the pilot loses control?
• what if my main communication system fails?
• how can the submersible signal to the mothership there is a problem?

These scenarios commit the naval architects to ensure what’s called a safety SFAIRP (so far as is reasonably practicable). This involves not only mitigating the consequences of an accident, but also preventing it from happening.

In practical terms, it means having:

• a reserve of oxygen (such as while waiting for a rescue party)
• reliable main power sources and back-up systems
• another power source (such as hydraulic) in case of power loss – this would help, for example, to release safety leads to get positive buoyancy and rise back to the surface.

Each of these systems would need a specific verification (theoretical) and validation (tests) for the specific environment.

Commercial off-the-shelf equipment can potentially fit onboard, if a demonstration of fitness for purpose is made for various scenarios. However, most of the external components (because of crushing pressure) and safety systems would warrant custom design.

According to reports, the Titan was using certain “off-the-shelf” equipment, but it’s difficult to say whether this was certified for its intended use at these depths.

Safety systems

In the Titan’s case, a tether with the mothership would have ensured instant two-way communication and a higher data exchange rate. But these cables can get entangled with potential hazards at a shipwreck site.

As such, tethers are mostly used for unmanned vehicles; manned submersibles prefer to trust the pilot. Also, GPS, portable satellite phones and automatic identification systems can’t be used underwater. These tools use electromagnetic waves that don’t propagate deep underwater (although they could be used on the surface).

Some submarines are equipped with a distress beacon, the equivalent of an emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB). This can be released at the captain’s order, or via a “dead-man” switch; if the pilot responds to a test at regular intervals, a sudden lack of response leads the system to assume the crew is incapacitated.

Hopefully, the “banging” sounds that have been reported are the Titan’s crew and passengers banging against the pressure hull every 30 minutes. This is a technique taught to military submarine crew when grounding on the sea floor.

A high-frequency acoustic pinger would be even more efficient, as this would provide directional accuracy to home onto a distressed submersible.

There are a number of situations that can unfold on the surface too, in the case that the Titan has floated its way up. Even if has (or will do so), the crew and passengers can’t open the vessel’s bolted hatch. They would likely have to continue to contend with the potentially fouled atmosphere inside.

Further complicating matters is the Titan’s white colour, which would make it harder to spot in the foaming sea. This is why floating assets detected from above are usually in orange or yellow shades allowing higher visibility.

The future of deep-sea submersibles

Hopefully, the crew and passengers of the Titan will be rescued. But if the worst happens, forensic examination will inevitably look into whether the Titan met the basic thresholds to demonstrate seaworthiness.

Although various classification societies propose a set of rules for commercial submarines and submersibles, opting to follow these rules remains a voluntary process (which the asset’s insurer usually pushes for).

It’s time to acknowledge that going deep is as complex, if not more complex, than going into space – and that ensuring the safety of submersibles ought to be more than a matter of choice.

Read more:
Titanic submersible: The Titan search-and-rescue effort shows that risky undertakings need to consider any potential rescue needs

Eric Fusil is affiliated with the Royal Institution of Naval Architects and Engineers Australia

– ref. As the clock ticks on the Titan sub, an expert explains what safety features a submersible should have – https://theconversation.com/as-the-clock-ticks-on-the-titan-sub-an-expert-explains-what-safety-features-a-submersible-should-have-208187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Wheatley, Laboratory Head, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Melbourne

In early 2021, recommendations about COVID vaccines were pretty straightforward – get two doses, as soon as you are eligible. A year later, we knew getting a third dose was important for protection against the new Omicron variant.

Today, though, the situation is far more complex – new updated vaccines are available, the majority of Australians have likely been infected at least once with an Omicron strain, and waves of infection continue to occur.

So how should you manage and time your booster shots?

Read more:
Over half of eligible aged care residents are yet to receive their COVID booster. And winter is coming

Why do vaccines need boosters?

Vaccines work by training our body’s immune system to react harder, faster, stronger and better when we get infected by a pathogenic virus or bacteria.

Unfortunately, this protective benefit is not permanent and immunity tends to “wane” over time. The extent to which vaccine protection wanes is a function of two main factors.

First, your immune system (in the form of antibodies, memory B cells and T cells) is not infinite, and the levels of vaccine-induced immune responses will gradually decline over time. Second, pathogens circulating in the community can mutate, which enables “escape” from being recognised by the immune system. The more the virus escapes, the less protection the vaccine can give you.

Read more:
Why does my back get so sore when I’m sick? The connection between immunity and pain

Some vaccines need frequent boosting, others last forever

Not all pathogens have the same ability to create or tolerate mutations. For viruses that change little (such as measles), your childhood vaccines remain highly protective and you might never need a booster.

In contrast, some viruses can rapidly and dramatically change (looking at you, influenza), quickly rendering our vaccines outdated and making updates necessary.

Read more:
I need a flu shot and a COVID booster. Can I get them at the same time?

So, where does COVID fit in?

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, has demonstrated an ability to rapidly change since emerging in 2019. Although the early pandemic in Australia featured vaccine supply constraints, we now lucky to have many different vaccine options.

Recommendations currently favour updated mRNA “bivalent” boosters from Pfizer or Moderna, each containing equal parts of the original virus strain and an Omicron strain.

But the virus continues to change (currently XBB strains are dominant, and further updates to the composition of the vaccine are to be expected in the future (most likely to target XBB.1.5).

That’s great, but I recently had COVID, so …

Are you sure? Queuing for a PCR test seems like a fever dream from the past. Now, many of the RATs stacked in our cupboards are rapidly expiring. Influenza and RSV are back with gusto (and cause similar symptoms).

If you did have confirmed COVID, our research shows the majority of people mount a strong immune response following each infection.

This means that once you recover, your immunity has been “updated” to reflect the virus variant that caused your infection and you will have higher protective antibody levels in your blood.

Well, I definitely had something. What does that mean for my COVID booster?

There are a couple of things to consider here.

Firstly, there is no such thing as “too much” immunity. Beyond the regular side-effects of a vaccine, there are no known additional risks to being re-vaccinated soon after an infection.

On the other hand, getting vaccinated quickly after recovery will not do much to further boost your immunity. Current recommendations are to wait six months after infection or your last dose before seeking another booster.

This allows your immune system time to rest, so that it can be effectively re-activated by vaccination. If you’d prefer to minimise your risk of COVID, and you don’t know what caused a recent illness, “topping up” your immunity via a booster may be the way to go.

How should we balance booster shots and infections in the community?

The short answer is, we need more information and time to figure that out.

Our communities now have high immunity (from both vaccines and infections), so balancing the risks and rewards of COVID boosters is increasingly complex.

Ultimately, your personal health care provider is best placed to offer specific advice. Generally however, those who are vaccinated (with three or more doses), younger (64 and under), and otherwise healthy have the least to gain.

For those who are older (especially over 65s) or who have health complications, regular COVID boosters are likely to be an important tool for staying healthy, especially over the winter season. While we still need more data, multiple studies suggest booster vaccines can reduce the risk of developing long COVID, providing another reason to keep up-to-date.

The bottom line

Unfortunately, COVID is among us and likely here for good. But like old mate influenza, we now have effective tools to blunt the impacts of COVID, and even better options will come through the pipeline to unlock further health improvements (like the transformative new vaccines for RSV).

For now, stay tuned to the latest advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) about additional vaccine boosters and rest assured scientists and public health officials are still working to better understand how best to maintain high levels of population immunity via regular immunisation.

Adam Wheatley receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF and ARC.

Jennifer Juno receives funding from the NHMRC, MRFF and NIH.

– ref. Do I need a booster vaccine if I recently had COVID? What if I’m not sure what I had? – https://theconversation.com/do-i-need-a-booster-vaccine-if-i-recently-had-covid-what-if-im-not-sure-what-i-had-207724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne

Rising has just completed its second run across Melbourne. The newest addition to the city’s festival scene, Rising replaced the much-loved White Night festival and the much-celebrated Melbourne International Arts Festival.

As a new major arts event for a city that has a year-long calendar of significant festival activity, Rising has yet to establish what kind of intervention it is making in our cultural conversation – although its slick marketing line, “Music, Food, Art and Culture under Moonlight”, speaks to the notion of Melbourne as a wintry ethereal nighttime stage.

Led by artistic directors Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek, Rising 2023 was an eclectic mix of local and international work. Some offered spectacle and thrill (Tanz and Euphoria) and some offered participation and community (The Rink and 1000 Kazoos).

But I found the highlight of Rising to be the significant and thrilling work created by First Nations artists across dance, visual art, theatre and music.

A key part of the journey of seeing work at Rising was the act of embodied witnessing.

My top three works situated witnessing as a political act. Witnessing is an act of deep listening, designed to change and shift your perspective. These works invite you to revisit what you thought you knew.

Each functioned to rethink questions of history and philosophy, to reshape notions of culture and memory, and troubled legacies of colonial violence.

Jacky

Jacky, a new play by Arrernte playwright Declan Furber Gillick, is a beautifully nuanced and performed investigation of the weight of white expectation and capitalism and its potentially dangerous impact on First Nations people.

Jacky (Guy Simon) is a young man who has moved from his community to the city with aspirations of securing a white-collar permanent job and owning an apartment. Jacky’s younger brother, Keith (Ngali Shaw), is sent by family to join him and soon upturns the ordered trajectory of Jacky’s life.

What quickly emerges is a profoundly uncomfortable look at what constitutes palatable Aboriginal behaviour by white people.

Jacky’s well-intentioned white boss (Alison Whyte) engages in culturally incompetent behaviour when she requests Jacky pretend he is from a local family group. Jacky’s sex work client, Glen (Greg Stone), requests that Jacky participate in an act of racist role-play.

Keith challenges the social expectations of “good Aboriginal” Jacky has been relying on. He plays witness to the bind Jacky finds himself in: whether he succumbs to the demands of white expectation, or forfeits the social and material gains that are part of playing the role of “sexy Black poster boy”.

Jacky is part of the Melbourne Theatre Company’s season, playing at Arts Centre Melbourne. For me as a white audience member, the performance lays bare an act of political witnessing as Furber Gillick’s writing demands you pay attention and not look away.

Titled in reference to Jacky Jacky, an Aboriginal guide who was awarded medals for his service to NSW, the play troubles ideas of subservience and collaboration within white and First Nations relationships.

It reveals the racist and white supremacist underpinnings of ideas of Aboriginal inclusion premised upon white understandings of success in a capitalist system.

Read more:
Joyous, comic and grim: the best new Indigenous playwrights

Shadow Spirit

The exhibition Shadow Spirit brings together 30 contemporary First Peoples artists and collectives from across the country into an immersive exhibition, including 14 specially commissioned works.

Curated by Kimberley Moulton, Shadow Spirit weaves throughout the decaying and compelling site of the rooms above Flinders Street Station. Works incorporate a range of forms including light, sound, sculpture, screen and projection.

Ambitious and stunning, as you wander through the exhibition works pay tribute to AC/DC; speak to contemporary hero narratives; and feature First Nations Jedi Knight figures blinking back at you on full-size screens under expansive celestial skies.

There is a giant sculptural bandicoot spirit animal; works that map the spirits and energies of Country, waterways and skies and speak to how ancient knowledges protect land and children; and works that directly address the space between what is known and tangible, and what is felt and intuited.

One stand-out moment is Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens’ sculptural works Deeply Rooted.

These spiky works fuse together native hardwood from the artist’s Country with found objects like witches hats, steel caps, broken pieces of rabbit trap, petrol nozzles with the sculptural doll-like head of an Aboriginal child.

Together, these objects create a monstrous and confronting homage to colonial violence and destruction, and a comment on the failure of successive governments to implement meaningful policy change.

Another stunning moment is Rarrirarri in the large ballroom.

Artistic collective The Mulka Project and Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda (Yolŋu) have collaborated on an installation. A stone monolith (part Uluru and Kata Tjutu and part termite mound) rises from the centre of the room. Across this screens stunning graphic projections of floral and animal landscapes.

Rarrirarri speaks clearly to desert landscapes and ceremonial and spiritual Country. It requires you to sit and watch it for some time, as the experience of passing time and a landscape of seasonal change reveals itself in the stunning moving graphics of the art work.

The exhibition’s location at the Flinders Street ballroom brings these stories of creation, ancestral knowledge, spirituality and the legacies of colonial violence into conversation with the city’s civic centre. This site is full of cultural memory as a meeting place for railway workers for over 100 years, and its deeper history as a Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung gathering place across thousands of generations.

Shadow Spirit invites you to linger, to witness and absorb the breadth and depth of knowledge and culture and story threaded through each room in the space.

You are asked to consider your own position and history in relation to these stories, and how you connect and belong within the ancient and contemporary narratives running through the exhibition.

It is a gift to Naarm: a physical and spiritual centre for reflection and communion and gathering, a showcase of the excellence of our First Nations artists and a demonstration of art itself as a political witness.

Read more:
Bark Ladies: how women’s Yolŋu bark paintings break with convention and embrace artists’ strong personalities

Tracker

A co-production between Australian Dance Theatre and Ilbijerri Theatre, Tracker is a remarkable piece of storytelling about Wiradjuri elder Alec “Tracker” Riley.

Riley worked with the NSW police for over 40 years solving crimes to great acclaim. He was the great, great uncle of director-choreographer Daniel Riley.

Blending contemporary dance, text, live music and a simple but effective 270-degree rotating set design of scenic painted curtains and greenery rigged around a circular ring, Tracker takes us deep into ancestral Country in the middle of the night.

Our protagonist (Ella Ferris) has travelled to reconnect with the spirit of her great great uncle prior to giving birth to her own child.

She seeks to understand and uncover this piece of her past in order to keep her son safe. In doing so, she reveals how our access to the truths of these stories of cultural resilience are obscured and hidden by layers of history and colonialism.

As the remarkable stories of Tracker Riley’s success in finding missing children and bringing criminals to justice are revealed, three spirit guides appear (Tyrel Dulvarie, Rika Hamaguchi and Kaine Sultan-Babij). Their poetic and synergistic movements echo, enhance and articulate the searching nature of the story.

As the audience, we bear witness to this uncovering of a piece of our nation’s past. Throughout the work, we seek to understand how this extraordinary man successfully forged a path between ancient wisdom and colonial structures – yet received no pension at the time of his retirement.

This is a powerful and ambitious story, asking us to look more closely at history and what the past can reveal about today.

Jacky is at Arts Centre Melbourne until June 24. Shadow Spirit is at Flinders Street Station until July 30.

Read more:
60 years of The Australian Ballet and 90 years of ‘Australian’ ballet: Identity asks us to reflect on Australian dance today

Sarah Austin 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. Rising has yet to establish its voice – but this year’s festival gave us significant and thrilling work by First Nations artists – https://theconversation.com/rising-has-yet-to-establish-its-voice-but-this-years-festival-gave-us-significant-and-thrilling-work-by-first-nations-artists-207719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ananish Chaudhuri, Professor of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, University of Auckland

As recent headlines have made clear, New Zealand universities are in an existential crisis for a variety of reasons, including a sharp drop in international student numbers and chronic underfunding.

But there is another crisis lurking – the disappearance of students from our classrooms following the pandemic. This was happening already, but with the COVID-related shutdown and move toward online delivery of courses, the process has accelerated massively.

Lecturers, even great ones, see barely a fifth of students showing up. And it’s not a random fifth – some students routinely attend while many others never do.

Some will be working, too. Even with subsidised education, course costs can still be prohibitively high. To make ends meet, others stay at home to avoid long and expensive commutes.

Faced with this reality, universities are striving to improve accessibility by putting more material online, including exams, and cutting down face-to-face teaching time. This is based partly on the belief that the so-called “sage on stage” lecture method is outdated.

But this is a fallacy. Some sages have unique insights to offer, which can’t always be broken down into bite-sized YouTube videos, especially for technical material.

More importantly, the ability to sit still for an hour and absorb complex material is a skill students need to learn. In the workplace, meetings often happen early in the morning and are not recorded to be watched later at double speed.

Social skills in the real world

Part of the problem can be traced back to when universities began to consider students as “customers” and education as a transaction between them and their lecturers.

Yet students are better seen as the “products” of the university. We take them (mostly) from high school and aim to send them out into the world as informed citizens with real-world skills.

Read more:
Starved of funds and vision, struggling universities put NZ’s entire research strategy at risk

And while cognitive abilities such as reading, writing and maths matter, so too do social skills such as empathy, resilience and an ability to work in diverse groups and with diverse views.

Using survey data and information about the education and careers of more than 10,000 Americans, Harvard professor of political economy David Deming showed the surprising impact of those social skills on career development.

If you keep cognitive skills constant, those with higher social skills are more likely to have a full-time job and earn more. More importantly, the two are complementary. Among those who already have advanced degrees, the earnings are higher for those with measurably better social skills.

The returns from investing in social skills have increased over the past few decades. They will possibly increase even more, as artificial intelligence begins to perform many jobs, even white-collar ones.

Read more:
Studying can be a costly choice. Universities should address young people’s financial literacy gaps

Universities play a crucial role in developing these skills. But the emerging two groups of students – on campus and off – are not getting the same education. The increasing emphasis on online instruction and exams is devaluing degrees.

Employers may be taking note. As a recent Harvard Business Review article points out, US companies are relying less on degrees and more on their own tests for “hard” skills and competencies. But they may also be using a degree as evidence a candidate has the “soft” social skills they’re looking for too. In which case, the distinction between in-person and online learning becomes significant.

A two-tier system

This suggests we may need to distinguish between online and on-campus students in each of our courses. The course content will be the same, but the assessment methods will be different.

Online students can take tests, quizzes and exams remotely. Some of this may also be available to on-campus students. But on-campus students will be expected to come to lectures regularly, ask questions, write, speak and engage in interactive tasks, including group work.

Would students sign up for on-campus courses but simply not attend? This could be prevented by making sure each student completes tasks that earn participation marks that count toward on-campus credits. If they fail to do so, they will automatically become online students.

Read more:
7 ways to reduce the learning loss caused by the pandemic

Is this unfair to online students? Not necessarily. Many with jobs may prefer it. In any event, they will have to consider whether the benefits of coming to campus are worth it in terms of job prospects or earning potential.

As it stands, the current system designed to cater to online students is failing those who want to show up for lectures. And regardless of grades, how do I write a letter of reference for a student I have never met in person?

If things continue this way, very soon we won’t have any students in our classrooms and our universities and polytechnics will become truly online institutions. This will be catastrophic for society.

Ananish Chaudhuri receives funding from the Royal Society NZ Marsden Fund.

– ref. With campus numbers plummeting due to online learning, do we need two categories of university degree? – https://theconversation.com/with-campus-numbers-plummeting-due-to-online-learning-do-we-need-two-categories-of-university-degree-208172

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stefan Hajkowicz, Senior Principal Scientist, Strategy and Foresight, Data61

Our nation is experiencing its lowest productivity growth in 60 years, according to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia. And this downturn is reflected across most advanced economies worldwide.

So it’s not surprising some see the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as productivity’s saviour. Media articles herald a new era of high productivity enabled by AI, and particularly by generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E.

Similarly, the world’s top journals are filled with accounts of how AI has enabled transformative leaps in research. Machine learning has been used, for example, to predict the shape of proteins from DNA information, or to control the shape of super-heated plasma in a nuclear fusion reaction. One team at CSIRO designed an AI-based autonomous system that can manufacture and test 12,000 solar cell designs within 24 hours.

Does that mean we can flick the switch, leave it on auto, and go to the beach? Not quite.

Read more:
Don’t blame workers for falling productivity – we’re not the ones holding it back

Not a productivity panacea

As much as the above examples provide hope, they also distract from the many AI applications that haven’t quite worked. These are the cases, often not captured in journals and media, where using AI has been costly and time-consuming and failed to generate the desired result.

In 2021, the AI community had to pause when 62 published studies that used machine learning to diagnose COVID-19 from chest scans were found to be unreliable and unusable in clinical settings, mostly due to problems with the input data. It was a stark reminder AI is fallible.

That’s not to say AI can’t be used to boost productivity – just that it isn’t an off-the-shelf panacea to our productivity woes. AI can’t magically fix problems related to inefficient processes, poor governance and bad culture.

If you drop advanced AI into a dumb organisation, it won’t make it smart. It will just help the organisation do dumb stuff more efficiently (in other words, quicker). This will hardly lead to a productivity gain.

Where AI applications work

One recent study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found a 14% increase in productivity among customer service agents who used an AI tool to help guide conversations. In Australia, Westpac says AI has provided a 46% productivity increase for its software engineers, with no loss in quality of work.

In many ways these examples aren’t surprising. It’s obvious AI can boost productivity when used effectively; Google Maps is clearly better at getting someone from A to B than an old road atlas.

So what’s common among the situations where AI performs well?

Successful applications of AI tend to be characterised by a clear need and function for the AI system. They are well integrated within the business or organisation’s broader processes, and do not interfere with employees’ other tasks.

They also tend to have high-quality, fit-for-purpose and curated datasets used to train the algorithms, and are applied safely and in accordance with ethics principles.

Where AI applications fail

However, it’s difficult to achieve AI productivity benefits across an entire organisation, let alone an entire economy. Many organisations still struggle with much more basic digital transformation.

Consulting firm Deloitte estimates 70% of organisations’ digital transformation efforts fail. Perhaps the real solution to the productivity dilemma lies less in using AI, and more in managing the organisational inefficiencies associated with adopting new technology.

Modern offices are chock-a-block with pointless emails, unnecessary meetings and bureaucratic processes that sap workers’ energy and motivation. Research has established that productivity decreases when workers face this onslaught of busywork and distractions.

It’s unlikely AI will solve this. The currency of the modern day is attention; an AI that’s built to shield us from unnecessary busywork may end up nagging us. We may even see a future where AI tools designed to shield us from distraction are competing with AI tools designed to distract us.

University of Leeds economist Stuart Mills points out that if tools such as ChatGPT merely automate bureaucratic inefficiencies, they won’t raise productivity at all.

We once asked a friend, a senior manager in a global engineering company, if he uses ChatGPT for his work. “Oh yes,” he exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I use it for generating all those reports management keeps asking me for. I know no one will ever read it, so it doesn’t need to be high quality.”

Towards long-term productivity gains

It seems very likely AI will improve productivity at a societal level in the long run, and some of these improvements may be transformative.

As of September 2022, research found 5.7% of all peer-reviewed research published worldwide was on the topic of AI – up from 3.1% in 2017, and 1.2% in 2000.

It’s clear innovators everywhere are exploring how AI can supercharge their productivity – and perhaps help them make discoveries. We can expect effective solutions that genuinely solve problems will self-select and organically rise to the top.

Successful AI implementation requires understanding the context within which the technology is being applied. It requires picking up the correct tool for the task at hand, and using it in the correct way. And even before that, it requires working through issues of process, governance, culture and ethics.

Read more:
AI could take your job, but it can also help you score a new one with these simple tips

Stefan Hajkowicz works at CSIRO which receives R&D funding from wide ranging government and industry clients.

Jon Whittle works at CSIRO which receives R&D funding from wide ranging government and industry clients.

– ref. Yes, AI could help us fix the productivity slump – but it can’t fix everything – https://theconversation.com/yes-ai-could-help-us-fix-the-productivity-slump-but-it-cant-fix-everything-207623

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robbie Williams, Traditional Owner, Indigenous Knowledge

For 60,000 years, many First Nations peoples managed the land that sustained us. Fire, for us, was not destructive. It created new life. We believe bringing back cultural burning is an important step towards creating a more just and sustainable future.

We are from the Githabul and Ngarakbul peoples of the Yoocum Yoocum Moeity. Our traditional lands span what is now northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. But the knowledge of how to burn and when to burn spans the entire continent.

We want to pass this knowledge on, from First Nations to the ones who came later. Farmers, landholders, people with bush blocks – these are the people who need this knowledge.

Over a decade ago, we ran a workshop for Jayn Hobba, a non-Indigenous woman who has a nature reserve property outside Stanthorpe. We taught her about the art of tree thinning and cultural burns.

She writes:

Working alongside traditional owners who are the fire, soil and water keepers of their culture, I’ve also gained much practical knowledge in thinning out native black cypress, conserving old growth eucalyptus and mosaic cool burning. A decade later, I can see culturally appropriate fire regimes and conservative thinning of vegetation are benefiting the ecosystems and reducing fuel load.

Why is cultural burning undertaken?

Every group burned country differently. The knowledge of what to burn – and when to burn – is known as lore. By burning the right areas at the right time, we burn off the fuel loads and keep Australia’s fire-loving trees from starting dangerous fires.

The way we burn is known as mosaic cool burning – burn this area, leave this area – which produces a pattern of newer and older growth across the landscape. Traditionally, these mosaics produced new growth attracting kangaroos and wallabies, which could then be hunted.

Our thousands of years of cultural burning made much of Australia look like a park – stands of trees, large tracts of grass and shrub, as historian Bill Gammage has detailed.

After the colonists came, much knowledge was lost. Cultural burning, too, could have been lost. But it survived.

How does it differ from hazard reduction burns?

Cultural burns are cool, low intensity burns which stay on the ground. Hazard burns are usually hot burns, done with more intensity.

Cool burns are best done at night or early in the morning. Many Australian trees sweat flammable oils during the day, making it a more dangerous time. Early morning dew helps to cool the fire. The wind is often gentle during a morning burn, assisting us as we direct the fire.

Cool fires do not bake seeds or nutrients into the soil, nor do they destroy root systems. Because the flames are so low, they cannot leap up to set tree canopies on fire and can only char the bottom bark.

Cool fires help change ground vegetation by reducing the density of plants such as bracken fern and casuarina, which lead to high fuel loads. Hot fires will encourage their regrowth.

If fires are started too early in the season, thick shrub grows afterwards which adds to fuel loads. If fires are started too late, dried-out fuel can make fires more intense and even lead trees to explode.

Hazard reduction burns are performed to control overgrowth of bush. If cool burns aren’t done, fallen branches, leaf litter and dead trees keep building up and up. Australia’s trees are very messy – many of them shed bark and leaves and branches to encourage fire.

First Nations people did everything they could to avoid intense, destructive bushfires. By burning small and burning often, we made sure the fuel never built up to extreme levels.

But after we were colonised, cultural burning almost entirely stopped. Forests grew back, covering some grasslands. Fuel began to build up. And immense bushfires began. Black Friday, 1939. Black Saturday, 2009. And the devastating Black Summer of fire in 2019-2020. These show us what happens when we do not burn country properly.

Read more:
This rainforest was once a grassland savanna maintained by Aboriginal people – until colonisation

How is it done?

Cultural burning is complex and nuanced. To do it properly, you need thorough knowledge of the natural environment. You can’t simply walk into a field or forest and set it alight.

Fire lore is passed on from knowledge holders to initiates. We are taught to read signs in the land and signals in the environment to know when to burn, from different grasses drying out to trees beginning to flower, seed or fruit, to animal breeding and migration.

The reason for this is simple. Burning at the wrong time in the wrong place risks a cool burn running hot. As our firefighters know, it’s very hard to find the right time to do burns.

Each country contains its own season for fire – the time when fire can help cleanse, reset and safekeep the land, ready for the rebirth that comes after burning.

The return of cultural burning

The Black Summer had many causes, ranging from climate change to misuse of land and bad land and water use. The absence of cultural burning and traditional land management practices made matters worse.

Cultural burning and land management can improve soil health, dampen down the impact of weeds and invasive species, control pests, sequester carbon and improve runoff and water quality.

Cultural burning could help create a better future

Using fire in this way is an ancient artform. We consider it a sacred tool.

As we grapple with ever-larger bushfires, it’s time to start involving Traditional Owners more in talks, negotiations and planning – especially when it affects our own country. Our knowledge of this continent may help save lives, land, flora and fauna – and help protect all of us from the ravages of climate change.

Our organisation and others like it work with non-Indigenous Australian landowners and farmers to undertake cultural burns – and to pass on the lore.

Read more:
World-first research confirms Australia’s forests became catastrophic fire risk after British invasion

Robbie is also Director for the Natural Design Research Institute.

– ref. Before the colonists came, we burned small and burned often to avoid big fires. It’s time to relearn cultural burning – https://theconversation.com/before-the-colonists-came-we-burned-small-and-burned-often-to-avoid-big-fires-its-time-to-relearn-cultural-burning-201475

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dougal Sutherland, Clinical Psychologist, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

In 2019 the New Zealand government committed an unprecedented NZ$1.9 billion to improving mental health services. This announcement brought hope to a sector that had been treated like the second-class citizen of the health service for decades.

But four years later, it is clear these high hopes have not been realised.

It’s easy to find examples of unmet mental health needs in our communities. Fundamental gaps are evident across the sector, from young people in crisis waiting 70 days to be seen by a therapist, to men struggling with depression, to those with more chronic conditions such as ADHD struggling to receive diagnoses and care.

Where did the money go?

So what has happened to the billions set aside to improve mental health services?

Almost a quarter of the funding has gone to health improvement practitioners (HIPs) and health coaches based within general medical practices. The aim of these practitioners and coaches is to give fast and early access to people presenting to their general practitioner (GP) with mental health concerns.

Considerable investment has also gone into making mental health apps widely available to the public, a move that was at least partly sparked by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

These initiatives focus mainly on providing proactive support to people with mild symptoms and/or upskilling the general population to help prevent psychological distress occurring.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

This investment approach by the government has several problems, which mean the country’s collective mental health needs have not been successfully addressed.

Firstly, while the aims of the HIPs programme are to be lauded – it allows a quick and “warm” handover from GP to mental health clinician – it has done little to increase the pool of mental health professionals. The practitioners are drawn from the existing health workforce. Many nurses and psychologists have taken up practitioner roles, meaning we have robbed Peter to pay Paul as clinicians move from one area of the mental health sector to another.

Read more:
Pixels are not people: mental health apps are increasingly popular but human connection is still key

Secondly, while mental health apps often include excellent psychological tools and techniques that can enhance wellbeing, they are still largely untested, can suffer from low levels of uptake and don’t always meet the need for human interaction.

Thirdly, it appears the Ministry of Health’s focus on one or two approaches to meeting our mental health demands has blinded it to other possible solutions.

For example, there is a growing body of local and international research highlighting the relationship of micronutrients and what we eat to our mental health.

Yet this line of intervention has only recently received government support. Even then the investment is relatively limited.

Going global for ideas

Unsurprisingly, Aotearoa New Zealand is not the only country to be grappling with high demand for mental health services. We can learn from what other countries are doing in response to gaps in their services.

The United Kingdom, for example, has attempted to address its own mental health services shortfall with a programme called Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT). This is a limited talking therapies programme that is commonly offered to people struggling with anxiety and depression.

Since its launch in 2008, 10,500 additional psychological therapists and practitioners have been trained to work with IAPT referrals. According to recent National Health Service data, 75% of people referred to IAPT services start treatment within six weeks of referral, and 95% start treatment within 18 weeks.

As with any programme developed overseas its applicability in New Zealand would need to be tried and tested but, on its face, IAPT offers some potential solutions. Yet there has been little to no interest in this approach from the current government.

Real action is long overdue

The government’s singular focus on one or two new mental health initiatives has been at the expense of training programmes. In 2021, the then health minister, Andrew Little, claimed New Zealand did not need an “army” of psychologists but given we are at least 1,000 psychologists short a battalion would be welcome.

If even a quarter of the funding that has been funnelled to new initiatives had been invested in 2019 in existing psychology training programmes, we could have doubled the numbers of psychologists graduating into the health workforce.

To give the government its due, there has been some recent investment in clinical psychology training but it feels like an afterthought. It is also still very small compared to investment in other areas.

Read more:
Road to nowhere: New Zealanders struggle to get the help they need, 2 years on from a funding boost for mental health services

The four years that have passed since the government’s bold commitment to addressing our mental health crisis has included several large bumps in the road that would have disrupted even the best-laid plans. Our leaders have had to deal with a physical health pandemic and a restructure of the entire health system. The former was out of anyone’s control, the latter very much of the government’s own making.

Nonetheless, looking at our mental health system in 2023 it feels like very little progress has been made. A blinkered approach to how to spend the $1.9 billion of our health dollars has stymied any good intentions that were behind the original plan.

Dougal Sutherland is an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at Te Herenga Waka and also works for Umbrella Wellbeing.

– ref. It’s 4 years since the NZ government pledged $1.9 billion for better mental health services – why are we still waiting? – https://theconversation.com/its-4-years-since-the-nz-government-pledged-1-9-billion-for-better-mental-health-services-why-are-we-still-waiting-207908

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Ferrill, Lecturer in Financial Crime Studies, Charles Sturt University

Australia’s financial crime laws are unfit for purpose. The problem: there are many professionals currently facilitating money laundering within the country who are exempt from the laws and regulations set up to stop it.

To illustrate the extent of the problem, nine people were arrested on money laundering charges this year. They were allegedly involved in a Chinese-Australian syndicate that moved around A$10 billion offshore and amassed at least $150 million in luxury assets and properties.

The suspects allegedly relied on lawyers, accountants and real estate professionals to launder such large sums of money. These are the industries currently not regulated by our anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws.

But there is a ray of hope: the Albanese government recently invited public consultation on proposed reforms of these laws. If the government lives up to its commitments, the draft reforms will go through the legislative process and be passed into law.

What is money laundering?

Australia has seen its fair share of alleged money laundering cases in recent years. Banks, casinos and organised crime groups have all been at the centre of recent allegations. Record fines have been handed down and reputations have been tarnished.

Money laundering is the process of “cleaning” dirty money to give its source a legitimate appearance. The dirty money is generated from illicit activities such as fraud, bribery, corruption and drug trafficking – either within Australia or internationally.

On the surface, money laundering may initially appear to be a victimless financial crime. Large corporations get fined and syndicates are interrupted, and we move on.

The reality is money laundering results in serious harm: socially, politically and economically. Dirty money inflates the cost of housing, fuels gang violence, exacerbates foreign interference in our politics, and enables human and wildlife trafficking. It finances nuclear weapons proliferation and helps countries evade international sanctions, such as those currently imposed against Russia for its war on Ukraine.

Money laundering also results in reduced revenue for the government that could be used for the benefit of Australians. Our tax dollars are also being spent on fighting the organised crime rings that are behind these activities.

In short, money laundering is a global problem and affects all of us. Still, the federal government has long failed to act. For 16 years, it has been shirking the implementation of crucial reforms to strengthen our regulations.

Read more:
Crown Sydney casino opens – another beacon for criminals looking to launder dirty money

Key weakness in the current law

In 2006, the Howard government passed the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act in response to the global concern around money laundering and terrorism financing.

The act addressed “high-risk” sectors: financial institutions, cash-carrying services, bullion dealers, casinos, remittance service providers and stored value card providers. However, soon after it passed, numerous weaknesses were identified.

One major weakness was the fact that a wide range of professionals operating outside the traditional financial system were not included under the law. This includes real estate professionals, lawyers, accountants, dealers in precious metals and stones, and trust and company service providers. Collectively, they are known as “designated non-financial businesses and professions”.

These professionals are vulnerable to exploitation for a number of reasons. They may have extensive networks to facilitate high-value, cross-border transactions. They often handle large amounts of cash. They also have insider knowledge on how to conceal or integrate large amounts of funds into the financial system.

Several multi-agency investigations in Australia have revealed the use of such professionals in concealing the source of illicit funds, financing criminal activities and disguising the true ownership of companies and trusts through the use of associates or fake identities.

Similarly, in a joint investigation last year, the Australian Federal Police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigations identified the involvement of lawyers, accountants and other professionals in organised crime activities across Australia and abroad.

Australia remains vulnerable to financial crime

To overcome this problem, the Howard government started to talk about reforming the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act in 2007. But these reforms have still not been implemented.

As a result, Australia is currently failing to meet international commitments on cracking down on money laundering and terrorist financing set by the global financial crime watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force. The Paris-based task force was established in 1989. It currently has 39 members, including Australia, and 205 jurisdictions committed to meeting its standards.

Read more:
How Westpac is alleged to have broken anti-money laundering laws 23 million times

Astonishingly, Australia is one of the only three countries that have not extended or promised to extend its money laundering laws to cover professionals like lawyers and real estate agents. Haiti and Madagascar are the other two.

This regulatory gap opens Australia up to potentially grave consequences. It has made the country an attractive destination for financial crimes and leaves us ill-equipped to deal with evolving threats.

Extending the law to include these professionals would give Australia a more robust framework to combat illicit activities in line with international standards. Better reporting, due diligence and oversight of these individuals must be a priority.

The need for implementing these reforms cannot be overstated. By seizing this opportunity, Australia can demonstrate its dedication to safeguarding its financial system. While it may just be the tip of the iceberg, it is a necessary step that can no longer be neglected.

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

– ref. Australia is awash with dirty money – here’s how to close the money-laundering loopholes – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-awash-with-dirty-money-heres-how-to-close-the-money-laundering-loopholes-206606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Allard, Post doctoral researcher and medical epidemiologist, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

When it comes to COVID, people living in disadvantaged communities are hit with a triple whammy. First, they’re more likely to get infected, and when sick, are more likely to have serious disease. Second, they’re more likely to develop long COVID. Third, our recent research suggests they’re less likely to get antivirals and when they do, it’s on average later.

We’ve just published the data to map how disadvantage is linked with access to COVID antiviral drugs you can take at home.

Here’s why our findings matter and what we can do to level the playing field for this critical part of Australia’s COVID response.

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What we did and what we found

Our team looked at Victorian and national prescribing data trends for the oral antiviral medications eligible Australians can take at home – Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) and Lagevrio (molnupiravir).

My health department colleagues linked data from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme with information from the Victorian health department’s COVID surveillance database. They then matched levels of socioeconomic disadvantage by postcode, according to criteria from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Their analysis showed people living in the most disadvantaged postcodes were 15% less likely to receive oral antivirals compared with those in the most advantaged postcodes.

Those in the most disadvantaged postcodes were supplied with the antivirals on average a day later (three days versus two days) than those in the most advantaged postcodes.

There are some limitations to our analysis. Not everyone who tests for COVID reports their positive result. And we suspect there may be more under-reporting of infections in disadvantaged areas.

Nevertheless, our findings about the influence of disadvantage on antiviral supply are not surprising. In the United States, there have been similar results.

Read more:
First, COVID hit disadvantaged communities harder. Now, long COVID delivers them a further blow

Why has this happened?

We know early access to antivirals, within the first five days of symptoms starting, is important to reduce the chances of severe disease and hospitalisation in those at risk.

So why are people in disadvantaged areas less likely to have access to COVID antivirals? The answers are multiple and complex.

Some relate to disadvantage that existed before the pandemic – for instance, poverty, homelessness, lower levels of English or formal education, and being less likely to have a regular GP.

Some factors relate specifically to antivirals. For instance, to access antivirals, you first have to know they exist and whether you might be eligible, then know how to access them and when. There may be out-of-pocket costs to see a GP to be assessed, then there’s the cost of filling the prescription, even with a concession card.

Read more:
Homelessness today sees workers and families with nowhere stable to live. No wonder their health is suffering

How can we address this?

We have an opportunity to address this inequity, whether that’s by addressing social determinants of health more broadly, or specifically related to antivirals access.

Equity depends on continuing to address the structural inequalities in our health system that create barriers to people accessing primary health services, and tailoring responses to communities.

For instance, earlier in the pandemic we saw funding to house homeless people, provide COVID-related health care to non-English speaking communities, and for people isolated at home. These initiatives need to continue.

Other countries have also recognised the need for more equitable access to COVID antivirals. Initiatives have included:

• COVID medicine delivery units in the United Kingdom. These identify, triage and arrange for high-risk people to receive antivirals at home

• pharmacists prescribing antivirals in New Zealand, and

• “test to treat” services in the US. This is where people can get tested, assessed and access antivirals in one spot, in one visit.

What needs to happen next?

As COVID waves continue, we must focus on reducing deaths and hospitalisations. Antiviral treatments are part of our armour and equity must drive our response.

Our ongoing COVID response should be designed with consumer input, supported by an adequately funded public health system and be data driven.
Here’s what needs to happen next:

• encourage a tired public to see COVID testing as an important first step to accessing antiviral treatment, and why they should consider treatment

• address the health care inequality in primary care (for instance, boosting timely access to a GP people can afford to visit) by increasing resourcing in areas where we know there are gaps

• provide culturally safe health care, delivered in community languages, co-designed with community input

• evaluate current and future antiviral medications

• communicate up-to-date information to the public and health professionals about antivirals, particularity GPs

• access more data on the coverage and equity of antiviral COVID treatments, to help direct us to the gaps in the health system that need to be plugged.

Why this matters now

For many of us in the past year, COVID has become another “cold” we encounter and may not even bother testing. Yet, we continue to see deaths and hospitalisations across the country.

Serious COVID infections continue to affect our most vulnerable people. These include elderly people, especially those over 80, First Nations people, people living with a disability and people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

We have a chance to ensure antivirals are used to reduce existing disparities in hospitalisation and death – not to make them worse.

Nicole Allard is affiliated with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Viral Hepatitis, Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. She is a senior lecturer, Department of Infectious diseases University of Melbourne, and is a general practitioner at
Cohealth, a community health centre in Melbourne.

– ref. Who’s taking COVID antivirals like Paxlovid? Hint: it helps if you’re rich – https://theconversation.com/whos-taking-covid-antivirals-like-paxlovid-hint-it-helps-if-youre-rich-207822

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amelia Ruscoe, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University

Australian primary schools are becoming increasingly reliant on commercial programs for teaching students. This means the content and the way students are being taught is outsourced to a third-party provider, who is not your child’s teacher.

Pre-pandemic research, commissioned by the New South Wales Teachers Federation in 2017 showed 28% of the state’s public school teachers already regularly used commercial products. We know the use of commercial programs increased since the start of COVID with increasing demands on schools.

The use of programs has grown to the point where some state education departments provide guidance about their use and even have endorsed resources.

These programs may seem like a good solution when teaching resources are stretched and the community demands evidence of learning progress. But their use can threaten children’s engagement in learning and undermine the value of professional teaching staff.

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What are commercial programs?

These are programs developed by commercial organisations and sold to schools in prepackaged form. Some parents may already be familiar with literacy programs used to teach reading. But commercial programs are developed and sold across all areas of the curriculum.

Packages include programs of work with prescribed lessons and timing for delivery. They can even include scripts for teachers to read aloud during lessons. Teachers are trained how to use these programs by the provider. They are told it will only be effective if they copy the provider’s content and methods.

The developers also advocate a “whole school” approach, which means the program is taught across all year levels and incorporates its assessment tools, interventions and extension programs.

The cost to schools can be thousands of dollars, plus associated resources like worksheets and tests, and professional development. They are paid for out of school budgets via both government funding and school fees.

Why are schools using commercial programs?

The use of commercial programs in Australian schools has increased dramatically over the last 15 years since the introduction of NAPLAN and publication of test results on the MySchool website.

More transparency around school performance was intended to empower parents to make informed choices and drive school improvement.
However, pressure to prove a school’s academic performance has created urgency for schools to find strategies that will give them a competitive edge.

At the same time, there has been a broader, global shift in education towards standardisation, high-stakes accountability and the use of corporate management models.

It is easy to see why schools use commercial programs. They offer efficient, consistent delivery of content across year levels. They also save teachers planning time and come with ready-made resources for lessons.

But schools often adopt these programs to reduce workload or because they have become widely accepted by other schools, rather than investigating whether they are endorsed and peer-reviewed by Australian or international education experts.

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Why is it a problem?

Most commercial programs claim to be “evidence-based”. But this can be based on small, selective or inadequate research that cannot be generalised to all students.

They may rely on “direct instruction” teaching methods – where the teacher stands at the front and instructs students – and prioritise a quick pace for rapid academic gains.

This is despite broad understanding that hands-on, play-based experiences support meaningful learning and are more inclusive in the classroom.

Commercial programs also require teachers to “trust the program”, which can limit the teacher’s capacity to meet individual children’s needs.

Some schools and early learning centres now deliver commercial programs in the preschool years despite National Quality Standards requiring educators to respond to children’s own ideas and play, and personalise interactions.

All the while, it is taking autonomy away from teachers, while devaluing their professional knowledge and skills.

Reliance on commercially driven third parties is at odds with the evidence-based training teachers receive at university. It also makes it harder for education students to develop essential teaching and programming skills during their professional placements.

What do parents need to know?

It is important parents ask who (or what) is behind their child’s learning at school.

Commercial programs are inherently generic and may rely on teaching methods including repetition of content and skills, often without opportunity for “real life” application that sustains children’s motivation to learn.

This can have an impact on a child’s engagement at school, because they are being “talked at” rather than allowed to explore ideas and develop thinking and communication skills that lead to understanding.

Particularly in the early years of school, homogeneous teaching makes it harder for children to learn at their natural pace – and to support their social and emotional development.

Schools need to be transparent about the commercial programs they adopt so parents are aware of the costs, how the programs are delivered, and what that means for their child’s engagement in learning on a daily basis.

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Amelia Ruscoe is affiliated with the Literacy Education Network, Western Australia (LENWA) and the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority, W.A. (SCSA).

Fiona Boylan is affiliated with the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority, W.A.

Pauline Roberts is affiliated with Early Childhood Australia (ECA).

– ref. Chances are your child’s school uses commercial programs to support teaching: what parents should know – https://theconversation.com/chances-are-your-childs-school-uses-commercial-programs-to-support-teaching-what-parents-should-know-203062

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Boucaut, PhD Candidate & Tutor, Media Department, University of Adelaide

“Animation is cinema. Animation is not a genre. And, animation is ready to be taken to the next step – we are all ready for it, please help us, keep animation in the conversation.”

This was Guillermo del Toro’s testament accepting the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2023 for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, released by Netflix. As one of the most acclaimed modern auteurs – and one who has announced his intention to stick with animation as his preferred medium – his acceptance speech reads like a plea directly to the academy.

Animated films at the Oscars

The Oscars have had a storied history of engaging with animated cinema. Since 2002, they have awarded a Best Animated Feature award, first won by Shrek. This was a time of technological innovations for 3D animation (think Toy Story or A Bug’s Life), and of standout A-list voice performances (Robin Williams in Aladdin, or Shrek’s star-studded cast).

By including animated films as a standalone category, the Oscars ended up segregating them: animation was treated as its own thing. Beauty and the Beast broke ground as the first-ever animated nominee for the Best Picture Oscar in 1992, but only two films have achieved such a feat since.

Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) were Best Picture Oscar nominees (and Best Animated Feature winners) of their respective years. However, such recognition only came after the academy expanded its Best Picture category from five nominees to up to 10. This was a concerted effort to include more popular films in the Oscars due to waning audience interest, after Best Picture snubs of The Dark Knight and WALL-E.

If animated films have had difficulty breaking into the Oscars’ vision of a Best Picture, then voice talent has been outright bypassed for consideration in acting categories. Since Shrek, stars have increasingly taken on voice work for animated projects in ways that elevates them from a side-hustle to key parts of their CVs.

For instance, Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy’s promotional duties for The Super Mario Bros. Movie represent significant time and stardom investments for the sake of animated intellectual property.

Yet without the physical body to observe, the Oscars have ignored voice work in animated films. The most meaningful push to have a voice performance nominated was for Scarlett Johansson’s in Her where she played a computer operating system. Johansson’s performance was nuanced, played with chemistry against her co-stars, and, ironically, Her was not an animated film.

Are things changing?

The Oscars this year shifted their brand of “prestige” to value the “cinematic experience” (and box office money) in the age of streaming.

The sweep of Everything Everywhere All at Once and Best Picture nominations for Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water in 2023 signal the academy conspicuously praising populist fare for bringing audiences into the physical cinema. This then hopefully attracts more audience eyeballs to an Oscars telecast where they are likely to have actually seen some of the nominees.

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Winning everything everywhere all at once: 5 experts on the big moments at the Oscars 2023

Popular film’s infiltration of the Oscars even seeped into the acting categories. Everything Everywhere All At Once’s indie cred made nominations (and three eventual wins) for its stars logical and welcome, but even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Angela Bassett scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination, the first acting recognition for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Its online fandom was instrumental here, having opined the academy’s biases against their beloved franchise.

Now, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has arrived ahead of the 2024 Oscars race. The animated film boasts a star-studded cast, including past Oscar nominees and winners like Daniel Kaluuya and Hailee Steinfeld in key supporting roles. Shameik Moore’s lead vocal performance as Miles Morales is also exceptional. Still figuring out what it means to balance being Spider-Man with a complicated home and social life, he sounds remarkably recognisable as a modern teenager.

Credit for this extends to a snappy script and intricate editing that bounces through its complex multiverse setting and superhero super-stakes to focus on moving character development. Thematically, it reflects on the artistic value of the superhero genre, unpacking the Spider-Man lore across its many iterations. And, of course, the visual artistry on display is mind-blowing, truly pushing cinematic excess in ways that only animation (currently) can.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the kind of popular cinema that the academy is currently primed to take more seriously. It’s on track to become one of the year’s box office successes, serves a dedicated fandom, showcases a stacked cast and dynamically plays with genre and narrative conventions.

As part two of a trilogy, it is unlikely to take out the Best Picture race altogether (Beyond the Spider-Verse, coming in 2024, is the more likely candidate if it sticks the landing). But it is still well-positioned to break through the confines of the Best Animated Feature category.

Robert Boucaut 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. Are the Oscars going to take animated films more seriously? – https://theconversation.com/are-the-oscars-going-to-take-animated-films-more-seriously-207716