The weekend’s surprise and brutal attack on Israel by Hamas fighters has the potential to reshape the Middle East – and will only further increase global geopolitical instability. As of Sunday night NZT, the initial 24 hours of the assault by Hamas on Israel had already taken at least 250 Israeli lives – easily making it the bloodiest day for Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In addition, dozens of Israelis have been kidnapped and taken back to Gaza to be used as bargaining chips. While there will be a range of motivations for why Hamas chose to act in the way it did now, the symbolic timing of Hamas’ assault – almost 50 years to the day after Yom Kippur – is unlikely to be a coincidence.
In recent years, Western countries such as New Zealand have largely taken their eye off the region to focus on the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific. A staple of New Zealand’s world news diet in decades past, of late the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has only rarely made the headlines. When it has, New Zealand has preferred not to become involved to any real extent beyond expressing sympathy with the victims. For example, when conflict broke out over Gaza in 2021, Jacinda Ardern cut an image that resembled more that of an observer or commentator, rather than of a participant in international affairs.
The new Hamas assault is a reminder of the continued power of the Middle East to shock and surprise. While it is too early to tell how the conflict will exactly unfold, one of the most concerning aspects will be the extent to which other nation-states become involved – particularly Iran, a close supporter of Hamas. The risk is that the war could spiral out of control and become a wider conflict with an even greater global impact, in an echo (or, potentially, an even more dangerous version) of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Determining New Zealand’s response to the new war in the Middle East will be one of the new New Zealand government’s first challenges – and as shown by the fierce reaction to the initial lack of direct condemnation of the Hamas assault by Nanaia Mahuta, it will not be an easy path to navigate. A sustainable and durable two-state solution is the only long-term answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But with Israel now defending itself against a vicious and horrific attack by Hamas, and planning a new ground invasion of Gaza, this will not be on the table in the near future.
However, New Zealand should resist the temptation to lose hope or to see the war as simply someone else’s problem. As a small democracy far from the epicentre of the conflict, New Zealand could eventually play a role in peacemaking efforts – if it wanted to. We should not forget that as horrific as the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was, the Camp David Accords came just five years later in 1978. These led to Egypt signing a peace treaty with Israel, a settlement that has endured. The darkest moment can sometimes come before the dawn. There will absolutely be a need for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy in the days, weeks, months and years ahead – and countries will be sorely needed to lead and support these efforts.
For now, these ambitions may seem like a pipe dream. But as the war in Ukraine has shown, even distant wars can have an outsized impact, even half a world away. Crude oil prices have already risen sharply this year – and combined with a strengthening US dollar, these have caused New Zealand petrol prices to head back up to levels last seen in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The pain caused by rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis – the number one issue of the election campaign – may not be over yet.
Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.
This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. To subscriber, please visit the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz).
Given the presidential style of modern politics, the intense media focus on party leaders is unavoidable. But this involves a degree of artifice. New Zealanders don’t vote directly for a prime minister, they vote for their preferred party and electorate candidate.
Technicalities aside, though, party leaders play a key role in shaping their party’s policies and soliciting public support. The upside of the attention they receive, therefore, is that voters get to scrutinise before they “buy”.
That’s especially important for undecided or swing voters. Not only can they compare policies, they can also examine each leader’s strengths and weaknesses, and gauge what values guide their approach.
Being head of state is a hugely challenging role – not least because leaders fundamentally get results through mobilising collective effort. If no one’s following, there is no leadership.
This is different from management, which largely revolves around detailed planning and then implementing and monitoring progress toward goals.
Leadership, however, involves connecting with people’s values and needs, and helping them make sense of events. It entails crafting a vision for the future and formulating credible strategies to achieve that.
It involves the capacity to make wise decisions, and role modelling what it means to be a person of good character. While managerial competency still matters, being a prime minister demands far more.
That said, trying to objectively evaluate a potential leader is not easy.
Favouring our own team
Humans strongly favour those they view as being “one of us”. A large body of research shows people trust, respect, support, care for and are more influenced by those they feel an affinity with. This sense of a shared identity might be based on common demographic characteristics, or shared interests and values.
Dedicated sports fans illustrate this well. Individually and collectively, they back their team no matter what. They wear team colours, idealise team members, mock opponents and boo referees – even if the ref is right.
The same socio-psychological forces are at play in the political domain.
The party faithful are unlikely to offer an objective view. They will likely overestimate the strengths and underestimate the weaknesses of their party’s policies and its leaders (and do the opposite when evaluating opposing parties).
This is clearly not helpful for undecided or swing voters. But even beyond partisan influences, determining what constitutes good leadership is a more vexed issue than we might imagine.
While people often hold strong views, the actual evidence about what constitutes “good” leadership is quite diverse and complex.
Fantasies and realities
There are many different theories, but researchers generally agree that “good leadership” is both ethical and effective. But people can often ignore those considerations when evaluating someone in (or aspiring to) a leadership role.
Subconsciously, we are inclined to judge leaders according to our own personal theories of leadership. This “implicit” bias is typically shaped by the kinds of behaviours role-modelled by the authority figures we were exposed to early in life.
A very strict parenting style, for example, which a child finds reassuring rather than restrictive, can lead them in later life to favour command-oriented or even authoritarian leaders.
Research indicates that even in democracies, about one-third of the population favours that kind of traditional “strong man” leadership style.
But scholars have long argued such leaders tend to be intolerant, oppressive, punitive, lacking in empathy and prone to bullying. They may resist being held to account for their actions, arrogantly believing they know best.
Romantic attachments
Popular culture and media narratives are other important influences on people’s ideas about leadership. In books, TV shows and movies, leaders are often depicted as heroic, larger-than-life characters with the capacity to save others, even the world. In the business media, it’s often implied CEOs have somehow turned a company around single-handedly.
Researchers call this the “romance” of leadership – a tendency to overstate what leaders can actually do, and to blame them when they fail to meet unrealistic expectations.
Indeed, no matter how skilled and dedicated, leaders are inevitably flawed, just like the rest of humanity. Nor are they omnipotent. New Zealand is a small and remote trading nation in an interconnected world, not a superpower or totalitarian state. There are many things its prime minister cannot control.
In that sense, an ability to manage expectations is an indicator of good leadership. Having the personal integrity to avoid making unrealistic promises is what serves democracy. Offering false hope is not good leadership, it’s more like what con artists and charlatans hungry for power do.
Overall, the evidence is that we’re not very rational or objective when it comes to evaluating leaders. Even if we’re not swayed by ideological factors, our personal experience and a romantic view of leadership can unconsciously cloud our judgment.
But there are some things we can do to help us make a more informed and balanced judgement. Firstly, we can try to step back and reflect on our own biases and assumptions about leadership. (You can even test your own bias on a number of issues with the Project Implicit online resource.)
Secondly, look for indicators of behaviours associated with good leadership. Many of these are the same character virtues we’d admire in anyone: integrity, fair-mindedness, the determination to do their best, confidence (but not arrogance), being accountable for their actions, and empathy and respect for others. These are vital foundations for good leadership.
And thirdly, look for actual evidence of leadership skills. Being prime minister is complex and challenging. It demands an ability to address serious issues in a serious-minded way.
As to whether that’s enough to win your vote, only you can be the judge of that.
Suze Wilson 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
The referendum on the Indigenous Voice to parliament will be held on Saturday. Polls close at 6pm AEDT in the south-eastern states, 6:30pm in South Australia, 7pm in Queensland, 7:30pm in the Northern Territory and 9pm in Western Australia.
I expect counting to be faster than at a federal election, as there’s just one question with a yes/no response, not multiple candidates. Ordinary votes cast at election day or pre-poll booths should be counted on election night. Postal and absent votes will be counted in the following weeks.
For a referendum to succeed, it requires a majority in at least four of the six states as well as a national majority. Polls imply there is no realistic chance of a national “yes” majority, so the double majority is a moot point.
A national Newspoll, conducted October 3–6 from a sample of 1,225, gave “no” to the Voice a 58–34 lead, out from 56–36 in the previous Newspoll, two weeks ago. With the 8% undecided excluded, “no” led by 63–37.
Here is the updated 2023 Voice polls graph. It includes the latest polls from Newspoll, Resolve, Morgan and YouGov (only one point so far for YouGov). In Resolve and last week’s Essential, “yes” has gained ground, but in other polls “yes” continues to fall.
Labor led by 53–47 on voting intentions, a one-point gain for the Coalition. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (steady), 34% Labor (down two), 12% Greens (up one), 5% One Nation (down one) and 13% for all Others (up two).
Anthony Albanese’s ratings were 46% dissatisfied (up two) and 45% satisfied (down two), for a net approval of -1. After slumping to net -20 in the previous Newspoll, Peter Dutton’s net approval jumped seven points to -13. Albanese’s lead as better PM was reduced to 50–33, from 50–30 previously, its narrowest since the election.
Here is a graph of Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll, showing the continued drop in his ratings since late 2022.
Large-sample Resolve poll gives ‘no’ a 56–44 lead
A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers was conducted over two weeks (September 22 to October 4) from a sample of 4,728. This sample is about three times Resolve’s normal sample of 1,600.
“No” to the Voice led in this poll by 56–44 after a forced choice question, in from a 57–43 “no” lead in early September. Initial preferences were 49% “no” (steady), 38% “yes” (up three) and 13% undecided (down three).
Tasmania was the only state where “yes” led, by 56–44. In New South Wales, “no” led by 52–48, in Victoria by 54–46, in SA by 55.5–44.5, in WA by 61–39 and in Queensland “no” led by 64–36.
This state data suggests that if “yes” somehow got over 50% in Saturday’s results, “yes” would win majorities in four states by adding six points to the current “yes” vote in every state, and so a double majority could be attained with SA the key state. But it’s very unrealistic to expect such a result.
This is the first gain for “yes” in Resolve’s Voice polls since April, when the “yes” lead increased from 57–43 in March to 58–42. By June, “no” was ahead by 51–49, and the “no” lead increased to 57–43 in September.
A key theme of the “no” campaign has been “if you don’t know vote no”. In this poll, 29% said they were happy to cast their ballot on the principles of the Voice without knowing the design, while 60% wanted more information.
Morgan poll: ‘no’ leads by 46–37
A Morgan Voice poll, conducted September 25 to October 1 from a sample of 909, gave “no” to the Voice a 46–37 lead, out from a 44–39 “no” lead the previous week. With undecided excluded, “no” led by 56–44, out from 53–47. Morgan’s two online Voice polls have been relatively favourable to “yes”.
Morgan’s weekly federal poll last week gave Labor a 52–48 lead, a two-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 37.5% Coalition, 32.5% Labor, 13% Greens and 17% for all Others. This poll was conducted September 25 to October 1 from a sample of 1,406.
YouGov Voice poll: ‘no’ leads by 53–38
Newspoll is now being conducted by Pyxis, but until mid-July it was conducted by YouGov. YouGov is now doing its own polls. A national YouGov poll, conducted September 25–29 from a sample of 1,563, gave “no” a 53–38 lead. “Yes” was ahead by 48–41 in inner metropolitan seats, but “no” was far ahead in all other regions.
Labor led by 53–47 on voting intentions from primary votes of 35% Coalition, 33% Labor, 13% Greens and 19% for all Others. Albanese’s net approval was -3, while Dutton’s was -17, with Albanese leading Dutton by 50–33 as preferred PM.
A national poll on the monarchy, conducted September 2–5 from a sample of 1,203, had net approval ratings for various United Kingdom royals and Australian politicians.
Prince William was at net +49, King Charles at net +10, Penny Wong at net +8, Jacqui Lambie at net +8, Tanya Plibersek at net +2, David Littleproud at net -6, Adam Bandt at net -12, Pauline Hanson at net -16, Prince Harry at net -17, Duchess Meghan Markle at net -32 and Prince Andrew at net -48.
UK Labour has huge win at Scottish byelection
I covered last Thursday’s UK byelection in Rutherglen for The Poll Bludger, in which Labour overturned a 10-point Scottish National Party margin in 2019 to win by 31 points. There will be two byelections in Conservative-held seats on October 19.
The ousting of Kevin McCarthy as United States House Speaker, the October 15 Polish election and a pro-Russia party winning the most seats at the September 30 Slovakian election were also covered.
Adrian Beaumont ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
In January 1983, skeletal remains were found in roadside scrub on Kangaroo Island. Forensic testing over the years revealed he was male, middle-aged, of European ancestry, blue-eyed, 162–173cm tall and wore full dentures.
But it wasn’t until June 2023 that advances in forensic genomics and genealogy gave William Hardie his name back.
The AFP DNA program used similar technology to direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies like AncestryDNA and 23andMe. These companies market themselves as a DNA-based way to explore your ancestral origins by simply sending in a saliva sample. But how is this technology used to solve cold cases?
All humans are more than 99% genetically identical. The genetic differences in the remaining 1% of the genome are what hints at our ancestors, as well as coding for other distinctive traits (for example, facial features and height).
Most consumer DNA testing companies use microarrays to survey this non-identical DNA. Microarrays target a small fraction of the genome – up to a million genetic variants called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs.
The reason we can match our DNA to relatives is because we inherit it from each of our biological parents. On average, half of our DNA (including the identical and non-identical parts) is shared with our parents and siblings – first degree relatives.
Going further, we share roughly a quarter of our DNA with second degree relatives, and an eighth with third degree relatives. As the genetic distance increases, we generally share fewer and smaller pieces of DNA.
Even so, it’s possible to detect the few small pieces of DNA we share with our ancestors (and their descendants) going back many generations.
But there are unique challenges for forensic scientists trying to identify human remains using ancestral DNA. In long-term missing persons cases, often the only remains found are skeletal.
In this scenario, DNA has to be extracted from bones or teeth. However, the DNA contained in these hard tissues will degrade with time and exposure to adverse environmental conditions (for example, long periods in soil and seawater).
As a result, the quantity and quality of extracted DNA is often insufficient for microarray analysis. Whole genome sequencing – which can recover all 3.2 billion letters that make up the genetic code – is proving more successful for such samples, but it’s not yet available in Australian forensic laboratories.
To overcome these challenges, the AFP DNA program recently validated a forensic DNA kit for use in their accredited laboratory. The kit employs targeted sequencing to focus on about 10,000 SNPs.
While this new method doesn’t analyse as much DNA as microarrays or whole genome sequencing, it is enough to link genetic relatives up to the fifth degree (for example, second cousins or great-great-great grandparents), or sometimes further.
A saliva sample contains enough DNA to sequence the whole genome of a living person, but for skeletonised human remains the DNA may be limited or damaged. Mufid Majnun/Unsplash
Combing through public databases and records
Once a SNP profile is obtained – and after all other avenues of inquiry have been exhausted – the AFP DNA program will upload it to the GEDmatch PRO and FamilyTreeDNA databases for comparison to the profiles of citizens who have volunteered their DNA to be used in this way.
If suitable genetic matches are found, a genetic genealogist will use public information to build out their family trees until they discover (typically deceased) ancestors in common. From there, they will research relevant family lines to find closer (ideally living) relatives of the unknown individual.
They may also work with police who can use investigative techniques, non-public information and targeted DNA testing to fill in some branches of the tree and rule out others. The aim is to find a present-day family with a missing or unaccounted-for relative.
AFP DNA program specialists are supporting state and territory police to identify these nameless individuals, link them to missing people and reunite them with families who’ve missed them for years.
So far, the AFP DNA program has been instrumental in resolving 46 cases. This includes identifying the remains of 15 missing Australians, including Mario Della Torre, Owen Ryder, Tanya Glover and Francis Foley.
How can you help if you have a missing relative?
First, you should report them missing to the police if you haven’t already. Provide all known information relevant to the forensic investigation (including physical appearance, medical history and dentist’s details).
Second, you can provide a reference DNA sample. This simple procedure involves you swabbing the inside of your cheek and can be done at your local police station when making a missing persons report.
Your DNA profile will be uploaded to Australia’s national DNA database so it can be compared to DNA profiles from unknown deceased persons across Australia with your consent.
This is critical for decades-old missing persons cases where few close genetic relatives remain.
You can help if you’ve taken a consumer DNA test
You may be distantly related to one of the unknown Australians without even knowing it.
Anyone who has done a consumer DNA test can potentially help identify missing people. To do so, you need to download your DNA data file, upload it to GEDmatch and choose to opt in or out of “law enforcement matching”.
If you opt in, you consent to your DNA being included in searches by police worldwide for the purpose of identifying human remains and solving violent crimes like homicides.
If you opt out, your DNA can still be used by the AFP DNA program to resolve unidentified and missing persons cases, but it won’t be used for criminal cases.
Without the leads from distant genetic relatives who had previously opted in to this type of DNA matching, it wouldn’t have been possible to connect human remains found on Kangaroo Island in 1983 to the family of William Hardie, who’ve missed him for over 40 years.
Jodie Ward is also employed by the Australian Federal Police as the Program Lead of the National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons. She was involved in applying forensic investigative genetic genealogy to the unidentified human remains case found on Kangaroo Island, which assisted the South Australia Police to identify the remains as belonging to William Hardie. The National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons commenced in July 2020 and is currently funded under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Cth) until December 2023.
Dennis McNevin has been seconded to the Australian Federal Police National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons. He has also provided commercial scientific services to the NSW Police Force. He has previously received fuding for research on forensic genetics from the Australian Research Council, the AMP Tomorrow Fund, the ANU Connect Ventures Discovery Translation Fund and the US Army International Technology Center – Pacific.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney
Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects 2.5–5% of people. Less than half of people with ADHD have been diagnosed and treated – though more and more people are presenting for help.
Like other neurodevelopmental conditions, there are long delays to diagnosis. The current pathways to diagnosis and care can involve multiple assessments from different professionals who are in short supply, making the process confusing, expensive and time-consuming.
Yet many Australians have a GP on local clinic they can access. That’s why some medical groups are advocating for GPs to have a role in the diagnosis and management of ADHD.
But while GPs should have an expanded role in the ongoing management of ADHD, it’s important for specialists to diagnose and initiate treatment.
ADHD is associated with inattention, or difficulty holding and sustaining concentration over periods of time, particularly on tasks that are less interesting or require significant mental effort.
It is also often associated with hyperactivity and high levels of impulsivity and arousal, and difficulty planning, coordinating and remaining engaged in tasks.
In order to meet criteria for ADHD, these difficulties must be present over a long period and have a negative impact on a person’s day-to-day life. This is why an ADHD assessment requires a clinical interview from specialists, and should never be done by questionnaires alone.
ADHD assessments are performed by psychiatrists, paediatricians and clinical and neuropsychologists with specialist training.
To meet the criteria, difficulties must impact on day to day life over a long period. Shutterstock
An ADHD assessment must be comprehensive enough that if a diagnosis is made, it can be followed up with a management plan that:
addresses the person’s individual needs
is culturally appropriate for them and their circumstances
takes into consideration all of the issues identified.
When a diagnosis of ADHD is made, medication is often part of the management plan. Stimulant medications are usually the first-choice medication. Psychological therapies may also be recommended.
Treatment can ease some of the struggles
ADHD increases the risk for poor academic, occupational, social and mental health outcomes, and has even been associated with higher rates of accidental injury and death.
However, these risks decrease when ADHD is effectively treated. One front-line treatment, stimulants, have about a 70% efficacy rate for managing symptoms. Research shows stimulants can effectively reduce many of the adverse impacts of ADHD.
However, stimulants can be very hard to access. States and territories have different laws about stimulant prescribing, and your prescription from one state may not be honoured in another.
Why are medications difficult to access?
Stimulants are tightly regulated because they have been assessed as having the potential for abuse. Prescribing or supplying them requires prior authorisation by the state authorities and must be in accordance with criteria set out by each state.
While GPs and nurse practitioners can apply for authorisation in some situations in some states, the legislation generally identifies specialists (paediatricians and psychiatrists for children and adolescents, and psychiatrists for adults) as the main prescribers.
Currently, there are too few specialists, in both rural and urban areas of Australia, to ensure access to ADHD medication.
As our recognition of ADHD increases, especially in adults, alternative approaches are needed, since this skills shortage is unlikely to resolve soon.
We advocate for a “collaborative care” model, with GPs playing a greater role in managing patients’ ongoing ADHD care, including prescribing and monitoring medication.
However, it’s important for specialists to perform the initial diagnosis and identify the right treatment for the patient. Diagnosing ADHD can be complex – other psychiatric and medical conditions may need to be ruled out. And it can be difficult to match patients with an appropriate treatment.
GPs are specialists in chronic disease management and already provide ongoing care for many chronic physical and mental health conditions. GPs are generally easier and cheaper to access than other specialists, know their patients well and are embedded in their communities. Models of collaborative care for ADHD are already common in many other countries including the United Kingdom and United States.
A collaborative care model would also allow specialists to spend more of their time on initial consults and the management of complex cases, rather than the ongoing management of less complex cases.
For collaborative care models to work, national programs will be required that can train and register GPs in ADHD management, to meet the needs of their patients with ADHD and, most importantly, improve patient outcomes.
Resources and support will be needed to ensure practitioners are supported to deliver shared care for ADHD. If GPs don’t receive adequate support, fewer may be willing to provide this care.
Ultimately, the model could transform access to effective treatment for people with ADHD and their families.
Adam Guastella is scientific director of Neurodevelopment Australia and the Child Neurodevelopment and Mental Health team of the University of Sydney.
David Coghill has consulted with Takeda, Medice, Novartis and Servier. They have received research funding from the NHMRC. They are the president of the Australian ADHD Professionals Association.
Coral impacted by excess nutrients in the Great Barrier Reef.Ashly McMahon, CC BY-ND
The Great Barrier Reef is one of Australia’s most important environmental and economic assets. It is estimated to contribute A$56 billion per year and supports about 64,000 full-time jobs, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. However, the reef is under increasing pressure.
Our new study, published today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that previously unquantified groundwater inputs are the largest source of new nutrients to the reef. This finding could potentially change how the Great Barrier Reef is managed.
Too much of a good thing
Although nitrogen and phosphorous are essential to support the incredible biodiversity of the reef, too much nutrient can lead to losses of coral biodiversity and coverage. It also increases the abundance of algae and the ability of coral larvae to grow into adult coral, and impacts seagrass coverage and health, which is crucial for fisheries and biodiversity.
Nutrient enrichment can also promote the breeding success of crown-of-thorns starfish, whose increasing populations and voracious appetite for corals have decimated parts of the reef in recent decades.
Pristine coral and coral affected by excess nutrient in the Great Barrier Reef. Ashly McMahon, CC BY-ND
What are the sources of nutrients driving the degradation of the reef? Previous studies have focused on river discharge. According to one estimate, there has been a fourfold increase in riverine nutrient input to the Great Barrier Reef since pre-industrial times.
This past focus on rivers has emphasised reducing surface water nutrient inputs through changing regulations for land-clearing and agriculture, while neglecting other potential sources.
However, the most recent nutrient budget for the Great Barrier Reef found river-derived nutrient inputs can account for only a small proportion of the nutrients necessary to support the abundant life in the reef. This imbalance suggests large, unidentified sources of nutrients to the reef. Not knowing what these are may lead to ineffective management approaches.
The source of potential groundwater inputs to the Great Barrier Reef. Douglas Tait, CC BY-ND
We found a new nutrient source
Our research team decided to try and track down this missing source of nutrients.
We used natural tracers to track groundwater inputs off Queensland’s coast. This allows us to quantify how much invisible groundwater flows into the Great Barrier Reef, along with the nutrients hitching a ride with this water. Our findings indicate that current efforts to preserve and restore the health of the reef may require a new perspective.
Our team collected data from offshore surveys, rivers and coastal bores along the coastline from south of Rockhampton to north of Cairns. We used the natural groundwater tracer radium to track how much nutrient is transported from the land and shelf sediments via invisible groundwater flows.
The AIMS research vessel, Cape Ferguson. Ashly McMahon, CC BY-ND
We found that groundwater discharge was 10–15 times greater than river inputs. This meant roughly one-third of new nitrogen and two-thirds of phosphorous inputs came via groundwater discharge. This was nearly twice the amount of nutrient delivered by river waters.
Past investigations have revealed that groundwater discharge delivers nutrients and affects water quality in a diverse range of coastal environments, including estuaries, coral reefs, coastal embayments and lagoons, intertidal wetlands such as mangroves and saltmarshes, the continental shelf and even the global ocean.
In some cases, this can account for 90% of the nutrient inputs to coastal areas, which has major implications for global biologic production.
Nevertheless, this pathway remains overlooked in most coastal nutrient budgets and water quality models.
The research team sampling groundwater near the Great Barrier Reef. Ashly McMahon, CC BY-ND
A paradigm shift needed?
Our results suggest the need for a strategic shift in management approaches aimed at safeguarding the Great Barrier Reef from the effects of excess nutrients.
This includes better land management practices to ensure fewer nutrients are entering groundwater aquifers. We can also use ecological (such as seaweed and bivalve aquaculture, enhancing seagrass, oyster reefs, mangroves and salt marsh) and hydrological (increasing flushing where possible) practices at groundwater discharge hotspots to reduce excess nutrients in the water column.
Importantly, unlike river outflow, nutrients in groundwater can be stored underground for decades before being discharged into coastal waters. This means research and strategies to protect the reef need to be long-term. The potential large lag time may lead to significant problems in the coming decades as the nutrients now stored in underground aquifers make their way to coastal waters regardless of changes to current land use practices.
Pristine corals on the Great Barrier Reef. Ashly McMahon, CC BY-ND
The understanding and ability to manage the sources of nutrients is pivotal in preserving global coral reef systems.
While we need to reduce the impact of climate change on this fragile ecosystem, we also need to adjust our policies to manage nutrient inputs and safeguard the Great Barrier Reef for generations to come.
It may have been largely overlooked in the election debates, but New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are finally on the way down.
Annual emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels are the lowest since 1999 and the 12-month renewable share of electricity is back above 90% for the first time since 1981. The Ministry for the Environment has advised New Zealand is on track to meet the first (2022-2025) carbon budget.
All this can be attributed to a range of factors, including fossil gas running low, full hydro lakes, high petrol prices and working from home. But climate policies such as the Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), the clean car discount and the Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) have made a significant contribution to the turnaround.
Current decarbonisation policies have and will continue to deliver real emissions cuts, provided they remain in place.
It is therefore disconcerting that the National Party plans to take $2.3 billion from the CERF (almost two-thirds of the fund’s mid-2022 balance) to pay for tax cuts. The argument that individual households will use tax cuts to make their own decarbonisation decisions is unsupported by evidence and lacks credibility.
The Labour Party has also dipped into this fund, taking $236 million to pay for rebates for household installations of solar panels and batteries, and community energy schemes. These may produce some as yet unquantified emissions cuts.
Government funding is working
Allocations from the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) fund to NZ Steel and Fonterra show direct and measurable avoidance of emissions. The installation of an electric furnace at NZ Steel to utilise scrap will save 1% (800,000 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions, or tCO₂e) of New Zealand’s 2021 gross emissions. Support for Fonterra to convert coal-fired boilers at six plants to renewables will save 1.4% (1.1 MtCO₂e).
The State Sector Decarbonisation Fund, valued at $215 million and used to reduce emissions in government organisations including hospitals and universities, is on track to deliver emissions savings of nearly a million tonnes over ten years (0.1% per year).
Since the introduction of the clean car discount in July 2021, sales of electric vehicles have quintupled and now have a 12% market share. The market share of all low-emission vehicles rose from 20% to 60%, easily surpassing emissions targets of the clean car standard which came into force this year.
Since the introduction of the clean car discount in July 2021, sales of low-emission vehicles rose significantly. Data from Waka Kotahi, CC BY-SA
While these rates of increase may look impressive, the actual number of EVs remains very low. Nonetheless, emissions cuts already run into hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year, a significant part of which is due to the clean car discount.
Need for more investment
New Zealand is not yet on track to meet its international pledge (known as Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, and covering all emissions from 2021 to 2030) or the second and third carbon budgets.
Many important policy matters are either unresolved or stuck in review: how to meet the NDC, whether and how to prioritise gross emissions reductions over tree planting, how to reduce agricultural emissions.
The actual cost of achieving emissions reduction targets and addressing risks from climate change will likely exceed the overall size of the Climate Emergency Response Fund.
Lack of an integrated plan
In the year to June 2023, oil was responsible for nearly three-quarters of fossil fuel emissions. Two-thirds of this came from transport. But transport emissions are supposed to fall 41% by 2035 – a massive task that will involve pressing hard on all three parts of the avoid/shift/improve transport framework.
Regarding avoidance, even the draft local plans for avoiding car travel are not yet ready. Labour and National are competing as to who can offer the most extravagant motorway plans, known to encourage driving.
When it comes to shifting modes of transport, there has been some expansion of urban cycleways. But Auckland’s city rail link will not open until 2026. And a great deal has to happen to meet the Climate Change Commission’s draft advice to “complete cycleway networks by 2030 and take steps to complete rapid transport networks by 2035”.
The National Party plans to cut public transport funding and increase fares.
As for improvement, the National Party plans to cancel the clean car discount and weaken the clean car standard. The current plan requires 30% of the entire light-vehicle fleet to be zero emission by 2035 (currently at 1.4%), which is ambitious but doable under the existing framework.
New Zealand still doesn’t have any kind of fuel-efficiency standard or coordinated policy on heavy-vehicle emissions.
Renewable energy
New Zealand’s renewable share for all energy (not just electricity) has been stuck below 30% for decades. It is supposed to reach 50% by 2035 and then continue to increase until use of fossil fuels is almost entirely eliminated.
New Zealand has untapped resources of renewable energy, wind, solar and geothermal. An even bigger supply of offshore wind is now being explored.
At the recent New Zealand wind energy conference, many massive possible projects were mooted. But delegates said they needed to be sure the electricity demand would be there before making final investment decisions.
The fate of the Climate Emergency Response Fund is of great importance, as international evidence shows:
It is the use of revenues from carbon prices, not the carbon prices themselves, which trigger change.
Depleting this fund will slow electrification and demand for renewable energy.
New Zealand’s current emissions reduction plan, which runs to 2025, is a package. Its parts support each other and attempt to balance many people’s needs. If one part is weakened, the difference has to be made up elsewhere.
This article was prepared with the assistance of Paul Callister.
Ian Mason is affiliated with the NZ Offshore Wind Working Group.
Robert McLachlan 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.
Australia’s teaching workforce does not reflect the diversity of the Australian community, a situation that has far-reaching implications for our education system.
As we outline in our new research, published today, teachers are predominantly Australian-born, female, and non-Indigenous.
Most hail from middle-class backgrounds with urban upbringings, and are less likely to have disabilities.
So why is this lack of diversity a problem? And what can be done to help overcome it?
Australia is in the midst of a teacher shortage, which is affecting schools in unequal ways.
Schools in rural, remote areas, and those with higher levels of disadvantage have been shown to bear the brunt of this issue.
Our research suggests diversifying the teaching workforce can help address attaining and retaining teachers in schools and strengthen student outcomes across the board.
Diversity makes a difference
Research shows teachers from minority groups, such as teachers of colour, can increase student achievement, especially for students from the same groups.
Evidence also suggests teachers from minority groups often hold higher expectations for their minority students compared with majority teachers. For example, Black teachers tend to have higher expectations than white teachers of Black students, and students respond to this with greater effort.
Teachers from minority groups can act as role models for people from similar backgrounds.
Teachers from minority groups can also act as cultural “bridges” to parents and students from these groups, fostering a sense of belonging and facilitating cultural understanding among students and colleagues.
Teachers from minority groups are also more likely to stay in hard-to-staff schools impacted the most during a staffing crisis.
For example, teachers from ethnic minorities are more likely to teach and stay in schools with many minority students, and teachers from rural areas are more likely to teach and remain in rural schools.
So, how can we increase the diversity of the teaching workforce?
Scholarships can help meet the costs of studying to become a teacher. Shutterstock
Grow-your-own programs
One approach we examined in our new report is known as a “grow-your-own program”, which focus on would-be teachers already working in schools. This is where would-be teachers are given financial assistance by governments, and other support such as a mentor or study groups. Upon finishing the program, they become fully qualified teachers in their local school.
The research shows grow-your-own programs can increase teacher diversity and address staffing shortages. They can support people already working in hard-to-staff schools, such as teacher aides, to undertake teaching qualifications.
By recruiting people who already have ongoing connections with the community, grow-your-own programs produce graduates likely to take up and retain teaching positions in these communities.
New South Wales is currently trialling a similar program targeting teacher aides. The Northern Territory and Queensland also have targeted grow-your-own programs for Indigenous people.
Teacher residency programs
Teacher residency programs bring candidates into schools from the beginning of their training, where they are closely mentored by experienced teachers.
Candidates teach actively from the start while completing their teaching qualification.
These programs are usually focused on increasing the supply of teachers, rather than increasing diversity.
But since they allow people to earn an income and train at the same time, they can remove barriers, such as the costs of full-time study, for those from minority groups.
Teacher residency programs bring candidates into schools from the beginning of their training. Shutterstock
Targeted scholarships for teacher trainees
Scholarships can help meet the costs of studying to become a teacher, and have been used for decades, although mostly without an emphasis on teacher diversity.
Australian departments of education already offer scholarships targeted to Indigenous secondary and university students who want to become teachers, or who are in teacher training.
We know these scholarships do work to support people into teaching and could be targeted to other minority groups as well.
Building bridges between VET and teacher training
Vocational education and training (VET) courses can be easier and cheaper to access than university courses.
For some students they feel like less of a cultural and financial “leap” than going to university.
Building pathways between VET and teacher education courses can help diversify the teaching workforce. Victoria University and Charles Darwin University offer good examples in Australia.
Overcoming barriers
Those wishing to become teachers in Australia already face several barriers.
One is a test known as the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE), which aspiring teachers must pass.
While it’s important our teachers have strong literacy and numeracy skills, some people from diverse backgrounds can find tests threatening and underperform. We need to consider whether there are alternatives that are equally valid.
School context and culture is also important. Encouraging a person from a minority group into teaching won’t help if the structures and cultures in the workplace don’t support them and cater for diversity.
School leadership, parents and students need to recognise that staff diversity strengthens the school, and support minority staff appropriately.
We need to make sure schools are places where diverse teachers feel valued and can flourish.
Policymakers and schools must recognise teacher workforce diversity is a key component of school quality.
Suzanne Rice received funding from the Jack Keating Scholarship Fund to complete this research.
Alice Garner was affiliated with the Victorian Department of Education between 2014 and 2019 when employed as a secondary school teacher. During this period she was a member of the Australian Education Union.
Lorraine Graham 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.
Youth unemployment is a global problem, but in China the rate – 21.3% – is particularly alarming, not just because it’s high, but because it could affect other economies and geopolitical relations.
The release of the rate, which more than doubled the pre-COVID rate of May 2018, coincided with China’s National Bureau of Statistics announcing it would no longer report age specific data because it needed to “improve and optimise labour force survey statistics”.
Youth unemployment is a complex issue, but even more so in China as a result of government policy and society’s expectations.
Under the Hukou system, households in China are required to register, and authorities then determine where they live and work and which public services they can access.
The system often stops rural residents taking advantage of urban opportunities, which can limit their work prospects.
The stress and uncertainty experienced by this demographic is only worsened by the expectations that come with being the only child in the family as a result of China’s one child policy, which was abandoned only seven years ago.
The “Ant Tribe” phenomenon
The term “Ant Tribe” was coined in 2009 by sociologist Lian Si to describe highly educated young people stuck in low-paying, temporary jobs that hinder skill advancement.
These young people can’t accumulate social capital, leading to a negative cycle that’s hard to escape. This diminishes their return on their investment in education and highlights a breakdown in the career ecosystem.
The “Ant Tribe” phenomenon is more than just a sign of a flawed economy. It also reveals a deeper emotional and psychological issue. Being over educated and underemployed causes significant emotional trauma, including anxiety, depression and hopelessness.
This emotional toll is further complicated by societal shifts such as the “lying flat” movement and the rise of “full time children” in China.
These trends challenge traditional markers of success and redefine family expectations, adding another layer to the psychological complexities faced by the younger generation. The impact can be long-lasting, leading to a less productive and innovative workforce.
Weaknesses in the education system
Despite rapid expansion in higher education, a disconnect exists between university curricula and job market needs.
Programs often favour theory over practical skills, leaving graduates ill-equipped for work. For example, engineering students might focus on equations and theories but miss out on real-world applications such as internships.
Overqualified candidates flood the jobs market, forcing many to return to study. Shutterstock
Additionally, the market faces a glut of overqualified candidates, especially in the technology, finance and healthcare sectors. This imbalance drives many towards further studies.
In 2023, a total of 4.74 million students took the postgraduate entrance exam, a staggering 135% increase on the 2.01 million test takers in 2017. This cycle exacerbates youth unemployment and underemployment.
The wider impact
The ripple effect of China’s youth unemployment crisis is not to be underestimated. Drawing on warnings from UNICEF, high unemployment rates can lead to civil unrest, especially in nations with a large youth population.
The Chinese Communist Party has long maintained its authoritarian approach by securing a social licence based on economic stability and prosperity.
If rising youth unemployment erodes this licence by fostering political disengagement or radicalisation, China could experience a significant internal power shift.
In a globally connected world, such turmoil could spill over into international relations. Civic unrest can make a country less stable and thus less attractive to foreign investment, especially among nations with close economic ties to China.
Such an internal upheaval also threatens to destabilise supply chains globally, given China’s pivotal role in global supply chains.
Historical examples such as the Arab Spring and Brexit show internal dissatisfaction and social unrest can have ripple effects on a country’s international relations.
The Arab Spring led to the overthrow of multiple governments, created regional instability, influenced global oil prices, and necessitated the resetting of foreign policy by Western countries.
Instability in Britain caused by Brexit led to changes in foreign policy. Shutterstock
While youth unemployment is a global dilemma, the extent of the problem in China and its potential broader impact on interconnected economies means we can’t afford to ignore it.
What can China do to solve the problem?
China can find policy inspiration from successful initiatives in other countries, such as Germany’s dual vocational training system. This system ensures students are both academically prepared and practically skilled, better aligning education with labour market demands.
Addressing the urban/rural divide is equally crucial. By offering financial incentives including tax breaks and grants, China could promote job growth in rural areas. Australia and the United States have adopted similar models to attract healthcare workers to less populated regions.
China also needs to do something to reduce the emotional toll of chronic unemployment which worsens the longer graduates are out of work. Post-COVID, the issue is exacerbated, with 40% of Chinese youth reported to be susceptible to mental health challenges.
This is where mental health services such as those available in Australia that are tailored to young people could help. Besides benefiting the individual, these programs contribute to a more engaged, productive workforce essential for national well being.
The precarious nature of the gig economy can further deepen the unemployment crisis. Some European countries such as France and the Netherlands consider gig workers employees and offer social security benefits. A similar model could be implemented in China, providing benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans.
Finally, the scale and complexity of youth unemployment requires a multi-pronged approach that extends beyond national borders.
Countries should actively share successful employment strategies and cooperate on international initiatives to create job opportunities for youth. Collaboration is the key to developing a globally stable, productive young workforce.
Investing in young people isn’t just good policy. It’s a moral imperative for global stability and shared prosperity.
Christian Yao 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.
An enthusiastic, sellout crowd arrived at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall in September to hear an evening of music from Orchestra Victoria.
The program consisted largely of Australian music and premiere performances. If the sight of 3,500 filled seats (filled, anecdotally, by those much younger than the typical orchestra audience) did not indicate how deeply this music was loved, then the standing ovation at the end of the night would leave no-one in doubt.
This packed concert, however, wasn’t a performance of a symphonic great or even a major film soundtrack. It was an evening of music created for video games.
Video games are now a cultural activity for the vast majority of Australians and a major platform through which audiences are introduced to new music.
Audiences have personal, even intimate relationships with the music of video games, given the long hours spent playing in lounge rooms and studies around the nation.
The potential of video-game music is particularly evident in Australia, where several independent video games have obtained both critical and commercial success around the world. This is, in part, thanks to their music, such as Cult of the Lamb (2022), Unpacking (2021) and Hollow Knight (2017).
However, how the game developers actually work with musicians to produce these landmark works has so far been an unanswered question.
Our research includes findings about working conditions, rights, royalties and more. It paints a picture of a sector confidently performing on the global stage alongside far bigger national industries.
Game music work is overwhelmingly being undertaken in Australia as contract-based freelance work and rarely as full-time employment. Despite this, game developers see composers as fundamental creative partners.
Game music workers feel they have meaningful input on the projects they work on. They rarely approach game soundtracks as “just another gig”. This is reinforced by our finding the vast majority of game music workers in Australia create original music for game projects, rather than implementing pre-existing works.
Australian game composers are more likely than workers in other soundtrack sectors to retain rights and opportunities.
In film and television, disadvantageous “buyout” contracts, where composers hand over all ownership of their music to studios, have become common. In the Australian game music sector, such arrangements exist in only 13% of projects. This allows most composers to retain ownership of their music and to tap into additional revenue streams like performance royalties.
An astonishing 74% of music workers are able to release their game’s soundtrack personally and independently, rather than going through either the game’s studio, publisher or a music label.
There is no “one way” of working for Australian game music workers, with a wide diversity of skills and experiences evident.
Many composers work directly with game development tools or with audio “middleware” such as Fmod or Wwise on game projects. Tools like these allow composers to engage with the game’s production and implement their music directly into the game, rather than simply handing over audio files to game developers.
Around half, however, prioritise music creation and leave implementation of that music up to the developers. This means technical knowledge of game development is not as integral to creating game music as many may assume.
Creative communication skills are also important for musicians and highly valued by game developers who may otherwise find music to be a language they do not speak.
Like the game development and music sectors more broadly, unpaid work remains common. Only 53% of game music workers report any income from this work.
However, we found the median annual income for all game music workers is A$40,000, compared to only $30,576 for musicians generally. Among those who make more than the Australian minimum wage ($45,000) from game music, this jumps to a considerable median income of $82,500.
Being at the intersection of games and music also means the gender and racial inequalities of the video game and screen composing sectors are entrenched within game music.
Three-quarters of all game music workers identified themselves as male, and 72% as white, Caucasian or European. While Australia has diverse musicians, they currently have unequal ability to move into game music. This needs proactive solutions.
Creative works in their own right
Our benchmarking report reveals an exciting and so far under-appreciated area of cultural activity in Australia.
Australian game soundtracks are not sterile assets produced for a mass medium. They are genuine creative works that are adored in their own right by audiences around the world.
However, growing the sector in Australia requires focused support. Its lack of diversity is a major area of concern.
Even while game music workers are able to retain generous rights to their music, many are frustrated and confused by the lack of clear standards. We also heard several stories of workers being pressured to give up their rights once an international publisher decided to invest in a local game developer.
Dan Golding received funding from Creative Australia to undertake the Australian Music and Games 2023 Benchmark report. He is also a practicing videogame composer and made music for Untitled Goose Game and the Frog Detective series, both of which are mentioned in the report.
Brendan Keogh received funding from Creative Australia to undertake the Australian Music and Games 2023 Benchmark report.
Taylor Hardwick worked as a Research Assistant at the QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), which received funding from Creative Australia to undertake the Australian Music and Games 2023 Benchmark report.
The Hamas attack on Israel yesterday has brought the usual round of systemic misreporting by New Zealand news outlets as they repost stories from the BBC, AP and Reuters which bend the truth in favour of Israeli narratives of “terrorism” and “victimhood”.
As we said in a commentary earlier this year the systemic anti-Palestinian in reporting from the Middle East includes:
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa John Minto . . . “‘Occupied’ is the status these Palestinian territories have under international law, United Nations resolutions and NZ government policy, and should be consistently reported as such.” TVNZ screenshot/APR
The BBC, AP and Reuters typically talk about the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem when they should be reported as the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.
The BBC, AP and Reuters typically refer to Palestinians resisting Israel’s military occupation Palestinian “militants” or “terrorists” or similar derogatory and dismissive descriptions.
We would not call Ukrainians attacking Russian occupation forces as “militants” so why do our media think it’s OK to use this term to describe Palestinians attacking Israeli occupation forces?
Palestinian right to resist Under international law, Palestinians have the right to resist Israel’s military occupation, including armed resistance and should not be abused for doing so by our media.
Palestinian resistance groups should be described as “resistance fighters” or “armed resistance organisations” while Israeli soldiers should be described as “Israeli occupation soldiers”.
The BBC, AP and Reuters typically give sympathetic coverage to Israelis killed by Palestinians but do not give similar sympathetic coverage to Palestinians killed, on a near daily basis, by the Israeli occupation (more than 240 killed so far this year, including dozens of children.
Labour leader and NZ Prime Minister Chris Hipkins . . . New Zealand “condemns unequivocally the Hamas attacks on Israel.” Image: TVNZ screenshot/APR
The vast majority of these killings are simply ignored.
Palestinians are the victims of Israeli apartheid policies, ethnic cleansing, land theft, house demolitions, military occupation and unbridled brutality and yet our media ends up giving the impression it’s the other way round.
Wide coverage is given to Israeli spokespeople in most stories with rudimentary reporting, if any, from Palestinian viewpoints.
For example, so far Radio New Zealand has reported on the views of New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses but has yet to interview any Palestinian New Zealanders who suffer great anxiety every time Palestinians are killed by Israel.
Support for self-determination New Zealanders overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. They rightly reject Israel’s racist narratives and its apartheid policies towards Palestinians.
Yara Eid, a journalist from Gaza, expresses her reaction to the news that her friend and fellow journalist 21-year-old Ibrahim Lafi was murdered by Israeli missiles in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/4LqutaOgmP
We should not be calling for negotiations between the parties because Palestinians face both Israel and US at the negotiating table and this will never bring justice for Palestinians and will therefore never bring peace.
Killings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . . . a graph showing the devastating loss of life for Palestinians compared with Israelis in the past 15 years. Source: Al Jazeera (cc)
Instead, we need a timeline for Israel to abide by international law and United Nations resolutions. This would mean:
Ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestine;
Ending Israel’s apartheid policies against Palestinians, and Allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine
This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with permission.
Contact with the journalist Nidal Al-Wahidi was lost yesterday during his coverage of events at the Beit Hanoun checkpoint, and there is no confirmed information about his death. https://t.co/2U9wAkrwaw
The government’s efforts to tackle Indigenous disadvantage will not be as effective if Saturday’s referendum fails, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said.
Albanese has also reconfirmed that if there is a “no” vote he will not seek to legislate a Voice.
The government would respect the outcome, he said on Sunday. “If Australians vote “no”, I don’t believe that it would be appropriate to then go and say, oh, well you’ve had your say, but we’re going to legislate anyway”.
As the campaign enters its final days, the ABC’s “poll of the polls” had “yes” at an average of 41.2%, and “no” on 58.8%. To pass, the referendum needs a national majority and to win in a majority of states.
Albanese told a rally in Queanbeyan he would be visiting Broken Hill, Port Lincoln, Mutitjulu, Uluru and Melbourne, Hobart, Perth, Adelaide and Sydney in the final stretch.
Asked on the ABC whether he’d walk away from the Voice altogether if there was a no vote, he was unequivocal, saying “correct.”
“What you do when we’re talking about the Voice is listening. And Indigenous Australians have said they want a Voice that’s enshrined [in the Constitution].
“What they don’t want to do is what they’ve done time and time again, which is to be a part of establishing representative organisations only to see, for opportunistic reasons, a government to come in and just abolish it.”
The federal opposition is committed to legislating local and regional Voices.
Albanese said the government was already undertaking measures to combat Indigenous disadvantage but, in the event of a “no” vote, “it won’t be as effective as having a body, a Voice to be listened to”.
“But we’ll continue to do things like, we’re replacing the remote jobs program with a program for employment that actually creates real jobs with real wages. We’ll continue to invest in justice reinvestment, looking at programs like Bourke that work effectively. We’ll continue to invest in community health.
“But what a Voice will do is provide for an opportunity for us to replicate the success stories. There are success stories out there. Success stories where Indigenous kids are going to school, where health programs are being improved.”
Albanese said the referendum was being watched internationally. If it was carried, “it will be seen that Australia has come to terms with our history, that we’re a mature nation”.
The debate was about “whether we’re a country that looks for hope and optimism and for the future, or whether we shrink in on ourselves”.
But if the referendum went down, “we will go out there and explain the position”.
Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley told Sky: “Whatever the result is on Saturday it will be bad, divisive and unhappy for Australians the next day. So we do need to bring the country together.”
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.
Almost 50 years ago to the day, Israel failed to anticipate the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur war – a shock attack on its borders by a coalition of Arab states.
Now, it appears the country’s intelligence apparatuses have fallen victim to a false sense of security once again.
The belief, widely shared across Israeli society, that the Hamas militant group would avoid a large-scale military confrontation with Israel to protect itself and spare further suffering and harm to the residents of Gaza was shattered by a surprise assault on Saturday morning by air, land and sea.
The attack began with a barrage of more than 2,000 rockets fired into Israel. Under the cover of the rockets, a large-scale, carefully coordinated, ground operation set out from Gaza and attacked more than 20 Israeli towns and army bases adjacent to the strip.
Israeli losses, estimated presently at more than 250 dead and as many as 1,500 wounded, are certain to increase in the coming hours and days.
Israel’s military reserves have commenced a massive mobilisation as aerial bombings of Hamas installations and command posts in Gaza are being carried out. More than 230 Palestinian casualties have been reported so far in Gaza, with 1,700 wounded.
Calculations behind the attack
As in the case of the Yom Kippur war, numerous analyses and investigations will be undertaken in the coming weeks, months and years on the intelligence, operational and political failures that allowed the Hamas attack to unfold. The assault was apparently initially undetected by Israel, and then for hours met with either insufficient or unprepared Israeli forces.
Similar to the 1973 war, the purposefully chosen timing of a Sabbath and the Jewish holiday of Sukkot provide initial, though very partial, clues to the breakdown.
Hamas’ strategic calculations in launching the attack are uncertain at this stage. However, the assured severity of Israel’s retaliation against the group – and as a consequence, the civilian population in Gaza – makes it likely that considerations beyond just tit-for-tat revenge were at play.
Kidnapping Israelis for prisoner swaps with Hamas militants jailed in Israel, for instance, has been among the most highly desired objectives of the group’s military operations in the past.
In 2011, a single Israel soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been held captive in Gaza since 2006, was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Among these prisoners was Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ current leader in Gaza, who had served 22 years in an Israeli jail.
The reports of dozens of Israelis being taken captive in this weekend’s assault – many of them civilians – suggest this may have been a central motive behind the attack. An unknown number of hostages held for hours by Hamas militants in two Israeli southern towns were later freed by Israeli special forces.
Another broader objective for Hamas may have been to undermine the ongoing negotiations between the US and Saudi Arabia on an agreement to normalise relations between the kingdom and Israel.
Thwarting these talks would be a significant boon for Iran, a key backer of Hamas, and its allies. While Tehran has said it supports the attacks by Hamas against Israel, it remains uncertain at this point whether Iran or Hezbollah (the militant group in Lebanon that has a growing partnership with Hamas) would open additional fronts against Israel in the coming days.
Any escalation in the conflict from either Iran or Lebanon would be highly problematic for Israel. The same would apply if the war with Hamas further exacerbates the already high tensions and violent clashes between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank.
What could happen next?
Named “Iron Swords,” Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas in Gaza is likely to last a long time. The challenges it faces are massive.
Along with the need to restore the trust of the Israeli public and resurrect Israel’s smashed military deterrence against Hamas and other foes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will likely have to deal with other complexities:
the fate of potentially dozens of Israeli hostages
the significantly elevated risks for Israel’s forces should a ground incursion be carried out
and the threats of escalation on other fronts, including Lebanon, the West Bank, and mixed Jewish-Palestinian cities inside Israel.
International support for an aggressive operation could also become difficult to retain amid a mounting toll of civilian Palestinian casualties.
The current round of violence has barely started, but it could end up being the bloodiest in decades – perhaps since the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Lebanon during the 1980s.
As noted, Israelis will consider it critically important to reclaim their country’s military deterrence capabilities against Hamas, which in the eyes of many, may necessitate a military takeover of Gaza. This would bring more devastating outcomes for Gaza’s civilian population.
For many Palestinians, this weekend’s events offered Israelis a small taste of what their own lives have been like under decades of occupation. However, the early celebrations will likely soon turn into anger and frustration as the numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties will continue to rise. Violence begets violence.
In the short and medium terms, the trauma of Hamas’ surprise attack is bound to have momentous consequences for Israel’s domestic politics.
It’s still too early to assess the likely many long-term impacts of the attack on Israelis and their sense of security. But one thing is clear: the already challenging prospects for the building of trust between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have just suffered a devastating blow.
In his 2022 memoir, Bibi: My Story, Netanyahu wrote about his decision during Israel’s “Pillar of Defense” operation against Hamas in 2012 to avoid an Israeli ground assault in Gaza.
Such an attack, he warned, could lead to many hundreds of Israeli Defence Force casualties and many thousands of Palestinian casualties – something he was adamantly against. He did authorise ground incursions on two other occasions (operations “Cast Lead” in 2008 and “Protective Edge” in 2014). But his cautious tendencies prevailed in other cases, at times, in the face of strong pressure.
Arguably, this weekend’s national trauma and the radical make-up of Netanyahu’s right-wing government will make it very difficult for him to show similar restraint in the coming days.
Eyal Mayroz 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.
Almost 50 years ago to the day, Israel failed to anticipate the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur war – a shock attack on its borders by a coalition of Arab states.
Now, it appears the country’s intelligence apparatuses have fallen victim to a false sense of security once again.
The belief, widely shared across Israeli society, that the Hamas militant group would avoid a large-scale military confrontation with Israel to protect itself and spare further suffering and harm to the residents of Gaza was shattered by a surprise assault on Saturday morning by air, land and sea.
The attack began with a barrage of more than 2,000 rockets fired into Israel. Under the cover of the rockets, a large-scale, carefully coordinated, ground operation set out from Gaza and attacked more than 20 Israeli towns and army bases adjacent to the strip.
Israeli losses, estimated presently at more than 250 dead and as many as 1,500 wounded, are certain to increase in the coming hours and days.
Israel’s military reserves have commenced a massive mobilisation as aerial bombings of Hamas installations and command posts in Gaza are being carried out. More than 230 Palestinian casualties have been reported so far in Gaza, with 1,700 wounded.
Calculations behind the attack
As in the case of the Yom Kippur war, numerous analyses and investigations will be undertaken in the coming weeks, months and years on the intelligence, operational and political failures that allowed the Hamas attack to unfold. The assault was apparently initially undetected by Israel, and then for hours met with either insufficient or unprepared Israeli forces.
Similar to the 1973 war, the purposefully chosen timing of a Sabbath and the Jewish holiday of Sukkot provide initial, though very partial, clues to the breakdown.
Hamas’ strategic calculations in launching the attack are uncertain at this stage. However, the assured severity of Israel’s retaliation against the group – and as a consequence, the civilian population in Gaza – makes it likely that considerations beyond just tit-for-tat revenge were at play.
Kidnapping Israelis for prisoner swaps with Hamas militants jailed in Israel, for instance, has been among the most highly desired objectives of the group’s military operations in the past.
In 2011, a single Israel soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been held captive in Gaza since 2006, was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Among these prisoners was Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ current leader in Gaza, who had served 22 years in an Israeli jail.
The reports of dozens of Israelis being taken captive in this weekend’s assault – many of them civilians – suggest this may have been a central motive behind the attack. An unknown number of hostages held for hours by Hamas militants in two Israeli southern towns were later freed by Israeli special forces.
Another broader objective for Hamas may have been to undermine the ongoing negotiations between the US and Saudi Arabia on an agreement to normalise relations between the kingdom and Israel.
Thwarting these talks would be a significant boon for Iran, a key backer of Hamas, and its allies. While Tehran has said it supports the attacks by Hamas against Israel, it remains uncertain at this point whether Iran or Hezbollah (the militant group in Lebanon that has a growing partnership with Hamas) would open additional fronts against Israel in the coming days.
Any escalation in the conflict from either Iran or Lebanon would be highly problematic for Israel. The same would apply if the war with Hamas further exacerbates the already high tensions and violent clashes between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank.
What could happen next?
Named “Iron Swords,” Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas in Gaza is likely to last a long time. The challenges it faces are massive.
Along with the need to restore the trust of the Israeli public and resurrect Israel’s smashed military deterrence against Hamas and other foes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will likely have to deal with other complexities:
the fate of potentially dozens of Israeli hostages
the significantly elevated risks for Israel’s forces should a ground incursion be carried out
and the threats of escalation on other fronts, including Lebanon, the West Bank, and mixed Jewish-Palestinian cities inside Israel.
International support for an aggressive operation could also become difficult to retain amid a mounting toll of civilian Palestinian casualties.
The current round of violence has barely started, but it could end up being the bloodiest in decades – perhaps since the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Lebanon during the 1980s.
As noted, Israelis will consider it critically important to reclaim their country’s military deterrence capabilities against Hamas, which in the eyes of many, may necessitate a military takeover of Gaza. This would bring more devastating outcomes for Gaza’s civilian population.
For many Palestinians, this weekend’s events offered Israelis a small taste of what their own lives have been like under decades of occupation. However, the early celebrations will likely soon turn into anger and frustration as the numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties will continue to rise. Violence begets violence.
In the short and medium terms, the trauma of Hamas’ surprise attack is bound to have momentous consequences for Israel’s domestic politics.
It’s still too early to assess the likely many long-term impacts of the attack on Israelis and their sense of security. But one thing is clear: the already challenging prospects for the building of trust between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have just suffered a devastating blow.
In his 2022 memoir, Bibi: My Story, Netanyahu wrote about his decision during Israel’s “Pillar of Defense” operation against Hamas in 2012 to avoid an Israeli ground assault in Gaza.
Such an attack, he warned, could lead to many hundreds of Israeli Defence Force casualties and many thousands of Palestinian casualties – something he was adamantly against. He did authorise ground incursions on two other occasions (operations “Cast Lead” in 2008 and “Protective Edge” in 2014). But his cautious tendencies prevailed in other cases, at times, in the face of strong pressure.
Arguably, this weekend’s national trauma and the radical make-up of Netanyahu’s right-wing government will make it very difficult for him to show similar restraint in the coming days.
Eyal Mayroz 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.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has hailed the news that Narges Mohammadi — an Iranian journalist RSF has been defending for years — has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her “fight against the oppression of women in Iran,” her courage and determination.
Persecuted by the Iranian authorities since the late 1990s for her work, and imprisoned again since November 2021, she must be freed at once, RSF declared in a statement.
“Speak to save Iran” is the title of one of the letters published by Mohammadi from Evin prison, near Tehran, where she has been serving a sentence of 10 years and 9 months in prison since 16 November 2021.
She has also been sentenced to hundreds of lashes. The maker of a documentary entitled White Torture and the author of a book of the same name, Mohammadi has never stopped denouncing the sexual violence inflicted on women prisoners in Iran.
It is this fight against the oppression of women that the Nobel Committee has just saluted by awarding the Peace Prize to this 51-year-old journalist and human rights activist, the former vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, the Iranian human rights organisation that was created by Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was herself awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.
It is because of this fight that Mohammadi has been hounded by the Iranian authorities, who continue to persecute her in prison.
She has been denied visits and telephone calls since 12 April 2022, cutting her off from the world.
White Torture: The infamy of solitary confinement in Iran with Narges Mohammadi.
New charges At the same time, the authorities in Evin prison have brought new charges to keep her in detention.
On August 4, her jail term was increased by a year after the publication of another of her letters about violence against fellow women detainees.
Mohammadi was awarded the RSF Prize for Courage on 12 December 2023. At the award ceremony in Paris, her two children, whom she has not seen for eight years, read one of the letters she wrote to them from prison.
“In this country, amid all the suffering, all the fears and all the hopes, and when, after years of imprisonment, I am behind bars again and I can no longer even hear the voices of my children, it is with a heart full of passion, hope and vitality, full of confidence in the achievement of freedom and justice in my country that I will spend time in prison,” she wrote.
She ended the letter with a call to keep alive “the hope of victory”.
RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said:
“It is with immense emotion that I learn that the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to the journalist and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi.
At Reporters Without Borders (RSF), we have been fighting for her for years, alongside her husband and her two children, and with Shirin Ebadi. The Nobel Peace Prize will obviously be decisive in obtaining her release.”
On June 7, RSF referred the unacceptable conditions in which Mohammadi is being detained to all of the relevant UN human rights bodies.
During an oral update to the UN Human Rights Council on July 5, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran expressed concern over the “continued detention of human rights defenders and lawyers defending the protesters, and at least 17 journalists”.
It is thanks to Mohammadi’s journalistic courage that the world knows what is happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prisons, where 20 journalists are currently detained.
The New Zealand government bears heavy responsibility for loss of life of Palestinians and Israelis in the latest fighting in Israel/Palestine and must revisit its policy, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair John Minto.
“Whatever the eventual outcome of the Hamas attacks on Israel today [Saturday], the New Zealand government bears heavy responsibility for the loss of life of Palestinians and Israelis,” he said in a statement.
“Like other Western countries, New Zealand has failed to hold Israel to account for its multiple crimes, including war crimes, against the Palestinian people, day after day, year after year and decade after decade.
“We have ignored human rights reports of Israel’s apartheid policies. Our government has been looking the other way.”
Hamas launched a large-scale military operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel, describing it as in response to the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence.
The group running the besieged Gaza Strip (population 2.1 million) said it had fired thousands of rockets and sent fighters into Israel. Early reports said at least 5 Israelis, had been killed, 35 people taken captive and more than 500 had been wounded and taken to hospitals.
Repeated Israeli attacks Minto described the Hamas attacks as “understandable”.
“Over recent months Western countries have turned a blind eye to the brutality of the Israeli army and settler groups engaging in repeated attacks on Palestinian towns and villages and the killing of civilians and children,” he said.
“The result is now playing out in more violence initiated by Israel’s brutal occupation — the longest military occupation in modern history. The occupation includes Israel’s 17-year-old blockade of the Gaza strip — the largest open-air prison in the world.”
“New Zealand must reassess its policy on the Middle East and demand Israel adopt a timetable to implement international law and United Nations resolutions.”
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finished. Politically and otherwise,” declared Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara, who says Israel has never learnt from history of colonialism.
“His arrogance has finally caught with him. No matter how many Palestinians this corrupt opportunist kills before his final downfall, he will go down in utter humiliation.
“Israel gets a glimpse of the real future days after Netanyahu cavalierly showed us at the United Nations future maps of the new Middle East centered around Israel — with no Palestine existence.”
Israel launched air strikes on Gaza in retaliation in an operation called “Iron Swords”.
Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara . . . Israel has never learnt from the history of colonialism and the suffering of a third generation of Palestinians in the Gaza “open prison”. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot/APR
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fan Yang, Research fellow at Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society., The University of Melbourne
Some 1.4 million Australians are of Chinese ancestry, or about 5.5% of the population. Given the size of the community, it will be an important voting bloc in the upcoming referendum on a Voice to Parliament for First Nations people.
But while the government and the “yes” and “no” campaigns are translating some information into Chinese, it appears very little is gaining traction in the Chinese Australian online community.
According to our research, the Voice referendum has garnered limited attention on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, compared to discussions on other issues, such as immigration, the economy and property prices.
As we draw closer to the referendum, we’ve also seen right-wing political rhetoric and misinformation come to dominate what little online discussion there has been.
Our research found the “no” campaign was resonating much more than “yes” on WeChat, particularly among conservative voices within the community. Among the 339 comments we collected and analysed, the vast majority (about 98.5%) leaned towards voting “no”, while just five comments unequivocally expressed support for the “yes” side.
Our study used a tool called WeCapture to collect and archive public posts and comments on WeChat related to the referendum.
Between February and September, we collected more than 110 public posts, two short videos and 339 public comments in total. None of the posts had more than 20,000 views – showing how little the debate has resonated with Chinese Australians.
We were only able to analyse public WeChat accounts, as opposed to private discussions between individuals or in groups. As a result, commercial media accounts run by Chinese migrants, such as sydtoday, meltoday, AFNDaily, and melvlife, played a pivotal role in shaping these discussions.
Many of these posts were translated news reports on the Voice from the English-language media. These posts covered a broad range of topics, including explanations on the scope of the proposed Voice, analysis of Australian public sentiment about the Voice and reports on “yes” and “no” campaign rallies.
We found these media accounts sometimes editorialised the translated English sources to align with readers’ expectations and the accounts’ business imperatives. For instance, in the screengrab of a WeChat post below, the headline reads:
Breaking news! After 24 years, Australia has announced: an immediate mandatory nationwide referendum will be held. Everyone must participate. Australia is about to undergo significant changes.
This translation conveys a sense of emergency and ambiguity to entice WeChat users to click on the link.
Posts from the official groups
Other posts came from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), the Victorian Labor Party, the Yes Campaign Alliance and other content producers, also translated into Mandarin. These appeared on influential WeChat media accounts such as sydtoday and Mel_life.
The AEC posted a series of sponsored articles to explain the Voice and the voting procedure (as seen in the post below). The AEC posts were much more formal and official sounding than most public posts on WeChat.
The “yes” campaign has also embedded image banners within WeChat posts, such as the one below, authorised by Dean Parkin, director of the Yes Campaign Alliance.
And in a short video posted the Victorian Labor Party, Carina Garland, the MP for Chisholm, conducted an interview with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to explain the Voice referendum and its significance. The video, which features Chinese subtitles and is specifically targeting Chinese Australians, only received 20 likes and was shared just 25 times. It also got no comments from WeChat users.
Posts from ‘no’ campaigners
In our research, we found WeChat users who were leaning towards a “no” vote had many concerns, including:
fears the Voice could somehow disempower the Chinese Australian community
the perception taxes could increase due to Labor’s “leftist politics”
skepticism towards the Albanese government
fears the Voice could lead to “racial divide” and “apartheid” in Australia
and the prevalence of conspiracy theories associated with white supremacy ideologies.
One account named YamiChew has published a series of “no” campaign videos. The profile says the owner of the account transitioned from a professional career in Beijing to an immigrant life in Melbourne.
The account underwent a notable transformation at the end of September, from posting videos of the family dog to advocating for the “no” campaign. Compared to most WeChat posts about the referendum, YamiChew’s first video gained significant traction on the platform, with over 10,000 reposts, 1,800 likes and more than 300 comments within 24 hours of its release.
The video listed four reasons to vote “no”, which included claims that have been dismissedelsewhere as misinformation, such as concerns over the Voice’s impact on Australia’s “constitutional integrity”, fears of “racial inequality” if the referendum succeeded, and claims it would lead to “Indigenous priviledge”.
Why countering misinformation matters
Migrants from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds possess varying levels of literacy regarding Indigenous affairs.
As a result, Australian public institutions need to craft messages that are not only linguistically accessible, but also adapted to the information consumption habits of migrant communities.
The government also needs to take steps to address the amount of misinformation in the Chinese-language media and social media.
The government’s bill to curb the online spread of false and misleading information, for instance, does not include non-English-language platforms in its scope.
On WeChat, misinformation that is not directly linked to Beijing’s political interests tends to fall outside the scope of platform regulators.
This means it’s up to public institutions to counter misleading information. They can do this by working with local communities to provide credible information on all matters of public interest, not just during the referendum campaign.
The author would like to acknowledge Robbie Fordyce from Monash University and Luke Heemsbergen from Deakin University for their participation in the research project.
Fan Yang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The state of civic space in Indonesia has been rated as “obstructed” in the latest CIVICUS Monitor report.
The civic space watchdog said that ongoing concerns include the arrest, harassment and criminalisation of human rights defenders and journalists as well as physical and digital attacks, the use of defamation laws to silence online dissent and excessive use of force by the police during protests, especially in the Papuan region.
In July 2023, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, expressed concerns regarding the human rights situation in the West Papua region in her opening remarks during the 22nd Meeting of the 53rd Regular Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
She highlighted the harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention of Papuans, which had led to the appropriation of customary land in West Papua.
She encouraged the Indonesian government to ensure humanitarian assistance and engage in “a genuine inclusive dialogue”.
In August 2023, human rights organisations called on Indonesia to make serious commitments as the country sought membership in the UN Human Rights Council for the period 2024 to 2026.
Among the calls were to ratify international human rights instruments, especially the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), to provide details of steps it will take to implement all of the supported recommendations from the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and to fully cooperate with the Special Procedures of the Council.
Call to respect free expression The groups also called on the government to ensure the respect, protection and promotion of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, for clear commitments to ensure a safe and enabling environment for all human rights defenders, to find a sustainable solution for the human rights crisis in Papua and to end impunity.
In recent months, protests by communities have been met with arbitrary arrests and excessive force from the police.
The arbitrary arrests, harassment and criminalisation of Papuan activists continue, while an LGBT conference was cancelled due to harassment and threats.
Human rights defenders continue to face defamation charges, there have been harassment and threats against journalists, while a TikTok communicator was jailed for two years over a pork video.
Ongoing targeting of Papuan activists Arbitrary arrests, harassment and criminalisation of Papuan activists continue to be documented.
According to the Human Rights Monitor, on 5 July 2023, four armed plainclothes police officers arrested Viktor Makamuke, a 52-year-old activist of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), a pro-independence movement.
He was subsequently detained at the Sorong Selatan District Police Station where officers allegedly coerced and threatened Makamuke to pledge allegiance to the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).
A week earlier, Makamuke and his friend had reportedly posted a photo in support of ULMWP full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — an intergovernmental organisation composed of the four Melanesian states.
Shortly after the arrest, the police published a statement claiming that Makamuke was the commander of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) — an armed group — in the Bomberai Region.
The Human Rights Monitor reported that members of the Yahukimo District police arbitrarily arrested six activists belonging to the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) in the town of Dekai, Yahukimo Regency, on 6 July 2023.
KNPB is a movement promoting the right to self-determination through peaceful action and is one of the most frequently targeted groups in West Papua.
The activists organised and carried out a collective cleaning activity in Dekai. The police repeatedly approached them claiming that the activists needed official permission for their activity.
Six KNPB activists arrested Subsequently, police officers arrested the six KNPB activists without a warrant or justifying the arrest. All activists were released after being interrogated for an hour.
On 8 August 2023, three students were found guilty of treason and subsequently given a 10-month prison sentence by the Jayapura District Court.
Yoseph Ernesto Matuan, Devio Tekege and Ambrosius Fransiskus Elopere were charged with treason due to their involvement in an event held at the Jayapura University of Science and Technology (USTJ) in November 2022, where they waved the Morning Star flag, a banned symbol of Papuan independence.
Their action was in protest against a planned peace dialogue proposed by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).
According to Amnesty International Indonesia, between 2019 and 2022 there have been at least 61 cases involving 111 individuals in Papua who were charged with treason.
At least 37 supporters of the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) were arrested in relation to peaceful demonstrations to commemorate the 1962 New York Agreement in the towns Sentani, Jayapura Regency and Dekai, Yahukimo Regency, on 14 and 15 August 2023.
Allegations of police ill-treatment There were also allegations of ill-treatment by the police.
On 2 September 2023, police officers detained Agus Kossay, Chairman of the West Papua National Coalition (KNPB); Benny Murip, KNPB Secretary in Jayapura; Ruben Wakla, member of the KNPB in the Yahukimo Regency; and Ferry Yelipele.
The four activists were subsequently detained and interrogated at the Jayapura District Police Station in Doyo Baru. Wakla and Yelipele were released on 3rd September 2023 without charge.
Police officers reportedly charged Kossay and Murip under Article 160 and Article 170 of the Indonesian Criminal Code (KUHP) for “incitement”.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this series, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.
The release of the disability royal commission’s final report ignited a public debate about the future of “special schools” and whether we can phase out segregation in education. During one radio discussion this week, an irate parent asked me:
But how can a mainstream school have a hydrotherapy pool like the one our local special school has?
The future of special schools is important and discussed in the report. But it’s not the main story here. In fact, focusing on specialist schools for students with disability misunderstands the report’s point and misses its major implications for all schools.
Most educational recommendations in the report aim to strengthen inclusion in mainstream “regular” schools and prevent them from undermining inclusion or dodging their legal responsibilities toward students with a disability.
The report recommends a “legal entitlement for students with disability to enrol in a local mainstream school”. Currently, some mainstream settings do not welcome such students and use gatekeeping practices. These may include persuading parents the school cannot meet their’s child’s needs or to informally prevent enrolment.
Gatekeeping means mainstream school is not an option for many parents, and explains why the number of special schools has risen across Australia over the past decade.
The report also recommends mainstream schools take early, preventative actions before suspending or excluding students who have a disability. It urges transparent processes, so parents understand decisions and how to appeal.
Rising numbers of students with disability enrolled in the mainstream sector have faced suspension and exclusion from school over the past decade, typically due to “problem behaviour”.
Expensive safety net programs known as Flexible Learning Options have become popular across Australia as an emergency policy reaction to this trend. They are intended to support students at risk or already disengaged from education.
In our research, my colleagues and I found that, in 2019, more than 70,000 Australian high-school-aged students were enrolled in flexible learning programs. This number had almost tripled since 2016 and students with disability are over-represented. Such programs exist outside the mainstream system and provide personalised learning using a variety of education providers. But concerns have been raised about the quality of provision.
A national organisation called School Can’t – a peer support community for parents and carers of students with school attendance difficulties – told a recent senate inquiry into school refusal about the growing numbers of children with a disability being home schooled. The organisation reported its membership had grown tenfold since 2019 to almost 10,000 and it had been overwhelmed by the volume of parents seeking support.
International research consistently shows the devastating psychological impacts exclusion from school creates for affected students and their families.
In its report, the disability royal commission acknowledges that inclusion is failing in many mainstream settings.
Although split on some aspects of strategy, the commissioners detail progressive plans to invest in the skills and knowledge of the education workforce and steps to deliver greater inclusion in mainstream schools. For example, the report recommends we:
[…] strengthen initial teacher education in inclusive education and attract and retain people with disability and others with expertise in delivering inclusive education.
Establishing a national database to gather reliable information on “student experiences, school outcomes for students with disability and progress in addressing barriers to inclusive education practices” is another welcome recommendation. This will be vital to check whether the intended benefits are flowing down to more inclusion at classroom level.
But there has been scant public or media attention so far to the “elephant in the room”. That is the stressed state of today’s public education system.
Capacity is key
The big issue here is the capacity of our disintegrating public education system to adopt the report’s vision for higher-quality, inclusive mainstream public education. Gatekeeping and excessive use of suspensions and exclusion can be understood as predictable responses by schools under pressure.
That said, the report recommendations should be reframed as a powerful case for targeted educational reforms. With funding and investment, we can raise the quality of mainstream public education so it can include students with a disability.
In the name of greater inclusion, the disability royal commission’s proposed reforms represent a positive, visible investment in the whole of Australia’s public school system. The value of this contribution at this time of crisis cannot be underestimated. Well-funded inclusive education is better for everyone.
David Armstrong 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.
Earth’s ocean is incredibly vast. Some parts of it are so remote that the nearest human habitation is the International Space Station.
As the world warms, what happens in the ocean – and what happens to the ocean – will be vital to all our lives. But to monitor what’s happening in remote waters, we need to study the ocean from space.
Late last year, NASA and CNES, the French space agency, launched a satellite that promises to give scientists a far better view than ever before of the ocean’s surface. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will reveal ocean currents that play a crucial role in the weather and climate.
To make the most of the satellite observations, we need to compare them with measurements made at surface level. That is why we are heading out to sea on the state-of-the-art CSIRO research vessel RV Investigator to gather essential ocean data under the satellite’s path as it orbits Earth.
Current affairs
Climate change is disrupting the global network of currents that connect the oceans. Researchers have detected a slowdown of the deep “overturning circulation” that carries carbon, heat, oxygen and nutrients from Antarctica around the globe. Meanwhile, at the surface, ocean currents are becoming more energetic.
These currents funnel heat from the tropics towards the poles, and in recent decades they have become hotspots for ocean warming. In the Southern Hemisphere, they are warming two to three times faster than the global average.
As these currents destabilise, they alter how heat is distributed throughout the ocean. This in turn will cause major changes in local weather and marine ecosystems that may impact the lives of millions of people.
Playground physics
The SWOT satellite mission will give researchers a powerful new tool to monitor changes in ocean currents by using accurate satellite measurements of the sea surface – plus a little bit of playground physics.
The satellite carries an instrument that will map variations in the height of the sea surface in unprecedented detail. These variations might be less than a metre in height over horizontal distances of hundreds of kilometres. But oceanographers can use the measurements to estimate ocean currents flowing underneath.
Small variations in the height of the sea surface create horizontal pressure differences that try to push water away from areas of high sea level and towards areas of low sea level. That pressure difference is balanced by the Coriolis force, which gently deflects ocean currents to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.
Earth’s oceans are filled with complex network of currents driven by the rotation of the planet. NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
You can experience the Coriolis force at the playground. Step onto a merry-go-round and ask a friend to stand on the opposite side from you. As you start spinning, toss a ball to your friend. You will notice that the ball appears to be deflected away from the direction of rotation.
In reality, the ball has moved in a straight line; your friend has simply moved away from where you were aiming. But, to you both, the ball seems to have been deflected by an invisible “pseudo-force” – the Coriolis force.
Now imagine the merry-go-round is Earth, and the ball is an ocean current. The Coriolis deflection is enough to balance pressure differences across hundreds of kilometres and causes seawater to flow in ocean currents.
Science at sea
By carefully measuring the height of the sea surface and using our knowledge of the Coriolis force, oceanographers will be able to use data from NASA’s satellite to reveal ocean currents in greater detail than ever before. But to make sense of that data, researchers need to compare satellite measurements with observations made down here on Earth.
That’s why we are leading a voyage of more than 60 scientists, support staff and crew aboard the RV Investigator, Australia’s national flagship for blue water ocean research.
A 24-day voyage aboard the RV Investigator will gather data about oceans currents. CSIRO, CC BY
Our 24-day voyage will study ocean dynamics off Australia’s southeast coast using the Investigator’s world-class scientific equipment, including satellite-tracked floating buoys and drifters that will be used to measure the real-time movement of currents at the ocean surface.
The voyage is part of a huge collaboration by scientists around the world to gather observational data under the satellite’s path as it orbits Earth. This data will help validate satellite measurements and improve weather forecasts, including those from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, and assist with climate risk assessment and prediction.
We hope to better understand how our oceans are changing using what we observe in space, at sea — and in the playground.
This research is supported by a grant of sea time on RV Investigator from the CSIRO Marine National Facility.
You can follow our voyage on Twitter/X using the hashtag #RVInvestigator.
Shane Keating receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Moninya Roughan receives funding from Australian Research Council, Australia’s Marine National Facility, and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme
Papua New Guinea’s government has appealed to the Australian Federal Police and the Singapore Police to assist PNG police to link money laundering trails.
Speaking in Parliament yesterday, Prime Minister James Marape said Australia and Singapore had been the major hub of transit for possible money laundering activities.
He wants help from police in the two countries to assist PNG police in their fight against corruption in the country.
“We are fighting corruption. For instance, we are following the footprints of the [A$1.2 billion Swiss bank] UBS money that has gone deeply rooted so our police are working on it,” he said.
“Therefore I want to encourage police in Singapore and police in Australia assist PNG police to deal with money laundered from PNG.
“I want to appeal again to the Australian police and Singaporean police to assist our police and I make this statement as the Prime Minister of this country.
“And in the case of UBS, we have made [a] deep incision, we are following the money trail, the entire loot that was looted from this country,” he said.
‘Prioritise law and order’ “I want to give commendation to the Police Commissioner, David Manning — he is not here to stop tribal fights; stopping tribal fights is the job of our members of Parliament.
“Governors you have PSIP (constituency development funds) funds so prioritise law and order using your funds, do not wait for police commissioners to come and stop tribal fights.
“PNG has been labelled a corrupt country so I don’t want to leave this label for the next 20 years so we have to make an example out of other existing corruption that has been documented and evidence are used.
“And the ICAC [Independent Commission Against Corruption] commission of inquiry has sufficient evidence for us to pursue our efforts to fight corruption.
“I will indicate to this House that we will bring to this floor of Parliament the Finance Inquiry again and other inquiries that are outstanding.
“We will revisit if they are not time bound but we will not limit the limited police capacity so that is why I appeal to Singapore police and Australia police to assist my policemen to link to the money trails,” the Prime Minister said.
“Monies do not hide, monies move from one bank account to another bank account, forensic auditors and investigators will follow the money trials and our police are working as part of the law and order conversation, focusing on our country like fighting corruption like never before,” he said.
Marape said the ICAC, Ombudsman Commission and police would work in partnership in the pursuit to address corruption in the country.
He said with the efforts to strengthening the work of the ICAC, three commissioners had been appointed while a third Ombudsman commissioner would be appointed this week.
Jeffrey Elapa is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
After three wet years, bushfire season has begun again. We have been warned this season could be a bad one.
With the last few years of epic rain, more fuel has grown to burn in what is predicted to be a hot, dry summer. Disaster events like bushfires are predicted to increase in both frequency and severity as the climate changes. Disasters will cascade and overlap – there may be no time to recover between one disaster and the next.
The Voice to Parliament has the potential to be an effective way to adapt to this riskier future. It will enable Aboriginal communities to better undertake the urgent tasks of planning and disaster preparation.
Importantly, all Australians could benefit from the Voice advising on strategies for how Australia can prepare for, and survive, disasters.
First Nations people know how to adapt to changing climates
First Nations people around the world have experience in successfully adapting to changing climates, reaching back tens of thousands of years.
Some Australians are already turning to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge of Country to prepare for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the impacts of natural hazards. First Nations strategies – from “cool burn” bushfire hazard reduction such as the world leading Fire to Flourish program, to waterway management – can prevent disasters, or reduce their scale.
There’s also the example of Northern Australia’s satellite bushfire management program developed in collaboration with Traditional Owners.
The Voice has the potential to provide the means for the Australian government to learn from this expertise. This could enable all Australians to see and benefit from the extraordinary strengths in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Australia’s National Principles for Disaster Recovery emphasise that disaster management must be community-based.
Disaster management is not effective when government disaster responses do not consider local knowledge. The effect is often worsened when these responses also lack understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and ways of working.
One example of this was during the Lismore floods. Local Indigenous communities argued that a failure to include Aboriginal knowledge in the planning and response to the floods resulted in residents being left stranded on rooftops and surviving without water and electricity for days. Communities have since called for more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander first responders.
Disaster events in Australia can impact Indigenous people disproportionately. Poor housing, lack of access to resources and a higher prevalence of ill health render First Nations peoples more likely to be negatively impacted by heatwaves, floods and fires. This also means fewer resources and infrastructure to help these communities recover from these disasters after they occur.
Lack of external support has often led to First Nations communities leading disaster response for themselves. In Lismore, support and help for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families came from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community itself. Despite significant flood damage to their building, The Koori Mail – a Lismore-produced local newspaper – organised food, material needs and social support to the local Koori (Aboriginal) community.
Larrakia, Tiwi, Yolŋu and Desert people in the Northern Territory have similar stories of working together. In the past they have coordinated with friends and family to care for the young, sick and elderly in emergency events such as cyclones and bushfires.
All Australians need to learn from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disaster management
In every disaster there are calls to “build back better” – that is, to reimagine how we live and how we can live well together. First Nations communities globally do this work every day. Although First Nations people are only around 6% of the world’s population, their respective lands house 80% of the world’s biodiversity.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people provide models for how to live differently, in ways that care for Country and prevent climate change and its disasters.
The Voice is crucial for enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to prepare for, respond to and remain resilient to the disasters that lie ahead of all of us. It also has the potential to enrich the lives of all Australians as we imagine a different, more caring, more equal future through each disaster, together.
As others have noted, the Voice could provide cost-efficient policy solutions to Indigenous affairs. This could also be the case for effective disaster planning and responses.
We have seen First Nations communities successfully advise on how to look after Country, and this includes planning for a hazardous future. The Voice could provide this on a national scale.
What we learn about effective community-led disaster management in the process will benefit us all.
Claire Hooker is affiliated with The Arts Health Network NSW/ACT. She partners with the Creative Recovery Network.
Michelle Dickson receives funding from NH&MRC and the MRFF research funding schemes.
A female candidate slapped after a public debate, another whose home was vandalised, a man trespassed for entering the same house, shouts and jeers directed at another woman candidate for using te reo Māori – the 2023 election has certainly had its uglier moments.
But reports of abuse, threats and violence on the campaign trail shouldn’t surprise anyone. Over the past five years, female politicians have consistently spoken about the often violent and sexist harassment they receive online.
A recent United Nations study examining the experiences of female journalists established a clear link between online and real-world violence, particularly stalking. Another study found female politicians and journalists in Britain and the United States are abused on Twitter (now X) every 30 seconds.
This is backed up by local politicians’ experiences. Green Party MPs Marama Davidson and Golriz Ghahraman have both spoken about the serious abuse they receive online. Ghahraman needed a security escort following a series of death threats.
In 2021, Christchurch city councillor Sara Templeton and other female leaders, including mayor Lianne Dalziel and Labour MPs Sarah Pallet and Megan Woods, were subjected to a relentless campaign of online harassment and increasingly gendered abuse.
Similar experiences have been shared by National MPs Nicola Willis and Paula Bennett . Former prime minister Jacinda Ardern also had to tolerate high levels of online vitriol. What has happened during the election campaign is part of a clear trend.
Normalised gender-based violence
The often misogynistic nature of online abuse, from sexist name-calling to threats of rape and death, makes it a form of gender-based violence . And the New Zealand government has made international and domestic commitments to create a safe political environment for women.
But this would require the development of a concrete plan to address online violence – something most political parties have been largely silent about during the election campaign.
And it’s not a new issue. The independent review into bullying and harassment in parliament was released in 2019. It found online harassment and abuse of MPs by members of the public, including sexist and violent threats, was increasingly common and even accepted as par for the course.
Since then, there have been significant improvements to combat workplace bullying, but essentially nothing has been done about online abuse.
This is especially concerning given the way violent online behaviour may embolden some people to act out such behaviours in real life.
A weak legal framework
That said, there are some rules governing online abuse. The current legal framework includes the Harmful Digital Communications Act, which was designed to address harmful online communication such as cyberbullying, harassment and threats. It established legal mechanisms for reporting and prosecuting harmful digital content.
But the law has two key weaknesses when it comes to gender-based violence.
Firstly, to prove a criminal offence, the harmful content must cause “serious emotional distress” to the victim. This may be difficult to prove from a single comment from a single person, because the real harm lies in the barrage of abusive comments from numerous people all at once.
It must also be proved that the content would cause “serious emotional distress” to an “ordinary reasonable person”. So the law does not fully consider the gendered nature of online abuse, and may not account for the specific ways in which women are targeted.
Secondly, the normalisation of online abuse against female politicians means they often do not report the abuse. This leaves perpetrators to continue with impunity. Overall, the law seems to have failed to deter people from engaging in online gender-based violence.
Although some political leaders have expressed deep concern about online abuse in the past, the issue is not currently a priority for any major party. The risk is that women will simply leave the political arena, something already observed overseas.
Whichever party or coalition forms the next government should act urgently to address gender-based violence, both online and offline. It needs to review the legal framework to allow better protection for women, and find ways to enlist the general public’s support in making such abuse socially unacceptable.
This will require a comprehensive plan involving public education, schools, law enforcement, the judiciary and parliamentarians. But without more urgent action, the likelihood of online violence spilling over into the real world only increases.
Cassandra Mudgway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The world is very warm right now. We’re not only seeing record temperatures, but the records are being broken by record-wide margins.
Take the preliminary September global-average temperature anomaly of 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels, for example. It’s an incredible 0.5°C above the previous record.
So why is the world so incredibly hot right now? And what does it mean for keeping our Paris Agreement targets?
Here are six contributing factors – with climate change the main reason temperatures are so high.
1. El Niño
One reason for the exceptional heat is we are in a significant El Niño that is still strengthening. During El Niño we see warming of the surface ocean over much of the tropical Pacific. This warming, and the effects of El Niño in other parts of the world, raises global average temperatures by about 0.1 to 0.2°C.
Taking into account the fact we’ve just come out of a triple La Niña, which cools global average temperatures slightly, and the fact this is the first major El Niño in eight years, it’s not too surprising we’re seeing unusually high temperatures at the moment.
Still, El Niño alone isn’t enough to explain the crazily high temperatures the world is experiencing.
2. Falling pollution
Air pollution from human activities cools the planet and has offset some of the warming caused by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. There have been efforts to reduce this pollution – since 2020 there has been an international agreement to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from the global shipping industry.
It has been speculated this cleaner air has contributed to the recent heat, particularly over the record-warm north Atlantic and Pacific regions with high shipping traffic.
It’s likely this is contributing to the extreme high global temperatures – but only on the order of hundredths of a degree. Recent analysis suggests the effect of the 2020 shipping agreement is about an extra 0.05°C warming by 2050.
People pass through the rising pollution on the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, on November 12 2021. Shutterstock
3. Increasing solar activity
While falling pollution levels mean more of the Sun’s energy reaches Earth’s surface, the amount of the energy the Sun emits is itself variable. There are different solar cycles, but an 11-year cycle is the most relevant one to today’s climate.
The Sun is becoming more active from a minimum in late 2019. This is also contributing a small amount to the spike in global temperatures. Overall, increasing solar activity is contributing only hundredths of a degree at most to the recent global heat.
On January 15 2022 the underwater Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano erupted in the South Pacific Ocean, sending large amounts of water vapour high up into the upper atmosphere. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, so increasing its concentration in the atmosphere in this way does intensify the greenhouse effect.
Even though the eruption happened almost two years ago, it’s still having a small warming effect on the planet. However, as with the reduced pollution and increasing solar activity, we’re talking about hundredths of a degree.
5. Bad luck
We see variability in global temperatures from one year to the next even without factors like El Niño or major changes in pollution. Part of the reason this September was so extreme was likely due to weather systems being in the right place to heat the land surface.
When we have persistent high-pressure systems over land regions, as seen recently over places like western Europe and Australia, we see local temperatures rise and the conditions for unseasonable heat.
As water requires more energy to warm and the ocean moves around, we don’t see the same quick response in temperatures over the seas when we have high-pressure systems.
The positioning of weather systems warming up many land areas coupled with persistent ocean heat is likely a contributor to the global-average heat too.
6. Climate change
By far the biggest contributor to the overall +1.7°C global temperature anomaly is human-caused climate change. Overall, humanity’s effect on the climate has been a global warming of about 1.2°C.
The record-high rate of greenhouse gas emissions means we should expect global warming to accelerate too.
While humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions explain the trend seen in September temperatures over many decades, they don’t really explain the big difference from last September (when the greenhouse effect was almost as strong as it is today) and September 2023.
Much of the difference between this year and last comes back to the switch from La Niña to El Niño, and the right weather systems in the right place at the right time.
The upshot: we need to accelerate climate action
September 2023 shows that with a combination of climate change and other factors aligning we can see alarmingly high temperatures.
These anomalies may appear to be above the 1.5°C global warming level referred to in the Paris Agreement, but that’s about keeping long-term global warming to low levels and not individual months of heat.
But we are seeing the effects of climate change unfolding more and more clearly.
The most vulnerable are suffering the biggest impacts as wealthier nations continue to emit the largest proportion of greenhouse gases. Humanity must accelerate the path to net zero to prevent more record-shattering global temperatures and damaging extreme events.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this series, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.
The commission made more than 220 recommendations, and was conducted at a cost to the taxpayer of $600 million. But commissioners split on the key issues of special schools and group housing for people with disabilities, causing immediate controversy.
In this podcast, the Greens spokesman on disability, Jordon Steele-John, who campaigned for the royal commission, joins The Conversation to discuss the report, and also to canvass the NDIS, which is under review in another inquiry.
Steele-John feels “immense pride” in the disabled community for their contribution to the royal commission report, and sees it as a milestone:
This is the work of so many people who have themselves experienced violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect, who campaigned for decades to see this investigation be undertaken […] It’s a milestone for the Australian disability community who have come together in the aftermath of this report to say ‘now is the time to end segregation and to end ableism in Australian government policy’.
Steele-John opposes separating disabled people into special schools and group homes, so he backs those commissioners who want a phase-out. But he believes the proposed timelines are unnacceptably long.
They’ve suggested that we wait until 2050. In segregated education, for instance, that would mean that a disabled child born today would be likely to see their child educated in a segregated setting. That’s not acceptable.
They’ve also recommended that we take a decade to reach the point at which a disabled person is paid the same as a non-disabled person in the workplace. That’s unacceptable, but I think it is really important that we really grapple with and acknowledge the reality of the damage that segregation does to people. It leads to loneliness and isolation, and it exposes them to the violence, abuse and neglect that the recommendations in the report found.
While Steele-John has seen an improvement in the NDIS since Labor won the election, he has criticisms.
My quite critical observation of the government is that they have, I think, failed to push back on and have in many ways bought into a conversation about the NDIS, which is very one sided, focusing on its financial implications on the overall federal budget and minimising the good that it does in people’s lives; while point blank refusing to commission new research or investigations into the positive economic impact of a scheme who, the last time anybody checked, [the investment] actually returned $2.25 for every dollar that was invested in it.
So if you combine that with the fact that the minister’s made a number of comments and their colleagues have made a number of comments about people with psychosocial disabilities and other disabilities and there being too many of them on the scheme, I think that’s really concerning to me and really concerned to the disability community more broadly.
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.
The federal government has, for a long time, encouraged Australians to get private health insurance, in an attempt to reduce the financial burden on the public health system.
To make private health insurance more attractive, the government has a strategy of carrots and sticks. Low-income and older people receive subsidies through “premium rebates”. High-income earners without the right policy face the Medicare Levy Surcharge, ranging from 1 to 1.5% of their taxable income.
The effectiveness of these subsidies is regularly debated, with questions about whether the A$6.7 billion of taxpayer money that subsidises private health insurance premiums could be better spent on Medicare or directly financing hospitals.
We set out to answer this question: do the savings from increased participation in private health insurance outweigh the costs the government incurs by subsidising private health insurance rebates?
Our analysis, which was commissioned and funded by the Department of Health and Aged Care, found large benefits to the government, especially when older people sign up for private insurance. On average, the government saves about $554 for each person it helps with these subsidies a year.
But rebates can be better targeted for Australians who are more likely to need and use health services.
How did we work this out?
To assess if the money spent on subsidising private health insurance pays off, we examined both the costs (from the premium rebate subsidies and the forgone tax from the Medicare Levy Surcharge) and the savings.
To calculate the savings we looked at how much money the government would spend if these people didn’t have private health insurance and used the public health system instead of the private system. We call this the “offset”.
This is a key metric for the success of the carrot and sticks, as it will be able to tell us the health-care costs saved by the government when someone has private insurance.
Using private health insurance spending data from 2019, we made assumptions that one day in a private hospital costs equal to one day in a public hospital, based on findings from the Productivity Commission.
On average, we found that private health insurance offsets public health-care costs by about $1,400 per person, with greater savings for older people than younger people, reaching $4,000 for those aged 75 and above.
To answer if the savings from private insurance take-up outweighs the costs incurred, we needed to take into account what the government spends to subsidise insurance.
We used the standard premium rebate percentages where a person aged 70 or above earning up to $90,000 attracts a 32.812% rebate, while a person aged under 65 making $105,001–$140,000 would receive a 8.202% rebate.
The savings were greater for older people, who were more likely to use health services. Anna Schvets/Pexels
With an average annual private health insurance premium of $2,300, this would mean the government incurs costs ranging from $755 to $189.
As people who enrol in private insurance don’t have to pay the Medicare Levy Surcharge, which helps fund the public health system, we found that the forgone tax amounts range between $970 and $2,400 for single individuals subject to the penalty.
Combining the costs (from the premium rebate subsidies and the forgone tax from the Medicare Levy Surcharge), and subtracting the savings (the offsets), is how we find that the subsidies are a good financial deal for the government. The subsidies are less than the cost offset by about $554 per person who has private health insurance.
Is there room for improvement?
This raises a question: what if we could change these subsidies based on who costs more to provide health care for and who saves the government more money? As our findings reveal that some groups save the government more money than their subsidies cost, what should we do with the subsidies? If we increase their subsidies, it costs taxpayers more – unless more of them switch to private health insurance.
For instance, an individual aged 75+ earning $105,001 to $140,000 receives $1,877 in subsidies and offsets $5,268 in public health spending, saving the government $3,391. Given the roughly 6,000 people in this age group currently in private health insurance, only two additional enrolments would make it budget-neutral.
A better way to subsidise private health insurance is to give extra subsidies to people who are sicker and need more medical care. These are known as “risk-adjusted subsidies”.
A risk-adjusted subsidy would be based on a person’s characteristics such as their age, gender, income, where they live and their health history (such as prior hospitalisations, or use of services). These are people who need private health insurance the most, and also would save the government the most money by having private insurance.
This subsidy could be computed by a formula that uses individual-level spending to figure out how much health care the person is likely to need and how much it’s expected to cost.
Existing work in Australia has shown how this can be developed, while countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, the United States and Switzerland show such a system is feasible.
The Australian health system, and private health insurance regulation in particular, is set for a shake-up, with the Department of Health and Aged Care seeking input on its options. Our research can help inform a path forward.
Francesco Paolucci has received funding from Horizon 2020, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, the Australian Research Council, and The Department of Health and Aged Care.
Josefa Henriquez has received funding from the Department of Health and Aged Care.
The new report says people of African descent experience racism in many key areas of life, including health, education and employment. It also highlighted the use of racialised hate speech in political rhetoric, racial profiling in law enforcement, and the highly racialised nature of Australia’s immigration policies. In one section, the report said:
Some refugees of African descent expressed surprise that settlement was less of a protection tool, and more of a pathway to prison for their communities, stating, “in Africa, we knew what was killing us.”
A new report examines the experiences of people of African descent in Australia. Shutterstock
At the invitation of the Australian government, the working group visited Australia for the first time in December last year.
The group’s task was to evaluate the human rights situation of people of African descent living in Australia. It collected information on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance during visits to Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. It also met with various arms of government (including senior officials of the federal government, the Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police), non-government stakeholders, academics and human rights defenders.
The working group, supported by the African Australian Advocacy Centre, also facilitated public consultations across Australia where it heard from individuals and community leaders. And it received formal written submissions during and after the visit.
In its report, the UN working group called attention to how the legacies of British colonisation and the White Australia policy still continue to have harmful impacts on Black people of African descent living in contemporary Australia.
In reference to a 2007 assertion by then-Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews that African refugees fail to integrate, the report noted:
This unsupported statement was never retracted nor repaired, even by subsequent governments. It lives on in the minds of people of African descent who see themselves as contributors to Australia and as African-Australian.
The report also observed the politicised association of youth of African descent with “African gangs” and criminality. It revealed their experiences of being racially profiled and surveilled by law enforcement.
Across Australia, young people also reported experiencing racism and cultural denial at university. Children reported similar experiences at school, where they are not presented with positive images of themselves. In fact, many reported being ostracised, subjected to racial slurs and bullied by both classmates and teachers. Their complaints often go unaddressed.
One student told the working group about an incident at school when a football labelled with racial and misogynistic slurs was thrown at her and other Black students in maths class. She said:
Essentially, we have all seen the slow response. We have seen the staff take little to no relevant action – believe it or not, sometimes they do not play by the rules. We have felt lost. Emotionally bruised.
The working group noted children of African descent often feel there are “no safe spaces” for them to grow up Black in Australian society.
The working group had numerous recommendations for the Australian government to consider. Shutterstock
Mapedzahama and Kwansah-Aidoo write that the main issue is not people’s dark skin, but rather how it marks them as inferior, problematic and not belonging in a predominantly white space.
This can result in the diversity of Black Africans being flattened and their presence in Australia being seen in negative terms. Australian leaders have a particular responsibility not to contribute to such deficit-based portrayals of people of African descent.
The working group’s report makes for difficult reading.
It shows the many compounding ways racism hinders the ability of people of African descents to fully participate in Australian society.
It also draws attention to the fact many felt their experiences of racism had been denied, minimised or ignored.
The report provides 27 recommendations to help guide the Australian government’s future actions to address the working group’s concerns. These include:
people of African descent should be meaningfully included in all decisions that impact their lives
narratives that feed a “culture of denial” of anti-Black racism should be confronted
and that the same care and commitment should be devoted to addressing systemic racism in Australian institutions that the government demonstrated in implementing the White Australia policy historically.
The report also welcomed the federal government’s willingness to engage in the process and take action.
Australia now has the opportunity to take on board the report’s recommendations. Doing so will bring us closer to empowering people of African descent to contribute to – and benefit more fully from – Australia’s prosperity.
The author would like to acknowledge and thank Noël Zihabamwe, chairperson of the African Australian Advocacy Centre, for his contributions to this article.
The author has an ongoing research partnership with the African Australian Advocacy Centre (AAAC). The author is not a AAAC board member and maintains her academic independence.
New Caledonia’s daily newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes is back six months after it closed — but with a big difference. It is online only and free, almost.
The return of the news outlet which had been an institution for half a century is welcomed in many quarters, but some local mayors would have liked to also see the news print version which traditionally carried special local community liftouts.
In March, the then owners, the Melchior Group, publishers of a chain of giveaway titles, announced the closure of the publication just months after halting the daily newspaper edition.
This left the French overseas territory of New Caledonia (population 275,000) without a daily newspaper.
Readers were shocked when the website of the LNC also shut down abruptly on March 10 citing economics and the covid pandemic.
The Melchior Group owned printing presses, Les Editions du Caillou publishing house and the radio station NRJ-Nouvelle-Calédonie.
Reports surfaced in September that there were efforts to revive LNR as a digital-only publication with the need for a daily news source strengthened with New Caledonia on the threshold of major political changes with the Noumea Accord era drawing to a close and growing polarisation between anti- and pro-independence advocates.
According to the state-owned public broadcaster Nouvelle Calédonie 1 Première TV, the new chief editor Nicolas Lebreton — who had been part of the previous LNC team — pledged: “We will give Caledonians quality and free information.”
In an Inside Report article in May headlined “Death of a newspaper”, Nic Maclellan wrote: “It [LNC] made little pretence of impartiality during the armed conflict that divided New Caledonia in the mid-1980s, denigrating indigenous Kanak and editorialising in favour of the anti-independence party, Rally for New Caledonia in the Republic.”
The Algerian democracy advocate Ahmed Zaoui, a New Zealand citizen, has been arrested by Algerian security forces after commenting on human rights violations at a political meeting at his home.
His New Zealand lawyer Deborah Manning said Zaoui had been detained at a police station in the city of Medea since he was taken from his home at about 5.30pm on Tuesday (Algerian time).
“He was arrested at gunpoint . . . by eight men in balaclavas from the special forces and the neighbourhood was surrounded, so it was a significant operation, and he’s been taken for interrogation,” she said.
“It’s a precarious situation for anyone taken under these circumstances.”
He had not yet been charged with anything, she said.
Zaoui, who was recognised as a refugee in New Zealand 20 years ago after a protracted legal battle, entered Algeria on a New Zealand passport.
“Mr Zaoui has two homes now — he has family in Algeria and New Zealand and he was wanting to find a way to live in both worlds.
‘Constant communication’ “He returned to Algeria to be with family in recent years as the political situation appeared to be settling. He was planning to return to New Zealand later this year.”
Manning remained in “constant communication” with Zaoui’s family in Algeria.
The family was “very concerned” and was working with New Zealand consular affairs.
There was no New Zealand consulate in Algeria but Manning said she was in touch with “the relevant authorities”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told RNZ it was aware of reports of a New Zealander detained in Algeria but could not provide further information due to “privacy reasons”.
According to Amnesty International, about 300 people have been arrested in Algeria on charges related to freedom of speech since a law change in April cracking down on media freedom.
Zaoui, a former theology professor, stood as a candidate for the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria’s first general election in 1991.
However, the government cancelled the election and banned his party when it appeared it was on track to win the election, forcing Zaoui and others to flee the country.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Algerian democracy activist Ahmed Zaoui, a New Zealand citizen, has been arrested by Algerian security forces after commenting on human rights violations at a political meeting at his home.
His New Zealand lawyer Deborah Manning said Zaoui has been detained at a police station in the city of Medea since he was taken from his home at about 5.30pm Tuesday (Algerian time).
“He was arrested at gunpoint yesterday by eight men in balaclavas from the special forces and the neighbourhood was surrounded, so it was a significant operation, and he’s been taken for interrogation.
“It’s a precarious situation for anyone taken under these circumstances.”
He had not yet been charged with anything, she said.
Zaoui, who was recognised as a refugee in New Zealand 20 years ago after a protracted legal battle, entered Algeria on a New Zealand passport.
“Mr Zaoui has two homes now – he has family in Algeria and New Zealand and he was wanting to find a way to live in both worlds.
“He returned to Algeria to be with family in recent years as the political situation appeared to be settling. He was planning to return to New Zealand later this year.”
Manning remained in “constant communication” with Zaoui’s family in Algeria.
The family was “very concerned” and was working with New Zealand consular affairs.
There was no New Zealand consulate in Algeria but Manning said she was in touch with “the relevant authorities”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told RNZ it was aware of reports of a New Zealander detained in Algeria but could not provide further information due to “privacy reasons”.
According to Amnesty International, about 300 people have been arrested in Algeria on charges related to freedom of speech since a law change in April cracking down on media freedom.
Zaoui, a former theology professor, stood as a candidate for the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria’s first general election in 1991.
However, the government cancelled the election and banned his party when it appeared it was on track to win the election, forcing Zaoui and others to flee the country.
In 2020, Oxford-based philosopher Toby Ord published a book called The Precipice about the risk of human extinction. He put the chances of “existential catastrophe” for our species during the next century at one in six.
It’s quite a specific number, and an alarming one. The claim drew headlines at the time, and has been influential since – most recently brought up by Australian politician Andrew Leigh in a speech in Melbourne.
It’s hard to disagree with the idea we face troubling prospects over the coming decades, from climate change, nuclear weapons and bio-engineered pathogens (all big issues in my view), to rogue AI and large asteroids (which I would see as less concerning).
But what about that number? Where does it come from? And what does it really mean?
Coin flips and weather forecasts
To answer those questions, we have to answer another first: what is probability?
The most traditional view of probability is called frequentism, and derives its name from its heritage in games of dice and cards. On this view, we know there is a one in six chance a fair die will come up with a three (for example) by observing the frequency of threes in a large number of rolls.
Or consider the more complicated case of weather forecasts. What does it mean when a weatherperson tells us there is a one in six (or 17%) chance of rain tomorrow?
It’s hard to believe the weatherperson means us to imagine a large collection of “tomorrows”, of which some proportion will experience precipitation. Instead, we need to look at a large number of such predictions and see what happened after them.
If the forecaster is good at their job, we should see that when they said “one in six chance of rain tomorrow”, it did in fact rain on the following day one time in every six.
So, traditional probability depends on observations and procedure. To calculate it, we need to have a collection of repeated events on which to base our estimate.
Can we learn from the Moon?
So what does this mean for the probability of human extinction? Well, such an event would be a one-off: after it happened, there would be no room for repeats.
Instead, we might find some parallel events to learn from. Indeed, in Ord’s book, he discusses a number of potential extinction events, some of which can potentially be examined in light of a history.
Counting craters on the Moon can gives us clues about the risk of asteroid impacts on Earth. NASA
For example, we can estimate the chances of an extinction-sized asteroid hitting Earth by examining how many such space rocks have hit the Moon over its history. A French scientist named Jean-Marc Salotti did this in 2022, calculating the odds of an extinction-level hit in the next century at around one in 300 million.
Of course, such an estimate is fraught with uncertainty, but it is backed by something approaching an appropriate frequency calculation. Ord, by contrast, estimates the risk of extinction by asteroid at one in a million, though he does note a considerable degree of uncertainty.
A ranking system for outcomes
There is another way to think about probability, called Bayesianism after the English statistician Thomas Bayes. It focuses less on events themselves and more on what we know, expect and believe about them.
In very simple terms, we can say Bayesians see probabilities as a kind of ranking system. In this view, the specific number attached to a probability shouldn’t be taken directly, but rather compared to other probabilities to understand which outcomes are more and less likely.
Ord’s book, for example, contains a table of potential extinction events and his personal estimates of their probability. From a Bayesian perspective, we can view these values as relative ranks. Ord thinks extinction from an asteroid strike (one in a million) is much less likely than extinction from climate change (one in a thousand), and both are far less likely than extinction from what he calls “unaligned artificial intelligence” (one in ten).
The difficulty here is that initial estimates of Bayesian probabilities (often called “priors”) are rather subjective (for instance, I would rank the chance of AI-based extinction much lower). Traditional Bayesian reasoning moves from “priors” to “posteriors” by again incorporating observational evidence of relevant outcomes to “update” probability values.
And once again, outcomes relevant to the probability of human extinction are thin on the ground.
Subjective estimates
There are two ways to think about the accuracy and usefulness of probability calculations: calibration and discrimination.
Calibration is the correctness of the actual values of the probabilities. We can’t determine this without appropriate observational information. Discrimination, on the other hand, simply refers to the relative rankings.
We don’t have a basis to think Ord’s values are properly calibrated. Of course, this is not likely to be his intent. He himself indicates they are mostly designed to give “order of magnitude” indications.
Even so, without any related observational confirmation, most of these estimates simply remain in the subjective domain of prior probabilities.
Not well calibrated – but perhaps still useful
So what are we to make of “one in six”? Experience suggests most people have a less than perfect understanding of probability (as evidenced by, among other things, the ongoing volume of lottery ticket sales). In this environment, if you’re making an argument in public, an estimate of “probability” doesn’t necessarily need to be well calibrated – it just needs to have the right sort of psychological impact.
From this perspective, I’d say “one in six” fits the bill nicely. “One in 100” might feel small enough to ignore, while “one in three” might drive panic or be dismissed as apocalyptic raving.
As a person concerned about the future, I hope risks like climate change and nuclear proliferation get the attention they deserve. But as a data scientist, I hope the careless use of probability gets left by the wayside and is replaced by widespread education on its true meaning and appropriate usage.
Steven Stern 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abby Foster, Allied Health Research Advisor, Monash Health; Adjunct senior lecturer, La Trobe University; Adjunct research fellow, School of Primary & Allied Health Care, Monash University
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this series, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.
With the release of the disability royal commission’s final report, the harrowing treatment of people with disabilities in Australia has been starkly displayed.
Just prior to the report’s release, media reports about abuse and neglect prompted National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) commissioner Tracy Mackey to say anyone on the scheme who is concerned about the care they’re receiving and doesn’t have someone to advocate for them should get in touch with the scheme’s quality and safety commission.
But this fails to acknowledge the systemic barriers people with communication disability face. For many, picking up the phone or completing an online form without support is not possible.
Acknowledging this, the disability royal commission made specific recommendations around enabling autonomy and access through “communication access”. Acknowledging that failure to do so can lead to poor health, education, employment and justice outcomes, with increased risk of harm during emergencies and natural disasters.
Communication access is necessary for everyone in society, but especially for the 1.2 million Australians who live with a communication disability.
Communication is enormously diverse. We use spoken, written and sign language, gesture, pictorial and digital forms, facial expression, vocalisation, and physical expression to convey meaning. Through these, we can communicate our needs, thoughts and concerns.
Critically, the success of any communicative attempt requires the communication form to be acknowledged, valued and supported. Our environment has a profound impact on how successful communication is – irrespective of a person’s abilities or impairments.
Over the last 40 years we have witnessed a significant shift in attitudes towards people with disability in Australia. There is now legal entitlement for “people with disability to exercise choice and control”.
An independent review of the NDIS is due to report by the end of this month with pressure on costs and growth to ensure sustainability. But enabling people to communicate and exercise choice demands we design and resource accessible communication environments.
What’s it like to live with a communication disability?
Every day, people experience barriers to receiving and sharing information. These barriers can affect how they engage in meaningful interactions and how safe they feel. Inadequate communication accommodations can lead to difficulties accessing health care, using public transport, even ordering a coffee.
The disability royal commission exposed failures that have caused immense harm. The agency of people living with communication disability has not been respected, with devastating consequences.
Communication barriers exist within the context of high rates of abuse, violence and deprivation of basic needs, including food, shelter, or assistive aids. These rates are almost double those reported for people living without disability.
Communication access occurs when everyone can meaningfully access information and get their message across. The commission called it “a critical safeguard against violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation”.
Yet common approaches to communication accessibility – including those used by government bodies such as the National Disability Insurance Agency (which administers the NDIS) – have limited value.
Universal design principles go someway in supporting agency for people with communication disability. These principles aim to recognise, value and accommodate a broad range of users of specific products or environments. But tailored attention to individual communicative requirements is essential too.
There have been calls to enhance communication access for many years. While the commission’s recommendations are an important step, the real challenge lies ahead.
The government taskforce charged with acting on the commission’s recommendations should begin by acknowledging the expertise of people with communicative disability.
NDIS funding models must cover making a person’s support and service network an accessible communication environment. People with communication disability tell us that time, sustained engagement and relationship building are essential. While strategies are person-specific, practical considerations include ensuring access to assistive equipment and devices, providing choices, checking own understanding, and paying attention to non-verbal communication.
The costs of doing so are offset by the economic value of better health and well-being, employment, education, health, leisure and access to justice.
As the disability royal commission showed, poor oversight has resulted in significant harm, with inadequate safety and incident reporting measures that have translated to increased risk for people experiencing barriers to communicating their concerns.
At a minimum, communication access standards should ensure disability providers have base-level skills to recognise and support diverse forms of communication. Feedback and complaint mechanisms must also go beyond traditional formats of written and verbal communication.
As a community we must learn, not just from the stories and experiences shared with and by the disability royal commission, but also from how people with disability were supported to provide them. Through acknowledgement of the diversity of communication and by providing communication supports, we now have the opportunity to build inclusive environments.
Abby Foster consults to and is a certified practising member of Speech Pathology Australia. She is a research affiliate with the Centre for Research Excellence in Aphasia Recovery and Rehabilitation. She is affiliated with Yes23 campaign and Healthy Futures
Lucette Lanyon consults on inclusion of people with communication disability within organisational structures and clinical research. She receives funding from the Stroke Foundation and is a research affiliate with the Centre for Research Excellence in Aphasia Recovery and Rehabilitation.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University
Shutterstock
When we think of extinction, we think of individual species. But nature doesn’t operate like that. Entire communities and even whole ecosystems are now so compromised they could be lost entirely. Australia now has about 100 ecological communities at risk.
One of those is the iconic Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) community in Victoria’s Central Highlands. Many of us know and love these regal trees, the tallest flowering plant in the world. But decades of logging, repeated wildfires, and fragmentation of these forests means they and the species which rely on them like Leadbeater’s possum and gliders now face existential threats.
In our new research, we point to the need to list the entire community as threatened.
Australia is an enormous contributor to global biodiversity loss. A recent study found 97 species in Australia have now gone extinct since British colonisation in 1788, with roughly 10% of all native mammal species gone forever. The numbers would be higher if invertebrate losses were included.
Worldwide, roughly a million species are now at risk of extinction. Looming loss at this scale threatens entire ecological communities – or even whole ecosystems.
Under Australia’s biodiversity laws, ecological communities can be listed as threatened, endangered or critically endangered. About 100 ecological communities – defined as assemblages of species in a particular habitat – are currently at risk. But even this figure is likely to be a massive underestimate.
Many ecological communities are not on this list even though they probably should be. The reason for that is a lack of good data.
To find out whether a community is threatened requires a thorough assessment of many species and key ecological processes using high-quality long-term data.
These kinds of data aren’t available for many communities. But we have 40 years of detailed data for the Central Highlands Mountain Ash forests. So to find out whether they are truly threatened, we undertook a detailed assessment.
Why are these forests at risk of collapse?
These forests cover 140,000 hectares near Victorian towns like Marysville, Warburton and Healesville. They’re rich in biodiversity, including several threatened mammals and plants.
We focused on the Central Highlands because this area is home to the largest remaining forests of Mountain Ash – 44% of all remaining forest.
Much elsewhere has been lost. In South Gippsland, plantations, dairy and potato farms have replaced Mountain Ash forests, with only small fragments left.
Tasmania’s Mountain Ash forests are important, albeit less extensive than those in Victoria’s Central Highlands.
This is what mountain ash forests should look like – old growth trees stretching to the sky. Esther Beaton/Author provided, CC BY-NC-ND
Our conclusion? Sadly, the Central Highlands Mountain Ash community is now eligible for listing as either endangered or critically endangered.
These forests are now largely regrowth. Many have been fragmented, making it harder for wildlife to cross between patches. Biodiversity is still declining, including threatened species, while changing fire regimes are placing intensive pressure on the remaining forests.
What happened here? These forests have been subject to decades of intensive clearfell logging, as well extensive cutting dating back to the late 1920s.
These pressures have made old growth a vanishing rarity, accounting for just over 1% of the remaining 137,000 hectares of Mountain Ash forest in the Central Highlands. The rest of the forest is often highly degraded.
The loss of almost all old growth has been devastating for species like Leadbeater’s possum, the southern greater glider and the yellow-bellied glider over the past 25 years. These animals must have nesting hollows to survive, and these only form when large old trees lose limbs – a process that can take well over 100 years.
And because the Mountain Ash community is dominated by younger trees, it is now at risk of reburning. Younger trees are highly fire-prone – even those regenerating from the Black Saturday fires of 2009. This has left the entire ecological community vulnerable to future fires.
Our analysis found nearly 70% of these forest communities are already either severely disturbed by fire and logging or exist within 70 metres of severely disturbed areas.
What would happen if Mountain Ash communities collapse?
These pressures have pushed these forests to the edge. They could readily collapse and be replaced by an entirely different community, dominated by wattles and prone to more fire, more often.
The collapse of the Mountain Ash community would have catastrophic implications for the five million people who live in Melbourne. The city’s famously good drinking water relies almost entirely on run-off from Mountain Ash forest to the east.
You might wonder – won’t the ending of industrial logging in January help? It might – if we undertake a massive restoration effort. Many tracts of forest are simply not regenerating after logging – up to 30%.
Restoring tree cover, species diversity and making the ecosystem functional again will take a great deal of work.
Nature will bounce back, won’t it? Not always, as the failure of mountain ash to regenerate after logging or fire demonstrates. Chris Taylor/Lachlan McBurney, CC BY-NC-ND
What can we do?
The case is compelling for listing Victoria’s Mountain Ash community as threatened.
Huge efforts will be required to stop the populations of animals such as the southern greater glider from plunging. Recently, we have been testing new nesting box designs to help populations recover. These boxes are meant to be a stop-gap substitute as nesting hollows to replace natural cavities.
We’ll also have to do our best to keep out high-intensity wildfire from as many areas of Mountain Ash forest as possible, so the young trees have a chance to mature and develop hollows.
This kind of restoration is compatible with efforts by conservationists to declare a Great Forest National Park to protect Mountain Ash communities.
It’s well established that protecting areas does work. For example, an estimated 25% of the world’s bird species are alive today because they have been protected in reserves.
Listing an ecological community as threatened isn’t a one-way street to extinction. We can – and have – reversed the damage for other communities and species. We need do it for Mountain Ash forests, and it must be done now.
David Lindenmayer receives funding from the Australian Government, and the Victorian Government. He is a Councillor with the Biodiversity Council and is a member of Birds Australia.
Elle Bowd has received funding from the Paddy Pallin Foundation, Centre of Biodiversity Analysis, the Ecological Society of Australia, New South Wales government and the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment fund.
Kita Ashman works for WWF Australia and is an Ambassador for Paddy Pallin.
Chris Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In defending a Federal Court case brought by opponents of her decisions to approve two export coal mines, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is relying in part on what critics call the “drug dealer’s defence”.
Prime Minister Albanese has argued the same thing, telling The Australian
policies that would just result in a replacement of Australian resources with resources that are less clean from other countries would lead to an increase in global emissions, not a decrease.
Albanese’s reasoning is that saying no to new Australian coal mines wouldn’t cut global emissions, it would just produce “less economic activity in Australia”.
If it sounds like a familiar argument, it is – past prime ministers and the coal industry have made similar claims for decades.
It’s possible to test this argument using economics, putting to one side the question of whether it is morally justifiable.
The defence works for drug dealers
Let’s look at how this defence works with retail drug dealers, many of whom are drug users themselves.
Street-level drug dealing is a job that doesn’t require much skill and pays above the minimum wage, even after allowing for the risk of arrest.
As a result, as soon as one dealer is arrested, someone will enter the market to replace the dealer. For this reason, drug policy has shifted away from traditional modes of street-level enforcement and towards community partnerships.
But coal is different. Global markets are supplied by a range of producers, each with different costs. Some mines can cover their costs even when world prices are low, others require very high world coal prices to break even.
In the case of metallurgical (coking) coal used to make steel, Australia’s mines are mostly at the low-cost end of the spectrum as shown below:
Indicative hard coking coal supply curve by mine, 2019
Thermal coal, used in electricity generation, is more complex, since much of the variation in price relates to its quality, rather than extraction cost.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that if one producer withdraws from the market or reduces output, it is highly unlikely to be replaced by an identical-cost producer.
It is likely instead to be replaced by a higher-cost supplier who needs a higher price to cover its costs. That’ll make the coal less attractive to the buyer who would have bought from the low-cost producer, making that buyer less likely to buy less of it.
This is Economics 101, illustrated in the supply and demand diagrams in just about every economics textbook.
Why Australia’s coal matters globally
In most markets, the demand curve is downward sloping, meaning the higher the price, the less the buyer wants.
If the supply curve moves up, because the cost of supply has increased, the price at which the good is bought will move up and the quantity bought will move down.
In the figure below, the supply curve S1 is the current global supply.
If Australia supplies less coal, the supply curve will shift from S1 to S2, resulting in the higher price P2.
The higher price will result in increased supply from competitors, but also a reduction in the total amount consumed, a cut from Q1 to Q2.
This means that, contrary to government claims, our decisions will have an impact on global emissions and ultimately on global heating
Moreover, Australian decisions aren’t isolated.
All around the world, governments, financial institutions and civil society groups are grappling with the need to transition away from coal.
Proposals for new and expanded coal mines and coal-fired power stations face resistance at every step. In particular, the great majority of global banks and insurance companies now refuse to finance and insure new coal.
This means that the long-run response to a reduction in Australia’s supply of coal will involve less substitution and more of a drop in use than might be thought.
For coal, the drug dealer’s defence is shoddy
It makes the drug dealers defence for exporting coal especially shoddy.
It would be open to Plibersek to make another argument: that in the government’s political judgement, Australians are not willing to wear the short-run costs of a transition from coal, regardless of the impact on the global climate manifested every day in bushfires, floods and environmental destruction.
But instead, we are being told that if Australia cuts supply, other suppliers will rush in, without being told about their costs and what will happen next.
In markets like coal, with a fixed number of suppliers facing different costs, demand responds to the withdrawal of supply in the way the economics textbooks say it should.
The concerns of various pundits and politicians earlier this year that New Zealand might struggle to attract immigrants turned out to be premature. In fact, the country’s population has been boosted to the extent it should be a bigger election issue than it is.
In the 12 months to July, total permanent migrant arrivals were 208,400 – exceeding previous levels by quite a margin. Accounting for permanent departures, the net population gain from immigrants has been 96,200.
That breaks all previous records, and even accounts for a return to the consistent pattern of a net loss of New Zealand citizens (39,500 in the same period). There is every indication the country will hit an annual net gain of 100,000 people.
At this rate, inward migration will provide a net annual population gain of 2% for 2023. Once natural increase is added (births over deaths being more than 20,000 a year), the overall rate will be around 2.3% to 2.4%. By contrast, the OECD average is less than 0.5%.
Auckland is beginning another period of rapid population growth, reversing the decline seen in 2021. The city’s growth accounts for around half of the country’s total net migration gain. Combined with a natural increase of around 7,000 to 8,000, it means the city will have significant population growth, even allowing for a net migration loss to other regions.
Some of this surge can be explained by the return to relative normal after pandemic restrictions were lifted. But there’s a range of other factors pushing people to New Zealand, including anti-immigrant politics and general disenchantment in other countries.
New Zealand is seen as a desirable destination. In a recent US survey Americans ranked New Zealand second on their list of “best countries” – ahead of the US itself.
Immigration and productivity
In 2021, at the request of the finance minister, the Productivity Commission examined the ways immigration settings would contribute to the “long-term prosperity and wellbeing” of the country.
The Immigration – Fit for the Future report released in 2022 provided a very complete review of the data and issues. While it indicated that immigration and immigrants have positive effects and outcomes for New Zealand, it also pointed to a lack of consistency and strategy, and little public accountability.
Key findings included what the commission referred to as “an infrastructure deficit” as investment failed to keep up with population growth. It also described a “reliance risk” on migrant labour that had “negative consequences on innovation and productivity”.
In the trade-off between a reliance on migrant labour or investing in new technologies, the concern is that migrant labour presents an easy win, with little incentive for employers to innovate.
Yet the significant implications of the current immigration surge for planning and productivity are noticeably absent from this election campaign.
The missing election issue
Mostly, the main parties are positive about the role and contribution of immigrants (unlike some countries where anti-migrant sentiment has been rising). But the parties are also mainly concerned with policy detail, not the bigger picture.
Labour, National, ACT and the Greens all propose family and parent visas. This is to be welcomed, as migration works best when extended families are involved. And there is a general recognition that talent recruitment needs more attention.
Specifically, Labour wants Pasifika and other migrants who have been in New Zealand for ten years or more to gain residency. The Greens propose a review of refugee and asylum-seeker policy. National wants a new visa category for highly educated migrants. And ACT would require a regulatory impact analysis for all immigration policy.
For its part, New Zealand First refers back to its policies from the 2020 election. This includes statements about the negative impact of “cheap labour undermining New Zealand’s pay and conditions”, something the Productivity Commission found little evidence of.
But the party also suggested greater attention should be given to a more regionally dispersed population and the establishment of a 30-year population plan. Somewhat by default, then, New Zealand First highlights the gaps in other parties’ policy recommendations.
A more robust and constructive election debate would have addressed those big gaps more directly.
What should be New Zealand’s annual target for migrants, both permanent and temporary? How do we meet the challenges created by the current high volume, including the processing of applications, potential for migrant exploitation, and the stress on services and infrastructure?
More broadly, shouldn’t we be looking at immigration policy in the context of all the elements in play? This would mean factoring in the rapid ageing of the population, declining fertility and very different regional demographic trajectories (with some places experiencing population stagnation or decline).
Asked in a recent radio interview about the housing and infrastructure challenges of immigration and record population growth, National leader (and potentially next prime minister) Christopher Luxon argued the numbers were a “catch-up” from the COVID years:
We’ve got to make sure immigration is always strongly linked to our economic agenda and where we have worker shortages.
This only emphasises the lack of a genuine national plan. Now that the workers kept out by COVID are flowing into the country in large numbers, the Productivity Commission’s observations and suggestions are more relevant than ever.
Otherwise, New Zealand risks allowing immigration to be the default answer to much harder questions about innovation, productivity and the development of a long-term population strategy.
Paul Spoonley has received funding from MBIE to research migrant flows and the impacts of diversity. This research ended in 2021.
After 10 years of non-attendance, France turned up to this week’s French Polynesia sitting of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (C-24) — but the French delegate did not deliver the message that pro-independence French Polynesian groups wanted to hear.
French Polynesia was re-inscribed to the United Nations (UN) list of non-self-governing territories in 2013.
Pro-independence leader Moetai Brotherson, President of French Polynesia, came to power in May 2023.
Since then he has claimed he received assurances from French President Emmanuel Macron that France would end its “empty chair” policy regarding UN decolonisation sessions on French Polynesia.
President Macron apparently kept his promise, but the message that the French Ambassador to the UN, Nicolas De Rivière, delivered was unambiguous.
He declared French Polynesia “has no place” on the UN list of non-autonomous territories because “French Polynesia’s history is not the history of New Caledonia”.
The indigenous Kanak peoples of New Caledonia, the other French Pacific dependency currently on the UN list, have actively pursued a pathway to decolonisation through the Noumea Accord and are still deep in negotiations with Paris about their political future.
French public media Polynésie 1ère TV quoted the ambassador as saying: “No process between France and French Polynesia allows a role for the United Nations.”
French Ambassador to the UN Nicolas De Rivière . . . present this time but wants French Polynesia withdrawn from the UN decolonisation list. Image: RNZ Pacific
The ambassador also voiced France’s wish to have French Polynesia withdrawn from the UN list. At the end of his statement, the Ambassador left the room, leaving a junior agent to sit in his place.
This was just as more than 40 pro-independence petitioners were preparing to make their statements.
Tahiti’s President Moetai Brotherson . . . pro-independence but speaking on behalf of “all [French] Polynesians, including those who do not want independence today.” Image: Polynésie 1ère TV screenshot/APR
This is not an unfamiliar scene. Over the past 10 years, at similar UN sessions, when the agenda would reach the item of French Polynesia, the French delegation would leave the room.
The C-24 session started on Tuesday morning.
This week, French Polynesia’s 40-plus strong — mostly pro-independence delegation — of petitioners included the now-ruling Tavini Huiraatira party, members of the civil society, the local Māohi Protestant Church, and nuclear veterans associations and members of the local Parliament (the Territorial Assembly) and French Polynesian MPs sitting at the French National Assembly in Paris.
It also included President Moetai Brotherson from Tavini.
French position on decolonisation unchanged For the past 10 years, since it was re-inscribed on the UN list, French Polynesia has sent delegates to the meeting, with the most regular attendees being from the Tavini Huiraatira party:
“I was angry because the French ambassador left just before our petitioners were about to take the floor [. . . ] I perceived this as a sign of contempt on the part of France,” said Hinamoeura Cross, a petitioner and a pro-independence member of French Polynesia’s Territorial Assembly, reacting this week to the French envoy’s appearance then departure, Polynésie 1ère TV reports.
Since being elected to the top post in May 2023, President Brotherson has stressed that independence, although it remains a long-term goal, is not an immediate priority.
Days after his election, after meeting French President Macron for more than an hour, he said he was convinced there would be a change in France’s posture at the UN C-24 committee hearing and an end to the French “empty chair policy”.
“I think we should put those 10 years of misunderstanding, of denial of dialogue [on the part of France] behind us [. . .]. Everyone can see that since my election, the relations with France have been very good [. . . ]. President Macron and I have had a long discussion about what is happening [at the UN] and the way we see our relations with France evolve,” he told Tahiti Nui Télévision earlier this week from New York.
President ‘for all French Polynesians’ – Brotherson President Brotherson also stressed that this week, at the UN, he would speak as President of French Polynesia on behalf of “all [French] Polynesians, including those who do not want independence today”.
“So in my speech I will be very careful not to create confusion between me coming here [at the UN] to request the implementation of a self-determination process, and me coming here to demand independence which is beside the point,” he added in the same interview.
He conceded that at the same meeting, delegates from his own Tavini party were likely to deliver punchier, more “militant”, speeches “because this is Tavini’s goal”.
“But as for me, I speak as President of French Polynesia.”
Ahead of the meeting, Tavini Huiraatira pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru said that “It’s the first time a pro-independence President of French Polynesia will speak at the UN (C-24) tribune”.
Temaru, 78, was French Polynesia’s president in 2013 when it was reinscribed to the UN list.
Speaking of the different styles between him and his 54-year-old son-in-law — Moetai Brotherson is married to Temaru’s daughter — Temaru said this week: “He has his own strategy and I have mine and mine has not changed one bit [. . .] this country must absolutely become a sovereign state.
“Can you imagine? Overnight, we would own this country of five million sq km. Today, we have nothing.”
French Minister of Home Affairs and Overseas Gérald Darmanin wrote on the social media platform X, previously Twitter, earlier this week: “On this matter just like on other ones, [France] is working with elected representatives in a constructive spirit and in the respect of the territory’s autonomy and of France’s sovereignty.”
Darmanin has already attended the C-24 meeting when it considered New Caledonia.
The United Nations list of non-self-governing territories currently includes 17 territories world-wide and six of those are located in the Pacific — American Samoa, French Polynesia, Guam, New Caledonia, Pitcairn Island and Tokelau.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney, UNSW Sydney
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles today announced significant changes aimed at restoring the integrity of Australia’s refugee protection system.
The key focus is on reducing the significant backlogs in the processing and reviewing of protection visa applications once people apply for asylum in Australia.
The aim is to ensure people who fear persecution or other serious rights abuses can be granted protection quickly. This will, Giles says, allow them to “rebuild their lives with certainty and stability”.
According to Giles, “Australians are rightly proud of our country’s generous refugee program”. But there is no denying the current onshore protection system is broken.
The focus of successive governments in recent years has been on blocking and punishing asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat. This has distracted both the public – and the government – from the serious systemic issues slowing down access to protection here in Australia.
A decade for a final decision
The onshore protection system covers people who arrive in Australia on a valid visa – such as a tourist or student visa – and then apply for asylum.
Some people have valid protection claims, some don’t. A key problem is that processing times for these claims have been ballooning in recent years. On average, it now takes around 2.4 years for an initial decision on a protection claim to be made by the Department of Home Affairs. If the application is denied, it takes another 3.6 years to seek a merits review of the claim at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. And if it’s denied again, there’s an additional 5.1 years for judicial review by the courts.
As a result, some people have had to wait as long as 11 years for a final decision. Such delays have a devastating impact on people with genuine asylum claims, who are forced to live in limbo and uncertainty for lengthy periods of time.
On the flipside, these delays have also been “motivating bad actors” to take advantage of the system by lodging increasing numbers of “non-genuine applications for protection”, according to the Nixon report, a review into the exploitation of Australia’s visa system by Victoria’s former police chief commissioner, Christine Nixon, which was released this week.
In this context, we welcome the A$160 million investment announced by the government today to implement a faster and fairer onshore protection system. This will increase the decision-making capacity across the whole asylum system. The funding includes:
$54 million for the initial processing of claims by Home Affairs
$58 million for the appointment of ten additional members to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the body that reviews claims that have been rejected
and ten additional judges to the Federal Circuit and Family Court.
Another $48 million will be provided for legal assistance to support people through the complex asylum application process – something we have long called for.
There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating legal assistance increases the fairness and efficiency of the asylum process. Research by the Kaldor Centre Data Lab found asylum applicants with legal representation are, on average, five times more likely to succeed on a merits review than applicants who represent themselves. They are also six times more likely to succeed at the judicial review stage.
There is a wealth of similar research from other countries, including Canada, Switzerland and the United States, showing legal representation makes the entire system more efficient.
This is because refugee lawyers provide a very important “triage” service in the process. Their specialised understanding of the law – as well as the social and political conditions from which asylum seekers have fled – means they only take on cases they feel have merit. In this way, lawyers help reduce the number of unmeritorious claims reaching tribunals and courts.
Refugee lawyers also help asylum seekers prepare their statements coherently and systematically. They identify relevant evidence and legal principles, which assists decision-makers to focus on the key aspects of the claim.
When an asylum seeker is unrepresented, decision-makers have to spend much more time ensuring the applicant understands the process and possible outcomes. They also want to ensure the person feels they have had a fair hearing. Overall, this is an inefficient use of public resources.
Smarter use of resources
These reforms represent a significant departure from Australia’s previous attempts to increase the efficiency of Australia’s asylum processes. Over the past three decades, successive governments have instead limited the rights of people seeking asylum – including by cutting funding for legal support.
Our research has made clear these efforts have almost always backfired, leading to more appeals and longer delays.
The most egregious example is the so-called “fast-track” procedure for processing the claims of certain asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Not only is the procedure unfair, but (contrary to its name) it has also been excruciatingly slow.
Now, to help speed up the asylum process more broadly, the government is implementing a new approach called “real-time priority processing” of protection visa applications at Home Affairs. This will involve a “last in, first out” approach that prioritises new asylum applications for rapid processing.
The rationale is this will de-incentivise unmeritorious applications and abuse of the asylum system.
While this makes sense as an interim measure as the government works through its significant backlogs, we still need a wider discussion on different approaches to prioritising claims. We need to ensure government resources are being used most efficiently and in the best interests of people seeking asylum.
There are potential lessons Australia can draw on from overseas. Canada, for example, prioritises and fast tracks applications that have a high likelihood of success. Switzerland accelerates cases with both high and low chances of success. Only complex cases requiring further investigation take longer to resolve.
To ensure fairness, Switzerland also provides universal access to government-funded legal representation. We need to spend more time examining these models to see what we can learn and adopt in Australia.
The Kaldor Centre is continuing this process by hosting a conference in Sydney next month which will discuss how we can ensure fairness for people seeking protection in the decade ahead. However, the central focus of the announcement this week on increasing the quality and capacity of Australia’s asylum system is a welcome first step in the right direction.
Daniel Ghezelbash receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the NSW Government. He is a member of the management committee of Refugee Advice and Casework Services and a Special Counsel at the National Justice Project.
Jane McAdam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
In the world of lithium-ion batteries, smartphones take centre stage. Yet they’ve also sparked an ongoing debate: does prolonged (or overnight) charging wreak havoc on your battery?
A number of factors determine a phone battery’s lifespan, including its manufacturing age and its chemical age. The latter refers to the battery’s gradual degradation due to variables such as fluctuations in temperature, charging and discharging patterns and overall usage.
Over time, the chemical ageing of lithium-ion batteries reduces charge capacity, battery lifespan and performance.
A normal [iPhone] battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles when operating under normal conditions.
Research has found a 2019 smartphone battery could, on average, undergo 850 full charge/discharge cycles before dropping to below 80% capacity. This means only 80% of the initial battery capacity remains after about two to three years of use. At this point the battery begins to deplete noticeably faster.
Should you charge your phone overnight?
Most new-generation smartphones will take somewhere between 30 minutes and two hours to charge fully.
Charging times vary depending on your device’s battery capacity – larger capacities require more time – as well as how much power your charger supplies.
Charging your phone overnight is not only unnecessary, it also accelerates battery ageing. Full charging cycles (going from 0%–100%) should be avoided to maximise your battery’s lifespan.
charging your battery up to 100% too frequently may negatively impact the overall lifespan of the battery.
Similarly, keeping iPhones at full charge for extended periods may compromise their battery health.
Rather than a full top-up, it’s recommended to charge your battery up to 80% and not allow it to dip under 20%.
Can your phone be overcharged?
In theory, lithium-ion batteries can be overcharged. This can lead to safety risks such as the battery overheating and catching fire. The good news is most modern phones have an in-built protection that automatically stops the battery from charging further than 100% – preventing any damage from overcharging.
However, each time a battery drops to 99% (due to apps running in the background) it will “trickle charge”: it will start charging again to maintain a fully charged state.
Trickle charging can wear a battery down over time. That’s why many manufacturers have features to regulate it. Apple’s iPhones offer functionality to delay charging past 80%. Samsung’s Galaxy phones provide the option to cap the charge at 85%.
Can your phone explode from charging?
It’s very unlikely your smartphone will explode as a result of charging – especially since most phones now have automatic protections against overcharging.
Still, over the years we have seen severalreports of phones exploding unexpectedly. This usually happens as a result of manufacturing faults, poor-quality hardware or physical damage.
Lithium-ion phone batteries overheat when the heat generated during charging is unable to dissipate. This may cause burns or, in extreme cases, lead to a fire.
Also, these batteries operate effectively within a temperature range of 0℃ to 40℃. They may expand at higher ambient temperatures, potentially causing a fire or explosion.
Using an incorrect, faulty or poor-quality charger or cable can also lead to overheating, fire hazards and damage to the phone itself.
Although your phone probably has in-built safety mechanisms to protect its battery, taking a cautious approach will make it last even longer. Here are some ways to protect your phone’s battery:
install the latest software updates to keep your phone up-to-date with the manufacturer’s battery efficiency enhancements
use original or certified power chargers, as the power delivery (amps, volts and watts) in off-market chargers can differ and may not meet the required safety standards
avoid exposing your phone to high temperatures – Apple and Samsung say their phones work best at 0℃ to 35℃ ambient temperatures
limit your charging to 80% of the full capacity and don’t let it dip below 20%
don’t leave your phone charging for an extended period, such as overnight, and disconnect it from the power source if the battery reaches 100%
keep your phone in a well-ventilated area while it’s charging and avoid placing it or the charger under a blanket, pillow or your body while it’s connected to a power source
monitor your battery health and use to identify unusual trends, such as taking an excessive time to charge, or rapid draining
if you notice your phone is heating up excessively, or has a bulging or swollen back, get an authorised service centre to check and repair it.
If you want specific details about your particular phone and battery, the best option is to follow the manufacturer’s guidelines.
Ritesh Chugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The above chart looks rather noisy, and so it should. Life and death are messy, and subject to random variations. But this chart, for females, and those that follow, are important charts. It’s worth looking through the ‘random noise’. These charts suggest that the cliché ‘we are all living longer’ is incorrect. Also, this representation of New Zealand’s mortality data highlights the experience of younger people, something hidden by most death and life expectancy data.
First, some technical information. Triennial death increases are three-yearly percentage increases in the actual number of deaths; in this case, the numbers of deaths for an age-cohort (aka. for a generation). These are 11-year age-cohorts; eg the 1970s’ age cohort here is made up of people born from 1969 to 1979. Hence it is listed as 1974±5 (where ± means ‘plus or minus’).
Consider the plot for people in the 1974±5 cohort who died aged 21. The number shown is 23%. Essentially, that means there were 23% more deaths of females in this 1970s’ birth cohort who died aged 21 compared to the number from that birth cohort who died aged 18. (This is equivalent to an annual increase in deaths of 7%. We note that the incidence of death among 18-21 year-olds remains very low, even if the numbers of deaths are increasing.)
The data has been ‘smoothed’ in the following way. The deaths of those aged 21 have been compared with the annual average of deaths for those people when they were aged 16 to 20. The reason for this smoothing is to remove distortion arising from random single-year impacts on comparison populations.
We note that, in the absence of immigration and emigration, each year the population of a birth cohort falls; the fall is slow when the birth cohort is young, and accelerates from middle-age. Certainly, from about age 30, the likelihood of death from natural causes increases, as the cohort population falls. Again ignoring net immigration for the time being, death increases with age should be positive (ie above zero percent); and approximately stable as the increased likelihood of death offsets the reduced cohort population size.
Adding emigration and immigration to the picture, for New Zealand at least, is likely to reduce the numbers of deaths of people aged in their early twenties (an age which typically features net emigration) and to raise the numbers of deaths of people in their thirties (an age which features net immigration).
A further point of interpretation. Where there are ‘spikes’ in the chart, it does not necessarily mean that death rates are falling in subsequent years. The spikes essentially show acceleration of death incidence. If death rates are high, then zero percent increases indicate that death rates are still high.
So, what does this first chart tell us?
First, we see that from age 30 onwards, each birth-cohort (ie each generation) has experienced about 20% more deaths every three years; this amounts to about a 6% annual increase in death numbers. The greater variability for women aged 30 to 50 most likely reflects variations in the rate of immigrant arrivals; and we should bear in mind that immigration in this age group includes large numbers of returnees, immigrants to New Zealand who were born in New Zealand.
There is no obvious sense that more-recently-born women are living longer or shorter than their elders. Though women born in the 1930s do seem to have been more likely to die age 35 to 45 than their daughters and granddaughters; probably a mix of aftereffects of childhood poverty in the Depression years, and of the high rates of smoking amongst that generation.
Second, all generation show at least one age from 20 to 25 where there were fewer deaths than three years previously. Emigration – in particular, extended ‘overseas experience’ – will have been one reason, though probably not the only reason.
Third, and perhaps most worrying, are the high increases in teenage death rates showing for people born after 1980. This will be partly due to falling death rates for people aged around ten. But is also likely to reflect the emergence of a growing underclass; child/teenage poverty in times in which underclass births have become a larger proportion of total births. While this data is for females, we’ll look at males shortly.
Chart by Keith Rankin.
This second chart shows the same data as the first chart, though it’s plotted by year-of-death rather than age-at-death. This chart shows particular high-death or low-death years. 1957 and 1968 were influenza pandemic years, and it shows, especially for the 1930s-born age cohort. We can also see death peaks in 1977, 1980, 1987, 1995, 2003/04, 2011, 2017, and 2022.
We note the big fall in the late 1990s in deaths of the 1970s’ born. This will be due to particularly heavy emigration of young people in the 1990s; emigration resulting from the record-high unemployment levels in the early 1990s.
The other feature prominent in this chart is the experience of teenagers born from 1979 to 2009. These are most likely to be due to increased mental health issues faced by teenagers born from the 1980s, perhaps combined with other issues around childhood immunity to pathogens. Anecdotally, we do hear about increasing incidences of conditions such as asthma and allergies; conditions possibly due more to over-cleanliness than to exposure to pathogens.
Chart by Keith Rankin.Chart by Keith Rankin.
Comparing males with females, we see that the ‘teenage issue’ is substantially more prominent with males, and more clearly extends back to older generations. In the case of teenage males, we note a greater propensity to risky behaviours, and also the greater likelihood of death by suicide. On the matter of risky behaviours, the most prominent feature of risk-taking was vehicle crashes.
(A particular note re my own memories. 1973 was the worst year ever for road deaths in New Zealand, and one group overrepresented were motorcyclists aged around 18 to 20. Look at the green 1950s’ birth cohort. While I neither died nor got injured from such a crash, that was me; born in 1953, and an active student motorcyclist. I knew a number of people who did have serious crashes. And I attended two funerals in 1973; both born in 1952, one in a mountaineering accident and one suicide.)
In the final chart, we again see no evidence that the younger generations are healthier – or more likely to be long-lived – than their parents’ generations. Further, those born in the 1990s are not showing the decline in deaths in their early 20s which characterised previous generations. Though this may be due to less emigration; ie to changes in the culture of ‘overseas experience’ with more young people taking short trips rather than an extended or indefinite period of absence from New Zealand.
The last year of data is 2022, the year of high Covid19 mortality in New Zealand. New Zealanders born in the 1970s appear to have been hard-hit by Covid19, whether by the infection itself, or as a result of other circumstances associated with the pandemic. A 40% triennial increase in deaths in 2022 cannot be explained entirely by immigration.
Finally, in terms of the charts, we see that for older people, cohort death increases have been less for males than for females. This is because there are fewer older men than older women; meaning that more ‘past deaths’ of older men means relatively fewer ‘present deaths’ of older men.
Explanatory Context
Finally, I should mention the work of prominent (and still living) twentieth-century demographer Richard Easterlin (b.1926). His central insights were that baby-bust generations have more successful life-outcomes, on average, than baby-boom generations. (This may be modified, by the conclusion that ‘trailing baby-boomers’ – eg Gen X – would do less well in life than ‘leading baby-boomers’.)
And that the advantages/disadvantages of each age-cohort would show up in death rates, and would persevere throughout their cohorts’ lives.
The recent data that I have shown here modifies the first insight. Young people born in the 1980s – a baby bust period – have higher teenage death rates than those born in the 1960s and 1970s. My modification to Easterlin’s conclusion is that increasing inequality and poverty within a nation-state will also have an adverse impact on the life outcomes of a generation; especially given that, for today’s younger generations, children are overrepresented in the poorest households.
On Easterlin’s second insight, it’s too early to tell if unusually high teenage death rates for recent birth cohorts will also translate to unusually high death rates for these generations when they reach middle-age and old-age. But it’s looking likely that triennial death toll increases for people born in New Zealand after (say) 1970 will continue higher than for people born in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
This means that I am questioning current official life-expectancy projections as too optimistic, given that they are biassed by the experiences of people born before 1970. Not only are we not all living longer, as the purveyors of retirement savings’ schemes claim, but my prediction is that true life-expectancy (an average) for people born after 1970 is actually lower than it is for people born between 1940 and 1970. Indeed, some United States data already shows this for that American country. I can see every reason to believe that New Zealand will follow this turning trend already apparent in official United States’ mortality data.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Rural communities feel the impact of drought much more than urban residents. Our new research looks at the link between drought and suicide rates in one of Australia’s biggest farming areas, the Murray-Darling Basin.
Drawing on monthly data from 2006 to 2016, our findings were alarming. We found, for instance, that one more month of extreme drought in the previous 12 months was strongly associated with a 32% increase in monthly suicide rates.
Climate change is predicted to bring more heat and longer, more extreme droughts. More effective approaches will be needed to prevent suicides in affected regions.
Research overseas found suicide rates rise with higher average temperatures. In Australia, a study found some evidence linking drought and suicide in New South Wales. However, a Victorian study found no significant association.
Our study looked at the Murray-Darling Basin. The region went through one of the worst droughts on record, the Millennium Drought, over the past couple of decades.
We analysed local area monthly data from 2006-16. We wanted to see whether worsening drought and heat were linked to higher monthly suicide rates, by examining differing types of droughts (moderate to extreme).
The map below shows the average suicide rate for 2006-2016 in local areas across the basin. Male suicide rates were over three times female rates.
We sought to control for as many local area characteristics as possible. Our modelling included unemployment, income, education, proportion of farmers, proportion of Indigenous people, health professionals, green space and various climate and drought variables. We modelled suicide rates for different age and gender sub-groups.
Key findings include:
one more month of extreme drought in the previous 12 months was strongly associated with the total suicide rate increasing by 32%
one more month of moderate drought in the previous 12 months was very weakly associated with a 2% increase in the suicide rate
a 1℃ increase in average monthly maximum temperature in the previous 12 months was associated with up to an 8% increase in the suicide rate
in males and younger age groups, suicide rates are more strongly associated with extreme drought and higher temperatures
a higher proportion of farmers in a local area was associated with an increased suicide rate
a higher proportion of First Nations people in a local area was also associated with higher suicide rates
more green space was significantly associated with moderating impacts of both extreme drought and temperature on suicide rates
an increase in average annual household income moderated the relationship between higher temperature and suicide.
Our results suggest the association between moderate drought and suicide rates is significant but the effect was small. As the drought becomes extreme, suicide rates increase significantly.
Given drought’s impact on farm production and finances, mental health will clearly get worse in rural areas if the impacts of climate change are not better managed.
Mental health interventions to prevent suicide in rural areas are different from what’s needed in urban areas. Areas in the basin with higher percentages of farmers and First Nations people were hot spots. These areas may need special intervention.
Many have emphasised the need for a systems approach to suicide prevention. Actions need to be multifaceted and co-ordinated as well as possible. One intervention or approach is not enough.
The relationship between drought and financial hardship seems to be key in farming areas. This points to the need for other forms of income on the farm, including from native vegetation and carbon credits. Work can also be done to promote drought preparedness, increase appropriate regional economic, social development and environmental policies and – where necessary – help people leave farming.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Sarah Ann Wheeler has received funding from the Australian Research Council; GRDC; Wine Australia; MDBA; CRC Food Waste; CSIRO; Goyder Institute; SA Department of Environment and Water; ACCC; NT Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security; NSW Health; Commonwealth Department of Agriculture and Water; Meat and Livestock Australia; ACIAR; RIRDC; UNECE; NCCARF; National Water Commission; and the Government of Netherlands.
Alec Zuo receives funding from the Australian Research Council, GRDC, ACCC, NSW Health, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, ACIAR, NCCARF, and the National Water Commission.
Ying Xu 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.
