Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vera Xia, Lecturer in Design and Urban Technology, University of Sydney

Sydney, like many other Australian cities, has a long history of urban farming. Market gardens, oyster fisheries and wineries on urban fringe once supplied fresh food to city markets.

As suburbs expanded, many farms in and around cities were converted to houses, roads and parks. The process is continuing.

But this isn’t the whole story. Urban farming is making a comeback in a different guise.

Underneath the Barangaroo towers in Sydney’s CBD, a basement carpark has been transformed into a farm. Trays of more than 40 different varieties of sprouts and microgreens grow under LED lights, often maturing within two weeks. Within hours of harvest, they’re in the kitchens of nearby restaurants.

The urban farmers use sensors, ventilation systems and smartphone apps to ensure growing conditions are ideal. From around 150 square metres, farmers produce about 5,000 punnets a week. Farms such as this one at Urban Green Sydney are part of a broader shift towards high-tech urban farming.

In my research, we asked what these new forms of urban farming mean for cities. Do they make cities and their far-flung food supply chains more resilient to climate change – or do they consume energy without enough to show for it?

Greenhouse – or laboratory?

Greenhouses are a way of controlling the growing conditions for plants. The technology has deep historical roots, from early greenhouse experiments during the Roman Empire to progress in 15th century Korea and advances during the Victorian era such as the Wardian Case, which allowed live plants to survive long sea voyages.

Traditional greenhouses act as climate-controlled enclosures for plants. These days, smart greenhouses use sensors and digital monitoring to optimise, and often automate, plant growth.

Large-scale rural farms such as South Australia’s Sundrop Farms already demonstrate how smart greenhouses, renewable energy and desalination can power food production in harsh climates. Overseas, countries including Spain and China have rolled out smart greenhouses at scale in rural areas.

But these technologies are being urbanised, appearing in commercial buildings, rooftops and even domestic kitchens.

One of the best places to see what smart greenhouses look like is the Agritech Precinct at Western Sydney University. Here, researchers experiment with the “unprecedented control” of temperature, humidity and light the technologies permit on crops such as eggplants and lettuce.

The greenhouses use drones to water crops, robotic arms to harvest them and smart lighting systems to manage growth. Visiting these facilities doesn’t give you the sense you’re in a farm. It feels more like a laboratory.

Technologies like these are promoted in official plans for Greater Sydney, which call for “new opportunities for growing fresh food close to a growing population and freight export infrastructure associated with the Western Sydney Airport”, particularly in Sydney’s peri-urban areas.

Australia is funding research on improving these technologies as a way to future-proof food production.

Researchers are conducting similar experiments with smart greenhouses around the world, from the United States to the Netherlands.

Which crops work best in cities?

Smart greenhouses can’t do everything.

Grain crops need much more space. Fruit trees don’t work well with space constraints. Some vegetable crops don’t lend themselves well to intense high-tech production.

The cost of running LED lights and smart systems mean farmers have to focus on what’s profitable. Many hyped urban farming ventures have failed.

These challenges don’t mean the approach is worthless. But it does mean farmers have to be selective about what they grow. To date, crops such as tomatoes, leafy greens, and herbs have proven the best performers. These crops can be grown relatively quickly in space-restricted, repurposed urban areas mostly hidden from public view and sold to restaurants or individual buyers.

Smart greenhouses producing these type of crops have emerged in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.

Urban farmers often draw on the promise of sustainability and low food miles in their branding. But the technologies raise questions around equity. Do these farms share environmental and social benefits fairly across the city or are they concentrated in a few rich areas?

Smart greenhouse technology – at home?

The humble veggie patch is an Australian staple. But the shift to apartment living and larger building sizes risks crowding it out.

At household scale, smart greenhouses and apps are making it possible for some people to begin producing larger volumes of food in kitchens, balconies and backyards as a DIY method of boosting food security and self-sufficiency.

Compact growing appliances promise to automate production of fresh herbs and baby vegetables. Hydroponic grow tents can grow almost anything indoors (though they are commonly used for illicit crops). Maker communities are using open-source tools such as Hackster to automate watering, lighting and data collection.

Using these technologies at home seems positive, acting to boost home-grown food supplies and increase resilience in the face of food supply chain issues. In fact, it’s perhaps the most uneven frontier. Rather than working to spread smart agriculture across a cityscape, these approaches resemble prepping – efforts to boost individual household resilience.

Making best use of smart greenhouses in cities

At their best, smart greenhouses dotted around cities work to create controlled environments where food can be produced close to where it is eaten. These high-tech, climate controlled environments are often hidden from view.

They promise resilience against the disruption climate change is bringing to agriculture and shorter supply chains. But these food production technologies also risk deepening inequality if they’re mainly taken up by wealthy consumers.

Whether these technologies ultimately benefit cities will depend on how they are integrated and positioned within our urban systems.

For urban authorities, the challenge is to ensure these emerging methods of producing food in the heart of cities boosts resilience collectively rather than fragment it. It will take policy guidance to ensure the benefits of these smart farms are shared equally.

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

– ref. Can smart greenhouses bring back food production in cities? – https://theconversation.com/can-smart-greenhouses-bring-back-food-production-in-cities-265375

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres, PhD Candidate, Political Science, International Relations and Constitutional Law, University of the Sunshine Coast

Two centuries ago, US President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European powers in what would became known in history books as the “Monroe Doctrine”.

The proclamation established the foundation for a new era of US dominance and “policing” of the region.

In the decades that followed, almost a third of the nearly 400 US interventions worldwide took place in Latin America. The United States toppled governments it deemed unfavourable or used force later ruled illegal by international courts.

In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over”. It signalled a shift towards treating the region as partners rather than a sphere of influence.

Now, however, the National Security Strategy released last week by the Trump administration has formally revived that old doctrine.

It helps explain the administration’s interventionist actions in the region over the past couple months, from its deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean to its selective use of sanctions and pardons.

Why Latin America is so important

In typical hubristic fashion, the document openly announces a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, elevating the Western Hemisphere as the top US international priority. The days when the Middle East dominated American foreign policy are “thankfully over”, it says.

The document also ties US security and prosperity directly to maintaining US preeminence in Latin America. For example, it aims to deny China and other powers access to key strategic assets in the region, such as military installations, ports, critical minerals and cyber communications networks.

Crucially, it fuses the Trump administration’s harsh rhetoric on “narco-terrorists” with the US-China great power competition.

It frames a more robust US military presence and diplomatic pressure as necessary to confront Latin American drug cartels and protect sea lanes, ports and critical infrastructure from Chinese influence.

How the strategy explains Trump’s actions

For months, the Trump administration has been striking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing dozens of people.

International law experts and human rights officials say these attacks breach international law. The US Congress has not authorised any armed conflict in these waters, yet the strikes have been presented as necessary to protect the US from “narco‑terrorists”.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has also been branded a “narco‑dictator”, though Venezuela is a minor player in the flow of drugs to the US.

On December 2, President Donald Trump told reporters that any country he believes is manufacturing or transporting drugs to the US could face a military strike. This includes not just Venezuela, but also Mexico and Colombia.

On the same day, Trump also granted a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, Honduras’ former president. He had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for helping move hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US.

The new National Security Strategy attempts to explain the logic behind these contradictory actions. It emphasises the need to protect US “core national interests”, and stresses:

President Trump’s foreign policy is […] not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First’.

Within this logic, Hernández was pardoned because he can still serve US interests. As a former president with deep links to Honduran elites and security forces, he is exactly the kind of loyal, hard-right client Trump wants in a country that hosts US military personnel and can help police migration routes to the US.

The timing underlines this: Trump moved to free Hernández just days before Honduras’ elections, shoring up the conservative networks he once led to support Trump’s preferred candidate for president, Nasry Asfura.

In Trump’s “America First” calculus, pardoning Hernández also sends a couple clear signals. Obedient partners are rewarded. And power, not principle, determines US policy in the region.

The obsession with Venezuela

The new security strategy explains Trump’s obsession with Venezuela, in particular.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and a long coastline on the Caribbean Sea, which is a vital sea lane for US goods travelling through the Panama Canal.

Under years of US sanctions, Venezuela signed several energy and mining deals with China, in addition to Iran and Russia. For Beijing, in particular, Venezuela is both an energy source and a foothold in the hemisphere.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy makes clear this is unacceptable to the United States. Although Venezuela is not named anywhere in the document, the strategy alludes to the fact China has made inroads with like-minded leaders in the region:

Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse, given the political alignments
between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors.

A recent report suggests the Maduro government is now attempting a dramatic geopolitical realignment. The New York Times says Maduro’s government offered the US a dominant stake in its oil and gold resources, diverting exports from China. If true, this would represent a clear attempt to court the Trump administration and end Venezuela’s international isolation.

But many believe the Trump administration is after regime change instead.

The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is pitching a post‑Maduro future to US investors, describing a “US$1.7 trillion (A$2.5 trillion) opportunity” to privatise Venezuela’s oil, gas and infrastructure.

For US and European corporations, the message is clear: regime change could unlock vast wealth.

Latin America’s fragmented response

Regional organisations remain divided or weakened, and have yet to coordinate a response to the Trump administration. At a recent regional summit, leaders called for peace, but stopped short of condemning the US strikes off Latin America.

Governments are instead having to deal with Trump one by one. Some hope to be treated as friends; others fear being cast as “narco‑states”.

Two centuries after the Monroe Doctrine, Washington still views the hemisphere as its own backyard, in which it is “free to roam” and can meddle as it sees fit.

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

– ref. Why is Trump so obsessed with Venezuela? His new security strategy provides some clues – https://theconversation.com/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-venezuela-his-new-security-strategy-provides-some-clues-271530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Cummings, Lecturer in Singing, University of Sydney

Music and theatre can bring into the world places and stories that exist only in the imagination. Can music and theatre also change hearts and minds?

This question is at the heart of Cowbois, a new music theatre piece written by Charlie Josephine and directed by Kate Gaul.

Cowbois reimagines a Hollywood-esque Wild West where rugged individuality and hyper masculinity are challenged and eventually replaced by joy, freedom and resistance. It dreams forward towards a utopian vision, where hope and desire can be forces for change.

Challenging community

Cowbois opens with a group of women in a saloon waiting for the return of the men of the community, who have gone off in search of gold.

Into this collective of women comes the transmasculine fugitive Jack Cannon (non-binary performer Jules Billington, with a swagger reminiscent of Elvis with a touch of Bowie). He is a legendary bandit famed for his song and voice, charisma and legendary lawlessness.

Jack develops a passionate relationship with Miss Lillian (Emily Cascarino), the bar owner, that results in a magical pregnancy.

Jack’s presence is the catalyst for Lucy/Lou (Faith Chaza) and Sheriff Roger (Mathew Abotomey) to experiment with their gender expression: the Sheriff with cross dressing and Lou with their own version of extravagant cowboy dress. We see both characters’ emerging power and confidence challenged – at times violently – by the return of the men.

The men arrive without the promised gold but wanting to re-exert their control over a community that has dramatically changed in their absence. The atmosphere of threat and potential violence lead to a backsliding where Lou and Sheriff Roger grudgingly and fearfully put on their old masks.

The kid (Beau Jenkins) disarms the returning men with his unquestioning acceptance of Lou and the Sheriff’s transformations, and the men, in turn, face their own behaviour.

Change is afoot when a gun fight sees the collision of several opposing forces (including bounty hunters), forcing each character to pick a side. This community finds its place with each other and the hostile outside world.

Cowbois’ use of music, song and dance present a subversive, fantastical epiphany.

The music – bluegrass, blues and pop – places us in a world that is neither the Wild West nor now, but somewhere that speaks to both. It is full of wild possibilities where transgender and non-binary characters drive the action in a joyous, extravagant romp reminiscent of old style movie musicals.

The dramatic entrance of the bounty hunters through the middle of the audience is a gloriously silly touch.

Queering music theatre

Musicals and theatre have always had space for queer creatives, it just hasn’t always had space for their stories.

Musicals are moving away from coded and two-dimensional representations of queerness towards more authentic representations of gender diversity.

But there are still few opportunities for transgender and non binary performers and characters to be seen on music theatre and theatre stages – let alone in chaotic, wild and celebratory stories like Cowbois.

Cowbois draws on real-life figures to populate this world. Charlie Parkhurst (Clay Crighton), who arrives all leers and menacing guffaws, was a real stagecoach driver and legendary character of the Wild West and also a transgender man.

Much of the image we hold in our minds of cowboys is made in myths. Many cowboys were Black, Hispanic (Vaqueros) and Native American and most didn’t carry guns. The work was hard and gruelling and attempts to form a union were met with violent opposition by landowners.

In creating this work, Josephine was interested in exploring “masculinity and the truth of that”. Through conversations with men and non-binary people about the enforced rules of masculinity, he concluded: “Patriarchy is squashing everyone.”

The musical has often not done transgender and non-binary characters any favours in their representation (or absence). Here the transgender and non-binary characters are fully fleshed out and the central protagonists of the piece.

Josephine has spoken about the importance of seeing characters like him on stage or screen and that working class and queer stories were equally absent in the stories he saw growing up.

In Cowbois, Josephine is trying to redress this imbalance.

Cowbois plays with music and theatre and creates something that is neither a musical nor a play but an evolution of both: a subversive opposition that is full of joy and optimism.

Cowbois, from Seymour Centre and Siren Theatre Co, plays Sydney until December 13.

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

– ref. Cowbois reimagines Hollywood’s Wild West – with a wonderful queer twist – https://theconversation.com/cowbois-reimagines-hollywoods-wild-west-with-a-wonderful-queer-twist-271611

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Denny, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Tasmania

An extensive government review of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in 2023 made 51 specific recommendations to enable “an RBA fit for the future”. But the narrow terms of reference confined the review to an economic lens.

The failure to investigate the effectiveness of monetary policy setting through a demographic lens has resulted in an RBA which is no longer fit for purpose.

The Reserve Bank has just one policy tool – the setting of official interest rates – to manage the economy and achieve its twin goals of:

• low and stable inflation
• full employment.

From a demographic perspective, the reality is that a large and growing proportion of the population is retired, with tax-free income thanks to superannuation and secure home ownership. They are immune to interest rate changes and may actually be fuelling inflation because their spending is not affected by interest rate rises.

A changing nation

After the second world war, Australia transformed economically and socially, driven by industrialisation, social movements and education reform, building on the foundations for a modern welfare state.

Demographic change was also underway. These transformations led to a sustained period of economic growth and wealth accumulation for many, but not all, Australians. The Reserve Bank of Australia was established by an act of parliament in 1959.

Australia was relatively young, economically and demographically. A larger proportion of the population was either school age or working age (15 to 64 years). Rising levels of education and workforce participation meant stronger economic growth, rising incomes and wealth accumulation.

In the post-war years, home ownership became the “great Australian dream”. The post-war baby boom continued until 1971. As a result, the working age population continued to increase until it peaked in 2010.

The great Australian dream

By the 1990s, a large proportion of the population held mortgages. So changes in official interest rates flowed straight through to households. The Reserve Bank’s main policy tool was highly effective.

Over half (54.2%) of those born between 1947 and 1951 were home owners by the time they were 25 to 29 years old, increasing to 77.8% by the time they were 45 to 49 years at the 1996 census and 81.9% by 2021, aged 70 to 74 years.

Now, the post-war baby boomers are in retirement, or close to it. They have very high levels of home ownership, and so their spending patterns are mostly immune to interest rate changes.

When RBA moves had bite

High levels of home ownership and exposure to interest rates meant the RBA could meaningfully manage the economy by shaping household spending and business investment.

Critically, home ownership is one of three pillars of Australia’s retirement system, alongside compulsory superannuation introduced in the 1990s and the age pension.

Baby boomers reached their peak earnings capacity as the super system matured and also benefited from strong asset price growth. Those born before 1960 could access super pensions from age 55. Now in retirement phase, they receive guaranteed, tax-free income streams.

This tax-free income has further helped to insulate their spending from interest rate moves.

An ageing population

By 2024, the number of Australians aged 65 or older had increased by 437% since 1960 and 85.2% since 1992, according to calculations based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

And the majority are homeowners. According to the 2021 Census, 61.9% of Australians aged 60 or older owned their homes outright, 16.7% owned had a mortgage, and 13.8% rented. Based on life expectancy data, they can look forward to more than 20 years of future spending ahead, unaffected by moves in interest rates.

For the RBA, this really matters.

High rates of outright home ownership insulate people from mortgage rate fluctuations. Superannuation pensions provide stable income, regardless of movements in official interest rates.

In fact, for retirees with savings in term deposits or similar accounts, higher interest rates can actually boost discretionary spending, and thus feed through to inflation.

Immune to the RBA’s moves

Wealth accumulated by those born in the post-war era through home ownership and superannuation stimulates the economy. Spending by retirees on recreation, leisure and health, combined with wealth transfers, such as helping children with housing deposits, mortgage repayments or school fees, continues regardless of changes in interest rates.

The demographic reality is the growing over-65 population is not
working, is financially and housing secure, and is immune to interest rate levers. The smaller, younger, working age families with mortgages are bearing the brunt of the RBA’s policy decisions. This risks widening inequity in Australia further.

As a result, the RBA is not meeting its overarching purpose, which is “to promote the economic prosperity and welfare of the Australian people”.

Other structural reforms should be considered. To achieve long-term economic prosperity and equity for all Australians, reform of tax settings around wealth, superannuation, housing and intergenerational transfers needs to be prioritised.

Without a demographic lens informing economic and social policy-making, Australia, and its governing institutions, risk failing future generations of students, workers and families.

Lisa Denny is affiliated with Australian Population Association.

– ref. As the population ages, the RBA’s interest rate policy is no longer fit for purpose – https://theconversation.com/as-the-population-ages-the-rbas-interest-rate-policy-is-no-longer-fit-for-purpose-271098

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin University

The Australian Federal government’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act, commonly referred to as the “social media ban”, is now in effect.

In the months leading up to the ban, there have been a lot of stories about what will actually happen once the legislation is active, and many people believe the ban will prevent cyberbullying. It won’t – because bullying is a social problem, which can’t be solved with a quick technical fix.

What is happening?

The ban requires that social media platforms take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from having an account on those platforms.

The platforms definitely included in the ban are Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, X (née Twitter) and YouTube.

This list is dynamic and will likely change and grow over time.

Some platforms are, initially at least, definitely not subject to the ban, including Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids.

What isn’t happening?

There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings circulating about the ban.

Some people have the impression the ban is a broad piece of legislation to prevent any online harms children and young people might encounter. It isn’t.

Rather, this legislation narrowly targets social media platforms, and can only prevent teens and young people from having an account on those platforms.

Despite recent concerns raised about the gaming platform Roblox, for example, it is not subject to the ban as its primary purpose is gaming, not social media.

Similarly, while teens may not be able to have accounts on these platforms, they may still be able to access content on many of them.

On YouTube, for example, under-16s can still watch public YouTube videos. They just can’t subscribe to channels, like videos or leave comments.

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying – or bullying that extends into online spaces and platforms – is a significant issue for young Australians.

A 2021 report found that more than one third of Australian young people had experienced bullying online within a six month period.

Many teens, parents and trusted adults hope the ban will prevent cyberbullying.

Some of the most recognisable faces and loudest voices promoting the ban are bereaved parents who believe their children were cyberbullied to the point of suicide.

That is incredibly tragic, and any parent in that situation would understandably be pushing for change so no one else has that awful experience.

Unfortunately, the social media ban will not stop cyberbullying.

In fact, it may not reduce cyberbullying significantly at all.

While under-16s won’t have Snapchat and Instagram accounts, they will still have access to messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Discord and others.

It would be naive to believe that bullying activity will not simply shift from one platform to another.

The shift might make cyberbullying worse in some ways, as bullying on more closed messaging platforms may be less visible to others.

Bullying is never (just) a technology problem

It can be reassuring to think of bullying as somehow just a social media or online problem.

While cyberbullying extends the abuse of bullying into homes and bedrooms, platforms don’t actually bully. People do. And often those people are peers, colleagues and classmates, and much less often strangers.

In some ways the term cyberbullying itself is unhelpful. It puts focus on the “cyber” component, when the bullying is actually the problem.

Bullying is widespread in Australian schools and well beyond.

Dealing with cyberbullying

If you or a young person you know is facing cyberbullying, there is plenty of guidance available.

Youth mental health service Reachout offers very clear advice for young Australians on how to deal with cyberbullying.

Strategies include slowing down before young people respond to bullying content, taking the space to calm down before doing anything, keeping screenshots and evidence, trying not to check for new messages or content too often, and blocking or reporting those doing the bullying.

For parents and trusted adults supporting young people dealing with bullying, the eSafety Commissioner’s website also provides clear, actionable advice.

Indeed, having the support of at least one trusted adult is a key part in helping young people navigate and cope with experiences of cyberbullying.

The social media ban is a fairly blunt tool, and does not have the complexity needed to directly address or necessarily even reduce cyberbullying.

However, if the ban allows Australian families to continue, or even begin, conversations about young people’s experiences online, then that’s of real value to young Australians.

For parents and trusted adults, keeping that conversation going is vital. An open door to a trusted adult is key to supporting young people, no matter what they experience online.

For under-16s, they should keep in mind that they have not broken the law if they get around the ban. The onus is entirely on platforms to prevent under 16s having accounts.

No magic button

Under-16s, their parents, and their trusted adults, should feel perfectly able and safe to have full and frank conversations about any online experiences, including on social media platforms.

There is no quick fix, no magic button that will stop cyberbullying. The social media ban certainly won’t do it – and it shouldn’t give young people or adults a false sense of security.

For young Australians, having access to trusted adults is vital to reducing online bullying, building resilience, and shifting the culture.

In situations where trusted adults are not available, young people should remember organisations like ReachOut, Headspace and the Kids Helpline (1800 551 800) are there to provide support, too.

Tama Leaver receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

– ref. Australia’s social media ban won’t stop cyberbullying – https://theconversation.com/australias-social-media-ban-wont-stop-cyberbullying-271541

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

When the rains end, creeks and rivers run full. Suddenly, deserts bloom with all the colours of the rainbow as new life emerges. As Tony Albert, artistic director of the Fifth National Indigenous Art Triennial, says, “After the rain there are always new beginnings.”

Albert’s creative practice has long been based on adapting and critiquing images made by others. It is easy to see this exhibition is a giant collage, where each work, or group of works, is an element of a larger whole, all working together in harmony.

Post the failed referendum, the participants are aware of what this time means for Australia’s Indigenous people. As Aretha Brown says in the catalogue:

It feels, after the referendum, as if everything has been burnt down, but now the seeds are going to come back stronger and greener.

The exhibition is introduced by Brown’s striking black and white mural, THE BIRTH OF A NATION: THE TRUE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA, which shows her timeline of colonisation. Her **Kiss My Art Collective began as street art, reclaiming public space for Indigenous perspectives.

Shortly before the exhibition is due to close, Brown will paint over her mural, to demonstrate that the erasure of the past is very much a part of Indigenous Australia’s story.

Unlike previous exhibitions in this series, which were almost encyclopedic in scale, the space is confined to ten rooms, each with either a single artist or artists’ collective.

The mood of intimate collaboration is struck at the entrance where the artists are introduced – not by name but by images in the form of portraits painted by Vincent Namatjira. Their names are listed in small print to one side, but the images dominate.

The Namtajira legacy

Tony Albert has long been the master of collage, repurposing pieces of kitsch into critiques of the cultural blindness of white Australia.

It is no surprise that Albert has placed the art and legacy of Albert Namatjira as the very core of the exhibition.

Although his art was always popular with the general public, for much of the 20th century, those who saw themselves as arbiters of progressive taste regarded Albert Namatjira with open contempt.

In the 1960s, when a curator at the National Gallery of Victoria was ordered to exhibit one of Namatjira’s paintings, he hung it outside the ladies toilet, next to a bowl of gladioli. He thought he was being witty and his colleagues agreed with him.

Indigenous Australians always knew better. They understood he was a great interpreter, using a different visual language to paint Country in a style that white people could recognise. What artist and academic Brenda L. Croft calls
“Albert’s Gift” was more than his art. His determination to be fully recognised by white Australia helped empower later generations of Indigenous people.

The room exhibiting art by the extended Namatjira family and the community of Ntaria/Hermannsburg is an explosion of paintings and ceramics. It is dominated by a stained glass interpretation of the house Albert Namatjira built at Lhara Pinta in 1944, where he lived for five years until cultural protocols meant the house had to be abandoned after the death of a child.

Lit from within, it shines like a jewel, throwing light on the many paintings and ceramics by Albert Namatjira, his children, grandchildren and other kin. His great-grandson Vincent Namatjira has painted Albert as a king, Royal Albert, the master of his land.

The South Australian artist Rex Battarbee became Albert Namatjira’s mentor. The installation includes Beth Mbitjana Inkamala’s exquisite ceramic facsimiles of letters written by Namatjira to Battarbee, exhibited alongside Rona Panangka Rubuntja’s recreation of Namatjira’s camera.

Many layers of beauty

Tony Albert appears to be guided as much by connections of friendship and kinship as by aesthetics or ideology. His long association with the Hermannsburg artists is well documented by the art they have made together.

But one of the most touching moments at the media opening was his introduction of the Aurukun artist Alair Pambegan, the creator of Kalben-aw Story Place of Wuku and Mukam the flying fox brothers, a reinterpretation of a Wik-Mungkan narrative from far north Queensland on the creation of the Milky Way.

People who live far away from city lights see the night sky in all its glory.

West of Aurukun, on the other side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Yolŋu artist Naminapu Maymuru-White, has painted Milŋiyawuy (Milky Way), where the stars of the Milky Way form rivers of pure light filled with different forms of life.

The installation extends to the ceiling, and visitors can lie on cushions and gaze at her version of the wonder of the night.

After the Rain is an exhibition of many layers of beauty, where the elegant design of Blaklash’s interior installations contrasts with Just Beneath the Surface, Jimmy John Thaiday’s beautiful, but unnerving video on the impact of climate change on the fragile ecology of the Torres Strait.

As Albert writes in the catalogue:

After the Rain does not seek to define, but to honour. It holds story, strength and sovereignty with care. It grows from Country. It speaks from artists. It moves with community.

The 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain is at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, until April 26.

Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial is a collage of an exhibition, and a work of wonder – https://theconversation.com/the-5th-national-indigenous-art-triennial-is-a-collage-of-an-exhibition-and-a-work-of-wonder-271508

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chari Larsson, Senior Lecturer of Art History, Griffith University

An enormous sun looms overhead in the gallery space. Somehow, it throbs and pulses with lights that render its surface active and alive. An austere rocky landscape inside another gallery reveals a riverbed and a narrow stream runs down the gentle slope towards the viewer.

Visitors explore, clamouring across the rocks and dipping their toes into the water to test the temperature. Outside, on a long table, visitors are invited to engage with hundreds of kilos of white Lego and build an imaginary cityscape.

Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson is best known for producing large-scale, immersive installations. Most famously, he created a huge artificial sun for London’s Tate Modern in 2003. By recreating the experience of being outside, Eliasson established his reputation for pushing the boundaries of what is artistically possible.

In Presence, curator Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow has cleverly synthesised three decades of his diverse and multifaceted body of work that includes installation, photography and sculpture. The exhibition gives visitors a sense of the range of Eliasson’s preoccupations: spectatorship and the conditions of perception, the environment and climate change.

The long-term commitment of Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) to Eliasson’s practice is demonstrated through the return of much-loved installations including Riverbed (2014) and The cubic structural evolution project (2004), both part of the gallery’s permanent collection.

Developed specially for the exhibition is a spectacular new installation, also titled Presence. An enormous sun hovers in the corner of the gallery space. Eliasson uses mirrors to create the illusion of depth and space, further extending QAGOMA’s already generous ceiling heights. The “sun” is only a segment; the mirrors create the illusion that it is a sphere.

Amplifying the experience is the use of monofrequency light: the visitor is bathed in a yellow light, as the other colour frequencies are invisibilised, or edited out.

Facing the climate emergency

There is a deep art-historical impulse underpinning Eliasson’s work, and it is interesting to connect his work with 20th century artistic movements.

The reference points are many, ranging from the Californian Light and Space movement practitioners such as James Turrell and Robert Irwin and the Minimalist artists in the 1960s.

For these artists, the engagement with the viewer’s body is a core concern and the viewer was necessary to “complete” the work. Building on this idea, for Eliasson, the viewer becomes a vital co-producer in the work.

Eliasson’s work is often positioned as a harbinger alerting us to the threats of the climate emergency. In Ice Watch (2014) he harvested free-floating ice bergs and installed these in a circular formation outside the Tate Modern and the Place du Panthéon, Paris.

In The glacier melt series (1998/2019), Eliasson photographed glaciers in Iceland in 1998. Returning in 2019, 30 photographs placed side by side reveal the impact of 20 years of glacial retreat.

Eliasson’s glacier series is documentary in spirit and devoid of human activity. It is interesting to think about the points of connection with the history of conceptual photography and practitioners such as Ed Ruscha, who took photographs of gasoline stations in the early 1960s. German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher systematically documented industrial architecture for over 40 years in a style that has been described as “deadpan” photography.

The viewer completes the work

Eliasson’s extensive use of mirrors and lenses provide another important visual link with the history of optical devices, photography and cinema.

Your timekeeping window (2022) is composed of 24 glass spheres embedded directly in the gallery wall. On close inspection, the spheres are projecting live activity directly outside QAGOMA’s entrance; the humans moving but upside down.

The work might be understood as a wry historical nod back to the camera obscura and the natural phenomenon whereby light passing through a small hole in a dark, enclosed interior will create an inverted image on the wall opposite. This has been known for at least 2,000 years and was discussed by philosophers such as Aristotle.

The analogy with the camera obscura underscores exactly what is at stake in Eliasson’s practice: representation itself. The rocks that form Riverbed are real rocks; the creek consists of real water. The installation, however, revels in its artificiality.

His frequent use of mirrors signals further interest in probing the tension between the natural and artificial. Like the camera obscura, mirrors also enjoy a long history in Western art history. In the Renaissance, the representation of a mirror in painting was a declaration of the painting’s status as a mimetic illusion.

Mirrors also have the capacity to fold the viewer into the work, reinforcing his commitment to co-production. The work is complete when the viewer becomes part of the work itself.

Behind the curtain

Eliasson delights in the “big reveal”, where he demonstrates to the viewer just how he has made the work.

Pluriverse assembly (2021) consists of constantly moving shapes and shadows projected onto an enormous, luminous screen. When the viewer walks to the other side of the screen, it is possible to view the series of rings, projectors and mirrors. He makes visible the mechanics driving the installation.

Other works investigate the intermingling between sound and light. Your truths (2025) is comprised of a series of fans placed on the gallery floor, gently blowing sheets of plastic.

The ambient soundscape produced by the scraping of the plastic on the floor is akin to the soothing sound of the ocean’s waves. We hear the work before we see it, as the sound bleeds into the surrounding gallery spaces.

Olafur Eliasson: Presence is at Brisbane’s QAGOMA until July 12.

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

– ref. Artist Olafur Eliasson brings the outside world thrillingly to life inside the art gallery – https://theconversation.com/artist-olafur-eliasson-brings-the-outside-world-thrillingly-to-life-inside-the-art-gallery-267621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juliet Bennett, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Food labels are intended to support healthy choices. But not all labelling schemes are equal.

Australia currently uses a voluntary Health Star Rating system. Food manufacturers can choose to add a star label to their packaging to indicate how it compares to other similar products. Or they can choose not to show a star rating on a product at all.

The Australian government is now considering making it mandatory.

But our new research on parenting and food in Australia found the Health Star Ratings are often confusing, misunderstood and have little credibility among shoppers.

If Health Stars are mandated, the system will also need a major overhaul to be trusted and useful for shoppers.

How do Health Star Ratings work?

The government set up the front-of-pack Health Star Rating system in 2014 in collaboration with the food industry, public health and consumer groups.

Product ratings range from (bad) ½ to (good) 5 stars.

Calories, saturated fat, sugars and sodium decrease the rating. Fibre, protein, and the content of fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes increase it.

The good and bad offset each other. This means companies can strategically formulate products to boost the rating and mask unhealthy ingredients.

Processing and additives – such as sweeteners, colouring, emulsifiers, preservatives and artificial flavourings – are not part of the calculation.

Previous research has found the ratings can incentivise ultra-processed foods over minimally and unprocessed foods, and misrepresent healthfulness. Some researchers have also suggested practical ways to modify the rating algorithm to account for processing.

The Health Star Rating’s own consumer research found 74% of consumers do not understand that the rating cannot be used to compare dissimilar products.

What parents told us

In our interviews with 34 parents in Australia, participants often described the Health Star Ratings as “misleading”, “not helpful” and “on the wrong product”. One participant called it the “fake health star rating”.

They gave many examples:

Like you might buy 100% orange juice or fruit juice and it might have only half a star health star rating, but then you can buy like a box of processed muesli bars and it will have five stars. – Mother of three high school aged children, urban WA

Coco Pops or Nutrigrain have three and a half star rating, and what exactly does that mean? – Mother of one primary school aged child, urban WA

Participants wondered if the Health Stars were something companies paid for, a “marketing thing”.

Positivity bias

Part of the problem with the Health Stars is the positivity bias of the symbol. As one participant put it, “All stars are good. Right?”

Another noted their children comment on the stars, saying “but look Mum, it’s five stars.”

However, parents were not convinced:

A lot of packaged stuff is rated as five stars. I’m like yeah, well, don’t know about that. It’s still packaged. – Mother of two primary school aged children, urban NSW

Participants thought discretionary foods should not have any stars. As one participant said:

The other day, we saw a mud cake and it has a two out of five star health rating. How can that be a two out of five star?… Like there should not even be a star available for this. – Mother of pre-school aged child, urban NSW

Burden on parents

Parents often disregarded the rating. For example:

This particular thing, you know, had all sorts of additives, had actually had a much higher rating than something that actually didn’t have any additives… what I ended up buying was rated slightly lower. – Mother of two primary school aged children, rural Victoria

Instead participants used ingredients lists, apps such as Yuka, and “hours of internet research” to guide healthier choices.

But there was a sense of frustration that the burden was on them. Participants said:

I feel like food labels are extremely deceptive and by producers, purposely confusing. – Mother of one primary school aged child, urban SA

It has to be government driven because companies won’t change unless they’re forced to by the government. – Father of two primary school aged children, urban Tasmania

We need a food labelling system that works

Still, the parents we spoke to think a front-of-pack system is valuable. As one participant explained:

I do think if I had a better system for that, that would get a lot of use. – Mother of two primary school aged children, urban NSW

Parents repeatedly stated a desire for transparency over food, for information they can trust and food policies that prioritise consumer health.

As one mother put it, the “multi-billion dollar” food industry will not do this on their own, and “that’s where the government needs to step in.”

If Health Stars are mandatory, how could labelling be overhauled?

Chile, Mexico, Brazil and other countries, including Canada from 2026, are now using “stop-sign” warnings to steer consumers away from the least healthy products. Large Black Octagons alert consumers to high sugar, sodium and saturated fats, and ultra-processing.

Evidence shows these warning labels have improved nutrition and public health in other countries and could be an option for Australia.

We need to mandate a fit-for-purpose food labelling system that supports healthy eating. Governments should centre the voices of consumers in these and other national food policies to ensure they work as intended.

Juliet Bennett receives funding from the Charles Perkins Centre Jennie Mackenzie Research Fund, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, and a family foundation grant.

Alex Broom receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Charles Perkins Centre JMRF

David Raubenheimer has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Pacific Fund, and an anonymous Australian foundation that supports early career research.

– ref. Parents find Health Star Ratings confusing and unhelpful. We need a better food labelling system – https://theconversation.com/parents-find-health-star-ratings-confusing-and-unhelpful-we-need-a-better-food-labelling-system-264881

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shawna Foo, Senior Research Fellow, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

During the last global coral bleaching event in 2023 and 2024 , the Great Barrier Reef experienced the highest temperatures for centuries and widespread bleaching. With bleaching events becoming more frequent, the very existence of coral reefs is under threat.

This, in case it’s not clear, is a major problem. Coral reef ecosystems are essential for many species of plants and animals to survive. They provide humans with essential food security (many fish can’t survive without them), prosperity (via tourism and fisheries) and shoreline protection.

But heat stress can weaken corals, making them vulnerable to disease. At the same time, warm conditions can make the pathogens that cause disease stronger and more virulent.

For our research, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we tracked hundreds of coral colonies on One Tree Reef in the southern Great Barrier Reef in Australia during a 2024 heatwave. Weakened by heat stress, one particular type of boulder coral, Goniopora, developed a disease called black band disease.

These corals are old – probably at least 100 years old – and are like the old growth forest of the reef.

Six months later, 75% of these coral colonies in the reef community we monitored were dead.

This is especially worrying because these massive corals are normally quite resilient to heat stress. Even the strong are now struggling to survive.

And their huge, dead bodies can detach from the reef and hurtle around, crushing and destroying other corals in their path.

What we found on the Great Barrier Reef

We were originally tracking multiple sites on One Tree Reef in response to an extreme heatwave. We wanted to understand which coral species were more resistant and which were more sensitive to heat stress.

It was a surprise to see the bleached boulder corals quickly get infected by black band disease.

Black band disease is caused by a group of pathogenic microbes that kill coral tissue. These pathogens naturally occur in the environment but this is the first time such a disease epidemic has been observed on the Great Barrier Reef.

The disease appears as a black band, leaving behind bare skeleton as it destroys the coral tissue and spreads throughout the colony. Around the world, black band disease has been recorded on many different coral species. This disease has wiped out reefs in the Caribbean and fundamentally altered reef structure and function.

A review of coral diseases on the Great Barrier Reef shows that black band disease is mostly found on branching corals. Branching corals are more delicate and tree-like in comparison to sturdy, boulder corals.

Our findings are curious because on One Tree Reef only one particular species, a normally resilient boulder-like coral, was affected.

Black band disease virtually wiped out these corals at the site we were monitoring.

In other words, ordinarily strong and resilient corals are now succumbing to this disease. This is extremely troubling.

Why is this worrying?

This boulder-like coral, specifically from the genus Goniopora, has long, flower-like tentacles that sway with the currents.

A key reef-building coral on the Great Barrier Reef, it is very slow-growing compared to branching corals. Goniopora tends to be more resistant to disturbance and is often found in areas of lower water quality.

Living for hundreds of years, it can form extensively large coral patches supporting a wide range of organisms. These long-lived corals form the backbone structure of reefs providing refuge for a range of invertebrates and fish. Because of their size, they help buffer coastlines from waves.

We found that six months after the 2024 heatwave, the colonies we were tracking had been all but wiped out. At least 75% were dead.

Of the surviving colonies, 64% had experienced partial coral tissue death due to black band disease. While other species of corals showed signs of recovery after the heatwave, we didn’t see any recovery at all for the boulder corals.

Killer bowling balls

One Tree Reef is one of the most protected coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef.

Previously, outbreaks of black band disease have been linked to coastal stressors such as pollution and high nutrients. Given One Tree Reef is 80 km offshore in open ocean, its isolation protects it from land-based pressures.

This makes the disease prevalence and rapid spread at One Tree Reef particularly concerning.

Once the coral tissue is killed by the disease, the skeleton is quickly covered by algae (and other organisms) that eat away at the skeleton. We noticed the breakdown of the boulder coral skeleton began surprisingly fast after the colony died.

This process usually takes many months to years. By six months, though, we found these boulder corals were unstable and began to detach from the reef.

This is dangerous as they can act like bowling balls if moved by waves and tropical cyclones, destroying surrounding reef.

These large structural corals that have survived for hundreds of years are now lost from this reef, resulting in a potentially permanent change to the ecosystem.

Black band disease is one of the earliest recorded coral diseases, first identified in the Caribbean. There, it has driven high mortality in corals and reshaped entire coral communities. Our results are beginning to echo these devastating disease outbreaks seen in the Caribbean.

With coral disease expected to rise with climate change, our findings reinforce the need for urgent global action and for ambitious climate and reduced emissions targets.

Shawna Foo receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Westpac Scholars Trust and the University of Sydney.

Maria Byrne receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Reef Trust.

– ref. We watched these coral colonies succumb to black band disease. 6 months later, 75% were dead – https://theconversation.com/we-watched-these-coral-colonies-succumb-to-black-band-disease-6-months-later-75-were-dead-264895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Hurd, Associate Professor, Marketing & International Business, Auckland University of Technology

For Kinleith Mill, cycles of new owners, restructuring and retrenchment have been a fact of life since the 1980s. Each ownership change and downsizing has affected the mill’s workforce – and, inevitably, the Tokoroa community.

In July this year, foreign-owned Oji Fibre Solutions closed the mill’s last paper machine, effectively stopping all manufacturing. Not long after, Carter Holt Harvey announced it was also shutting its Tokoroa plywood plant.

The double impact and loss of 249 jobs was seen by many as simply the latest blow to a dying forestry company town.

Elsewhere, the sale of Fonterra’s consumer brands and the closure of Carter Holt Harvey’s Nelson-Tasman sawmill seemed to underscore the fragility of New Zealand’s manufacturing base.

These decisions were no doubt justified commercially: competing with international firms that enjoy cheaper production and larger consumer markets has become increasingly difficult.

And, as ownership of major industrial facilities has shifted overseas, those making the decisions have become further removed from the local context – and from the communities that bear the consequences.

But it hasn’t always been this way. Building the forestry industry was central to Aotearoa New Zealand’s postwar economic and employment strategies. As our research has shown, community identity and cohesion cannot be easily separated from that political and economic history.

Life of a forestry town

When the government issued its first pulp licence in 1943, it had two clear aims: to create jobs for returning servicemen after World War II, and to make use of the forests planted during the Depression-era work schemes of the 1930s.

The establishment of the privately-owned Kinleith mill, and the development of Tokoroa, fitted neatly within these national priorities. The mill was entirely funded by private equity, common in the United Kingdom and United States but very rare in Aotearoa New Zealand at the time. Tokoroa became one of the country’s rare “company towns”.

Once the mill was operating, Tokoroa grew quickly. People were drawn to the town, actively recruited by both mill management and the government from across New Zealand and overseas.

For a time, it was the fastest-growing town in the country, peaking at more than 19,000 people, with over 5,000 employed at Kinleith. Tokoroa became one of the first destination towns under the Pacific Migration Scheme of the 1960s, introduced to ease labour shortages.

By 1972, around 20% of the town’s population – double the national average – had migrated from the Pacific Islands, including about 2,000 from the Cook Islands alone.

For many of the people involved in our research, the mill wasn’t just a job, it was the reason they came to New Zealand or moved to Tokoroa.

Their sense of identity, especially among those who had migrated from overseas, was bound to the town, the company (in all its ownership iterations) and the mill.

Many described strong family ties to Tokoroa and a deep connection to its history. Second- and third-generation Cook Islands participants, for example, referred to Tokoroa as their “home away from home”, yet didn’t feel that same familial connection to New Zealand as a whole.

Distant decisions, local lives

None of this fits easily with successive governments’ messaging that Tokoroa residents could easily move to other places for employment.

Indeed, people we interviewed also recalled a time when employees, unions, the company and the government worked together in ways that are difficult to imagine now.

One example many offered was the building of Tokoroa Hospital. Not only did unions raise funds through their organisers, but union members helped plan the new facility alongside company leaders and government officials.

The collaboration remains a defining chapter in the town’s story and is still vivid in the memories of first-generation residents and long-serving mill workers.

For them, especially, the prospect of losing local hospital services during the health system restructuring of the 1990s and 2000s reignited a deep sense of town ownership – a town many long-time residents helped build from the ground up.

Today, however, the impact of more than 30 years of globalisation and creation of complex international value chains has separated workers from the people and institutions that determine their jobs and working conditions – and the future of the towns they helped shape.

Our research is a reminder to political leaders and company executives that their choices are never just abstract financial calculations. They ripple through the lives of real people – workers, families and communities with long histories, deep attachments and complex reasons for calling places like Tokoroa home.

The story of Kinleith and Tokoroa is far from unique. Around the world, small towns built around a single industry or company are feeling the effects of decisions made far beyond their borders.

Absentee owners and governments can’t ignore the history embedded in these communities, and the significant contributions their residents have made – and continue to make – to national economic and social policy.

We also urge everyone to challenge the familiar narrative that these towns are simply “run down”, with limited futures. Instead, we should acknowledge the complexity, pride and strong sense of community their residents hold, and recognise the value of the places they have spent decades building.

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

– ref. Through the mill: Tokoroa’s tough year was about much more than job losses – https://theconversation.com/through-the-mill-tokoroas-tough-year-was-about-much-more-than-job-losses-269262