Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phill Cassey, Head, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Adelaide

The internet has made it easier for people to buy and sell a huge variety of wildlife – from orchids, cacti and fungi to thousands of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish, as well as insects, corals and other invertebrates.

But alongside legal trade in wildlife, there’s a dark twin – illegal trading of wildlife. Endangered birds with very few left in the wild. Horns sawn off shot rhinos. The illegal wildlife trade is a blight. It puts yet more pressure on nature, adds to biodiversity loss and threatens biosecurity, sustainable development and human wellbeing globally.

In our new research, we probed the dark web – the secretive section of the internet deliberately set up out of view of search engines. Most people associate the dark web with illicit drug marketplaces. We wanted to see what types of wildlife were being sold there.

The result? Across 51 dark web marketplaces, we found 153 species being sold. These were almost entirely plants and fungi with psychoactive effects, indicating they are part of the well-known dark web drug trade. There were only a small number of advertisements offering vertebrates such as the infamous Colorado River toad, which faces poaching pressure because its skin secretes psychoactive toxins as a defence.

Why aren’t traders in illegal wildlife using the dark web? Mainly because the trade in illegally traded animals and animal parts is not hidden – it’s all over the open internet. For instance, the frog toxin kambo used in the ritual that killed a Mullumbimby woman in 2019 is still sold openly.

What was being sold on the dark web?

We found over 3,000 advertisements selling wildlife species on dark web marketplaces between 2014 and 2020. We searched these marketplaces for keywords relating to wildlife trade and species names.

What was for sale? Of the 153 species we found, we verified 68 as containing psychoactive chemicals.

The most commonly traded species was a South American tree Mimosa tenuiflora, commonly known as jurema preta, whose bark contains an extremely potent hallucinogen, DMT. Plants made up most of the species being sold, with many coming from Central and Southern America.

We also found 19 species of Psilocybe fungi being sold.

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

Many species were being sold for their purported medical properties, as well a small number of species being sold for clothing, decoration or as pets.

Many of the animals we found on the dark web have a long history of being illegally traded, such as live African grey parrots, as well as elephant ivory, rhino horn, and the teeth and skins of tigers and lions.

We also found small amounts of less commonly documented wildlife, including the Goliath beetle, Chinese golden scorpion and Japanese sea cucumber.

The illegal wildlife trade is hard to stop

Globally, the wildlife trade is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). But the regulated market is just a fraction of the whole. To date, CITES protects less than 5% of traded species. The number of species traded live outnumbers the regulated trade by at least three times, according to some estimates.

To date, there have been few effective disincentives to stop traffickers from selling illegal wildlife online. Punishments for convicted wildlife traffickers are not effective, with Australian traffickers continuing to harvest animals even after being caught.

Efforts to combat wildlife trafficking online are increasing. One positive recent initiative is the End Wildlife Trafficking Online coalition. It’s a collaboration between animal NGOs and online platforms like Facebook, Alibaba and eBay aimed at rooting out online trafficking.

While clamping down on illicit open web trade is crucial, crackdowns here make it more likely that a wider range of wildlife will surface on the dark web.

What can be done?

Australia and all other nations that have signed up to CITES have a responsibility to keep track of internet-based wildlife trade. At recent CITES conferences resolutions were made to track and report all internet trade – including on the dark web – in an effort to boost monitoring and enforcement of wildlife trafficked online.

One stumbling block is the legality of online trade, which depends on factors such as the laws of the country or countries involved and whether the sale actually took place.

To stop the trafficking of iconic Australian species such as shingleback lizards and red-tailed black cockatoos, authorities here have to monitor what native species are being bought and sold online, as well as the species trafficked into and through Australia.

Since 2019 we have been monitoring the wildlife trade in Australia, drawing data from over 80 websites and forums.

Datasets like this will be vital in monitoring and combating internet-facilitated wildlife crime as it continues to grow – especially if enforcement drives traffickers to harder-to-access parts of the internet like the dark web.

Read more:
New exposé of Australia’s exotic pet trade shows an alarming proliferation of alien, threatened and illegal species

Phill Cassey receives funding from the Australian Research Council and previously the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.

Adam Toomes receives funding from the Australian Research Council and previously the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.

Charlotte Lassaline previously received funding from the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.

Freyja Watters receives funding from an Adelaide University Postgraduate Research Scholarship.

Jacob Maher previously received funding from the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions. He is affiliated with the National Tertiary Education Union.

Oliver C. Stringham previously received funding from the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions.

– ref. Lickable toads and magic mushrooms: wildlife traded on the dark web is the kind that gets you high – https://theconversation.com/lickable-toads-and-magic-mushrooms-wildlife-traded-on-the-dark-web-is-the-kind-that-gets-you-high-201180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Walker-Munro, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Two weeks ago, 55-year-old Sydney businessman Alexander Csergo was arrested on charges of “recklessly” engaging in foreign interference.

Csergo’s case reads like a spy novel. He allegedly met two Chinese people he knew as “Ken” and “Evelyn” in empty cafes in Shanghai, taking cash and agreeing to write reports for them about Australian defence, economic and security arrangements.

Csergo’s barrister, Bernard Collaery, has argued that he is innocent.

Collaery has some skin in the national security game. In 2018, he was charged with conspiring to release classified information after he allegedly asked a client (an ex-spy known only as Witness K) for information regarding an Australian spying operation. It wasn’t until last year that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus dropped those charges.

Csergo’s defence is that he only accessed publicly available material. He claims he cooperated with police, and even turned over his devices to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to prove his innocence.

Putting aside Csergo’s guilt or innocence, his case does raise an interesting question: what does Australia’s raft of new foreign interference laws mean for people who deal in open-source information, for example, academics, analysts or journalists?

Could you be breaking the law by doing the “wrong” Google search and posting your results online?

What does the law say?

In 2018, the federal government overhauled Australia’s national security laws in an attempt to address the growing threat posed by foreign actors. This overhaul included the introduction of nine novel offences for foreign interference.

The new offences include a crime of “reckless foreign interference” – the crime Csergo has been charged with. Csergo is only the second person to be charged since the new laws were introduced in 2018. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Reckless foreign interference prohibits covert, deceptive or threatening conduct on behalf of, or in collaboration with, a “foreign principal”. The person must also have been reckless as to whether the conduct will:

• influence a political or governmental process or right,
• support intelligence activities of a foreign principal, or
• prejudice Australia’s national security.

Many of the terms used in this offence are wide-reaching or have not been clearly defined. This means the offence has the capacity to capture innocent people.

For example, covert or deceptive conduct could arise in relation to any part of a person’s actions, even if it only plays a minor role. So, for instance, an investigative journalist who uses hidden cameras or goes undercover to investigate a public interest story could be deemed as having acted covertly under the law.

Read more:
Why Australia’s tough national security laws cannot stop foreign interference in our elections

And a “foreign principal” could not only include foreign governments, but also entities that are owned, directed or controlled by foreign governments (such as media organisations, public universities or businesses). This means the offence has the capacity to capture, for example, Australian journalists, academics, researchers and businesspeople who work for or collaborate with an entity like this or its staff.

Lastly, the “recklessness” part of the law makes it extremely broad, criminalising people with a much lower level of personal culpability compared to offences that require an “intention” to commit a crime.

It is this element of the reckless foreign interference offence that could catch out people using open-source information online.

Could I inadvertently break the law?

It’s not a simple question to answer, but you might.

Ostensibly, this offence could be applied to anyone using open-source research to write an academic paper or policy report, provided it satisfies the other requirements under the law.

Even more at risk is “open source intelligence”, or the use of public information for intelligence assessments (think “market research” for spies). This is being used everywhere from the war in the Ukraine to combating hackers and identity thieves. Csergo’s case could set a precedent here.

Read more:
Amid warnings of ‘spy hives’, why isn’t Australia using its tough counter-espionage laws more?

One of the biggest pieces missing from Australia’s counter foreign interference strategy is an awareness and education effort on how these laws work in practice, as well as the “red flags” we should all look out for.

Individually, Australians also need to wake up to the reality that foreign interference is happening more often than we think.

Foreign interference, espionage and covert action aren’t abstract concepts. They’re real, and they’re happening in Australia. It is no coincidence the head of ASIO said our spy agencies are in “hand-to-hand combat”.

To be better protected, Australians should be alert, but not alarmed, and be more careful who they share information with. Just think like a spy: if I wanted to do something illegal with this information, what could I do?

The government also needs to consider whether these laws need to be clarified, reformed or even replaced. We will continue to need laws that prohibit other countries from interfering in our affairs. However, in doing so, we need to be careful we aren’t undermining the very freedoms Australia is known for.

Brendan Walker-Munro receives funding from the Australian Government through Trusted Autonomous Systems, a Defence Cooperative Research Centre funded through the Next Generation Technologies Fund. This article reflects the author’s view, and not those of any organisation, agency, or government.

This article was written in the author’s personal capacity as a PhD Candidate at The University of Queensland School of Law. It does not reflect the views of any organisation with which the author is affiliated.

– ref. Could using open-source information online get you arrested for foreign interference? – https://theconversation.com/could-using-open-source-information-online-get-you-arrested-for-foreign-interference-204548

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olivier Salvado, Lead AI for Mission, CSIRO

Debates about AI often characterise it as a technology that has come to compete with human intelligence. Indeed, one of the most widely pronounced fears is that AI may achieve human-like intelligence and render humans obsolete in the process.

However, one of the world’s top AI scientists is now describing AI as a new form of intelligence – one that poses unique risks, and will therefore require unique solutions.

Geoffrey Hinton, a leading AI scientist and winner of the 2018 Turing Award, just stepped down from his role at Google to warn the world about the dangers of AI. He follows in the steps of more than 1,000 technology leaders who signed an open letter calling for a global halt on the development of advanced AI for at least six months.

Hinton’s argument is nuanced. While he does think AI has the capacity to become smarter than humans, he also proposes it should be thought of as an altogether different form of intelligence to our own.

Why Hinton’s ideas matter

Although experts have been raising red flags for months, Hinton’s decision to voice his concerns is significant.

Dubbed the “godfather of AI”, he has helped pioneer many of the methods underlying the modern AI systems we see today. His early work on neural networks led to him being one of three individuals awarded the 2018 Turing Award. And one of his students, Ilya Sutskever, went on to become co-founder of OpenAI, the organisation behind ChatGPT.

When Hinton speaks, the AI world listens. And if we’re to seriously consider his framing of AI as an intelligent non-human entity, one could argue we’ve been thinking about it all wrong.

The false equivalence trap

On one hand, large language model-based tools such as ChatGPT produce text that’s very similar to what humans write. ChatGPT even makes stuff up, or “hallucinates”, which Hinton points out is something humans do as well. But we risk being reductive when we consider such similarities a basis for comparing AI intelligence with human intelligence.

We can find a useful analogy in the invention of artificial flight. For thousands of years, humans tried to fly by imitating birds: flapping their arms with some contraption mimicking feathers. This didn’t work. Eventually, we realised fixed wings create uplift, using a different principle, and this heralded the invention of flight.

Planes are no better or worse than birds; they are different. They do different things and face different risks.

AI (and computation, for that matter) is a similar story. Large language models such as GPT-3 are comparable to human intelligence in many ways, but work differently. ChatGPT crunches vast swathes of text to predict the next word in a sentence. Humans take a different approach to forming sentences. Both are impressive.

Read more:
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How is AI intelligence unique?

Both AI experts and non-experts have long drawn a link between AI and human intelligence – not to mention the tendency to anthropomorphise AI. But AI is fundamentally different to us in several ways. As Hinton explains:

If you or I learn something and want to transfer that knowledge to someone else, we can’t just send them a copy […] But I can have 10,000 neural networks, each having their own experiences, and any of them can share what they learn instantly. That’s a huge difference. It’s as if there were 10,000 of us, and as soon as one person learns something, all of us know it.

AI outperforms humans on many tasks, including any task that relies on assembling patterns and information gleaned from large datasets. Humans are sluggishly slow in comparison, and have less than a fraction of AI’s memory.

Yet humans have the upper hand on some fronts. We make up for our poor memory and slow processing speed by using common sense and logic. We can quickly and easily learn how the world works, and use this knowledge to predict the likelihood of events. AI still struggles with this (although researchers are working on it).

Humans are also very energy-efficient, whereas AI requires powerful computers (especially for learning) that use orders of magnitude more energy than us. As Hinton puts it:

humans can imagine the future […] on a cup of coffee and a slice of toast.

Okay, so what if AI is different to us?

If AI is fundamentally a different intelligence to ours, then it follows that we can’t (or shouldn’t) compare it to ourselves.

A new intelligence presents new dangers to society and will require a paradigm shift in the way we talk about and manage AI systems. In particular, we may need to reassess the way we think about guarding against the risks of AI.

One of the basic questions that has dominated these debates is how to define AI. After all, AI is not binary; intelligence exists on a spectrum, and the spectrum for human intelligence may be very different from that for machine intelligence.

This very point was the downfall of one of the earliest attempts to regulate AI back in 2017 in New York, when auditors couldn’t agree on which systems should be classified as AI. Defining AI when designing regulation is very challenging

So perhaps we should focus less on defining AI in a binary fashion, and more on the specific consequences of AI-driven actions.

What risks are we facing?

The speed of AI uptake in industries has taken everyone by surprise, and some experts are worried about the future of work.

This week, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced the company could be replacing some 7,800 back-office jobs with AI in the next five years. We’ll need to adapt how we manage AI as it becomes increasingly deployed for tasks once completed by humans.

More worryingly, AI’s ability to generate fake text, images and video is leading us into a new age of information manipulation. Our current methods of dealing with human-generated misinformation won’t be enough to address it.

Read more:
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Hinton is also worried about the dangers of AI-driven autonomous weapons, and how bad actors may leverage them to commit all forms of atrocity.

These are just some examples of how AI – and specifically, different characteristics of AI – can bring risk to the human world. To regulate AI productively and proactively, we need to consider these specific characteristics, and not apply recipes designed for human intelligence.

The good news is humans have learnt to manage potentially harmful technologies before, and AI is no different.

If you’d like to hear more about the issues discussed in this article, check out the CSIRO’s Everyday AI podcast.

Olivier Salvado works for CSIRO and lead AI for CSIRO Missions, which receives funding from The Australian Commonwealth and funding bodies.

Jon Whittle works for CSIRO as Director of Data61, which receives funding from the Australian Government. Jon is also Chair of UNSW AI Institute’s Advisory Board.

– ref. AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton says AI is a new form of intelligence unlike our own. Have we been getting it wrong this whole time? – https://theconversation.com/ai-pioneer-geoffrey-hinton-says-ai-is-a-new-form-of-intelligence-unlike-our-own-have-we-been-getting-it-wrong-this-whole-time-204911

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kobie Boshoff, Senior lecturer, Occupational Therapy, University of South Australia

The federal government and National Cabinet has committed to rebooting and fixing the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for people with disabilities. It plans to invest more in the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), which administers the scheme, and drive change to support participants better.

As part of these initiatives, the government has indicated a move towards prioritising evidence-based supports to ensure funds are appropriately and effectively spent. NDIS minister Bill Shorten promised “a renewed focus on evidence and data,” adding that he wanted to

[…] get rid of shoddy therapies that offer little to no value to participants or desperate parents.

The rhetoric raises important questions. How is “evidence” defined? And can it be usefully applied within the complex NDIS context?

Medical research origins

The term “evidence-based practice” comes from the medical field, mostly from research trials with a clear cause-and-effect relationship. A specific drug or treatment (termed “interventions”) might be given to certain subjects and then any changes are tracked with objective measurement tools, such as blood tests, improvements in health or changes in function.

Research evidence is ranked in a hierarchy to denote its reliability and significance. Expert opinion sits at the base, then case studies, then randomised control trials (in which subjects are randomly assigned to experimental or control groups) and systematic reviews (which look at the results of lots of different trials and studies combined) at the prestigious peak.

But this narrow idea of what evidence is can be problematic when applied to a complicated scheme like the NDIS.

Disability is different

Firstly, disability is not a medical condition. It is part of being human and affects everyone uniquely due to factors such as each person’s unique socio-, psychological and physical make-up and the context and environment they are in. Support services need to be tailored for each person and their circumstances.

This uniqueness of intervention and the multiple and often unpredictable benefits and outcomes of intervention makes measuring clear cause-and-effect relationships inaccurate or incomplete in many cases. This calls for a different approach to the definition of evidence.

To add to this complexity, each support service is unique in terms of set-up, context and resources available.

Finally, disability research has historically been overlooked and severely underfunded compared to medical research into drugs, detection or therapies. The quality and quantity of published research available is very limited.

3 things we can consider about supports

So, how can we judge NDIS supports and practice to ensure funds are appropriately spent?

Evidence within complex environments needs to incorporate:

1. Qualitative outcomes

The current focus on highly rigorously published research study outcomes, for example from Randomised Control Trails, should be complemented with qualitative research studies. These studies may involve fewer participants but incorporate the voices of people with disabilities. Participants can articulate their views on services provided, outcomes and benefits, and their preferences. Systematic reviews can then be formulated to survey and summarise quantitative and qualitative research studies.

2. NDIS participant feedback

Research takes a long time. Information can be gathered more quickly from NDIS participants that will reflect their choices, priorities, values, preferences and individual context. Service providers should be regularly surveying and monitoring their client groups. The NDIS Review is due to report in the coming months and they are also investing in a wellbeing measure and the government has developed a Disability Strategy Outcomes Framework to track and report improvements for people with disability.

3. Supports in context

Real-world supports don’t happen in a vacuum. To judge effectiveness and suitability we will need information about service provision. This might include the available resources to provide services (such as telecommunications access in remote areas of Australia), contexts (such as geographical or population demographics including culture and language), and organisational factors such as service delivery and set-up (for example, inter-disciplinary teams or sole-practitioner models).

Read more:
The NDIS is set for a reboot but we also need to reform disability services outside the scheme

Evidence-based recommendations in the real world

An example of how these three important components can inform evidence-based practice can be found in the recently released guidelines for supporting children with autism and their families.

Read more:
New national autism guideline will finally give families a roadmap for therapy decisions

Autism is the largest disability category for NDIS, with around one in three active NDIS participants receiving funding for the condition. The fresh guidelines include information from extensive systematic reviews, incorporate qualitative and quantitative research studies, and the voices of autistic people, families and service providers. The surrounding context of service provision – how and where supports are delivered in the real world – was described and applied to recommendations.

This broader view and application of evidence-based practice is more appropriate for the supports the NDIA provides funding for. However, these types of evidence sources are currently limited. We do not have them available for all disability groups or age groups.

Investments will need to be made to focus on developing these evidence sources and ensuring the government stays true to its commitment of working together with people with disability and the sector to provide “choice and control” and effective support.

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

– ref. The government says NDIS supports should be ‘evidence-based’ – but can they be? – https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-ndis-supports-should-be-evidence-based-but-can-they-be-204763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Archie Chapman, Senior Lecturer, School of IT and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland

There were an estimated 100 million individual solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in Australia at the end of 2022. We estimate this number will likely grow to over 2 billion if we are to meet Australia’s 2050 net-zero emissions target. This growth means Australia is facing a 450,000-tonne mountain of used PV panels by 2040.

Managing all those discarded PV panels will be a huge job. Rather than treating them as “waste”, though, these panels could be a source of social, environmental and economic value. Our new industry report outlines how we can realise that value.

PV panels contain a variety of valuable materials. The panels can also be put to new uses, such as on uninhabited community and sports club buildings, for agricultural irrigation pumps, or for camping and caravanning.

However, at present, they tend to follow a linear, “take, make, dispose” lifecycle. This results in many PV panels being sent to landfill or stockpiled. Much of their value is wasted.

Read more:
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What did the research look at?

The University of Queensland and Circular PV Alliance have assessed the market for used and surplus PV panels, with funding from Energy Consumers Australia. Our findings are in the report launched today at the Smart Energy Council Expo in Sydney.

Our goal was to understand potential customers and value streams for used PV panels. We also wished to identify market or policy barriers to reusing, repurposing and recycling these panels.

We reviewed the academic research on the topic and conducted a series of interviews. Thirteen organisations with diverse interests in solar energy and PV panel reuse and recycling participated. A series of recurrent themes emerged that indicate potential or perceived opportunities and challenges for PV panel reuse.

Read more:
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What did the research find?

Overall, there was broad concern among interviewees that PV panels are being decommissioned before the end of their productive lives. A few key reasons stood out:

• renewable energy certificates encourage PV investors to install new panels rather than extend the life of older panels, because the subsidy is paid in full on installation, rather than as power is generated

• low-quality PV products have a high failure rate

• an array that combines different PV panels can be limited by the lowest-performing panel.

These issues contribute to the already large amounts of discarded panels coming from solar farms, and warranty and insurance claims.

However, we also found reclaimed PV panels offer low-cost, clean energy options for households and community energy projects.

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Even when not reusable, PV panels include valuable materials that can be recovered. The average silicon panel contains silver (47% of recycled materials value), aluminium (frame, 26%), silicon (cells, 11%), glass (8%) and copper (8%).

And PV panel recycling is becoming more efficient. This has led to better-quality outputs and higher recovery rates. For example, nano-silicon created by processing recovered silicon can sell for over A$44,000 per kilogram.

A shift towards viewing a PV panel as a valuable resource or asset, rather than “waste”, will improve both consumer and industry understanding of its inherent value, even when it’s not brand new.

Read more:
Solar is the cheapest power, and a literal light-bulb moment showed us we can cut costs and emissions even further

How do we turn ‘waste’ into an asset?

We can keep used PV panels out of landfill by treating them as an asset through a value-capture system. This will create a variety of benefits and opportunities.

The circular economy model loops the “take, make, reuse” phases into a self-sustaining cycle. It provides a foundation to grow markets for used PV panels. This will tap into consumer demands for credible and sustainable products and services.

There are already successful examples of similar solutions for other products in Australia and around the world. Australian examples include the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme
and Tyre Stewardship Australia, as well as state-based beverage container deposit schemes.

So how do we set up a circular economy for PV panels? We found a combination of policies, regulations and commercial services can overcome the obstacles to reuse and recycling.

A consistent, national approach is needed to establish successful markets for used PV panels. Standards for testing and certifying these panels, as well as repair warranties, are essential to build consumer trust in this product.

Industry reporting and accreditation requirements as well as product traceability, so the reused and recycled panels can be accounted for, are all important elements of product stewardship and used PV panel markets.

Targeted engagement with a broader range of potential consumers, insurers and PV panel manufacturers will help overcome their perceived barriers to reusing panels.

Taken together, these actions are the building blocks of creating a circular economy for PV panels in Australia. The looming volumes of used panels and ever-increasing amount of solar energy being installed in Australia compel us to do this. Consumers, industry and the environment will all benefit.

The author acknowledges Megan Jones, Circular PV Alliance co-founder and director, for her contribution to this article.

Megan Jones, Circular PV Alliance co-founder and Director, was employed as a research assistant by The University of Queensland for the work discussed in this article and was an author of the industry report. Archie Chapman received funding from Energy Consumers Australia to conduct this research. He is affiliated with the Circular PV Alliance.

– ref. Australia is facing a 450,000-tonne mountain of used solar panels. Here’s how to turn it into a valuable asset – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-facing-a-450-000-tonne-mountain-of-used-solar-panels-heres-how-to-turn-it-into-a-valuable-asset-204792

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Shiels, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University

At first glance it would be easy to presume the artworks in Renee So’s survey exhibition are from another time and have come from distant shores.

Her commanding busts and figurines and large textile wall hangings are telling stories about ancient civilisations or adventurers who sailed the seas in search of new lands.

However there is a twist. So’s ceramic objects and “knitted paintings” not only look contemporary, they also challenge orthodoxies about our colonial histories, male authority, gender representation and women’s bodies.

Provenance, now at the Monash University Museum of Art, brings together more than a decade of So’s artworks. Inspired by art history and collections in museums, So has drawn on the visual language, provenance and acquisition histories of figurative vessels and objects from Assyria, Egypt, Iran, Latin America and China.

Many of these antiquities were stolen and ransacked when colonising forces attempted to seize control of these countries. Some are on display in public museums in London where So has lived since 2010.

Read more:
Stolen cultural objects: what’s the role of Australian galleries?

Long beards, boots and booze

In the first rooms, So’s flat knitted paintings and bulbous figurative clay forms mock and expose the fragility of male authority figures. Repeating motifs of beards and boots are used to explore outward symbols of masculinity, entitlement and military power.

However, a series of large, knitted motifs of male dominance are humorously undercut by the introduction of booze.

In Nightfall, the initial threats of the goose-stepping boots embellished with caricatures of bearded faces are neutralised by repeating, reversing and upending a mirrored set of legs.

In Sunset, big-arsed figures collapse against an oversized moon. Only a bottle remains upright: a decadent and pathetic end to spent power.

Beards and booze also underpin So’s long-running interest in Bartmann (bearded man) or Bellarmine jugs, manufactured in Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries.

These ceramic vessels were decorated to look like bearded men – the necks of the bottle their head, with their bulbous bodies below – and used to ship wine and other commodities throughout Europe.

Translated into clay by So, the big beards threaten to take over the face and inflated trousers and add a satirical edge.

In Bellarmine holding Bellarmine (Version II), the blocky head, scale and the bulk of the body are contrasted with spindly arms that cradle a wine jar, offering a critique of masculine archetypes and entitled authority.

In Steatopygous Bellarmine, the bravura of a hatted and bearded man is completely undone by skinny arms that connect to a body immobilised and emasculated by the heft and solidity of a pair of pantaloons – which can also be read as a magnificent set of breasts.

Drunken Bellarmine describes the ignominy of a drunken fall where a wayward pair of pantaloons have parted company from the body which dangles off the edges of what seems to be a stand or pedestal.

Internal symbols and female bodies

In stark contrast to the externalised trappings of body hair and bad behaviour that So uses to parody and mock masculine figures, she emphasises agency when working with the female form.

So combines a visual language developed from figurative representations from the past with new visualisations of female anatomy drawn from Australian urologist Helen O’Connell’s work mapping the hidden shape of the clitoris using MRI technology.

So links this knowledge of the clitoris with ancient depictions of Venus, often equated with fertility.

While similar in bulk and form to her masculine objects, her female archetypes have greater agency. The unglazed ceramic figures, many augmented with renderings of this “new clitoris”, have a fleshy fluidity and sexuality. The solidity of their three-legged bottoms give the figures gravitas.

In Woman XI, So’s interpretation of a pre-Columbian artefact has breasts shaped like the invisible clitoris.

In Woman X, So draws on the similarity between the tip of this pleasure centre and an ancient Egyptian “bird faced” figurine dated 3500 to 3400 BCE. In a belated act of defiance, So cloths her bird-headed figure, Woman Sans Culottes XV, in the freedom cap and culottes worn by French Revolutionaries, a movement that did not welcome women.

Representations of the clitoris also appear in new two-dimensional works where So swaps her soft, flat-knitted, wool “paintings” for the rigidity of clay. The “bird head” and other translations of the clitoris are graphically interpreted and segmented onto hard shiny surfaces of glazed tiles.

Read more:
Why the clitoris doesn’t get the attention it deserves – and why this matters

Old with the new

So’s survey exhibition tracks the development of her complex visual language and illustrates how she draws on the origins of new and old cultural objects to communicate her messages.

Figurative ceramics, one of the oldest forms of art making, are contrasted with the creative outputs from the new technology of a knitting machine. Here, So has also added imagery produced by MRI to her library of references.

Her reflections and discoveries about colonialism and gender stretch across time and provide new insights into overlooked histories and past and present injustices.

Renee So: Provenance is at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) until July 9.

Julie Shiels 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. How the sculpture and ‘knitted paintings’ of Renee So explore colonial legacies, male authority and women’s bodies – https://theconversation.com/how-the-sculpture-and-knitted-paintings-of-renee-so-explore-colonial-legacies-male-authority-and-womens-bodies-204260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

The war in Ukraine is approaching a tipping point.

Russia’s army has struggled to make meaningful advances after months of trying, and has still failed to capture the ruined town of Bakhmut. A persistent inability to establish air superiority, low troop morale, and equipment shortages all suggest President Vladimir Putin’s military machine will soon be incapable of mounting meaningful offensive operations.

One key to successful military planning lies in reliably identifying new ways to derive the greatest strategic benefit at the lowest overall cost. Ukraine’s decision to vigorously defend Bakhmut is an excellent example of this, even though it runs contrary to the logic that there was little strategic value in doing so.

By throwing its own forces into Bakhmut, Ukraine has tied up a large proportion of the Russian military, inflicting heavy losses. Its approach is both a strategy of corrosion – the gradual attrition of the invader – and absorption, soaking up repeated Russian assaults while taking the pressure off other parts of the conflict zone.

This has led to several important payoffs for Ukraine. First, Moscow’s commanders have been unable to shift forces to another axis of advance.

Second, the loss of personnel and materiel means fewer bodies and less equipment available for Russia to prosecute its war of aggression.

Third, it has created a buffer to construct Ukrainian defensive fortifications once Bakhmut finally falls.

Finally, it has bought time to train and equip its forces for its own counteroffensive operations.

When, where and how Ukraine goes on the counteroffensive represent the most crucial decisions President Volodymyr Zelensky will make about the war so far. Ukraine’s own vulnerabilities mean no obvious answers reveal themselves, and whatever Zelensky decides will carry significant risk.

Timing

One of the most important considerations is timing. Ukraine’s forces will want to advance under optimal conditions to liberate as much of its territory as possible before winter closes in again (winter makes ground operations, resupply and air support much more difficult to sustain).

Failure to do so will not only weaken Kyiv’s hand in any peace negotiations, but also potentially leave large swathes of Ukraine under Russian control for the foreseeable future. Russia’s forces are aware the strategic momentum will shift once Ukraine counterattacks, and have been constructing deep networks of tank traps, trenches and other defensive fortifications to arrest its momentum.

Taken together, these would suggest a counteroffensive sooner rather than later. Why wait until both the weather and the enemy conspire to stymie your attempts to liberate territory, especially when Russia is better placed to prosecute a lengthy war?

But that ignores even more crucial considerations around Ukraine’s capabilities, and its prospects for realising its war aims which have pushed the timeframes out.

Put simply, it’s absolutely crucial for Ukraine that its counteroffensive succeeds. If it doesn’t, the international coalition that has kept Ukraine in the fight with arms, training and aid may well come to favour a negotiated settlement.

Domestic politics will inevitably play a role in shaping the United States’ thinking as its election season gains momentum. While both sides of US politics are fairly solidly behind Kyiv, that may change.

Indeed, the surest way to encourage US populist isolationists will be a stalled Ukrainian advance. And since a multinational coalition is only as strong as its weakest link, Ukrainian planners will likewise be anxious not to give Berlin or Paris cause to waver.

Having the wherewithal, not just the will

Besides the need to maintain international support for full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty, planning for offensive operations rests fundamentally on Kyiv’s ability to conduct them.

Attacking is far more costly than defending. A counteroffensive launched before Kyiv had the chance to recruit, prepare, arm and assemble the necessary personnel would peter out quickly. Such a failure would be a harsh blow to Ukrainian morale, hand momentum back to Russia, and lead to a pointless loss of life.

Counteroffensives therefore require the right kind of capabilities to increase the chances of success. Much of the public discussion about Ukraine’s war needs has centred on tanks and air power. Of course, these are very important, yet neither can actually hold territory. For that, you need ground forces – and lots of them.

What’s more, many of the likely lines of Ukrainian advance will feature choke points and vulnerable terrain. The retreating Russian army can be counted on to use mines, ambushes and scorched earth tactics to funnel viable routes for the Ukrainians into impenetrable and risky ones. That means Ukrainian forces will also need specialised equipment and personnel, from bridging units to those specialising in clearing terrain.

As their forces advance, Ukraine’s armoured vehicles will require refuelling and logistical support, and its army will need regular resupply of food, aid and ammunition. All those will need to be mobile to keep the counteroffensive going. The capability for aerial resupply of Ukrainian forces that penetrate deep into Russian-annexed areas will need to be developed too.

What’s more, re-establishing control over liberated territories will require significant planning to provide humanitarian supplies, shelter, medical care and public administration – not to mention security against any Russian forces left behind to cause chaos.

Scope and location

As to where the Ukrainian counterattack will come, a common view is that it’s most likely to occur around Zaporizhzhia in the southeast (made famous by its regularly besieged nuclear power plant). But war is about trying to gain strategic surprise, which Ukraine’s armed forces have shown themselves to be adept at.

Before the counteroffensive starts we should expect a variety of Ukrainian feints, probes, and “shaping” the battlespace – essentially, the use of tactical, strategic and political instruments to turn the situation on the battlefield to one’s advantage.

Finally, the status of Crimea in Ukraine’s plans deserves some attention. It will remain one of the thorniest problems in the war’s eventual resolution. The official position of the Zelensky government is clear: there can be no peace with Russia until Ukraine is fully restored, which includes the Crimean peninsula seized by Russia in 2014. This is understandable. Any hint of willingness to concede territory signals weakness domestically, to the Kremlin, and internationally.

Importantly, Ukraine retains agency. It will ultimately decide on the scope and location of its counteroffensive. But several factors make Crimea a potentially special case. It’s well defended and hard to assault. There are only about ten roads linking the peninsula to Kherson province. It’s home to the highest concentration of ethnic Russian (and Russia-leaning) people in Ukraine. And Western supporters of Ukraine remain concerned that Putin’s deep personal and political investment in Crimea would make a Ukrainian attempt to recapture it one of the Kremlin’s “red lines” for further escalation.

The lead-up to Ukraine’s imminent counteroffensive has so far been patient and careful, focusing on developing the best chance of operational success. With more than a year of evidence, we can expect Ukraine’s armed forces to perform better than their Russian adversaries. Time and again, Kyiv’s approach has been nimble, creative and efficient given limited means. Ukraine’s commanders have also sensibly followed the maxim of not interrupting your enemy while they are making a mistake (perhaps the sole thing Russia’s forces have excelled at).

But the stakes for Ukraine are no less than its national survival. The success or failure of its attempt to take back its territory will determine whether its future will revolve around rebuilding a damaged but restored state, or the pain of fashioning an existence in a shattered and partial one. And the repercussions outside Ukraine will be no less solemn, teaching dictators either that expansionism is rewarded, or that it’s a catastrophic mistake.

Ultimately, we owe it to the people of Ukraine, and to ourselves, to help ensure the latter lesson prevails.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Lowy Institute, the Carnegie Foundation, Chatham House and various Australian government agencies.

– ref. Why Ukraine’s fate rests on its imminent counteroffensive – https://theconversation.com/why-ukraines-fate-rests-on-its-imminent-counteroffensive-204900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, The University of Western Australia

In 2021, avian influenza evolved into a new form – a new and remarkably lethal variant first found in Europe.

Bird flu is usually most dangerous to birds kept in close quarters, such as chicken farms. But as it spread around the world, the highly pathogenic HPAI A(H5N1) variant began killing millions and millions of wild birds too.

Seabird colonies in the UK have been decimated. The virus can kill up to half of the birds it infects. It has also spread into sea lions and seals.

Luckily, it doesn’t spread easily in humans. More than 50 million birds have already been culled over 37 countries in a bid to slow the spread.

Australia’s birds have so far dodged this bullet. Our isolation has kept us safe for now. Antarctica’s birds have stayed safe too. But if this variant makes it here in the lungs of a migratory shorebird, our unique birds will be at extreme risk. Black swans, for instance, are especially vulnerable to all types of avian flu.

The federal government will boost surveillance measures when large flocks of migratory birds begin arriving later this year. It’s unlikely to be enough, as we enter a time of high risk from September onwards.

Could it really get here?

Yes.

Surveillance of Australia’s vast coastlines is all but impossible. Instead, the government is likely to focus on the major wetlands and shallow inlets which attract migratory birds.

Every year, around eight million birds take the East Asian-Australasian Flyway – a route stretching from the Arctic Circle down through east and south-east Asia to Australia and New Zealand.

Is the H5N1 flu lethal enough to be self-limiting? Not necessarily. A bird could get a mild dose and still be infectious when it arrives. That means there’s a good chance this variant could arrive. It would only take one infectious shorebird to trigger outbreaks.

If it gets here, the virus would decimate poultry farms and wild birds, just as it has overseas. In densely populated farms, it can kill 90-100% of all birds.

It could pose an extinction threat to iconic birds such as black swans, which have an immune deficiency making them particularly at risk. Flocking birds like rainbow lorikeets and corellas would also be at extra risk of catching the virus.

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has dismissed the idea Australia is unprepared.

He said his government had been “closely monitoring the global HPAI situation” and had boosted early warning efforts.

But what we don’t have is an action plan for what happens if the virus does arrive, as seems likely.

Responses like the mass destruction of beehives after the devastating varroa mite arrived are unlikely to work for a virus. A tailored vaccine could help domestic birds, but it would be all but impossible to administer to wild birds.

Over time, birds with natural resistance would survive and breed populations back up. But endangered species or those particularly vulnerable would find it much harder to bounce back.

Read more:
Australia’s iconic black swans have a worrying immune system deficiency, new genome study finds

Haven’t our birds survived bird flu before?

Yes, but not quite like this one.

In 2020, three egg producers in Victoria had an outbreak of another highly pathogenic influenza variant, H7N7. To stop it spreading, authorities culled all birds in the farms.

This variant emerged when low pathogenic viruses carried by local wild birds evolved into a deadlier form. While authorities stopped its spread on poultry farms, they could do nothing about the wild reservoir of the virus.

If H7N7 is still around, it could pose even more problems. When two different influenza virus subtypes infect the same host cell, their genetic material can mix to create a new virus, which could be milder – or more severe.

Australian scientists have researched the impact of low pathogenic avian influenza on many bird families, which gives some insight into how highly pathogenic avian influenza may spread in Australia. For instance, arid areas would likely be better protected from the virus, which does not like dry conditions.

But can we act in time? We know what to do when there’s an outbreak in domesticated birds. But if the virus gets into wild birds and takes off, we have no plan.

Rapid monitoring and surveillance of wildlife pathogens is a major gap in Australia’s biosecurity framework – and one we should fill.

We must prepare

COVID from bats or raccoon dogs. Ebola from bats. Avian flu from birds. As we back nature into a corner, we can find ourselves more exposed to the viruses wild animals carry.

So far, the HPAI H5N1 strain is only known to have jumped into humans a handful of times.

That’s lucky. Around 800 people have contracted one of the variants of bird flu since 2003. Of these, more than half died. That’s a similar death rate to many of the birds dying of the avian flu elsewhere in the world. The main protection we have at present is the fact avian flu finds it hard to infect us in the first place.

To save our birds – and potentially, ourselves – we need a better way to detect and track viral outbreaks in wildlife, particularly those which could jump across into humans.

Read more:
What is spillover? Bird flu outbreak underscores need for early detection to prevent the next big pandemic

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

– ref. Migrating birds could bring lethal avian flu to Australia’s vulnerable birds – https://theconversation.com/migrating-birds-could-bring-lethal-avian-flu-to-australias-vulnerable-birds-204793

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Green, Host + Producer, The Conversation

“I’m often asked if I feel hopeful for the future,” says Lesley Hughes, climate scientist and former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author.

“For me, hope is a strategy, rather than an emotion. Because if we don’t have hope and optimism, then we all give up, and if we all give up, then we are truly lost.”

In this live bonus episode of Fear & Wonder, The Conversation’s climate podcast, recorded on May 1, host Michael Green spoke with Hughes, alongside current IPCC authors Mark Howden and Frank Jotzo.

All three guests have been at the forefront of climate science in Australia for decades. They trace how climate science went from a relatively peripheral topic to one of central importance to scientists and governments around the world.

They reflect on their respective journeys, the key takeaways from the IPCC’s most recent Synthesis Report, and the imminent challenges and opportunities for Australia and the world.

To listen and subscribe, click here, or click the icon for your favourite podcast app in the graphic above.

Fear and Wonder is sponsored by the Climate Council, an independent, evidence-based organisation working on climate science, impacts and solutions.

Michael Green 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. Fear and Wonder podcast: where to next on climate change? – Live bonus episode – https://theconversation.com/fear-and-wonder-podcast-where-to-next-on-climate-change-live-bonus-episode-204908

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Millmow, Senior Fellow, Federation University Australia

Might Jim Chalmers have forgotten Labor Party history?

The treasurer says he is on board with all of the recommendations of the independent review of the Reserve Bank.

One of them – the first – is to make the bank truly independent of the government that owns it by removing the treasurer’s power overrule its board.

At the moment the Reserve Bank of Australia Act makes it clear that in the event of a disagreement between the government and bank’s board, the government has the right to force the bank to do its bidding.

In order to overrule the board, the treasurer must

submit a recommendation to the governor general, and the governor general, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council, may, by order, determine the policy to be adopted by the bank

The treasurer is required to inform the House of Representatives of his actions within 15 sitting days.

It’s a clause that has never been used, and the review didn’t think it was useful
to say that if an elected government controlled monetary policy, it could limit the credibility of the bank’s commitment to deliver low and stable inflation.

But Australian and Labor Party history suggests it’s there for a reason.

Theodore vs Gibson

In 1930, the Scullin Labor government was only in office two weeks before it was hit by the 1929 Wall Street crash and the beginning of the Great Depression.

The Australian government and the states had all borrowed heavily from London and faced a huge servicing cost at a time when the prices of Australia’s leading exports of wool and wheat slumped.

The London capital markets refused to lend anything else to Australia, and that, along with all of Australia’s state governments cutting back spending, put the Australian economy into free-fall.

Labor Treasurer Edward G. Theodore was economically enlightened and believed along with economist John Maynard Keynes that it made sense to use debt-financed public works to soak up unemployment.

Read more:
The RBA has got a lot right, but there’s still a case for an inquiry

Theodore wanted Australia’s Reserve Bank (then called the Commonwealth Bank) to issue treasury bills to finance the public works and provide relief to farmers.

In his way stood the independent Commonwealth Bank board and its austere chairman, Sir Robert Gibson who was an unswerving devotee of “sound finance” and wary of budgets that weren’t balanced.

In April 1931, Gibson wrote to Theodore warning that a point was being reached

beyond which it would be impossible for the Commonwealth Bank to provide further financial assistance for the government in the future

The bank was saying no to the treasurer.

Theodore replied that Gibson’s attitude

can only be regarded by the Commonwealth government as an attempt on the part of the Bank to arrogate to itself a supremacy over the government in the determination of the financial policy of the Commonwealth, a supremacy which, I am sure, was never contemplated by the framers of the Australian Constitution, and has never been sanctioned by the Australian people.

Gibson wouldn’t budge, and there was no mechanism to break the impasse.

Eventually, Theodore backed down. His successor, Joseph Chifley, was one of the commissioners on the 1937 Royal Commission into the Banking System.

The RBA was made subservient for a reason

The commission recommended that in any conflict between the bank board and the government over monetary policy, the government should prevail.

As prime minister, Chifley had the principle enshrined in the Commonwealth Bank Act of 1945, and it was later enshrined in the Reserve Bank Act of 1959.

The ultimate supremacy of the government over the Reserve Bank board was hard won – by Labor – and it is easy to imagine circumstances in which a government might need to use it.

Even the knowledge that the trigger is there, never pulled, lets the board know it is not able to go completely rogue and act against the wishes of a democratically elected government.

Chalmers ought to consider the wisdom of keeping his ultimate power in reserve.

One day, Chalmers or his successors might wish they had it.

Read more:
RBA revolution: how Chalmers will recraft the bank for the 21st century

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

– ref. Jim Chalmers wants a truly independent RBA. He should be careful what he wishes for – https://theconversation.com/jim-chalmers-wants-a-truly-independent-rba-he-should-be-careful-what-he-wishes-for-204550

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Langley, Associate Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University

An international team of researchers has recovered DNA from the owner of a deer-tooth pendant that was buried inside a remote Siberian cave for tens of thousands of years.

In research published in Nature, Elena Essel of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and colleagues detail how they developed a new technique to extract DNA left behind on an artefact.

In much the same way police solve crimes using “touch DNA” – DNA recovered from skin cells or trace bodily fluids left behind when somebody touches an object – archaeologists will now be able to recover genetic traces of ancient humans from the artefacts they left behind.

These traces will reveal the biological sex and genetic ancestry of the individual who once held or wore a particular artefact, allowing archaeologists to link genetic and cultural evidence as they attempt to unravel the deep past.

Prehistoric artefacts and touch DNA

When archaeologists find artefacts such as tools and ornaments at a site, it’s not easy to work out who used them.

Until now, we have had to rely on finding artefacts in “direct association” with buried people. That is, we could only link an individual to an ornament if we found them buried wearing it.

Even then, this funerary association isn’t always a guide to what happened in life. The dead are buried with things their community think they should have, which may not have been theirs when they were alive.

This new method of ancient DNA extraction provides a more direct way of determining who used specific items in everyday life.

The method can only be used for artefacts made from bone or tooth as these materials are porous and can soak up human DNA from repeated contact with bodily fluids (sweat, blood, saliva). Luckily, the bones and teeth of animals (and sometimes humans) were widely used throughout the past to create everyday tools, sacred items, and personal adornment.

These osseous artefacts were held in the hand or worn against the body for extended periods, resulting in sweat and other fluids soaking into their surfaces over time. As a result, the artefact records the genetic information of the wearer.

Through experimentation with different techniques, Essel and her team found a way to recover that DNA record in a form that is intact enough to be read.

Is this yours?

Using this new method of DNA extraction, the researchers were able to extract a wealth of archaeological information from a single tooth pendant recovered from the famous archaeological site of Denisova Cave in Siberia.

The cave, tucked away in the foothills of the Altai mountains, has fascinated researchers for decades as its past inhabitants included not only Homo sapiens but also Neanderthals and another enigmatic extinct human species known as Denisovans.

First, they were able to extract the DNA of the animal the tooth belonged to, a wapiti deer (Cervus canadensis).

They were then able to extract human DNA from the pores of the tooth and deduce that this DNA had come from a female individual whose ancestry is most similar to ancient people found further east in Siberia and with Native Americans.

They were also able to use the DNA data to estimate the date of the pendant’s creation, somewhere between 19,000 and 25,000 years ago. This date fits with previous radiocarbon dating of the layer of the cave floor sediment in which the artefact was found.

Without the extraction and analysis of the human DNA held in the tooth, archaeologists would have been able to tell what animal it had come from and how old it was. However, we could never have guessed the owner of this ornament. Now we can identify a specific individual.

Using the additional DNA information attached to individual artefacts, archaeologists will be able to create an understanding of past societies with a level of detail never before possible.

Read more:
Dirty secrets: sediment DNA reveals a 300,000-year timeline of ancient and modern humans living in Siberia

Michelle Langley is an Associate Professor of Archaeology in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University. She receives funding from the ARC.

– ref. Who owned this Stone Age jewellery? New forensic tools offer an unprecedented answer – https://theconversation.com/who-owned-this-stone-age-jewellery-new-forensic-tools-offer-an-unprecedented-answer-204797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mangor Pedersen, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Auckland University of Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving fast and will become an important support tool in clinical care. Research suggests AI algorithms can accurately detect melanomas and predict future breast cancers.

But before AI can be integrated into routine clinical use, we must address the challenge of algorithmic bias. AI algorithms may have inherent biases that could lead to discrimination and privacy issues. AI systems could also be making decisions without the required oversight or human input.

An example of the potentially harmful effects of AI comes from an international project which aims to use AI to save lives by developing breakthrough medical treatments. In an experiment, the team reversed their “good” AI model to create options for a new AI model to do “harm”.

In less than six hours of training, the reversed AI algorithm generated tens of thousands of potential chemical warfare agents, with many more dangerous than current warfare agents. This is an extreme example concerning chemical compounds, but it serves as a wake-up call to evaluate AI’s known and conceivably unknowable ethical consequences.

AI in clinical care

In medicine, we deal with people’s most private data and often life-changing decisions. Robust AI ethics frameworks are imperative.

The Australian Epilepsy Project aims to improve people’s lives and make clinical care more widely available. Based on advanced brain imaging, genetic and cognitive information from thousands of people with epilepsy, we plan to use AI to answer currently unanswerable questions.

Will this person’s seizures continue? Which medicine is most effective? Is brain surgery a viable treatment option? These are fundamental questions that modern medicine struggles to address.

As the AI lead of this project, my main concern is that AI is moving fast and regulatory oversight is minimal. These issues are why we recently established an ethical framework for using AI as a clinical support tool. This framework intends to ensure our AI technologies are open, safe and trustworthy, while fostering inclusivity and fairness in clinical care.

Read more:
AI is transforming medicine – but it can only work with proper sharing of data

So how do we implement AI ethics in medicine to reduce bias and retain control over algorithms? The computer science principle “garbage in, garbage out” applies to AI. Suppose we collect biased data from small samples. Our AI algorithms will likely be biased and not replicable in another clinical setting.

Examples of biases are not hard to find in contemporary AI models. Popular large language models (ChatGPT for example) and latent diffusion models (DALL-E and Stable Diffusion) show how explicit biases regarding gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status can occur.

Researchers found that simple user prompts generate images perpetuating ethnic, gendered and class stereotypes. For example, a prompt for a doctor generates mostly images of male doctors, which is inconsistent with reality as about half of all doctors in OECD countries are female.

Safe implementation of medical AI

The solution to preventing bias and discrimination is not trivial. Enabling health equality and fostering inclusivity in clinical studies are likely among the primary solutions to combating biases in medical AI.

Encouragingly, the US Food and Drug Administration recently proposed making diversity mandatory in clinical trials. This proposal represents a move towards less biased and community-based clinical studies.

Another obstacle to progress is limited research funding. AI algorithms typically require substantial amounts of data, which can be expensive. It is crucial to establish enhanced funding mechanisms that provide researchers with the necessary resources to gather clinically relevant data appropriate for AI applications.

We also argue we should always know the inner workings of AI algorithms and understand how they reach their conclusions and recommendations. This concept is often referred to as “explainability” in AI. It relates to the idea that humans and machines must work together for optimal results.

We prefer to view the implementation of prediction in models as “augmented” rather than “artificial” intelligence – algorithms should be part of the process and the medical professions must remain in control of the decision making.

Read more:
Biased AI can be bad for your health – here’s how to promote algorithmic fairness

In addition to encouraging the use of explainable algorithms, we support transparent and open science. Scientists should publish details of AI models and their methodology to enhance transparency and reproducibility.

What do we need in Aotearoa New Zealand to ensure the safe implementation of AI in medical care? AI ethics concerns are primarily led by experts within the field. However, targeted AI regulations, such as the EU-based Artificial Intelligence Act have been proposed, addressing these ethical considerations.

The European AI law is welcomed and will protect people working within “safe AI”. The UK government recently released their proactive approach to AI regulation, serving as a blueprint for other government responses to AI safety.

In Aotearoa, we argue for adopting a proactive rather than reactive stance to AI safety. It will establish an ethical framework for using AI in clinical care and other fields, yielding interpretable, secure and unbiased AI. Consequently, our confidence will grow that this powerful technology benefits society while safeguarding it from harm.

Mangor Pedersen receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Australian Medical Research Future Fund.

– ref. AI has potential to revolutionise health care – but we must first confront the risk of algorithmic bias – https://theconversation.com/ai-has-potential-to-revolutionise-health-care-but-we-must-first-confront-the-risk-of-algorithmic-bias-204112

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Patfield, Senior Research Fellow, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle

This article is part of our series on big ideas for the Universities Accord. The federal government is calling for ideas to “reshape and reimagine higher education, and set it up for the next decade and beyond”. A review team is due to finish a draft report in June and a final report in December 2023.

Teaching and research are the two core functions of Australian universities.

But teaching has long been treated as the poor cousin of higher education. It is generally considered low status, given little professional recognition, and sometimes even seen as the domain of those academics who are not successful researchers.

Indeed, the Universities Accord terms of reference, released in November 2022, didn’t explicitly include teaching as a priority theme for review. It was only mentioned in passing in relation to access and affordability.

It was more prominently included in the accord discussion paper released in February this year. This noted:

Strength in higher education teaching is a critical element in ensuring strength in the sector as a whole.

While this ambition reaffirms the core role of teaching, this goal must now be taken seriously. This needs to be through national and institutional commitments to support quality teaching.

The devaluing of teaching in higher education

Teaching lies at the heart of creating a high-quality learning environment and producing a high calibre of graduates.

Yet the teaching of university students has long been devalued in Australian higher education.

Academics are supposed to teach well, but it’s assumed simply being a subject expert is enough. Significantly, most undergraduate teaching is now done by casual academics, who are frequently paid exclusively to teach but receive no professional development to do so.

Read more:
‘Some of them do treat you like an idiot’: what it’s like to be a casual academic

Despite federal government talk about wanting to ensure better outcomes for students, industry and the community, cuts to national teaching initiatives have also signalled a disregard for teaching.

For example, in 2016, the Coalition government cut funding to the Office for Learning and Teaching, a peak body that drove quality and innovation in university teaching. Since then, there has been no equivalent body to replace it.

Teaching also takes a backseat to research as an indicator of success. In international rankings, the “best” universities are commonly the most research-intensive. Within institutions, academics also say research is highly regarded when applying for promotion, with relatively little merit given to teaching performance.

What does ‘quality teaching’ mean?

Renewed commitment to teaching at university requires an urgent shift from narrow understandings of what constitutes “quality teaching” across the sector.

Quality teaching has many different meanings in higher education, but few – if any – get to the heart of supporting academic staff to deliver effective teaching.

The national Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching focus on three different areas of quality: the student experience, graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction. These indicators speak to different stakeholder concerns and outcomes – which are important in and of themselves – but don’t provide any clarity or guidance on what constitutes “good teaching”.

Student evaluations and teaching awards are marketed by universities as evidence of “quality teaching”. However, evaluations do little more than reveal student biases. They reflect perceptions of a teacher rather than anything to do with their actual teaching. And awards only allow a small number of academics to be recognised as “good teachers”.

These examples demonstrate how the management of teaching has become the dominant focus rather than the practice of teaching.

Read more:
Australian unis could not function without casual staff: it is time to treat them as ‘real’ employees

A new way to ensure quality teaching

The Universities Accord could signal a genuine commitment to quality teaching if it reinstated a peak national body focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education.

At an institutional level, the accord must also invest in the professional development of academics, including casual staff.
Our research shows this can be achieved by providing a strong conceptual understanding of what quality teaching looks like in the university classroom.

In 2019–2020, we trialled the Quality Teaching Model as a mechanism to underpin teaching professional development with 27 academics. The QT Model is an evidence-based, practical framework to help academics generate constructive feedback and develop meaningful evidence to transform teaching and learning. This approach was adapted from a model education academics James Ladwig and Jenny Gore developed for the New South Wales Department of Education for use in schools.

The QT Model focuses attention on three core dimensions of “good” teaching practice. These are:

1. intellectual quality: developing deep understanding of important ideas

2. quality learning environment: ensuring positive classrooms that boost student learning

3. significance: connecting learning to students’ lives and the wider world.

We worked with academics from a range of disciplines and at different career stages across designated teaching periods.
When interviewed, participants reported the QT Model helped them feel their teaching was valued. They reported it reinvigorated many aspects of academic work, including course planning, collaboration within and across disciplines, and improving students’ learning experiences.

Read more:
Our study found new teachers perform just as well in the classroom as their more experienced colleagues

Where to from here?

The key legislation guiding higher education in Australia mandates academics should not only have relevant disciplinary knowledge, but also skills in contemporary teaching, learning and assessment.

But supporting quality teaching has always been a struggle.

The accord is a crucial opportunity to ensure universities deliver their core function of teaching. This is possible and achievable by reinvesting in the scholarship of teaching and learning, along with meaningful professional development in teaching for all academic staff.

This will require a strong commitment from government and the university sector.

Australian academics are already stressed, face huge workloads and are part of a workforce that has been casualised and endured mass redunancies. They also have to cope with the challenges of online learning and uncertainty around what Artificial Intelligence means for teaching and learning.

University students can’t receive a quality education without quality teaching. It is high time we recognise this and do something meaningful about it.

Sally Patfield currently receives funding from the NSW Department of Education and the Paul Ramsay Foundation. The study on which this piece is partially based was funded through the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Initiatives Fund at the University of Newcastle.

Elena Prieto-Rodriguez receives funding from from the Australian Research Council, Paul Ramsay Foundation, NSW Roads and Maritime Services, Glencore Coal Assets Australia, Google Australia, GHD, Bradken Resources, Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group, BHP Billiton and the NSW Department of Education.

Jenny Gore receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Paul Ramsay Foundation and NSW Department of Education. With University of Newcastle colleague, James Ladwig, she developed the Quality Teaching Model for the NSW Department of Education.

– ref. Teaching and research are the core functions of universities. But in Australia, we don’t value teaching – https://theconversation.com/teaching-and-research-are-the-core-functions-of-universities-but-in-australia-we-dont-value-teaching-203657

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

Tuesday’s budget will include $11.3 billion over four years to fund the 15% pay rise aged care workers will receive from July 1.

The rise was awarded by the Fair Work Commission. Labor committed at last year’s election to fully fund a rise in pay for this sector.

Given acute staff shortages, it is hoped that the higher wages will attract more workers.

The pay rises will benefit more than 250,000 people.

A registered nurse on a level 2.3 award wage will receive an extra $196.08 a week – more than $10,000 a year.

A personal care worker on a level 4 (aged care award) or a home care worker on a level 3.1 (social, community, home care and disability services award) will get an extra $141.10 weekly – more than $7300 annually.

Recreational officers and chefs in the sector also are in line for increases.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that “for too long, those working in aged care have been asked to work harder for longer without enough reward, but with this budget that changes”.

Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said that “fair wages play a major role in attracting and retaining workers”.

Aged care is now the fifth-largest area of federal government spending.
This financial year the cost of aged care will increase from $24.8 billion to an estimated $29.6 billion (23%).

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: NDIA chair Kurt Fearnley on ‘fundamental’ reform of the disability scheme

There are about 1.5 million recipients of aged care in Australia, with growing pressures on the system ahead as the population ages.

In a round of Wednesday media appearances, Chalmers reiterated next week’s budget would contain “substantial cost-of-living relief”.

“It’ll prioritise the most vulnerable. It won’t just be limited by age, and it will be responsible.”

Chalmers said the budget would forecast the economy slowing considerably but not going into recession.

“The budget will be a difficult balancing act, between providing the cost-of-living relief that people need, being conscious of the pressures on the budget and all of that debt that we inherited, but also making sure that we can grow our way out of this slowing economy by investing in things like energy and laying some of these foundations for growth in our economy.”

Read more:
Word from The Hill: Another rate rise, higher tax on cigarettes, and likely JobSeeker boost for over-55s

Chalmers said the budget would also contain efforts “to get people into work if they want to work, including in communities where there has been for too long entrenched disadvantage”.

“We’ve got colleagues working on the job agency system to make sure that if people want to work, they can grab the opportunities of an economy that’s got unemployment currently running at three and a half per cent.”

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

– ref. Government to spend $11.3 billion over four years to fund 15% pay rise for aged care workers – https://theconversation.com/government-to-spend-11-3-billion-over-four-years-to-fund-15-pay-rise-for-aged-care-workers-204919

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

The federal government is trying to contain the exploding cost of the landmark National Disability Insurance Scheme – especially difficult given the fears of vulnerable people who rely on it.

National cabinet’s decision last week to aim to reduce the cost increase from the current 14% annually down to 8% by 2026 received a sharp reaction from disability advocates. This financial year the NDIS will cost more than $35 billion, two thirds paid by the federal government.

The government has flagged areas for change and there is also a review being done.

In this podcast, former Paralympian Kurt Fearnley, chair of the National Disability Insurance Authority, which implements the scheme, discusses its issues and the road ahead.

Fearnley says the NDIS broadly “is working really well”, while acknowledging parts need significant overhaul if it is to be financially sustainable.

“There are parts of the scheme that would require pretty fundamental reform” – but that reform will need to “walk hand in hand” with participants.

The government has announced more than $720 million over four years for the NDIA: Fearnley says: “It will allow us to build an agency that is better positioned to answer and respond to the participant in a quick away, but also be able to build an agency that is better positioned to ensure that we are focused on the outcomes that we all fought for.”

“This scheme has been working for a lot of communities. Unfortunately, it’s also had its complications with ensuring that we are engaging with First Australians in a way that is appropriate, that allows the Indigenous Australians the ability to be able to thrive on this scheme.”

“So there’s lots of areas of reform, but it will all hinge on whether or not we’re able to create a system that has the participants’ voice heard at every step.”

A key area of reform is making the scheme less complex. Fearnley recounts a situation he experienced recently as an example.

One mother “broke down, she was in tears describing her interactions between the agency and a service provider. We encourage an evidence-based approach to the experience of the child within the scheme. And then this parent is speaking about how they felt like their child was considered an ATM to a third party service.

“Choice and control is beautiful to one and tough for others. We have built this incredible system […] It is there servicing 590,000 people, all with there unique experience with disability, and it’s the choice and control element that I think could be overwhelming for a new participant.

“It’s fundamentally reforming in an incredible, bloody amazing, empowering concept for an individual with disability who was never, in many instances, never asked what they want out of life.

But disability is “one of the most complex experiences in life. As a person with a disability, I’ve been able to find my pathway over a long period of time. And that’s where I think the choice and control element is amazing. But I do think it has its challenges in other parts.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: NDIA chair Kurt Fearnley on ‘fundamental’ reform of the disability scheme – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-ndia-chair-kurt-fearnley-on-fundamental-reform-of-the-disability-scheme-204922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The Albanese government’s announcement it will provide $240 million for a new stadium in Hobart has not had the favourable reception it might have hoped.

Those concerned with the proper operation of the federal system can point out that this kind of funding is the concern of state and local governments.

Concerns about process are reinforced by the sorry history of “sports rorts”. Both Labor and Liberal federal governments have funded sports facilities to curry political favour.

To be fair, it is hard to see this project as targeted at a particular seat, but presumably the aim was to win support in Tasmania as a whole. Even compared with the dubious economics of sporting events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Olympic Games, stadium developments stand out as boondoggles.

Extensive research in the US is summarised by the conclusion that over the past 30 years, building sports stadiums has been a profitable undertaking for large sports teams, at the expense of the general public.

While there are some short-term benefits, the inescapable truth is the economic benefit of these projects for local communities is minimal. Indeed, they can be an obstacle to real development.

Read more:
Devils in the detail: an economist argues the case for a Tasmanian AFL team – and new stadium

Making the business case

The economic case for the Hobart Stadium is startlingly thin. The only clear-cut benefit attributable to the project is that the new Tasmanian AFL team will play its home games there, replacing the small number of AFL rounds played at Hobart’s existing stadium, Bellerive Oval.

In 2022, eight AFL men’s games were played in Tasmania – four at Bellerive, four at UTAS Stadium in Launceston. A local AFL team will play 11 home games.

The state government’s business case estimates that 5,000 interstate visitors will attend seven matches a year. It seems safe to assume some will fly in and out on the same day, and that few will stay more than two nights.

If we allow an average of one night per visitor, that’s 35,000 bed nights, or an increase of about 0.3% in current visitor nights for Tasmania (about 11 million a year in 2022).

Against that must be offset the Tasmanians who will travel to Melbourne and elsewhere for away games.

What about housing?

All of this is par for the course for projects of this kind. The big problem for both state and federal governments is that it comes at a time of a housing crisis.

The federal government’s press release contains some vague references to housing developments associated with the project. But this is little more than the sort of PR spin we’d expect from, for example, the proponents of a new coal mine.

The numbers here are quite startling. The centrepiece of federal Labor’s election platform was a $10 billion fund for housing, providing $500 million year to support social housing. (Labor’s bill is currently held up in the Senate, with the Coalition opposed, and the Greens demanding stronger action.)

Read more:
Labor’s proposed $10 billion social housing fund isn’t big as it seems, but it could work

If this $500 million were allocated proportionally by population, Tasmania would get about $10 million a year. The Commonwealth’s $240 million contribution to the stadium would cover this expenditure until nearly 2050. The total public outlay on the Hobart stadium (with $375 million from the Tasmanian government) would cover most of this century.

At a time of extreme fiscal stringency, such a massive outlay on a luxury project is very hard to justify.

What about job creation?

No serious benefit-cost analysis of this project has been made. Instead, supporters have relied on announcing the number of jobs it will create – 4,200 jobs during construction and 950 jobs when operational.

Such numbers are questionable. To make them bigger, governments typically count on the “multiplier effect” of work created for suppliers of various kinds. This is a long-standing tradition taken to new heights by the Albanese government. The announcement of the AUKUS submarine project, for example, was all about the jobs it would create.

Read more:
$18 million a job? The AUKUS subs plan will cost Australia way more than that

But wait a moment. At the same time as trumpeting the creation of jobs for construction workers, the government is seeking to solve Australia’s “skills shortage” arising from historically low unemployment.

Tasmania’s unemployment rate is 3.8%, marginally above the average for Australia, but lower than at any time since the economic crisis of the 1970s. This low rate represents a situation of full employment, where numbers of unemployed workers and job vacancies are roughly equal.

In such circumstances, creating a job means luring a worker away from another. If the new job is on a major construction project, that means one less worker available to build housing.

As I argue in my book, Economics in Two Lessons (Princeton University Press, 2019), the true costs of wasteful public expenditure are opportunity costs – the alternatives that are foregone.

Multiplier effects make opportunity costs even larger. The project diverts the workers employed directly, and takes all kinds of resources that could otherwise be used for socially useful purposes. This diversion of necessary resources is the truly pernicious aspect of publicly subsidising projects like the AFL stadium.

Tasmania, like the rest of Australia, does not need government action to create any more jobs, particularly in construction. It needs to ensure skilled workers are employed where they can be most valuable.

John Quiggin 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. Job creation isn’t always a good thing. Hobart’s new stadium can only make Tasmania’s housing crisis worse – https://theconversation.com/job-creation-isnt-always-a-good-thing-hobarts-new-stadium-can-only-make-tasmanias-housing-crisis-worse-204806

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler has announced a major policy shift on vaping. Its two primary objectives are to make it harder for children and non-smokers to access vapes and to allow people trying to quit smoking to access nicotine vapes with a prescription.

Vapes are unquestionably popular, with many who vape saying they are trying to quit or to cut down on cigarettes. “Recreational” vapers of any age with no interest in quitting will find themselves frozen out.

But can vapes actually help significant numbers of people quit smoking? The evidence suggests it’s unlikely.

Read more:
A potted history of smoking, and how we’re making the same mistakes with vaping

Myth of the ‘hardened smokers’

First, let’s bust a widely believed myth. With smoking at an all time low, some experts argue today’s smokers are the die-hard addicts: frequently relapsing smokers who just can’t quit.

Whenever this hypothesis has been tested it has been found wanting. In nations where smoking prevalence has fallen most, we would expect (if the hypothesis was true) that indicators of hardened smokers (such as average number of cigarettes smoked per day) would be rising because the remaining smokers would be over-represented by heavy, addicted smokers.

But according to a 2020 review of 26 studies:

Some have argued that a greater emphasis on harm reduction or intensive treatment approaches is needed because remaining smokers are those who are less likely to stop with current methods. This review finds no or little evidence for this assumption.

In other words, there is no evidence long-term smokers are impervious to the suite of tobacco control policies and campaigns that have driven hundreds of millions of smokers around the world to quit.

Vapes don’t help smokers cut back

The idea that vaping helps people smoke fewer cigarettes isn’t supported by the evidence. Studies of the number of cigarettes foregone by vapers who still smoke have shown that, compared with smokers who never vape, the average daily cigarette consumption is very similar.

Data from 2019 from the United Kingdom government’s annual Opinions and Lifestyle Survey also show the average number of cigarettes smoked daily by smokers who vape (8 a day) is almost identical to that by smokers who have never vaped (8.1 a day).

A 2018 paper considered the surge in e-cigarette use in England and whether this was reducing the number of cigarettes being smoked at the population level across the country. The authors concluded:

No statistically significant associations were found between changes in use of e-cigarettes […] while smoking and daily cigarette consumption. Neither did we find clear evidence for an association between e-cigarette use […] specifically for smoking reduction and temporary abstinence, respectively, and changes in daily cigarette consumption.

If use of e-cigarettes […] while smoking acted to reduce cigarette consumption in England between 2006 and 2016, the effect was likely very small at a population level.

How effective are vapes in quitting?

The most recent Cochrane review of randomised controlled trials compared vaping with nicotine replacement therapy (such as drugs, gums and patches). It found about 82% of people who vape are still smoking when followed up six or more months later.

This was better than those using nicotine replacement therapy: 90% were still smoking.

Neither nicotine replacement therapy or vapes are hugely disruptive of smoking. You certainly wouldn’t be confident using a drug for any health issue that had a 82-90% failure rate.

Read more:
Drugs, gums or patches won’t increase your chances of quitting

Randomised controlled trials also poorly reflect the ways vapes and nicotine replacement therapy are used in the real world and aren’t representative of all smokers wanting to quit.

A review of 54 randomised controlled trials on quitting smoking, for example, found two-thirds of smokers with nicotine dependence would have been excluded from clinical trials by at least one criterion. This may result in participation biases, which reduce the applicability of the results to smokers at large, or even smokers at large who want to quit.

This, and other factors, make randomised controlled trials likely to overestimate effectiveness, as I outline in chapter two of my book.

What does the real-world evidence show?

The best evidence we have about how vapes perform comes from studies where large numbers of vapers are followed for several years. The US Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) project, for example, has been collecting national cohort data on 46,000 Americans since 2013.

As the PATH data below show, when randomly selected groups of vapers are followed up at 12 months, the most common outcome is those who were smoking and vaping at the beginning of the study period will still be vaping and smoking at the end of the 12 months.

I’ve summarised 16 other reviews and expert group conclusions of the evidence published since 2017. Words like “low quality”, “inconclusive”, “insufficient”, “weak”, “low level” and “limited” abound.

The upshot?

The prescription vapes access scheme’s most important population effect is likely to be that it will massively reduce access to vapes by children. State governments will start hitting retailers illegally selling with massive fines and Border Security will do the same with importing suppliers.

Taiwan fines sellers a maximum of US$1.65 million, with a minimum of US$330,000. The current maximum fine in New South Wales is currently only A$1,600. Such a fine would barely raise dust in big retailers’ petty cash drawers.

Based on the research, we might expect 10-18% of vapers using the prescription scheme to quit within 12 months (with some relapse expected), but many more will quit unassisted.

Preventing new generations of kids from becoming addicted to nicotine and more likely to start smoking is a huge policy advance that is hugely welcome.

Read more:
Vaping and behaviour in schools: what does the research tell us?

Simon Chapman 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 vaping help people quit smoking? It’s unlikely – https://theconversation.com/can-vaping-help-people-quit-smoking-its-unlikely-204812

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yvette Grant, PhD (Dance) Candidate and Dance History Tutor, The University of Melbourne

When The Australian Ballet was founded in 1962, its charter stated that, alongside international repertoire and visiting international choreographers, it must engage Australian choreographers and produce Australian works.

But what does “Australian” look like in ballet?

In 1989, dancer, teacher, choreographer and director of The Ballet Guild (later Ballet Victoria) Laurel Martyn was asked about what it meant for ballet to be Australian:

It’s Australian because it comes out of our experience, what we think, how we do things […] It must come out of our own lives, our own way of seeing.

Martyn had choreographed her first Australian ballet in 1941. The project of creating Australian ballet is not a new one.

In 1964, Robert Helpmann claimed his ballet The Display was the first Australian ballet, because it was the first with an Australian score, designer, story and choreographer.

His ballet met all those criteria with its Aussie rules football, machismo, bush picnics and lyrebirds – but there had been many much earlier than his.

Like Helpmann’s ballet, some focused on Australian cultural life, such as Kira Bousloff’s The Beach Inspector (1958) and Rex Reid’s The Melbourne Cup (1963).

Others celebrated Australian industry. Joanna Priest’s The Lady Augusta (1946) was about the maiden voyage of a steamship along the Murray River to transport wool. Valrene Tweedie’s Wakooka (1955) was about life on a sheep station.

Still others looked to the rich natural environment, such as Martyn’s Voyageur about Australian migratory birds (1956).

And there were those that appropriated Australian Indigenous culture in their attempt to create an identity of this place. The most infamous of these was Beth Dean’s Corroboree with white dancers in blackface performing for Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.

Since then, Australian ballet has radically transformed the way that it includes First Nations identity in its construction of what it means to be Australian. The 1989 founding of Bangarra Dance Theatre was key to this new Australian identity in dance.

A reflection of this transformation was The Australian Ballet’s 1997 work Rites, a creation of then Bangarra artistic director Stephen Page. Page brought the two companies together in a First Nations’ reimagining of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

At The Australian Ballet’s 30th anniversary in 1992, the company staged an Australian reimagining of The Nutcracker, choreographed by Graeme Murphy.

Murphy’s ballet told a story of the importance of migration to Australia: a history of how war in Europe had led many Russian dancers to stay, enriching our cultural landscape and firmly setting ballet’s roots in this country.

Now, for its 60th anniversary, the company is again asking what is an “Australian ballet”. This time it’s answering the question with a two-part program Identity. Identity features Wiradjuri man Daniel Riley’s THE HUM, a collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and Alice Topp’s Paragon, which brings back to the stage many company alumni.

Both works demonstrate an approach to creating an Australian ballet that, as the program suggests, “explores the community of the stage”. They each return to Martyn’s statement that for ballet to be Australian it must come from us.

Who is on that stage as part of that community, then, becomes critical.

Read more:
Explainer: what is contemporary dance?

THE HUM

THE HUM has a powerful First Nations presence including choreographer Riley, composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, costume designer Annette Sax and dancer Karra Nam, and engages a conversation not only with white settler Australia but also between contemporary dance and ballet.

Dancers encounter each other with a deep breath in. Holding their gaze, they drop twice at the knees with two short sharp outbreaths: confrontation and common ground.

Black rock formations that frame the stage are turned around and repurposed, their constructed nature exposed, a metaphor for our inherited Australian identity.

Neon lights and projected computer-generated images combine with the natural moon, water and tree branches, reminding us we are both of country and city in the 21st century.

THE HUM shows a community where members are finally facing each other but haven’t yet worked out who they are together – although they know where to begin. The audience is equally tasked with this provocation.

Paragon

In Paragon, Topp shows us who The Australian Ballet has been in footage, images, dance styles and in the returning dancers who carry the company’s history in their bodies. These include Marilyn Rowe, who had her debut with the company in 1965, Simon Dow, who joined in 1974, and Lucinda Dunn, who danced with the company for 24 years until 2014.

Topp also shows us who we might be into the future in the bodies of the company’s young dancers.

And in bringing these elements together on the one stage, she shows us where we are now.

The work exudes a combination of strength and tenderness. Avoiding any trumpet blowing, it offers a thoughtful and sometimes playful celebratory reflection: achingly nostalgic yet its own contemporary work.

Divided into 12 parts, it juxtaposes lyrical pas de deux in Grecian white with powerful ’80s Spartacus-style male corps de ballet in black; almost floating 19th-century ladies in long gold ball gowns moving through elegant formations with sets of duos in studio wear moving independently or in canon.

The ages of the dancers are highly visible. Older and younger bodies dance on the ballet stage together, demanding our attention. Much like THE HUM, Paragon is a result of this community, an honouring of ancestors and a revelation of ever-present history.

The Australian identity is a work in progress, but in Identity it is heartening to witness that one of our iconic cultural institutions is up for the challenge.

Identity is at the Sydney Opera House until May 20, and then at Arts Centre Melbourne June 16-24.

Read more:
5 Australian women choreographers you should know (and where to see them in 2023)

Yvette Grant receives funding from an Australian Commonwealth Scholarship.

– ref. 60 years of The Australian Ballet and 90 years of ‘Australian’ ballet: Identity asks us to reflect on Australian dance today – https://theconversation.com/60-years-of-the-australian-ballet-and-90-years-of-australian-ballet-identity-asks-us-to-reflect-on-australian-dance-today-203931

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Una Rey, Senior Industry Affiliate, RMIT University

In April, The Australian published the results of a four-month investigation into white staff “interference” at Tjala Arts, a member of the APY Arts Centre Collective of Indigenous art centres across South Australia.

It included a video of an art centre manager painting on Yaritji Young’s canvas, to “juice it up” a bit.

The ongoing media commentary has been divisive and confusing. One question it raises is what do art managers and studio assistants actually do in remote Indigenous community art centres?

50 years of arts centres

Remote art centres are central to today’s internationally successful Indigenous contemporary art industry. They typically have a white art centre manager and other staff overseen by an Indigenous board.

Papunya Tula Artists in Central Australia, incorporated in 1972, is the common ancestor of the publicly funded art centre model.

Papunya Tula marked the transition from the paternalism of the mission era to Indigenous self-determination, supported by the establishment of the Aboriginal Arts Board.

On May 3 1973, a press release from Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s office announced:

Aboriginals have been given full responsibility for developing their own programs in the arts under a new Government policy to revitalise cultural activities through the Australian Council for the Arts.

What followed was a revolution, led by and for Aboriginal artists, with non-Indigenous staff employed to mediate with the art world.

Today, this workforce are mostly young women with degrees in visual art or arts management. They operate in around 90 Aboriginal-owned collectives across remote Australia. Staff turnover is high, and recruitment is a perennial task.

Read more:
40 years on: how Gough Whitlam gave Indigenous art a boost

A cross-cultural thing

The troubling fact is not that “Aboriginal art is a white thing”, as Aboriginal artist and activist Richard Bell famously declared in 2002. Rather, Aboriginal art is “a cross-cultural thing”, bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative workers together.

Despite the shared goal and triumphs of the cultural industries in celebrating Indigenous art, the shadow of Australia’s colonisation is never far away.

The conditions in remote art centres have evolved since the 1970s, but the practicalities are essentially the same. Art centre staff support the artists socially, culturally and logistically to ensure artists are happy to create their work in a culturally safe space.

Staff also manage the external demands of the market, exhibition schedules, bureaucratic accountability (to funding bodies and institutions, for example) and advocacy.

Studio assistance involves purchasing art materials, stretching and priming canvas, harvesting raw material such as ochre, bark or timber, as well as packing, freighting and distributing the work and travelling with artists to exhibitions.

The level of support depends on an individual artist’s needs. Art centres often include the elderly and artists with a disability. Some artists have a strong creative drive; some work slowly or inconsistently.

Whatever the art form, good work takes considerable time. Art production is frequently interrupted “mid-canvas” to attend to other business such as cultural events, funerals or medical treatment.

Read more:
Aboriginal art: is it a white thing?

A collaborative space?

The APY Art Centre Collective management strongly denied allegations of any interference with the paintings or “the Tjukurrpa” (the Aṉangu term for their comprehensive spiritual belief system). Their website currently states hands-on assistance, such as “underpainting”, is common practice.

Selecting colours and mixing paint, priming and delegating canvases, washing brushes and general maintenance, as well as regular discussion and responsiveness to the art are all part of the studio assistant’s role.

Some aesthetic influence on the final product is only natural, but painting directly on the canvas is never part of the job description. Undeclared, many would consider it fraudulent.

In 1997, when I first went to work in a Western Desert art centre, the message from the artists was simple: sell our paintings, and be straight with us.

It was also clear the paintings offered for sale – to public institutions, knowledgeable collectors and souvenir buyers – would be of a certain standard.

“Quality control” is an ambivalent term, but it is implied and expected in the job.

In 1996 Kathleen Petyarre won the lucrative Telstra Art Award for her painting Storm in Atnangkere Country II. It was later revealed she was “assisted” by her white partner.

Following an inquiry, Petyarre retained her rightful authorship of the work, but this prompted art centres to recognise “creative labour”, when delegated by the artist and particularly among family, as culturally accepted practice — which should be attributed accordingly.

The right to determine who gets to collaborate on artwork, and how, applies to artists worldwide. The studios of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are extreme examples of art making being undertaken by studio assistants. So too, Aboriginal artists enjoy workshops with specialists in fields as varied as printmaking, bronze casting, animation or glassmaking.

It’s up to the artists first, and the institutions, curators, the market and art critics next, to evaluate such collaborations and exchanges case by case.

Cultural narratives and daily realities

A key role in art centres is “taking the story”. This is where art centre staff document the artist’s painting with a photo and the related Tjukurrpa or Country.

These “certificates of authenticity” documenting culturally important stories guarantee the works as genuine Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander works. They also underpin the marketing, promotion and interpretation of many contemporary art exhibitions from remote communities.

It’s the disconnect between these purist cultural narratives and the realities of the busy cross-cultural studios that puts the artists, their staff and the entire industry in such a paradoxical position.

Trust and ethics lie at the heart of these working relationships. It’s impractical to create more rules and impossible to enforce the ways artists and staff interact in art centre settings, but it’s time to acknowledge these exchanges with a new story.

Read more:
Beware red flags and fakes: how to buy authentic First Nations designs that benefit creators and communities

Una Rey is editor of Artlink.

– ref. What do white staff do in remote Indigenous art centres? – https://theconversation.com/what-do-white-staff-do-in-remote-indigenous-art-centres-204746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa A Williams, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

The winner of the reality TV show Alone Australia
will need more than “survival skills” to succeed. They will also need to draw on a host of psychological strengths.

Will the winner be the one who shows the most mental toughness or “grit”? Will it be the one who copes with being socially isolated in the Tasmanian wilderness for weeks? How about the contestant who takes a moment to feel awe watching a sunset?

I’m a social psychology researcher, specialising in the dynamics between social interactions and emotions. Here’s what happens when you take away those social interactions, and some thoughts on who’s most likely to thrive.

Read more:
What Alone Australia tells us about fear, and why we need it

Remind me, what’s Alone Australia?

Alone Australia on SBS TV involves ten contestants who are dropped into the wilds of a Tasmanian winter. Each has ten chosen items (from an approved list) and kilos of recording equipment.

Aside from medical check-ins, they have no social contact. Over the coming days and weeks, they film themselves building a shelter, making fire, and finding food and water. Some thrive, some clearly struggle.

Contestants can choose to “tap out” or can be removed for medical reasons. The contestant who lasts the longest wins A$250,000.

Contestants were selected on the basis of having survival skills and a personality likely to be engaging on camera.

But success on the show will likely also stem from a range of psychological capacities – and perhaps a bit of good luck.

Read more:
Woman spends 500 days alone in a cave – how extreme isolation can alter your sense of time

Mental toughness is key

Contestants face a gruelling environment. They are repeatedly challenged by the terrain and weather, as well as by hunger and setbacks.

Here, “mental toughness”, which is related to the popular idea of “grit”, plays a role.

Mental toughness is a group of personality characteristics originally identified in elite and successful athletes. It relates to coping with the pressures of competition, as well as setting and following through on training and performance goals.

Athletes higher in mental toughness tend to perform better. Mentally tough military recruits are more likely to be selected to join special forces.

Can mental toughness be cultivated in the moment? It appears so. Thinking back to past failures tends to spur people to stick to current tough goals. Future thinking also plays a role. Imagining a future in which you are confident and in control builds self-reported toughness.

We know mentally tough people use a few “performance strategies”. These include talking positively to themselves (either out loud or in their mind), controlling their emotions, and intentionally staying relaxed. People can practise and draw on these strategies in the face of adversity. Mentally tough people also avoid negative thinking such as leaning into thoughts of failure or engaging in self-blame.

But mental toughness has limits. When fatigued, mental toughness no longer predicts perseverance towards a difficult physical goal. Instead, underlying fitness levels appear to be critical.

Read more:
Grit or quit? How to help your child develop resilience

Combating loneliness is crucial

The main premise of the show – and its namesake – is total social isolation.

Research highlights the difference between social isolation (lack of opportunity for social interaction) and loneliness (the distressing feeling that one’s social needs aren’t being met). A person can be socially isolated but not feel lonely or feel lonely even in the presence of others.

Not everyone has the same needs for social interaction. Indeed, some people place high value on solitude and generally need less interaction to avoid loneliness.

But there’s a caveat. “Social anhedonia” (markedly low interest in and reward from interpersonal connection) is associated with poor functioning.

Even people who don’t prefer solitude can get creative about fulfilling social needs when people aren’t around.

Humans tend to anthropomorphise (or perceive as human) non-human objects and animals when feeling lonely.

You might remember Wilson the volleyball from the movie Cast Away. Wilson kept the lead character company during his years being stranded on an island.

People can also remember past, or anticipate future, social interactions. This “social daydreaming” may help people cope when their friends and family are not around.

Read more:
The politics of the castaway story

How about awe and pride?

Emotional experiences also likely have a role in pushing some contestants to endure longer. Others have written about the role of fear on the show (in a nutshell, fear has its place and isn’t to be avoided).

But research also points to the potential benefits of positive emotions in this situation, such as awe and pride.

Natural environments are in no short supply for contestants on the show. In fact, nature is nearly all they see. And nature is a prime trigger of
awe – the positive emotional experience when witnessing extraordinary things that are vast and complex.

Awe is linked to a variety of beneficial outcomes, including higher self-reported wellbeing, physical health, critical thinking and humility.

Most of us are familiar with pride – the emotional experience associated with achievement. Pride isn’t just felt upon attaining a goal, but also when making progress along the way.

Despite pride’s bad rap (for instance, as a deadly sin), my own research links the experience of pride to pursuing goals. People work harder at a goal when they’re feeling proud of earlier accomplishments.

One key to unlocking the benefits of positive emotions such as pride and awe is to mindfully find the opportunities to experience them. Specifically, savouring the moment is a documented strategy for intentionally increasing the experience of positive emotions such as awe and pride.

Read more:
Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone

Are you a future Alone Australia winner?

If you’re thinking of applying for future seasons of Alone Australia, you might be wondering if you have what it takes.

Given time, you can build both your survival and psychological skills.

You can develop mental toughness, your capacity to combat loneliness while socially isolated, and your ability to savour positive emotions such as awe and pride.

Read more:
What is hedonism and how does it affect your health?

Lisa A. Williams receives funding from the Australian government (Australian Research Council; Department of Industry, Science, and Resources).

– ref. Alone Australia contestants are grappling with isolation and setbacks. Here’s what makes a winner – https://theconversation.com/alone-australia-contestants-are-grappling-with-isolation-and-setbacks-heres-what-makes-a-winner-204264

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick McRae, Adjunct Professor, School of Science at UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney

The bushfire outlook for many parts of Australia has changed drastically over the past decade. Environmental conditions have transformed, producing larger and more destructive bushfires.

The frequency of bushfires that alter the atmospheric conditions around them has also increased. Nowhere was this more evident than during the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020.

As we continue to experience the effects of climate change, these environmental changes and destructive fire events will only become more prevalent.

Thanks to satellite imaging data collected over the past 20 years, we can map and quantify the region-by-region impact of climate change and how this has affected the prevalence of fire in different parts of Australia. With more accurate bushfire modelling, we can assist fire services and land managers to determine where they need to refocus their efforts as we adjust to the long haul of adaptation to climate change.

To this end, the maps in this article show where fires occurred in two consecutive decades, and show the changes between them. They also show regions where those changes exceed a threshold, indicating a significant increase in fire activity. This enables better-targeted fire risk management.

Read more:
200 experts dissected the Black Summer bushfires in unprecedented detail. Here are 6 lessons to heed

Two decades of satellite fire monitoring

More than 20 years ago NASA launched two satellites, (Terra in 1999 and on Aqua in 2002), to monitor the Earth’s surface with specialised sensors. One sensor, MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), was able to see both smoke plumes and the infrared signature of fires. An algorithm was developed to classify image pixels containing fire, producing a set of “hotspots”.

Both satellites have lasted well beyond their planned mission durations. This is significant for fire managers, who now have two decades of continuous hotspot data.

Mapping Australia’s fire hotspots

For many years I have been analysing MODIS data from the perspective of seasonality. I have been looking at when fires occurred and whether that reflected expectations. The aim is to validate seasonal bushfire outlooks.

The past 20 years of annual seasonality reviews are now available online. Each year the previous 12 months’ data were compared against those from a set time range or control period. This was a decade-long period covering a mix of El Niño and La Niña years, indicating “average” conditions.

Recently, we passed the end of the second decade of MODIS data. This opened the prospect of comparing two decades (starting in July 2002 and in July 2012) and looking for differences.

In a year with a lot of fire, Australia creates more than 450,000 hotspots. This makes the 20 years of MODIS data an irreplaceable tool for seamless, quantitative assessments of fire dynamics across Australia. The datasets are freely available online and have been used to create useful products to assist fire managers.

Several caveats apply to hotspot datasets. Low-intensity fires (especially well-planned, hazard-reduction burns), fires under heavy cloud cover, and fire runs that burn out quickly may not produce a hotspot. The latter was the case for many of the worst fire events during the Black Summer fires.

There is also no way to separate wildfire from planned fire. This has to be a goal, as both contribute to the fire regime but the balance varies a lot between regions. Future burn planning may become a major challenge as big wildfire events like Black Summer put much of the landscape into a single fire age. This makes burning difficult until the forest recovers.

Read more:
Fire management in Australia has reached a crossroads and ‘business as usual’ won’t cut it

To determine how fire activity had changed between the first and second decades of data, hotspots were aggregated into grid-cells. Each spanned half a degree of both latitude and longitude.

By comparing the number and ratio of hotspots in the grid-cell count from decade one to that from decade two, we could determine where fire frequency was changing the most.

Some areas, such as eastern New South Wales, have a very high ratio of change between the first and second decade, reflecting Black Summer. Some areas, such as Arnhem Land, have a very high hotspot count and a slight increase from the first decade to the second, which may produce a significant challenge in future.

Read more:
We are professional fire watchers, and we’re astounded by the scale of fires in remote Australia right now

To encompass the effects of both high counts and high ratios, a threshold was set and any region that exceeded this was an area that needed the most attention.

This produced a set of geographic regions with consistent patterns.

The impacts detailed in the interactive map below (click on the dots for details) must be considered as longer-term management issues for the highlighted regions.

Year-to-year fire patterns have been showing extreme swings in recent years, which may swamp the longer-term trends. However, these trends have picked up many of the key operational challenges, including fire thunderstorms, of recent years.

These challenges are evident in forests in the south-east and south-west of Australia, south-east Queensland, central Tasmania and the tropics.

Read more:
Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems

Hotspot mapping in the future

Challenges as we move forward include developing ways to merge the MODIS data with data from the next generation of satellites, and to separate data for wildfire and prescribed burning.

This and other work will allow us to better anticipate what the next decade will bring.

Rick McRae was a senior emergency manager in the ACT for over three decades, and has now retired. He is now a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Canberra.

– ref. In a bad fire year, Australia records over 450,000 hotspots. These maps show where the risks have increased over 20 years – https://theconversation.com/in-a-bad-fire-year-australia-records-over-450-000-hotspots-these-maps-show-where-the-risks-have-increased-over-20-years-204679

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle O’Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University

A long, competitive recruitment process to name a new Australian Football League chief executive has concluded with the appointment of an AFL insider.

By its own admission, the AFL has chosen a safe pair of hands in Andrew Dillon. AFL Commission Chair Richard Goyder described him as “an exceptional football person who had been involved in virtually every major decision across the AFL for many years”. To be exact, Dillon has been in the AFL for 23 years

Since 1897, 13 men have served as CEO of the AFL or its precursor, the Victorian Football League. All have been white, with an average age of 49 at the start of their tenure.

To be sure, Dillon is immensely qualified, but did the AFL miss an opportunity to transform Australia’s national sport with a history-making hire?

The bold pick: a woman in the role

The AFL had a chance to name a woman to the role, with an excellent candidate in Kylie Watson-Wheeler. She was unanimously appointed president of the Western Bulldogs in 2020 and also serves as senior vice president and managing director of the Walt Disney Company Australia & New Zealand.

The AFL continues to see double-digit growth in women’s grassroots football participation, in addition to sizeable commercial gains and future possibilities emanating from the AFL Women’s League.

Of the eight current serving AFL commissioners, two are also women (Helen Milroy and Gabrielle Trainor). And they are not the first to sit at the decision-making table. Sam Mostyn’s 2005 appointment as the league’s first female commissioner was a transformational moment, but she faced resistance and criticism in the job – highlighting the game’s complex cultural problems.

The AFL’s 2022-24 gender equity action plan set lofty aspirations for gender representation across the codes. But research shows the numbers of female hires often conceal the gendered workplace cultures and informal practices that can prevent women from progressing in sport management careers.

Read more:
‘Jobs for the boys’: women don’t get a fair go in sports administration

Dillon has refuted suggestions that his appointment is the result of the “AFL boys club”. Reflecting the AFL’s espoused diversity and inclusion strategy, he quickly turned the spotlight to “his talented, diverse workforce”.

Diversity is vital for developing the AFL, but the league needs to consider the structural and cultural barriers to attracting this diverse talent in the first place.

Dillon will also need to be sensitive to genuine equity and inclusion – an enduring problem for the AFL.

It is promising to see that Laura Kane will be the acting executive general manager of football, and she is expected to be among the candidates to fill the role permanently. But only time will tell if we will see real change in the codes’ hiring decisions.

Sexual harassment on and off the field

Historically, AFL House has not been a safe haven for women. Sports journalist Michael Warner’s 2021 book, The Boys Club: Power, Politics and the AFL, unearthed numerous egregious claims about the game’s treatment of female administrators.

As is often the case in male-dominated organisations, women’s voices have been quieted in the AFL through the use of payouts and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) when they’ve made complaints of sexual harassment or bullying.

There are dangers for women on the field, as well. A 2022 report commissioned by the AFL (but not publicly released) reported that female and non-binary umpires were subjected to sexual abuse, assault and racial slurs at all levels of the game. The AFL offered a formal apology to the umpires.

Read more:
It’s not all about gender or ethnicity: a blind spot in diversity programs is holding equality back

These allegations came after the 2017 revision of the AFL’s policy for managing complaints and incidents, which sought to address the poor and inconsistent manner in which complaints levelled by women had been managed. The revised policy provides clear supportive processes for those making complaints, together with formal and transparent procedures for complaint management.

The number of complaints is higher now than under the 2005 policy, according to the AFL.

In another positive step, a recent pay deal almost doubled the salaries of AFLW players (albeit under a one-year collective bargaining agreement). The minimum AFLW wage increased from $20,239 to $39,184, though this is still well below other women’s professional sporting leagues.

AFLW players also remain on precarious six-month contracts and most still rely on income from outside sources. While a step forward, the AFL’s commitment to ensuring AFLW players are the best paid female athletes in Australia by 2030 will require much more attention.

Racism and homophobia need to be dealt with, too

In his first comments since being named to the role, Dillon said he had no intention of trying to fast-track or interfere with the inquiry into allegations of historic racism at Hawthorn.

Although he mentioned getting “the right outcome at the right time”, his statement lacked any mention of the deep personal costs and ongoing trauma for the people involved. This is a deeply concerning omission in response to an issue that continues to cast a dark shadow over the league since the allegations were made public last September.

And last month, in a span of less than 24 hours, racial and homophobic abuse was directed at four separate AFL players.

While the outgoing AFL chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, made calls to stop this sort of abuse from happening, it’s clear the sport needs wholesale cultural change.

Is Dillon the man for the job? Will his leadership be bold enough and his team diverse enough to put real action behind the promises? We are hopeful it is.

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. The AFL needs real cultural change. Can the new chief deliver it? – https://theconversation.com/the-afl-needs-real-cultural-change-can-the-new-chief-deliver-it-204761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Hoek, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

Tobacco companies claim to be transforming their business by “reducing the health impact” of their products. Yet they often oppose the very policies that could achieve this goal.

British American Tobacco NZ supplies about two thirds of the New Zealand tobacco market. The company opposed policies outlined in the smokefree law that came into force in January this year. Instead, it proposed non-regulatory approaches.

Among a suite of objections, the company claimed denicotinisation, reduced availability of tobacco, and the introduction of a smokefree generation would lead to serious unintended consequences. These included a tobacco black market that would fuel “drug trafficking, money laundering and other nefarious activities”.

Independent research analysing the data tobacco companies use to support these claims has documented numerous problems with the data collection, analysis and presentation. The effect has been to inflate estimates of illicit tobacco trade.

Other international studies have examined the role tobacco companies themselves play in supporting illicit trade by attempting to control a global track and trace system and undermining the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.

Analyses of industry behaviour in low and middle-income countries found overwhelming historical evidence of the industry’s complicity in illicit trade. For more than two decades, studies have questioned tobacco companies’ claims that black market trade results from high taxation and noted how these companies are often the main beneficiaries of illicit trade.

Read more:
Smoke and mirrors: why claims that NZ’s smokefree policy could fuel an illicit tobacco trade don’t stack up

Who gains from black market scaremongering?

There are obvious risks to relying on industry evidence. In 2006, a US court found international tobacco companies acted with “intent to defraud or deceive” the public about the harms from smoking for decades.

A New Zealand lobby group supported by tobacco companies appears not to have critically reviewed industry evidence but instead amplified the claims. Its submission during the consultation process for New Zealand’s smokefree legislation erroneously argued the measures would amount to prohibition. It drew incorrect parallels with alcohol prohibition in the US.

Nicotine products will in fact remain available, either as approved treatments (such as nicotine replacement therapies) or through vaping products. Prohibition arguments are as baseless as they are misleading.

How do people who smoke view illicit tobacco?

We recently completed a study involving in-depth interviews with 24 people who smoke. Very few of them reported personal interest in illicit tobacco products or had purchased illegally imported or stolen tobacco. The wide availability of other nicotine products in Aotearoa New Zealand may explain their comments.

Although few had used illegally-traded tobacco, nearly all had accessed and smoked homegrown tobacco. However, none had enjoyed using what some call “chop chop” and instead described homegrown tobacco as “vile” and “feral”. Rather than seeing homegrown tobacco as a long-term alternative once measures under the smokefree law are implemented, participants viewed using this tobacco as unpleasant and unsafe.

Read more:
Forget tobacco industry arguments about choice. Here’s what young people think about NZ’s smokefree generation policy

We found numerous contradictions in how participants expected an illicit market to evolve. Some thought it would grow, yet had little idea how people would access it. Some envisaged black market products being more expensive, while others thought they would be less so. Several expressed concern about the safety of sourcing and smoking product obtained through a black market.

These contradictions and the participants’ unfamiliarity with illegally imported tobacco suggest tobacco companies and lobby groups may overstate the problem. Rather than opt for non-regulatory approaches over measures predicted to reduce smoking prevalence very quickly, we should instead actively manage any threat illicit tobacco may pose.

The government has allocated funding to a specialist team that will monitor and disrupt illicit tobacco. Ideally, this funding will enable greater X-ray surveillance of imports from countries identified as potential sources of illicit tobacco. New Zealand could also sign the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products to access international illicit supply data.

Read more:
NZ’s smokefree law will reduce the number of tobacco retailers – here’s what people who smoke think of that

While improving monitoring and surveillance is important, reducing the size of any illicit market is arguably the strongest response to the alleged threat. The fewer people who smoke, the smaller the potential market size. The smaller the market, the less rewarding illicit trade will be.

The most potent response to claims that illicit tobacco trade will increase is to implement measures predicted to lead to a rapid drop in smoking prevalence. Far from creating a case to dismantle measures outlined in the law, tobacco companies’ claims provide a compelling rationale for implementing the policies as rapidly and comprehensively as possible.

Janet Hoek receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and New Zealand Cancer Society; she has previously received grants from the Royal Society Marsden Fund. She co-directs ASPIRE Aotearoa, a research centre whose members undertake research to inform and evaluate smokefree policies. She is also a member of the Health Coalition of Aotearoa Smokefree Expert Advisory Group.

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

– ref. Why tobacco companies’ warnings about a black market are inflated – and misleading – https://theconversation.com/why-tobacco-companies-warnings-about-a-black-market-are-inflated-and-misleading-204272

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Kha, Senior Lecturer in Law, Macquarie University

King Charles III is the first British monarch who has previously had a civil marriage and a civil divorce.

In 1981, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, married Lady Diana Spencer in a fairytale wedding watched by 750 million people worldwide.

However, the royal couple separated in 1992 and they were divorced in 1996. The marriage had spectacularly broken down.

Charles later went on to marry his long-time love interest Camilla Parker-Bowles. They married in a civil ceremony in 2005. This broke with the tradition of royal family members getting married in an Anglican church ceremony.

The extramarital relationship of Charles and Camilla prevented them from being remarried in church. But there was a subsequent service of prayer and dedication. Queen Elizabeth II declined to attend the wedding, reportedly because it conflicted with her role to uphold the Christian faith as supreme governor of the Church of England.

The accession of Charles to the throne is not only politically significant, but also carries religious importance. Charles is the “defender of the faith” and the supreme governor. Charles’ status as a divorcee puts him at odds with his religious roles.

Read more:
King Charles, defender of faith: what the monarchy’s long relationship with religion may look like under the new sovereign

Royal divorces

King Henry VIII was infamous for having six wives in the 16th century. He annulled his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. This meant the marriage was never legally valid to begin with.

King George IV was almost successful in divorcing his wife Queen Caroline in 1820. At the time, divorce could only be granted by Act of Parliament. The trial took place in the House of Lords. The king accused his wife of committing adultery as grounds for divorce. However, Prime Minister Lord Liverpool eventually withdrew the divorce bill due to political pressure.

King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate in 1936 because he wanted to marry an American divorcee Wallis Simpson. This conflicted with his role as supreme governor.

While Charles was in a similar position to his great-uncle in his marriage to Camilla, they lived in different worlds. The Conservative government and the Church of England simply could not tolerate Edward’s marriage to a divorcee. It was viewed as an affront to morality.

Similarly, Princess Margaret was pressured to not marry the divorcee Group Captain Peter Townsend. As the sister of the queen, the marriage would have been scandalous in some circles.

Queen Elizabeth called 1992 the “annus horribilis” (horrible year) for the royal family. Her three children Prince Charles, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew’s marriages had all broken down. Divorce by then had become increasingly acceptable in society.

Read more:
Australia has a new head of state: what will Charles be like as king?

Royal civil marriage

Charles had to seek his mother’s permission to marry Camilla. The Royal Marriages Act 1772 stipulated that all descendants of King George II were required to seek the consent of the sovereign to marry.

This law was repealed in 2013. Only the first six persons in the line of succession now have to seek the sovereign’s permission to marry.

There was controversy at the time whether a member of the royal family could legally marry in a civil ceremony. The Marriage Act 1836 permitted civil marriages. But the law stated this did not apply to members of the royal family.

The British government released a statement declaring Charles could legally enter into a civil marriage. The view was the Marriage Act 1949 had repealed the previous legislation. The government also argued there was a right to marry under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The civil marriage of Charles and Camilla symbolised the changing values of society. The view of marriage had shifted from a moral commitment to a celebratory union. This marked the modernisation of the monarchy over tradition.

A modern monarchy

The accession of a divorcee as king a generation earlier would have been unpalatable to many. But Charles embodies the modern character of monarchy and the liberal values of wider society.

Charles has recently affirmed his commitment to Anglican Christianity. This is an acknowledgement of his constitutional role in the Act of Settlement 1701. Only Protestant Christians can claim succession to the crown.

It also affirms his role as nominal ruler of the Church of England. The monarch still appoints bishops on the advice of the prime minister. Anglicanism is the official state religion of England.

Read more:
Beheaded and exiled: the two previous King Charleses bookended the abolition of the monarchy

Yet Charles is also pushing for a modern monarchy. He has viewed himself as a defender of diversity. Upholding a space for multifaith practice and expression of secular ideals form part of the agenda of his reign.

The monarchy faces a tension between modernity and tradition. As a divorced and remarried monarch, Charles III represents the reinvention of the crown, an ancient institution that seeks to embrace its role in a multicultural, religiously diverse and more open and tolerant society.

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

– ref. A new monarch who is a divorcee would once have scandalised. But Charles’ accession shows how much has changed – https://theconversation.com/a-new-monarch-who-is-a-divorcee-would-once-have-scandalised-but-charles-accession-shows-how-much-has-changed-204544

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

Since the 18th century, humans have been taking fossil fuels out of their safe storage deep underground and burning them to generate electricity or power machinery.

We’ve now converted coal, oil and gas into more than two trillion tonnes of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and added them to the atmosphere.

The current result? The average temperature at the planet’s surface is about 1.2℃ hotter than in the pre-industrial era. That’s because adding new carbon to the world’s natural carbon cycle has caused an imbalance in the amount of energy entering and leaving the Earth system.

To warm the entire planet takes an extraordinary amount of extra energy. Recent research shows we’ve added the energy of 25 billion nuclear bombs to the Earth system in just the last 50 years.

Billions of nuclear bombs to produce 1.2℃ of heating – so what? It seems small, considering how much temperature varies on a daily basis. (The world’s average surface temperature in the 20th century was 13.9℃.)

But almost all of this energy to date has been taken up by the oceans. It’s no wonder we’re seeing rapid warming in our oceans.

The Goldilocks zone

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. It gets hot, at an average temperature of 167℃. But it has no atmosphere. That’s why the second planet, Venus, is the hottest in the solar system, at an average of 464℃. That’s due to an atmosphere much thicker than Earth’s, dense in carbon dioxide. Venus might once have had liquid oceans. But then a runaway greenhouse effect took place, trapping truly enormous quantities of heat.

One reason we’re alive is that our planet orbits in the Goldilocks zone, just the right distance from the Sun to be not too hot and not too cold. Little of the Earth’s internal heat gets through to the cold crust where we live. That makes us dependent on another source of heat – the Sun.

Read more:
Global carbon emissions at record levels with no signs of shrinking, new data shows. Humanity has a monumental task ahead

When the Sun’s light and heat hits Earth, some is absorbed at the surface and some is reflected back out into space. We see some of the energy emitted by the Sun because the Sun is hot and hotter objects emit radiation in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Because Earth is much cooler than the Sun, the radiation it emits is invisible, at long infrared wavelengths. Much of this energy goes out into space – but not all. Some gases in our atmosphere are very effective at absorbing energy at the wavelengths Earth emits at. These greenhouse gases occur naturally in Earth’s atmosphere, and keep the planet warm enough to be habitable. That’s another Goldilocks zone.

And then there’s a third Goldilocks zone: recent history. All of human civilisation has emerged in the unusually mild 10,000 years after the last ice age, when the climate has been not too hot and not too cold across much of the world.

But now, we are at very real risk of pushing ourselves outside of the comfortable climatic conditions which allowed humans to expand, farm, build cities and create.
The energy dense fuels which made industrial civilisation possible come with an enormous sting in the tail. Burn now, pay later. Now the bill has become apparent.

How do we know this is real? Satellites measure the rate at which Earth’s surface radiates heat. At any one moment, thousands of Argo robotic floats dot our oceans. They spend almost all of their lives underwater, measuring heat, and surface to transmit data. And we can measure sea level with tide levels and satellites. We can cross-check the measurements between all three approaches.

Climate change: more energy comes in than goes out

Greenhouse gases are potent. You only need small concentrations to get a big effect.

We’ve already boosted the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 50%, and added considerable volumes of methane and nitrous oxide as well. This is pushing our life-sustaining greenhouse effect out of balance.

A recent study suggests the energy imbalance is equivalent to trapping roughly 380 zettajoules of extra heat from 1971–2020. (The period between 1971 and the present accounts for about 60% of all emissions).

One zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules – a very big number!

Little Boy, the nuclear bomb which destroyed Hiroshima, produced energy estimated at 15,000,000,000,000 joules. This means the effect of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions in that 50-year period to 2020 is about 25 billion times the energy emitted by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.

If we’ve trapped so much extra heat, where is it?

To date, almost every joule of extra energy – about 90% – has gone into our oceans, particularly the top kilometre of water. Water is an excellent heat sink. It takes a lot of energy to heat it, but heat it we have. Hotter oceans are a major contributor to coral bleaching and sea level rise.

It takes a long time to get this much heat into the oceans, and once it is there it doesn’t disappear. Reversing global warming entirely may not be feasible. Just to stop temperatures going any higher means correcting the imbalance and bringing CO2 levels down towards the pre-industrial level of 280ppm.

If we can reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, we will most likely stop further global warming and carbon dioxide concentrations will slowly start to drop.

Realistically, this means rapid, large-scale reduction of emissions and deployment of carbon capture to compensate for the emissions we can’t eliminate.

To go further and cool the planet back down towards a pre-industrial climate would require net-negative emissions, meaning we would have to draw even more carbon back out of the atmosphere than any lingering emissions.

Unfortunately, we aren’t there yet. Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are at near-record highs. But clean energy production is accelerating. This year might be the first time emissions from power begin to fall.

We’re in a race, and the stakes are as high as they could possibly be – ensuring a liveable climate for our children and for nature.

Read more:
In hot water: here’s why ocean temperatures are the hottest on record

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

Steven Sherwood receives funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone? – https://theconversation.com/two-trillion-tonnes-of-greenhouse-gases-25-billion-nukes-of-heat-are-we-pushing-earth-out-of-the-goldilocks-zone-202619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Harmes, Professor in Pathways Education, University of Southern Queensland

Information about King Charles III’s coronation is coming out bit by bit from who will do what to the choice of music and the coronation emoji design.

One fact was never in doubt: we can watch it on television.

Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 drew 20 million viewers on the BBC. Behind the scenes there were fierce arguments about televising the service. Prime Minister Winston Churchill opposed the idea.

The 27-year-old queen insisted there would be cameras inside Westminster Abbey. But one thing was clear: the cameras would avert their gaze at the most sacred moment of the ceremony.

Everyone agreed the anointing, the moment the monarch becomes sacred, was too holy for television cameras.

In 2023, coronation planners feel the same: the cameras will again avert their gaze as Archbishop Justin Welby anoints Charles III.

But while this will only be the second British coronation to be televised, popular culture has provided many opportunities to see fictional depictions.

Read more:
Picking up a King Charles III coronation commemorative plate? You’re buying into a centuries-old tradition

Coronations on the screen

Elizabeth (1998) about Queen Elizabeth I had a major set piece as the crown was placed on the queen’s head even as there was turmoil in her 16th-century kingdom.

In close-up, Elizabeth closes her eyes and draws on her inner strength as the crown and sceptre are handed to her and her political enemies watch with hostility.

In England My England (1995) the coronation of Charles II in 1685 is farcical, as the king processes behind an ancient and tottering archbishop.

The King’s Speech (2010) showed behind-the-scenes preparation for George VI’s coronation in 1937, including George’s concerns at speaking without a stutter.

The tasteful planning in 1953 to preserve the holiness of the coronation contrasts with other versions of the coronation on British television. British television’s respect in 1953 has given way to parody, comedy and sensationalism.

One of the most outrageously disrespectful depictions of a televised coronation is a 1977 episode of the famous comedy series The Goodies. The Goodies made their parody of the coronation in the year of Elizabeth’s silver jubilee in an episode packed with bizarre and disrespectful comedy.

The actual royal family are injured when performing an entertainment routine and so it is up to one of the Goodies, Tim Brooke-Taylor, to impersonate the injured queen in a re-creation of the coronation.

Another Goodie (also a man) takes the place of Princess Anne. Because of budget cuts, everyone at Westminster Abbey is a cardboard cut-out.

In a chase scene between the royal family and the Goodies, the false Princess Anne leaps on the back of the Archbishop of Canterbury and makes him canter around a field.

There was more comedy and more disrespect in King Ralph (1991), which not only showed the death by electrocution of the entire royal family but also the crown placed on the head of a loud-mouthed American slob who was the only surviving heir to the throne. He then promptly wore it in a bubble bath.

More serious in tone, The Crown in 2016 showed what the BBC’s cameras did not in 1953 with close-up views of the most sacred moments of the ceremony. The high-definition cameras make viewers close and intimate when the 1953 ceremony was veiled and sacred.

In 2009 the drama series The Queen showed Elizabeth II’s accession and coronation not as holy but as part of domestic drama and scandal.

Like both the comedy of the Goodies and the drama of The Crown, it showed both a coronation and a royal family that had shifted from the sacred to the profane. Public ritual masked the private dramas in the royal family including Princess Margaret’s liaison with a divorced man.

Most serious of all, the 2017 television film King Charles III imagined a near future where Charles comes to the throne only to cause political chaos through erratic and unconstitutional acts.

Controversial because it showed Charles’s reign as brief and turbulent, and forced to abdicate by William, the film ends with Charles disgruntled and cast aside, gate-crashing William’s coronation and slamming the crown down on William’s head.

Charles III’s coronation will be a magnificent spectacle. But today’s television viewers will also know the real-life soap opera behind the scenes of today’s royal family. Whether we laugh at comedy or are absorbed by drama, we have seen television as less than respectful of sacred mysteries.

Read more:
From fairytale to gothic ghost story: how 40 years of biopics showed Princess Diana on screen

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

– ref. Coronations – real and imagined – on the screen: the outrageously disrespectful, the controversial and the tasteful – https://theconversation.com/coronations-real-and-imagined-on-the-screen-the-outrageously-disrespectful-the-controversial-and-the-tasteful-204539

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has long said Medicare is in the worst shape it’s been in decades. Premiers have come to successive national cabinet meetings saying primary care is failing – and demanding reform and investment.

Fortunately, the policies Minister Butler outlined today at the National Press Club to strengthen Medicare live up to challenge. These reforms will be funded with a total of A$2.2 billion

They certainly won’t fix everything. But instead of kicking the can down the road, or just addressing superficial symptoms, they start to tackle some of the biggest challenges in general practice: outmoded technology, GPs working with little support, a broken funding model, and restrictive regulations.

Read more:
Health and housing measures announced ahead of budget, and NDIS costs in first ministers’ sights

Diagnosing the problem

There are many visible and urgent crises in health care, ranging from falling rates of bulk-billing to overwhelmed hospital emergency departments. But the minister zeroed in on the one big structural failure driving many of these problems: Medicare hasn’t kept up with the health needs of Australians.

Medicare was established in the 1980s. Today, Australians are living longer, often with chronic diseases. Chronic diseases – such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and depression – are the leading cause of illness and death. Almost half of Australians have one chronic condition; more than half of Australians over 65 have two or more.

As Minister Butler noted, Medicare has not kept up and has “started to show its age”. A system designed for quick, one-off consultations with doctors isn’t a good fit for the more complex range of ongoing care and support many patients need today.

To update Medicare, the minister announced three areas of reform.

1. Modernising digital systems

With people likely to have multiple health conditions, and to see a range of professionals across the health system, it’s more important than ever for patients and clinicians to have relevant and up-to-date health information. That helps clinicians understand their patients’ needs. It also means patients don’t have to provide the same information again and again, or have duplicated, wasteful tests.

Read more:
My Health Record is meant to empower patients – but with little useful information stored, is it worth saving?

Australia’s digital systems are outdated, hard to use and ineffective. MyHealth record, our main digital health tool, is only used by a small minority of specialists, private hospitals and allied health providers. According to Minister Butler, only one in ten specialists use it, and only one in five radiology test results (such as X-rays or MRIs) are uploaded.

Computer systems in practices and hospitals usually can’t talk to each other, and often they aren’t connected to MyHealth Record.

To start to address this, more than $950 million will be spent on digital health, including keeping the Digital Health Agency running and improving MyHealth record.

2. Building bigger teams

To respond to the growing complexity of people’s health needs, most countries are moving towards “multidisciplinary” teams in general practice. Those teams might include nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, psychologies and administrative roles. This approach can improve care and take pressure off GPs.

As with digital systems, Australia is well behind other countries. Our GPs are more likely to work on their own, or with little support. That’s because the way we fund general practice is stuck in the past, mostly restricted to paying GPs for disconnected, one-off consultations.

The Workforce Incentive Program, which funds general practices to hire a range of different health professionals, will be increased. For small clinics, and in areas with too little care to go around, Primary Health Networks (regional bodies responsible for improving primary care) will fund and attract allied health professionals and nurses to work in GP clinics.

But the biggest change is a new way of funding care. Our outdated fee-for-service system rewards rushed consultations, is complex and confusing for doctors, and blocks team-based care. For clinics and patients who choose to participate, a new system dubbed My Medicare will change that.

Patients will register with a preferred practice. The practice will then get a budget for treating them, on top of fees for each visit. Getting a patient-centred budget alongside visit fees will give care teams the flexibility to plan and deliver care in new and better ways.

Registering with a clinic will support strong relationships between patients and their care teams. Funding will be focused on that relationship, not on isolated visits, and will reflect the work of the whole care team, not just the GP.

3. Unlocking workforce skills

Along with measures to attract nurses to primary care settings, there will be a review of the barriers that stop health professionals using all their skills.

Australia has a thicket of inconsistent regulations and complex funding rules that result in double-handling, high costs, wasted talent and GPs having to do too much. The review is an opportunity to clear many of these barriers away, and make sure that workforce roles reflect the best evidence about how to provide safe, high-quality care.

Pharmacists will also do more, with new funding for free vaccinations and expansions to treatment for people addicted to opioids. And there will be more training places in primary care for nurses, and efforts to attract nurses who have left the profession back into general practice.

Read more:
Should pharmacists be able to prescribe common medicines like antibiotics for UTIs? We asked 5 experts

Evolution not revolution – and a team effort

The breadth of the proposals is important – there will be little progress without improvements in all those areas.

At the National Press Club, Minister Butler said “remaking Medicare for the 21st century will take persistent evolution, not overnight revolution”.

That incremental approach is important too, including making the most complex reform, My Medicare, voluntary. These changes will be hard, so participating clinicians and patients must be convinced of the benefits, willing to change, and ready for inevitable setbacks.

The reforms won’t satisfy everyone, but this might be the biggest opportunity for primary care reform in a generation.

The minister remarked on the “pointy elbows and loud voices” of the various professional groups in health care that provided input through his Strengthening Medicare Taskforce. This package needs the support of all the workforce groups involved in primary care, and a strong voice for patients. Hopefully they will work together to make sure these reforms succeed.

Read more:
Here’s why pharmacists are angry at script changes – and why the government is making them anyway

Peter Breadon’s employer, Grattan Institute, has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

Lachlan Fox’s employer, Grattan Institute, has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

– ref. New Medicare reforms won’t fix everything but they start to tackle the system’s biggest problems – https://theconversation.com/new-medicare-reforms-wont-fix-everything-but-they-start-to-tackle-the-systems-biggest-problems-204800

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

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

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn discuss the Reserve Bank’s Tuesday interest rate rise (this time 25 basis points), the 11th increase in a year.

They also canvass a likely boost to JobSeeker payments for people aged 55 and over in next week’s budget, part of the government promised cost-of-living relief package. The budget will deliver a hit to cigarette smokers, with a 5% rise in excise for each of three years, bringing in $3.3 billion in revenue for the government. Health Minister Mark Butler announced the increase in a Tuesday speech that also flagged a comprehensive push to crack down on the vaping scourge.

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

– ref. Word from The Hill: Another rate rise, higher tax on cigarettes, and likely JobSeeker boost for over-55s – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-another-rate-rise-higher-tax-on-cigarettes-and-likely-jobseeker-boost-for-over-55s-204814

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

What was Treasurer Jim Chalmers thinking?

Late last year he set up a committee he specifically asked to tell him how bad JobSeeker was.

The exact words in its terms of reference required it to advise him on the “adequacy, effectiveness and sustainability of income support payments”.

It is true that he was sort of forced to. Independent Senator David Pocock made the committee a condition of supporting an unrelated industrial relations bill in the Senate. Its findings had to be published a fortnight before each budget.

Yet Chalmers chose to set a group whose findings would be hard to ignore. He put on it one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in the adequacy of payments, Professor Peter Whiteford; one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in labour markets, Professor Jeff Borland; and one of Australia’s pre-eminent experts in calculating disadvantage, Associate Professor Ben Phillips.

To give the “interim economic inclusion advisory committee” extra heft, he added the head of the trade union movement, the head of the Businesses Council, the head of the Council of Social Service and the head of the Treasury.

In short, Chalmers set up a committee he couldn’t ignore. So why is he now so keen to talk about everything but its number one recommendation?

Impossible to ignore

Sometimes committees like these end up making so many recommendations that a minister can pick and choose from them.

And this committee did make 37 recommendations, as Finance Minister Katy Gallagher noted this week saying she was “not going to be able to do everything”.

But, unusually, this committee went out of its way to make sure one recommendation stood out above all others.

It reported that, given its short timeframe, it had:

decided to concentrate on the needs of the largest
number of Australians experiencing poverty and disadvantage today, namely people
on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and related working-age payments.

It found every available indicator showed the current rates of JobSeeker and related payments were seriously inadequate, whether measured against payments overseas, against the minimum wage, against pensions, or against poverty lines.

Measured against other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Australia’s JobSeeker payment for a newly-unemployed single was the third worst.

When the higher rates of rent assistance available overseas were taken into account, it became the absolute worst.

Whereas a quarter of a century ago Australia’s unemployment payment was roughly in line with the pension, decades of lifting one in line with prices and the other in line with wages have left us with a base JobSeeker rate of $347 a week ($49.51 per day), compared to a base age pension of $485 a week ($69 per day).

Too little to get medicines or work

Job seekers told the committee that $347 per week is so low, they kept looking around their homes for things to sell. Some had to choose between medicines and electricity. Some could fill only some of their prescriptions. Others could barely afford the petrol to get to medical appointments.

The committee’s findings echoed those of the OECD, which found 12 years ago Australia’s unemployment payment had fallen so low compared to costs as to raise “issues about its effectiveness” in helping the unemployed find jobs.

The committee’s number one recommendation – more important than any other – was that the government

as a first priority, commit to a substantial increase in the base rates of the JobSeeker Payment and related working-age payments

It didn’t ask for JobSeeker and associated payments to be lifted to the pension rate straight away, although it did suggest that the ultimate goal should be 90% of the pension. Ben Phillips has calculated that would cost $5.7 billion per year, which is less than 1% of total government spending.

What the committee didn’t want was a tiny increase along the lines of the $25 a week ($3.60 per day) the Coalition delivered when the coronavirus payments ended in 2021, without a commitment to build to something substantial.

So what is the government now doing in response? Chalmers and Gallagher appear to have decided it’s best to talk about something else.

Changing the subject

Seven News has reported that, while it won’t touch the base rate of JobSeeker and associated payments, the Albanese government will increase the rate for Australians aged 55 and over who have been out of work for some time.

That’s even less of a commitment than it seems.

There are 920,640 Australians on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (which is a lower rate of JobSeeker for young Australians and is also paid to apprentices and students). Only 236,280 of them are aged 55 and over.

Many of those 236,280 are aged 60 and over, and already get a boosted JobSeeker payment; an extra $26 per week ($3.70 per day) after they have been out of work for nine months.

Read more:
Top economists want JobSeeker boosted $100+ per week, tied to wages

If all Chalmers is planning is to extend the extra for the long-term unemployed aged 60 and over to the long-term unemployed aged 55 and over, it will cost little, and deny the vast bulk of those on $49.51 per day hope that things will improve.

Chalmers appeared to verbal his committee on Tuesday by saying it had found women over 55 are the most vulnerable group amongst unemployed Australians.

While the committee did say that (and while 56% of the Australians on JobSeeker in that age group are women), it could not have been clearer in recommending that the base rate of JobSeeker and associated payments be lifted for all Australians.

Chalmers says we ought to wait to see what is in the budget, which is fair enough. But if a commitment to do what his personally selected group of experts has recommended isn’t in this budget, the committee is likely to recommend it again two weeks before the next budget, and again two weeks before the next.

The treasurer has put himself on notice.

Read more:
Boosting JobSeeker is the most effective way to tackle poverty: what the treasurer’s committee told him

Peter Martin 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. Presented with a JobSeeker finding too clear to ignore, he changed the subject: how Jim Chalmers is shaping the budget – https://theconversation.com/presented-with-a-jobseeker-finding-too-clear-to-ignore-he-changed-the-subject-how-jim-chalmers-is-shaping-the-budget-204754

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ariel Liebman, Ariel Liebman Director, Monash Energy Institute and Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University

The federal government’s plan to extend the gas price cap is not surprising, given fundamental market issues remain.

For as long as the war in Ukraine continues, Australian gas will attract premium prices overseas. So the “temporary” $12 per gigajoule cap on wholesale domestic prices – intended to protect local energy users – will no longer be lifted in December, but will stay for a further 18 months at least.

This is just kicking the can down the road, rather than developing a coherent energy policy.

A price cap is the worst of all credible options to establish market or price stability. It creates perverse incentives to continue with inefficient industry and residential energy use practices. It also delays progress towards emissions reduction and transition to renewable energy.

The optimal regulation of natural gas markets has been well studied and applied internationally, and state and commonwealth governments would be well advised to learn from such expertise. The government should, at the very least, consult a range of experts and develop a variety of policy options.

These options should include a gas reservation policy and a new tax on excess gas industry profits that would be shared among consumers.

In tandem, the government should also institute a first principles review of all energy market frameworks, as this issue (among others) shows the fundamental assumptions underpinning current energy market frameworks no longer hold.

Read more:
Surging energy prices are really going to hurt. What can the government actually do?

Introducing a code of conduct

The extension of the gas price cap is just one part of the Albanese government’s proposed mandatory code of conduct (gas code).

It’s worth noting the consultation paper, released on April 26 states the gas code “will ensure domestic prices are reasonable by establishing a price anchor through:

• a price cap, initially set at $12/GJ
• conditional exemptions from the price cap for producers on the basis of satisfactory voluntary enforceable supply commitments or being a small producer who exclusively supplies the domestic market.

So large gas producers can apply to exceed the price cap. That might explain the term “price anchor”.

Read more:
Yes, the government’s price cap is overly generous to gas producers. But it was necessary

The draft code has already been subject to consultation with gas producers and big industrial users over recent months. Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen told the ABC this was about striking “the right balance”.

Large gas producers are being asked to make submissions on the supply and price commitments they would be prepared to make in the context of the proposed exemption framework by May 8.

Submissions on the second and final round of consultation will close on May 12.

Wholesale electricity prices have come down since caps on coal and gas price caps were introduced. (The wholesale electricity price is heavily influenced by the gas price).

But the wholesale gas price for the first quarter of this year is still the highest Q1 price on record. The average price across all Australian Energy Market Operator markets in March was $9.43/GJ, the lowest since January 2022 which was $8.81/GJ. The quarterly average price across all AEMO markets was $11.86/GJ, compared to $9.93/GJ in Q1 2022.

Retail prices for electricity and gas continue to increase.

A fragile framework in need of repair

The relatively minor reduction in gas supply, due to sanctions on Russia, exposed the delicate balance of supply and demand, and the fragility of the global fossil energy system. In the long term, the solution is clear: move to renewables that are not subject to short term supply-demand shocks, and are now cheaper than coal and gas.

The switch to renewables also has another significant benefit – decentralising the production of electricity from concentrated sources of fossil fuels. This can start to address some of the key sources of geopolitical instability related to oil and gas in the middle east, Russia and similar sources.

However, in the short term, the Australian government must curb the worst excesses of the unfettered free market in natural gas and retail electricity. We must give Australians short term relief by decoupling the Australian natural gas market from global markets for a limited period.

The price cap is a poor attempt to do this, but the only sure way is a domestic reservation policy. This would reserve a proportion of gas produced on the east coast for the domestic market.

Western Australia already has one, which mandates 15% of the gas extracted in the state must stay there. That’s why WA gas prices are cheaper. Now the east coast of Australia needs a strong gas reservation policy.

A double whammy

Coupling domestic gas and electricity markets to the extremely volatile and constrained international market is not in the national interest.

It is a double whammy, because not only are power prices overinflated, the resulting profits are not taxed appropriately.

We must fix this, properly.

Australian Research Council, ARENA, DFAT, and a range of Australian energy utilities and energy resources companies,

– ref. Kicking the gas can down the road: why a gas price cap is the worst way to protect energy consumers. – https://theconversation.com/kicking-the-gas-can-down-the-road-why-a-gas-price-cap-is-the-worst-way-to-protect-energy-consumers-204752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Jane Archer, Senior Lecturer, Communication, Edith Cowan University

Parents share content of their children for myriad reasons, including to connect with friends and family, and to seek validation or support.

However, some parents also do this for commercial gain. They manage their children as social media “kidfluencers” – allowing them to work with brands to market products to other children (and adults).

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s latest interim report for the Digital Platforms Services Inquiry has acknowledged key issues relevant to kidfluencers, including privacy concerns and possible labour exploitation issues.

Our research, published recently in the M/C Journal, further highlights how the kidfluencer culture opens the door for possible child exploitation and a host of other problems.

There is a clear need for regulation in this space – and achieving it will require a considered, collective effort.

Is YouTube the world’s most popular babysitter?

Speaking to Forbes in 2019, Eyal Baumel, the chief executive of Yoola (a management company which also manages digital child stars), described YouTube as “the most popular babysitter in the world”.

Since then, the COVID pandemic has prompted a surge in screentime for kids, who are being marketed toys as well as other products normally targeted to adults.

Product lines for kids are big business. In 2021, the global toys market was projected to grow from about US$141 billion to $230.6 billion by 2028.

It’s now common to see YouTube kidfluencers marketing toys to other kids through toy “reviews”. But these videos aren’t the same as traditional product reviews. They’re mash-ups that blur the lines between three major genres: reviews, branded content and entertainment.

The most popular toy review channels have millions of subscribers, and their hosts are some of YouTube’s top earners. Ryan’s World is probably the most well-known channel in this genre. Conservative estimates suggest 10-year-old Ryan Kanji’s family earns about US$25 million each year.

Instakids are on the rise

Apart from YouTube (now more popular among kids than television), a significant number of kids and teens are also spending time on Instagram.

According to a 2021 report by child protection organisation Thorn, about 40% of children under age 13 (out of some 750 interviewed) said they’d used Instagram. This is despite the platform ostensibly only being for people aged 13 and older.

For our latest research, we analysed the Instagram accounts of two Australian influencer siblings to better understand the nature of child-to-child marketing in 2023.

Pixie Curtis, age 11, started her online toy store Pixie’s Pix during COVID, when toy sales rose globally. This came after initial success selling hair bows through Pixie’s Bows, a business managed by her mother, PR entrepreneur and reality TV personality Roxy Jacenko.

Pixie’s Instagram account (which has about 136,000 followers), and her brother Hunter’s (20,000 followers), have been used to promote Pixie’s Pix toys as well as other brands and products.

And although Pixie recently “retired” from the toy shop business, she continues to promote products, including her original line of hair bows and other brands’ skincare and beauty products.

Our research identifies key areas of concern, including:

• a lack of online privacy for kidfluencers, who have many aspects of their lives publicised online
• the commodification of children, and the enabling of a culture geared at up-selling them products and services
• the gendered marketing of toys and an increased focus on appearance for girls (which can be harmful for their self-esteem)
• the “stealth” marketing of toys and other products through advertorials.

Read more:
3 ways app developers keep kids glued to the screen – and what to do about it

Regulation is needed now

So far, the French government appears to be the only one that has taken tangible action to regulate the labour of child social media influencers. Under French law, children below age 16 can only work limited hours, and their earnings must be safeguarded in an account made accessible when they turn 16.

France is also considering legislation to regulate “sharenting” – a portmanteau of sharing and parenting that describes the practice of consistently posting content about one’s children on social media.

In the US, the Coogan Act (named after child star Jackie Coogan) was signed into law in 1939 to regulate child labour in the entertainment industry, but no equivalent laws have been enacted for child social media stars.

Nonetheless, the problems surrounding kidfluencing are starting to gain attention around the world.

Last year a UK House of Commons report investigated the implications of influencers targeting children with advertorials, especially those that provide little to no disclosure of the post being an ad.

The committee made several recommendations, including promoting young people’s social media literacy, developing a code of conduct for influencer marketing, and strengthening the powers of the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority and Competition and Markets Authority.

As a result, the UK’s Department for Education is now “open to exploring legislative ways of improving employment protection for child influencers”.

Read more:
Is 13 too young to have a TikTok or Instagram account?

The unintended consequences of regulation

In January, Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) held its first Summit on Youth Safety and Wellbeing. It might be trying to get on the front foot as regulators continue to scrutinise platforms on issues relevant to young people’s social media use.

But regulating in the kidfluencer space won’t be easy. In March, Utah introduced laws to stop children under 18 having access to social media without parents’ explicit consent – but critics have pointed out the potential negative consequences.

Teens use social media for important connections, including with friends and online support groups. Vulnerable teens may become isolated without online support from their peers. Beyond that, social media provide kids with a sense of enjoyment and identity. Taking this away could do more harm than good.

More work is needed to determine what effective regulation would look like. While parents and educators have a role to play to increase children’s social media literacy, digital platforms and businesses should also step up.

Read more:
‘Anorexia coach’: sexual predators online are targeting teens wanting to lose weight. Platforms are looking the other way

The Conversation is commissioning articles by academics across the world who are researching how society is being shaped by our digital interactions with each other. Read more here

I am an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Kate Delmo 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. ‘Kidfluencer’ culture is harming kids in several ways – and there’s no meaningful regulation of it – https://theconversation.com/kidfluencer-culture-is-harming-kids-in-several-ways-and-theres-no-meaningful-regulation-of-it-204277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Enzo Palombo, Professor of Microbiology, Swinburne University of Technology

Most people would expect a freezer can keep perishable food fresh and safe from spoilage for many months. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Have you ever noticed a funky smell in your freezer? Where does it come from and what can be done to fix the problem?

Hardy microbes and pungent chemicals

There are several causes for bad smells coming from your freezer. Typically, the culprits are microbes – bacteria, yeasts and moulds.

Although a freezer dramatically slows down the growth of most common spoilage microbes, some can still thrive if the temperature rises above -18℃ (the recommended freezer temperature). This can happen if there is a power outage for more than a few hours, or if you put something hot straight in the freezer.

Food spills and open containers provide an opportunity for microbes to get to work. It’s also worth noting that many microbes will survive freezing and start growing again once conditions are favourable – for example, if you remove the food, partially thaw it, and return it to the freezer.

Two things happen when food breaks down. First, as microbes start to grow, several pungent chemicals are produced. Second, the fats and flavours that are part of the food itself can and will be released.

These are generally referred to as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They are the pleasant aromas that we sense when we eat, but VOCs can also be produced by bacteria.

For example, many of us would be familiar with the smells that come from fermentation – a microbial process. When fermenting a food, we intentionally contaminate it with microbes of known characteristics, or provide conditions that favour the growth of desirable microbes and subsequent production of aromatic compounds.

By contrast, uncontrolled food spoilage is problematic, especially when the contaminating microbes can cause disease.

Freezing changes the food

It is not only microbial growth that can lead to undesirable odours. There’s a suite of chemical processes happening in the freezer, too.

Freezing causes physical changes to foods, often enhancing their breakdown. Many of us would be familiar with “freezer burn” on meats and other foods, as well as ice crystals on frozen food.

This phenomenon is called “salt rejection”. Depending on how rapidly something is frozen, salts can sometimes be concentrated, as pure water freezes at a higher temperature than water with things dissolved in it – like sugars and salts. On a large scale, this happens to icebergs in the ocean. As the sea water freezes, salt is removed. Thus, the iceberg is composed of fresh water, and the surrounding sea water becomes a saltier and denser brine.

In a similar way, as water in food freezes, organic molecules are concentrated and expelled. If these are volatile, they move about the freezer and stick to other things. Where they end up depends on what else is around.

Some of the volatiles like water. We call them “hydrophilic” or water loving; those are the ones that will make your food taste bad. Other are more water-hating or “hydrophobic” and they stick to things like silicone ice cube trays, making them go smelly.

Domestic freezers are commonly attached to a refrigerator, and this provides another opportunity for smells to move through the systems. The two units share a single cooling source and airflow channel. If your fridge has foul odours from the food inside (natural or after microbial spoilage), it is very likely they will migrate to your freezer.

Read more:
How colour-coding your fridge can stop your greens going to waste

Help, my freezer smells!

There are some simple steps you can take to stop your freezer from smelling.

First, try to prevent odours from developing in the first place by covering the food. If you place food in an airtight container (glass is best), it will dramatically slow the release of any aromatic compounds produced by bacteria or the food itself. Covered food is also less likely to absorb smells and flavours from other foods around it.

If the smells have already developed, you can eliminate them by following a few simple steps, including a thorough clean.

• Remove all items from the freezer and inspect the foods for any spoilage, freezer burn or unpleasant odours.

• Discard anything that has developed ice crystals and store the rest in a cooler box while attending to the freezer itself. You should also inspect the fridge and discard any bad-smelling foods.

• Once you have removed all items, take out the shelves and clean up spills or crumbs.

• Wipe down all surfaces using warm soapy water or a mix of two tablespoons of baking soda with warm water.

• Wash all the shelves and ice compartments and let them dry completely.

If the smells are not removed with these simple cleaning steps, the freezer may require a deep clean, which involves turning off the unit and letting it “breathe” for a few days.

Placing some baking soda inside the freezer before adding food can help to absorb any residual odours. For serious smells where crevices or insulation are contaminated, you may need a service technician.

In short, even though we think freezers keep things “fresh”, microbes can still proliferate in there. Make sure to clean your freezer now and then to keep your food safe and healthy.

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. Here’s why your freezer smells so bad – and what you can do about it – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-your-freezer-smells-so-bad-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-203058