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

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Allison, Research Fellow, Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney

Justice reinvestment emerged in the United States more than 20 years ago as a way to reduce mass incarceration and its vast costs by addressing the social drivers of imprisonment.

Through justice reinvestment, communities identify and develop responses to issues that feed high rates of re-incarceration locally, resourced through a “reinvestment” of funds drawn from prison budgets. The focus is often on better access for ex-prisoners to essentials such as accommodation and reducing inequity at a community level in health, education and other outcomes.

The Albanese government is currently implementing its 2022 commitment to A$81 million in funding to support justice reinvestment initiatives in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The New South Wales government also recently pledged $9.8 million for Aboriginal-led justice reinvestment initiatives in Kempsey and Nowra.

But what does “reinvestment” mean in practice? Who decides what gets funded and how?

To find out more, we spoke with Aboriginal communities in the NSW towns of Bourke, Moree and Mount Druitt.

Our report, produced alongside these Aboriginal communities, aims to convey their understanding of justice reinvestment.

This work invites government to co-design with community what “reinvestment” means, led by those Aboriginal communities where local solutions are already underway.

Read more:
‘A life changing experience’: how adult literacy programs can keep First Nations people out of the criminal justice system

Investing in Aboriginal-led solutions

We heard that current criminal justice approaches are not working in Aboriginal communities like Moree and Mt Druitt. Far too many Aboriginal people are taken off-country to be locked up away from family, employment and schooling.

This fractures community and cultural connections and other elements of a healthy, thriving Aboriginal community. The scale at which this occurs does more harm than good and drives re-incarceration. As one Moree community member told us:

They just come out worse. It’s like setting them up to fail. Like, it doesn’t fix it at all. Do you know anyone that’s gone to jail and come out and been good, like better?

Aboriginal people in Moree and Mount Druitt know what’s needed to turn this around. One Moree community member said:

As we’ve been saying for years, we’re the only ones that can tell people what’s wrong, what’s the best way to fix it. And we’re the only ones that can actually do it.

These communities have developed Aboriginal-led justice reinvestment governance structures and programs that strengthen culture and self-determination. They aim to improve life opportunities to keep more Aboriginal people – particularly young people – out of custody.

In Mount Druitt, justice reinvestment includes Mounty Yarns, a project led by local young people with both lived experience of incarceration and ideas about how to reduce contact with the justice system that they want heard:

We don’t want the next generation to go through what we went through. We want to be a voice so others don’t have to keep repeating their stories.

Aboriginal communities like Moree and Mount Druitt need increased access to resources and decision-making to implement their solutions.

They are calling for backing to put their ideas in motion, including partnerships, programs and interventions they identify as crucial to preventing offending.

These ideas, once implemented, may work well quickly, take time to succeed or perhaps struggle. Increasing community agency is a crucial outcome in itself, regardless.

Funding justice reinvestment

Diverting funding from prisons to resource justice reinvestment in communities like Moree or Mount Druitt is appealing to Aboriginal people. They want divestment from what they see as highly punitive institutions that have long caused significant harm.

One idea for a source of funding might be a state-level mechanism requiring the NSW government to deposit an annual levy into a justice reinvestment fund.

Funds could potentially be drawn from justice spending allocations, calculated on the basis of the number of Aboriginal people imprisoned in NSW in the year in question.

Aboriginal people would determine where this money is spent, with priority given to justice reinvestment and other Aboriginal community-led and prevention-focused approaches likely to reduce over-representation.

As this is achieved, the levy will reduce, as will justice and related costs for government.

Importantly, the enormous social and economic costs for Aboriginal people of mass incarceration would also be averted. As one Mount Druitt community member told us:

What’s the outcome of prison spending? A criminal record. There’s lots of things they can do before they chuck them into jail but that’s the first option out here. Help him reconnect with his family, his culture. You could do a lot of things with that money.

Aboriginal people in Mount Druitt and Moree told us of other ways to “invest” in community-led ideas for change.

They want funding decisions to be informed by community knowledge of which services and programs will best contribute to outcomes likely to help keep Aboriginal people out of prison.

One Mount Druitt community member told us:

We’ve got no control here in Western Sydney. We need to have more of a say when we’re getting in funding here. How is that funding going to be distributed?

They have also identified “tipping points” that push Aboriginal people into the justice system. These include inappropriate or biased police decisions about bail, inadequate post-release support and school exclusions for younger people. They are calling for government reform in these areas.

Achieving change

The message from our report is clear: Aboriginal communities want to determine their own priorities for change and to lead that change. This is crucial to reducing Aboriginal over-representation.

Commitment by governments to funding justice reinvestment initiatives is definitely a positive step in the right direction.

Alongside funding, reform to government ways of working and policy will also be essential to ensuring justice reinvestment has the best chance of success.

Read more:
Australian governments should follow the ACT’s lead in building communities, not prisons

Fiona Allison completed research on reinvestment as a consultant for Just Reinvest NSW. As an academic at Jumbunna, she is also involved in the co-design process informing implementation of the federal government commitment to justice reinvestment.

Daniel Daylight works for JustReinvest NSW.

Thomas Duncan works for JustReinvest NSW.

– ref. ‘Too much money is spent on jails and policing’: what Aboriginal communities told us about funding justice reinvestment to keep people out of prison – https://theconversation.com/too-much-money-is-spent-on-jails-and-policing-what-aboriginal-communities-told-us-about-funding-justice-reinvestment-to-keep-people-out-of-prison-200531

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Becky Freeman, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney

In a major speech today, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said vaping has become “the number one behavioural issue in high schools”.

The government today proposed a suite of reforms aimed at reducing vaping.

But what does the evidence show about the prevalence of vaping in schools and the kind of behavioural issues associated with it?

My colleagues and I have been researching teen vape use through the Generation Vape study. We’ve been tracking teenagers’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours about using vapes (also known as e-cigarettes).

This has involved interviewing and surveying young people across Australia aged 13–17, their parents and carers and secondary school teachers, principals and administrators.

Here’s what we know so far.

Read more:
Albanese government launches war on vaping, declaring it the ‘number-one behavioural issue in high schools’

How prevalent is vaping in high schools?

Of the 721 young people we have surveyed so far:

• 32% had ever vaped (we call these people “ever-vapers”)

• 54% of ever-vapers had never smoked cigarettes before starting vaping

• ever-smokers were seven times more likely to be ever-vapers than those who had never smoked (in other words, young people who have tried smoking are much more likely to have tried vaping)

• ever-vapers were 18 times more likely to be ever-smokers than those who had never vaped (in other words, young people who had ever tried vaping were significantly more likely to have ever tried smoking).

Most of our respondents said the main factor driving their vaping was flavouring and taste.

In other words, about one in three teenagers have tried vaping. Only a few years ago it was really rare, but it’s exploded in use.

We also asked about frequency of vaping. We found 10% typically used vapes on six or more days a month, but the fact that most are occasional users suggests we have a window of opportunity to act now before these people become addicted.

Occasional users told us they are trying vaping because they are curious, are interested in experiencing the hit from nicotine, and don’t imagine themselves getting addicted. Unfortunately, they often do find soon themselves addicted, which is why a public health response is so urgently needed.

Our data also shows:

• more than half of those trying a vape for the first time are under age 16

• more than half of ever-vapers reported using a vape they knew contained nicotine

• vaping is seen as a socially acceptable behaviour separate and unique from smoking.

One 17-year-old ever-vaper told us “no-one” buys the non-nicotine devices

because they don’t give you head spins, so they are pointless. It’s almost like wasting money.

Another 17-year-old past vaper told us:

Oh, you can get ones without nicotine but I don’t think they’re very popular […] it tells you when you buy a vape how much nicotine’s in it. It’s usually 5%.

What are teachers, principals and school administrators saying?

In our surveys and interviews with teachers, principals and school administrators, we found:

• 58% of teachers have confiscated vaping products from students two or more times a week

• 86% of teachers are concerned or very concerned about students vaping in their school

• 62% of teachers are aware of vaping products being sold on school grounds.

Teachers reported feeling they had to police students by searching bags and pencil cases, and that having to manage vaping as a disciplinary issue took time away from teaching.

Principals and school administrators talked about having to

• use school funds to install vape detectors in school toilets

• liaise with parents of children caught vaping

• think about safety issues presented by people coming to the school gate to sell vapes to students.

If children are addicted, we don’t want to see them kicked out of school. It’s not their fault they have become addicted to these products. That’s why we need a public health response rather than a punitive response.

One principal told us:

it’s probably the single most disruptive thing in our school at the moment.

A different teacher said:

even when you catch them they deny to your face and then you have argue […]
it becomes a massive issue and 40 minutes of your life is taken away just with this
one thing when you should be doing other things as a teacher.

Another principal said:

We can bring it up with the kids as much as we want, but I think we need a little bit of traction there beyond school too.

What kind of behaviour issues are linked to vaping in school?

Teens who vape regularly reported:

• experiencing nicotine withdrawal while at school, which can feel like anxiety or stress (many told us they vape for their mental health, not understanding the stress is linked to the addiction)

• sneaking out of class to vape

• feeling distracted and finding it difficult to focus in the classroom

• feeling stressed about needing to hide their device and their vaping while at school.

One 17-year-old told us:

I’d see people at school […] at nine o’clock in the morning going, “Oh do you have a vape? Do you have a vape? I need one. I haven’t had one all day”, and begging people for it […] so I think it’s mostly an addiction thing with people who are heavy users.

What is the evidence telling us is needed?

The evidence tells us we really need to get these products out of the hands of young people. That’s why making them harder to buy is vital.

About 80% of our respondents told us it was easy to get vapes; it was common knowledge who sold them at school or that certain people would sell them by the school gate.

That’s why the importation ban in the government reforms is so important, and why it’s crucial states and territories work with the federal government to get vapes out of corner shops and petrol stations. It’s about reducing access so kids aren’t exposed to it as they are walking to school.

Is it really the number one behavioural issue in high school?

It’s impossible to say. But certainly the data is telling us it is a very big issue.

Of the teachers we surveyed, 86% said they were “highly concerned” about vaping at school. In interviews, teachers often described vaping as the key issue they are dealing with outside the classroom.

Schools have to deal with so many issues, so if we can reduce this one or even take it off their plate altogether then we should.

Read more:
We asked over 700 teens where they bought their vapes. Here’s what they said

Becky Freeman is an Expert Advisor to the Cancer Council Tobacco Issues Committee and a member of the Cancer Institute Vaping Communications Advisory Panel. These are unpaid roles. She has received relevant competitive grants that include a focus on e-cigarettes/vaping from the NHMRC, MRFF, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; relevant research contracts from the Cancer Institute NSW and the Cancer Council NSW; relevant personal/consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, BMJ Tobacco Control, the Heart Foundation NSW, the US FDA, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council NSW; and relevant travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.

– ref. Vaping and behaviour in schools: what does the research tell us? – https://theconversation.com/vaping-and-behaviour-in-schools-what-does-the-research-tell-us-204794

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Howard Manns, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University

If slang is the people’s poetry, then Australia lost a poet last week.

Barry Humphries breathed life into Australia’s “slanguage” – but it was often an imagined life. When it comes to their lexicon, Australians take pride in skirting the thin line between reality, romanticisation and furphies. Humphries took linguistic invention to extremes – plucking words and phrases out of obscurity, but also pushing or exceeding acceptability.

In this way, Humphries joined others who have guided Australia into a sense of nationhood by contributing words, attitudes and a few porkies to our national lexicon.

“Slangy philosophers” in Australian history

Slangy philosophers emerge at Australia’s key points, and elevate certain words, phrases and verse to help us make sense of our national experience.

In his 1898 dictionary, E.E. Morris famously noted the impoverished state of “Austral English”: “there never was an instance in history when so many new names were needed, and there never will be such an occasion again.”

Australia’s slangy philosophers have historically risen to the occasion. Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson wrote on topics of billies boiling, mateship and waltzing Matilda. However, they didn’t always agree on whether and to what degree the bush should or might be romanticised.

Lawson was perhaps the less sentimental of the pair, writing in his poem The City Bushman (1892):

Don’t you fancy that the poets better give the bush a rest,
Ere they raise a just rebellion in the over-written west?

A certain romanticisation of Australian ways of speaking, and disagreement about those ways of speaking, seem to be part of Australia’s linguistic landscape. During a great period of Australian myth-making (1890-1925), newspapers and magazines such as the Argus, Australian Tit-Bits and the Bulletin enabled the public to write letters or stories and debate one another.

Readers aggressively debated Australian word etymologies – and the degree to which these words were or were not Australian. For instance, a Bulletin writer by the name of “Blue Duck” dismissed the emerging Australian slang, writing, “Much Australian slang is simply cockney flash, introduced every mailboat by stewards”.

While Mr. B. Duck might be overstating the case, his comment hints at a wider truth. Many aspects of the Australian lexicon first emerge in Britain, or in the imaginations of our middle-class citizens or artists.

For instance, C.J. Dennis’s fictional larrikin Ginger Mick – one of Australia’s original slangy philosophers – had a style of speaking that was more a middle-class flight of fancy — some argue more cockney than Australian.

But Mick’s imagined ways of speaking became loved by Australians, and played a role in our emerging nationhood. We might argue that Barry Humphries and Bazza McKenzie did the same, albeit in a different era.

Humphries and the lexicon of New Nationalism

Barry Humphries’s Bazza McKenzie character emerged during Australia’s New Nationalism in the 1960s/1970s. In linguistic terms, this was an era of growing colloquiality in Australian English.

Linguists Peter Collins and Xinyue Yao linked the identifiable rise in Australian colloquialisms from 1961-1991 to:

an upsurge of nationalistic fervor in Australia at this time, epitomised most colourfully and infamously in the cult of “Ockerdom” of the 1970s, and heralding the decline of Britishness in Australia.

In other words, while Australians have long been noted to speak more colloquially than their American and British counterparts, this bloomed during the era of New Nationalism — and shows little signs of stopping.

Bazza McKenzie – in the British magazine Private Eye – leaned into the Ockerdom of the era. Humphries noted that

words like cobber and bonzer still intrude as a sop to Pommy readers, though such words are seldom, if ever, used in present-day Australia.

However, Bazza might have thrown such words a lifeline. Humphries took pride in giving old Aussie words and phrases a second life, drawing inspiration from school days, public life or friends like “Shearing Bill, who had spent most of his life in the outback […] collecting arcane vernacular”.

In 1965, Humphries noted he’d first heard chunder in Victoria’s elite private schools ten years earlier (though it was already being used “by the Surfies, a repellent breed of sunbronzed hedonists […]”). When it hit the big screen chunderama style, it was Bazza who popularised its (probably false) origin story, the nautical warning for others to “watch under” – successful slang is usually buttressed by tall etymological tales.

Bazza, taboo and the Australian lexicon

Of course, Humphries – especially through Bazza McKenzie – didn’t just breath fresh life into old Australian words, but coined many of his own. Slang generally flourishes wherever things go bump in the night, and Humphries had in his sights Victorian taboos around body parts and bodily effluvia. These taboos guided our public imagination (or euphemism) at least into the 1980s, and for some beyond.

Humphries coined or popularised cheeky ways to discuss vomiting (for example, technicolour yawn, liquid laugh (down the great white telephone)), urinating (such as drain the dragon, point Percy at the Porcelain) and masturbation (for example flog the lizard, jerking the gherkin). He was also a master of the frankenphrase – pulling together bits and pieces of the Australian lexicon, and reinventing them.

Through Bazza, Humphries took phrases based on ugly as […] to new levels, popularising a shift away from religious connotations of “ugly” (such as ugly as the devil, ugly as sin) toward containers and orifices as the standard of comparison (for example, ugly as a hatful of arseholes) – in Australia at least.

In some cases, Humphries went too far, especially for modern sensibilities – his character Sir Les Patterson deliberately sought to offend. Humphries popularised more than a few pejorative terms for marginalised people – words that we won’t repeat here.

Beer-swilling Bazza and our slang from ‘Down Under’

Not only did Humphries change Aussie slang, he changed the way we thought about it. Colin Hay cites the influence of Bazza McKenzie on Men at Work’s iconic song “Down Under”:

He’s a master of comedy and he had a lot of expressions that we grew up listening to and emulating. The verses were very much inspired by a character he had called Barry McKenzie, who was a beer-swilling Australian who travelled to England, a very larger-than-life character.

To survive, slang expressions require what Ben Zimmer once described as a “perfect lexicographical storm”. We think there are usually four things that create this storm, and successful Bazza-isms have them all: celebrity endorsement, handiness, imagination and a magic furphy or two.

Sure, Bazza’s wondrous contributions may not be part of most people’s active vocab, they do belong to a kind of (national) lexical Wunderkammer – loved, admired and trotted out as stellar examples of Australian slang.

Howard Manns receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

Isabelle Burke receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

Kate Burridge receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

Simon Musgrave receives funding from ARC SR200200350.

– ref. From ‘technicolour yawn’ to ‘draining the dragon’: how Barry Humphries breathed new life into Australian slang – https://theconversation.com/from-technicolour-yawn-to-draining-the-dragon-how-barry-humphries-breathed-new-life-into-australian-slang-204542

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

When people think about child maltreatment, many think of physical or sexual abuse. But a key finding of our Australian Child Maltreatment Study, published last month, is that emotional abuse is widespread and associated with similar harms as sexual abuse.

It is an overlooked type of child maltreatment that requires urgent attention.

Read more:
Major study reveals two-thirds of people who suffer childhood maltreatment suffer more than one kind

What is emotional abuse?

Emotional abuse is a pattern of parent behaviour and interactions that communicate (verbally or non-verbally) to the child they are worthless, unloved, unwanted or that their only value is in meeting someone else’s needs.

It can include verbal hostility (insults, humiliation, hurtful name calling), rejection (such as parents or carers saying they hate a child, don’t love them, or wished they were dead) or denying emotional responsiveness (consistently ignoring or withholding love or affection).

Emotional abuse is a repetitive pattern of hostile interactions, as opposed to occasional angry words in an otherwise loving and nurturing relationship.

How common is emotional abuse?

Our research found 30.9% of Australians experienced emotional abuse during their childhood.

Rates among young people aged 16–24 years are even higher (34.6%) suggesting it may be increasing.

More women experienced child emotional abuse than men, and there are higher rates of emotional abuse among gender diverse people.

The messages that emotional abuse sends children are hurtful. For example, one in ten young people had a parent tell them they hated them, didn’t love them, or wished they had never been born. We found most emotional abuse extended over a period of years.

The paradox of emotional abuse is that it comes from the most important adult(s) in a child’s life. And this hurt occurs while a child’s sense of self-worth and identity is developing. It negatively influences the way children perceive themselves for many years – potentially throughout their lifetime.

What is the impact of emotional abuse?

Compared to Australians who were not maltreated in childhood, and after adjusting for demographics and other co-occurring forms of child maltreatment, adults who experienced emotional abuse in childhood are:

• 1.9 times as likely to have a major depressive disorder
• 2.1 times as to have generalised anxiety disorder
• 2.0 times as likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the past year they are:

• 2.1 times as likely to have self-harmed
• 2.3 times more likely to have attempted suicide
• 1.9 times more likely to have consulted a psychologist
• 1.4 times as likely to have consulted a psychiatrist.

There are links between people who experience emotional abuse and obesity, binge drinking alcohol and cannabis-dependence. These findings back up other studies worldwide that show the physical and mental health harms associated with emotional abuse of children. These come with substantial personal, social, and economic costs.

Read more:
Paramedics could sound early warnings of child abuse or neglect – but they need support and more training

How can we reduce emotional abuse?

A comprehensive approach is required, starting with broad policy change, and encompassing a range of strategies including parenting interventions, mental health interventions and population education approaches.

Fundamentally, emotional abuse is about parent-child interactions. Evidence-based parenting supports should be widely available and easily accessible. Supports that aim to enhance positive, loving parent-child relationships, teach non-abusive parenting strategies, combat negative attributions, and enhance parental confidence are likely to be most effective for the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment.

These programs teach parents why children behave as they do and provide practical strategies for communicating with children and showing affection, encouraging positive behaviour and using clear, calm limit-setting and discipline to manage problem behaviour.

However, there is more evidence available for physical abuse prevention and further research on what works for specific types of maltreatment, and for whom, is needed.

There is evidence the right kind of help can prevent psychological aggression in some parents. This has not been studied at a wider population level but is possible. To do this a blend of supports of different intensities would be needed. This could include public health campaigns using mass and social media similar to the Slip Slop Slap campaign which resulted in reductions in melanoma rates.

Prevention and early intervention programs could be delivered through pre-schools and schools. More intensive support for high-needs families could be offered through maternal and family health services, allied health professionals and mental health specialists.

All children deserve a loving environment

Population studies of parenting interventions have demonstrated reductions in rates of physical abuse across whole communities, indicating even parents who do not actively attend parenting programs benefit from the their availability. This likely occurs through changing social norms and social contagion effects. Since these focus on strengthening parent-child relationships and reducing known parental risk factors, its likely they would also reduce rates of emotional abuse. More research in this area is sorely needed.

Parenting support must be embedded within broader social and policy changes designed to support families. These include those focused on reducing financial strain and food insecurity, and those that aim to increase access to high-quality childcare, education, and health and mental health services.

All children deserve to be raised in loving, safe, nurturing environments. Emotional abuse should not remain a “silent” form of child maltreatment. It must not be ignored just because the harm is not physical or sexual. We must prioritise the reduction of emotional abuse alongside other forms of child maltreatment – starting with the parents and carers at risk of inflicting it.

For parenting support contact Parentline. The Australian government has also made an evidence-based online parenting program available for free.

Dr Haslam has received a range of grants and funding including from the Australian government. In addition to her primary employment at QUT she holds an honourary research position at the University of Queensland’s Parenting and Family Research Centre. The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by Uniquest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. Dr Haslam has no share or ownership of TPI. Dr Haslam receives royalties from TPI. TPI had no involvement in the writing of this article. She is a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance.

The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by Uniquest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. Dr Morawska has no share or ownership of TPI. Dr Morawska receives royalties from TPI.TPI had no involvement in the writing of this article. Dr Morawska is an employee at UQ. Dr Morawska is a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance.

James Graham Scott receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Emotional abuse is a pattern of hurtful messages – building parenting skills could help prevent it – https://theconversation.com/emotional-abuse-is-a-pattern-of-hurtful-messages-building-parenting-skills-could-help-prevent-it-203556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Maher, Computational Neuroscientist and Biomedical Engineer, University of Sydney

The technology to decode our thoughts is drawing ever closer. Neuroscientists at the University of Texas have for the first time decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct language and meaning from stories that people hear, see or even imagine.

In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, Alexander Huth and colleagues successfully recovered the gist of language and sometimes exact phrases from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain recordings of three participants.

Technology that can create language from brain signals could be enormously useful for people who cannot speak due to conditions such as motor neurone disease. At the same time, it raises concerns for the future privacy of our thoughts.

Language decoded

Language decoding models, also called “speech decoders”, aim to use recordings of a person’s brain activity to discover the words they hear, imagine or say.

Until now, speech decoders have only been used with data from devices surgically implanted in the brain, which limits their usefulness. Other decoders which used non-invasive brain activity recordings have been able to decode single words or short phrases, but not continuous language.

Read more:
We’ve been connecting brains to computers longer than you’d expect. These 3 companies are leading the way

The new research used the blood oxygen level dependent signal from fMRI scans, which shows changes in blood flow and oxygenation levels in different parts of the brain. By focusing on patterns of activity in brain regions and networks that process language, the researchers found their decoder could be trained to reconstruct continuous language (including some specific words and the general meaning of sentences).

Specifically, the decoder took the brain responses of three participants as they listened to stories, and generated sequences of words that were likely to have produced those brain responses. These word sequences did well at capturing the general gist of the stories, and in some cases included exact words and phrases.

The researchers also had the participants watch silent movies and imagine stories while being scanned. In both cases, the decoder often managed to predict the gist of the stories.

For example, one user thought “I don’t have my driver’s licence yet”, and the decoder predicted “she has not even started to learn to drive yet”.

Further, when participants actively listened to one story while ignoring another story played simultaneously, the decoder could identify the meaning of the story being actively listened to.

How does it work?

The researchers started out by having each participant lie inside an fMRI scanner and listen to 16 hours of narrated stories while their brain responses were recorded.

These brain responses were then used to train an encoder – a computational model that tries to predict how the brain will respond to words a user hears. After training, the encoder could quite accurately predict how each participant’s brain signals would respond to hearing a given string of words.

However, going in the opposite direction – from recorded brain responses to words – is trickier.

The encoder model is designed to link brain responses with “semantic features” or the broad meanings of words and sentences. To do this, the system uses the original GPT language model, which is the precursor of today’s GPT-4 model. The decoder then generates sequences of words that might have produced the observed brain responses.

The accuracy of each “guess” is then checked by using it to predict previously recorded brain activity, with the prediction then compared to the actual recorded activity.

During this resource-intensive process, multiple guesses are generated at a time, and ranked in order of accuracy. Poor guesses are discarded and good ones kept. The process continues by guessing the next word in the sequence, and so on until the most accurate sequence is determined.

Words and meanings

The study found data from multiple, specific brain regions – including the speech network, the parietal-temporal-occipital association region, and prefrontal cortex – were needed for the most accurate predictions.

One key difference between this work and earlier efforts is the data being decoded. Most decoding systems link brain data to motor features or activity recorded from brain regions involved in the last step of speech output, the movement of the mouth and tongue. This decoder works instead at the level of ideas and meanings.

One limitation of using fMRI data is its low “temporal resolution”. The blood oxygen level dependent signal rises and falls over approximately a 10-second period, during which time a person might have heard 20 or more words. As a result, this technique cannot detect individual words, but only the potential meanings of sequences of words.

No need for privacy panic (yet)

The idea of technology that can “read minds” raises concerns over mental privacy. The researchers conducted additional experiments to address some of these concerns.

These experiments showed we don’t need to worry just yet about having our thoughts decoded while we walk down the street, or indeed without our extensive cooperation.

A decoder trained on one person’s thoughts performed poorly when predicting the semantic detail from another participant’s data. What’s more, participants could disrupt the decoding by diverting their attention to a different task such as naming animals or telling a different story.

Read more:
Our neurodata can reveal our most private selves. As brain implants become common, how will it be protected?

Movement in the scanner can also disrupt the decoder as fMRI is highly sensitive to motion, so participant cooperation is essential. Considering these requirements, and the need for high-powered computational resources, it is highly unlikely that someone’s thoughts could be decoded against their will at this stage.

Finally, the decoder does not currently work on data other than fMRI, which is an expensive and often impractical procedure. The group plans to test their approach on other non-invasive brain data in the future.

Christina Maher 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 close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans – https://theconversation.com/how-close-are-we-to-reading-minds-a-new-study-decodes-language-and-meaning-from-brain-scans-204691

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

For much of the past two decades, polarisation and hyper-partisanship have weakened Western democracies, most notably in the United States and Britain. Australia has not escaped, although the consequences here have been nothing as compared with Brexit or the insurrection in Washington on January 6, 2021.

Social media has been the primary agent of this democratic dysfunction, but parts of the professional mass media have also contributed.

Impartial news reporting is an antidote to polarisation. The Voice referendum, with its impassioned arguments on both sides, presents the Australian media with an opportunity to show their capacity for truth-telling and impartiality.

While the overall performance so far is patchy, there does seem to be a lessening in the polarisation that was such a significant feature of federal political reporting between the overthrow of Kevin Rudd by Julia Gillard in 2010 and the defeat of the Morrison government in 2021.

A straw in the wind was a column by Chris Mitchell, the former editor-in-chief of The Australian, in a recent commentary on coverage of the referendum. While supportive of the referendum’s critics, he made an appeal to both sides to respect the other.

It was an important point. As the Harvard political scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued in their book How Democracies Die, it is lack of respect for the opposing side that has been so corrosive of democracy, especially in the US, over the past two decades.

There are other signs the Australian media are approaching the task of covering the referendum in a way that serves the public interest. Many platforms, for example the Canberra Times and the ABC, have published factual and straightforward “explainers” setting out the basics of the referendum.

This is one way in which the media are doing their essential job of providing the public with a bedrock of reliable information. Another is by tracking public opinion through polls, and these have been reported at frequent intervals, revealing a slow but steady increase in support for the Voice proposal.

The latest YouGov poll is particularly informative because it shows results state-by-state as well as nationally. On those data, the “yes” side has majority support nationally and in four of the six states, which meets the double-majority requirement for a referendum to succeed.

So far so good in terms of coverage. But achieving impartiality in news is also challenging the media to abandon some bad old habits, and not everyone so far is up to the task.

There are plentiful examples where journalists have succumbed to the temptation to fall back on the simplest, safest yet professionally inadequate way to achieve impartiality: by simply reporting what someone says and then finding someone else to oppose it.

It is tempting because it saves time and does not demand independent evaluative thinking. It is professionally inadequate because it is journalism as stenography, rightly dismissed nowadays as “he said, she said” journalism.

The result is that absurd or far-fetched propositions go unchallenged other than by an opposing political voice. When this happens, journalism’s evaluative element goes missing, leaving the audience to figure out the rights and wrongs for themselves.

Maintaining impartiality does not require the media to publish nonsense, and certainly does not require them to publish nonsense without drawing attention to the facts or contrary evidence.

The starkest examples come from stories about the scope and power of the proposed Voice.

There is plenty of material against which to test what people say about this:

• the final report of the Indigenous Voice Co-design group, which is the basis for the government’s approach

• submissions to the parliamentary select committee inquiring into the matter from constitutional experts

• the opinion of Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue, contained in his submission to that inquiry

• the exact wording of the proposed constitutional amendment.

The best of the reporting so far imposes these tests. A good example was the challenge on Melbourne commercial radio 3AW by Tony Jones to Sussan Ley, deputy leader of the Liberal Party, who opportunistically seized on the approach of Anzac Day to say the Voice could seek to alter Australia’s national public holidays.

The worst of the reporting does not impose these tests. An example was a front-page story in The Australian, amplified by Sky News, in which Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the Voice could offer advice on interest rates.

Attempts like this to panic the population have their parallels in the scaremongering over native title 30 years ago.

Read more:
Australian politics explainer: the Mabo decision and native title

Then, the likes of Jeff Kennett, as Liberal premier of Victoria, promoted the populist furphy – which he later repudiated – that native title represented a threat to people’s backyard.

The proposed new section 129 of the Constitution, which would establish the Voice, states the function of the Voice in these terms:

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Commonwealth Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The key word is “representations”. As various legal opinions make clear, this word was carefully chosen in preference to “advice” because it has less forceful connotations.

Read more:
What happens if the government goes against the advice of the Voice to Parliament?

A second argument against the Voice – that its representations would lead to a cascade of litigation – can be tested against the opinions of Professor Emerita Anne Twomey, Donaghue and other constitutional law experts, who say this would not happen.

A third argument is that the Voice is a mechanism to enshrine racial difference as a feature of the Constitution.

The final report of the co-design group argues Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are, in practice, the only racial groups in Australia for whom laws are made exclusively. The implication is that racial difference is already part of the basis for law-making in certain circumstances, and that fairness dictates those people directly affected by such laws should have a say in their formulation.

People who put forward arguments against the Voice deserve a fair hearing. Inconsistencies in the wording of some of the documentation raise legitimate questions, and it is also legitimate to question why the executive government has been included alongside the parliament as an institution to which the Voice can make representations.

However, impartiality requires that where answers to these questions exist, they should be reported, not left hanging in the air for the audience to make of it what they will. With an issue as ripe for polarisation as the Voice, that is not good enough.

Denis Muller 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. Journalists reporting on the Voice to Parliament do voters a disservice with ‘he said, she said’ approach – https://theconversation.com/journalists-reporting-on-the-voice-to-parliament-do-voters-a-disservice-with-he-said-she-said-approach-204361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

Australians will soon be able to fill two months’ supply of medicines at their community pharmacy, rather than one, for 325 common medicines. This change is expected to halve the cost of prescriptions for six million Australians.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has taken exception to the government’s policy change, warning it will create medicine shortages and make pharmacies financially worse off.

The president of the guild wept at the thought of pharmacies going under because of reduced income from dispensing fees and co-payments.

Mark Butler, the federal minister for health and aged care, was deft in his response, advising Australians to:

take advice around medicine supply and medicine shortages from our medicines authorities rather than the pharmacy lobby group.

This argy-bargy between the government and the guild is not uncommon.

What is uncommon is the public dismissal from a health minister of the guild’s views. This government is using its political capital to push health reform forward and doesn’t seem afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

What is the Pharmacy Guild of Australia?

The guild is an influential peak body registered under the federal Fair Work Act 2009. It acts like a union for community pharmacy (also known as chemists) owners. It provides resources to help pharmacists improve their small businesses, but most of its membership value comes from advocating for community pharmacy owners.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia is a separate group which represents all pharmacists, including those who work in hospitals and those who don’t own the pharmacy they work in.

The guild and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia negotiate five-year agreements with the government on remuneration and funding for supplying Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines in the community and for delivering pharmacy programs to support patients.

Known as Community Pharmacy Agreements, the first was signed in 1990, while the most recent seventh Community Pharmacy Agreement was signed in 2020. That agreement is due to expire in 2025, potentially costing A$25 billion over five years. Of this, $16 billion will be paid for by the government and $9 billion will be paid for by patients.

Read more:
Explainer: what is the Community Pharmacy Agreement?

How does the guild wield its power?

The guild is nearly 100 years old. It understands health care and how health policy is made. It has a reputation for shaping government health policy envied by many a health care peak body.

It doesn’t have authority over government policy. It asserts its influence through its soft power by shaping community preferences to get patients behind what it wants. This stems from community pharmacy’s reach into every corner of Australia and the inherent trust between a pharmacist and a patient. It undertakes its own research to generate ideas and to criticise government policy when it suits.

The guild also takes a more direct approach to influencing government policy. The Australian Electoral Commission reported the guild was the 13th largest political donor in 2021–22, donating $578,000 to political parties across 88 separate donations. This was in an election year, which almost doubled its donations compared to the previous year.

What policies has the guild influenced?

The recent extent of the guild’s power is reflected in favourable policy outcomes for community pharmacies, despite these sometimes being unfavourable for taxpayers or patients.

The guild convinced the government to provide community pharmacies and pharmaceutical wholesalers with an extra $225 million in the 2017–18 budget because prescription volumes were lower than expected within the sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement. This was a simple cash grab by pharmacies from taxpayers.

The guild also won a contentious policy back-flip in 2018 by getting the government to retain the Pharmacy Location Rules, arguing they provide “certainty and stability” for pharmacy small business.

Read more:
What is the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and why does it wield so much power?

What are the Pharmacy Location Rules?

The Pharmacy Location Rules are an agreement between the Australian government and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. They place restrictions on where a new pharmacy can be established or where an existing pharmacy can be relocated. Pharmacies must meet location based criteria to be approved by the Australian Community Pharmacy Authority to receive pharmaceutical benefits.

The Pharmacy Location Rules do not allow new pharmacies to open within 1.5 kilometres or 10 kilometres of an existing pharmacy depending on the location, distance to the nearest pharmacy, and the number of supermarkets and medical practitioners in the area. Unless exempt, they do not allow pharmacies to be relocated from the town in which the approval was originally granted.

While no research has directly examined the impact, this policy has likely inflated consumer costs due to a restricted competitive pharmacy environment.

The Pharmacy Location Rules were introduced in the first Community Pharmacy Agreement to help larger pharmacies generate efficiencies and profit through scale. The rules sweetened accompanying restrictions on PBS remuneration from the government. They have been included in each subsequent Community Pharmacy Agreement.

Read more:
Relaxing pharmacy ownership rules could result in more chemist chains and poorer care

The Pharmacy Location Rules were meant to expire in 2015 after the government initiated Competition Policy Review recommended they “should be removed in the long term interests of consumers”. Instead, the guild pulled back on a threat made to the government to launch a major campaign on another policy initiative, in exchange for delaying the removal of the location rules for five years.

Upon further lobbying, the Pharmacy Location Rules sunset clause was removed after the guild formed a Pharmacy Compact with the government in 2017.

Pharmacy policies that benefit consumers

Some government policy change has aligned guild and patient interests.

Community pharmacists are increasingly providing services traditionally delivered by GPs. Pharmacists can now administer flu and COVID vaccines, and state trials allowing pharmacists to dispense oral contraception and antibiotics without a prescription are gaining favour.

This push towards greater scope of practice is embedded in the current and prior Community Pharmacy Agreements. But it threatens GP revenues.

The Australian Medical Association, the peak body for doctors, recently took a swing at the guild. It outlined ways to improve pharmacy competition in a government submission, which included removing Pharmacy Location Rules and getting pharmacies to compete on medicine prices through discounting.

What does this all mean for patients?

The government has assured the guild that the $1.2 billion savings from allowing patients to fill two months’ supply of medicines will be invested directly back into pharmacies.

Savings will be used to further expand the scope of practice for pharmacists, potentially informed by a National Scope of Practice Review to start in 2023.

Despite this assurance, the guild will fight. It has already canvassed 2,500 “voters” across Australia on the budget proposal. In addition to reduced dispensing fee revenue, having patients with chronic diseases reduce their pharmacy visits by half means the opportunity to sell other products sitting on shelves is also halved.

Substantial health reform is on the horizon, but it won’t be painless. Policy change can upset embedded business models. It can impact livelihoods if providers don’t respond to their new regulatory environment. In the coming whirlwind of power struggles, wouldn’t it be nice if the government and providers worked together to put the patient first?

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

Henry Cutler 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. Here’s why pharmacists are angry at script changes – and why the government is making them anyway – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-pharmacists-are-angry-at-script-changes-and-why-the-government-is-making-them-anyway-204028

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Thompson, Lecturer in Human Geography, Monash University

The wild-caught fish you buy was landed far away from cameras or scrutiny. So how do you know it really is what the label says? How do you know it was caught in a sustainable fishery? Even in regulated fisheries like Australia’s, the answer is, broadly, you don’t.

That’s because most wild-caught seafood is untraceable. Yes, it could have been caught sustainably by pole and line fishers. But it could have been relabelled as a different fish altogether. Worldwide, seafood fraud is rampant. That’s why conservationists ask fish buyers to use apps like GoodFish to check.

And while technologies now exist to solve this problem and make opaque supply chains transparent, our new research suggests many players in the Australian industry are not interested in change – particularly large wholesalers, processors and fish markets.

What did we find?

We interviewed people who work in seafood supply chains in Australia – from fishers and aquaculture companies to seafood traders and restaurants.

These insiders believed bigger supply chain actors were often not doing the right thing, by concealing trade information, manipulating prices, and with little concern about product origin.

Fishers and fish farmers explained that once their catch departs for the big seafood markets, they “lose control of the supply chain”, have “no idea where they go”, and that it’s “impossible to keep track of any of it”.

Read more:
Where is your seafood really from? We’re using ‘chemical fingerprinting’ to fight seafood fraud and illegal fishing

Our interviewees told us a degree of food fraud still exists. This is when a species is incorrectly labelled by name, origin or how it was caught.

This can be accidental, or done deliberately to mask certain information or to justify selling it at a higher price. For example, critically endangered species such as the school shark are being mislabelled as gummy shark – which is sustainably caught in Australia.

Chefs told us about regularly seeing species labelled as locally caught when they knew they were out of season in their state.

Fish farmers told us cheap overseas fish of questionable quality would often be sold as their fish. As one barramundi farm representative told us:

It honestly really frustrates and upsets me because you do all this work and your barramundi is happily substituted.

Fishers, fish farmers, and restaurants were largely supportive of traceability technologies. But they feared a backlash from the wholesalers on which their sales relied. Some interviewees reported experiences of threatening, bullying and cajoling from some wholesalers.

As one interviewee told us:

I know that these guys [wholesalers], right or wrong, can hold me to ransom. If they don’t buy my fish, we don’t have ability to send [high volumes] to anyone else.

How would traceability improve the situation?

At present, tracking where fish, prawns, shellfish and other seafood come from relies on largely paper-based systems. These are prone to human error, negligence, or manipulation.

In an effort to fix the problem, several traceability platforms have been developed in Australia. These tend to rely on blockchain, where encrypted “blocks” of product, trade, and price data are stored along a digital “chain” which is publicly visible.

This data is linked to a QR code on individual fish or boxes of fish. Data added include the species name, time of catch, product weight, and the time of each physical handover point – with new data being verified against preexisting data in the chain. Traders and consumers can scan these QR codes to access information on the seafood product in front of them.

In short, digital tracing of seafood would create a transparent trading environment by making public how the market operates, from buyers and sellers to the prices paid, and the ability to track seafood from ocean to plate.

A system like this would also give fishers more power. At present, wholesalers are often able to name a price that fishers simply have to accept.

Fishers would much prefer to be able to set their own prices. Traceability technology could help here too, to give fishers a sense of which seafood products are in demand right now and allow them to price their products accordingly.

Australia should embrace greater seafood transparency

Estimates of food fraud in global fisheries range widely, from 20% up to 90%. That is to say, we know there’s a real problem here – we just don’t know exactly how large. But we do know there are very real problems in the world’s wild-caught fisheries.

Australia could have a role here to demonstrate what good fisheries can look like. At present, our fishing authorities are primarily concerned with catch regulations at sea.

There’s not enough focus on what happens next. Our label-based traceability systems are weak compared to the European Union which has the strict import laws and seafood labelling standards that conservationists in Australia are pushing for.

But digital technology could offer something even better. While the EU’s solution is positive, it’s been criticised by scholars for being overly bureaucratic and not delivering the same depth of information.

Could it happen? Yes – but it would have to happen over the protests of those who would be disadvantaged, such as some seafood wholesalers.

One way it could happen is if the government adds more information disclosure requirements to laws governing fair competition. This would give the market the nudge required to see traceability technologies more rapidly adopted.

If nothing is done, Australia’s seafood industry could become less viable since illegal fishing practices would remain difficult to identify, putting strain on fish stocks. But we are optimistic that innovators will eventually succeed in bringing together enough actors across the supply chain to make the shift to digital traceability happen.

While many academics, disruptors and commentators often laud blockchain as a way to rapidly drive sustainable change, our research suggests this will only occur if the most influential supply chain actors see value in using it.

Read more:
Blockchains can trace foods from farm to plate, but the industry is still behind the curve

This article is based on research co-authored with my industry partner Sascha Rust, who currently works for a digital technology developer operating in the Australian seafood industry. I undertook the data collection, interviews and analysis independently.

– ref. Wild-caught seafood is often untraceable – and some industry players don’t want that to change. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/wild-caught-seafood-is-often-untraceable-and-some-industry-players-dont-want-that-to-change-heres-why-204195

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David John Eldridge, Professor of Dryland Ecology, UNSW Sydney

Mosses are some of the oldest land plants. They are found all over the world, from lush tropical rainforests to the driest deserts, and even the wind-swept hills of Antarctica.

They are everywhere; growing in cracks along roads and pathways, on the trunks of trees, on rocks and buildings, and importantly, on the soil.

Yet despite this ubiquity, we have a relatively poor understanding of how important they are, particularly the types of moss that thrive on soil.

New global research on soil mosses published today in Nature Geoscience reveals they play critical roles in sustaining life on our planet. Without soil mosses, Earth’s ability to produce healthy soils, provide habitat for microbes and fight pathogens would be greatly diminished.

A global survey of soil mosses

The results of the new study indicate we have probably underestimated just how important soil mosses are.

Using data from 123 sites across all continents including Antarctica, we show that the soil beneath mosses has more nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium, and a greater activity of soil enzymes than bare surfaces with no plants.

In fact, mosses affect all major soil functions, increasing carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and the breakdown of organic matter. These processes are critical for sustaining life on Earth.

Our modelling revealed that soil mosses cover a huge area of the planet, about 9 million square kilometres – equivalent to the area of China. And that’s not counting mosses from boreal forests, which were not included in the study.

The strength of the effect mosses have on soil depends on their growing conditions. They have the strongest effect in natural low productivity environments, such as deserts. They are also more important on sandy and salty soils, and where rainfall is highly variable.

Not unexpectedly, mosses have the strongest effects on soils where vascular plants – those that contain specialised tissues to conduct water and minerals – are sparse.

Read more:
Silver moss is a rugged survivor in the city landscape

An intimate connection

Mosses lack the plumbing that allows vascular plants to grow tall and pull water from beneath the soil. This keeps them relatively short, and means they develop an intimate connection with the uppermost soil layers.

Mosses are extremely absorbent and can attract airborne dust particles. Some of these particles are incorporated into the soil below. It is not surprising then that they have such a strong effect on soils.

Our modelling shows that, across the globe, mosses store 6.4 gigatonnes more carbon than soils without plant cover.

Losing just 15% of the global cover of soil mosses would be equivalent to global emissions of carbon dioxide from all land use changes over a year, such as clearing and overgrazing.

Not all mosses are equal

We also found some mosses are more effective at promoting healthy soils than others. Long-lived mosses tended to be associated with more carbon and greater control of soil pathogens.

The ability of mosses to provide ecosystem services and support a diverse community of microbes, fungi and invertebrates was strongest in locations with a high cover of mat- and turf-forming mosses such as Sphagnum, which are widely distributed in boreal forests.

Soils are a huge reservoir of soil pathogens, yet the soil beneath mosses had a lower proportion of plant pathogens. Mosses can help to reduce the pathogen load in soils. This ability may have originated when mosses evolved as land plants.

A special group in the desert

A special type of moss flourishes in deserts. They either live hard (perennial mosses) or die young (annual mosses).

Mosses in the family Pottiaceae are uniquely suited to life under dry and inhospitable conditions. Many have specialised structures that allow them to survive when water is scarce. These include boat-shaped leaves with long hairy tips that help to funnel water into the centre of the plant. Some mosses twist around their stem to reduce the area exposed to the sun and conserve moisture.

Desert mosses also protect the soil against erosion, influence how much water moves through the upper layers and even alter the survival chances of plant seedlings.

Other mosses have special moisture-absorbing cells (papillae) that swell up and provide them with a moisture reserve when conditions are dry.

Our global study showed that mat- and turf-forming mosses such as Sphagnum had the strongest positive effects on the diversity of microbes, fungi and invertebrates, and on critical services such as nutrient supply. Predictably, longer-lived mosses supported more soil carbon and had greater control of plant pathogens than short-lived mosses.

Protect the mosses

Overall, our work shows mosses influence important soil processes and function in the same way vascular plants do. Their effects may not be as strong, but their total cover means mosses are potentially as significant when summed across the whole globe.

But mosses are under increasing threats globally; disturbance by livestock, overharvesting, land clearing and even changing climates are the greatest threats.

We need a greater acknowledgement of the services that soil mosses provide for all life on this planet. This means greater education about their positive benefits, identifying and mitigating the main threats they face, and including them in routine monitoring programs.

Soil mosses are everywhere, but their future is far from secure. They are likely to play increasingly important roles as vascular plants decline under predicted hotter, drier and more variable global climates.

Read more:
Antarctica’s ‘moss forests’ are drying and dying

David John Eldridge receives funding from The Hermon Slade Foundation.

Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo receives funding from the British Ecological Society, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and Junta de Andalucía.

– ref. An epic global study of moss reveals it is far more vital to Earth’s ecosystems than we knew – https://theconversation.com/an-epic-global-study-of-moss-reveals-it-is-far-more-vital-to-earths-ecosystems-than-we-knew-203141

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Research Fellow, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University

Mugs and plates celebrating the coronations, marriages and deaths of British royalty are not unusual sights in the Australian home. With the forthcoming coronation of King Charles III on May 6, such memorabilia cluttering our cupboards are only likely to increase.

Guides to “the best King Charles III memorabilia” are already advising what souvenirs to buy, including commemorative coins, biscuit tins, tea towels, plates and, of course, mugs.

Yet the royal souvenir is not a recent invention.

Read more:
We’ve been collecting souvenirs for thousands of years. They are valuable cultural artefacts – but what does their future hold?

History of the royal mug

The tradition of celebrating royal events with a mug or drinking vessel dates to at least the 17th century when the current king’s ancestor and namesake, Charles II, was restored to the English throne in 1660-1.

Several mugs and cups produced at the time have survived and depict the “merry monarch”.

The restoration of Charles II (after his father Charles I had been executed by order of parliament in 1649) was greeted with rejoicing throughout England, Scotland and Ireland.

The famous social climber and diarist Samuel Pepys embodied the general feeling of this time when he wrote that on the day of Charles II’s coronation he watched the royal procession with wine and cake and all were “very merry” and pleased at what they saw.

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

Drinking and eating in celebration may account for why mugs and plates were, and remain, such popular forms of royal memorabilia; they were used to drink loyal toasts of good health to the monarch on special days of celebration.

While a strong ale was the preferred liquid for 17th-century toasts, as the British Empire expanded tea drinking became a common pastime. Teacups became popular royal souvenirs during the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century.

Fostering support

The earthenware mugs made for Charles II’s coronation were relatively inexpensive, but not produced on a mass scale.

With the industrial revolution of the 19th century and the rise of souvenir culture, royal memorabilia in all forms became more popular and widespread.

Since 1900, royal births, deaths, marriages and coronations have been big money for manufacturers of royal memorabilia.

The pitfalls of mass production were realised in 1936 when Edward VIII abdicated from the throne just months before his planned coronation in May 1937. Manufacturers were stuck with thousands of mugs, plates and other items celebrating the coronation of a king that would not happen.

Many of these mugs still made their way out to the market, while other manufacturers such as Royal Doulton adapted existing designs and used them for the coronation of his brother, George VI.

English monarchs were not the only royals to encourage the use of their image on objects collected, worn or used by their subjects.

Renaissance Italian princes popularised the portrait medal and the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V, fostered support in his vast territories using mass-produced medallions bearing his image.

Objects with images of royalty served similar functions in the 20th century. Australian school children were often given medals to commemorate coronations, while children in England were gifted pottery mugs to drink to the sovereign’s health.

When Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, English children received mugs, tins of chocolate and a spoon or coin.

Measuring popularity

Royal memorabilia don’t just foster support but act as a barometer of the popularity of the royal family around the globe.

Coronation mugs became popular in the reign of Charles II in 1661 because these objects captured the joyous feeling of a nation that had endured 20 years of warfare and political chaos.

Support for the royal family has often been shown through royal weddings and marriages: plates depicting Charles II and his Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza, were made to celebrate their union in 1662.

Recently a gold pendant inscribed with the initials of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, likely worn by a supporter, was also discovered.

For Prince William and Kate Middleton’s highly anticipated wedding in 2011, thousands of types of mundane and wacky souvenirs were produced, such as plates, mugs, magnets, graphic novels, toilet seat covers and PEZ dispensers.

Over 1,600 lines of official merchandise were produced for the marriage of Princes Charles to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. Less than 25 lines were produced for Charles’ unpopular second marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.

While Charles may not be as popular as his mother, coronation fever has most definitely taken hold in the United Kingdom. Royal fans are set to spend £1.4 billion (A$2.6 billion) on coronation parties and souvenirs.

The availability of coronation souvenirs and party supplies in Australia is somewhat more limited – perhaps an indicator of Australia’s diminishing appetite for the royal family amid increased calls for another vote on a republic.

Read more:
What King Charles III’s coronation quiche tells us about the history of British dining

Sarah Bendall 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. Picking up a King Charles III coronation commemorative plate? You’re buying into a centuries-old tradition – https://theconversation.com/picking-up-a-king-charles-iii-coronation-commemorative-plate-youre-buying-into-a-centuries-old-tradition-200646

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

A government change requiring superannuation to be paid on payday could mean a young employee will be several thousand dollars better off by retirement.

The reform – which will not come in until July 1 2026 – will benefit the retirement incomes of millions of Australians, according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones.

They give the example of a 25-year-old median income earner presently receiving their super quarterly and their wages each fortnight, who could be about $6000 (or 1.5%) better off when they retire.

The ministers argue there will be benefits to bosses, as well as to the workers, in the change. “More frequent super payments will make employers’ payroll management smoother with fewer liabilities building up on their books.”

They say payday super will mean employees can keep track of the payments more easily and it will be more difficult for disreputable employers to exploit them.

“While most employers do the right thing, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) estimates $3.4 billion worth of super went unpaid in 2019-20

The ATO will get extra resourcing to help it detect unpaid super payments earlier.
Treasury and the ATO will consult stakeholders on the changes later this year.

The ministers say the July 1 2026 start will give employers, superannuation funds, payroll providers and other parts of the superannuation system enough time to get ready for the change.

Michelle Grattan no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.

– ref. Government will require bosses to pay workers their super on payday – https://theconversation.com/government-will-require-bosses-to-pay-workers-their-super-on-payday-204759

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

The federal government is declaring war on vaping, announcing measures to stamp out its recreational use – especially among the young – including by stronger legislation and enforcement action.

In a tough message to be delivered on Tuesday, Health Minister Mark Butler declares: “Vaping has become the number one behavioural issue in high schools. And it’s becoming widespread in primary schools.”

The government will work with the states and territories to clamp down on the increasing black market in vaping, including to stop the illegal import of non-prescription vapes.

The minimum quality standards for prescription vapes will be increased, with restrictions on flavours and colours.

Prescription vapes will have to come in “pharmacy-like packaging” (following the example of plain packaging for cigarettes). The permissible nicotine concentrations and volumes will be reduced, and single-use, disposable vapes will be banned.

The governments will work with other jurisdictions to shut down the sale of vapes, ending sales at convenience stores and other retailers. But it will also make it easier for people to get a prescription for legitimate therapeutic use.

Read more:
How can I help my teen quit vaping?

Next week’s budget will provide $234 million to address smoking and vaping.

In an extract released ahead of delivery of his National Press Club speech, Butler warns the gains made in the fight against smoking “could be undone by a new threat to public health”.

“Vaping was sold to governments and communities around the world as a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit,” Butler says.

“It was not sold as a recreational product – especially not one for our kids. But that is what it has become: the biggest loophole in Australian history.

“One in six teenagers aged 14-17 has vaped. One in four people aged 18-24 has vaped.

Read more:
From October, it will be all but impossible for most Australians to vape — largely because of Canberra’s little-known ‘homework police’

“By contrast, only one in 70 people my age has vaped.

“And when more than a thousand teenagers aged 15 to 17 were asked where they could get vapes, four out of five of them said they found it easy or somewhat easy to buy them in retail stores.

“This is a product targeted at our kids, sold alongside lollies and chocolate bars,” Butler says.

“Over the past 12 months, Victoria’s poisons hotline has taken 50 calls about children under four becoming sick from ingesting or using a vape.”

Butler says that just as with smoking, “Big Tobacco has taken another addictive product, wrapped it in shiny packaging and added flavours to create a new generation of nicotine addicts.

“Vapers are three times as likely to take up smoking, which explains why under 25s are the only cohort in the community currently recording an increase in smoking rates.

“This must end,” Butler says.

Read more:
Everyone is NOT doing it: how schools and parents should talk about vaping

The budget money includes $63 million for a public health campaign to discourage people taking up smoking and vaping and encourage quitting. Some $30 million will be put into support programs to help people quit, and into education and training for health professionals.

Another $140 million will go to the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program, including widening it to tackle vaping.

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. Albanese government launches war on vaping, declaring it the ‘number-one behavioural issue in high schools’ – https://theconversation.com/albanese-government-launches-war-on-vaping-declaring-it-the-number-one-behavioural-issue-in-high-schools-204760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Rolph, Professor of Law, University of Sydney

Former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann has been given the all-clear to continue with defamation proceedings against several media outlets and journalists regarding reporting about Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations.

Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence, and no finding has been made against him. The rape trial was abandoned last year following juror misconduct, and a second trial was not pursued amid fears for Higgins’ mental health.

Lehrmann is suing the Ten Network and former presenter of The Project Lisa Wilkinson, as well as News Life Media (the publisher of news.com.au) and journalist Samantha Maiden.

In New South Wales since 2002, and across Australia since the beginning of 2006, the limitation period for defamation claims is one year. However, the court has the power to extend the limitation period for up to three years.

Lehrmann needed the court to extend the limitation period because both Maiden’s story on news.com.au, and Wilkinson’s interview with Higgins on The Project, took place in mid-February 2021. Lehrmann commenced his defamation proceedings in the Federal Court almost two years later.

On Friday, Justice Michael Lee of the Federal Court of Australia extended the limitation period in these two defamation proceedings brought by Lehrmann.

As Justice Lee observed at the outset of his judgement:

Any sentient person with an interest in newsworthy events in Australia would be familiar with the general background to the present disputes.

To have the limitation period extended, Lehrmann needed to persuade the court that it was “not reasonable in the circumstances” for him to have commenced his proceedings within the one-year limitation period.

If the court was persuaded, it would be required to extend the limitation period, although it had discretion as to the length of the extension.

Justice Lee was satisfied that it was “not reasonable in the circumstances” for Lehrmann to have commenced defamation proceedings within the one-year limitation period.

This was mainly because it was not reasonable to commence defamation proceedings while criminal allegations were unresolved. This was the legal advice Lehrmann received from the solicitor with criminal law expertise he consulted.

Read more:
Why was the Lehrmann trial aborted and what happens next?

As Justice Lee stated:

Whatever way one looks at it, for Mr Lehrmann to have started defamation proceedings absent the resolution of the criminal allegations would have been for him to take a step into the unknown. Everything might well have worked out, and all respondents may have been passive, but one cannot discount as misconceived advice that taking the risk of starting was imprudent and distracting while criminal allegations were unresolved.

Justice Lee’s decision followed a decision of the Full Federal Court in Joukhador v Ten Network Pty Ltd in 2021.

In that case, the court stated that, in general, where a person is facing a criminal charge and the publication being sued upon raises an issue about the person’s guilt or innocence, it will ordinarily not be reasonable to commence defamation proceedings within the one-year limitation period.

Justice Lee therefore extended the limitation period in both of the proceedings.

In April this year, Lehrmann also commenced defamation proceedings against the ABC. This concerned the broadcast of the National Press Club address by Higgins and Grace Tame in February 2022.

Justice Lee indicated that he was inclined to hear all three proceedings together.

Justice Lee also raised the prospect that the case may be an appropriate one for trial by jury. This is significant because civil trials in the Federal Court are presumptively heard by a judge sitting alone. However, the court has the power to order trial by jury if “the ends of justice appear to render it expedient to do so”.

The Federal Court has only ordered a jury trial in civil proceedings once before. In 2009, Justice Rares ordered a jury trial in defamation proceedings brought against The Daily Telegraph for reporting about sexual servitude allegations (the matter then settled before the trial).

Justice Lee sought submissions from the parties as to whether there should be a jury trial in this case. Jury trials tend to take longer and are therefore costlier than trials by judge alone.

Read more:
Can juries still deliver justice in high-profile cases in the age of social media?

If a defamation case is brought in a State Supreme Court (other than in South Australia), either party can elect to have trial by jury. Juries are not available in defamation cases in the territories.

The possible trial date is mid-November this year, lasting for approximately four weeks.

David Rolph previously received funding from the Australian Research Council that ended in 2014.

– ref. Why was Bruce Lehrmann given the all-clear to sue media for defamation? A media law expert explains – https://theconversation.com/why-was-bruce-lehrmann-given-the-all-clear-to-sue-media-for-defamation-a-media-law-expert-explains-204683

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Willand, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University

One in four Australian households are finding it hard to pay their gas and electricity bills. As winter looms, energy price rises will make it even harder. Cold homes and disconnections resulting from energy poverty threaten people’s health and wellbeing.

Income support for welfare recipients and retrofitting homes to make them more thermally efficient – by adding insulation, for example – can ease the burden. And when homes are not too cold or hot, people’s health benefits. This in turn eases pressure on the public health system.

However, many people are missing out on assistance as programs often do not recognise their difficulties. Their energy vulnerability is hidden.

Read more:
If you’re renting, chances are your home is cold. With power prices soaring, here’s what you can do to keep warm

What forms does hidden energy poverty take?

Our newly published study has revealed six aspects of hidden energy vulnerability. These are:

1. underconsumption – households limit or turn off cooling, heating and/or lights to avoid disconnections

2. incidental masking – other welfare support, such as rent relief, masks difficulties in paying energy bills

3. some households disguise energy poverty by using public facilities such as showers or pooling money for bills between families

4. some people conceal their hardship due to pride or fear of legal consequences, such as losing custody of children if food cannot be refrigerated because the power has been cut off

5. poor understanding of energy efficiency and the health risks of cold or hot homes adds to the problem

6. eligibility criteria for energy assistance programs may exclude some vulnerable households. For example, people with income just above the welfare threshold are missing out on energy concessions. Energy retailer hardship programs also ignore people who have voluntarily disconnected due to financial hardship.

Read more:
‘Die of cold or die of stress?’: Social housing is frequently colder than global health guidelines

5 ways to help these households

Our studies suggest trusted intermediaries such as people working in health, energy and social services can play a vital role in identifying and supporting such households.

First, energy efficiency and hardship initiatives may be integrated into the My Aged Care in-home care system. Energy poverty risk identification, response and referral could be built into the national service’s assessment form. This could leverage existing client screening processes.

The system’s front-line staff could connect at-risk householders with energy counsellors. These counsellors could help people access better energy contracts, concessions, home retrofits and appliance upgrade programs.

A new Commonwealth “energy supplement” could help pay for essential energy-related home modifications. This would help avoid My Aged Care funds being diverted from immediate healthcare needs.

Read more:
We need a ‘lemon law’ to make all the homes we buy and rent more energy-efficient

Second, general practitioners and other health professionals could help identify energy vulnerability among patients with medical conditions of concern. They could also provide letters of support emphasising renters’ health-based need for air conditioners or heaters.

Third, energy providers could use household energy data to identify those that seem to be under-consuming or are often disconnected. They could also identify those that are not on “best offer” deals. They could be proactive in checking struggling householders’ eligibility for ongoing energy concessions and one-off debt relief grants offered by states and territories.

Energy providers could also make it easier for social housing providers to ensure concessions for tenants renew automatically.

Fourth, local councils could use their data to identify at-risk householders. They might include those with a disability parking permit, discounted council rates or in arrears, on the social housing waiting list, Meals on Wheels clients and social housing tenants. Maternal and child health nurses and home and community care workers making home visits could call attention to cold or hot homes.

Councils could employ in-house energy counsellors to provide assistance and energy literacy training. Council home maintenance teams could develop bulk-buying, insulation and neighbourhood retrofit programs.

Strategies to reduce vulnerability to energy poverty should be part of municipal public health and wellbeing plans. Under these strategies, net-zero-carbon funds set up by states and local councils to reduce emissions could finance targeted housing retrofits.

We also suggest setting up a central helpline to improve access to energy assistance via local referrals.

Fifth, residential energy-efficiency programs could become more person-centric. For example, we already have Residential Efficiency Scorecard audits to assess the thermal quality of a home. These audits could also explore whether concessions and better energy deals are available to the household.

Read more:
We all need energy to survive. Here are 3 ways to ensure Australia’s crazy power prices leave no-one behind

Building capacity at all levels

Capacity-building strategies are needed at all levels – individual, community and government – to overcome the challenges of reducing energy poverty. Current obstacles include the competing priorities of service providers, lack of time and resources, and poor co-ordination between siloed programs and services.

Access to essential energy services should be part of state and local governments’ strategic health plans. Housing, energy and health departments could work together to include housing retrofits in preventive health programs.

A comprehensive approach is needed to overcome hidden energy poverty. It must include public education, integrated services and well-funded energy-efficiency programs. Regulatory reforms and ongoing funding are both needed to improve the availability of energy-efficient, affordable homes for tenants.

Our suggested strategies start with improving the skills and knowledge of trusted intermediaries. Doctors, social workers, housing officers, community nurses and volunteers can play a central role. Using these front-line professionals to help identify and act on energy poverty offers a novel, cost-effective and targeted solution.

Nicola Willand receives or has received funding for research from various organisations, including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian State Government, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, the Future Fuels Collaborative Research Centre and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Centre. She is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Architects.

Nooshin Torabi receives or has received funding for research from various organisations, including the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation,

Ralph Horne receives or has received funding for research from various organisations, including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian State Government, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

– ref. 1 in 4 households struggle to pay power bills. Here are 5 ways to tackle hidden energy poverty – https://theconversation.com/1-in-4-households-struggle-to-pay-power-bills-here-are-5-ways-to-tackle-hidden-energy-poverty-204672

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samia Badji, Research Fellow, Centre for Health Economics, Monash University

Those in the disability field have been expressing a sense of whiplash since Friday. Many had felt buoyed by reassurances from Bill Shorten, minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), at the National Press Club the previous week that a reboot would ensure the scheme was “here to stay”. Yet a week later, the word from the National Cabinet meeting of state and territory leaders, was that NDIS growth would need to be constrained in order for the scheme to be sustainable.

An independent review of the NDIS, is due to report before October this year. Ahead of its findings, critics have been quick to pass judgement on the financial outlay of the NDIS without comprehending the significance of cutting spending on the lives of Australians with disability and their families.

But people with disability have been here before. Our recent research shows people’s wellbeing deteriorates when their supports are threatened. We need to learn from their experiences before putting them in that same position again.

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

Enormous investment

The NDIS provides funding for more than 550,000 Australian with permanent and severe disabilities to receive the services and supports they need. However, with the current budget at A$29.2 billion and estimated future costs at $60 billion per year it is consistently being raised as a budgetary concern.

Similarly, spending on the Disability Support Pension, which provides required income support for people with long-term disability, is at $18.3 billion per year. In total, these two schemes amount to a $47.5 billion a year investment into the wellbeing of Australians with disability and their families.

The previous government already implemented significant changes and reviews for those receiving the Disability Support Pension and also sought to introduce independent assessments for NDIS participants.

While independent assessments are off the table for the current government, participants undergo regular reviews of their plans. They have been undertaken annually but the National Cabinet announced multiyear plans will now be implemented.

People on the Disability Support Pension have also experienced the threat of losing support. In 2012, new impairment tables were brought in for them and in 2014 it was decided to review people under 35 who had been deemed eligible under the old impairment tables. Some later described how being under medical review proved particularly stressful and negatively impacted their health.

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

What we looked at

Our new study based on anonymous administrative data on all welfare recipients and healthcare use has shown the medical review of Disability Support Pension recipients under 35 led to significant increases in GP and specialist visits. We wanted to investigate whether this was due to additional consultations to prove eligibility or from the need to manage the stress of the review process itself.

To investigate this, we looked at several types of medications and found that the group that includes antidepressants was the only one that increased for those targeted by the review. The increase was not driven by the few who stopped getting disability support, but by those who still received the Disability Support Pension after the review. This indicates the reassessment process itself contributed to poorer health.

Increased health-care use was likely just the tip of the iceberg, with many people experiencing mental distress as the result of the reassessment likely suffering in silence.

Taxpayers also contributed more than $4 million to cover the additional healthcare expenses incurred by the review, on top of the $21 million in government costs to conduct the reviews. These financial costs do not account for the additional time contacting Centrelink, finding healthcare professionals, attending visits and appealing the process. Such costs are not only borne by people with disabilities but also their carers, as well as the not-for-profit sector and other government sectors such as the judicial system. These efforts reduce the time people have available for finding work or contributing to society more broadly.

Read more:
Inclusion means everyone: 5 disability attitude shifts to end violence, abuse and neglect

Caution ahead

Given these findings, a cautious approach to examining the cost of disability support is indicated. Medical Disability Support Pension reviews were eventually stopped and planned NDIS independent assessments were abandoned. But the spectre of these reviews and investigations remains.

The conclusions from NDIS independent review and the Royal Commission into Robodebt will help us understand the consequences of procedures that review entitlements and ensure that they do not harm Australians.

It is important we shift the focus from solely considering the NDIS and Disability Support Pensions in terms of their budgetary cost and measure their performance in terms of their impact on the health and wellbeing of people with a disability, their families and carers.

The NDIS is investing in a wellbeing measure for participants and the government has developed a Disability Strategy Outcomes Framework to “measure, track and report on how things are improving for people with disability”.

But as cost and growth scrutiny intensifies, policies must strike the right balance between the budgetary impact and the wellbeing of people with disabilities and their families.

Samia Badji receives funding from the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). She has previously received funding from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Department of Social Services (DSS).

Anne Kavanagh receives funding from the National Health Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council and the Victorian and Commonwealth governments.

Dennis Petrie receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), WISE employment, the National Disability Insurance Agency and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

– ref. NDIS cost scrutiny is intensifying again – the past shows this can harm health and wellbeing for people with disability – https://theconversation.com/ndis-cost-scrutiny-is-intensifying-again-the-past-shows-this-can-harm-health-and-wellbeing-for-people-with-disability-203336

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Waqavakatoga, PhD candidate, University of Adelaide

Fiji has a track record of service to the British crown. Travel to Hereford, where the Special Air Service is based, and you will find a statue of Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba, who was one of the 212 Fijians who joined the British Army in 1961 and gave his all in the 1972 Battle of Mirbat in Oman.

When you arrive at Nadi International Airport in Fiji, there is another statue honouring his sacrifice.

Opposition defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie’s call for foreigners, including from the Pacific, to enlist in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), is therefore neither new, nor necessarily unwelcome, in parts of the Pacific.

If Australia wanted to recruit Fijians into the ADF tomorrow, it would have no problem raising a battalion in one day.

Fiji has what is called a “youth bulge”, which occurs when a country’s youth population is particularly large compared with other age ranges. Unemployment is a challenge, and recruits might see enlisting in the ADF as one of their few routes to economic opportunity – and eventual Australian citizenship.

The challenge will be finding the ideal recruits that meet the standards for the required roles needed for the ADF. Therefore, strict criteria for entry should be considered, given there will be no shortage of volunteers.

Why I chose to join the British Army

Since 1998, thousands of young Fijian men and women have travelled to the United Kingdom to fill in the gaps of the British armed forces. I was one of them. I served in the 1st Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (now Royal Yorkshire Regiment) with multiple tours to Iraq.

No one joins the British Army with the hope of going to war. The September 11 attacks changed everything and new theatres opened up in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fijian men and women served in these wars, and some paid with their lives. There is nothing unique about this. It is the cost for taking the queen’s shilling. Fijians in the British Army understand they are not special, and should not be given any special treatment because of where they have travelled from.

When I joined the British Army in 2001, I was 19 attending the University of the South Pacific with a full scholarship, studying chemistry. I made a calculated decision to join given what was going on in the country at the time. The 2000 coup had recently taken place and I was concerned for my future. Like any young person, the opportunity to travel and see the world through the army appealed.

Observers may question whether recruiting Fijians or other Pacific citizens constitutes exploitation. But Fijians who join the British Army do not feel exploited; they see it as an honourable duty that comes with economic benefits to improve their own welfare and those of their families. There have been hundreds of Fijian soldiers completing their 22 years of service in the British Army from last year. They are entitled to retire with a full pension after this length of service.

Australia should consider targeting these Fijians first if they are serious about recruitment and wish to test the idea.

If not, consider recruiting those who are still serving with the British Army. Fijians would prefer to be closer to home with the same economic value they get out of the UK forces. They would have already been vetted from a security standpoint, too.

Developing trust in the Pacific

Recruitment from the Pacific Islands should also be considered a smart security strategy for Australia. This kind of policy change goes beyond any memorandum of understanding or government security agreement.

In Fiji, households that have sent their sons and daughters to serve in the British armed forces develop a close connection with the United Kingdom. Fijian servicemen and women are remembered in the prayers in the households of these families.

Australia has already developed this kind of trust by helping Fiji during natural disasters. Former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama’s government softened its tone with Canberra after Australia provided critical support in the aftermath Cyclone Winston in 2016. The sight of HMAS Canberra arriving in Fiji was a welcome one.

Australian tourists have also been coming to Fiji for decades contributing to Fiji’s economic growth, so the close relationship with Fiji is already there. And then there is our nations’ shared love of rugby.

The currency of meaningful relationships is valued in the Pacific Islands region. Get this right, and you have trust.

If I had the opportunity to join the Australian Army back in 2001, I would have been outside a recruitment centre in record time. An opportunity is presenting itself here which will simultaneously be a step towards fulfilling Australia’s security needs, while also helping Fiji.

Read more:
Penny Wong said this week national power comes from ‘our people’. Are we ignoring this most vital resource?

William Waqavakatoga served in the British Army.

– ref. Why Australia would be smart to recruit soldiers in the Pacific – a Fijian who served in the British Army explains – https://theconversation.com/why-australia-would-be-smart-to-recruit-soldiers-in-the-pacific-a-fijian-who-served-in-the-british-army-explains-204748

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney

The Australian Football League’s announcement of a Tasmanian football club – likely to be called the Tassie Devils – is now a formality, after the federal goverment’s pledge of A$240 million to a new stadium and precinct in Hobart.

A new stadium is the last of 11 AFL requirements for a Tasmanian club to become the league’s 19th team, joining ten Victorian clubs and two each from the other four states.

The view was that UTAS stadium in Launceston could be upgraded but that upgrading Hobart’s Bellerive Oval (known as Blundstone Arena) made less sense than a new facility in Hobart’s CBD, on Macquarie Point, north of Hobart’s Constitution Dock.

The Tasmanian government wants the stadium, which it will own, to anchor a new “arts and sports” precinct. It will contribute $375 million of the estimated cost of $715 million. Another $85 million will come from loans against future land sales and leases in the revitalised area. The AFL will contribute the final $15 million. There will also be $10 million to build a headquarters for the new club.

This is part of $360 million the AFL will spend on AFL in Tasmania over the next ten years, with $209 million to subsidise the new club and $120 million to support grassroots participation and the development of talented players.

Compared with the $3.4 billion the federal government has committed to buildings for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, its contribution to the Hobart arena is relatively minor.

But critics say the stadiums in Hobart and Launceston are adequate, and that the money would be better spent on public housing – with rents having risen 45% in the past five years. As novelist Richard Flanagan put it:

Tasmania doesn’t have a stadium problem. It has a housing and homelessness problem.

The problem with this argument is that economies are dynamic, not static. Was it also wrong to have built the Sydney Opera House because of housing issues in the late 1960s?

Without an AFL team and new stadium, Tasmania is likely to still have a homeless problem. In fact, the problem may even be worse without economic activity the new team and stadium will bring.

Economic rationale

The rationale for the federal and state governments is that a new stadium is a precondition for a Tasmanian AFL, and that both together will generate $2.2 billion in economic activity over 25 years according to Tasmanian government.

Governments favour infrastructure projects because construction has a high “multiplier effect” – generating flow-on benefits. The Tasmanian government estimates construction will generate $300 million in economic activity and 4,200 jobs. It expects the stadium when operational to sustain 950 jobs and generate $85 million in economic activity a year.

This will depend on hosting major events along with AFL fixtures. The Tasmanian government’s business case anticipates the venue hosting at least 44 events a year, attracting 123,500 overseas and interstate visitors.

These expectations will be buoyed by the success of the AFL’s “Gather Round” in mid-April, in which all AFL games were played in South Australia. A reported $15 million state government contribution generated an estimated $85 million in economic benefit from 60,000 interstate fans.

The case for a Tassie team

In assessing this decision, we can’t just consider the business case for the stadium. It’s about the case for a Tasmanian AFL club.

Tasmania may only have a total population of 558,000 (with 247,000 in Hobart) but its claim to have an AFL is a good as the Gold Coast (home of the Suns, population 640,000) or even Geelong, (home of the Cats, population about 280,000). Townsville, where the North Queensland Cowboys play in the NRL, has 235,000 people.

Read more:
Loud, obnoxious and at times racist: the sordid history of AFL barracking

According to James Coventry’s 2018 book Footballistics: How the Data Analytics Revolution is Uncovering Footy’s Hidden Truths, no other state has a higher percentage of AFL fans. In WA it’s 62.3%, in South Australia
75.7%. In Victoria, 70.2%. In Tasmania it’s 79%.

Aussie Rules is really the only game in town on the Apple Isle, writes Hunter Fujak his 2021 book Code Wars, which explores the nation’s “Barassi Line”
split between AFL and National Rugby League. The percentage of Tasmanians that only follow the AFL is 35%, compared to the national average of 19%.

Read more:
The Barassi Line: a globally unique divider splitting Australia’s footy fans

More than the bottom line

Yes, the AFL is a multimillion-dollar business, but it’s also a community organisation, managing a public good. As the Richmond president Peggy O’Neal put it in Coventry’s book:

It’s sort of a blend of strict financial business and not for profit […] If we wanted just to make money, our model would be quite different.

This explain the AFL’s preparedness to commit $345 million over the next decade to support the new club, as well as grassroots football across Tasmania, to ensure local community footy doesn’t lose out from the resources and energy being put into the AFL team. This will include building 70 new ovals across the state, and funding football academies in Hobart, Launceston and Penguin (west of Devonport on the north coast).

The AFL has subsidised the AFLW for similar reasons. It’s about more than just the bottom line.

Tasmania has waited far too long for a team of its own. The entry of the Tassie Devils into the AFL can be justified on economic, social and (most of all) footy grounds.

Tim Harcourt 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. Devils in the detail: an economist argues the case for a Tasmanian AFL team – and new stadium – https://theconversation.com/devils-in-the-detail-an-economist-argues-the-case-for-a-tasmanian-afl-team-and-new-stadium-204678

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

Support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament has dropped since the first polls that asked about it in late 2022. Analyst Kevin Bonham has plotted all the poll results, and the average Voice support is down from 65% in August 2022 to 57% now.

Last week’s Morgan (a “yes” lead of just 54-46) was particularly concerning for Voice supporters, given the history of support for referendum proposals collapsing as the referendum draws near.

Read more:
Labor gains in Newspoll but Voice support slumps in other polls; NSW final results and Queensland polls

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday that a YouGov poll of over 15,000 respondents, for the group behind the Uluru Statement from the Heart, had “yes” to the Voice leading nationally by 51-34, and in every state and territory, with Queensland the closest at 47-40 “yes”.

However, this poll was conducted March 1-21, so it is well over a month out of date.

To win a constitutional referendum in Australia, a majority of the states as well as an overall majority must vote “yes”. This means at least four of the six states need to vote “yes”.

History of past referendums

Only eight of 44 proposed referendums have succeeded. There have been five instances where “yes” has won nationally, but failed to win a majority of states.

I have investigated whether referendum proposals were attempted by Labor or conservative governments, and whether those held concurrently with a general election were more successful. Referendum results and dates are here, governments formed after each election here and House of Representatives election dates are here.

The first ten years after federation in 1901 were before the development of the two party system, and Labor was part of a government led by the Protectionists that passed the 1906 referendum. Since then, only one of 25 referendums proposed by Labor governments have succeeded.

Conservative governments have had more success with six of 18 referendums proposed by non-Labor governments succeeding. Analyst Peter Brent wrote in Inside Story that conservative oppositions nearly always oppose Labor referendum proposals, while Labor oppositions sometimes support conservative government proposals.

While not doing well enough to pass when held with a general election, Labor government proposals have performed better when held with an election than at midterm referendums. The four 1988 midterm referendums all failed with between 31% and 38% support nationally, while the four that were held with the 1974 election had 47% to 48% support.

Brent says that elections are about who will form the next government, and referendums held with elections benefit from not being the focus of attention. But midterm referendums are the focus, and can become like a byelection, at which governments usually do badly.

Early polling for referedums is not predictive. Brent said the 1988 referendums were polling in the 60s and 70s in May 1988, before crashing into the 30s at the September referendum.

The record “yes” vote of 90.8% at the 1967 referendum is not a guide to the result of the Voice referendum, as this earlier referendum was proposed by the Coalition and supported by Labor. Brent also thinks this referendum benefited from being the second question asked in 1967; the first was heavily defeated.

Read more:
‘Right wrongs, write Yes’: what was the 1967 referendum all about?

In 2017, the plebiscite that allowed same-sex couples to marry was passed with 61.6% support (this was not a referendum as it did not require a change to the constitution to implement).

This plebiscite was initiated by the Coalition with Labor support, and the large majority of voters would have known someone who was homosexual, and were therefore inclined to be sympathetic to same-sex marriage. By contrast, most Australians do not have regular contact with Indigenous people.

If the Voice is to defy the history of Labor-initiated referendums that were opposed by the Coalition, particularly at midterm referendums, the Albanese government will need to continue to poll at honeymoon levels until the referendum date. Labor’s history-making win at the federal Aston byelection gives the Voice some chance of passing, but history suggests it will be a struggle.

UK local elections and the US debt limit

I wrote for The Poll Bludger last Thursday that UK local elections will be held this Thursday. Labour has a large poll lead, but it is being reduced.

Last Thursday AEST, Republicans passed a bill that would raise the US debt limit in return for spending cuts that are strongly opposed by Democrats through the House of Representatives. The US is headed for a crisis over the debt limit later this year. Donald Trump’s lead in national Republican primary polls continues to widen. Polls for the May 14 Turkish elections were also covered.

Victorian Resolve poll: Labor still way ahead

A Victorian state Resolve poll for The Age, conducted with the federal March and April Resolve polls from a sample of 1,600, gave Labor 42% of the primary vote (up one since February), the Coalition 30% (steady), the Greens 10% (down three), independents 12% (down one) and others 5% (up one).

Resolve does not provide two party estimates until close to elections, but Labor is clearly still far ahead. This poll was taken before the corruption watchdog’s report that criticised the Labor government. Incumbent Daniel Andrews led the Liberals’ John Pesutto by 49-28 as preferred premier (50-26 in February).

Liberal MP Moira Deeming attended an anti-trans rights rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Pesutto tried to expel her, but was forced to settle for suspending her for nine months.

The poll article says that 23% wanted Deeming expelled, but 20% said she deserved less punishment than her suspension. “About one-third” were unsure or indifferent as to her punishment, leaving 24% who presumably supported the nine-month suspension.

Adrian Beaumont 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. While the Voice has a large poll lead now, history of past referendums indicates it may struggle – https://theconversation.com/while-the-voice-has-a-large-poll-lead-now-history-of-past-referendums-indicates-it-may-struggle-204365

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sora Park, Professor of Communication, News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra

Belonging can be defined as a settled feeling. It is about feeling attached to the community and society you live in. Not only does belonging make people feel at home, but it can also help people participate in society.

More than 5 million Australians use a language other than English at home, of which 15% have low English proficiency. Almost one-third (28%) are born overseas. How do we ensure they are part of the society?

A new report unveils research examining the impact of news representation on multilingual audiences’ sense of belonging to broader Australian society. The report employed a survey combining face-to-face, phone, and online methods to ask questions of five multilingual groups: Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, and Vietnamese speakers.

Participation in society by sense of belonging

The study found that multilingual Australians’ sense of belonging is closely related to their confidence in participating in society. Compared to those who say they don’t belong, people who feel “at home” in Australia are twice as likely to say they have a good understanding of political and social issues facing Australia.

Furthermore, among those who feel at home in Australia, the majority agree they are well informed (71%) and think their cultural community can have a significant impact on society (71%).

Where does this confidence to participate come from?

We found that time spent in Australia and proficiency in English are both related to belonging.

It seems to take more than 10 years for migrants to find a sense of belonging in Australia; 76% of those who have lived in Australia for more than 10 years feel at home in Australia compared to only 64% of those who arrived here less than five years ago. Having high confidence in English is also a factor.

Sense of belonging by English proficiency and lenght of stay

Furthermore, the study found that feeling represented in the news is strongly related to multilingual audiences’ sense of belonging.

Those who feel fairly represented in the news are much more likely to feel a sense of belonging to the Australian society. The majority (86%) of those who feel adequately represented in the news “feel at home”, compared to only 62% of those who don’t feel represented.

This may be because perceptions of news representation foster trust in news. We found that multilingual audiences who believe they are sufficiently and fairly represented in the news have a much higher level of trust in news compared to those who feel under- or misrepresented.

Three-quarters (76%) of multilingual audiences who feel their cultural community is fairly covered in the news say they trust the news. This trust level drops to 40% if they don’t feel they are represented.

Sense of belonging by fair news representation

Misrepresented and under-represented in the media

The problem is that many migrants feel under- or misrepresented in Australian news.

Only 42% say news in Australia covers their cultural or language community fairly, while just 38% say there is enough coverage. Even fewer (33%) say journalists in the news represent people like them. Compared to the general public, where more than half (52%) think their ethnic group is portrayed fairly in the news, this is a much lower figure.

There is simply not enough coverage in mainstream news that linguistically and culturally diverse Australians can relate to.

A recent study found 78% of presenters, commentators and reporters had an Anglo-Celtic background. In a survey of Australian journalists, we found less than one-third say there is enough ethnic diversity in their news organisation.

Trust in Australian news media

These findings suggest there is room for improved recruitment and reporting practices in the news industry. By providing news that is trustworthy and representative, news media can help all Australians to stay informed. Informed citizens are more likely to be empowered to participate in social and political issues facing society.

Providing relevant, localised information, including news in languages, that multicultural audiences can relate to, is an important way in which the news media can play a role in social cohesion. By reflecting the diverse cultural perspectives and experiences of its audiences, news media can drive a greater sense of belonging.

Sora Park receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Community Media and Australia Council for the Arts.

Jee Young Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Community Media and Australia Council for the Arts.

Kieran McGuinness has received funding from Google News Initiative and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

– ref. Fair representation in news makes multicultural Australians feel more at home: new research – https://theconversation.com/fair-representation-in-news-makes-multicultural-australians-feel-more-at-home-new-research-204104

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shaun Adams, Archaeologist, Griffith University

Acknowledgement: we would like to extend our thanks to the Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People who invited us to work on this sensitive project through the lens of truth-telling – particularly Phillip George, Richie Bee and Francine George – whose insights have formed a key pillar of the work.

In 2015, Gkuthaarn and Kukatj community members of Queensland’s Gulf Country invited us to excavate, analyse, and rebury the skeletal remains of eight young Indigenous people who died near the town of Normanton in the late 1800s.

The remains were acquired by Walter Roth (1861-1933). Roth was a medical doctor, anthropologist, and the first Northern Protector of Aboriginal people. He eventually sold the remains to the Australian Museum in Sydney, which held them for almost a century before repatriating them to the Traditional Owners in the 1990s.

The remains were reburied, but later exposed by erosion – which prompted Gkuthaarn and Kukatj community members to invite us to collaborate with them.

In research published in Archaeologies, we show how bioarchaeological techniques have helped shed light on the experiences of these young Indigenous people who were displaced by European colonisation.

Unfortunately, we only know the name of one of the eight individuals – a young woman named Dolly. Roth’s records indicate Dolly was a member of the Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People, and was working at the police barracks (shown in the banner image) in the town of Cloncurry, about 382km south of Normanton, when she died.

Driven from their lands

In 2018, we published a study that showed these individuals had experienced nutritional stress and, in some cases, syphilis. These findings are consistent with other evidence relating to the experience of Aboriginal people living on the Gulf Country during colonial expansion.

Archaeological data and historical documents indicate Aboriginal people on the Gulf Country lived as foragers until the mid-1800s, when their lands were occupied by Europeans and stocked with cattle. The cattle depleted resources that were critical for a foraging lifestyle, and conflict ensued.

As a result of the violence and loss of resources, many Aboriginal people on the Gulf Country became refugees in their own land. They had little choice but to move into camps on the fringes of towns such as Normanton. These camps were overcrowded and unhygienic, and many occupants died from infectious diseases as a result.

We spoke to several Gkuthaarn and Kukatj people during the course of our research. One senior person expressed feeling relief when the remains were safely retrieved and reburied:

[Researchers] put a tarp over and dug it [the remains] up real steady. [They were] fragile from the sun […] We felt like we was just welcome [by the spirits of the people connected with these remains], like they wanted to get reburied. [We] just had that feeling they wanted to get reburied; was a couple of times they had been exposed.

Insight into displacement, disease and diet

In our recent study, we analysed strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes from the teeth of six of the eight individuals.

Measuring isotope ratios in human bones and teeth can reveal information about an individual’s diet and geographical movements prior to their death. When we compare strontium isotope values from tooth enamel to an isotope map (called an “isoscape”) constructed for this project, we can see where the six individuals grew up.

Dolly’s strontium value suggests she grew up near the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is consistent with Roth’s suggestion that Dolly was a member of the Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People, as their traditional territory extends to the coast. The strontium results for the other individuals suggest they grew up some distance to the east or northeast of Normanton.

Carbon isotope results indicate that in their early years, all six individuals had diets dominated by tropical plants and/or marine foods. However, Dolly’s carbon value suggests her diet was especially high in such foods. This is again consistent with her having lived near the Gulf of Carpentaria when she was young.

The oxygen isotope results we obtained are also high when compared to international samples. We suspect these elevated values can be explained by a combination of the environmental conditions in the Gulf Country, and the effects of infectious diseases that spread into the region with European settlers.

Based on the formation times of Dolly’s tooth samples, and her strontium and oxygen values, we estimate she moved from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Cloncurry area sometime between the age of 2.5 and 10. Our analyses also suggest she was a young adult when she died.

These assessments are in line with Roth’s reports from the Gulf Country, which state that Indigenous girls were often taken from their families and made to work for Europeans, and that it was common for such individuals to succumb to diseases early in life.

Speaking on the findings, one Gkuthaarn and Kukatj person told us:

I am sad to learn of our people getting horrible diseases and, with the study completed, these were young people who left behind such a sad story that needs to be told so non-Indigenous people, not just throughout Australia
but particularly in our region, know and understand that these traumas still
impact on our people 120 years later.

Read more:
First Nations people have made a plea for ‘truth-telling’. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future

The Voice

Combined with historical documents and information from contemporary Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People, our results provide new individual-level insight into the devastating impact of European colonisation on Aboriginal people of the Gulf Country.

Australians are currently debating a constitutional amendment to create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. The proposed amendment is a key recommendation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Another key recommendation is that of “truth-telling” about the experiences of Aboriginal people during European colonial expansion.

Science can’t tell us whether the Voice is the correct course of action. Yet our findings about these individuals – whose remains we have been honoured to analyse – reveal that scientific work conducted with and by First Nations people has an invaluable role in the process of truth-telling.

We hope such work will help reveal more truth of the experiences of those rendered voiceless by the violence of colonisation. As one Gkuthaarn and Kukatj person explained:

My old grandmother was one of those people who said they was horrible
and didn’t want to repeat it [i.e. they did not want to tell accounts of colonial violence to subsequent generations], but I believe it should be repeated [to] help us understand more about what really happened.

People [are] just listening to one side of it. You’ve got people who say Aboriginals just live off the welfare, but there was a reason why that happened. Aboriginal people fought for this country. You’ve got people who say you’ve gotta get over that [colonial violence], but what I say is: lest we forget.

We would like to thank our co-author Susan Phillips for her involvement in this research.

Shaun Adams receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Mark Collard receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and Simon Fraser University.

Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Richard Martin receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Dr Martin has also undertaken commissioned research relating to native title claims and cultural heritage protection for Aboriginal organisations around the Gulf Country.

David McGahan 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. Isotope analysis helps tell the stories of Aboriginal people living under early colonial expansion – https://theconversation.com/isotope-analysis-helps-tell-the-stories-of-aboriginal-people-living-under-early-colonial-expansion-203342

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Belgrave, Professor of History, Massey University

Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent claim that New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has veto powers over parliament was met with surprise in New Zealand, especially by the members of the tribunal itself. That’s because it is just plain wrong.

As the debate around the Voice to Parliament ramps up, we can probably expect similar claims to be made ahead of this year’s referendum. But the issue is so important to Australia’s future that such misinformation should not go unchallenged.

From an Australian perspective, New Zealand may appear ahead of the game in recognising Indigenous voices constitutionally. But that has certainly not extended to granting a parliamentary power of veto to Māori.

The Waitangi Tribunal was originally established as a commission of inquiry in 1975, given the power only to make recommendations to government. And so it remains. The Crown alone appoints tribunal members and many are non-Māori.

As with all commissions of inquiry, it’s up to the government of the day to make a political decision about whether or not to implement those recommendations.

Deceptive and wrong

Price’s claim echoed a February article and paper published by the Institute of Public Affairs, aimed at influencing the Voice referendum. Titled “The New Zealand Māori voice to Parliament and what we can expect from Australia”, it was written by the director of the institute’s legal rights program, John Storey.

The paper makes a number of assertions: the Waitangi Tribunal has a veto over the New Zealand parliament’s power to pass certain legislation; the Waitangi Tribunal was established to hear land claims but its brief has expanded to include all aspects of public policy; and the Waitangi Tribunal “shows the Voice will create new Indigenous rights”.

Read more:
What Australia could learn from New Zealand about Indigenous representation

The last of the statements is deceptive and the others are completely wrong. The Waitangi Tribunal’s jurisdiction was largely set in stone by the New Zealand parliament in 1975 when it was established.

Far from investigating land claims, it initially wasn’t able to examine any claims dating from before 1975. Parliament changed the tribunal’s jurisdiction in 1985, giving it retrospective powers back to 1840 (when the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed).

The tribunal then started hearing land claims. But in its first decade, it focused on fisheries, planning issues, the loss of Māori language, government decisions being made at the time and general issues of public policy.

Historic grievances

Over the past 38 years, the tribunal has focused on what are called “historical Treaty claims”, covering the period 1840 to 1992. In 1992 a major settlement of fishing claims began an era of negotiation and settlement of these claims, quite separate from the tribunal itself.

With the majority of significant historic claims now settled or in negotiation, that aspect of the tribunal’s work is coming to an end. It has returned to hearing claims about social issues and other more contemporary issues.

Read more:
Solicitor-general confirms Voice model is legally sound, will not ‘fetter or impede’ parliament

Far from expanding its jurisdiction, the tribunal’s powers have been steadily reduced in recent decades. In 1993, it lost the power to make recommendations involving private land – that is, land not owned by the Crown. In 2008 it lost the power to investigate new historical claims, as the government looked to close off new claims that could undermine current settlements.

There is one area where the tribunal was given the power to force the Crown to return land. The 1984-1990 Labour government set a policy to rid itself of what were seen as surplus Crown assets. A deal was struck between Māori claimants and the Crown to allow the tribunal to make binding recommendations to return land in very special cases.

This compromise was not created by the tribunal but through ambiguity in legislation, which was resolved in favour of Māori claimants in the Court of Appeal. The ability to return land has almost never been used and is being progressively repealed across the country as Treaty settlements are implemented in legislation.

Wide political support

Storey quotes a number of tribunal reports, which make findings about the Crown’s responsibilities, as if these findings are binding on the Crown or even on parliament. This is not the case. The Waitangi Tribunal investigates claims that the Crown has acted contrary to the “principles of the Treaty”.

The Waitangi Tribunal establishes what those principles are, but they are binding on neither the courts nor parliament. Having made findings, the tribunal makes recommendations – not to parliament, as Storey suggests, but to ministers of the Crown. Some recommendations are implemented, others are not.

Read more:
Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi

Where there is a dispute between the Crown and Māori, the tribunal has often recommended negotiation rather than make specific recommendations for redress.

Storey has elsewhere referred to the tribunal as a “so-called advisory, now binding, Māori Voice to Parliament” that has “decreed” certain things. In the longer paper he does admit the “tribunal cannot dictate the exact form any redress offered by government must take”. But he then falls back on the notion of a “moral veto” – that its status is so elevated that parliament is forced, however reluctantly, to do its bidding.

Yet not only does the Crown ignore tribunal recommendations as it chooses, it refuses even to be bound by the tribunal’s expert findings on history in negotiating settlements.

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

The Waitangi Tribunal will remain a permanent commission of inquiry because there is wide political support for its work. Nor can be it held solely responsible for increasing Māori assertiveness or political engagement with government, even if this was in any way a bad thing.

A larger social shift has taken place in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past few decades. No fiat from the Waitangi Tribunal has eliminated the cultural misappropriation of Māori faces and imagery – something Storey warns could mean “tea towels with a depiction of Uluru/Ayers Rock, or boomerang fridge magnets, would become problematic”.

The Waitangi Tribunal has often done no more than make Māori histories, Māori perspectives and Māori values accessible to a non-Māori majority. It has certainly had no power to control where debates on Indigenous issues fall.

Michael Belgrave was Research Manager for the Waitangi Tribunal, 1990-1993, and was commissioned at various times until 2006 to undertake historical research for the Tribunal.

– ref. Australians should be wary of scare stories comparing the Voice with New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal – https://theconversation.com/australians-should-be-wary-of-scare-stories-comparing-the-voice-with-new-zealands-waitangi-tribunal-204676

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University

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.

The university fees (known as “student contributions”) paid by most domestic undergraduates are a difficult issue for the Universities Accord review.

Student contribution rates have significant consequences for student, university and government finances. The success or failure of the whole reform process may depend on managing the politics of who pays and how much.

Some university lobby groups are calling for a flat rate student contribution for all subjects and courses. This would reduce costs for many students but substantially increase student contributions for politically sensitive groups, including teaching and nursing students.

A multi-rate student contribution system – with the aim of making average student debt repayment times similar across different courses – would be more politically acceptable.

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The inequity of Job-ready Graduates for students must be brought to a quick end. Here’s how

Current student contributions

The Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates policy set current student contributions in 2021. For subjects the government deemed “job ready” or “national priorities,” student contributions were lowered to attract students. Other subject prices were set at neutral levels or increased to deter students.

The cheapest annual charge for a 2023 full-time student is A$4,124 for nursing, teaching and agriculture. Engineering, science, IT, allied health and performing arts cost $8,301. Students in medicine, dentistry and veterinary science pay $11,800. The highest rates are for law, business and most arts disciplines, set at $15,142.

These student contributions are added to federal government subsidies called “Commonwealth contributions”, which also vary by discipline, to create a total funding rate received by universities.

What are university groups calling for?

Two university lobby groups, the Group of Eight (which includes the University of Melbourne and University of Sydney) and the Australian Technology Network (which includes Curtin, Deakin and RMIT universities), want a single student contribution rate regardless of subjects taken.

The Innovative Research Universities group (which includes Flinders, Griffith and James Cook universities) recommends a two or three tier student contribution system, with prices varying according to graduate employment outcomes.

Before the Job-ready Graduates scheme was introduced, student contributions were roughly linked to future expected earnings in a similar way.

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Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt’s big ideas for how Australia funds and uses research

My submission to the Universities Accord

Job-ready Graduates assumes student contributions significantly influence student course choices.

But student interests, and within those interests employment prospects and expected salaries, are the main drivers of course choices.

In practice, the Job-ready Graduates scheme delivers financial penalties and rewards for course choices students would mostly have made anyway. For students who borrow under the HELP loan scheme, this means longer or shorter repayment times than previously.

My submission to the Universities Accord review focused on practical consequences for students, the government and universities.

Consequences for students

On the surface, a single annual student contribution rate makes repayment burdens more equal.

Students in longer courses would pay more in total, but final HELP debts on completion would be more similar across courses than under Job-ready Graduates or the previous student contribution system.

In practice, however, the same debt has different on-average consequences depending on degree taken. Annual HELP debt repayments are based on the debtor’s income, so students with degrees leading to better-paid occupations make more annual progress towards paying off their HELP debt.

With a single student contribution level graduates in high-paying fields would repay their debt much more quickly than graduates in lower-paying fields.

Slow repayments mean a larger number of years of outstanding HELP debt being indexed to inflation. This year’s indexation will be 7.1%. With more debt to repay as a result, repayment times will increase.

Student contributions based on expected future income narrow these differences in repayment times. The available analyses of repayment times have flaws, (including mixing HELP debtors who started and finished their degrees at different times) but nonetheless support this proposition.

For example, before Job-ready Graduates law students were charged more than humanities students, but graduates from both fields on average took nine years to repay their HELP debt. Typically law graduates earn more than arts graduates and so repay more debt each year.

Setting student contributions based on future income leads to more equality of effort in repaying than a flat rate student contribution system.

Consequences for government

HELP debt costs the government money as well as students. Normally the government incurs interest subsidy costs, calculated as the difference between what it costs the government to borrow money in the bond markets and the CPI-linked indexation rate.

Unusually CPI exceeds the bond rate this year, but this is not expected to last. Not all HELP debtors repay, with 15% of new debt estimated to be eventually written off at taxpayer expense.

Job-ready Graduates made HELP more costly. For example, more than doubling the debt of humanities graduates means they will take much longer to repay fully than previously, if they ever do. Interest and bad debt costs will increase.

A repayment times-based policy would help manage the government’s own financial risks by allocating a high share of HELP debt to students likely to repay in full.

Consequences for universities

For universities, the total funding rate matters more than how it is divided between Commonwealth and student contributions. But student contributions matter independently in one specific set of circumstances: when universities “over-enrol”.

This happens when a university reaches its maximum level of Commonwealth contribution funding. Any additional students are funded at the student contribution rate only.

Student contributions alone may not cover costs in courses with labour-intensive teaching methods or practical training components. For students in health courses, for example, universities pay hospitals and other health services for clinical placements.

Job-ready Graduates significantly cut student contributions for teaching and nursing, which have compulsory work placements. Universities would lose money if they over-enrol in these courses, discouraging them from offering more student places.

Both the single rate and tiered student contribution systems would be an improvement on Job-ready Graduates, by improving on the economics of over-enrolment in teaching and nursing.

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Why arts degrees and other generalist programs are the future of Australian higher education

The politics of single rate student contributions

A flat student contribution that left the government and universities in the same financial position as now would be about $10,000 per year for a full-time student.

$10,000 is more than double what teaching and nursing students pay now. While most would still pursue their career goals, a large price increase would confuse the messaging when policymakers are trying to increase enrolments in these fields.

Nursing and teaching students need to pay more than now to make the system work for all stakeholders, but a multi-rate system would put them in a low or mid-tier student contribution band of less than $10,000 a year.

Teaching and nursing are highly feminised and popular with low socioeconomic status (SES) students. Based on 2021 enrolment data, a flat student contribution would, on average, lead to women paying slightly more than under Job-ready Graduates. Low SES students would also, on average, pay slightly more.

The dollar differences are not huge, at about $1,000 extra for women and $1,500 more for low SES students on average over a three year degree. But again, it would confuse the government’s messaging, with the Universities Accord terms of reference requiring policies to increase low SES enrolments.

What now?

A flat rate student contribution would be simple and improve on Job-ready Graduates for universities and students in high student contribution courses.

But a three or four-tier student contribution system would do more to equalise repayment burdens between students. It would be fairer overall, and politically easier for the government to sell.

Andrew Norton is on the Universities Accord Ministerial Reference Group, an unpaid advisory committee.

– ref. The Universities Accord should scrap Job-ready Graduates and create a new multi-rate system for student fees – https://theconversation.com/the-universities-accord-should-scrap-job-ready-graduates-and-create-a-new-multi-rate-system-for-student-fees-203910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sean O’Byrne, Associate Professor, Deputy Head of School (Research), School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney

“God mode”, for those who aren’t gamers, is a mode of operation (or cheat) built into some types of games based around shooting things. In God mode you are invulnerable to damage and you never run out of ammunition.

There’s no God mode in real life, of course, but the world’s military organisations are very interested in weapons that promise something like it: lasers and other “directed energy weapons”. The US government, for example, is spending nearly US$1 billion per year on directed energy projects.

Australia is not immune to the appeal. The 2020 Force Structure Plan called for a directed energy weapon system “capable of defeating armoured vehicles up to and including main battle tanks”.

Read more:
The much-anticipated defence review is here. So what does it say, and what does it mean for Australia?

In March this year, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles launched Australian startup AIM Defence’s new directed energy testing range on the outskirts of Melbourne. In April, the Defence Science and Technology group announced a A$13 million deal with British defence technology company QinetiQ to develop a prototype defensive laser.

And directed energy technology is a priority in the new A$3.4 billion Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) program.

What is directed energy?

A directed energy weapon concentrates large amounts of electromagnetic energy on a remote target. This energy might be in the form of light (a laser), but microwaves or radio waves can also be used.

In the interest of brevity, we’ll concentrate on laser-based directed energy weapons here, but much of the argument also applies to the other types.

Depending on how much energy is focused on the target, these weapons can damage the delicate electronic systems that control devices and the people who operate them, or melt or burn sturdier hardware.

Because electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, they are much faster than even the fastest traditional weapons. Take a hypersonic missile travelling at ten times the speed of sound towards a target 10 kilometres away. It would have moved only about 10 centimetres by the time the directed light energy from a high-power laser would have reached the target.

What’s more, because these weapons project light rather than munitions, they will never run out of ammunition. This also means ammunition does not have to be manufactured in a factory and transported to the weapon.

Directed energy is not affected by gravity like missiles and bullets are, so it travels in a straight line. This makes aiming and targeting easier and more reliable.

And because directed energy weapons cause damage by heating up a target area, they have less potential to hit nearby objects or send shrapnel flying.

So why doesn’t everyone use directed energy weapons?

Although directed energy weapons have all these advantages over conventional weapons, useful ones have proven difficult to build.

One problem faced by laser weapons is the huge amount of power required to destroy useful targets such as missiles. To destroy something of this size requires lasers with hundreds of kilowatts or even megawatts of power. And these devices are only around 20% efficient, so we would require five times as much power to run the device itself.

We are well into megawatt territory here – that’s the kind of power consumed by a small town. For this reason, even portable directed energy devices are very large. (It’s only recently that the US has been able to make a relatively low-power 50kW laser compact enough to fit on an armoured vehicle, although devices operating at powers up to 300kW have been developed.)

Also, all that heat needs to be removed from the delicate optical equipment that produces the light very rapidly, or it will damage the laser itself. This has proved difficult, though laser technologies with more efficient heat transfer have gradually increased the amount of light energy that can reliably be produced.

Another side effect of dealing with such large amounts of energy is that any imperfections in the optical systems used to focus and direct the light can easily cause catastrophic damage to the laser system.

Nor is it easy to focus a laser on a spot the size of a 10 cent piece tens of kilometres away, through atmospheric turbulence and dust or rain. Add to this the difficulty of holding the energy in the same location on a fast-moving target for tens of seconds, and the practical difficulties become apparent.

Having said this, technologies to overcome all of these obstacles continue to improve.

Directed energy weapons will need a whole industry

But suppose all the technical problems of directed energy weapons are overcome. Even then, to manufacture them in quantity we will face significant supply chain and infrastructure challenges.

There are companies in Australia with the expertise to make such devices. However, to develop and mass-produce directed energy weapons requires an industrial capacity for the fabrication of the necessary laser diodes and high-quality optics, which does not exist in Australia.

To have a “sovereign capability” – being able to produce these weapons without relying on inputs from overseas – we will need to develop such industries.

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This is a time-consuming and expensive national infrastructure investment. In peacetime, it is relatively easy to acquire the raw materials for a directed energy weapon from overseas, but in a large-scale conflict countries that are able to produce these devices will likely be producing them for their own needs.

The potential military advantages of directed energy weapons, and the consequences of an adversary having them, mean Australia and many other countries will maintain an interest in developing them. But as recent policy decisions about nuclear submarines have shown, it is no easy task to quickly develop an industrial capability in technologies that our industrial base has until now largely ignored.

Sean O’Byrne receives funding from DST group for a directed energy research project and was previously funded by Lockheed Martin Corporation to study the physics of high-powered gas lasers.

– ref. Australia wants to build a laser that can stop a tank. Here’s why ‘directed energy weapons’ are on the military wishlist – https://theconversation.com/australia-wants-to-build-a-laser-that-can-stop-a-tank-heres-why-directed-energy-weapons-are-on-the-military-wishlist-204623

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, Professor, School of Politics Economics & Society, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra

Party stability on the progressive side of politics, and repeated party reconfiguration on the conservative side of politics, is a marked contrast in the history of Australia’s two-party political system.

That history is relevant now, as the Liberals find themselves in the electoral wilderness, and as a schism emerges over its stance on the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to the Australian parliament.

It raises a legitimate question about whether, as has happened several times in the past, the Liberal Party might be superseded by a new vehicle that better represents mainstream liberal and conservative voters’ interests and provides a viable electoral alternative to Labor.

A party of many iterations

In contrast to the Australian Labor Party, which predates Federation in 1901 and has existed continuously since, the Liberal Party was formed in 1944 and formally launched in 1945. It is the fifth iteration of the main vehicles through which the centre-right has sought federal parliamentary representation.

Federally, the Liberal Party’s genealogy is:

• Protectionist Party, Free Trade Party (1901-1909)

• Commonwealth Liberal Party (1909-1917)

• Nationalist Party (1917-1931)

• United Australia Party (1931-1945)

• Liberal Party (1945+).

The earliest parliaments were dominated by, as Alfred Deakin famously dubbed them, “the three elevens” – because it was like having three cricket teams play the same match. They were the Deakin-led Protectionist Party, the Free Trade Party (later renamed the Anti-Socialist Party) and the Labor Party.

In 1909 the Protectionist Party and Anti-Socialist Party united to create the Commonwealth Liberal Party to compete with Labor, ushering in the “two party” era.

The next two iterations saw the main anti-Labor party unite, from opposition, with Labor breakaways to form a new party.

In 1917, the opposition Commonwealth Liberals merged with Billy Hughes’ breakaway National Labor Party to form the Nationalist Party, which held office under the prime ministership of Hughes and later Stanley Melbourne Bruce.

In 1931, the Nationalist Party opposition and Labor defector Joseph Lyons and his allies joined to form the United Australia Party (UAP). This was the vehicle for Lyons’ prime ministership and, on his death, Robert Menzies’ first prime ministership.

The UAP became increasingly dysfunctional after Lyons’ death. Menzies proved a poor war-time prime minister, was unpopular with colleagues, and resigned as prime minister in 1941. The coalition UAP-Country Party government of Arthur Fadden fell several weeks later after losing a confidence motion on the floor of parliament, succeeded by the Curtin Labor government.

Labor’s landslide 1943 election win finished the UAP as a political force. The party’s primary vote slumped to 21.9% and it won just 14 of the federal parliament’s then 74 seats.

Menzies drove the Liberal Party’s foundation as a fresh start for centre-right politics in Australia.

His insight that the UAP was terminal was partly driven by the large amount of political activity that sprang up from centre-right forces outside the party’s bounds. This included a large number of independent anti-Labor candidates running at the 1943 election.

The upsurge in centrist community independent candidates – notably the Teals ¬– running at the 2022 federal election is a striking parallel.

Read more:
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Could the Liberal Party be reborn again?

Forming a new political party is a drastic move. The calculus on whether an existing party is still viable and can be renewed, or whether, as Menzies judged with the UAP, it is too far gone and needs to replaced, is a delicate one.

Former prime minister and Liberal leader John Howard declared after the 2022 election that “we have to hold ourselves together”, arguing Peter Dutton was the right man for the job.

Holding the Liberal Party together has since become established as the benchmark for Dutton’s success or failure as opposition leader. This is either a low bar or it’s a sign that the Liberal Party is indeed at risk of breaking apart.

These tensions date from the early 1980s under Howard’s aegis, when the conservative push to crush moderate viewpoints began in earnest.

Howard and conservative Liberal leadership successors since demanded the selling out of principled centrist policy positions as the price of moderates’ inclusion in cabinet and shadow cabinet.

Liberal moderates persistently paid that price in exchange for ministerial advancement. This in turn hastened the Liberals’ lurch to the right. The party become less and less reflective of mainstream Australia even as some visible moderates survived and rose through the ministerial ranks.

Women especially feel unwelcome in the party. The bullying of MP Julia Banks and her subsequent resignation from the Liberals in 2018 became emblematic of the party’s toxic masculinity problem.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison’s misogynistic handling of sexual violence allegations concerning Liberal Party figures followed. Female voters remember this in the ballot box.

The pervasiveness of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics in the branch membership combined with, under the influence of Sky News “After Dark” programming, US Republican-style fringe interests and agendas, are alienating people who in other eras could or would have been branch members. There seems to be little space now for moderate Liberals.

People trying to improve things quietly from the inside are frustrated by the hardened factionalism and capture of key party organs by warring right-wing factions. There are too few mainstream people to coalesce with to drag the party back towards the centre.

Combined with the demographic changes noted by Redbridge analysts Kos Samaras and Tony Barry after the Liberals’ poor showing at the Victorian state election and federal Aston by-election, the picture for the party looks bleak.

As well as losing support among women, the Liberals have lost it among young people, Samaras and Barry note. This is compounded, they say, by young people now not becoming conservative as they age: those who once would have developed into Liberal voters simply aren’t doing so.

Read more:
Will a preoccupation with party unity destroy the Liberal Party?

The Teals who won traditional blue riband Liberal seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth at the 2022 election are essentially moderate Liberals sitting on the crossbench, because sensible centrists are repellent to, and repelled by, the Liberal Party in its current state.

The entropy is gathering pace.

Less than a year ago, Indigenous MP Ken Wyatt was a Liberal cabinet minister before losing his seat at the 2022 election. In April this year, Wyatt resigned from the party in frustration over the Liberals’ opposition to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the co-design of which he himself commissioned and took to cabinet in the expectation of support. He was disappointed.

The resignation of the Dutton opposition’s Indigenous affairs spokesperson, Julian Leeser – a Voice supporter like Wyatt and a significant number of other Liberals – breaks the pattern of moderates selling their soul for career advancement. While admirable, there’s a lot less to lose taking a principled stand like this in opposition than government, but it’s a start.

Now Voice-supporting Liberals are forming WhatsApp groups to co-ordinate their actions in the “yes” campaign. This will likely bring them into campaigning contact with centrist Teals in those traditional blue riband seats the Liberals lost at the 2022 election.

Could that create a chemistry that spurs development of the Liberal Party’s next iteration?

Who knows? But remnant centrists inside the Liberals finding common cause with Teals and their allies outside it, campaigning if not together then at least in close proximity around a galvanising issue of national importance, does make it more rather than less likely.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s defensive posture of just appealing to “the base’” and trying to hold the Liberals together may prove the losing gambit in this fifth iteration of Australia’s main party of the centre-right. As Dutton would know from sport, purely playing defence rarely wins the game.

Chris Wallace has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The Liberals are the fifth iteration of Australia’s main centre-right party. Could the Voice campaign hasten a sixth? – https://theconversation.com/the-liberals-are-the-fifth-iteration-of-australias-main-centre-right-party-could-the-voice-campaign-hasten-a-sixth-203654

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

Some projects in the $120 billion federal infrastructure investment pipeline that the Albanese government inherited from the Coalition will soon be on the chopping block.

This follows the announcement of a 90-day review of the pipeline, and sharp criticism by Infrastructure Minister Catherine King of the Coalition program.

There have been large cost escalations in many projects. Apart from inadequate costing to start with, supply chain pressures have drastically increased the costs of major projects.

The infrastructure pipeline includes rail and road projects in the capitals as well as rail and road construction and upgrades in regional and outback areas.

The government is keeping the size of the pipeline the same, but with its content changing. The review’s outcome is expected to be announced in the mid-year budget update released in December. There will not be new infrastructure projects announced in the May 9 budget.

King said the government was committed to delivering on its election promises and following through on projects now under construction.

The ambitious Brisbane to Melbourne inland railway has already been reviewed and guaranteed. The review, by Kerry Schott, recommended a number of ways to improve its delivery.

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King said that under the Coalition, the number of projects had blown out from from nearly 150 to 800.

“Projects were left without adequate funding or resources, projects without real benefits to the public were approved, and the clogged pipeline has caused delays and overruns in important, nation building projects,” she said.

Many projects never started, and some 160 had a commitment of $5 million or under.

The government needed to fix the situation. “Australia should have a pipeline of land transport infrastructure projects that are genuinely nation-building, economically sustainable and resilient to our changing climate,” King said.

The review will be done by Reece Waldock, a former director-general of the Western Australian transport department, Clare Gardiner-Barnes, a member of the Infrastructure Australia board, and Mike Mrdak, who once headed the federal infrastructure department.

States, territories and local government will be consulted in the review. It is seen as an opportunity for states to name any projects they are no longer committed to.

“A properly functioning infrastructure investment pipeline means projects can be delivered with more confidence about timeframes and budgets,” King said.

“Easing the pressure on the construction sector will help drive inflation lower and deliver more predictable investment and delivery outcomes from governments.”

Labor accuses the Coalition of using the infrastructure program for massive pork barrelling. It says when it took office only 19% of the infrastructure investment program projects with a federal government contribution under $50 million were in seats the ALP held before the election.

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. Some projects in $120 billion federal infrastructure pipeline set to be scrapped – https://theconversation.com/some-projects-in-120-billion-federal-infrastructure-pipeline-set-to-be-scrapped-204741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Theresa Larkin, Associate professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong

Have you been craving certain foods and gaining weight? Maybe you’re fatigued and can’t concentrate, then wake up in the middle of the night. The latest TikTok wellness trend would have you believe high cortisol levels are to blame.

It’s true that cortisol affects our weight, energy balance, metabolism and sleep. But so do thyroid hormones, appetite hormones and sex hormones, as well as diet and physical activity.

Cortisol also does more than this and regulates many other biological functions. It affects nearly all the cells of our body and is essential for survival.

Why is cortisol portrayed as bad?

Some of what is being blamed on cortisol are symptoms of chronic stress or depression – which makes sense, since these are linked.

Cortisol is the main “stress hormone” of the body. This might make people think cortisol is bad for them, but this is not the case.

Stress is an inevitable part of life, and our stress response has evolved as a survival mechanism so we can react quickly to dangerous situations. Both psychological and physical stresses elicit the stress response.

Cortisol is essential for a healthy stress response

Our immediate reaction to a sudden threat is the fight-or-flight response. Adrenaline is released from the adrenal glands into our bloodstream. This instantly increases our heart rate and breathing rate so we can be ready to act quickly to escape or avoid danger. However, the adrenaline response is only very short-lived.

When a threat or stress persists for minutes rather than seconds, cortisol is released from the adrenal glands. Its main role is to increase blood glucose (sugar) for energy.

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Three reasons to get your stress levels in check this year

Cortisol affects the liver, muscle, fat and pancreas to increase glucose production and mobilise stored glucose. This increases glucose to the brain so that we are mentally alert and to the muscles so we can move.

In a healthy and normal stress response, cortisol rises quickly in response to the stress and then rapidly reduces back to baseline levels after the stress has passed.

However, chronic stress and ongoing increased cortisol secretion are not healthy. Chronic stress can cause dysregulated cortisol secretion: when cortisol remains high even in the absence of an immediate stress.

It can take weeks for cortisol dysregulation to return to normal after chronic stress.

What’s the link with depression?

Emerging evidence suggests chronic stress and dysregulated cortisol may contribute to the development of depression. Our research team has shown that people with depression have, on average, higher cortisol than people who don’t have depression. We also found that higher cortisol was associated with more negative thinking and lower quality of life.

The symptoms described on TikTok as being due to high cortisol may be caused by stress, depression or anxiety. Depression can also cause insomnia, increased appetite, and weight gain or loss.

The relationship between cortisol, weight changes and depression are complex. High cortisol also increases the activity of adrenaline. This explains why when you are stressed you can be extra reactive and snap into fight-or-flight mode quickly.

However, some of the symptoms described on TikTok as due to “high cortisol” may actually reflect low cortisol. Low cortisol can be caused by chronic stress and high cortisol during childhood or earlier in life. This is why some people with depression, particularly those with a long history of depression, have low rather than high cortisol.

Low cortisol causes fatigue and weight gain. This is more common in women and we found this was linked to leptin, a satiety hormone.

How do you know if your cortisol is too high or low?

Despite claims on TikTok, we cannot tell whether our cortisol is in balance or high or low.

The only way to know is to have your blood, urine or saliva analysed in a laboratory. This is not done routinely and would be a waste of resources. A doctor would only check this if they suspected you had a disorder of cortisol production, but these are rare.

Besides, your cortisol levels vary considerably across different times of the day and night.

Cortisol affects your body clock

One of the most important roles of cortisol is in the circadian system of the body. The hypothalamus in the brain sets the circadian (approximately 24-hour) rhythms of our biological functions to match the light-dark cycle. Cortisol communicates these signals from the brain to the rest of the body.

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Cortisol secretion from the adrenal glands increases in the early hours of the morning, peaks at about 7am, and then is lowest from about midday until early morning.

Cortisol is our body’s natural alarm clock. Higher cortisol during the morning or at the end of the sleep period stimulates wakefulness, increased energy, and physical activity. Lower cortisol during the night encourages sleep and restorative functions.

How can you maintain healthy cortisol levels?

You can try to maintain healthy levels of cortisol by addressing the underlying causes of cortisol dysregulation.

Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy can reduce the reactivity of the stress response.

Exercise during the day and good sleeping habits also help to reduce chronic stress and high cortisol.

Finally, a healthy balanced diet gives your body the building blocks for good hormone health.

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

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. No, you can’t blame all your health issues on ‘high cortisol’. Here’s how the hormone works – https://theconversation.com/no-you-cant-blame-all-your-health-issues-on-high-cortisol-heres-how-the-hormone-works-203162

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simone Pedrini, Lecturer in ecological restoration, Curtin University

A drone drops a small wooden projectile with three spiral tails and a seed mounted on the tip. It gently lands on the bare ground and sits there, exposed to the elements, until it rains. Then, the moisture penetrates the wood fibres, and the spiral tails start twisting, slowly pushing the seed into the ground, where it will germinate.

The design of this incredible depth-seeking seed carrier, recently published in Nature, was inspired by the self-burying mechanism of a few grass species, such as those of the genus Erodium.

According to the authors, these seed carriers, also known as E-seeds, can be built in various sizes for different species and dropped by aeroplanes or drones to restore degraded ecosystems.

This bio-inspired engineering marvel has received a vast and well-deserved share of attention and praise.

But, from a restoration practitioner’s point of view, it has logistical issues that can greatly limit its application at scale.

Unproven ‘game-changers’

E-seeds are the latest of many technologies presented as restoration “game-changers”.

Numerous private companies have entered the market with revolutionary devices (mostly drones), claiming to restore ecosystems by planting billions of trees. Yet, to date, there is little evidence of their efficacy.

This fascination with shiny technological gadgets might divert scarce resources from practical, on-the-ground solutions that will seriously affect our ability to restore degraded ecosystems globally.

A vast portion of the world’s ecosystem has been damaged or destroyed due to human activities. Global initiatives, such as the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration and the Bonn Challenge, promote international cooperation to restore 350 million hectares by 2030.

For decades, scientists and practitioners have been working on solutions to support and accelerate the recovery of degraded ecosystems.

Read more:
Restoring forests often falls to landholders. Here’s how to do it cheaply and well

Most seeds fail

Often, the first step for initiating the natural recovery of terrestrial ecosystems is to establish native vegetation. Tree planting is a common approach, but it can be expensive on a large scale. Direct seeding is faster and cheaper, but also riskier.

For a start, seeds need to reach the right place in the soil to germinate and grow.

If seeds are scattered (seed broadcasting) on the soil surface by hand, tractor or drone, they can be blown off by the wind or eaten by animals. Even if they germinate, the seedling can dry up and die. As a result, most seeds will not become a plant.

This is why seed penetration in the soil is the key to improving a seed’s chance of success. Generally, the bigger a seed is, the deeper it can go. This is often achieved using precision seeders, similar to those used in agriculture. These machines open up the soil, deposit the seed at a precise depth, and cover it. The E-seed can achieve a similar result, ideally making seed broadcasting as effective as precision seeding.

Unfortunately, this approach presents two problems: scalability and logistics. First, it’s unlikely that the multi-step process needed to manufacture E-seeds can be scaled to the many billions of seeds across thousands of species we need to restore entire ecosystems.

Second, the tails of the E-seeds could easily get tangled with each other, either clogging the seed delivery mechanism or being released in clumps. The authors solved this problem by dividing the seeding box into compartments containing a single E-seed. This stopped the seed from clumping but greatly reduced the number of seeds that could be delivered on each drone flight.

This clumping seeds issue is also common when dealing with native species, such as the grasses that inspired the design of the E-seed. A simpler, less technological solution currently used in restoration is to actually remove the tails.

This reduces the seed volume for storage and delivery, and improves the seed flow through seeding equipment. In some cases, the removal of appendages could also improve seed germination.

Such approaches are not as spectacular as E-seeds dropped from drones. Still, in most scenarios, they are the most cost-effective way to reintroduce native vegetation to a degraded site at scale.

Effective, not flamboyant

Ecological restoration is an incredibly complex activity that goes beyond vegetation establishment.

It must consider the complex and dynamic interactions of organisms and their environment, while accounting for social and economic implications for local communities. Therefore, we must approach ecosystem restoration holistically and not get carried away by the lure of shiny technologies.

Funders with limited appreciation of restoration’s ecological and practical complexities are keen to embrace and invest in charismatic, yet often unproven technologies.

For example, a start-up focused on drone seeding raised a A$200 million investment, double the amount the Australian federal government has dedicated to the environmental restoration fund over four years. But science is yet to demonstrate if drone seeding can work at scale to rebuild Australia’s degraded landscapes and ecosystems.

We should welcome any attempt to improve the success of ecological restoration, and promote the implementation of novel technologies.

But new technologies must prove their worth and practicality. We should focus on the most effective ways to restore native ecosystems, not the most flamboyant.

Read more:
Australia could ‘green’ its degraded landscapes for just 6% of what we spend on defence

Simone Pedrini received funding from the Australian Research Council through the Centre for Mine Site Restoration. He is the Chair of the International Network for Seed-Based Restoration and board advisor for the Europen Native Seed Producers Association.

Jorge Castro Gutiérrez receives funding from Spanish government (project TED2021-129690B-I00).

Kingsley Dixon receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the ARC Centre for Mine Site Restoration. He is the Chair of the Society for Ecological Restoration.

– ref. Drone seeding and E-seeds sound exciting, but ecosystem restoration needs practical solutions – https://theconversation.com/drone-seeding-and-e-seeds-sound-exciting-but-ecosystem-restoration-needs-practical-solutions-204274

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cathy Mihalopoulos, Professor, Monash University

Australia is the world’s first country to legalise the medical use of psychedelics. But not everyone is sure the timing is right. There are still major issues to work out for this move to benefit those most in need.

In particular, there is the question of whether psychedelic medicines will be publicly subsidised, given the lack of data about their cost-effectiveness compared with other treatments.

From July 1 2023, authorised psychiatrists will be able to prescribe psilocybin and MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, to be used in conjunction with psychotherapy.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which regulates medicines and medical devices in Australia, made this decision in February, reclassifying psilocybin and MDMA from “Schedule 9” (prohibited substances, only legally available for use in research) to “Schedule 8” (controlled substances).

Many in the field were surprised. Advocacy group Mind Medicine Australia, which lobbied hard for the decision, was delighted. But mental health experts such as former Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry questioned the sufficiency of evidence.

Read more:
The TGA has approved certain psychedelic treatments: the response from experts is mixed

The TGA considered the effectiveness and safety of psilocybin and MDMA, as the regulator is supposed to do, but not their cost-effectiveness. This is not a requirement of TGA approval processes, but it is for the regulatory bodies that must approve these treatments for a public subsidy.

The paucity of such evidence is going to be a high hurdle.

Will they be subsidised?

How much will such therapy cost? One estimate is $20,000 to $30,000, comprising the cost of the medication and therapists’ time for sessions.

The pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin and MDMA used in Australian clinical studies has largely been supplied free by US-based not-for-profit organisations such as the Usona Institute and Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. The bureaucratic requirements to import these medications include a permit from the TGA and an import licence and permit from the Office of Drug Control.

Increasing supply will require streamlining these import controls. There is also work to be done on the potential for local production. But for now the major determinant of costs for patients will be if the medicines and therapy are subsidised, as many psychological treatments and most psychiatric medications are now.

A subsidy for the psilocybin/MDMA component will require approval by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, the independent body of medical experts that advises the federal health minister on which drugs should be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

This will require a detailed submission (usually from the pharmaceutical supplier) explaining how the medicine will be prescribed, its effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness compared with alternatives. Submissions must also include budget impact analysis – that is, how much it will cost if the medicine is listed on the PBS.

Read more:
Explainer: how is the price of medicine decided in Australia?

A subsidy for the psychotherapy component will require listing on the Medicare Benefits Schedule, which funds services such as blood tests, diagnostics and allied health services. This will need endorsement from the Medicare Services Advisory Committee (MSAC), which is not a statutory committee like the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee but has a similar function.

Are they cost-effective?

To date there are no published studies on psilocybin’s cost-effectiveness, and only three on MDMA – all on its use in treating PTSD.

The first of these studies was published in 2020, the second in February 2022 and the third in March 2022. All three used economic modelling to to simulate long-term benefits and costs of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy compared with standard health care, extrapolated from the results of clinical trials (involving a few hundred people).

All three conclude MDMA-assisted therapy is a potentially cost-effective treatment for people with chronic and severe PTSD. However, the modelling assumes the effects of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy taken from clinical trials of relatively short durations (with maximum follow up of 18 weeks) will extend over 10 to 30 years. This may be overly optimistic. They were also based on the treatment patterns and costs from the US that differ to those in Australia.

PBAC and MSAC will likely need to carefully weigh this type of evidence to make an assessment about cost-effectiveness.

Read more:
Psychedelics researchers balance trippyness with scientific rigor after history of legal and cultural controversy – podcast

Estimating ‘off-label’ use

Another issue to be carefully considered is how many people will likely use these medicines in routine practice. Such estimates are complicated by the risk of off-label use – psychiatrists prescribing psilocybin and MDMA for purposes not listed by the TGA.

An estimated 40–75% of anti-psychotic medicine use is “off-label”. For example, the anti-psychotic medicine quetiapine is registered for treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but is often used off-label for conditions such as anxiety or insomnia. This is despite the rules for prescribing quetiapine (the prescriber must state why they are prescribing it).

Allowing only authorised prescribers of psilocybin and MDMA may reduce the risk but not eliminate it. It could mean the cost of the medicines to the health budget ends up being a lot higher than estimated.

The upshot of all this means, in practice, Australia is still a way off from offering a public subsidy for these psychedelic treatments. Which means, come July 1, the number of Australians able to afford these treatments will be small.

Cathy Mihalopoulos was a member of the Economics Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee from 2012 to 2022. She receives funding from organisations including National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, Department of Health, the Butterfly Foundation. She is an investigator on a clinical trial evaluating psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for treatment resistant depression with Swinburne University and Woke Pharmaceuticals.

Christopher Langmead receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, Therapeutic Innovation Australia, and Servier Australia. He is co-founder and chief executive of Phrenix Therapeutics Pty Ltd, a biotechnology company developing new medicines for mental health disorders.

Mary Lou Chatterton receives funding from multiple organisations including National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, Department of Health, and the Butterfly Foundation. She is an investigator on a clinical trial evaluating psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for treatment resistant depression with Swinburne University and Woke Pharmaceuticals. She is also an investigator on a trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder funded through the Medical Research Future Fund.

– ref. The tricky economics of subsidising psychedelics for mental health therapy – https://theconversation.com/the-tricky-economics-of-subsidising-psychedelics-for-mental-health-therapy-201462

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola St John, Lecturer, Communication Design, RMIT University

From souvenir shops to art galleries, First Nations designs are big business. Australia’s Productivity Commission estimates about $250 million of Indigenous-style art and consumer products are sold annually. But just 16% of that ends up in the hands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.

When it comes Indigenous-style souvenirs, the commission says about 75% aren’t authentic. The art market is a little better, but fakes are prevalent enough for one to have appeared in comedian Ricky Gervais’ sit-com Afterlife.

To support First Nations artists and communities, here’s what you need to know, and need to ask, before buying.

Home is where the art is

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art is more than aesthetically pleasing shapes and colours. It is a cultural expression, a means of passing information from one generation to the next, of telling stories.

These stories may be about sacred knowledge and dreamings specific to an individual, a family or a community – stories not culturally permissible for others to tell. Those stories share commonalities but also differ according to place – plants, animals, customs and laws.

Each of Australia’s more than 200 Indigenous nation groups – comprised of clans that share a common language and kinship systems – will use designs, colours and materials related to place.

Dot painting, for example, is specific to the desert interior of Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia.

Cross-hatching and “x-ray” paintings come from Arnhem Land in north-east Northern Territory.

Depictions of “Wandjina” spirits come from the Kimberley coast in northern Western Australia. The Wandjina are the most powerful creation spirits, symbolising rain. They are often depicted with bodies of dots, representing rainfall.

Ochre pigments, derived from soil, are used across the east Kimberley, Arnhem Land and central Northern Territory.

Any authentic piece of Indigenous art tells a story. Before you buy, get to know that story.

What’s the story?

There’s one simple rule when buying First Nations art or crafts: the more information the better.

Artists have two main ways to sell their art. For original art, it’s through a gallery, which takes a hefty commission. If it’s a design on a product, licensing is more common: the artist gives permission for the reproduction of their work in exchange for a one-off payment or an ongoing commission, usually linked to sales.

In either case, a legitimate gallery or licensee has a vested interest in assuring you of the authenticity of what they are selling, and that the artist is benefiting from your purchase.

They should be able to provide you with:

• the artist’s name and biography, including their language or nations group
• evidence of the work’s authenticity, such as photographs of the artist at work
• how they pay the artist, and how much
• evidence of commitment to efforts to improve the industry, such as the Indigenous Art Code.

If there’s no information on who created an artwork and where they’re from, it is most likely fake.

In short: buy from sellers with transparent policies. On their website and in person they should provide clear information on all off the above. Reluctance to share this information is a red flag.

Look for community connections

Galleries and other intermediaries may be Indigenous or non-Indigenous-owned. They may be private for-profit businesses or community-owned.

Private businesses can be highly ethical and reinvest in their community, but there is greater assurance of this happening with collectively owned businesses established specifically for the benefit of local artists, to employ local people and fund community projects.

An example is the Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, a not-for-profit company owned by artists from the Yuendumu community in the Northern Territory, about 300 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs. Founded in 1985, the company uses its surpluses to fund community projects such as a health program and a dog program, which cares for the local dog population.

There are more than 100 such independently governed First Nations art and craft centres in Australia, including umbrella organisations in the following areas:

• Western Australia: the Aboriginal Art Centre Hub of Western Australia
• Central Australia: Desart.
• Northern Australia from the Kimberley to Arnhem land: Arnhem, Northern and Kimberley Artists.
• Far-north Queenland: Indigenous Art Centre Alliance.
• APY lands of north-west South Australia: APY Art Centre Collective

Art centres sell online. They may have arrangements to sell artwork through commercial galleries nearer population hotspots. They may also license art for use on homeware and souvenirs.

In the wider market for First Nations designs and products, look for evidence of Indigenous ownership, commitment to compensate artists, and other evidence of community engagement. Most First Nations-run businesses are proud to acknowledge their heritage.

There is a federal scheme, called Supply Nation database, that verify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses. But because this is focused on government and commercial procurement, it has few listings for arts, craft, and design business.

So use your best judgement. Ask the right questions, expect full answers.

What about product certification?

What about certifying products? This is done for Australian Made goods. Why not for First Nations-made products?

The problem, according to the Productivity Commission, is that certification schemes need high producer take-up and high consumer recognition to succeed. That would require resources the artists don’t have.

The commission has recommended an alternative approach, mandatory labelling of inauthentic products, through amending the Australian Consumer Law.

It has also recommended new “cultural rights” legislation, giving traditional owners control over cultural assets such as stories, symbols and motifs, with power to take legal action when the infringement of their rights.

So far, however, the federal government has given no indication of if and when it will act on these recommendations.

Until it does, and there are more legal protections and clear labelling – of fake or authentic good – take the time to ask the right questions and get the right answers.

Read more:
Labelling ‘fake art’ isn’t enough. Australia needs to recognise and protect First Nations cultural and intellectual property

Nicola St John receives funding from The Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s principal arts investment, development and advisory body. She also consults to Solid Lines, Australia’s only First Nations led illustration agency.

Emrhan Sultan has received funding from The Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s principal arts investment, development, and advisory body. Emrhan is the co-founder and manager of Solid Lines, Australia’s only First Nations led illustration agency.

– ref. Beware red flags and fakes: how to buy authentic First Nations designs that benefit creators and communities – https://theconversation.com/beware-red-flags-and-fakes-how-to-buy-authentic-first-nations-designs-that-benefit-creators-and-communities-196290