Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Thomas, Professor of Public Health, Deakin University

“Excellent decision.”

This was the reaction from English football great Gary Lineker to the announcement that the English Premier League has agreed to voluntarily “withdraw gambling sponsorship from the front of their matchday shirts”.

The league announced its decision after an “extensive consultation” with the UK government about its review of gambling legislation.

This decision was held up by the government as a key strategy to reduce children’s incidental exposure to gambling logos while watching football, in the UK’s gambling white paper released Thursday.

The white paper also identified the front-of-shirt ban as part of an effort to move towards “socially responsible” sports sponsorship.

Some UK campaigners cautiously welcomed the decision, saying it was an important admission from the Premier League that gambling advertising is harmful.

In Australia, some gambling reform groups said the measure was great news, and that Australian sporting codes should do the same.

However, in the following days, extensive criticism of the deal emerged. Public health experts and other stakeholders argued the measure was more about public relations than harm prevention.

Experts argued the ban would do little to tackle the entrenched relationship between the gambling industry and sport, and could even be a step backwards.

Many were concerned the measure deflected from the urgent need for comprehensive restrictions on gambling marketing – a measure widely supported to prevent the normalisation of gambling for children.

And the UK white paper did little to implement the comprehensive restrictions needed to reduce children’s daily exposure to gambling promotions.

A flawed approach

At the heart of the criticisms were that the decision, as well as related measures, did very little to address the proliferation of gambling marketing in sport.

The agreement:

• only removes a small part of marketing on the front of matchday shirts. This leaves the door open for gambling branding to remain on other parts of the uniform, and on other kits

• doesn’t address marketing or branding around sporting grounds

• will not be implemented until the end of the 2025-26 season – hardly a sign of an urgent imperative to reduce the marketing of a harmful product

• includes a promise to establish a “new code for responsible gambling sponsorship”

• and seemingly ignores the evidence that voluntary codes serve primarily to protect the interests of advertisers, not the community.

The flaws with the Premier League’s decision highlight the significant problems with allowing those with vested interests to make decisions about what they’re prepared to engage in (or not) to protect the health of the public.

History shows these types of initiatives are rarely effective in reducing marketing for these products, or in protecting children.

Far from signalling progress, they serve to delay regulation that would protect public health. Voluntary measures and self-regulation are convenient for governments that don’t want to regulate a powerful industry. They form part of the narrative for government that “something is being done”.

Vested interests

In Australia, sporting organisations have a significant vested interest in making money from gambling products, sponsorships and promotions. Some, including the AFL, also receive a cut of gambling turnover on matches.

Peak sporting bodies claim sport delivers “long-term social, health, community and economic benefits”. While this is clearly true in many cases, it’s inconsistent with the stance many Australian sporting codes have taken on gambling. This is especially so given the irrefutable links between gambling and some of Australia’s most pressing health and social problems, including homelessness, family violence, criminality and mental health issues.

Instead of taking a strong stand to restrict gambling marketing, some sporting codes have continued to normalise the promotion of gambling products. We saw this all too clearly in the recent testimonies of the chief executives of the AFL and NRL to the current Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Gambling.

The AFL and NRL chiefs, Gillon McLachlan and Andrew Abdo, did acknowledge concerns about gambling marketing, and said responsibility to the community was taken “seriously”. But both spoke repeatedly about the need for regulatory “balance” in relation to gambling.

McLachlan added: “I don’t believe that brand advertising per se is too much.”

But our research tells a different story.

Normalising gambling for kids

Children as young as eight have awareness and recall of gambling brands and promotions. They can name multiple gambling brands, describe the advertising in detail, and even tell us what colours certain gambling companies are. Young people tell us that much of this awareness comes from seeing gambling marketing in sport.

The gambling industry is also becoming more creative in linking gambling with sport. This includes promotions on platforms such as TikTok. Sportsbet chief executive Barni Evans justified these promotions by telling the parliamentary inquiry “we only work with partners such as TikTok who have reliable and robust age-gating technology”.

Learning from tobacco control

Government action is clearly the most effective intervention in curbing marketing for harmful products. That’s why governments took decisions about advertising and sponsorship away from the tobacco industry.

Sporting organisations also resisted restrictions on tobacco advertising and sponsorship (with many of the same arguments now used in defence of gambling promotions).

But history shows us that legislated bans on tobacco advertising through sport made a huge difference to preventing young people from being exposed.

Read more:
Gambling needs tobacco-like regulation in sports advertising and sponsorship

An opportunity for change

The Australian parliamentary inquiry into online gambling is looking at how to best respond to gambling marketing. It’s important we don’t follow the ineffective voluntary approach to marketing restrictions that the UK is taking.

As public pressure for action grows, we’re likely to see vested interests offering further minor concessions that have little impact on their advertising or their capacity to target young people.

We need strong action by governments, not small steps that lead nowhere. Gambling and sporting bodies should play no part in decisions about keeping young people and the community safe from this predatory industry.

And their predatory ads should be removed completely from the sporting arena, not just the front of matchday shirts in the English Premier League.

Samantha Thomas has received funding for gambling research from the Australian Research Council, Healthway, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, and the NSW Office for Gambing. She is currently the Editor in Chief of Health Promotion International, an Oxford University Press Journal.

Dr Hannah Pitt has received funding for gambling research from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the NSW Office for Responsible Gambling, VicHealth and Deakin University.

Dr Simone McCarthy has been employed on research projects that are funded by the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.

– ref. Premier League’s front-of-shirt gambling ad ban is a flawed approach. Australia should learn from it – https://theconversation.com/premier-leagues-front-of-shirt-gambling-ad-ban-is-a-flawed-approach-australia-should-learn-from-it-204105

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI, Research Group Leader, UNSW Sydney

Throughout history, war has been irrevocably changed by the advent of new technologies. Historians of war have identified several technological revolutions.

The first was the invention of gunpowder by people in ancient China. It gave us muskets, rifles, machine guns and, eventually, all manner of explosive ordnance. It’s uncontroversial to claim gunpowder completely transformed how we fought war.

Then came the invention of the nuclear bomb, raising the stakes higher than ever. Wars could be ended with just a single weapon, and life as we know it could be ended by a single nuclear stockpile.

And now, war has – like so many other aspects of life – entered the age of automation. AI will cut through the “fog of war”, transforming where and how we fight. Small, cheap and increasingly capable uncrewed systems will replace large, expensive, crewed weapon platforms.

We’ve seen the beginnings of this in Ukraine, where sophisticated armed home-made drones are being developed, where Russia is using AI “smart” mines that explode when they detect footsteps nearby, and where Ukraine successfully used autonomous “drone” boats in a major attack on the Russian navy at Sevastopol.

We also see this revolution occurring in our own forces in Australia. And all of this raises the question: why has the government’s recent defence strategic review failed to seriously consider the implications of AI-enabled warfare?

AI has crept into Australia’s military

Australia already has a range of autonomous weapons and vessels that can be deployed in conflict.

Our air force expects to acquire a number of 12 metre-long uncrewed Ghost Bat aircraft to ensure our very expensive F-35 fighter jets aren’t made sitting ducks by advancing technologies.

On the sea, the defence force has been testing a new type of uncrewed surveillance vessel called the Bluebottle, developed by local company Ocius. And under the sea, Australia is building a prototype six metre-long Ghost Shark uncrewed submarine.

It also looks set to be developing many more technologies like this in the future. The government’s just announced A$3.4 billion defence innovation “accelerator” will aim to get cutting-edge military technologies, including hypersonic missiles, directed energy weapons and autonomous vehicles, into service sooner.

How then do AI and autonomy fit into our larger strategic picture?

The recent defence strategy review is the latest analysis of whether Australia has the necessary defence capability, posture and preparedness to defend its interests through the next decade and beyond. You’d expect AI and autonomy would be a significant concern – especially since the review recommends spending a not insignificant A$19 billion over the next four years.

Yet the review mentions autonomy only twice (both times in the context of existing weapons systems) and AI once (as one of the four pillars of the AUKUS submarine program).

Countries are preparing for the third revolution

Around the world, major powers have made it clear they consider AI a central component of the planet’s military future.

The House of Lords in the United Kingdom is holding a public inquiry into the use of AI in weapons systems. In Luxembourg, the government just hosted an important conference on autonomous weapons. And China has announced its intention to become the world leader in AI by 2030. Its New Generation AI Development Plan proclaims “AI is a strategic technology that will lead the future”, both in a military and economic sense.

Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared that “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world” – while the United States has adopted a “third offset strategy” that will invest heavily in AI, autonomy and robotics.

Unless we give more focus to AI in our military strategy, we risk being left fighting wars with outdated technologies. Russia saw the painful consequences of this last year, when its missile cruiser Moscova, the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, was sunk after being distracted by a drone.

Future regulation

Many people (including myself) hope autonomous weapons will soon be regulated. I was invited as an expert witness to an intergovernmental meeting in Costa Rica earlier this year, where 30 Latin and Central American nations called for regulation – many for the first time.

Regulation will hopefully ensure meaningful human control is maintained over autonomous weapon systems (although we’re yet to agree on what “meaningful control” will look like).

But regulation won’t make AI go away. We can still expect to see AI, and some levels of autonomy, as vital components in our defence in the near future.

There are instances, such as in minefield clearing, where autonomy is highly desirable. Indeed, AI will be very useful in managing the information space and in military logistics (where its use won’t be subject to the ethical challenges posed in other settings, such as when using lethal autonomous weapons).

At the same time, autonomy will create strategic challenges. For instance, it will change the geopolitical order alongside lowering costs and scaling forces. Turkey is, for example, becoming a major drone superpower.

We need to prepare

Australia needs to consider how it might defend itself in an AI-enabled world, where terrorists or rogue states can launch swarms of drones against us – and where it might be impossible to determine the attacker. A review that ignores all of this leaves us woefully unprepared for the future.

We also need to engage more constructively in ongoing diplomatic discussions about the use of AI in warfare. Sometimes the best defence is to be found in the political arena, and not the military one.

Read more:
‘Bet you’re on the list’: how criticising ‘smart weapons’ got me banned from Russia

Toby Walsh receives funding from the Australian Research Council as an ARC Laureate Fellow. He has been banned indefinitely from Russia for his outspoken criticism of Russia’s use of AI weapons in Ukraine.

– ref. The defence review fails to address the third revolution in warfare: artificial intelligence – https://theconversation.com/the-defence-review-fails-to-address-the-third-revolution-in-warfare-artificial-intelligence-204619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessa Rogers, First Nations Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

How does having a safe, reliable place to call “home” affect the health of people and communities across generations? We spoke to staff and families at Yumba-Meta Ltd in Townsville, Queensland to find out.

Yumba-Meta is a community-controlled organisation that has delivered comprehensive support programs for 50 years to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This includes short-term accommodation, such as for people experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, or people at risk of incarceration due to intoxication. Medium to long-term housing options include community home ownership, seniors’ housing, and transitional housing to facilitate employment, education or to break the cycle of addiction.

Our collaborative research project with Yumba-Meta, which will be released mid-year for Yumba-Meta’s 50th anniversary, explores the power of home and how services can support intergenerational wellbeing.

Read more:
Treatment for drug and alcohol misuse should involve families and communities

What we did

We interviewed Yumba-Meta staff and used yarning and photoyarning with Yumba-Meta residents and Elders to hear about the history and evolution of Yumba-Meta. Photoyarning draws on Indigenous storying and conversation. Photographs are used as both prompts and a way for participants to share their thoughts and ideas.

One staff member described the generational change she has seen at Yumba-Meta over time:

[…] young kids, they see you’ve got a home, Mum or Dad, or both […] being able to […] improve their lives […] then those kids are the next ones. The importance of education, the importance of having a job. We do see that […] someone who’s been chronic homeless for ten years and then is able to sustain a tenancy, that’s when changes it for some of their families to go, “oh, I think I might be able to do that too!” You do see it. That’s a long process…before you actually see that happening, I think.“

Yumba-Meta has grown from managing eight houses, to now managing over 203 tenancies. This includes homes under the employment and education program, supported accommodation, women’s shelters and diversionary places. Yumba-Meta has also developed a housing estate, Hillside Gardens with 41 privately-owned lots.

Read more:
First Nations children are still being removed at disproportionate rates. Cultural assumptions about parenting need to change

Safe at home

Our research found a sense of pride is instilled when families and individuals have a home – somewhere grandchildren can visit, a place where young people can learn from Elders, and a safe place to go.

We found health improves over time with safe and affordable housing, especially for older generations who have struggled in the past with housing issues such as chronic overcrowding, and racism that prevents Indigenous people renting and purchasing homes in Townsville.

Those we spoke with talked of a “new normal” being conveyed to children. Young people saw that having their own bed and homes with less people allowed better sleep and space for learning and study. Reliable sanitation practices and facilities (including bathrooms and toilets) along with healthy and sufficient nutrition had direct health benefits.

Overcrowded housing has been linked to chronic eye and ear infections, skin problems, gastroenteritis, respiratory infections, exacerbation of family violence and mental health issues.

Read more:
First Nations mothers are more likely to die during childbirth. More First Nations midwives could close this gap

Before and after

One interviewee said sustainable housing was transformative for families.

Seeing […] people coming from the park and getting into house, like, the pride they have in there […] it’s life changing for them […] and they say, ‘Oh, my grandkids are coming over on the week’, their faces are lit up like this [smiling]

For residents who had experienced homelessness and addiction, having a safe and affordable home was spoken of as a major achievement. Descriptions of life living rough with little ability to eat healthy food were juxtaposed with their new life in a stable home: having food in the fridge and cupboard, and making good personal choices.

These yarns showed the impact organisations like Yumba-Meta can have, by providing supports on multiple fronts while people heal and make positive changes in their lives.

A bit of money I made […] to buy more, more stuff for my little place […] to do it up, and I take pride in my place […] Furniture you know, and things that are needed. A bed and washing machine, and fridge and all that sort of stuff and few other things to brighten my place up, you know […] and I got ornaments, you know […] and make it comfortable for me. That I call ‘home’.

What ‘home’ means

So, “home” was about physical resources: access to washing, showers, toilets, health care providers, medicines and opportunities to remain sober and access healthy food. But it was also spiritual: feeling connected, strong in spirit, good about one’s self. It fulfilled emotional needs with space to grieve loss, talk about feelings, heal from relationship breakdown and domestic violence, pass on culture and stories and a place to hold photos of family and ancestors.

Home was described as somewhere family can be raised with continuity and stability, where children do not need to move schools all the time and where neighbours become friends. These things might be taken for granted in other communities, but previously for Yumba-Meta residents, this stability was often out of reach.

Yumba-Meta continues to have a lasting positive impact on the Townsville community, through provision of safe, secure and affordable housing and “wrap-around” services. Support for community-controlled housing like Yumba-Meta will help more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families remain strong and connected, through improved intergenerational wellbeing.

Jessa Rogers is a First Nations Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She receives funding from the Australian Research Council as a DECRA Fellow. Jessa is a board member of Wesley Mission Queensland.

Vicki Saunders is a Gunggari woman and Senior Research Fellow in the Jawun Research Centre at Central Queensland University (CQU). She currently receives funding from the Medical Research Futures Fund (MRFF) and from The Centre for Research Excellence: Stengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity (CRE-STRIDE) Research Fellow.

Janya McCalman 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. ‘Life changing’ – what 50 years of community-controlled housing at Yumba-Meta tells us about home and health – https://theconversation.com/life-changing-what-50-years-of-community-controlled-housing-at-yumba-meta-tells-us-about-home-and-health-203907

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

Protesters derailed a Monash City Council meeting on Wednesday, demanding the cancellation of a sold-out drag storytime event at Oakleigh Library in Melbourne’s south-east.

This is just the latest in a string of drag performances for children throughout Victoria being cancelled or postponed in response to protest.

The central message of these campaigns (accompanied by varying levels of vitriol) is the same: “let our kids be kids”, “protect our children” and “hands off our kids”, while simultaneously labelling performers and supporters of the events “paedophiles”.

This is part of a global backlash. Similar protests and cancellations have happened in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The argument in support of drag emphasises the impact on the performers at the centre of these events and queer community, arguing that the cancellation of these events is a form of discrimination and a contravention of human rights.

But the debate so far overlooks the agency and rights of the events’ intended audiences: children and young people.

Children as citizens

Calls to “protect the children” from drag performers and trans people assume children are, in fact, in need of safeguarding.

Such messaging is rooted in a tendency for Western societies to reduce childhood to an idyllic innocence, which positions children as “in need of protection” and amplifies their constant vulnerability.

Children’s vulnerability played a critical role in motivating the adoption of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

Since the adoption of the charter, new laws and policies have been established in Australia to criminalise forced marriage, to remove children from detention and to change the Family Law Act to better protect the rights of children.

The charter details children’s need for safeguarding and special care. But it also confirms the evolving capacity of children to assert their rights as cultural citizens and their need for freedom of thought and expression.

The power of drag and imaginative play

Drag as a form of creative, physical and spiritual expression has existed within theatre and cultural performance for millennia.

Drag and queer performance studies have given rise to understandings of gender as an everyday performance: from the clothes we pick out, to the products we gravitate towards in supermarkets, to our repeated physical and vocal gestures.

Drag pokes fun at the gender binary and, in doing so, it aims to blur the boundaries and expose the artificiality of gender roles.

While the success of television shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race have established drag as something more accessible and relatable for a range of audiences, the visibility of queerness that comes with drag – especially when moving outside designated queer spaces – is an apparent step too far.

Read more:
Explainer: the difference between being transgender and doing drag

But the way drag asks us to question the socially constructed nature of gender offers children a vision of self-determination. You can do what you want to do, you can be who you want to be.

The potentiality within the play of drag engages the power of children’s imaginations today to conceive better tomorrows.

Philosopher David Harvey refers to moments of “free play” as fertile ways of exploring and expressing a vast range of ideas, of taking on power structures and social practices, and imagining new possibilities for how we structure and support community.

The insights of the child

In post-plebiscite Australia, the success of targeted campaigns against drag-themed events for children exposes certain conditions around what are “acceptable” encounters of queer expression for children.

The all-too-familiar campaign messages that swirled around the marriage debate – “protect the sanctity of marriage”, “protect families” – are rearing up again with only a minor rhetorical shift.

The more obvious difference now is that the messages have been co-opted by extreme groups who are targeting individuals and threatening violence.

The drag storytime event at the centre of the protests at Monash City Council remains scheduled to take place at Oakleigh Library on May 19. At the time of writing, an online petition to cancel the event has 820 supporters, while another in support of the event has over 3,300 signatures.

Perhaps, then, the social temperature is not as heated towards drag performers as recent cancellations suggest. Instead, a minority of vocal and visible dissenters are dictating the rights and freedoms of the majority.

The image of a drag performer in relation to a child elicits violent responses for some because it is an image of progress and change and of queer acceptance and love set against a long history of homophobia and transphobia in this country.

But there are two figures in this image and one has been kept silent.

In debating rights and agency, perhaps it’s time to ask and be guided by the insights of the child.

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

– ref. Won’t somebody please think of the children? Their agency is ignored in the moral panic around drag storytime – https://theconversation.com/wont-somebody-please-think-of-the-children-their-agency-is-ignored-in-the-moral-panic-around-drag-storytime-204182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne

About 50 years ago an unknown artist entered a portrait of the artist Russell Drysdale in the Archibald Prize. They had painted the artist as a craggy head, emerging from the landscape. The gallery trustees, who knew Drysdale well, loved it – but it was never hung. In their collective opinion the Archibald Prize was a serious art competition. Its subject should never be mocked, even with affection.

How times have changed. The current generation of trustees still take the prize seriously, but not only as an exhibition. The prize has evolved to being an annual snapshot of Australia. It shows a selection of the personalities who are valued both by the artists who paint them and the trustees who select the lucky few to be on view (it is worth noting that while 57 works have been hung, 949 were entered).

This year the exhibition reveals a colourful display of a multitude of styles and subjects. The new orthodoxy is that there is no orthodoxy. There is a similar inclusive sensibility on display in the Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figurative sculpture, and the Sulman Prize for best subject painting, genre painting or mural project exhibitions, although these works tend to be overlooked in the annual festival of art.

Read more:
‘I think Archie would be pleased’: 100 years of our most famous portrait prize and my almost 50 years watching it evolve

The trifecta

Perhaps the work that best encapsulates 2023’s Archibald is Kaylene Whiskey’s Cooking my famous Indulkana soup, a joyous celebration of raw ingredients, pop culture and Aboriginal heritage. It rightly hangs in a prominent position, opposite the podium where the final judgement will be announced.

Whiskey is also exhibiting Come see Kaylene in the Sulman Prize, a reworked Northern Territory tourism poster from the days when TAA flew “the friendly way”. Those who have come to see her include good friends Wonder Woman and Dolly Parton.

Jason Phu has managed the trifecta this year, with entries hung in all three competitions. His Archibald portrait of William Yang, cameras are the best, cameras are the worst, implies Yang’s trademark low-key inscrutability.

In all three of Phu’s paintings thin paint runs down the surface, making it look as though we are seeing the images through wet glass.

This is most disconcerting in his Wynne entry, EVERYTHING STINKS UNDER A STINKING HOT SUN, EVERYTHING GROWS UNDER A SEXY SEXY SUMMER SUN (after a pile of dead rats on a lovely flower bed in the rocks), based on memories of an incident when he was a “dish pig” in a tourist restaurant in The Rocks.

I suspect the Trustees will find it hard to judge this year’s Wynne as there are many very strong entries, including sculptures.

Billy Bain’s Blak Excellence is a light-hearted collection of five Aboriginal sports people, all of whom are both stars in their field, all of whom have helped change some negative stereotypes some would impose on Aboriginal Australians.

Probably the most beautiful of the sculptural entries is Pippin Drysdale’s Wolfe Creek Crater Installation, consisting of 17 individual porcelain pieces. However the most memorable is James Powditch’s The Wynne Club Championship, a mock honour board for the previous winners of the grand old prize.

Life is short, art is long

But the Archibald remains the main game.

When trying to assess this year’s exhibition I keep on thinking of Sydney’s Royal Easter Show. It is enormously popular with the general public for it sideshows and baby animals, magnificent displays of agricultural produce, fairy floss and CWA scones. But at its heart there is the very serious purpose of competition – from fine wool sheep and beef cattle to dogs and poultry. The day trippers enjoy the spectacle but the competitors mean business. And so it is with the Archibald.

When the packing room judges gave the amuse bouche of the Packing Room Prize to Andrea Huelin, they set a high bar for those judging the main event.

In the past it would be fair to describe the gallery’s packing crew as “good old boys”: the early winners were, more often than not, paintings otherwise destined for the reject pile.

This year’s winning portrait, Clown Jewels, is a credible finalist. It sits well with academic portraits by Judith Sinnamon, Tsering Hannaford and Marie Mansfield.

The exhibition is enlivened by Ryan Presley’s whimsical but tough Blood money – infinite dollar note – Aunty Regina Pilawuk Wilson, the sheer energy of Emily Crockford’s Jeff’s pink daisy eyelash clash and Abdul Abdullah’s playful Self-portrait after MD 2.

But the painting that haunts me, that I cannot forget, is Danie Mellor’s A portrait of intimacy. The subject is Gene Sherman, whose husband Brian died less than a year ago.

She sits in profile, her face controlled in grief, staring ahead, focusing on infinity, eyes protected by her tinted glasses, hands gripping the arm of the chair. Sherman’s pose echoes a translucent background image of Alesso Baldovinetti’s Portrait of a Lady in Yellow.

Life is short, art is long, and will outlive us all.

Read more:
Judging the Archibald: the rules of the game

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

– ref. From joyous celebration to the depths of grief: the new orthodoxy of the Archibald prize is there is no orthodoxy – https://theconversation.com/from-joyous-celebration-to-the-depths-of-grief-the-new-orthodoxy-of-the-archibald-prize-is-there-is-no-orthodoxy-204261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Deem, Lecturer – Law, CQUniversity Australia

Australian political leaders are good crisis managers. The establishment of the National Cabinet in March 2020, which brought together the prime minister, state premiers and territory chief ministers to coordinate the national response to the COVID pandemic, played into this strength.

Compared to other intergovernmental forums, the National Cabinet was designed to be nimble, decisive and not weighed down by bureaucracy.

However, three years on, and with the pressing nature of the pandemic easing, it’s time to rethink the National Cabinet. With the leaders gathering today in Canberra, a central question looming over the meeting is whether the group is still fit for purpose.

Late last year, Griffith University’s Policy Innovation Hub convened a workshop bringing together experts, politicians and other stakeholders to review National Cabinet’s performance and identify how it can be improved in the future. We reached three main points of agreement.

1. An informal approach is no longer sustainable

While the current model for National Cabinet worked well at the height of the pandemic, the same approach is not ideal today.

Since the abolition of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 2020, National Cabinet has served as the primary forum for Australia’s leaders to meet and consider important issues facing the country.

But National Cabinet’s emphasis on informality, which came to be valued by political leaders during the pandemic, is not a sound basis on which to deal with the complex challenges facing the nation.

While avoiding the mire of bureaucracy might often be a good thing, we also need to develop a set of principles or touchstones to guide and monitor the success of the National Cabinet. We also need greater selectivity and justification of the projects the cabinet focuses on, and a reasonable balance between stability, flexibility and priorities.

2. The veil of secrecy must be lifted

The National Cabinet is still shrouded in secrecy. From the outset, then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison argued it was protected by cabinet confidentiality, which prevented public disclosure of discussions and documents considered by the body.

This argument was rejected by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in 2021. Federal Court Justice Richard White held that simply naming the institution a “cabinet” did not automatically grant it confidentiality.

Read more:
Morrison government loses fight for national cabinet secrecy

But even after that decision, both the Morrison and Albanese governments have refused Freedom of Information requests for National Cabinet documents.

As a federation, Australia already struggles with accountability, as it can be easy for governments to shift blame to one another. For example, the federal and Victorian governments argued over who was to blame for COVID outbreaks in aged care centres in 2020.

Adding in a policy of blanket secrecy about National Cabinet further constrains our ability to hold governments accountable and undermines public trust.

To be sure, there is some value in preserving the privacy of National Cabinet discussions. In a regular cabinet, for example, it allows members to have rigorous debate and consider all options before coming to a unified position.

The key, then, is to strike a balance between encouraging frank discussions between our leaders and promoting transparency. A good starting point would be to return to the partial Freedom of Information exemption that operated under COAG. This allowed for documents to be released under a Freedom of Information request – with the agreement of all jurisdictions – while preserving the confidentiality of the details of the leaders’ discussions.

Read more:
Nowhere to hide: the significance of national cabinet not being a cabinet

3. National Cabinet must have a true federal-state balance

Australia is at its best when it operates as a true federation, with state governments given space to innovate, learn from one another and collaborate.

The response to the pandemic is a good example: as infection patterns varied around the country, each state was able to respond to local conditions as needed. If the National Cabinet is to succeed into the future, its participants must be committed to the aims of federalism.

Any reform of National Cabinet should ensure it is a truly federal body. An intergovernmental agreement could formalise the National Cabinet’s governance arrangements and clarify its role and function. It could also add innovations, such as a a joint Commonwealth-state secretariat.

The National Cabinet, like COAG before it, is currently a top-heavy body.

The topics the Commonwealth government deems important tend to be prioritised and the states have limited opportunities to raise issues they see as important. In addition, the Commonwealth has a bias towards uniform policies rather allowing variation to suit local needs. The Commonwealth also has a larger revenue base, giving it a stronger bargaining position compared to the states.

These issues remain a challenge to fostering greater equality in the National Cabinet and optimising our federation to the greatest advantage.

Read more:
Will national cabinet change federal-state dynamics?

Where to from here?

The National Cabinet played a vital role in seeing Australia through the worst of the pandemic. But the transition from COAG to the National Cabinet was so swift, there was no opportunity to develop a truly workable, sustainable model. We need a body suited to meet the substantial challenges the nation faces into the future.

Australians have a well-honed scepticism of bureaucratic talk fests, but there is also frustration at the perceived inability of government to undertake long-term reform. The National Cabinet has an opportunity to learn from the deficits of COAG and create a lasting model of federal cooperation and achievement.

Jacob Deem receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Victorian Department of Health and Telematics Trust.

Jennifer Menzies 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. With the COVID crisis easing, is the National Cabinet still fit for purpose? – https://theconversation.com/with-the-covid-crisis-easing-is-the-national-cabinet-still-fit-for-purpose-202145

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessa Rogers, First Nations Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ school experiences are often inaccurately described through what researchers call “deficit perspectives”. This means their experiences are spoken about by others in ways that aren’t representative of lived experience.

It is rare to hear from Indigenous students and young people directly in research and reports.

Indigenous students, their parents and their teachers shared their experiences as part of the federal government’s ongoing “Footprints in Time” study. Our research using this data set illuminates Indigenous primary school experiences.

Our findings show young Indigenous school students are engaged in their school lives. But they and their families still experience significant levels of racism and want more teaching of Indigenous culture and language.

Meanwhile, teachers say they do not have adequate training to value and teach Indigenous cultures in their classrooms.

Our research

Footprints in Time is also known as the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. Since 2008, it has followed the development of Indigenous children to understand what they need to grow up strong.

It involves annual waves of data collection and follows about 1,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in urban, regional and remote locations. Interviewers have spoken with more than 1,200 of the original families for most of the study’s 15 years.

Our new primary school report has been produced as the majority of children in the study have now completed primary school. For this, we used data collected between 2009 and 2019.

Here are some of our early findings, ahead of our full report due to be released in mid-2023.

Students are engaged

There is a prevailing assumption in education debates that school engagement is a struggle for Indigenous students and their families.

Yet more than half of the children in this data set were very highly and consistently engaged with school right across the primary years.

Parents’ trust and engagement with schools was also high – with high rates of visiting the classroom (76%), attending school events (76%), talking to other parents (72%) and contacting the teacher (68%).

Read more:
How can Australia support more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers?

Racism is a problem (despite what some teachers think)

Our report found a disconnect between teachers’ approaches to cultural identity, the training they have received and racism experienced by parents and students.

Many teachers spoke of taking a “colourblind” approach, with teachers having the general sense racism is not an issue in their classrooms.

As one teacher noted:

I aim to treat each child the same as any other in terms of race. I also aim to teach this to my students. I emphasise that a colour or religion is not what makes us different.

Another teacher stressed students were simply treated the “same” to foster a culturally inclusive classroom:

We treat ALL students the same. Culturally our students don’t know they are different/same; five out of six are Aboriginal students.

But this approach does not appear to be working. Almost a quarter (24%) of students said they had experienced racist bullying at school, while 22% of parents said they had experienced racism at their child’s school.

Meanwhile, 53% of teachers also said they had insufficient cultural competency training.

Despite many schools noting that they celebrate Indigenous days of significance, 41% of parents surveyed reported no or limited representation of Indigenous teachers or staff at their child’s school.

Read more:
Racism hits Indigenous students’ attendance and grades

Time to change homework approaches?

Teachers were asked what strategies they used to encourage parents to support children’s learning at home. Of more than 400 responses, homework was in the top three. This included weekly homework to revise what is taught in class, as well as readers and flash cards.

This was despite there being little evidence for academic benefits of homework in the primary years.

When asked what they would like to change about school, children reported reduced homework. They also said they wanted to see less staff turnover, better play areas and less bullying.

Opportunities to learn Indigenous languages

While learning to read and write in Standard Australian English is important, so too are Indigenous literacies and languages.

Almost 90% of parents surveyed said they wanted their child to learn an Indigenous language at school, but only 21% of children had this opportunity. Most teachers (57%) reported their schools were not delivering an Indigenous language program.

There was also very little access to specialist language teachers in remote areas, despite the fact most children in the study who had an Indigenous language as their first language lived in remote regions.

Primary school teachers most frequently reported they would benefit from learning to teach Indigenous children successfully (61%), followed by learning about Indigenous culture in the local area (59%), and then learning to teach Indigenous knowledge appropriately (58%).

Roughly 18% of teachers were confident they had sufficient training. Overall, an average of 84% of teachers across the primary years said they felt they would benefit from some form of additional training. This reflects the words of one parent who shared their own experience at school:

I was always proud to be Black, but we didn’t learn any (Indigenous) history.

Read more:
Tradition and innovation: how we are documenting sign language in a Gurindji community in northern Australia

What next?

Our report highlights several areas where we can make positive – and necessary – changes. These include:

• improve cultural competency training for teachers. This training is the responsibility of schools, policy makers, and universities alike

• professional learning should explicitly address race-based bullying and racism, providing teachers with clear strategies to put into practice

• it is essential that teachers personally reflect on their approaches and how a “colourblind” approach may not be working

• teachers should act to strengthen relationships with families and build opportunities for engagement with parents throughout the primary school years

• we need to make Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island histories and cultures a national priority across the curriculum. It should be delivered fully and universally, regardless of location, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student numbers

• homework policies across primary schools in Australia should be transparent and evidence-based. Consideration needs to be given as to whether homework is an engagement barrier for Indigenous children

• the overall lack of provision of Indigenous language programs is of significant concern and a national plan to address this should be a top priority for government.

The National School Reform Agreement

These priorities should be addressed in the next National School Reform Agreement.

The agreement is a joint agreement between the Commonwealth, states and territories, designed to lift student outcomes in Australian schools.

The current agreement will expire in December 2024. And the new one is now being examined by an expert panel, with a report due in October. The government has asked it to look at supporting students, student learning and achievement, attracting and retaining teachers and data collection.

Indigenous voices are key to improving each of these areas and should be central to future discussions.

Jessa Rogers receives funding from the Australian Research Council as a DECRA Fellow. She has previously received research funding from the AuDA Foundation. The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children: Primary School Report was funded through a competitive tender, commissioned by the Department of Social Services.

Kate E. Williams has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, and Queensland Department of Education. The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children: Primary School Report was funded through a competitive tender, commissioned by the Department of Social Services. Kate is affiliated with Play Matters Australia, currently holding the role of Executive Manager Operations for the company. She is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Early Childhood & Inclusive Education at the Queensland University of Technology.

Kristin R. Laurens received funding from an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2018-2022), and has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Future Fund. The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children Primary School Report was funded through a competitive tender, commissioned by the Department of Social Services.

– ref. First Nations students are engaged in primary school but face racism and limited opportunities to learn Indigenous languages – https://theconversation.com/first-nations-students-are-engaged-in-primary-school-but-face-racism-and-limited-opportunities-to-learn-indigenous-languages-203408

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Jongenelis, Associate Professor, Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change, The University of Melbourne

It’s 2013. The Harlem Shake is on the radio and e-cigarettes are becoming a thing. A group of researchers convene to discuss these and other products containing nicotine.

In a 2014 paper detailing the outcomes of that meeting, the authors rated “electronic nicotine delivery systems” (e-cigarettes) as having “only 4%” of the maximum relative harm of cigarettes.

Critically, the authors stated their “understanding of the potential hazards” of e-cigarettes was “at a very early stage” because they lacked “hard evidence for the harms of most products on most of the criteria” they examined.

In other words, they noted their work was methodologically weak and their estimates were just that – guesses based on their opinions rather than scientific evidence.

But one of those “guesstimates” has gone on to become the most cited piece of vaping misinformation globally: e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.

The problem is, it’s wrong.

Read more:
Sex and lies are used to sell vapes online. Even we were surprised at the marketing tactics we found

How the guesstimate took off

Public Health England used the 95% figure in its 2015 review of e-cigarettes, but failed to mention the caveats of the guesstimate.

This prompted widespread criticism from experts. An editorial in The Lancet medical journal labelled the 2014 paper “an extraordinarily flimsy foundation” on which to base the major conclusion of Public Health England’s review.

The Lancet editorial notes Public Health England used the guesstimate despite it being based on “the opinions of a small group of individuals with no prespecified expertise in tobacco control” and “an almost total absence of evidence”.

The 2015 editorial also raised concerns about conflicts of interest, noting that some researchers involved in developing the guesstimate had connections to Big Tobacco. These conflicts were described further in the British Medical Journal in September and November.

Despite this, the 95% figure remained in Public Health England’s communications. It had also spread to e-cigarette advertising.

By 2020, the guesstimate had become a “factoid”: unreliable information repeated so often it becomes accepted as fact. Yet given the growing evidence of harms associated with e-cigarette use, the factoid was even less valid seven years later.

How it has been used in Australia

The industry and its allies have been so effective at publicising this unscientific guesstimate, it continues to be used to undermine Australia’s public health policy.

In submissions made to Australia’s 2020 Senate Inquiry into Tobacco Harm Reduction, industry bodies and allies leaned heavily on the factoid in their arguments for legalising e-cigarettes.

They continued to do so in the 2020 Therapeutic Goods Administration’s consultation on the rescheduling of nicotine as prescription only and most recently in the 2022 consultation on proposed reforms to the regulation of vaping products to limit importation and improve product standards.

Why does it matter?

Although this factoid has been debunked, it continues to influence people’s thinking. Misinformation researchers refer to this as the continued influence effect: once it takes hold, it’s notoriously difficult to dislodge.

As a digestible, attention-grabbing stat, it circulates in the media, and is repeated again and again. And because we are more likely to believe false information when it has been repeated many times (the illusory truth effect), the misinformation becomes “truth”, even after we have been told it’s false.

Even this year, harm-reduction experts have used the factoid to argue vaping is less harmful than smoking and that Australia could look to other countries that legally sell vapes to adults without prescription.

Read more:
How bad is vaping and should it be banned?

What’s the solution?

We must debunk the myth that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes often and with factual evidence.

Here is that evidence:

• e-cigarette use involves the inhalation of toxic substances and is associated with poisoning, lung injury and burns

• nicotine e-cigarettes can cause dependence or addiction in non-smokers

• young non-smokers who use e-cigarettes are more likely than non-users to initiate smoking and become regular smokers

• e-cigarettes do not result in reduced harm if users continue to smoke (which most do). This study found no difference between e-cigarette users’ and smokers’ rates of smoking-related disease and self-reported health six years later.

Public health policies should be informed by impartial evidence, not industry-backed guesses. It’s time to leave the factoid back in 2013 with The Harlem Shake.

Read more:
My teen’s vaping. What should I say? 3 expert tips on how to approach ‘the talk’

Michelle Jongenelis receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is affiliated with the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, the Public Health Association of Australia, and the World Federation of Public Health Associations’ Tobacco Control Working Group.

– ref. No, vapes aren’t 95% less harmful than cigarettes. Here’s how this decade-old myth took off – https://theconversation.com/no-vapes-arent-95-less-harmful-than-cigarettes-heres-how-this-decade-old-myth-took-off-203039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny van Oosterzee, Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University

From the outside, planting trees seems simple. Seedlings want to grow – pop them in the soil, water them and walk away.

But Australia has never seriously invested in restoration and has barely monitored outcomes when it has been done. Recent research into the replanting of 20 million trees nationwide found little impact on the threatened species these trees were meant to support.

This matters, because Australia is a major global deforester. Efforts to preserve forests are important, but the remnants that remain are highly fragmented. Before 1788, forest covered an estimated 30% of the continent. Only half of Australia’s forest coverage has survived colonisation.

For a little over a decade, we’ve experimented with different planting methods on our own land in Queensland’s wet tropics. In our recent research, we collated what works well and cheaply. Use a planter spade, make sure both sapling and soil are wet, gently press the seedling into the hole, and only spray weedkiller where needed.

Australia still isn’t serious about restoration

Forests support most of life on Earth. But in just the last century, the world has lost as much forest as it had in the previous 9,000 years. Today half of the Earth’s land previously covered by trees has been cleared. Of the forests remaining only 40% have high ecosystem integrity.

Under First Nations stewardship, around 30% of Australia was originally covered with forest.

Read more:
Nature is in crisis. Here are 10 easy ways you can make a difference

Australia remains one of the world’s top deforesters – the only developed nation on the list.

All climate action pathways limiting warming to 1.5℃ rely on intact forests. But we still lack basic information on how to do restoration best. Most native species have not been tested for their survival and growth rates.

Globally, improving seedling survival has proved difficult because of lack of evidence of best practices. The evidence we do have shows seedling mortality can be as high as 30-40%.

Landscape-scale restoration now relies largely on private investment, often done at small scale on bush blocks owned by individuals and small groups.

A major problem is money. Community restoration in the wet tropics, for instance, has been estimated to cost over A$60,000 a hectare for densely planted native seedlings. This cannot stretch to the scale of restoration desperately needed across Australia’s iconic landscapes.

But there’s good news – since 2011, we’ve been experimenting with how to restore land effectively and for much, much less money.

Restoring forests means mastering replanting

Eighteen years ago, we bought Thiaki – 180 hectares of land on the Atherton Tablelands, in Queensland’s wet tropics. Covering just 0.3% of Australia, this biome supports more species diversity than anywhere else, including cassowaries, tree kangaroos, striped and lemuroid possums.

Much was cleared early on for dairy. But since the 1940s, many farmers have left the industry due to new economic realities. This has provided new opportunities for restoration.

We bought a patch of forest and set it up as a research project looking at cost-effective restoration for carbon and biodiversity using native species.

While the immediate challenge was cost, there were other challenges. Which trees do you plant, where do you plant them and what time of year? How do you plant them quickly and cost-effectively?

Here’s what works

In our latest research, we tested many combinations of technique, spacing and planting care across three landscape-scale experiments. What we found sounds simple. But recreating a forest relies on doing these things right.

Here are five tips:

1. Use a spade: Using a two-person tree planting auger made no difference to survival versus a simple planter spade. But the humble planter spade was four times cheaper and four times faster, which substantially reduces costs of restoration.

2. Saturate the seedling and the soil. This sounds like common sense, but it’s often overlooked, particularly when plantings are scheduled for drier months. When we planted seedlings into drying soil, we lost up to 40% in the first four months.

3. Treat saplings with care. Damaging roots by yanking a seedling out of the tube or kicking them instead of closing the soil gently with the toe of your boot can cut survival by 20%.

4. Don’t lose sleep over spacing. We found the distance between plants had little impact on survival. It didn’t matter whether we planted six or 24 different species.

5. Don’t blanket the area with weedkiller. In places like the wet tropics, fast-growing grasses can make it impossible for trees to establish. But spraying weedkiller across an entire area isn’t necessary. We found just spraying the rows where seedlings will be planted gave the same survival rates. This cuts costs, reduces erosion and protects soil biodiversity.

What else did we learn?

It’s vital to maximise survival in the first months. Boosting survival rates by 10% in the first four months of a planting program proved to be an indicator of up to 40% better survival rate 18-20 months later.

Many restoration programs plant species expecting them to grow as they do in intact forests. Their behaviour in the wild, however, does not necessarily translate to saplings in restoration projects. So it’s also important to take on board experience of sapling survival in other plantings, and nursery experience and provenance.

We kept a close record of costs, and found it was possible to slash restoration costs more than seven-fold, to below $8,000 a hectare – even in areas where costs are usually higher. When you bring the cost down this low, it makes carbon farming worthwhile in agricultural landscapes (if prices are above $37/tonne of CO₂).

Some of these tips may not be as important in every ecosystem. But caring for saplings will be true everywhere.

To help Australians at work restoring their bush blocks, it would be useful to have regional best-practice guidance documents – particularly around cost-effective planting, monitoring, species selection and case studies.

While the work of individual landowners is laudable, it won’t be enough – even if carbon farming and biodiversity markets take off.

Ideally, governments would knuckle down and help restore these denuded landscapes at scale. But if they prefer to stand back, the only option will be to set prices for carbon and biodiversity to reflect the true value of bringing our forests back.

Read more:
Fungi: the missing link in tree planting schemes

Penny van Oosterzee is a Director of Biome5 Pty Ltd which was a linkage partner in an ARC research project on cost-effective restoration for carbon and biodiversity. Penny has recently published a book with Allen & Unwin based on the Thiaki restoration projects.

Noel D Preece is a Director of Biome5 Pty Ltd which derives some income from Australian Carbon Credit Units. He has been an Investigator on several Australian Research Council grants associated with reforestation and restoration in the Wet Tropics of Australia. He does not currently receive funding from any institutions. Noel is a non-executive Director of Terrain NRM Ltd.

– ref. Restoring forests often falls to landholders. Here’s how to do it cheaply and well – https://theconversation.com/restoring-forests-often-falls-to-landholders-heres-how-to-do-it-cheaply-and-well-204123

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan K Martin, Emeritus Professor in English, La Trobe University

Can we justify maintaining water-hungry botanic gardens in an age of climate change and rising water prices?

Perhaps such gardens are no longer suited to Australia’s changing climate – if they ever were.

It is easy to argue Australian botanic gardens are imperial remnants full of European plants, an increasingly uncomfortable reminder of British colonisation.

But gardens, and their gardeners, aren’t static. They are intrinsically changing entities.

A brief history

Most Australian botanic gardens were established in the 19th century, starting with the garden in the Sydney Domain around 1816.

The earliest gardens served multiple functions.

They were food gardens. They were test gardens used to establish the suitability of crops and vegetables introduced from Europe and other colonies.

Nostalgia, European ideas of beauty and the desire to test introduced varieties meant botanic gardens were planted with trees familiar to British visitors. Oaks, elms and conifers were all planted, along with the kinds of flowers and shrubs naturalised in British private and public gardens.

Introduced plants and trees were distributed to settlers as part of acclimatisation – the introduction of exotic plants intended to transform the Australian landscape to a more familiar one and make it “productive”.

Botanic gardens also reversed this exchange by collecting, cultivating and internationally distributing Australian native plants deemed potentially useful or beautiful.

Read more:
Friday essay: the forgotten German botanist who took 200,000 Australian plants to Europe

Finally, and most controversially, they were public spaces.

Australian public gardens drew on then new ideas from European social reformers and progressive politicians. These gardens were seen as providing healthy air for the citizens of increasingly crowded cities. They were also built on older ideas about commons and provision of shared public space for the recreation of the poorer classes.

These different uses sometimes clashed. Ferdinand Mueller, director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, was arguably displaced from his role because his vision of the garden was as an instructional botanical nursery. Public demand had shifted to a desire for a more aesthetic and usable garden.

Facing the climate emergency

Water for trees and decorative plants drawn from very different climates were always an issue for these gardens.

As early as 1885, Richard Schomburgk in his role of director of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens told Nature about the drought affecting that city and the drastic impact it was having “upon many of the trees and shrubs in the Botanic Garden, natives of cooler countries”.

As the climate has shifted, droughts, changes in water table and climate change uncertainty have foregrounded the plight of these thirsty trees, and some have died.

The Geelong Botanic Gardens, established in 1851, provide an example of water demand and the work done to retain historic trees, using wastewater to maintain these plantings. The garden also now has a “21st-Century Garden” focused on sustainability, containing hardy natives including acacias, eremophila, saltbush and grasses.

Today’s botanic gardens are still test gardens, and are now important sites for global climate change research. They demonstrate what not to plant, but also that not all introduced plants are unsuited to Australian conditions.

Adelaide Botanic Gardens offer a plant selection guide where residents can check whether a plant is suited to their local conditions.

The Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens have a “climate ready” rose display, a reframing of the decimated species rose collection, which adjusts exotic planting to climate change, without throwing the baby out with the (diminishing) bath water.

Some European, Mediterranean, North and South American plants are exactly suited to Australian climates, or are robust enough to adapt to changes which include increased drying and heat in many areas, but also the possibility of increased humidity in formerly arid zones.

Colonial memorials

There has been a recent trend to erase reminders of our colonial past.

Do the best lessons come from removing colonial memorials, or from rewriting their meaning? Pull out the giant trees and exotic gardens, or use them to demonstrate and examine the assumptions and mistakes of the past, as well as to design the future?

Various garden exhibitions, such as the touring Garden Variety photography exhibition, do the latter, foregrounding the problematic history as well as the future possibilities of the space.

Many gardens also now include Indigenous acknowledgement and content: heritage walks, tours, and talks by Indigenous owners to demonstrate the long history, naming and uses of local plants which overturn their colonial positioning.

Shifting landscapes

Australia’s botanic gardens have changed a lot over the past 200 years.

Botanic gardens are adapting to climate change, replacing dying and stressed trees and outdated gardens with hardier varieties and new possibilities, conserving endangered species and acting as proving grounds for climate impacts.

For decades, state and national gardens like the Western Australian Botanic Garden and regional gardens like Mildura’s Inland Botanic Gardens have installed indigenous, native or climate-focused gardens, as well as or instead of the traditional heritage European style.

Botanic Gardens Australia and New Zealand offers a landscape succession toolkit: a guide for mapping out what is doomed, what most needs preserving and what adaptations are most pertinent for our botanic gardens of the future.

Finally, we don’t need to rip out non-hardy introduced trees: climate change will progressively remove them for us.

Susan K Martin has received ARC funding from the Australian Research Council for projects on Gardens and environment including currently ‘Parched: Cultures of Drought in Regional Victoria’. She is a member of Landcare.

– ref. The public history, climate change present, and possible future of Australia’s botanic gardens – https://theconversation.com/the-public-history-climate-change-present-and-possible-future-of-australias-botanic-gardens-198864

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

Anthony Albanese’s first year as prime minister will, as it happens, be bookended by meetings of the Quad – the gathering of the leaders of the United States, Japan, India and Australia.

After the 2022 election, Albanese rushed to get himself sworn in so he could immediately fly off to the Quad, for what was a dream initiation into summit diplomacy. The timing could not have been more fortuitous.

The coming Quad on May 24 (three days after the election anniversary) has equally fallen Albanese’s way, because Australia, for the first time, is the host.

This week, Albanese announced the meeting will be held at the Sydney Opera House.

The choice of venue is a master stroke in political terms. What better setting to be welcoming US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – to be showing off Australia to the region? And with greater symbolism, for Australians, than a more workaday backdrop.

As a leader, Albanese presents with a certain homespun quality, which is what makes him popular with ordinary people. Behind that, he demonstrates a shrewdness in exercising power, in communicating and in showcasing both his government and the country.

These skills can be observed ranging from how he manages his ministers (with a light rein but kept in line) to his messaging (he’s personally constantly engaged with the media but seldom tripped up by them). The attention given to the physical framing of the Quad meeting – which comes at a critical time with the uncertain strategic outlook and Australia’s defence policy reorientation – is just another example.

The Albanese government operates on the principle of maximum visibility, but that is accompanied by considerable secrecy. A bevy of ministers is sent out daily to blitz the news and talk cycles. But what we don’t know is as significant as what we get to see and hear.

If we go back to the Hawke government, for example, the cabinet process was much more transparent, the policy arguments among ministers more exposed. Some of this was due to leaks, but there was also a greater willingness to talk about the internal debates.

Mostly – albeit not entirely – Albanese has been able to keep behind closed doors what divisions there are. This holds despite the exposure of some battling around Treasurer Jim Chalmers and budgeting.

News conferences can be telling contests between a prime minister and journalists. Albanese has one interesting tactic for avoiding being thrown onto the back foot.

“You get one question” is his mantra. That stops a journalist following up an answer in which the PM has dodged. While sometimes fellow reporters will home in, often the “one question” approach allows for escape.

Scott Morrison was a control freak and the crassness of his style meant things often ran out of control. Albanese runs a highly controlled government, but uses gossamer threads, so the control becomes near invisible.

After almost a year, a debate is beginning about whether this is emerging as a do-little government or an engine for change.

Journalist Tim Colebatch has written in Inside Story that “the Albanese government has fine-tuned many small things but embarked on no really big changes, and none are foreshadowed”.

The government gives the impression of hyperactivity, but does the impression reflect reality?

We have to insert the disclaimer that it’s early days. Beyond that, it’s a case of whether you want to see the glass as half empty or half full.

In around a week we’ve had three reviews released, into the Reserve Bank, defence policy, and the migration system.

The proposed reforms of the bank, embraced by the government, include having a specialist board set interest rates. This and other recommendations are in line with overseas practice. And worth doing. Whether they will make a material difference to Australia’s future performance on monetary policy is unforeseeable.

The defence strategic review, which elevates naval capability and missiles, and places a lot of faith in nuclear-powered submarines, contains an element of smoke and mirrors. One critics says it talks big but delivers small, at least in the short term.

The review rightly identifies a need for urgency in boosting our defence preparedness. But it doesn’t increase expenditure during the forward estimates, finding savings within the defence budget (notably by cutting back army capability) for new initiatives. Pushing the spending increase off into the medium term seems at odds with the review’s warnings.

The migration review has concluded the system is broken more or less all over. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil says she is anxious to repair it as fast as possible and has announced early measures, especially to reduce the reliance on high numbers of “permanently temporary” migrants.

The government is keeping away from dangerous “big Australia” territory: O’Neil says her reforms would actually produce a smaller intake. It’s all about attracting the best people in a competitive international market for migrants. Judgment on the results will have to wait for the government’s second anniversary.

Within a shorter timeframe we’ll know if Albanese’s great social initiative, his referendum for the Voice to Parliament, will become a political triumph of his first term. (It will take a lot longer to find out whether the Voice, if it comes into being, proves to be a policy triumph.)

But the centrality Albanese puts on the Voice has served to highlight the Indigenous issue his government has not adequately confronted – the crisis in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

Beyond his intervention to secure the reimposition of alcohol bans and provide some extra funding, Albanese has shied away from taking on the NT government. Yet more action is desperately needed. A win in the referendum will be diminished if the NT problems are not addressed now.

Climate change is a case study in how the government’s actions can be seen both ways. It has lifted the national effort on emissions reduction and the transition to cleaner energy, while at the same time resisting pressures from the Greens and others on the left to ban new fossil fuel projects.

Albanese’s presentational skills come to the fore in the way he invokes his government’s climate policy when he sells Australia abroad. This was a feature of his first appearance at the Quad and in his international meetings since.

There are multiple reasons, including the parlous state of the opposition, why Australians have maintained their strong support for the government despite their worsening personal circumstances over recent months.

Important among them has been Albanese’s ability (so far) to retain public trust in an era of mistrust. That will be in his mind as he drives some of the very final decisions for a budget to be delivered in hard times.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Albanese runs a highly controlled government using gossamer threads – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-albanese-runs-a-highly-controlled-government-using-gossamer-threads-204624

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Boucher, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Political Science, University of Sydney

The Albanese government’s review of Australia’s migration system offers a blueprint for overhauling the troubled system and addressing at least some of its shortcomings.

Touted as the biggest review of immigration since the 1988 FitzGerald Report, the Parkinson Review covers issues as diverse as our reliance on temporary immigration, skills lists and care shortages, immigration backlogs and ageing information technology systems in Home Affairs.

The review represents a wholesale critique and potential upheaval of the immigration system, rather than, in the words of Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neil, “ad hoc” changes. At its centre is the argument that Australia has become too reliant on temporary migrants, without clear pathways for them to permanent residency.

Read more:
Migration review warns against Australia becoming nation of ‘permanently temporary’ residents

What did the review find?

Because temporary visa numbers have been uncapped since the Howard government, they have been growing faster than permanent visa numbers. Temporary migrant numbers have doubled in the past 15 years.

Yet there are not always clear pathways to remain permanently in Australia. This has the effect that temporary visa-holders engage in a series of visa “hops” before gaining permanent residency. Sometimes, they do not gain permanent residency at all.

The review is critical of temporary migration when it does not provide pathways to permanency. It suggests Australia risks becoming a guest worker society like Germany or Switzerland in the post-second-world-war era. This “permanently temporary migration” system, it argues, has “caused harm to Australia and to migrants, and undermined community confidence in the migration system”. It results in less equality and fairness.

The exploitation of migrant workers is identified as another, associated issue. Other commentators have also made this point in academic and public inquiries, most notably the Fels Migrant Worker Taskforce that investigated the 7-Eleven scandal.

My research using litigated court cases to analyse the issue of migrant worker exploitation has demonstrated that those on temporary visas – and, indeed, visas without clear pathways to permanent status – are most at risk of exploitation.

The review identifies the Temporary Skilled Immigration Income Threshold (TSMIT), which is the salary benchmark used as a threshold for entry into temporary skills visas, as part of the exploitation problem. In O’Neil’s words, over time, the TSMIT has become “frozen” and failed to keep pace with increases in average wages of Australian workers.

My research shows workers at the lower occupational codes are more likely to face underpayment. O’Neil announced today the TSMIT will be increased from $53,900 to $70,000. Yet factors other than wage levels also affect exploitation risk, in particular visa status and whether migrants have access to trade union representation.

This reality that temporary status is in part responsible for exploitation risk presents challenges for another recommendation of the review: to create a visa to address shortages in the care sector.

The review proposes protections to ensure care workers do not face the same exploitation as other lower-wage workers. However, comparative research suggests it is difficult, if not impossible, to create temporary labour schemes without at least some exploitation. This will be a core challenge if the government adopts a low-skilled care visa.

Matching the migrant intake to Australia’s needs

The review makes the important point that Australia will need a more diverse economy to deal with an ageing population and reduced productivity. The development of skills and capabilities will be crucial to this, and immigration can play an important role.

In this regard, the review finds the Skilled Occupations List for the selection of skilled migrants (both permanent and temporary) is not working, as it cannot keep up with rapid changes in our labour market.

As a result, Australia is “falling behind in attracting skilled migrants in a fierce global competition for the best migrants”. This point is supported by research on migrant desire to come to Australia, which suggests migrants are being put off by backlogs, among other issues.

Read more:
What do people really think about immigration to Australia? We analysed their internet usage to find out

The review instead proposes selecting migrants through detailed identification of skill requirements by Jobs and Skills Australia. The body would focus on three types of skilled migrants: those with in-demand skills, those with high human capital, and “exceptional cases” (such as “an older prize-winning academic”).

Finally, the review raises concerns about the complexity of the system and immigration backlogs. A central challenge for reforming the immigration system is its size, complexity (with over 100 different visas as well as tailored labour agreements) and detailed admission requirements.

The Migration Act 1958 is one of Australia’s longest and most complicated pieces of federal legislation. Add to that a web of regulations and policy advice manuals, and migrants face huge challenges in navigating the system.

A study of comparable countries found Australia had the most complex visa system of major Western admission countries.

Last year, O’Neil identified immigration backlogs as a key challenge for the new government. This is another issue raised in the review.

While the government has responded by hiring more staff to process visas, the backlogs remain a problem, especially for family migrants. The review blames this in part on “cumbersome” and ageing computer systems in Home Affairs, which it suggests needs a complete overhaul.

Read more:
Canada needs to consider the user experience of migrants when designing programs that impact them

Now, we need action

The review is bold and detailed. It represents a significant reform agenda, which will take years, if not decades, to implement. But it is probably worth it.

It provides intellectual and policy support for reforms to the way temporary immigration levels are set around the budget, the ease of movement between temporary and permanent visas, mitigation of exploitation risk and selecting skilled migrants. All of these concerns have been raised for some time, so it is heartening to see them reinforced by the expert review.

The challenge will be in its implementation, both practically and politically. For example, removing temporary visas without clear pathways to permanent residency (such as Working Holiday Maker Visas or some areas of international student visas) will be fought by affected stakeholders, whether they are the migrants themselves, or those that otherwise benefit from such immigration flows.

Reducing flows in one area can also create pressures on other parts of the system, as migrants may choose visa pathways based on availability. For instance, if a person cannot come as an international student, we may see an increase in sham spousal applications. Clarifying these different pathways will be particularly challenging at a time when our immigration system is already growing much faster than previously estimated.

Providing pathways for more temporary migrants could significantly increase the overall size of the permanent immigration program (although Minister O’Neil contests this), which may not be what is best for Australia at a time of a growing housing crisis, or what voters desire.

So, the government will need to tread carefully with its transitional arrangements that follow from this review and consider how to slowly change the system. At present, not all details of implementation have been announced.

We know from O’Neil’s speech at the National Press Club that the government’s position is largely in step with the findings of the review. The TSMIT will be raised and there will be more pathways to permanent residency for current temporary workers. Reforms to tertiary education and international students will also be announced in future weeks.

These changes alone are unlikely to achieve all the goals of the review, but combined with reforms in the areas of worker exploitation and industrial relations, they may go some way to addressing its concerns.

Anna Boucher 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. Immigration system set for overhaul in wake of review’s damning findings – https://theconversation.com/immigration-system-set-for-overhaul-in-wake-of-reviews-damning-findings-203764

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamin Wood, PhD Candidate, Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology, The University of Queensland

Ammonia has been in the news because of its suitability as a hydrogen carrier and fuel, in addition to being a vital ingredient in fertiliser. Existing distribution networks and the ease of turning ammonia gas into a liquid make ammonia a cost-effective way to transport renewable energy. For a given volume, ammonia – a molecule made up of three hydrogen atoms and one nitrogen atom – carries about 50% more hydrogen atoms than hydrogen itself.

As ammonia contains only hydrogen and nitrogen, it does not emit carbon dioxide when used. If made using green hydrogen (produced with renewable energy), its production also does not emit carbon dioxide. Therefore, green ammonia could help achieve a net-zero world, particularly as a fuel for long-haul transport and heavy industry.

Australia is well placed to develop a major renewable hydrogen export industry, potentially using green ammonia. Proposed projects include Cape Hardy, Collinsville, Australian Renewable Energy Hub, HyNQ, H2Tas and Gibson Island.

Unfortunately, just because ammonia doesn’t contain carbon, that doesn’t make it good for the environment. It’s a source of nitrogen pollution, which has many damaging environmental impacts. Despite Australia’s natural advantage in producing green ammonia, we ironically have the biggest per capita nitrogen footprint in the world.

Rarely, though, do green ammonia proponents critically assess its environmental sustainability beyond net zero claims.

Read more:
Green ammonia could slash emissions from farming – and power ships of the future

Exceeding planetary boundaries

The Stockholm Resilience Centre defines nine processes that regulate Earth to support life as we know it. The boundaries of a “safe operating space” have been defined for each process.

You probably won’t be surprised to know climate change is one of the boundaries we have exceeded. You could be forgiven for thinking it has been our biggest impact on the planet. But that “honour” goes to biogeochemical flows of nutrients, mostly as a result of nitrogen fertilisers.

Why? Well it comes back to ammonia.

Read more:
You’ve heard of a carbon footprint – now it’s time to take steps to cut your nitrogen footprint

Unbalancing the nitrogen cycle

Nitrogen makes up 78% of our atmosphere as dinitrogen gas (N₂). However, in this form it is inaccessible to living organisms.

To support life, nitrogen must be converted into reactive forms such as ammonia. Once it reaches ecosystems, ammonia undergoes a series of chemical transformations. Eventually it breaks up again into N₂, and the cycle can start over again.

For millions of years, the processes in each step of the cycle have been in balance. However, industrial fertiliser production in the 20th century has thrown this cycle out of balance.

On the upside, ammonia has been a miracle chemical for growing food. An estimated 3.5 billion people are being fed thanks to chemical fertilisers. This means almost half of the world’s population would go hungry if not for synthetic ammonia.

The downside is too much reactive nitrogen is ending up in the environment – more than twice as much as the recommended planetary boundary.

In the case of excess nitrogen, crossing its planetary boundary has already had huge consequences. It has led to deterioration of ecosystems, photochemical smog, acid rain and health problems such as respiratory illnesses and cancer, algal blooms leading to fish kills such as the recent one at Menindee Lakes, damage to the Great Barrier Reef, and greenhouse gases much more potent than carbon dioxide.

Producing additional ammonia as a renewable energy carrier could make these problems even worse.

Read more:
Nitrogen pollution: the forgotten element of climate change

A problem of leakage

Some estimate ammonia supply chains leak it into the environment at rates as high as 6%. However, research is limited. More widely understood natural gas supply chains may provide a ballpark figure of around 2.6%.

Replacing fossil fuels with ammonia for long-haul trucks and shipping might reduce the carbon footprint of transport (which accounts for 37% of total carbon dioxide emissions). Yet, if 2.6% of ammonia leaked from the supply chain, we estimate this could triple the reactive nitrogen flux, further overshooting the planetary boundary. At a 6% leakage rate, it could be four times.

Read more:
Global shipping is under pressure to stop its heavy fuel oil use fast – that’s not simple, but changes are coming

We all know how climate change has been changing our world – and that is at “only” 1.2 times the carbon planetary boundary. Using green ammonia as a renewable energy carrier could have an even greater impact on the nitrogen planetary boundary.

A complement to ammonia

Another renewable energy carrier can be made from green hydrogen: methanol. It’s a molecule of four hydrogen atoms and single carbon and oxygen atoms.

Like ammonia, methanol can be used as a fuel. It could replace petrochemical feedstocks used in industrial processes and manufacturing. Our research shows methanol could also enable biotechnology to better integrate with industrial processes.

More significantly, methanol doesn’t affect the nitrogen cycle. As long as it is made using a renewable source of carbon, such as carbon dioxide from direct air capture, there is a net zero impact on the environment. International Energy Agency projections show the United States has a greater emphasis on green methanol, while Australia and Europe are more focused on green ammonia.

Environmental sustainability means more than net zero. In the case of green ammonia, holistic thinking is needed so we don’t solve one problem only to make another worse.

Jamin Wood receives funding from The Warwick and Nancy Olsen Scholarship and Research Training Program.

Bernardino Virdis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Why green ammonia may not be that green – https://theconversation.com/why-green-ammonia-may-not-be-that-green-204363

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasiia Zalogina, Postdoctoral researcher, Australian National University

High-frequency light is useful. The higher the frequency of light, the shorter its wavelength – and the shorter the wavelength, the smaller the objects and details the light can be used to see.

So violet light can show you smaller details than red light, for example, because it has a shorter wavelength. But to see really, really small things – down to the scale of billionths of a metre, thousands of times less than the width of a human hair – to see those things, you need extreme ultraviolet light (and a good microscope).

Extreme ultraviolet light, with wavelengths between 10 and 120 nanometres, has many applications in medical imaging, studying biological objects, and deciphering the fine details of computer chips during their manufacture. However, producing small and affordable sources of this light has been very challenging.

We have found a way to make nanoparticles of a common semiconductor material emit light with a frequency up to seven times higher than the frequency of light sent to it. We generated blue-violet light from infrared light, and it will be possible to generate extreme ultraviolet light from red light with the same principles. Our research, carried out with colleagues from the University of Brescia, the University of Arizona and Korea University, is published in Science Advances.

The power of harmonics

Our system starts out with an ordinary laser that produces long-wavelength infrared light. This is called the pump laser, and there’s nothing special about it – such lasers are commercially available, and they can be compact and affordable.

But next we fire short pulses of light from this laser at a specially engineered nanoparticle of a material called aluminium gallium arsenide, and that’s where things get interesting.

The nanoparticle absorbs energy from the laser pulses, and then emits its own burst of light. By carefully engineering the size and shape of the nanoparticle, we can create powerful resonances to amplify certain harmonics of the emitted light.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, we can make a useful analogy with sound.

When you pluck a string on a guitar, it vibrates with what’s called its fundamental frequency – which makes the main note you hear – plus small amounts of higher frequencies called harmonics, which are multiples of the fundamental frequency. The body of the guitar is designed to produce resonances that amplify some of these harmonics and dampen others, creating the overall sound you hear.

Both light and sound share similarities in their physics – these are both propagating waves (acoustic waves in the case of sound, and electromagnetic waves in the case of light).

In our light source, the pump laser is like the main note of the string, and the nanoparticles are like the guitar body. Except what’s special about the nanoparticles is that they massively amplify those higher harmonics of the pump laser, producing light with a higher frequency (up to seven times higher in our case, and a wavelength correspondingly seven times shorter).

What it’s good for

This technology allows us to create new sources of light in parts of the electromagnetic spectrum such as the extreme ultraviolet, where there are no natural sources of light and where current engineered sources are too large or too expensive.

Conventional microscopes using visible light can only study objects down to a size of about a ten-millionth of a metre. The resolution is limited by the wavelength of light: violet light has the wavelength of about 400 nanometres (one nanometre is one billionth of a metre).

But there are plenty of applications, such as biological imaging and electronics manufacturing, where being able to see down to a billionth of a metre or so would be a huge help.

At present, to see at those scales you need “super-resolution” microscopy, which lets you see details smaller than the wavelength of the light you are using, or electron microscopes, which do not use light at all and create image using a flux of electrons. However, such methods are quite slow and expensive.

Read more:
A quantum hack for microscopes can reveal the undiscovered details of life

To understand the advantages of a light source like ours, consider computer chips: they are made of very tiny components with feature sizes almost as small as a billionth of a metre. During the production process, it would be useful for manufacturers to use extreme ultraviolet light to monitor the process in real time.

This would save resources and time on bad batches of chips. The scale of the industry is such that even a 1% increase in chip yields could save billions of dollars each year.

In future, nanoparticles like ours could be used to produce tiny, inexpensive sources of extreme ultraviolet light, illuminating the world of extremely small things.

Sergey Kruk receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE210100679).

Anastasiia Zalogina 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. New nanoparticle source generates high-frequency light – https://theconversation.com/new-nanoparticle-source-generates-high-frequency-light-204618

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yingying Lu, Research Associate, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, and Economic Modeller, CSIRO

On November 30 2022, OpenAI launched the AI chatbot ChatGTP, making the latest generation of AI technologies widely available. In the few months since then, we have seen Italy ban ChatGTP over privacy concerns, leading technology luminaries calling for a pause on AI systems development, and even prominent researchers saying we should be prepared to launch airstrikes on data centres associated with rogue AI.

The rapid deployment of AI and its potential impacts on human society and economies is now clearly in the spotlight.

What will AI mean for productivity and economic growth? Will it usher in an age of automated luxury for all, or simply intensify existing inequalities? And what does it mean for the role of humans?

Economists have been studying these questions for many years. My colleague Yixiao Zhou and I surveyed their results in 2021, and found we are still a long way from definitive answers.

The big economic picture

Over the past half-century or so, workers around the world have been getting a smaller fraction of their country’s total income.

At the same time, growth in productivity – how much output can be produced with a given amount of inputs such as labour and materials – has slowed down. This period has also seen huge developments in the creation and implementation of information technologies and automation.

Read more:
The internet has done a lot, but so far little for economic growth

Better technology is supposed to increase productivity. The apparent failure of the computer revolution to deliver these gains is a puzzle economists call the Solow paradox.

Will AI rescue global productivity from its long slump? And if so, who will reap the gains? Many people are curious about these questions.

While consulting firms have often painted AI as an economic panacea, policymakers are more concerned about potential job losses. Economists, perhaps unsurprisingly, take a more cautious view.

Radical change at a rapid pace

Perhaps the single greatest source of caution is the huge uncertainty around the future trajectory of AI technology.

Compared to previous technological leaps – such as railways, motorised transport and, more recently, the gradual integration of computers into all aspects of our lives – AI can spread much faster. And it can do this with much lower capital investment.

This is because the application of AI is largely a revolution in software. Much of the infrastructure it requires, such as computing devices, networks and cloud services, is already in place. There is no need for the slow process of building out a physical railway or broadband network – you can use ChatGPT and the rapidly proliferating horde of similar software right now from your phone.

It is also relatively cheap to make use of AI, which greatly decreases the barriers to entry. This links to another major uncertainty around AI: the scope and domain of the impacts.

AI seems likely to radically change the way we do things in many areas, from education and privacy to the structure of global trade. AI may not just change discrete elements of the economy but rather its broader structure.

Adequate modelling of such complex and radical change would be challenging in the extreme, and nobody has yet done it. Yet without such modelling, economists cannot provide clear statements about likely impacts on the economy overall.

More inequality, weaker institutions

Although economists have different opinions on the impact of AI, there is general agreement among economic studies that AI will increase inequality.

One possible example of this could be a further shift in the advantage from labour to capital, weakening labour institutions along the way. At the same time, it may also reduce tax bases, weakening the government’s capacity for redistribution.

Most empirical studies find that AI technology will not reduce overall employment. However, it is likely to reduce the relative amount of income going to low-skilled labour, which will increase inequality across society.

Read more:
The benefits of job automation are not likely to be shared equally

Moreover, AI-induced productivity growth would cause employment redistribution and trade restructuring, which would tend to further increase inequality both within countries and between them.

As a consequence, controlling the rate at which AI technology is adopted is likely to slow down the pace of societal and economic restructuring. This will provide a longer window for adjustment between relative losers and beneficiaries.

In the face of the rise of robotics and AI, there is possibility for governments to alleviate income inequality and its negative impacts with policies that aim to reduce inequality of opportunity.

What’s left for humans?

The famous economist Jeffrey Sachs once said

What humans can do in the AI era is just to be human beings, because this is what robots or AI cannot do.

But what does that mean, exactly? At least in economic terms?

In traditional economic modelling, humans are often synonymous with “labour”, and also being an optimising agent at the same time. If machines can not only perform labour, but also make decisions and even create ideas, what’s left for humans?

The rise of AI challenges economists to develop more complex representations of humans and the “economic agents” which inhabit their models.

As American economists David Parkes and Michael Wellman have noted, a world of AI agents may actually behave more like economic theory than the human world does. Compared to humans, AIs “better respect idealised assumptions of rationality than people, interacting through novel rules and incentive systems quite distinct from those tailored for people”.

Importantly, having a better concept of what is “human” in economics should also help us think through what new characteristics AI will bring into an economy.

Will AI bring us some kind of fundamentally new production technology, or will it tinker with existing production technologies? Is AI simply a substitute for labour or human capital, or is it an independent economic agent in the economic system?

Answering these questions is vital for economists – and for understanding how the world will change in the coming years.

Yingying Lu 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. AI will increase inequality and raise tough questions about humanity, economists warn – https://theconversation.com/ai-will-increase-inequality-and-raise-tough-questions-about-humanity-economists-warn-203056

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

In a television interview with Phillip Adams in 1999, Paul Keating remarked that he retained much influence on the international stage.

I still have most of the access […] throughout the world, in Asia in particular, that I had as prime minister.

This was a calm and contented Keating, barely three years out of office but comfortable in the knowledge his voice continued to be heard in the right quarters.

His recent appearance at the National Press Club to talk about the AUKUS pact between Australia, Britain and the United States (under the auspices of which Australia is purchasing up to five nuclear-powered submarines for the princely sum of $368 billion) was mostly devoid of that quality.

Keating called it the “worst deal in all history” and lampooned Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as the only “payer” of the pact. He was especially critical of Foreign Minister Penny Wong: “Running around the Pacific with a lei around your neck, handing out money, which is what Penny does, is not foreign policy”.

There were important and sage policy points on offer, but there was something a little unseemly about the polemic, and even more so about his complaint the prime minister’s office hadn’t heeded his advice. Those cognisant of Labor’s history might have been reminded of former NSW Premier Jack Lang, at whose feet Keating learned much of his politics in the 1960s and 1970s, and whose trenchant criticism of the party earned him many enemies over the decades.

It is easy to assume this kind of intervention is the natural corollary of losing power, egotism and what former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans called “relevance deprivation syndrome”. In fact, the spectre of a disgruntled former prime minister speaking out against their own party is a relatively recent one, a product of Australia’s modern, personalised political culture.

Read more:
Paul Keating lashes Albanese government over AUKUS, calling it Labor’s biggest failure since WW1

Death and duty

In the 20th century, several of Australia’s leaders died before they could enjoy any kind of retirement in which to disrupt their successors. Alfred Deakin’s health declined rapidly in the years after he left office, preventing him from making significant contributions to public life in the years afterwards. Joe Lyons and John Curtin both died in office, as did Ben Chifley, while serving as opposition leader. Harold Holt disappeared at Cheviot Beach in December 1967.

The survivors, it has to be said, were put to good public use after leaving office. Edmund Barton served the remainder of his days on the High Court, while George Reid and Andrew Fisher both went to London to serve as Australian High Commissioner. The former even took a seat in the British House of Commons in the final years of his life.

Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who lost government and his own seat at the 1929 federal election, was returned to parliament in 1931 and served as a minister in Joe Lyons’ government, before emulating Reid and Fisher by serving as High Commissioner in London and going to the House of Lords. Depression-era prime minister James Scullin remained an MP for a further 18 years after losing power in 1931, reputedly offering much wise counsel to Curtin and Chifley throughout the 1940s.

Former prime ministers were once a little more reticent about sparring with their successors in public, especially when it came to sensitive policy matters. Fisher despaired when his successor, Billy Hughes, campaigned for military conscription in 1916. But the former prime minister used his office as High Commissioner to abstain from commenting on the referendum, which failed.

Robert Menzies was so disappointed with his Liberal successors, according to biographer Troy Bramston, that he may not have even voted for the Liberal Party in 1972, preferring the Democratic Labor Party.

But he would never have admitted this publicly. Instead, he used his post-prime ministerial public appearances to wax lyrical about the British Commonwealth and bemoan its declining relevance.

Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser consulted Menzies periodically during the party elder’s final years.

Statesmen on the loose?

There is a longer history, though, of former prime ministerial interventions in debates about Australia’s strategic and defence policy. These were, after all, vital questions in the 20th century.

When Bruce proposed in 1924 to build two new Commonwealth naval cruisers in Britain rather than Australia, his Nationalist predecessor Hughes was irate, and said so from the backbench. “Are we such spineless anaemic creatures”, he asked, “as to be incapable of bearing the great responsibilities which free government imposes upon us?”

Hughes would play the role of provocateur again. In 1934, he published a short book called The Price of Peace, in which he called for a more urgent approach to preparation for conflict in the Pacific. An updated version was reissued the following year under the title Australia and the War Today, but it was highly controversial. Hughes was now a minister in a government whose foreign policy toward aggressors depended on economic sanctions, which he had described in the book as “either an empty gesture or war”. His resignation promptly followed.

More recent interventions have taken defence policy and strategic complacency as their concern, too. A year before his death, Malcolm Fraser published a polemical book called Dangerous Allies (2014), in which he argued against Australia’s bipartisan “strategic dependence” on the United States.

Speaking on daytime television, he warned that Australia’s partnership with the US could see it implicated in “major conflict” in the Pacific. He was, in this respect, equally critical of both major parties for what he perceived as subservience to American strategic interests.

Read more:
Book review: Dangerous Allies by Malcolm Fraser

The AUKUS pact, in its short life, has served as the launching pad for ex-leaders other than Keating to launch powerful attacks on successors. When Scott Morrison announced the initial agreement in 2021, his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull used a press club broadcast to argue Morrison had “not acted in good faith” in reneging on the existing submarine deal with France that he, Turnbull, had signed in 2016.

Morrison, Turnbull fulminated, had “deceived” France. Australian voters saw the French president and their own prime minister’s immediate predecessor calling the incumbent a liar.

Fights, feuds and frustrated men

In recent decades, Australians have become inured to bitter and emotional feuds between their former leaders. There are several reasons for this trend, including the increasingly personalised nature of politics since the 1970s, high rates of leadership attrition, and the thirst of media providers for easy news stories that hinge on personal animosity and Shakespearean intrigue.

A former leader criticising their own party is deemed the height of newsworthiness. John Howard and Julia Gillard have uniquely resisted the temptation. Howard had some stern words for his Liberal successors last year in a book called A Sense of Balance, but the book appeared after the Morrison government had been defeated. Gillard, for her part, has been almost unfailingly measured and dignified in her public pronouncements since 2013.

For those who did return to the fray of policy combat, the personal and the political were inseparable. For much of the 1980s, Gough Whitlam was anguished by the way Hawke government ministers treated his legacy. As Jenny Hocking has shown in her biography of Whitlam, Hawke and Whitlam clashed repeatedly as the Labor Party walked away from big 1970s initiatives such as free tertiary education, an ambitious Aboriginal land rights agenda and much else. When treasurer Keating joked about the “chasm” between Whitlam’s policy aspirations and his actual achievements, Whitlam returned serve by calling him a “smart-arse”.

Where race relations and national identity have been concerned, the fall-outs between Australian ex-PMs have been that much more embittered. A great defender of refugees and asylum seekers, Fraser spoke publicly about his abhorrence of the Howard government’s approach to border protection and mandatory offshore detention. When Tony Abbott took the leadership of the Liberal Party in December 2009 promising to “stop the boats”, Fraser resigned his life membership in protest.

Keating’s attack on the Labor Party is not unprecedented for a former prime minister, but it isn’t historically commonplace either. There is no doubt his criticisms have been heard, but their influence remains to be seen.

Joshua Black 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. Hell hath no fury like a former PM – but it wasn’t always so – https://theconversation.com/hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-former-pm-but-it-wasnt-always-so-204196

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Prafula Pearce, Associate Professor of Law, Edith Cowan University

If you’re thinking about getting a vehicle but don’t have enough money saved, you might be considering a choice between taking out a car loan or a novated lease (also known as “salary sacrificing” to get a car).

It’s important to know the difference, as there are plenty of tax implications and what’s right for one person won’t be for another.

So, what is a novated lease and how does it work?

A novated lease involves your employer

Under a normal lease, you enter an agreement with a leasing company. They buy the vehicle you’ve chosen (and own it until the end of the lease) and you get to use it in return for making regular lease payments. At the end of the lease agreement period, you can choose to make an additional payment (called a residual or balloon payment) and take over ownership of the vehicle.

A novated lease includes another party in the agreement – your employer.

In this case, your employer makes the payments to the leasing company on your behalf, then reduces your wages by the amount of the payment.

This is called a salary sacrifice or salary packaging arrangement and it means you end up paying less tax on your income.

To demonstrate the tax saving, see the example below, which is based on a vehicle expense of A$12,000 for the 2022-23 tax year.

Bundled with the novated lease is the finance or interest component, at a rate similar to a car loan. However, it is easier to obtain finance through a novated lease as your employer is guaranteeing the payment out of your salary.

Used or new car? What about running costs?

You can purchase a new or used vehicle under a novated lease.

Also, you may be able to bundle not only the purchase price and the finance costs, but also the running costs such as fuel, servicing and insurance.

This means the total costs of owning a vehicle are bundled into a single payment and deducted from your before-tax salary. This is called a fully maintained novated lease.

How does it compare with a traditional car loan?

A traditional loan involves borrowing money from a lender (such as a bank) to pay for your vehicle.

You become the owner of the vehicle straight away, but you have a debt (which is usually secured against the vehicle itself). You’ll need to make regular loan repayments plus interest.

If something goes wrong and you can’t make your regular repayments, you may be forced to sell the vehicle to cover the debt.

You’re also directly responsible for all the running costs, which you pay from your after-tax salary.

Since you own the vehicle, you may be able to claim some tax deductions if you use it for work.

5 things to think about before you sign up for a novated lease

1. Check if the novated lease arrangement is tax effective for you. There may be other costs involved in salary sacrifice agreements such as fringe benefits tax (sometimes shortened to FBT), which your employer may also deduct from your wages. However, some types of employers – such as charities – are exempt from this tax. It might be worth getting advice from your employer’s payroll officer or your accountant

2. Leasing companies often promote the savings on fleet discounts and on the GST component of both the vehicle cost and the running costs when you enter a novated lease. You need to pay attention to the total package cost. Other costs, such as interest, administration charges and services fees might outweigh the fleet or GST savings.

3. Leasing companies often have online calculators that show savings on a novated lease when compared with a traditional car loan. However, these calculators often omit the employer’s fringe benefits tax, which may end up being passed onto you. So you need to factor in this additional cost

4. Make sure you understand what will happen if you quit, get fired or leave your current employer for the duration of the novated lease. If you change jobs, you may become responsible for the lease payments. Or, you might need to enter into another agreement with the leasing company (this usually means additional administration costs)

5. Check the residual value or “balloon payment” that applies to your novated lease (remember, this is the amount you can pay at the end of the lease to take ownership of the car). This amount is set by the Australian Taxation Office.

Advantages and disadvantages

There are advantages and disadvantages to novated leases, just as there are to traditional car loans.

So it’s important to fully understand the choice you are making, and the risks involved.

If you’re planning on keeping your vehicle long term, a car loan may be the cheaper option.

If you want to upgrade regularly, a lease may be the convenient way to go.

Either way, make sure you get proper advice and make an informed decision.

Prafula Pearce 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. What is a novated lease on a car and what do I need to know before signing up? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-novated-lease-on-a-car-and-what-do-i-need-to-know-before-signing-up-202746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Hellewell, Research Fellow, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, and The Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, Curtin University

It’s Friday night, your team is playing, and scores are nail-bitingly close. A player intercepts the ball, and bam! A player tackles his opponent to the ground. Trainers and doctors gather nervously while the commentators wait for confirmation: a concussion, mild traumatic brain injury, head knock, strike, tap, bump, blow … there are many terms for it.

How to prevent and treat such injuries is the subject to a Senate inquiry, with public hearings this week.

But what exactly are these injuries? What’s going on in the brain?

Read more:
Concussion risks aren’t limited to the AFL. We need urgent action to make sure our kids are safe, too

What is concussion?

Concussion is a form of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Concussion typically falls at the milder end of the spectrum, and so is often called mild TBI.

Concussions happen most often when the head directly hits against something. But it can also happen without head impact, when a blow to the body causes the head to move quickly.

The brain is a soft organ in a hard case, floating in a thin layer of cerebrospinal fluid. The brain can be damaged away from the site of impact for this reason, as it bounces with force within the skull.

Concussions that happen during sport can be complex because the head often rotates as the person falls. This “rotational acceleration” can cause more damage to the brain. This is especially the case for cells in the long tracts of white matter responsible for relaying signals around the brain.

As well as causing initial damage to brain cells at the time of injury, concussion sets off a cascade of chemical and biological changes. These occur within minutes and may last for days or even weeks after concussion.

Cell membranes become permeable (more leaky), causing an imbalance of brain chemicals inside and outside cells. Cellular functions shift into overdrive to try to restore balance, using more fuel in the form of glucose. At the same time, blood flow to the brain is often reduced, resulting in a mismatch between energy supply and demand.

The structural scaffolding of cells in the white matter may begin to weaken or break, preventing or reducing the ability of cells to communicate.

Sensing danger, cells from the immune system begin to migrate to the brain in an attempt to stem the damage, spouting chemical signals to recruit other inflammatory cells to the sites of injury.

These initial responses to concussion typically resolve over time, but the recovery period may be different for each person, and may persist even after symptoms go away.

Read more:
Repeated head injury may cause degenerative brain disease for people who play sport – juniors and amateurs included

What are the symptoms?

Concussion symptoms can differ depending on the person and the circumstances of injury.

Some people have more obvious symptoms like loss of consciousness, vomiting and confusion; others may have headaches, problems with their vision, or thinking and concentration. Some people may have one symptom while others have many. Some people’s symptoms may be severe, and others may have only mild symptoms.

So diagnosing and managing concussion can be difficult. Most people who have a concussion will find their symptoms subside within days or weeks. But around 20% of people will have persistent symptoms beyond three months after their concussion.

Ongoing symptoms can make it harder to perform at work or school, to socialise with friends and to maintain relationships. Scientists don’t know why recoveries are different for different people. We have no way to predict who will recover from concussion and who won’t.

Read more:
Having a brain injury does not mean you’ll get dementia

How about repeat blows to the head?

People who play contact sports are more likely to have multiple concussions over a playing career. Higher numbers of concussions tend to mean worse symptoms and slower recovery for subsequent concussions.

This indicates the brain doesn’t get used to concussions, and each concussion is likely to impart additional damage.

Emerging evidence suggests repeated concussions may lead to ongoing changes in people’s brain cell structure and function.

Inflammation may persist inside and outside the brain. Inflammation may also cause or contribute to someone developing symptoms, and long-term brain functional and structural changes.

Prolonged symptoms and long-term brain changes may be worse in the long run for people who experience their concussions as young adults compared to people who have concussions as older adults.

Scientists are also starting to find differences in symptoms and brain alterations in males and females. These could be related to newfound sex differences in the scaffolding proteins of male and female brains, making female brains more susceptible.

Read more:
Sports concussions affect men and women differently. Female athletes need more attention in brain research

We’ve known about this for a long time

The long-term brain and behaviour changes resulting from repeated sports concussions have been reported since at least the 1920s. Back then, it was seen in boxers and termed dementia pugilistica, or punch-drunk syndrome.

We now call this condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). People found to have CTE don’t always experience severe symptoms. Instead, symptoms tend to emerge or worsen later in life, even decades after injury or at the end of a playing career.

People also have varied symptoms that can sometimes be hard to measure, like confusion, impaired judgement and aggression. This has made diagnosis difficult while people are alive. We can only confirm CTE after someone dies, by detecting altered structural proteins of the brain in specific brain areas.

There is still a lot to learn about CTE, including the exact processes that cause it, and why some people will develop it and others won’t.

Read more:
Here’s what we know about CTE, the brain condition that affected Danny Frawley

Concussion is common

Concussion is a common injury almost 30% of us will experience in our lifetime.

Although we have a lot still to learn, the current advice for people who experience concussion is to seek medical advice to help with initial management of symptoms and guide decisions on returning back to playing sports.

For coaches, trainers, parents and others interested in learning more about how to manage concussion, resources are available from Connectivity Traumatic Brain Injury Australia. These include its free concussion short courses to help you understand, recognise and manage a concussion injury when it occurs.

Sarah Hellewell receives funding from the Medical Research Futures Fund and the Bryant Stokes Neurological Research Foundation.

– ref. Hit your head while playing sport? Here’s what just happened to your brain – https://theconversation.com/hit-your-head-while-playing-sport-heres-what-just-happened-to-your-brain-203038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Whitcombe-Dobbs, Senior Lecturer in Child and Family Psychology, University of Canterbury

As the Abuse in Care Royal Commission inquiry has shown, the lifelong and intergenerational consequences of child abuse are devastating. Many children placed in state and religious institutions – often having already experienced harm and hurt – were then abused by those tasked with caring for them.

The numerous accounts of horrific abuse over many years have been devastating and heart-breaking. The commission has heard so much evidence that its reporting deadline has been extended until March next year.

It is to be hoped that one positive outcome of this traumatic process will be the introduction of mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse. Because right now in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is not required by law to report childhood sexual abuse – or any child maltreatment – when it is seen or suspected.

Despite the Children’s Act 2014 being designed to strengthen the safety of children, it stopped short of mandating the reporting of child abuse – even for professionals such as teachers, doctors, counsellors and nurses.

Instead, every agency that deals with children must have a “child protection policy” in place, outlining how the organisation should respond to, document and pass on concerns regarding child safety.

While allowing for professional judgment about individual cases, this system does not always result in robust child safety practices. Some staff members are unaware of their own policies, some do not feel confident to report, and many continue to base decisions about whether to notify on their own personal views and experiences.

Lasting impacts of abuse

We know experiencing abuse during childhood is harmful, with sexual abuse often difficult to detect and prevent. It can be painful, confusing and terrifying for children at the time. Lifelong and even life-threatening consequences include increased risk of suicide and self-harm, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety and substance use problems.

Survivors fare worse on health-related quality of life measures, experience poorer educational and employment outcomes, and are at increased risk of a range of other physical and psychological problems.

Read more:
Victims of child sex abuse still face significant legal barriers suing churches – here’s why

Many also show enormous courage and strength, going on to live fulfilling and extraordinary lives, despite their experiences. Several factors affect this resilience, with community and other adult responses to the abuse strongly influencing how well children fare later.

But the abuse-in-care inquiry has also highlighted serious injustices. Many child victims disclosed their abuse to other adults, only to be disbelieved – and, in some cases, punished for the allegations. Far more cases occur than are ever reported. Of those that are reported, few result in a conviction.

Greater chance of prosecution

Mandated reporting of child sexual abuse would send a clear message that children’s bodies do not exist for adult pleasure. Child sexual abuse is seen as repugnant everywhere, yet child sexual exploitation through pornography has grown over time. This risks normalising abuse and increasing offenders’ access to victims.

Many child sex offenders have multiple victims. When individual cases are not reported to police, even if the child is protected after disclosure, the offender may go on to find another victim.

Police can only follow up on events they know about. Mandated reporting will mean more information, with cases more likely to go to prosecution.

Read more:
Children can now report rights violations directly to the UN – it’s progress, but Aotearoa New Zealand still needs to do more

There have been concerns that social services might be overwhelmed by increased reporting, and that reporting may be biased against certain ethnic or socioeconomic groups.

Where Māori are already disadvantaged, there is a perceived risk that changing the rules may exacerbate existing injustices, and it’s not clear what impact mandated reporting may have on ethnic disparities. Nevertheless, the current rules allow for more discretionary decision-making, which inadvertently reinforces existing biases.

Based on Australian evidence, however, it appears the worries about overwhelmed systems have not been borne out.

Child sexual abuse reporting became mandatory in Western Australia in 2009. Certain professionals were required to report their “belief on reasonable grounds” that abuse may be happening. Evidence from this law change showed a two- to five-fold increase in reports, investigations and confirmations abuse had occurred.

Read more:
The cost of living crisis means bolder budget decisions are needed to lift more NZ children out of poverty

Another Australian study showed increased reporting rates benefit boy victims in particular. These studies suggest there were known and suspected perpetrators but other adults had not passed on their concerns.

If even some of these offenders have multiple victims, a conviction will increase child safety around that particular perpetrator. Offenders will also receive treatment and rehabilitation.

A public health approach

Currently in New Zealand, when suspected cases are reported, children are offered information about psychological services by police and child welfare agency Oranga Tamariki.

However, many parents and caregivers do not know about the ACC-funded sensitive claims process. It provides public access to mental health treatment for sexual assault and abuse victims – regardless of whether crimes are reported or substantiated.

Mandatory reporting will ensure all children and whānau are at least informed of support options. More than that, turning a blind eye to New Zealand’s already high levels of child abuse is unconscionable.

And while it’s true that Oranga Tamariki has been widely criticised for intervening unnecessarily and causing harm, inaction can result in tragedy too.

Read more:
Changes to the way Oranga Tamariki is monitored risk weakening children’s rights and protections – what should be done?

Despite undeniable differences over policy and practice within what is a poorly resourced and enormously risky field, childhood sexual abuse is so harmful that consensus on mandatory reporting may still be possible.

Good policy models have been drafted overseas. And any new law would have to be part of a broader public health approach to child protection that includes addressing inequality, poor housing and access to adequate mental health and addiction services.

Even if implemented today, mandatory reporting on its own would not prevent or fully address child sexual abuse. We need collaboration between housing, health, justice and social services, with a shared societal responsibility for child wellbeing.

But it is one small change that will help us respond decisively and protect children. As the Abuse in Care Royal Commission prepares its final report, it must carefully consider making mandatory reporting one of its key recommendations.

Sarah Whitcombe-Dobbs receives funding from the Health Research Council. She has worked and consulted for Oranga Tamariki and the Family Court.

– ref. Why NZ law should require everyone to report known or suspected child sexual abuse – https://theconversation.com/why-nz-law-should-require-everyone-to-report-known-or-suspected-child-sexual-abuse-204098

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn Holbrook, Senior Lecturer in History, Deakin University

Such has been the turmoil over the Liberal Party’s recent decision to join the National Party in campaigning against the forthcoming referendum on the Voice to Parliament that even some of the most reliable supporters in the media have remarked on the internal division.

But is the Liberal Party really “divided like never before”? Such assertions can scarcely stand if we have regard for history.

The original Liberal Party was created from a fusion of the Protectionist and Free Trade parties in 1910. It was officially named the Liberal Party, with Alfred Deakin as its leader, in 1913. It was reformed twice before the second world war, first in 1916 as the National Party (led by Labor renegade Billy Hughes), and then in 1931 as the United Australia Party (UAP), led by another Labor deserter, Joseph Lyons. In 1941, the UAP, now led by Robert Menzies, was defeated on the floor of parliament.

Division and realignment were elemental anti-Labor politics until the 1940s, as former implacable foes were marshaled to capitalise on opportunities created by turmoil within the Labor Party. The latter was rocked by Hughes and his supporters decamping to the other side during the first world war and shattered again by its defeat during the Depression.

Yet there was policy laziness within the UAP as war threatened. Lyons “knew how to win elections” said former National Party prime minister, Stanley Bruce, but was bereft of policy initiative and struggled to maintain party discipline.

The defeat of the UAP in 1941 was arguably the most consequential collapse we have seen in anti-Labor forces. It would take wholesale party reform and a revitalisation of the liberal message, led by Robert Menzies, for it to re-emerge as the Liberal Party that won government in 1949 and held office for 23 years.

Is current intra-party contention of a scale that saw the implosion of the UAP and the creation of the modern Liberal Party? Surely not, or not yet. Peter Dutton has provoked acrimonious debate with his opposition to the Voice to parliament. He has also suffered a substantial loss of support in the polls, from an already low base.

But to date, a majority of his party colleagues support his position, it is likely branch members do too.

Read more:
How does the Liberal Party’s Voice policy stack up against the proposed referendum?

More recent Liberal divisions over policy offer further grounds for comparison. The republic issue, championed by Labor prime minister Paul Keating in the 1990s, looked likely to cause division with the Liberal Party. While Howard was a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist, his shadow Cabinet included well-known republicans, Peter Costello, Robert Hill, Richard Alston and Peter Reith.

During the 1996 election campaign, Howard undertook to hold a constitutional convention on the republic if he won the prime ministership. If that convention reached a consensus about a model, Howard would take it to referendum, which is what happened in 1999. Recognising the differing views within his party, the prime minister allowed Liberal parliamentarians a free vote on the republic, but was pleased when the referendum, against which he campaigned enthusiastically, failed.

Despite clear ideological differences, the republic issue never seriously threatened party unity. Indeed, Howard used the occasion to underline, as he often did, that the Liberal Party was a “broad church”.

Malcolm Turnbull’s drawn out, and fruitless attempt in 2018 to introduce a National Energy Guarantee (NEG) – which destroyed his authority and precipitated a spill in which Scott Morrison seized the leadership – provides further lessons for the Liberal Party.

Turnbull, attempting a solution with the NEG that would satisfy business, investors and most of the public, could not withstand the relentless opposition of the party’s right to every progressive initiative. His was not only a moderate and science-based response to a manifest problem, but also a solution that appeared likely to win public support. But Turnbull was unable to deliver what many wanted because he was unable to contain the internal battles within the party room.

Read more:
View from The Hill: A shocker performance, even by coup standards

This was division more profound than anything we’ve seen yet in the current Coalition. Morrison was able to contain that division by promising to “win the vote”. He succeeded in this in 2019, not by proposing policy innovation, but by an effective negation of everything that Labor, under Bill Shorten, proposed. Having won the “miracle” election, he presided over a period of government and governance failure that led to Coalition defeat in 2022.

The 2022 performance was so bad that even Howard conceded that “the absence of a program for the future […] the absence of some kind of manifesto, hurt us very badly”.

However, in the months since, Dutton has failed to craft a new liberal message that has wider electoral appeal. Instead, he has persisted with a conservative and highly oppositional approach, such as the Coalition’s opposition to Labor’s 43% emissions reduction target and the safeguard mechanism.

Read more:
Australia will have a carbon price for industry – and it may infuse greater climate action across the economy

This recourse to negativity and fearmongering, employed with electoral success by Tony Abbott in 2013 and Morrison in 2019, is once more to the fore in Dutton’s resort to questions and division rather than positive engagement with the Voice. It can also be seen in spurious assertions such as Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s recent claim that if the Voice referendum is successful, the new mechanism could be used to veto Anzac Day.

These oppositional policy stances might maintain party unity and please the membership, but they fail to recognise fundamental problems. Australian electoral politics is undergoing significant realignment. Women and migrants have deserted the Coalition, the concerns of younger Australians about climate change, housing affordability and wealth inequality are registering in voting patterns, and mainstream opinion still inclines to supporting the Voice.

Given the 2022 election result and polling trends since, the only rationale for the Coalition to persist with its oppositional approach is a commitment to its small and unrepresentative base.

There are three things any leader must do. The first is to hold the party together, and this Dutton – aware of Turnbull’s fate – is doing. It will not be enough: social and demographic change are against him. If it is faithful to its members, the party will be destroyed at the ballot box.

The second is to respond to changing circumstances, recruiting an enlarged membership and persuading the party to adopt a constructive policy agenda to suit contemporary conditions. This is where Menzies, and arguably Howard, succeeded.

The third is to successfully communicate its policy purposes to a broad constituency by explaining how they will serve the principal public concerns of the moment. Menzies’ recognition in his time of the need for a revitalised liberalism, and now Howard’s call for a manifesto for the future recognise this.

If the Liberal Party cannot craft a positive message of liberalism that is attuned to the mainstream concerns of today’s electorate, a fate like that of the UAP is inevitable.

Carolyn Holbrook receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is on the executive committee of the Australian Historical Association.

James Walter 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. Will a preoccupation with party unity destroy the Liberal Party? – https://theconversation.com/will-a-preoccupation-with-party-unity-destroy-the-liberal-party-203849

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland

Got COVID? Again?

Deciding what to eat can be mentally taxing, especially when you are not feeling well. However, our diet plays a role in preventing and managing poor health, including COVID.

Having a healthy diet is associated with a reduced risk of COVID. And, if you do have COVID, a healthy diet is associated with milder symptoms.

Read more:
Don’t listen to Gwyneth Paltrow – IVs are not a shortcut to good health

What should I eat during COVID infection?

When we are sick it can be challenging to even think about food. However, the best way to fight the infection is by providing your body with foods that best support you to heal.

Fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains and various forms of protein are broken down into substances by the body to support your immune system.

The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating suggests we eat a variety of fresh foods every day including:

• two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables

• whole grains, such as wholemeal pasta, brown rice or wholemeal bread

• healthy fats, such as avocado or olive oil

• meat and meat alternatives (such as lean beef, chicken, tofu or legumes) and dairy (such as cheese or milk).

Eating these kinds of foods every day helps provide our body with the nutrients required to fight infections and remain healthy.

Avoiding processed and ultra processed foods is also encouraged due to the high levels of salt and sugar and lack of nutrition found in these types of foods.

What about chicken soup or similar?

A great way to get all the nutrition your body requires when sick with COVID is through homemade chicken soup, chicken avgolemono, chicken congee or other similar dishes.

Why? Here are four good reasons:

1. It’s easy and cheap to make

The great thing about chicken soup is you can pop it in one pan (or into a slow cooker), throw all the ingredients in together and let it simmer away.

While the ingredients in chicken soup pack a powerful nutritional punch, they don’t cost the Earth.

2. It’s easy to absorb

The boiling process releases the nutritional elements found in the ingredients and aids in digestion and absorption of these vital nutrients.

3. It’s full of vitamins and minerals

Essential vitamins and minerals found in chicken soup include: iron, magnesium, sodium, potassium, calcium, chromium, copper, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12.

4. It’s flavoursome and powerful

The tasty flavour of chicken soup is enhanced by the seventeen different amino acids found in chicken soup. These amino acids also provide strength for your immune system

Nutrition can support immune health but it’s not the only answer

The best way to treat and manage a COVID infection is to avoid it in the first place. So remember to practise good hygiene, like washing your hands regularly, and maintain your recommended vaccine schedule.

Practising a healthy lifestyle will also reduce your risks of not only contracting COVID, but also developing chronic disease. This includes not smoking or vaping, maintaining healthy physical activity habits, getting enough sleep and reducing alcohol consumption.

The current recommendation for maximum alcohol intake is ten standard drinks in one week, and no more than four standard drinks in one day.

Don’t forget to drink plenty of water

Water is crucial when you’re sick.

Being dehydrated can enhance symptoms of colds and infections, including COVID. It is also associated with a higher risk of developing long COVID.

Aim to drink at least two litres of water per day, even more if you have a high body weight or have been losing fluids through vomiting or sneezing/runny nose.

If you don’t feel like having plain water, there are many healthy alternatives such as tea, broth or soup.

Read more:
Don’t like drinking plain water? 10 healthy ideas for staying hydrated this summer

Let’s remember to eat healthy anyway

Eating a healthy and balanced diet is an important part of maintain good health and vitality.

Getting caught up in fads or buying supplements can be expensive and there is controversy around their effectiveness.

In the long run, eating healthy will make you feel better and save you money.

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

Lauren Ball works for The University of Queensland and receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is a Director of Dietitians Australia, a Director of the Darling Downs and West Moreton Primary Health Network and an Associate Member of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Julie Marsh works in her own private dietetic practice as an Accredited Practising Dietitian. She is currently enrolled as a PhD Candidate with the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at The University of Queensland. Julie is based at the Centre for Community Health and Wellbeing at Springfield Qld.

– ref. What to eat when you have COVID – and why reaching for the chicken soup is not a bad idea – https://theconversation.com/what-to-eat-when-you-have-covid-and-why-reaching-for-the-chicken-soup-is-not-a-bad-idea-202338

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

A long-awaited increase in energy-efficiency requirements for new homes is part of revised Australian construction standards taking effect on May 1. All new homes must achieve a minimum 7-star whole-of-home energy rating from October, following a six-month transition period.

It’s a crucial step in responding to the climate crisis and decarbonising Australian society. It will also make our homes more affordable and comfortable to live in, and improve our health and wellbeing.

These regulations affect the roughly 150,000 new homes built each year across Australia. But what about the other 10.8 million homes we’re already living in?

Any transition towards a low-carbon future must include big improvements to existing housing. Housing accounts for around 24% of overall electricity use and 12% of carbon emissions in Australia.

As a nation we spend at least as much on renovations and retrofits as on building new housing. Upgrading the energy performance of existing homes should get at least as much attention as new homes to help make the transition to low-carbon living.

Read more:
7-star housing is a step towards zero carbon – but there’s much more to do, starting with existing homes

How do you know if a home’s a lemon?

Australians can access lots of information about the performance of appliances and vehicles, but almost nothing about the quality and performance of our housing.

When buying an appliance or a car we can see how much energy it will use and how much it will cost to run. We can then compare options and improve our decision-making.

We also have rights if our purchase doesn’t perform as described. Australia doesn’t have a specific “lemon law” like the United States. Nonetheless, a raft of laws protect buyers of both new and used vehicles.

Yet when it comes to our biggest and most important buying decision – buying or renting a home – we have a right to precisely nothing in terms of information on its energy efficiency and readiness for a sustainable future. What little information is provided is often misleading.

Read more:
‘I’ve never actually met them’: what will motivate landlords to fix cold and costly homes for renters?

Energy performance must be disclosed in other countries

Housing energy rating schemes are used worldwide. These schemes rate and compare the energy use of housing to help people decide what they will rent and buy.

Energy ratings are important. They tell us how much we are likely to spend on essential activities such as heating and cooling our homes. Amid a cost-of-living crisis, including soaring energy prices, this matters to all Australians, particularly those doing it tough.

Australia had a world-leading housing energy rating scheme when it was adopted in the ACT in 2003. Since then progress has stalled on a national scheme similar to those established globally in recent decades.

Energy ratings also reveal the underlying condition of our housing. Housing in Australia built before the early 2000s typically has only a 1-3 star energy rating. That level of performance more than doubles its energy bills and emissions compared to a new home.

People looking to buy or rent could avoid the housing equivalent of a lemon if we had a national scheme that requires a standard, independently verified energy performance assessment be made available to them. This would create an incentive for sellers and landlords to improve the energy performance of housing. It would also give policymakers a national picture of where retrofit schemes could best be targeted to meet our emission-reduction commitments.

Read more:
Homes with higher energy ratings sell for more. Here’s how Australian owners could cash in

What are the prospects for such a scheme?

Discussions are taking place in Australia about introducing a requirement for households to obtain some sort of energy or sustainability rating on their dwelling, potentially at point of sale or lease. A similar requirement is in place in other locations like Europe, the United Kingdom and even the ACT.

We have the resources and knowledge to establish a robust system that is: accurate and holistic, robust and consistent, applied and clear, transparent and adaptive.

The benefits of such a scheme include:

• encouraging energy-efficient retrofits of existing homes for the health and comfort of Australians

• supporting social equity between people living in older homes and those in newer homes, and particularly for renters and low-income households

• giving Australians a better understanding of the houses they rent or buy, in the same way they choose their appliances

• reducing emissions from housing to help achieve the target of net-zero emissions

• providing information to inform and develop policies for existing homes that then align with policies for new homes.

Read more:
Will 7-star housing really cost more? It depends, but you can keep costs down in a few simple ways

The key is not to do a cheap job on this. That would waste the effort, time and money we put into retrofitting homes, and risk us missing our climate commitments. It would also mean our most vulnerable households would find it even more difficult to access decent, energy-efficient housing.

Doing a proper job means we will all have access to independent verified information. It will help fix market failures and provide peace of mind about the places we live, with the potential to upgrade them reliably and cost-effectively.

Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners. He is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network.

Lisa de Kleyn is a Research Fellow on projects that receive funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Victorian Government, and various industry partners.

Ralph Horne has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners.

– ref. We need a ‘lemon law’ to make all the homes we buy and rent more energy-efficient – https://theconversation.com/we-need-a-lemon-law-to-make-all-the-homes-we-buy-and-rent-more-energy-efficient-204369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joelle Gergis, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, Australian National University

Around half of all life on Earth is on the move because of climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Many species’ habitats are changing, forcing them to move, while others are fleeing harm’s way as new predators move in.

This staggering statistic shows just one of the ways climate change is impacting species at both ends of the Earth. In this week’s episode of The Conversation’s climate podcast Fear & Wonder, we travel from the Arctic to Tasmania to see how these changes are playing out.

The second volume of the IPCC’s monumental Sixth Assessment Report assesses the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability of people and ecosystems to global warming, including how animals and plants are responding to a changing climate.

In this episode, we speak to Finnish fisherman and IPCC scientist Tero Mustonen about the changes he has observed on the lake ice in his village of Selkie in North Karelia, and how his community has led a successful rewilding project on a nearby peatland mining site.

Read more:
Introducing Fear and Wonder: The Conversation’s new climate podcast

We also hear from Australian marine ecologist and IPCC author Gretta Pecl, whose research has helped map the rapid redistribution of life on Earth. Through her dives off the Tasmanian coast, we learn how species are shifting their distribution faster in the ocean than they are on land.

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

If you’re enjoying Fear & Wonder, be sure to join us for a live bonus episode at 1pm on May 1. Details here.

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

Dr Joelle Gergis has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources in the past. She currently receives funding from the Australian National University.

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

– ref. Fear and Wonder podcast: how species are responding to climate change – and how humans can help – https://theconversation.com/fear-and-wonder-podcast-how-species-are-responding-to-climate-change-and-how-humans-can-help-204359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Orlando, Researcher: Digital Literacy and Digital Wellbeing, Western Sydney University

School phone bans may seem like the answer to reeling in young people’s technology use.

But if we ban phones and bury this issue under the sand, when and how do our kids learn to have a healthy relationship with technology in a world becoming more tech-focused by the day?

Existing bans in Australian schools

School mobile phone bans have experienced a domino effect throughout Australia. Most jurisdictions now have full or partial bans.

Victoria has banned mobile phones in both primary and secondary schools since term 1 of 2020. Western Australia and Tasmania have similar “off and away all day” policies.

South Australia is transitioning to a ban in all public high schools by term 3 of 2023. New South Wales will ban them in public high school schools in October, as part of a flagship election policy from the incoming Minns government.

Earlier this month, Queensland said it was looking at the issue as well.

Talk of a national approach

While schools are largely a state government responsibility, the phone ban rhetoric has gained popularity at the federal level. Last week federal Education Minister Jason Clare called for a national approach, saying he will meet with state and territory counterparts in the middle of 2023 to discuss and encourage this.

I think the time has come for a national approach to the banning or the restriction on the use of mobile phones by students in schools.

If a national ban is instated, it would likely mean students in all government primary and high schools around the country will restricted or completely banned in their use a mobile phone at school.

Countries with a similar national approach include China, France and Sweden. Many countries, including the United Kingdom and United States, enable individual schools to create their own policy as per their individual needs.

Read more:
Another school has banned mobile phones but research shows bans don’t stop bullying or improve student grades

Students need to be included in this

Clare says he will prioritise a collaborative approach to phones and

not make the decision on our own; talk to parents, talk to principals, talk to teachers about what’s the best approach to take.

An obvious omission from this lineup is students. As studies of phone bans overseas show, children’s views are highly important as they are the policy receivers and beneficiaries.

Scenes of school phone bans gone wrong are all over TikTok, with footage of Australian students breaking open pouches often purchased by schools to lock phones away. This footage is quite different from the pro-ban scenes filmed for the nightly news.

It is easy to see why bans are popular

Banning mobile phones is popular with some parents, as it seems like the obvious answer to young people’s problematic technology use.

But this popularity in part is underpinned uncertainty on how to control children’s technology use.

Parents often resort to confiscating phones at home when they don’t know how to control children’s use of technology. School bans are confiscation on a large scale.

They began as a means to stop bullying and to keep kids focused in class – important issues that are proving difficult to solve. But they risk sweeping important issues under the rug. This could make life harder for children in the long run.

Read more:
‘Screen time’ for kids is an outdated concept, so let’s ditch it and focus on quality instead

What are adults doing?

Many young people I am interviewing as part of new research for the eSafety commissioner agree their technology use is not controlled, meaning that they feel they spend too much time using their phone in unproductive and habitual ways. This worries them.

However rather than pointing the finger at the kids, let’s consider what’s happening with the adult population and mobile phones.

Our all-consuming approach to phones has become so worrying that Problematic Mobile Phone Use (PMPU) has been identified by the Australian Psychological Society as one of the biggest behavioural addiction challenges of the 21st century.

Adults use their phones all the time, especially in places they should not be. A 2018 study by Education company Udemy showed millennials (the parents of many school-aged children) checked their phone two hours a day for personal activities during the workday. The 40-hour week has turned into a 30-hour work week, plus ten hours on your phone.

As adults we find it very difficult to cope with mobile phone bans. There are now hundreds of hidden mobile phone detection cameras to catch us out because we can’t be trusted not to use our phones when driving.

These cameras collected about A$66 million last year in fines. This was a $4 million increase from the previous year. It shows how real issues with adult phone use have not been solved with bans or arbitrary penalties.

Where’s the evidence this will work?

The scant research available shows no change to either bullying or class engagement after school phone bans are introduced.

One 2022 Spanish study did attempt to say bans had led to better academic results. But in careful reading of the study, students were permitted to use phones in schools as a learning tool for educational purposes. The researchers state this may have been the reason for increased scores.

Policies need to be made using evidence, and right now we don’t really have any.

In the meantime, bans make it likely we will leave our children without skills they need to be able to learn, work and live in a world saturated with technology. This includes their home and bedroom where they do their homework after school.

Meanwhile, we need a broader conversation about how all of us – children and adults alike – can use phones in a healthy way.

Joanne Orlando receives funding from eSafety Commisioner.

– ref. School phone bans seem obvious but could make it harder for kids to use tech in healthy ways – https://theconversation.com/school-phone-bans-seem-obvious-but-could-make-it-harder-for-kids-to-use-tech-in-healthy-ways-204111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Spry, Lecturer of Marketing, RMIT University

Earlier this month, influencer and trans woman Dylan Mulvaney promoted Bud Light beer on their social media and received vicious backlash from the conservative public. The TikTok star, known for documenting their gender transition in daily videos for their 10.8 million followers, showed a commemorative beer can with their face on it, which led to calls for a boycott of the brand.

Scandals surrounding celebrity endorsements are not new. In the 1980s, Pepsi paid Madonna a massive US$5 million to use Madonna’s Like A Prayer in its commercials. The commercial ran only twice before scandal was sparked by the religious imagery in Madonna’s music video, leading Pepsi to drop her as an endorser.

Decades later, Tiger Woods was notoriously stripped of US$22 million in endorsement deals when his extramarital affairs were revealed.

Same outrage, different reasons

While the outrage looks the same in the cases of Woods and Mulvaney, it occurred for very different reasons and prompted very different reactions from the companies involved.

In the case of Woods, the public objected to his transgressions and brands dropped him to protect their own reputations. In the case of Mulvaney, the criticism was targeted at them, as a member of the transgender community, and Bud Light, for implicitly supporting trans rights with this partnership.

How then does celebrity endorsement work as a marketing strategy? Why is a specific celebrity selected by a brand, and why does outrage sometimes occur? And how should we look upon brands using celebrities to signal a higher purpose?

How celebrity endorsements work

Human memory can be conceived as a network consisting of nodes connected by associative links. A celebrity and a brand are two nodes that become linked in peoples’ minds by appearing together in advertising campaigns. This can be imagined as a mind map – when a consumer thinks of a celebrity endorser, they may automatically think of the endorsed brand and vice versa.

The goal is for brands to “borrow” favourable associations from the celebrity’s personality. Our research showed that when a celebrity endorser is perceived as credible, the brand’s credibility is boosted, too.

Yet, undesirable associations with the celebrity can also spill over to the brand. This explains why brands are quick to distance themselves from celebrities behaving badly.

In 2021, clothes designer and influencer Nadia Bartel allegedly broke Melbourne’s COVID lockdown and snorted a white substance off a Kmart plate. Her partnerships with JSHealth and other brands were swiftly ended. Despite Bartel’s transparency and apology, the risk of her negative associations transferring to these brands was too great.

Read more:
Kanye West and Wyndham Lewis: how ‘cancellation’ affected two artists, a century apart

How celebrity endorsers are chosen

Typically, companies seek famous personalities that are congruent with their brand image and target market.

There may also be an aspirational element – the celebrity should fit with the brand but offer the benefit of new, more desirable associations.

It should come as no surprise that brands would not consider celebrities that have a chequered reputation or even celebrities that endorse many different brands. Brands want a salient, unsullied celebrity connection.

Celebrity endorsement in the age of brand purpose

With brands under pressure to demonstrate their purpose, the nature of celebrity endorsements is evolving. Brands can communicate their values by partnering with public figures who identify as part of a historically marginalised group or who demonstrate support of or opposition to a partisan issue.

Bud Light’s choice of Mulvaney as a celebrity endorser was likely for both business and societal reasons – a boundary that more and more brands are traversing.

Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, has said the brand’s financial performance has been steadily declining and that reversing this trend requires new, younger customers and leaving behind “fratty and out-of-touch humour”.

The backlash happened because Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, was accused of “woke-ifying” the beer and turning it into a political statement – one that doesn’t resonate with its target audience. Bud Light did not cut ties with Mulvaney even as the controversy erupted.

Brands can also take a stand by choosing not to work with certain celebrities. Kanye West – now known as Ye – was dumped by Adidas and Gap, among others, after his abhorrent behaviour, which included wearing a White Lives Matter t-shirt and publishing antisemitic remarks on Twitter.

This was not just an instance of bad behaviour. Ye’s actions were hateful and dangerous at a societal level. Adidas terminated the partnership and stopped production of Yeezy-branded items. While Adidas no doubt wished to avoid being cancelled by consumers, they also took the responsibility required for inclusive marketing and copped the significant financial cost of doing so.

Authentic action is paramount when brands take a stand.

Provocative and purposeful celebrity endorsements

Not all celebrity scandals are the same. In the past, celebrities have made egregious mistakes and brands have severed ties because it was the most profitable, least risky business decision.

Now, as celebrity endorsements are becoming part of the strategic toolbox for signalling brand purpose, more often than not, outrage will still occur. This provocation is anticipated and perhaps, even cultivated.

A worthwhile question to ask of brands like Bud Light is: beyond this provocation, how else is being in partnership with influential celebrities driving genuine change?

Amanda Spry 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. From Dylan Mulvaney to Madonna, there’s a long history of backlash to celebrity brand endorsements – https://theconversation.com/from-dylan-mulvaney-to-madonna-theres-a-long-history-of-backlash-to-celebrity-brand-endorsements-204102

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

America’s first octogenarian president has finally announced he is going to seek more time in office amid lacklustre public enthusiasm.

At first glance, the challenges facing US President Joe Biden’s re-election appear daunting. Following Donald Trump’s failed campaign in 2020, this will be the second time in four years that a sitting US president whom the majority of Americans wished would not run again has announced his re-election.

Yet, while many of his supporters are anxious, Biden has it made clear he likes his chances.

The age-old question

As the oldest-ever sitting US president, Biden’s age and ability to be in touch with younger generations remain a central criticism of his viability as a candidate for a second term.

Concerns about the 80-year-old Biden’s physical fitness only highlight the fact that the energy and exorbitant demands required to run a presidential campaign have overwhelmed far younger presidential candidates.

Furthermore, after running much of his 2020 presidential campaign from home due to the pandemic, Biden will now have to spend a considerable amount of time over the next 18 months travelling and fundraising around the country, in addition to maintaining his day job as president.

Biden has repeatedly acknowledged and rebutted such concerns with statements like, “The only thing I can say is, ‘watch me’”. But, in an effort to avoid giving a microphone to the gaffe-prone president, the Biden administration has severely limited the public’s ability to do that by granting the smallest number of media interviews for a sitting president since the Reagan administration.

Potentially lagging economic indicators

Beyond Biden’s age and ability to relate to the approximately 96% of Americans who are younger than him, there is also the challenge of not knowing how the US economy will be faring on election day in November 2024.

When Trump announced his re-election campaign on June 19, 2019, the US economy faced few headwinds and had record-low rates of unemployment, both nationally and across several major demographics. Yet, on election day 16 months later, the country was still emerging from a pandemic-fuelled economic downturn that saw the highest unemployment rate since 1941 and 5.4 million Americans lose their health insurance.

Read more:
Could Joe Biden be the most consequential American president of our times?

American presidents are generally favoured to win re-election. But in each of the four re-election losses that have occurred in the last century — Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Trump in 2020 — the US economy was either recently recessionary, fully recessionary or in a depression.

Today, the US has even lower levels of unemployment than when Trump announced his re-election bid in 2019 — in fact, the lowest since 1969. At the same time, a central criticism of the Biden administration — the highest levels of inflation in decades — appears to be slowly ameliorating.

With that said, the US Federal Reserve’s continued interest rate hikes have put pressure on both banks and homeowners. The Federal Reserve also has an undeniably mixed record on decreasing inflation without causing a recession.

A lot can happen before election day, but last month’s Bloomberg survey of economists found the probability of a US recession occurring in the next 12 months to be at 65%.

Once again, time and conventional wisdom may not be in Biden’s favour.

Lacklustre public enthusiasm

Politicians often perceive decisive election victories with significant margins to be mandates from voters for their policy agenda. Biden won by a slim margin in the “swing states” that determined the presidency in 2020 – by no means giving him a clear mandate.

Two and a half years later, Biden’s approval ratings do not appear to have markedly improved. Due to a combination of factors – the chaotic exit of the US military from Afghanistan, record levels of migrant border crossings, high levels of public concern about crime, and persistent economic anxiety related to inflation – Biden currently has just a 43% national approval rating. It should come as no surprise that two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

Although three-quarters of Democrats approve of the job Biden is doing, the majority still do not want him to run for re-election.

Ultimately, only three presidents in the last half century — Carter, Ronald Reagan and Trump — have announced their re-election campaign with similarly negative approval ratings. Only Reagan ended up winning a second term.

Read more:
80 is different in 2023 than in 1776 – but even back then, a grizzled Franklin led alongside a young Hamilton

Comparing him to “the alternative”

Perhaps no Biden quote better reflects his confidence in winning in 2024 than, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

A recent poll of registered US voters found Biden losing to a generic Republican presidential candidate in 2024, 47% to 41%. While many campaigns would initially be concerned about such a statistic, few commentators have highlighted it because Biden is obviously not going to be facing off against a generic Republican candidate.

Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination, according to most polls.
And following his involvement in the raid on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the prospect of a series of unprecedented indictments, the general public’s dislike of Biden seems to be eclipsed by a more passionate distaste for Trump.

While Trump’s hold over grassroots Republicans appears strong, the three national elections since his win in 2016 — the Republican loss of dozens of House seats in the 2018 midterm elections, Trump’s defeat in the presidential election of 2020 and the lacklustre performance of Trump-backed candidates in the 2022 midterm elections — have put a significant damper on his nationwide appeal.

Unsurprisingly, a recent poll found that in a general election match-up between Trump and Biden, the sitting president commands a four-point lead over Trump (46-42%).

Most Americans cite “exhaustion” as the most dominant feeling when thinking about a Biden-Trump match-up in 2024. Biden is banking on the notion they are slightly less exhausted by him than his rival.

Despite Biden’s pride in his legislative achievements, his team appears largely content for the 2024 election to be (yet another) referendum on Trump and “extreme “Make America Great Again” Republicans“ rather than a vote on Biden’s term as president.

Instead of seeing his age and subdued public support as weaknesses to be overcome, the Biden team is hoping his relative stability arising from half a century of experience in Washington will remain a welcome relief for many Americans following such an exhausting period in American politics.

Jared Mondschein 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. Yes, Joe Biden is old and has low approval ratings, but this is why he’s still confident of re-election – https://theconversation.com/yes-joe-biden-is-old-and-has-low-approval-ratings-but-this-is-why-hes-still-confident-of-re-election-204529

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Lobato, Associate Professor, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University

If you’ve bought a new smart TV in the past few years, you’ll likely have a remote with pre-programmed app shortcuts, such as the now ubiquitous “Netflix button”.

These branded buttons offer one-click access to select apps.

The choice and design of shortcuts vary between brands.

Samsung remotes have a monochrome design with small buttons for Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and Samsung TV Plus. Hisense remotes are overflowing with 12 big, colourful buttons advertising everything from Stan and Kayo to NBA League Pass and Kidoodle.

The remote is now a thoroughly commercial space.

Behind these buttons there is a lucrative business model. Content providers purchase remote shortcut buttons as part of negotiated deals with manufacturers.

For streaming services, presence on the remote control provides branding opportunities and a convenient entry point into their app. For television manufacturers, it provides a new revenue stream.

But the TV user must tolerate unwanted advertising every time they pick up their remote. And smaller apps – including many Australian apps – are disadvantaged because they are typically priced out of the market.

Who’s on your remote?

Our research examined remotes for 2022-model smart TVs from the five major television brands sold in Australia: Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL.

We found all major-brand TVs sold in Australia have dedicated buttons for Netflix and Prime Video. Most also have Disney+ and YouTube buttons.

However, local services are harder to find on remotes. A few brands have Stan and Kayo buttons, but only Hisense has an ABC iview button. None have buttons for SBS On Demand, 7Plus, 9Now or 10Play.

Remote shortcuts are part of a larger battle for brand visibility in smart TV interfaces.

Since 2019, regulators in Europe and the United Kingdom have been investigating the smart TV market. They have uncovered some questionable business arrangements between manufacturers, platforms and apps.

Following this lead, the Australian government is conducting its own investigations and developing a new framework to ensure local services can be easily found on smart TVs and streaming devices.

One proposal under consideration is a “must-carry” or “must-promote” framework that would require local apps to receive equal (or even special) treatment within the home screens of smart TVs. This option is enthusiastically supported by the broadcasters’ lobby group, Free TV Australia.

Free TV is also arguing for a mandatory “Free TV” button on all remotes that would bring the user to a landing page with all of the local free-to-air video-on-demand apps: ABC iview, SBS On Demand, 7Plus, 9Now and 10Play.

Read more:
Streaming platforms will soon be required to invest more in Australian TV and films, which could be good news for our screen sector

But what do we want on our remotes?

We asked more than 1,000 Australian smart TV users which four shortcut buttons they would include if they could design their own remote control. We asked
them to select options from a long list of locally available apps, or write their own choices, up to four.

The clear favourite was Netflix (selected by 75% of respondents), followed by YouTube (56%), Disney+ (33%), ABC iview (28%), Prime Video (28%) and SBS On Demand (26%).

All other services were selected by fewer than a quarter of respondents.

SBS On Demand and ABC iview are the only services in the top-ranked apps list not to routinely receive their own remote control buttons. So, based on what we found, there’s a solid policy rationale for mandating some kind of presence on our remotes for public-service broadcasters.

But it is also clear no-one wants their Netflix button messed with. So government needs to tread carefully to ensure user preferences are respected in any future regulation of smart TVs and remotes.

In our survey respondents also raised an interesting question: why can’t we choose our own remote control shortcuts?

While some manufacturers (notably LG) allow limited customisation of their remotes, the general trend in remote control design has been towards increased branding and monetisation of positioning. It is unlikely this will be reversed anytime soon.

In other words, your remote is now part of the global streaming wars – and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Read more:
Can Australian streaming survive a fresh onslaught from overseas?

Ramon Lobato receives funding from the Australian Research Council (FT190100978).

Alexa Scarlata receives funding from the Australian Research Council (FT190100978).

Bruno Schivinski 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. Netflix and other streaming giants pay to get branded buttons on your remote control. Local TV services can’t afford to keep up – https://theconversation.com/netflix-and-other-streaming-giants-pay-to-get-branded-buttons-on-your-remote-control-local-tv-services-cant-afford-to-keep-up-203927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Kate Kelly, PhD Candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, RMIT University

This month Coles announced a major new partnership with Uber Eats that will further expand the supermarket giant’s links with the gig economy. Under the arrangement, Uber Eats drivers will not only complete home delivery for the supermarket, drivers will also pick and pack orders from supermarket shelves.

Previously, online orders were completed by Coles’ directly employed “personal shoppers” who would hand over the order to a delivery partner. More than 500 Coles stores across the country will start selling goods via the digital platform, with gig workers performing the role of a Coles personal shopper.

The deal differs from an existing partnership between Woolworths Metro60 and Uber Eats, forged in June 2022, which also promises rapid delivery, albeit with orders fulfilled by supermarket workers.

The Coles partnership is a significant development that will see Uber Eats drivers working inside the supermarket alongside traditional employees and customers.

The gig economy enters the supermarket

The supermarket duopoly have been steadily recruiting gig workers into their home delivery offerings since Coles set up a partnership with Airtasker in 2017. Demand for rapid deliveries then surged during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.

From one perspective, Coles and Woolworths are simply outsourcing specific tasks (such as picking, packing and delivery) to Uber Eats and other gig-work platforms. From another, the supermarkets are absorbing gig workers into their own activities.

Read more:
Coles and Woolworths are moving to robot warehouses and on-demand labour as home deliveries soar

Gig workers are not formal employees and do not enjoy the same legal protections as other staff, but they are nonetheless performing work that is core supermarket business.

The so-called “last mile” of delivery – the final leg between a hub such as a warehouse or supermarket and the consumer – is widely considered the most difficult and unprofitable part of logistics, particularly for rapid deliveries. While both supermarkets run their own last-mile systems for deliveries booked in advance, the partnerships with Uber Eats let them offer customers rapid home delivery options while offloading the risk associated with the last mile.

Potentially tens of thousands of jobs at stake

In 2022, I interviewed supermarket workers about the impact of rapid delivery services. Many expressed concerns that the gig economy was “getting closer” with some predicting the role of the personal shopper – a supermarket employee who would gather and pack items for delivery – would eventually be taken up by gig workers.

Coles says the Uber Eats drivers will “complement rather than compete” with existing direct-employed supermarket employees.

Read more:
‘A weird dinging sound that everyone dreads’: what rapid deliveries mean for supermarket workers

For now, gig workers and employees will work alongside each other. Over time, however, it is possible other supermarket roles will be displaced into the gig economy.

Coles and Woolworths are Australia’s largest private sector employers. As they bring the gig economy into their workplaces, it has the potential to affect tens of thousands of jobs.

Grocery is a winner-takes-all industry

The new partnership was announced just days after grocery delivery startup Milkrun officially folded.

Milkrun was the last standing of four Australian rapid grocery delivery startups launched in the past couple of years. The company failed to turn a profit, was quick to abandon its central proposition of ten-minute delivery, and burned through $86 million in venture capital in less than two years.

Read more:
MilkRun’s demise is another nail in the 10-minute grocery-delivery business model

With much less fanfare, both Coles and Woolworths have achieved what startups couldn’t. Their advantage has been their enormous scale and market power, enabling them to push suppliers for lower prices and make use of their existing networks of distribution centres, stores, delivery vans – and now partnerships with the gig economy.

In an unfair playing field, the supermarket giants have the best of both worlds: vertical integration with the supply chain and the ability to shift risk away from the business and onto individual gig workers.

Essential service or frivolous convenience?

The example of Milkrun and other startups suggests the business of on-demand grocery delivery may not be feasible without an army of precariously employed workers such as Uber Eats drivers. This raises another question: do we really need or want groceries delivered this quickly?

The supermarkets often frame their new deliveries services as benefiting “vulnerable Australians”, such as the elderly and people living with disabilities. The implication is that the availability of rapid grocery delivery is a social good, rather than simply a convenience.

However, if the service is truly essential, it seems the people doing the work should be valued and supported with well-paid and secure employment. What’s more, it’s not entirely convincing that rapid grocery delivery in its current form is essential at all.

Many personal shoppers I interviewed said on-demand purchases tended to be frivolous. Referring to the partnership between Woolworths and Uber Eats, one worker recalled:

People are ordering […] a single banana and a Red Bull. It’s really weird the stuff you get.

Another added:

No one used to do it. Now, people buy only five things and they’ll pay that fee to have it delivered soon. It’s more popular for alcohol or cigarettes or something like that.

One supermarket worker expressed deep scepticism of rapid delivery, stating:

It didn’t seem like it was about meeting the demands of shoppers, that’s made explicit through the article cap for Uber Eats. […] You can only order 25 [items] so it wasn’t about regular shopping. Really, I think it was just more for the convenience. Instead of going to the shops yourself, you can just wait at home for it, and someone else can pick it for you.

The cost of this convenience will be carried by supermarket workers, who in recent years have already seen their work transformed to adhere to the logic of the gig economy, with on-demand time pressures and ad-hoc scheduling. Now, as the gig economy moves into the physical supermarket space, the distinction between conventional employment and gig work is further blurred.

Lauren Kate Kelly receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She works with United Workers Union which has members across the supermarket supply chain.

– ref. Coles’ Uber Eats deal brings the gig economy inside the traditional workplace – https://theconversation.com/coles-uber-eats-deal-brings-the-gig-economy-inside-the-traditional-workplace-204353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Moninya Roughan, Professor in Oceanography, UNSW Sydney

Large swathes of the world’s oceans are warm. Unusually warm. The heat this year is likely to break records. Since mid-March, the global average sea surface temperature is over 21℃ – the highest since satellite records began.

What’s going on? Climate change is the big picture – nine-tenths of all heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans. But there’s an immediate cause too: the rare triple-dip La Niña is over. During this cycle, cooler water from deep in the ocean upwells to the surface. It’s like the Pacific Ocean’s air conditioner is running. But now the air conditioner is turned off. It’s likely we’re set for an El Niño, which tends to bring hotter, dryer weather to Australia.

When you run your air conditioner, you’re masking the heat outside. It’s the same for our oceans. La Niña brought three years of cooler conditions, while global warming continued apace.

Now we’re likely to see the heat roar back. If El Niño develops, climatologists estimate it could add an extra 0.2℃ to global temperatures, which would nudge some areas past 1.5℃ of warming for the first time.

What are we seeing?

Wind patterns are changing over the eastern Pacific near Chile. These winds have stopped the upwelling of deep colder waters from cooling the surface. That’s why you can see temperatures much higher than average in that area.

This is often the start of an El Niño cycle, which usually brings Australia fire weather – dry and hot – while damaging fisheries in Ecuador and Peru and bringing torrential rain to parts of South America.

But the age-old El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle is happening amid climate change. That’s why it’s so hot across swathes of the world’s oceans.

Read more:
Shifting ocean currents are pushing more and more heat into the Southern Hemisphere’s cooler waters

Why do the oceans matter so much?

Ocean currents are a major carrier of heat around the globe, alongside atmospheric convection. Sun doesn’t pour down at the same rate everywhere. At the poles, it’s easier for sunlight to glance off, which is why they are colder. But the equator gets the full force of the sun, heating up air and water.

Ocean and air currents move this heat towards the poles. As the currents move south, heat mixes into the surrounding water. The East Australian Current carries warm water from the tropics southwards, distributing heat along south-eastern Australia. By the time the current reaches Hobart, it is typically a lot cooler.

Water can hold much more heat than air can. In fact, just the top few metres of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere. The oceans are slower to warm up, and slower to cool down. By contrast, the temperature of our atmosphere is much more mercurial and can change rapidly.

Heat gets into the ocean at the surface, as you’d expect, as that’s where sunlight warms water directly as well as warm winds transferring heat. Over time, this heat is mixed with the rest of the ocean. Most of the extra heat is going into the top two kilometres of seawater, but there’s warming all down the water column. On average, the oceans are four kilometres deep.

How much energy? A startling study suggests the earth system trapped roughly 380 zetajoules of extra heat from 1971-2020 – with the oceans taking up 90% of that. That’s a truly enormous number, the equivalent of 25 billion nuclear bombs.

Our research has found warmer currents – where heat is concentrated – are pushing further south, towards Antarctica.

Is that why my ocean swims are so warm this month?

Surprisingly, the answer is “not necessarily”. Local dynamics always play a role. And so do our own expectations.

In Sydney, many people have been surprised by how warm the water has felt when they dare a dip this month. The long-term trend of warming oceans plays a role. But more important is how long water can hold heat.

That warm Sydney dip is due to the oceans holding their heat from summer and autumn. Air temperatures might fall to 22℃ while the ocean is at 21℃. But that’s actually quite common in April – cooler air and warmer water. For a person swimming the contrast makes the ocean feel warm compared to the air, particularly if a breeze is blowing.

This is partly why global warming is hard to grasp. We experience the weather and climate directly, by our lived experience. What matters more is the big picture we are seeing. And that, based on the intense heating off Latin America, is a real worry.

Read more:
El Niño is coming, and ocean temps are already at record highs – that can spell disaster for fish and corals

Moninya Roughan receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) funded through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS)

– ref. In hot water: here’s why ocean temperatures are the hottest on record – https://theconversation.com/in-hot-water-heres-why-ocean-temperatures-are-the-hottest-on-record-204534

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

Australia’s inflation rate has fallen from its 30-year high of 7.8% in the December quarter of 2022 to 7.0% in the March quarter of 2023. But it’s still likely the Reserve Bank of Australia will push up interest rates again before the end of the year to drive inflation back to its target range.

Contributing to the lower growth in the Consumer Price Index in the first three months of 2023 were lower costs for furniture, appliances and clothing.

Other prices rose, but by less than they have been. The price of new dwellings, for example. This is likely due to construction materials becoming more readily available along with softer demand.

Prices showing little change include petrol, which remains about the same as a year ago, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

There are also some prices that have risen sharply. Gas prices – also influenced by the Ukraine war – are up by 26% from the March quarter a year ago. Electricity prices are also higher, up 16% from a year ago. There were also large rises in the price of university fees, up 9.6% from a year ago, and medical and hospital services, up 6.7%.

The annual rise in average rents was 4.9%, the highest since 2010, reflecting the low number of rental vacancies. Even so, the increase in rents was less than the overall Consumer Price Index.

Read more:
Rent crisis? Average rents are increasing less than you might think

To get a better idea of what would be happening were it not for some of the unusual and outsized moves, the Australian Bureau of Statistics calculates what it calls a “trimmed mean” measure of underlying inflation.

This excludes the 15% of prices that climbed the most in the quarter and the 15% of prices that climbed the least or fell. This gives a better idea of the underlying trend in inflation.

This measure, closely watched by the Reserve Bank, is now 6.6%.

Where is inflation heading?

Both the “headline” and “trimmed mean” measures are heading in the right direction, pointing to the success of ten consecutive interest-rate rises in the past year in slowing the economy. Inflation is likely to keep easing.

The supply-side issues from the COVID pandemic are largely resolved. Shipping costs have returned to pre-COVID levels, for example.

The big question now is how quickly inflation will ease, given it’s still well above the central bank’s target of 2–3%.

Read more:
Inflation still the ‘defining challenge’ as economic activity slows

What does this mean for interest rates?

As Treasurer Jim Chalmers said, “inflation has passed its peak” but “will still remain higher than we’d like for longer than we’d like”.

The Reserve Bank’s forecast in February was that inflation would not drop to the 2–3% target before 2025.
This assumed the projected decline may require one or two more interest rate rises.

The March quarter result will probably not change this assessment.

Speeding up the process would require more interest rate rises. But the bank is balancing its inflation objective with the risk of higher interest rates sending the economy into recession.

Read more:
The Lowe road – the RBA treads a ‘narrow path’

The Reserve Bank’s Governor Philip Lowe shared the board’s view on this a few weeks ago. Addressing the National Press Club, he was asked why Australia wasn’t following other central banks in continuing to increase interest rates. He replied:

We’ve discussed that at our board meetings: whether it would be beneficial to get inflation back down to 3% a year earlier. There’s an argument for that, but it would mean job losses – more job losses – and our judgement at the moment is that, if we can get inflation back to 3% by mid-2025 and preserve many of those job gains that have been delivered in the last few years, that’s a better outcome than getting inflation back to 3% one year earlier and having more job losses.

Today’s inflation data suggests the central bank will need no more than the one or two further increases, as flagged, to keep inflation on its “narrow path” back to the target range.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with the Reserve Bank.

– ref. Inflation has fallen, but one or two more interest-rate rises are still likely – https://theconversation.com/inflation-has-fallen-but-one-or-two-more-interest-rate-rises-are-still-likely-204269