Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee Morgenbesser, Griffith University

On December 24, 2021, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, 70, chaired a meeting of the Cambodian People’s Party, which has ruled the Southeast Asian country since 1979. The meeting saw his eldest son, Hun Manet, 45, unanimously selected to be the future prime minister.

After years of speculation over the identity of the strongman’s political successor, it was both an unsurprising and uninspiring choice.

A similar lack of surprise and inspiration encapsulates Cambodia’s general election this past Sunday. Even by the low standards of Southeast Asia, it was one of the worst sham votes in living memory. Up against a mix of 17 emasculated, feeble and grovelling opposition parties, Hun Sen’s party quickly boasted it had won in a “landslide”.

The entire event amounted to nothing more than a gigantic confidence trick designed to foist a political reality on repressed citizens – formulated without their consent and enforced without their approval.

Hun Sen’s transition of power to his son is now assured. The only question is when. The strongman said last week it could happen in a matters of weeks.

Preparing for a sham election

The campaign period for this year’s election featured the usual dose of manipulation and misconduct – all of which was aimed at guaranteeing few, if any, surprises at the ballot box.

In May, the National Election Committee barred the leading opposition Candlelight Party from competing in the election because it had failed to provide the necessary documentation. This documentation, ironically, had been taken in a police raid years earlier.

In early June, the National Assembly amended the election law to bar non-voters from ever running for office, as well as penalise anyone who calls for election boycotts. For the fledgling opposition, boycotts were a new and desperate tactic aimed at discrediting the electoral process.

In late June, Hun Sen also had a very public spat with Meta, Facebook’s parent company, after its oversight board recommended his account be suspended for threatening political opponents with violence.

And last week, the government blocked the websites of several news organisations, including Radio Free Asia. It was all just business as usual in Hun Sen’s Cambodia.

The uncomfortable truth is such elections have never been more than a means for Hun Sen to hold onto power with an ever-tightening grip, as opposed to an opportunity for his opponents to ever gain power.

Since the occupying Vietnamese forces installed him as leader in January 1985, the ageing strongman has slowly but methodologically bent the political system to his will.

How do dictators stay in power?

How has he accomplished this feat over the past 38 years? Based on my research in the field of authoritarian politics, two significant factors stand out.

The first thing Hun Sen did was personalise power by following the “playbook” of other strongmen like Paul Biya in Cameroon, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Idi Amin in Uganda. Among his actions across four decades of authoritarianism:

• he acted as a gatekeeper of the process by which people are appointed to high office

• appointed relatives to high-level posts in the party, military and government

• took control of the state security apparatus and created his own paramilitary group outside the normal chain of military command

• and monopolised the decision-making process within the ruling party, while also controlling who enters and exits its executive committee.

By 2005, Hun Sen alone had discretion over personnel policy and the distribution of rewards throughout Cambodia’s political system.

The second thing Hun Sen did was entrench a harsher form of dictatorship in Cambodia, transforming the country in recent years into a genuine one-party state.

In July 2015, the government rammed through a bill designed to suppress civil society groups. The law used arcane compliance requirements related to funding, reporting, registration and political neutrality to limit their operations.

Then, in August 2017, the Finance Ministry went after the independent English-language newspaper, The Cambodia Daily, for a decade’s worth of alleged back taxes. It was merely the start of sustained campaign aimed at ridding the country of an independent media.

The Supreme Court then dissolved the Cambodia National Rescue Party, the only serious challenger to the ruling party, on the fictitious grounds it was trying to topple the government in a “colour revolution.” Hun Sen has repeatedly rolled out this allegation against anyone who disagrees with him.

How does one dictator pass the reins to another?

It was against this backdrop that Hun Sen spent Sunday going through the motions of sanctioning one last sham election, at least as prime minister.

Having used his personal power to banish political opponents, monopolise the media landscape, disempower civil society organisations, crush mass protests and arbitrarily rescind the political rights and civil liberties of citizens, the path is now clear for Hun Manet to succeed him. So, what will happen next?

Leadership succession can be the Achilles heel of dictatorships. The process can sometimes encourage infighting among political elites and potentially plunge a country into chaos. The evidence suggests strongmen are more likely to give up power when they satisfy four preconditions:

1) Immunity: they can ensure legal protection for any alleged crimes committed while in office.

2) Security: they have a paramilitary force or formal position at the apex of the security apparatus.

3) Wealth: they have a stash of cash and/or a portfolio of properties to fund their retirement.

4) Trust: they appoint someone to take over who can protect their immunity, security and wealth.

Having so far satisfied all but the need for immunity, Hun Sen is now well-positioned to pass power onto his son.

Typically, when political succession occurs in dictatorships, the new strongman receives the benefit of the doubt from a slew of hopeful foreign states and optimistic foreign journalists. This comes from a place of exhaustion and exasperation: surely he can’t be worse?

Hun Manet, who was trained at the United States Military Academy at West Point and received a PhD in Economics from the University of Bristol, will be yet another beneficiary of this mindset.

But like the sons of other strongmen, such as Ilham Aliyev (the son former Azerbaijani leader Heydar Aliyev), Bashar al-Assad (son of Hafez al-Assad in Syria), Joseph Kabila (son of Laurent Kabila in Congo) and Kim Jong Un (son of Kim Jong Il in North Korea), Hun Manet has been groomed in the image of his father.

There is nothing to suggest Cambodia’s next prime minister won’t also have a sham election up his sleeve.

Lee Morgenbesser receives funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. Cambodian strongman Hun Sen wins another ‘landslide’ election. Will succession to his son be just as smooth? – https://theconversation.com/cambodian-strongman-hun-sen-wins-another-landslide-election-will-succession-to-his-son-be-just-as-smooth-209967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Sydney

Review: On The Beach, directed by Kip Williams.

When Nevil Shute wrote his 1957 novel On the Beach, the world was emerging from the devastation of the second world war to confront new fears.

Shute imagines a not-too-distant future in which a short nuclear war has destroyed life on much of the planet. It has left Australia briefly isolated, with the radioactive cloud slowly advancing towards its beaches. The characters in the novel are waiting out their inevitable deaths.

To adapt this novel in 2023 is to consider our own lives in parallel, as we walk bleary-eyed from the pandemic into a future of escalating global conflict and climate crisis.

Shute’s novel chillingly emphasises the persistence of a kind of stoic duty as an affirmation of the human in the face of overwhelming death. But playwright Tommy Murphy and director Kip Williams have produced something both more poignant and more life-affirming from the dry bones of the original.

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Passion for life

In the first half of this new play for the Sydney Theatre Company, Murphy is able to excavate genuine wit and humour from Shute’s turgid prose, allowing us to care that these people make the right choices for themselves. The dialogue is warm and human. And our connection to the characters in the first half provides a platform for the devastating pathos of the second half.

I can’t have been the only person hopelessly failing to hold back tears as the Max Richter soundtrack played behind some astonishingly affecting tableaux in the closing moments of the play.

Shute famously thought of writing as a “pansy occupation”, only deigning to write if the writing had utility. The novel comes as a conservative warning against complacency.

Australia’s sense of its isolation from global conflict is seen as a delusion against which readers are encouraged to reevaluate their commitment to a collective future. His sights are set as much on his country of birth, the United Kingdom, and what he saw as its disastrous turn towards socialism in the post-war period as they are on the naive utopianism he found in Australia, his adopted country.

In this 2023 adaptation, however, the story is invested with a sensual passion for life that moves well beyond Shute’s stern warnings and instead provides a celebration of sex, love, desire and embodied, animal life.

Where Shute’s characters stoically refrain from sex, this production loves the human body and its capabilities. Regrets here are not for lives lived wrongly but for lost futures that both we and the characters can see reaching out in front of us, unattainable. The beauty of men’s bodies is, in particular, constantly held up by the production as a reminder to both characters and audience of life-affirming humanity.

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Fragile lives

Williams’ direction brilliantly brings out the possibilities of Murphy’s script, and the two local theatre makers are on absolutely top form.

The staging does not contain the complex screen-work of Williams’ recent novelistic adaptations Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde, but it is still disarmingly gorgeous. Lighting from Damien Cooper and set design from Michael Hankin contribute to a cinematic experience that underscores the beauty the production draws out of our fragile lives.

Contessa Treffone gives a stand out performance as Moira, carrying much of the emotional weight of the play. The humour of the first half mostly comes from her warm and empathetic rendition of a young woman determined to drain the last drops from the champagne flute of life.

Michelle Lim Davidson as Mary, a mother uncertain what to do with her baby daughter in the face of death, also provides a performance that moves from nimble wit to affecting anguish. Matthew Backer’s scientist, Dr John Osborne, provides some much-needed glue to the scenes set in the submarine that sets out from Melbourne, only to discover a world of lost hopes.

On The Beach is clear-eyed in its pessimistic outlook for our lives. But with rare and important generosity, a sense of inevitable doom is turned into an affirmation of life, love and into a re-commitment to the future.

I can’t imagine anybody would come out of the theatre and not hold their loved ones just that little bit closer. And perhaps they might also take a look around themselves to see all of this beauty we still, perhaps, have time to save.

On the Beach is at the Sydney Theatre Company until August 12.

Huw Griffiths ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. I can’t imagine anybody would come out of On The Beach and not hold their loved ones just that little bit closer – https://theconversation.com/i-cant-imagine-anybody-would-come-out-of-on-the-beach-and-not-hold-their-loved-ones-just-that-little-bit-closer-208366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Chica-Latorre, Phd Candidate and Research Assistant, Research Institute for Sport and Exercise, University of Canberra

During the Women’s FIFA World Cup, it has been wonderful to see the spotlight turn to female athletes.

There’s always been more research on male athletes compared to female athletes, but the gap is narrowing.

One thing we still don’t know enough about is the effect of the menstrual cycle on athletic performance.

Read more:
Explainer: why do women menstruate?

What does the menstrual cycle do to a woman’s body?

The menstrual cycle is a complex cascade of events typically lasting 28 days. The primary female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone rise and fall as the body cycles through four phases, beginning at menstruation, maturation and releasing of an egg (ovulation), preparation for pregnancy, and restarting the cycle if the egg is not fertilised.

Fluctuations in female sex hormones have been associated with changes in inflammation, metabolism, muscle activation and body composition, which can influence athletic performance.

For instance, inflammation decreases when the body is preparing to ovulate, reaching its lowest point around ovulation. It then increases following ovulation and peaks during menstruation.

This peak coincides with lower perceived performance among many female athletes.

The menstrual cycle can also give rise to symptoms including pain, cramps, weakness, and poor sleep and focus, challenging performance during training and competition.

For example, research conducted in elite female soccer players found over 87% of players perceived reduced power and increased fatigue during menstruation, while over 66% perceived their reaction time and recovery to be affected.

Considering the approximate maximum career length of soccer players (21 years) and a woman’s fertile life, that adds up to about 250 times throughout a woman’s soccer career that performance may be compromised.

Trends observed among female soccer players closely mirror the experiences of other female athletes, with over 74% reporting negative effects mainly during the first days of menstruation.

For some, this may lead to reduced training participation, potentially compromising skill development, fitness levels, and even their chances of being selected for competition.

But the menstrual cycle is complex, and its effects can vary between athletes and sports. Consequently there is disagreement regarding whether the menstrual cycle universally affects athletic performance, with some research indicating no influence of the menstrual cycle on certain performance measures. But these studies are few and had various logistical limitations, including a small number of participants.

Also important to note is that most studies to-date have excluded women using hormonal contraceptives, which is about 50% of female athletes and 28% of female soccer players. The use of hormonal contraceptives suppresses natural hormonal fluctuations and replaces them with external synthetic versions of female sex hormones, affecting the athlete differently.

Clearly the extent and severity to which the menstrual cycle impacts athletic performance is highly variable and complex, with more research needed. So for now it’s sensible to consider the effects of the menstrual cycle on an individual basis.

Read more:
Supporting menstrual health in Australia means more than just throwing pads at the problem

How to support athletic performance at all cycle stages

It’s essential for players to familiarise themselves with their own cycles to understand how they’re affected throughout, as well as communicate any menstrual cycle-related issues to support staff (physicians and coaches). This awareness can guide adjustments in training and nutrition when required.

For example, oestrogen has an important influence on iron levels in females, such as chronic oestrogen deficiency is linked to iron deficiency. Iron status can also be compromised by blood loss during menstruation, depending on the heaviness and duration of bleeding.

Iron is essential for human function, facilitating energy production and the transportation of oxygen around the body. In soccer, about 60% of elite female players present as iron deficient, compared to less than 12% of their male counterparts. For an iron deficient midfielder, this might translate into covering less distance at lower speeds.

It’s therefore important female athletes have their iron levels regularly checked by qualified practitioners. Addressing deficiencies through diet, supplementation, or iron transfusions, will ensure athletic performance during training and competition is not compromised.

Individual athletes’ training loads can also be strategically managed to accommodate severe menstrual symptoms.

Football clubs around the world have been experimenting with this strategy since it gained popularity during the 2019 Women’s FIFA World Cup. But how does it look in practice?

For team sport athletes, such as soccer players, this can be a demanding logistical task. It’s not easy to track the menstrual cycles of more than 25 players concurrently, and hold training sessions at convenient times for all of them. The complexities are heightened when training and game days cannot be avoided.

But performance coaches must consider athletes’ needs and ensure they’re prepared for competition, while minimising the risk of injury and menstrual discomfort. Coaches should also ensure athletes maintain adequate nutrition for both competition and to support their menstrual cycle.

For an athlete who reports severe menstrual symptoms during the first days of menstruation (such as increased pain and weakness), this might translate into reduced training intensity, additional recovery days, and an anti-inflammatory diet that also supports the restoration of iron levels (increased intake of nuts, seeds, berries, lean red meats, and fibre and Omega-3 rich foods).

And it’s important to keep in mind some athletes might experience menstrual cycle issues in phases other than menstruation. So, training and nutrition should be flexible and individualised across the cycle.

Using this approach, athletes can mitigate the influence of the menstrual cycle on their performance, giving them the best opportunity to achieve their athletic potential and success during competition.

Sara Chica-Latorre receives funding from the Australian Department of Education

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

– ref. Does a woman’s menstrual cycle affect her athletic performance? Here’s what the science says – https://theconversation.com/does-a-womans-menstrual-cycle-affect-her-athletic-performance-heres-what-the-science-says-206700

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Taylor, Adjunct Research Fellow in the Faculty of Science & Engineering, Southern Cross University

Next time you’re road-tripping along the east coast, keep an eye out for a little-known Aussie invention piercing the skyline: glide poles. For Australia’s gliding possums, or gliders, they’re the next best thing since tall trees.

These tall timber structures, with timber cross arms near the top, give gliders a way to cross big roads. They can shimmy up a pole on one side of the road and then leap to another (and another) to get to the other side.

After witnessing the earliest experiments with glide poles decades ago, it’s heartening to see the design refined and replicated up and down the east coast.

The world’s largest gliding marsupial, the greater glider, was listed nationally as endangered a year ago this month. That’s because their populations had declined by 80% in just 20 years. As land-clearing and bushfires continue to destroy old growth forests with tall trees and hollows, gliders need all the help they can get.

Read more:
Greater gliders are hurtling towards extinction, and the blame lies squarely with Australian governments

Biomimicry with wooden poles

From the match-box sized feathertail glider to the small cat-sized greater glider, Australia’s 11 species each have a gliding membrane, or patagium. This a thin area of skin stretching from the ankles to the wrists or hands.

When a glider leaps from a tree (or glide pole), it extends its front and hind limbs, stretching out its patagium, which allows it to glide.

Read more:
Marsupials and other mammals separately evolved flight many times, and we are finally learning how

In 1993 Ross Goldingay, one of Australia’s leading glider ecologists, came up with the idea of using tall wooden power poles (without wires) as road-crossing stepping-stones for gliders. The glide poles would act as substitutes for tall trees, so it was a very simple and elegant form of what’s known as “biomimicry”.

Ross directed the placement of glide poles on either side of a powerline easement at Bomaderry Creek near Nowra in southern New South Wales. The trial aimed to ensure yellow-bellied gliders could still cross the easement if it was developed into a local road.

Unfortunately, the Bomaderry Creek glide poles were never monitored. More than ten years later, a series of successful trials at Mackay and Compton Road in Brisbane demonstrated gliders would readily use glide poles. I recall showing Ross early images of squirrel gliders shimmying up the smooth, hardwood poles on the Compton Road land bridge soon after we installed cameras. We were blown away!

The poles needed to be tall enough to enable a comfortable glide crossing of the intervening gap. This is where trigonometry and the laws of physics come in, to get the calculations right for the species being targeted.

Since then, glide poles have become a fixture of upgrades along the Hume Highway in Victoria, the Pacific Highway in NSW and the Bruce Highway in Queensland.

Do the poles reconnect glider populations?

We are gradually gathering more evidence of glide pole use. Squirrel gliders, sugar gliders and feathertail gliders have been recorded using glide poles to cross roads at several locations.

Mahogany gliders, yellow-bellied gliders and southern greater gliders have also been recorded using glide poles.

Most notably, retrofitting a glider crossing into a road that previously presented a barrier to squirrel glider movement restored gene flow between populations on either side within five years.

Celebrating some of Australia’s most iconic wildlife crossings

Glide poles are one of many structures designed to provide safe road crossing opportunities for wildlife.

Pipes and box culverts can provide safe passage under the road, while land bridges and rope canopy bridges offer an alternative pathway over the road.

When combined with fencing, these structures reduce roadkill, provide access to resources on both sides of the road, and enable gene flow.

My new book combines an exploration of the how, when, where and why wildlife crossings evolved in eastern Australia with a travel guide to 57 of its most iconic sites.

The road ahead

We need to conserve, protect and restore our natural landscapes. This is especially the case in a rapidly changing climate. Our unique native species need to be able to move and adapt to the changing environment.

Carving up the landscape for road networks has been particularly bad for wildlife, with many populations becoming increasingly fragmented and increasingly isolated. But roads no longer need to act as roadblocks for the movement of many native species.

Engineers and ecologists have come together over recent years to find new ways to support the safe passage of animals from one side of the road to another. Their efforts deserve to be celebrated. Especially glide poles. They may not be as famous as the good old Hills Hoist clothesline, but they certainly deserve a gong as a great Australian invention. Certainly worth a nod when you pass by on your next great Aussie road trip.

Brendan Taylor received funding from Brisbane City Council and Transport for NSW to conduct fieldwork reported in this article.

– ref. Glide poles: the great Aussie invention helping flying possums cross the road – https://theconversation.com/glide-poles-the-great-aussie-invention-helping-flying-possums-cross-the-road-209033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Allison Henry, Research Fellow, Australian Human Rights Institute, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney

Last week, the federal government released an interim report for the Universities Accord.

This review team, led by Professor Mary O’Kane, has been tasked with creating a “visionary plan” for Australian higher education. Amid their wide-ranging, 150-page report, there was a significant acknowledgement. When it comes to safety and sexual assault on campuses, “more obviously needs to be done”. As the report says:

Sexual assault and harassment on campus is affecting the wellbeing of students and staff, and their ability to succeed.

The interim report contains some initial measures and ideas to further improve student safety. But student survivors and advocates want to make sure universities are transparent about what is happening on their campuses, with real consequences if they are not.

Sexual violence on campus

In March 2022, a report commissioned by peak body Universities Australia found one in 20 students had been sexually assaulted in a university context since starting their studies. One in six had been sexually harassed in a university context since starting their studies.

Significantly these rates showed little shift from the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2017 report on university sexual assaults, despite universities committing to a range of measures that would make campuses safer.

For my doctoral research, I interviewed 24 university sector stakeholders including student representatives and advocates. Many expressed frustration with the time it took for a complaint to be dealt with by universities, which often re-traumatised student survivors. They also highlighted a lack of transparency around university reporting and disciplinary measures for perpetrators.

Read more:
1 in 3 uni students have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. They demand action on their vision of a safer society

What does the review say?

The interim report contains five initial, “priority” recommendations, which the federal government has already agreed to.

This includes a recommendation to improve university governance with a particular focus on staff and student safety and to add more higher education expertise to governing bodies. The report says the federal government needs to do this with state governments through national cabinet.

The review team is also seeking feedback on more than 70 ideas for the final report, due in December. A number of these centre around wellbeing on campus. It specifically wants to give more consideration to

improving student wellbeing and safety, including empowering students on matters that affect them.

Read more:
The Job-ready Graduates scheme for uni fees is on the chopping block – but what will replace it?

What needs to happen now?

Releasing the report, Education Minister Jason Clare declared his intention to immediately write to state and territory ministers and prioritise student and staff safety – among other governance issues – when they next meet.

This represents an important signal to state and territory governments that the federal government expects an escalated national response.

We certainly need state governments to be involved here.

The federal government funds and regulates higher education but apart from the Australian National University, universities are governed by state or territory legislation.

The review’s further recommendation that governments should rebalance university governing boards “to put greater emphasis on higher education expertise” offers a crucial opportunity to appoint individuals with sexual violence expertise who can advise on student safety and wellbeing.

But pursuing action on campus sexual violence through university governing boards, via state and territory governments, poses some challenges.

There are considerable jurisdictional differences in the acts governing universities and state and territory ministers have limited directive powers over university governing bodies. So, seeking nationally consistent responses across both jurisdictions and more than 40 individual institutions could prove difficult.

Complaints about complaints

The review team has suggested strengthening the role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, extending the coverage of this federal government agency to complaints from domestic students. Currently, the agency’s coverage on matters relating to university students is quite limited.

This move could potentially provide a new streamlined avenue for students to make complaints if they have been subjected to sexual violence.

The review team also floated the development of a national student charter to “ensure a consistent national approach to the welfare, safety and wellbeing of all students”. The review noted New Zealand has recently introduced a code of practice on student safety.

If a similar code was developed in Australia, it would need to address the deficiencies of the existing Higher Education Standards Framework (which forms the basis of current regulation).

Senate estimates figures used in my research show this has not been an effective framework for tackling campus sexual violence. In part, this is because the national higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), has been reluctant to employ its regulatory powers against universities in relation to sexual violence.

What else do we need?

The potential measures in the interim report are promising but will need to be carefully calibrated to make campuses safe.

Under the current system, TEQSA has “moved to ensure all higher education providers are fostering safe environments”. But my research shows stakeholders are frustrated by the regulator’s “very onerous” complaints mechanisms and ineffective enforcement of regulatory standards. There is still too much onus on individual survivors to drive a complaint.

This is why university student bodies and women’s safety groups are calling for a new national, expert-led independent body, which can compel universities to be transparent around incidents and their responses to them. They also want the new body to implement sanctions if needs be. They want this body to be set up immediately.

In its 2017 report, the Human Rights Commission made a series of recommendations to make campuses safer.

This included training for staff and students about respectful and safe behaviour, promoting information about where to report incidents and how to find medical and counselling services. The commission also recommended universities ensure they have adequate and safe processes for students to report a sexual assault or harassment incident.

There is currently mo monitoring mechanism around the implementation of these measures. A new independent body could also oversee this work.

Read more:
Sexual assault and harassment on campus: universities haven’t made reporting easy. They need effective regulation

Urgent action still required

At the National Press Club last week, Education Minister Jason Clare signalled he wanted to see change around sexual violence at universities, noting, “don’t underestimate the seriousness with which I take this or my willingness to act”.

An essential prerequisite for Australia’s higher education sector is that universities and residential colleges can provide a safe environment for their students.

Students, survivors and advocacy groups will be watching this space closely.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In an emergency, call 000.

Allison Henry was the Campaign Director for The Hunting Ground Australia Project 2015-2018 and in this capacity worked closely with advocate groups referred to in this article. She is an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW.

– ref. ‘More obviously needs to be done’: how to make Australian universities safe from sexual violence – https://theconversation.com/more-obviously-needs-to-be-done-how-to-make-australian-universities-safe-from-sexual-violence-210057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brigita Ozolins, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Fine Arts, University of Tasmania

“With song we have achieved freedom. With song we have gone to war. With song we have been victorious.”

These were the words of the newly elected president of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, at the closing ceremony of the 150th Latvian Song and Dance festival, held from June 30 to July 9.

Rinkēvičs was greeted by an audience of 50,000 members of the public and 21,000 performers who cheered and waved Latvian flags. He spoke about the power of song to unite and give hope to the Latvian people and to reinforce its centuries old cultural traditions.

Upward Together, the five-hour finale of this ten-day festival, was held in Silver Grove: an enormous, brand new, crescent-shaped arena amid tall pines in Mežaparks forest on the outskirts of Latvia’s capital, Rīga.

Upward Together was not just a celebration of Latvia’s rich culture: it was an emotional outpouring of both individual and collective national pride and sorrow. It reflected Latvia’s strong pagan roots and its deep love of nature which features in most of its folk songs. Here, the gods reside in trees, rivers, the sun, the moon and the stars.

But more significantly, the festival asserted the power of song as a peaceful form of protest against a long history of occupation by Germans, Poles, Swedes and Russians, culminating last century in almost 45 years of Soviet rule.

Joy about culture; sadness about history

As the daughter of refugees who escaped the Soviet occupation of Latvia during the second world war, I fought back tears as I listened to a choir of 17,000 champion the sun, the Daugava river and thunder – Latvia’s guardians against evil and oppression.

Next to me, two Ukrainian journalists wept as the orchestra played their national anthem. In the televised replays of the festival, cameras zoomed in on teary singers, dancers and musicians of all ages.

“Why does everyone cry?” I asked one of the participants.

“Because we feel great joy about our culture,” she said, “but also great sadness about our history.”

With the war in Ukraine on Latvia’s doorstep echoing its own battle with Russia during the second world war, the performances I saw over the ten day festival took on an added poignancy, offering a reminder of the Singing Revolution of 1987-91, when the three Baltic States raised their voices in song against their Soviet occupiers.

On August 23 1989, two million people from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia formed a human chain over 600 kilometres long to join their capital cities. They held hands, sang folk songs and waved flowers, in a peaceful demonstration of solidarity that saw each state finally gain independence in the early 1990s.

Read more:
Ukraine war prompts Baltic states to remove Soviet memorials

A free Latvia

Latvia’s Song and Dance festival was first held in 1873 with 1,000 performers, and was recognised by UNESCO in 2003.

After the second world war, when Latvia was part of the USSR, the festival was used to promote Soviet ideology. Certain songs particularly dear to Latvians could not be performed because they proclaimed the nation’s longing for independence. Gaismas Pils (The Castle of Light), composed in 1899 by Jāzeps Vītols, tells of a sunken castle that rises to announce the rebirth of a free Latvia. Despite being banned from the program, it was sung with defiance at the 1985 festival.

This year, 32 years after Latvia’s independence, the festival boasted over 40,000 participants including almost 3,000 from Latvia’s diaspora.

Participants from Latvia and from abroad paraded in national costume along Freedom Boulevard, cheered on by enthusiastic crowds and unfazed by downpours of rain. They performed in over 60 events in sport stadiums, theatres, churches and parks as well as the new arena in Mezaparks. They sang, danced and played the kokle, a traditional wooden instrument.

Ethnic groups from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Poland, the Jewish community and smaller regions of Latvia were featured in a special concert in the beautiful Chekhov Theatre; seniors gave a moving performance in the circus; 17,000 dancers formed constantly moving patterns of traditional Latvian symbols in a football stadium.

Riga’s central parks were transformed into art and craft markets selling silver, bronze and amber jewellery, hand-woven textiles, woodcarving, ceramics and leatherwork. Food stalls sold rye bread, sauerkraut and traditional pastries. Choirs, bands and theatre groups performed well into the night on outdoor stages and two giant traditional skirts spun continuously in the Esplanade as if unable to stop dancing.

The whole of Riga was alive.

Although I have been to Latvia many times, this was my very first experience of the Song and Dance Festival. I cried at every performance because every performance manifested the joy and the sorrow of what it is to be Latvian. When I was there, I truly understood the festival’s motto, Kopā but, kopa jūst. Being together, feeling together.

Read more:
Remembering minorities amid eastern Europe’s nation-state centenary celebrations

Brigita Ozolins 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. National pride and sorrow: attending the 150th Latvian Song and Dance Festival as the daughter of refugees – https://theconversation.com/national-pride-and-sorrow-attending-the-150th-latvian-song-and-dance-festival-as-the-daughter-of-refugees-205398

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

Casual workers will be given a new path to becoming permanent, with the security that brings, in industrial relations reforms Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke will introduce later this year.

Under the change, promised in Labor’s election campaign, there will be a new definition of when an employee can be classified as “casual”.

Eligible workers could then apply to change their status, which would mean they received benefits such as paid leave but lost the extra loading casuals have in lieu of entitlements.

Burke says the measure will potentially help more than 850,000 casuals who have regular work arrangements.

But he is anxious to reassure employers, as well as to stress that not all casuals will want to go down this path.

Business has been resisting a change to the arrangements affecting casuals, and in general criticising the government for a pro-union industrial relations agenda.

Burke, who will give more detail of his IR plan in a Monday speech to The Sydney Institute, said the government was keeping “much of the existing framework that unions and business groups agree should not change”.

This included current processes to offer eligible employees permanent work after a year.

The new measure will be prospective – people won’t be entitled to make claims for pay relating to past work.

Burke said many casuals, for example students, who worked irregularly and wanted the current extra loading, would not want to make the transition.

“No casual will be forced to lose their loading. No casual will be forced to become a permanent employee,” he said.

“But for those who desperately want security – and are being rostered as though they were permanent – for the first time job security will be in sight,” Burke said.

“There are casual workers who are trying to support households. They’re being used as though they’re permanent workers and the employer is double dipping – taking all the advantages of a reliable workforce and not providing any of the job security in return,” Burke said. “That loophole needs to be closed.”

Burke’s reassurances follow preemptive criticism from business.

Writing in the Weekend Australian Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, said: “The kinds of changes potentially under contemplation would inevitably increase business costs and risks, reduce investment and reduce employment”.

“Since it was elected, the government has implemented a series of unbalanced industrial relations changes that will do nothing to boost productivity or assist businesses to grow and increase employment. The changes so far have only looked to deliver on a wide range of longstanding union claims. Enough is enough.

“Current casual employment arrangements need to be preserved to prevent Australian businesses and their workforces losing the choices and agility they need to prosper.”

But ACTU secretary Sally McManus said in a statement in May: “Too many casuals are casual in name only. Too many jobs that are actually permanent jobs have been made casual, denying workers both pay and rights.

“The majority of casuals work regular hours, week in, week out and have been in their job for more than a year. Changes made by the Morrison Coalition Government in early 2021 made this erosion of job security completely lawful.

“Big business has used loopholes in our work laws to make what should be secure jobs into casualised, insecure work. It is a way of driving down wages and putting all the stress onto workers.”

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

– ref. Albanese government to make it easier for casuals to become permanent employees – https://theconversation.com/albanese-government-to-make-it-easier-for-casuals-to-become-permanent-employees-210259

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Weiwei Wang, PhD Candidate, Australian National University

It’s hard to imagine a world without spice today. Fast global trade has allowed the import and export of all manner of delicious ingredients that help bring Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Sri Lankan (and so many more) cuisines to our dinner tables.

Now, new research shows the trading of spices for culinary use goes way back – some 2,000 years, to be precise.

In a paper published today in Science Advances, we and our colleagues detail our findings of what seems to be evidence of Southeast Asia’s oldest known curry. It’s also the oldest evidence of curry ever found outside India.

We made the intriguing discovery at the Oc Eo archaeological complex in southern Vietnam. We found eight unique spices, originally from different sources, which were likely used for making curry. What’s even more fascinating is that some of these would have been transported over several thousand kilometres by sea.

Grinding into the evidence

Our team’s research wasn’t initially focused on curry. Rather, we were curious to learn about the function of a set of stone grinding tools known as “pesani”, which the people of the ancient Funan kingdom likely used to powder their spices. We also wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the ancient spice trade.

Using a technique called starch grain analysis, we analysed microscopic remains recovered from a range of grinding and pounding tools excavated from the Oc Eo site. Most of these tools were excavated by our team from 2017 to 2019, while some had been previously collected by the local museum.

Starch grains are tiny structures found within plant cells that can be preserved over long periods. Studying them can provide valuable insights into past plant use, diet, cultivation practices and even environmental conditions.

Of the 40 tools we analysed, 12 produced a range of spices including turmeric, ginger, fingerroot, sand ginger, galangal, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon. This means the occupants of the site had indeed used the tools for food processing, including to powder the rhizomes, seeds and stems of spice plants to release flavour.

To figure out how old the site and tools were, our team obtained 29 separate dates from charcoal and wood samples. This included a date of 207-326 CE produced by a charcoal sample taken from just below the largest grinding slab, which measures 76cm by 31cm (pictured below and at the top of this article).

Another team working at the same site applied a technique called thermoluminescence dating to bricks used in the site’s architecture. Collectively, the results show the Oc Eo complex was occupied between the 1st and 8th centuries CE.

A spicy history

We know the global spice trade has linked cultures and economies in Asia, Africa and Europe since classical times.

However, before this study we had limited evidence of ancient curry at archaeological sites – and the little evidence we did have mainly came from India. Most of our knowledge of the early spice trade has therefore come from clues in ancient documents from India, China and Rome.

Our research is the first to confirm, in a very tangible way, that spices were valuable commodities exchanged on the global trading network nearly 2,000 years ago.

The spices found at Oc Eo wouldn’t have all been available in the region naturally; someone at some point would have transported them there via the Indian or Pacific Ocean. This proves curry has a fascinating history beyond India, and that curry spices were coveted far and wide.

If you’ve ever prepared curry from scratch, you’ll know it’s not simple. It involves considerable time and effort, as well as a range of unique spices, and the use of grinding tools.

So it’s interesting to note that nearly 2,000 years ago, individuals living outside India had a strong desire to savour the flavors of curry – as evidenced by their diligent preparations.

Another fascinating finding is that the curry recipe used in Vietnam today has not deviated significantly from the ancient Oc Eo period. Key components such as turmeric, cloves, cinnamon and coconut milk have remained consistent in the recipe. It goes to show a good recipe will stand the test of time!

Read more:
A batshit experiment: bones cooked in bat poo lift the lid on how archaeological sites are formed

What’s next?

In this study, we primarily focused on microscopic plant remains. And we have yet to compare these findings with other larger plant remains unearthed from the site.

During an excavation conducted from 2017 to 2020, our team also collected a significant number of well-preserved seeds. In the future we hope to analyse these, too. We may identify many more spices, or may even discover unique plant species – adding to our understanding of the region’s history.

By completing more dating on the site, we might also be able to understand when and how each type of spice or plant started to be traded globally.

We would like to acknowledge our colleague Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen of Vietnam’s Southern Institute for Social Sciences for their invaluable contribution to this work.

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

– ref. Researchers find evidence of a 2,000-year-old curry, the oldest ever found in Southeast Asia – https://theconversation.com/researchers-find-evidence-of-a-2-000-year-old-curry-the-oldest-ever-found-in-southeast-asia-210192

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

The Albanese government’s new “Measuring What Matters” framework for a wellbeing economy has been criticised for relying on out-of-date data in several crucial measures. But that’s an easy and somewhat cheap criticism to make.

Notably, the Treasury document reports “little change” in overall life satisfaction based on statistics from 2020, and “stable” psychological distress, based on statistics from 2018.

As The Australian newspaper has editorialised, this old data “fails to reflect the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of dollars in extra NDIS spending, and the most aggressive series of interest rate hikes in a generation”.

True, but given these are the most recent years on which the Australian Bureau of Statistics has published data, that’s a relatively cheap shot. It’s as if the newspaper wants to find fault with the document, labelling it “a pitch to progressives” and a “fad”.

The document is more than that. It should be acknowledged as a significant and positive step in the right direction by Australia’s Treasury, in keeping with international best practice.

At the same time, it should be recognised that the measures being used need improvement, both in terms of regularity and how much they capture differences masked by national averages

Read more:
Chalmers ‘measures what matters’ – tracking our national wellbeing in 50 indicators

We’re late to this party

When the then shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers outlined his plan for a wellbeing budget in 2020, his opposite number Josh Frydenberg mocked it as a “yoga mat and beads” approach to economic management.

But the need to shift away from using the blunt instruments of national income or gross domestic product (GDP) to measure progress has long been recognised. Even the inventor of GDP, Simon Kuznets, said a nation’s welfare can “scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income”.

New Zealand, Wales, the United Kingdom, India and Canada are all ahead of Australia in adopting wellbeing frameworks to shape their budget decisions. International institutions such as the OECD and United Nations are working along similar lines.

The new statement is in some ways a restoration of the Treasury’s wellbeing framework developed in the early 2000s under the Howard government, championed by department head Ken Henry and inspired by the work of Nobel prizewinner Amartya Sen. It was quietly dropped in 2016 under the Turnbull government.

The problem with ‘average’ Australians

There are various approaches to measuring wellbeing. One way is to amend GDP by taking out “bad things” (pollution, loss of biodiversity, smoking) and include “good things” not currently included (such as unpaid caring work done in the home).

The approach of Measuring What Matters is to use a “dashboard” of 50 indicators of inclusion, fairness and equity over five areas: health, security, sustainability, cohesion and prosperity. The measures for health, for example, include life expectancy, mental health, prevalence of chronic conditions, and access to health and support services.

For these measures to be meaningful and useful to the budget process, they need to be both timely and capture differences in experiences between different groups – not just the “average”.

Averages can mask significant inequalities. As Paul Krugman put it, if Elon Musk walks into a bar then the average person there becomes a billionaire.

The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, and average household income and wealth at record levels. But not all Australians are sharing in this. The Indigenous unemployment rate, for example, is still about three times the national average.

As the statement notes, “the whole of population indicators outlined in this Framework are not an accurate measure of First Nations wellbeing”.

Many wellbeing surveys show the importance of understanding the wellbeing of specific groups. For example, the national Carer Wellbeing Survey shows that unpaid carers have much lower wellbeing compared to the average Australian.

Regional wellbeing

Another area where average indicators may be inaccurate is in capturing the experience of people living in rural and remote areas.

Some aspects of wellbeing – such as social connection – are often higher in rural areas. But others are much poorer, such as access to health and social services. People in rural and remote areas are also more affected by drought, flood, fires and storms – events increasing in frequency and severity.

For example, the University of Canberra’s Regional Wellbeing Survey, conducted since 2013, has consistently shown that Australians living in outer regional and remote areas report poorer access to many services, including health, mobile phone and internet access.

Measuring What Matters shows they wait longer to see a doctor and have less trust in institutions. But many other indicators don’t have specific data for rural regions, and don’t provide insight into the often large differences in wellbeing of different rural communities.

Without measures to see how they are faring, we risk leaving rural areas behind.

Read more:
Australians’ national wellbeing shows a glass half full: Measuring What Matters report

The importance of up-to-date data

Chalmers has rightly referred to the new framework as an “iterative process”.

Yes, the data in some areas is outdated, such as the cost of rent or mortgages and financial security, which come from 2020 – predating the surge in rents and higher interest rates.

The only way to fix this is to provide the resources needed to collect more detailed information more often. This should include ensuring a sample of the many groups known to be at higher risk of low wellbeing but often under-represented in national data collections.

When seeking to move from simplistic to more complex ways of measuring social progress, it is easy to criticise gaps in data, or to suggest that it’s all too hard and we should default back to easier numbers and measures.

But while Measuring What Matters is limited by the scope of the data available, it is a step in the right direction.

Read more:
Australia’s first wellbeing framework is about to measure what matters – but it’s harder than counting GDP

John Hawkins worked in Treasury when it had a wellbeing framework. He contributed to a submission about the framework.

Jacki Schirmer receives funding from a number of organisations to conduct research examining the wellbeing and resilience of Australians. These currently include the Australian, Victorian, New South Wales and ACT governments.

– ref. Cheap shots aside, Chalmers has work to do to improve his new ‘wellbeing’ framework – https://theconversation.com/cheap-shots-aside-chalmers-has-work-to-do-to-improve-his-new-wellbeing-framework-207324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emmanuel Stamatakis, Professor of Physical Activity, Lifestyle, and Population Health, University of Sydney

Physical activity has established benefits for health. The World Health Organization recommends adults do a minimum of 150–300 minutes of moderate or 75–150 minutes of vigorous activity each week. This can include active transport from place-to-place, exercise for fun and fitness, energetic housework or physical activity at work.

These amounts can be accrued by being, as the WHO recommends, regularly active throughout the week, or being a “weekend warrior” who does the bulk of their activity on one to two days only, which don’t need to be consecutive.

So far, experts haven’t fully established which of the two patterns is better for overall health. For many people, busy lifestyles may make it hard to be physically active every day. It may be more feasible to squeeze most physical activity and exercise into a few days.

Fresh analysis of the large UK Biobank database attempted to compare these two patterns of weekly activity and compare how they reduced cardiovascular risk for heart attacks, heart failure, irregular heart beat and stroke.

Read more:
Short bursts of physical activity during daily life may lower risk of premature death – new research

What the new study found

Researchers analysed records from 89,573 participants who wore a wrist activity tracker for seven days and were tracked for cardiovascular events for over six years.

Those who did less than the WHO recommended 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week were considered inactive. About a third (33.7%) of participants were inactive. Some 42.2% were active weekend warriors (they did at least 150 minutes and more than half of it occurred within one to two days) and 24% were regularly active (at least 150 minutes with most activity spread out over three or more days).

Researchers considered the potential factors that could explain the link between physical activity and new cases of cardiovascular events, such as smoking and alcohol intake. They found both active groups showed similarly lower risk of heart attack (a 27% reduction for weekend warriors and 35% for regularly active people, compared with inactive participants).

For heart failure, weekend warriors had a 38% lower risk than inactive people, while regular exercisers had a 36% lower risk. Irregular heartbeat risk was 22% lower for weekend warriors and 19% lower for regularly actively people. Stroke was 21% and 17% lower for weekend warriors and regular exercisers, respectively.

Not so fast. Some study limitations

Although the information was recorded by activity trackers, researchers did not consider on which days of the week the activity was done. Some people may have been active on Saturdays and Sundays, others might have chosen Wednesday and Friday – or different days each week. In that sense, the study examined a “pseudo-weekend warrior” pattern.

Despite the many advantages the UK Biobank activity trackers have over questionnaire-based studies, these trackers are not great at capturing strength-training exercise, such as weights or pilates, and other static activities that have established cardiovascular health benefits.

Read more:
Poor sleep is really bad for your health. But we found exercise can offset some of these harms

What other research in this area says

There have been several questionnaire based studies in this area in the past 20 years.

Our 2017 study, for example, combined data from 63,591 adults from England and Scotland and tracked them over 12 years. We looked at risk reductions for death from any cause, cardiovascular disease and cancer causes. We found similar benefits among people who clocked at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity in one to two sessions per week, compared with three sessions or more per week.

Our more recent studies used activity trackers and emphasised the flexibility of activity patterns that benefit the heart and circulation. We found doing short one-minute-long bouts of incidental vigorous physical activity three to four times a day can cut the risk of death from cardiovascular causes by almost half.

Similarly, in another study we found just 19 minutes of vigorous physical activity a week was associated with 40% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular death, with steadily increasing benefits to the maximum amount of vigorous activity recorded (110 minutes a week linked to a 75% risk reduction).

Read more:
Aiming for 10,000 steps? It turns out 7,000 could be enough to cut your risk of early death

What it means for you and your routine

Taken together, the new study and previous research suggest the same thing: if it is difficult to find time to be active during a busy week, it is good enough to plan moderate to vigorous physical activities in a couple of weekdays or in the weekend.

That said, there are benefits in being regularly physically active on most days of the week. A good session of aerobic exercise, for example, improves health indicators such as blood pressure, and blood glucose and cholesterol levels for a day or longer. Such effects can moderate some of the long-term health risks of these factors and assist with their day-to-day management.

But confirmation that we can be flexible about how physical activity is accumulated across the week for heart health benefits is encouraging. It offers more opportunities for more people to be active when it is convenient and practical for them.

Read more:
Why exercising your ‘good arm’ can also help the one in a sling

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

– ref. Good news for weekend warriors: people who do much of their exercise on a couple of days still get heart benefits – https://theconversation.com/good-news-for-weekend-warriors-people-who-do-much-of-their-exercise-on-a-couple-of-days-still-get-heart-benefits-210053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Gender, University of Waikato

The opening match of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Auckland was a historic moment for women’s sport in New Zealand – and not just because the Football Ferns upset highly-ranked Norway to win one-nil.

Played in front of 42,137 noisy and enthusiastic fans, the game showed just how far football has come since women were discouraged or simply banned from playing, right up to the 1960s.

The previously most-attended football game in New Zealand was between the All Whites and Peru in 2017. For the women’s team, last night’s stadium was like nothing they’d experienced – the biggest crowd they’d played in front of until last night was 13,000 (against the USA at Eden Park earlier this year).

There had also been doubts leading up to the tournament. Many were asking why ticket sales were lagging, and the Football Ferns came into the competition on a ten-game losing streak (bar the pre-tournament win over Vietnam).

In hindsight, the delayed enthusiasm may have simply been a reflection of football’s traditionally second-tier status in New Zealand. Despite being among the most popular sports for children and young people (and at times the most played sport by New Zealanders), football has struggled for the kind of media attention enjoyed by rugby, cricket, and netball.

So the World Cup win by the Football Ferns signals an important milestone in New Zealanders’ relationship with the game – and women’s sport in general.

The long game

Women’s football has a long history in New Zealand, dating back to the first decade of the 20th century. But generations of talented and dedicated players have had to fight to play and be visible and respected within clubs and organisations.

As football researcher Alida Shanks has shown, women were banned from playing for 50 years because football wasn’t considered socially appropriate. From the 1960s, however, women began organising themselves, navigating space in male-dominated clubs, or creating their own associations.

Read more:
Long-range goals: can the FIFA World Cup help level the playing field for all women footballers?

This history of exclusion and marginalisation has had lasting effects, and can still be seen and felt in many clubs around the country. As Shanks has shown, 36% of women who work in New Zealand football federations feel they have been discriminated against, and 28% believe bias has limited their careers within their current organisations.

Yet despite the challenges, football’s popularity with girls and women has continued to grow. Participation rates have increased by over 35% since 2011, according to New Zealand Football (NZF).

This growth might be attributed to the growing visibility of the women’s game globally. But efforts by NZF and regional sports organisations have also made the game more accessible and exciting to a wider range of girls and women.

Top down and bottom up

We may also be seeing the fruits of significant government investment through the Sport NZ Women and Girls in Sport strategy. This long-term initiative has sought to improve opportunities for girls and women to participate in sport, active recreation and play – and to improve conditions for women as athletes and leaders.

The Women’s World Cup has also seen the game’s perennial underfunding turn around, with the government pledging NZ$19 million to upgrade facilities, including improved accessibility and gender-neutral spaces in some stadiums.

Read more:
From ‘girls’ to Lionesses: how newspaper coverage of women’s football has changed

The current minister of sport Grant Robertson has been a strong advocate, too, backing New Zealand hosting the “world cup trilogy” of cricket, rugby and now football.

But these top-down strategies have been matched by the many layers of women working tirelessly behind the scenes to promote, grow and develop sporting opportunities for girls and women at all levels.

Building the legacy

Those early fears that New Zealanders might not get behind the team, or fully recognise the significance of co-hosting such a globally significant sporting event, appear to have been unfounded.

In particular, the number of families with young children – girls and boys – who turned out to watch the Football Ferns dominate a former World Cup champion team suggests new generations will keep building the local game.

As Ferns captain Ali Riley proclaimed, with tears in her eyes, at the end of the match:

There have been a lot of doubters because of our previous results, but we believed in ourselves. This is what dreams are made of. Anything is possible.

Going in as underdogs, the Football Ferns gave the crowd exactly what they wanted – a reason to believe in and celebrate women’s athleticism and dedication, and to respect the long fight to play the sport they love.

The historic opening match will undoubtedly encourage New Zealanders to fill stadiums in Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin over the coming weeks. If that happens, the ripple effects of this extraordinary game and the tournament in general will be felt across communities and seen on football fields for years to come.

Read more:
Will the Matildas and Football Ferns have a home ground advantage?

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

– ref. The Football Ferns’ historic win in the World Cup opener scores another goal for all women’s sport in New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/the-football-ferns-historic-win-in-the-world-cup-opener-scores-another-goal-for-all-womens-sport-in-new-zealand-210184

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warwick Smith, Research economist, The University of Melbourne

Today’s release of the Commonwealth Treasury’s Measuring What Matters statement is an important step towards better government decision-making and a shared vision for the Australia we want, but it’s only the first step.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has long talked about broadening our measures of success beyond the traditional ones of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation and unemployment.

The wellbeing framework announced today is an attempt to bring those ideas into being. The need for different economic thinking is demonstrated in many ways, including the current housing crisis, worsening climate change, the loss of biodiversity and increases in financial stress and mental illness.

The new framework consists of a dashboard of 50 indicators, grouped under five themes, which seek to broaden our collective ambition beyond things such as GDP.

Developing a wellbeing framework brings Australia into line with many forward-thinking democracies, including the five members of the Wellbeing Economy government partnership: Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales.

But creating such an economy requires more than a dashboard.

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a global collaboration of people and organisations working for a wellbeing economy, has developed five “tests” of a genuine wellbeing economy:

• Does the economy provide everyone with what is needed to live a life of dignity and purpose?

• Does the economy restore, protect, and cherish the natural environment and is the economy guided by the principles of interconnection and indivisibility of human, animal, plant, and environmental health?

• Does the economy value activities and behaviours by their contribution to social and ecological wellbeing?

• Is the economy designed to ensure a just distribution of income, wealth, power, and time?

• Is the shape and form of the economy locally rooted and determined by people’s active voices?

From metrics to meaningful change

Encouragingly, the statement says measurement is only the beginning.

It says the next step will be integrating the framework into decision making.

Consistent with our international counterparts, we will be looking for opportunities to embed the Framework into government decision-making. This will involve guidance for agencies to inform policy development and evaluation.

This won’t be easy. While the metrics in the framework will be useful for tracking progress and sparking action aimed at reversing negative trends and building on successes, international examples tell us it’s hard to use a framework built from 50 different metrics to work out what to do.

It can turn compliance into a box-ticking exercise, when what’s really needed is a paradigm shift.

Read more:
Beyond GDP: Chalmers’ historic moment to build wellbeing

Learning from others’ failures and successes

Wales found a way around this through a national conversation that eventually led to the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. That act requires public bodies to use sustainable development as guiding principle and to work to achieve seven goals that reflect the values and aspirations of the Welsh people.

Those goals include prosperity, resilience, health, equality, global responsibility, cultural vibrancy and connection – not dissimilar to the themes in Measuring What Matters.

Where the Welsh goals differ from those in Australia’s Measuring What Matters statement is that they have a democratic mandate, and all Welsh public authorities are legally obligated to work towards achieving all of them.

Realising the potential of Measuring What Matters will require the support and vigilance of the Australian people. Australians, and the government, will need to be willing to experiment and sometimes fail.

It took Wales three attempts at developing a wellbeing framework before it landed on the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.

Read more:
‘Wellbeing’ will give future budgets more rigour than any before

It is encouraging that treasury and the treasurer are openly saying that what was released on Friday is only the start of a conversation about measures of progress.

Measuring what matters, when the people have been robustly engaged in defining what matters, is a vital precondition for the economic system change Australia needs.

Read more:
Australians’ national wellbeing shows a glass half full: Measuring What Matters report

Warwick Smith is a Program Director at the Centre for Policy Development and the Chair of the Castlemaine Institute.

– ref. Today’s Measuring What Matters statement is just a first step – now we have to turn goals into action – https://theconversation.com/todays-measuring-what-matters-statement-is-just-a-first-step-now-we-have-to-turn-goals-into-action-209879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury

Spoiler alert: this review contains plot details of the film.

At last – after the hype and advance mass-merchandising – the Barbie movie is here. Part spoof, part action fantasy, part Barbie doll virtual museum, it’s a full-blown product placement experience – but ironic as much as iconic.

The movie sets off feeling like a post-pandemic party. It’s an opportunity to be frivolous after a time of adversity, and to reclaim the pink of life – especially, perhaps, for fun-starved Gen Z. Given Barbie first appeared in 1959 as a baby boomer’s plastic mini-mannequin, dress-up fashion doll, that’s real inter-generational reach.

But to early critics, the doll evoked the mass production of white, American tween culture. To feminists seeking women’s liberation, Barbie symbolised a culture that objectified women, treating them quite literally as living dolls.

All this is captured in the first part of the film, where “Stereotypical Barbie” and “Just Beach Ken” are brilliantly brought to life by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. The film playfully toys with the long history of Barbie debates, subtly feeding into the backstory.

Just as impressively, no expense has been spared on set and accessory design. Watching the actors breathe, think, move and play like dolls is hilarious and spooky.

Of course, real people playing dolls might suggest those feminist fears have been realised. Except for the fact that Barbie Land in this film is an empowering matriarchy, full of dreams coming true, and where the dolls are leading perfect lives of substance.

Unlike real-world America, there is a woman president. Equity, diversity and the acceptance of all body types are on display. All of which support Barbie manufacturer Mattel’s claim to create the dolls as “role models” for women’s advancement in a changing world.

And then the aspirational matriarchy starts to malfunction. Stereotypical Barbie develops bad breath, flat feet, cellulite and a fear of death. A leak in the portal to the Real World means dark and crazy drawings by that Barbie’s owner are having a voodoo effect. She must travel there to sort things out.

‘I am Kennough’

The movie turns dark, with tag-along Ken discovering patriarchy in the Real World and taking it back to Barbie Land. With Ken largely invisible in the film’s merchandising and girls-night-out launches, we’ve been set up for the surprising plot twist.

Gosling proceeds to own the screen and make this the Ken Movie. He rejects being “just Ken” and instead acts, dances, prowls and flexes to steal the show. (He calms down later, accepting that Barbie does not want to be his girlfriend.)

An appendage no more, it is Ken, not Barbie, who whines about blonde fragility and every night being a girls’ night, and who now sings of seeking to push women around and take them for granted.

Read more:
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is a ‘feminist bimbo’ classic – and no, that’s not an oxymoron

This is where the movie is at its most profound. Ken, not Barbie, is the victim of sexism. As Barbie has flourished, Ken has been left behind. Kens are the objectified, excluded second sex.

There are echoes here of the American feminist Susan Faludi’s writings. In the early 1990s, she saw feminism as being defined in a sign hoisted by a little girl at the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality march: I AM NOT A BARBIE DOLL.

By the end of that decade she described the betrayal of the American man, and a crisis of masculinity. Emasculated men, she wrote, were left behind in the wake of women’s progress. But as the inhabitants of Barbie Land discover in the film, matriarchy can be just as damaging as patriarchy. Better to mix pink and blue to make purple instead of them competing.

Rejects save the day

Writer-director Greta Gerwig and her collaborator (and husband) Noah Baumbach feed the dichotomy of being “for” or “against” Barbie. But they ultimately render that debate history.

Enter Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) and Alan (Michael Cera), outcasts and rejects of Barbie Land, who want “nobody in the shadows”. These are the real heroes who save the day, deprogramming the brainwashed Barbies. It is one more layer of irony in a film about a doll once accused of brainwashing girls.

Indeed, when Barbie cries at one point about being ugly, providing irony within irony, narrator Helen Mirren steps in to suggest that Margot Robbie was probably not the right actress to cast to make that point.

Read more:
How I learned to stop worrying and love the doll – a feminist philosopher’s journey back to Barbie

By the end of the film, Barbie has become real and ordinary. Replete with genitalia, she liberates herself from her plastic-fantastic dream world – without Ken – to live in the unruly real world. In a full circle, the doll becomes human.

So, must women’s empowerment come at men’s expense? The historian of patriarchy Gerda Lerner once addressed this very question. She said the idea was an outmoded construct that

no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth.

As in the finale of Gerwig’s film, Lerner’s feminist vision was for everybody to stand in the sunshine. In a world emerging from COVID and grappling with the general grimness of war and climate change, Gerwig’s Barbie is both an exuberant opiate and a comment on the state of global feminism.

Perhaps most ironically, however, it may signal market saturation for Barbie. Surely this must be her peak moment, a massive last hurrah, after which the doll and all she has represented for over 60 years recede into history. Then again, Hollywood loves a sequel.

Katie Pickles 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. In Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Land, the matriarchy can be just as bad as the patriarchy – https://theconversation.com/in-greta-gerwigs-barbie-land-the-matriarchy-can-be-just-as-bad-as-the-patriarchy-209317

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kaitlin Cook, DECRA Fellow, Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications, Australian National University

I would like to know what a nuclear bomb actually does – Rafael, age 11, Melbourne

Hi Rafael!

A nuclear bomb, like any bomb, makes an explosion by releasing an enormous amount of energy at once. Nuclear bombs just use a different process from other bombs.

You may have heard of atoms. These are the super-tiny particles that make up matter – which in turn makes everything around us (and us).

Nuclear bombs work by changing the cores of atoms to turn them into other types of atoms. This process releases a lot of heat energy, which quickly gets converted into a big wave of pressure: an explosion!

What are nuclei?

Nuclear bombs release much more energy than normal bombs that use chemicals such as TNT. This is because the cores of atoms are held together very strongly. But before I get into that, let me explain some of the basics.

Atoms themselves are made up of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. A cloud of electrons surrounds a tiny inner core made of protons and neutrons. This core is called the nucleus, and more than one nucleus are called nuclei.

Chemical reactions happen when electrons are rearranged, whereas nuclear reactions happen when protons and neutrons inside the nucleus are rearranged.

There are two types of nuclear bombs. In the case of “fission” bombs, nuclei that have a lot of protons and neutrons – such as those in a very dense metal called uranium – are split apart.

In another type of nuclear bomb called a “fusion” bomb, two very small nuclei – such as the cores of two hydrogen atoms – are stuck together.

But fission bombs are simpler and more common, so let’s talk about those.

Chain reactions

Some nuclei don’t take very much energy at all to split apart, such as those in some types of uranium or plutonium atoms (plutonium is another dense metal which has 94 protons in its nuclei).

These nuclei will sometimes fission even when they’re just sitting around. When a nucleus fissions, it turns into two smaller nuclei and spits out a few neutrons.

However, one nucleus doing this isn’t a big deal. To make an explosion, you need to have a certain amount of uranium together in one spot.

For instance, a fission bomb would usually use a very purified sphere of uranium weighing about 52kg. Even this would have to use certain types of uranium in which the atoms have a specific number of neutrons.

If you have enough of these atoms together in one spot, the neutrons that are spit out during fission will hit other nuclei, which then also fission and spit out more neutrons – and so it continues in a chain reaction that sets off a massive explosion.

An unexploded fission bomb will usually be holding separate pieces of uranium (or plutonium) that are too small to start the chain reaction on their own. A chemical explosive is used to smash the pieces together – triggering the chain reaction that sets the bomb off.

Fallout

After fission happens, the two smaller nuclei that are left over are radioactive. Having enough of them in one spot can be very harmful to human health.

These leftovers after a nuclear explosion are called “fallout”. Besides the huge size of the explosion itself, the fallout in particular is what makes nuclear bombs more dangerous than other bombs. The technology used to make nuclear weapons is some of the most secret information in the world.

Nuclear bombs have only ever been used twice. Both of these bombs were detonated during World War II, by the United States against Japan. People around the world are working hard to make sure they are never used again.

Kaitlin Cook receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Curious Kids: what does a nuclear bomb actually do? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-does-a-nuclear-bomb-actually-do-208475

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Smith, Associate professor, Australian National University

A week-long trip to Beijing by the Pacific’s most flamboyant statesman Manasseh Sogavare, was always going to cause concern in Canberra.

The substance of the visit was as expected. The relationship between China and the Solomon Islands was upgraded to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” (on par with Papua New Guinea, the first Pacific nation to sign up to the Belt and Road Initiative). Nine agreements were also signed covering everything from civil aviation and infrastructure to fisheries and tourism.

The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, who inked the deals with Sogavare, made a point of not mentioning the controversial policing cooperation agreement, the draft of which was leaked more than a year ago to New Zealand academic Anna Powles.

Despite repeated calls from Australia and New Zealand to release the text of the policing agreement, there is no indication the Chinese or the Solomon Islands leadership will do so.

There were also moments of theatre in Sogavare’s trip. The prime minister declared “I’m back home” when he arrived in Beijing in a clip posted by China Global Television Network.

He then said in a longer interview on the same network that his nation had been “on the wrong side of history” for the 36 years it recognised Taiwan instead of the People’s Republic of China, and lauded President Xi Jinping as a “great man”.

Sogavare saved his biggest serve for his return to the Solomon Islands, though. He accused Australia and New Zealand of withdrawing crucial budget support and hinted he would look to China to fulfil his ambitions to establish an armed forces, should Australia be unwilling to help.

China’s slow start in the Pacific

Some key questions have been overlooked this week in the pantomime about what Australia should or shouldn’t do to shore up its relationship with an important Pacific partner. (We could start by accepting that Sogavare will never love us, and avoid getting into an arms race in the Solomon Islands with China.)

What’s been somewhat lost, though, is how China has made inroads so quickly in a region that it still officially classifies as “peripheral”.

Read more:
In the wake of the China-Solomon Islands pact, Australia needs to rethink its Pacific relationships

China has certainly had to work harder to gain a foothold in the region. Relative to other regions, it has a lack of historical state ties with the Pacific. In Africa and Southeast Asia, China can draw on memories of shared anti-colonial struggles and aid projects like the Tanzam railway. In the Pacific, the Chinese Communist Party is a latecomer.

Also holding it back is the remoteness and small population of the region. This has not made the Pacific a good fit for China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has flourished in countries with rapid transport and communication links, substantial Chinese diasporas and leaders who are easily reached. Most of China’s own Pacific experts were baffled when the region was belatedly included in the project.

Yet despite these obstacles, it’s clear the Chinese state’s approach in the Pacific has shifted, most remarkably in its diplomacy and the role state-linked companies are expected to play.

Diplomats with serious intent

China’s wolf warrior diplomacy has received plenty of attention, but the picture in the Pacific is less straightforward.

The recently appointed special envoy to the Pacific, Qian Bo, undoubtedly styles himself as a wolf warrior. Under his tenure as Fijian ambassador, a Taiwanese representative was assaulted by Chinese diplomats for the crime of displaying a Taiwanese flag cake.

Yet, other appointments suggest China is appointing higher-calibre diplomats to the region. These include Li Ming, the current ambassador to the Solomon Islands, and Xue Bing, the former ambassador to Papua New Guinea who now holds the challenging post of special envoy to the Horn of Africa.

With experience in the region and good language skills, these diplomats have been more able to engage with Pacific communities than their predecessors, who largely focused on sending good news back to Beijing. More serious representatives suggest more serious intent.

Chinese companies exerting influence, too

China’s state-linked companies remain the driving force behind China’s engagement with the Pacific.

Unlike the embassies, they are well-resourced and have skin in the game. Many company men (in construction, where Chinese companies dominate, they’re mostly men) are based in the region for decades, developing a deep understanding of how to win projects and influence political elites.

Failed projects generate plenty of headlines, but many companies – such as COVEC PNG and China Railway First Group – are effective operators. They are building infrastructure cheaply in the Pacific and winning the favour of multilateral donors, particularly the Asian Development Bank.

For larger state-linked companies, like China Harbor Engineering Company and the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), the geopolitical game has shifted. In the past, they could rely on their standing within the Chinese political system (their parent companies often outrank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to resist pressure to act on behalf of state.

Now, they are expected to carry geopolitical water for Beijing. Often this can benefit the companies. For instance, when CCECC lobbied the Solomon Islands leadership to switch their allegiance from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China, it helped the company when it came to bidding for projects for the Pacific Games in Honiara.

The leaders of these companies realise it can harm their image when they are seen as Beijing’s pawns. Yet, the companies, diplomats and Pacific leaders who choose Beijing’s embrace know times have changed. China is now a serious player in the region with a development philosophy to sell.

It’s no longer enough to read Beijing’s talking points. You have to look like you mean it.

Read more:
Saying China ‘bought’ a military base in the Solomons is simplistic and shows how little Australia understands power in the Pacific

Graeme Smith 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. China is playing the long game in the Pacific. Here’s why its efforts are beginning to pay off – https://theconversation.com/china-is-playing-the-long-game-in-the-pacific-heres-why-its-efforts-are-beginning-to-pay-off-209960

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claudio Bozzi, Lecturer in Law, Deakin University

A little-known organisation is meeting this week in a conference centre in Jamaica. The rules the International Seabed Authority (ISA) are drafting could have immense impact.

That’s because this United Nations body has the power to permit – or deny – mining on the deep seabed, outside any nation’s exclusive economic zones. Boosters say the billions of tonnes of critical minerals like nickel, manganese, copper and cobalt lying in metal-dense nodules on the seabed could unlock faster decarbonisation and avoid supply shortages.

Developing Pacific nation Nauru has led the charge to open up the seabed for mining, seeing it as a new source of income. (Ironically, Nauru itself was strip-mined for guano, leaving a moonscape and few resources.)

But researchers warn the mining could trash entire ecosystems, by ripping up the sea floor or covering creatures with sediment. Early indications from trial mining efforts suggest the process is worse than expected, with long-lasting impact on sealife.

Almost 20 governments are calling for a moratorium or slowdown on mining. But China, Russia and South Korea are pushing for mining to begin.

The ISA has already missed its July 9 deadline to produce regulations governing seabed mining. That could mean we’re heading for a deep-sea free-for-all.

Why mine the deep sea at all?

Because no one owns it, and because parts of it are rich in easily accessible metals (once you get to the bottom, that is). Land-based mining usually involves processing vast volumes of rock, taking out the minerals you want and leaving the tailings behind. But on the seabed, things are different.

The main area prospectors are eyeing off is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an abyssal plain 4,000–5,000 metres deep east of Hawaii. Here, plate tectonics and underwater volcanoes have produced huge numbers of polymetallic nodules, accretions of minerals about 10-15 centimetres wide. They grow glacially slowly, about one centimetre every million years. But there are a lot of them – an estimated 21 billion tonnes in this zone alone, according to the ISA.

By 2050, demand for nickel and cobalt to make electric vehicle batteries could grow by up to 500%, according to the World Bank. That’s why companies like Nauru’s partner, The Metals Company, are investing in this type of mining.

Seabed mining, they argue, is an environmentally better option than expanding land-based mining into more challenging locations, mining low-grade ore bodies and risking contaminating waterways.

Boosters say seabed mining in international waters avoids the risk of dominance by a few countries or suppliers. For instance, the Ukraine-Russia war has hit battery grade nickel availability, as Russia is the primary global supplier.

Read more:
A rush is on to mine the deep seabed, with effects on ocean life that aren’t well understood

But what about the environment?

This is the sticking point. The seabed in question is a pristine environment. While fishing trawlers already tear up large areas of seafloor to devastating effect, mining would open up even more of the seabed.

Opposition has come from many conservation organisations, civil society representatives, governments like Canada, Germany, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. They want a moratorium on seabed mining based on the precautionary principle – not acting until we know what impact it will have. They argue we lack the technology to monitor the seabed and knowledge of the ecosystems of the deep, meaning we cannot be certain seabed mining can proceed without causing serious and long lasting harm. Early research shows this type of mining can be destructive.

Should the ISA have the power to decide this?

It took 25 years for the UN to negotiate the law of the sea treaty. The treaty is clear about how we should protect and use the seabed, as part of the “common heritage of mankind”. The ISA was created to steward these commons, with the power to make rules in international waters. These cover two-thirds of the world’s oceans and 90% of known polymetallic nodule deposits.

The problem is many governments and organisations don’t think it’s fit for purpose.

The ISA is, like some other UN bodies, a complex bureaucracy and has been criticised for lacking transparency. Even though all 167 nations which signed the law of the sea treaty are automatically ISA members, critical decisions can be made with far fewer.

Applications to mine the seabed are approved or denied by the ISA’s council, which has 36 members. Council decisions stem from recommendations by a legal and technical commission, made up of 30 members appointed by the council. Dominated by lawyers and geologists, this commission, according to NGOs and governments, has ignored comments and critique. Only a handful of the members have environmental expertise.

The council is also geared towards mineral extraction, with many members elected on the basis they already export minerals like nickel and manganese, have invested heavily in seabed mining technology, and already use significant volumes of these minerals.

The ISA’s secretary general Michael Lodge was earlier this year criticised by the German government for allegedly pushing to permit mining, an accusation Lodge rejected.

So is it a done deal?

Ideally, the authority would have more time to develop rigorous rules based on good environmental assessments.

But time is up. Two years ago, Nauru triggered a clause giving the ISA two years to produce a mining code and rules – a feat it had not previously managed. Those two years were up on July 9th and the code isn’t out. That means it’s now legally possible to lodge mining applications.

So because of the delays, we may be heading for a future where seabed mining becomes legal by default – without rules to govern it at all.

Read more:
Deep seabed mining plans pit renewable energy demand against ocean life in a largely unexplored frontier

Claudio Bozzi 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. Mining the seabed for clean-tech minerals could destroy ecosystems. Will it get the green light? – https://theconversation.com/mining-the-seabed-for-clean-tech-minerals-could-destroy-ecosystems-will-it-get-the-green-light-209690

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John G Conran, Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, University of Adelaide

One of New Zealand’s most exceptional fossil sites may soon be open to scientists again following a land purchase that saved it from commercial mining.

Foulden Maar is a small, deep lake that formed 23 million years ago in Otago, at the start of the Miocene epoch when New Zealand’s climate was much warmer and wetter. A rainforest thrived around the lake’s fringes, and algae known as diatoms bloomed each summer.

As the algal blooms died off and sank to the lake bed, they formed sedimentary layers of diatomite and preserved the most exquisite and delicate fossils of flowers, insects and fish as well as a climate record covering 100,000 years.

But the diatomite was also of interest to mining company Plaman Resources – until, following long negotiations, the Dunedin City Council bought most of the land earlier this year.

Fossil sites are relatively common, but examples representing entire ecosystems are extremely rare. Foulden Maar is one of only two such sites in New Zealand that preserve ecological interactions and features such as eyes, skin, stomach contents and original colour patterns.

Such sites yield remarkable information about the history of life, which is impossible to obtain from other sources.

The other site is the nearby Hindon Maar complex, which is 15 million years old.
Both sites preserve ecosystems of small crater lakes and the animals and plants of surrounding rainforests. Recent discoveries at these sites are transforming our understanding of New Zealand’s past biodiversity and climate.

Read more:
New Zealand’s fossil record suggests more species lived in warmer waters. But the current rate of warming may break this pattern

Lake ecosystems: freshwater galaxiids and eels

All fossils of the iconic southern-hemisphere family Galaxiidae derive from Otago Miocene lake deposits, with the entire life cycle from larvae (whitebait) to juveniles and fully grown adults present at Foulden Maar.

Remarkable preservation of numerous articulated skeletons includes eyes, gaping mouths and skin, the last including the star-like patterning that gave galaxiids their name.

Gut contents and an abundance of fossilised poo (coprolites) provide evidence of a changing diet. Larvae dined on diatoms while adults were lake-margin ambush predators feeding on terrestrial and aquatic insects. Fish debris in other less common coprolites show the galaxiids were themselves prey.

Slender, elongated articulated fish skeletons with rows of curved conical teeth provide the only southern-hemisphere records of the freshwater eel, Anguilla. This was likely the top predator in these lakes.

Trapped in these small, closed lakes, the eels would have been unable to return to the sea to breed and were effectively “living dead”, unlike the galaxiids which could reproduce in the maars.

Forest ecosystems: insects, spiders, leaves, flowers

These ancient maar lakes also contain a treasure trove of spiders and insects. When our research programme began in 2003, only six fossil insects more than two million years old were known from New Zealand. We now have more than 600, almost all different.

Foulden Maar has yielded 270 insects from 17 genera in 15 families and nine orders.

Spiders are commonly the top terrestrial invertebrate predators in modern New Zealand forests, but rarely fossilise because they lack hard parts. But in Foulden Maar, we found several specimens, including a juvenile trapdoor spider.

Early studies at Hindon Maar have already added 240 more insects in five orders and 20 families.

Insects are often completely preserved with details of antennae, fragile wings and compound eyes visible.

Fossils from the Foulden and Hindon maars include ancient lineages of termites, armoured scale insects in life position along leaf veins, bark bugs and a lace bug that probably lived on Astelia (kakaha, bush lily) as its close living relative does today.

Others include leaf beetles with structural colour, weevils, rove beetles, numerous ants and wasps, caddis flies with larvae still in their cases, crane flies with well preserved compound eyes and a hairy cicada whose closest relative today is found in Tasmania.

These taxa are only the tip of the taxonomic iceberg. Hundreds more terrestrial arthropods are also being revealed in our research on inclusions in New Zealand amber – 90 specimens in one block of layered amber alone.

Read more:
New Zealand should celebrate its remarkable prehistoric past with national fossil emblems – have your say!

Rainforest leaves and flowers

Myriad leaves with excellent preservation show that both maars were surrounded by subtropical to warm, temperate rainforests, dominated by members of the laurel and cinnamon plant families at Foulden Maar and a southern beech forest at Hindon.

To date we have recorded at least 100 species from 35 plant families between the sites, including many taxa now extinct locally, but with relatives still living in New Caledonia, Australia and South America.

Of particular importance are diverse fossil flowers with reproductive structures such as petals, stamens and anthers with pollen still present, as well as abundant fossilised fruits and seeds.

These reproductive structures are treasures of a different kind – fragile, seasonal and fleeting. But they provide critical information about the ecology of the parent plants and their possible pollination and dispersal mechanisms.

Close comparisons to the biology of living plants also suggest the fossil species reproduced in a similar manner to their living relatives. This implies that reproductive mechanisms were conserved for 23 million years in the New Zealand flora.

Currently, the Dunedin City Council is exploring management options for the site, which will once again allow public and scientific access to this remarkable fossil-rich, ancient lake deposit well into the future.

John G Conran received funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (11-UOO-043 and 14-UOO-102) towards this research

Uwe Kaulfuss receives funding from the German Research Foundation (project 429296833).

Daphne Lee 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. Life in maars: why it’s worth protecting a spectacular fossil site NZ almost lost to commercial mining interests – https://theconversation.com/life-in-maars-why-its-worth-protecting-a-spectacular-fossil-site-nz-almost-lost-to-commercial-mining-interests-209123

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gwilym Croucher, Associate Professor, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne

There is no doubt the federal government has big ambitions for the Universities Accord. Set up last November, the interim report was made public on Wednesday.

This is the first broad review of higher education since the 2008 Bradley Review. If the government’s aspirations are met, it could mean the most significant changes to Australian higher education in a generation.

The interim report covers many different issues, from student fees to governance, teaching, international students, student wellbeing and research.

But the interim report also asks us to think more broadly about the entire education system post-high school. This includes both vocational education and training (VET) providers (such as TAFE) and universities. It wants to see the whole tertiary education “pursue greater opportunities for alignment and collaboration”.

Why is this important? And how can this be done?

What does ‘alignment’ and ‘collaboration’ mean here?

When politicians and education commentators talk about the university and vocational sectors collaborating more, this can mean many different things.

This can include creating pathways between vocational and higher education, including how prior study in each is recognised.

It could also include universities, vocational education and training providers and employers collaborating in the design and delivery of their courses. It can also means students have the right incentives at every stage of their lives to connect with the type of education that is right for them at the time.

Attempts to better integrate post-secondary education are not new – and there have been effort since at least the time of former education minster John Dawkins in the 1980s.

But progress has been slow, with VET largely under the purview of state government while higher education is largely funded federally.

Why is this important?

If university and vocational education systems work together more, we will have a more flexible and more functional education system.

The report states that over the next two decades Australian workers will change jobs an estimated 2.4 times and it is estimated tasks within Australian jobs will change by 18% every decade. Even if these estimates prove wrong, there is broad recognition that updating skills is something workers will need to do over their working lives.

As the report notes, “many students move between the higher education and vocational education sectors during their lifetime”.

Vocational education can be an entry pathway into higher education. Or people will complement their higher education with job-specific skills from vocational education.

These transitions should be as seamless as possible.

Changing educational landscape worldwide

Any collaboration will occur against a backdrop of big changes coming to post-secondary education all around the world.

Just before the pandemic, global enrolments in higher education and higher vocational education were estimated at more than 200 million people. Around two-thirds of these students were in developing or recently developed countries. Overall, it is estimated global higher education and upper vocational education has grown by more than 50% in the past 20 years.

It is argued this growth is driven by the expansion of higher education in developing countries, particularly India. This means the locus of higher education will increasingly move away from wealthy countries.

Since 2011, the number of university students in wealthy countries has plateaued and, in some cases, even declined. One of the reasons for this is demographic changes, as large proportion of the populations in many wealthy countries age.

For Australia, like other countries, this presents many challenges, not least because there will be less people of working age. This only increases the importance of ensuring post-school education delivers the skills and workers our society and economy need.

What is being proposed?

The report calls for a conversation about making it easier for students to move between vocational education and university settings as well as more consistency around how prior learning is credited and recognised.

Rules can be a challenge here, especially where vocational courses are industry specific. The government is yet to fully respond to a 2019 review of the Australian Qualifications Framework, which remains an important piece of the puzzle.

The accord interim report proposes extending federal funding and HELP loans beyond the universities to TAFEs, to provide financial support to some of their programs.

It also suggests “Cooperative Skills Centres”, where universities and vocational education providers would work together as “joint ventures for fast skilling up in areas of urgent industry need”.

On top of this, it asks whether there should be a requirement (maybe a regulation) for the two sectors to work more together.

This suggests a more heavy-handed approach could be on the table, and given the slow progress in aligning higher education and VET it might be an attractive option to some.

Read more:
The National Skills Agreement needs time in the policy spotlight and it must include these 3 things

‘Must adapt’

So far, the accord process is picking up on a significant opportunity here for Australia – to create a more integrated system for post-high school education. As the report notes:

The tertiary sector must adapt to facilitate growth in lifelong learning.

Responses to the interim report are due in September, with a final report expected in December.

Read more:
The universities accord could see the most significant changes to Australian unis in a generation

Gwilym Croucher 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. Many Australians will need to study at both TAFE and uni: how do we get the two systems working together? – https://theconversation.com/many-australians-will-need-to-study-at-both-tafe-and-uni-how-do-we-get-the-two-systems-working-together-210136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

This week the Albanese government produced a detailed breakdown of the A$3 billion it plans to save over four years by cutting the use of outsourced labour and consultants.

The savings, which begin this financial year, take about $600 million each from the departments of defence and social service, followed by about $450 million from the treasury, most of it to be reportedly from the tax office.

They cover what the government describes as “savings from external labour, advertising, travel and legal expenses”. They are in line with the Labor’s election promise to cut its consulting and contractor bill by $3 billion over four years, except that the starting year is 2023-24 instead of the expected 2022-23.

Given that Labor says it’s already cut $500 million in its first year in office, they are set to take the five-year total to $3.5 billion.

But the cuts won’t come easily, a point Finance Minister Katy Gallagher conceded in an interview with the Australian Financial Review, saying it had

become very clear just how entrenched the use of consultancies and external labour became in the public service under the former Coalition government.

There’s nothing wrong with moderate use of consultants and contract labour. It’s been done by both sides of politics for decades.

More than 30 years ago, the then Labor government’s commercial support program outsourced defence functions, including cooking, cleaning, maintenance and guarding, to deliver services at a much lower cost than the military.

Outsourcing weakens accountability

The concern is the extent to which core public service functions – policy advice to ministers and delivery of welfare programs – have also been outsourced.

The public service has (or ought to have) a corporate memory of what works and what does not. Consultants hired on a one-off basis need not.

It is true that the public service does not always live up to its legislated standards, as has been found to have been the case with Robodebt. But it can be held accountable when it fails.

Accountability mechanisms for private consultants and contractors are weak by comparison, with failings often obscured by a veil of “commercial in confidence”.

Read more:
Blacklisting PwC won’t stop outsourcing: here are 3 reasons it has become embedded in the Australian public service

Why consultants seemed so attractive

In The Conversation in June, Richard Mulgan expertly analysed the findings of the audit of employment Labor commissioned shortly after taking office.

He listed three reasons why public servants like using consultants:

• they allow governments to bury advice they don’t like

• they help persuade ministers who distrust the public service. This is especially important with Coalition ministers.

• they maintain a revolving door for public servants to leave their job, collect their super and continue working on the same issues.

There is a fourth, more venal, reason – the millions of dollars consultants spend each year entertaining public servants.

One such prized invitation is to a private marquee at the annual Prime Minister’s XI cricket match at Manuka in Canberra.

There are hundreds of other dinners, lunches, private boxes at sporting events, theatre and concert tickets with which consulting firms seek to influence public service decision-makers.

The firms wouldn’t be spending that money if it didn’t win them business.

These constitute formidable obstacles. But there are three ways they could be overcome.

1. End the free lunches

One measure would be for departments to ban their staff from accepting gifts and hospitality from consulting firms.

If that is regarded as too much of an imposition, departments could publish all such gifts on their websites, disclosing the names of recipients and the value of what was received.

That would at least make what happens more open.

2. Stop insider hiring

Another would be to prohibit public servants from obtaining employment in a consulting firm with which their former department does business.

This could be done either through “non-compete” clauses (common in the private sector) or through departments excluding firms that employ former departmental staff from tenders. A reasonable time limit – for example between three and five years – could apply.

3. Tender internally first

Commonwealth procurement rules could be amended to require departments, before calling for tenders from outside the public service, to advertise internally for public servants to do the work.

The work would then only be sent out to a consultant if no public servant could be found to do it. Who knows, that might even encourage some former public servants to return from consulting back to their old jobs.

Getting senior public servants to want to use their own staff instead of consultants might be an unintended benefit of the PwC scandal.

Until May this year – when PwC confirmed one of its partners had shared confidential government information obtained while serving on a government advisory board – many public servants considered using consultants low-risk.

It has become clear it involves a much higher risk than hiring a public servant.

Stephen Bartos 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. My 3-point plan to untangle the public service from consultants such as PwC – https://theconversation.com/my-3-point-plan-to-untangle-the-public-service-from-consultants-such-as-pwc-210050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nelly Liyanagamage, Lecturer, University of Notre Dame Australia

You’ve been pressured to work overtime to finish a project. You won’t get paid for the extra hours but you’ve been assured there will be kudos from senior management. There is – but only for your boss, who takes the credit.

You’re a hard, efficient worker, but your manager closely monitors you, demanding you constantly account for your time and questioning your actions, as if you can’t be trusted.

You find out your boss is overclaiming on expenses. When you bring this to their attention, they ask you not tell anyone until they work it out. They then mention they’re considering recommending you for a promotion.

These are signs of Machiavellianism, the dark personality trait named after the 16th century Italian political theorist who wrote the first “how to” guide for rulers.

A Machiavellian personality is self-serving, opportunistic and ambitious – traits that can help them attain positions of power and status.

Estimates of the prevalence of Machiavellianism are imprecise, but experts have good reason to believe it is at least as common in the workplace as psychopathy, which affects about 1% of the population but an estimated 3.5% of executives.

For example, US business author Lewis Schiff says 90% of the millionaires he surveyed for his book Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons agreed with the statement “it’s important in negotiations to exploit the weaknesses in others”, compared with just 24% of those with “middle-class” incomes.

Working for a Machiavellian boss is likely to be infuriating, stressful and bad for your mental health. By understanding what drives this personality, and how it differs from the other “dark personality traits”, you can limit the fallout.

Origins of Machiavellianism

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) was a diplomat in Florence during a period of power struggle involving the powerful Medici family. When the Medicis returned to rule the city in 1512 after almost two decades in exile, he was briefly imprisoned and then banished. He then wrote Il Principe (The Prince) as a sort of job application.

The book (not formally published till 1532, though copies circulated in the two decades before) is regarded as the first work of modern political philosophy. It advises rulers to be pragmatic, cunning and strategic. “The lion cannot protect himself from traps,” it says, “and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps and a lion to frighten wolves.”

In 1970 two US psychologists, Richard Christie and Florence Geis, published Studies in Machaivellianism, using the term for a personality trait characterised by self-interest, manipulativeness, opportunism and deceitfulness.

Read more:
These are the characteristics of people most likely to cut corners at work

Joining the ‘Dark Triad’

Machiavellianism is now accepted as one of three antisocial personality types that comprise the “Dark Triad” – the other two being narcissism and psychopathy. However, while the three traits are lumped together due to their antisocial qualities, there are important differences.

Narcissism is a set of traits as well as a personality disorder, characterised by egoism, self-absorption and the need to feel superior to others. Psychopathy is also a diagnosable personality disorder, defined by lack of empathy or conscience. Machiavellianism is not classified as a formal personality disorder.

A Machiavellian personality can be charismatic, like a narcissist, but is driven by self-interest rather than self-aggrandisement. They tend to be calculating rather than impulsive like a psychopath.

Christie and Geis came up with a 20-question checklist, based on statements from Machiavelli’s writings, to gauge Machiavellian traits. This test, known as the MACH-IV, is still being used.

Data collected on those taking the test shows, on average, that men score higher than women, and are more likely to get the highest possible result (~1% compared with ~0.2%).

A score of 60 or more out of 100 on the test is deemed “high Machiavellianism”, and less than 60 as “low Machiavellianism”.

A “high Mach” will likely be highly manipulative, in ways you won’t even necessarily identify as manipulation at the the time. A “low Mach” will tend be more empathetic and more reluctant to exploit others.

But knowing which is which in real life isn’t so straightforward. “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are,” as Machiavelli writes in The Prince. It is important to remember this even when approaching “low Mach” individuals. The boss who assures you they have your best interests at heart might just be telling you what you want to believe.

How to deal with a Machiavellian boss

A Machiavellian boss may seek to manipulate
with flattery or bullying, promising reward or threatening punishment.
They are less likely to trust you, causing them to micromanage and criticise. Your feelings are of little concern. This experience can leave you angry, emotionally exhausted and cynical.

So how to deal with a Machiavellian boss?

The first lesson is to be clear about what drives a Machiavellian personality. Fundamentally that is self-interest. You can’t judge motivations according to superficial charm or niceness. They may seem kind, caring and helpful most of the time – because that works for them. But be warned: if you’ve been on the receiving end of their “dark” traits before, you should expect it to happen again, sooner or later, when circumstances suit.

The second lesson is harder. You can’t trust a Machiavellian, and need to deal with them cautiously. But distrusting your boss and operating with a “strike before the other does” mindset will, if you’re a relatively normal person, be emotionally draining. You may find yourself becoming more cynical and distrustful generally.

Machiavelli endorsed the strategy of “divide and conquer” in another of his books (The Art of War, published in 1521). Take the opposite tack. This is a time for solidarity. Having a support network and knowing that you are not alone, can serve as an emotional pillar.

Read more:
Here’s what to do when you encounter people with ‘dark personality traits’ at work

There are no laws against being a manipulative, scheming and self-interested boss. But if these traits manifest as bullying, abuse or victimisation, there is action you may be able to take. For advice contact your union or workplace regulator, such as Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman, Britain’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, or Employment New Zealand.

Manipulation, deceit and bullying should never be considered acceptable or necessary. Your psychological and physical wellbeing matters.

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

– ref. Manipulative, distrustful, self-serving: how to deal with a Machiavellian boss – https://theconversation.com/manipulative-distrustful-self-serving-how-to-deal-with-a-machiavellian-boss-209210

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Sharp, Associate Professor, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow & Senior Clinical Psychologist, Monash University

“…when you’re shooting a film like Magic Mike, and you’re doing dance routines for two weeks at a time, you have to peak every day. So that became kind of crazy. We had a gym in the parking lot, and we’d all be lifting weights on set all day,” explained actor Joe Manganiello, about performing in the film Magic Mike.

It is not unusual for actors to undergo drastic changes in preparation for a role, including gaining muscle and losing body fat for that shredded look. In fact, this is becoming the norm in Hollywood.

Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House, Michelle Rodriguez in Dungeons & Dragons, and Paul Rudd in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, have all undertaken body modifications for roles this year.

As the audience, we readily accept these body modifications to be part of the preparation for the role without necessarily considering the potentially long-term physical and mental health consequences.

So how do they do it?

From what Hollywood shares with the general public about these body modifications, which is generally very limited, it appears these transformations occur through excessive exercise and highly restrictive diets.

Nevertheless, these Hollywood workouts are highly popular with ordinary people, with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Chris Hemsworth’s workouts particularly sought after.

These regimens resemble those of competitive bodybuilders, whose success also relies on appearance.

The typical process for bodybuilders involves two phases: a “bulking” phase, during which the goal is to have enough energy for muscle growth, and a “cutting” phase, when the aim is to lose weight but not muscle.

The end result of such a process is usually highly applauded, even though drastic measures have been taken to achieve such a look.

Actors of all genders are undergoing these body transformations for various roles such as superheroes, athletes, or the portrayal of real-life people.

What are the consequences?

“I’ve become a little bit more boring now, because I’m older and I feel like if I keep doing what I’ve done in the past I’m going to die. So, I’d prefer not to die,” said Christian Bale, who has undertaken multiple extreme transformations for roles.

To achieve what is needed for a particular role, extreme measures are often taken. However, the consequences of these measures, such as use of substances, exercise dependence, and an increased risk of developing muscle dysmorphia and/or an eating disorder, is seemingly not common knowledge.

A concern for the bodybuilding community is the widespread use of drugs, often multiple drugs at a time not obtained through prescription. Androgenic-anabolic steroids are commonly used which can have extensive negative effects on the human body, including on the cardiovascular system, hormones, metabolism and even psychiatric wellbeing.

Exercise dependence can also occur when an individual engages in an extreme amount of exercise, to the point at which physical, psychological or emotional harm can occur. We are not sure exactly why exercise dependence happens, but it could potentially be a form of behavioural addiction.

Another risk is muscle dysmorphia, a subtype of body dysmorphic disorder characterised by the individual being preoccupied with the idea their physique is not muscular enough, even if they have a high degree of muscle.

What about the dieting impacts?

There are many similarities between the requirements of bodybuilding and eating disorders. Both are characterised by restrictive diets, high levels of exercise, potential social isolation, and adherence to a rigid schedule.

The seminal Minnesota Starvation Experiment fundamentally shaped our understanding of the changes a person can experience when they are consuming less than their daily nutrition energy needs, such as during the “cutting” phase for bodybuilders. This research showed that people who are experiencing starvation for a period of time will experience devastating impacts in the physical, psychological, behavioural and social aspects of their lives.

Some of the many documented changes included reductions in heart muscle mass, heart rate and blood pressure, dizziness, fatigue, increased feelings of depression and anxiety, obsessive thoughts about food, and withdrawal from social activities and relationships.

Concerningly, even once a person is renourished, the psychological issues around body size and food can persist. Therefore, even after an actor has returned to their pre-modification weight and size, it does not mean they have recovered from the consequences that came with that body modification.

What are the impacts on the general public?

Rapid changes in physical appearance are not realistically achievable for most people. So seeing actors doing this seemingly easily with the assistance of their professional teams sets an unrealistic standard.

For people without the same income or access to resources to achieve these body modifications in a safe way, more extreme means would be undertaken and consequent damage to mental and physical wellbeing can ensue. These body modifications are definitely a case of “do not try this at home”.

There are many risks when undertaking dramatic body modifications, most of which are not talked about in public. Actors are just as vulnerable to these risks, despite us rarely seeing what exactly they go through to achieve these dramatic transformations. Hollywood is a highly competitive environment, and being honest about body modification and its consequences could stop an actor landing their next gig.

We don’t recommend body modifications in any way, but if someone does want to make a change to their lifestyle, we strongly recommend consulting with a team of health professionals to ensure physical and psychological safety during the process and beyond.

––

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, do not hesitate to reach out for support. For concerns around eating, exercise, or body image visit the Butterfly Foundation or call the national helpline on 1800 33 4673. For concerns around drug use visit Drug Help or call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015.

Gemma Sharp receives funding from an NHMRC Investigator Grant (Emerging Leadership 2).

Bronwyn Dwyer 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. Extreme Hollywood body transformations have become standard preparations for film actors – but we need to consider the consequences – https://theconversation.com/extreme-hollywood-body-transformations-have-become-standard-preparations-for-film-actors-but-we-need-to-consider-the-consequences-207722

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

Australia presents a mixed picture of national wellbeing, according to the government’s Measuring What Matters report released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

On the positive side, over the past two decades life expectancy has increased, income and job opportunities have improved, and we are better at accepting diversity.

But Australians now have more chronic health conditions, access to care and support services is more difficult, and there has been little progress on mental health.

While school outcomes have improved, they are falling behind other countries, and we are spending less time developing new skills.

After a trial run of a wellbeing statement in Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ first budget last year, he says this is the first proper national wellbeing framework.

Fifty indicators are used to measure wellbeing under five themes: how healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive and prosperous we are. The idea is to go beyond the traditional economic measures.

The report says that over recent decades there have been improvements in 20 of the 50 indicators, while seven have been stable or little changed, and 12 have gone backwards. Eight have mixed trends, and for three there is not comparable data.

There has been environmental progress: on emissions reduction, resources use and waste generation. But biological diversity has deteriorated.

Household income and wealth have improved, as has job satisfaction, but people are finding it harder to make ends meet and homelessness is worse. Fiscal sustainability and economic resilience have also deteriorated.

There’s been little change in income and wealth inequality. The outcome on wages is mixed.

Trust in national government has fallen, although trust in others has increased.

In relation to Indigenous Australians, the report says: “the concept of wellbeing has always been the result of preserving and maintaining culture, which directly affects mental, physical and spiritual health”.

As a result:

the whole of population indicators outlined in this Framework are not an accurate measure of First Nations wellbeing as they are limited in their ability to represent these intrinsic cultural differences or acknowledge the past practices that have had detrimental impacts

There has been little change in Australians’ overall life satisfaction in recent years.

“Between 2014 and 2020 the average overall life satisfaction in Australia (out of 10) was relatively stable at around between 7.5 between 2014 and 2019 before declining slightly to 7.2 in 2020,” the report says.

The decline was likely due to COVID.

Overall progress on Australians wellbeing

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. Australians’ national wellbeing shows a glass half full: Measuring What Matters report – https://theconversation.com/australians-national-wellbeing-shows-a-glass-half-full-measuring-what-matters-report-210133

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

Andrew Leigh won’t have made himself many friends in Labor with his attack this week on the stifling power of the party’s factions.

Then again, when it comes to political advancement, Leigh’s non-factional status has, in opposition and government, left the well-credentialed Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment relatively friendless. To ascend to the higher reaches of the ladder in Labor, you need to march in either the right or left battalion.

Leigh’s Wednesday speech, denouncing the factional “duopoly” and pointing to its downsides, received little attention among colleagues. The system suits very well those it benefits.

Labor has a long history of factions. What is distinctive about them now is how professionally they operate, as two powerful machines of control in an alliance of mutual convenience.

Under a proportional representation system, the factions carve up all the spoils – ministries, seats, trips. In the federal caucus, they keep the troops in line, so there are few notable breakouts.

That (as Leigh says) such an arrangement can undermine democracy within the party, suppress internal policy debate, and make it harder to attract and advance good candidates – who cares? That’s the way politics works, isn’t it?

It may be. But that doesn’t mean it should be, at least to the extent that it is.

Factions within broad-based political parties have their place in bringing together people with common views, playing an organising role, managing conflict.

But when they become over-tight, as in Labor, they can eventually corrode democracy more generally. Or where, as in the Liberals, they are warring fiefdoms, resorting to “whatever it takes” behaviour (as in the NSW division), they are seriously dangerous to their host party. “Community candidates” are attractive to some voters fed up with over-factionalised parties.

Currently, Labor’s factional system works very nicely for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (who hails from the left). In contrast, factions in the Liberal Party are a nightmare for Peter Dutton, trying to keep together a party split on fundamentals.

In Labor, right and left have converged on the centre as they have become less ideological and found common interest in an orderly sharing of spoils. In the Liberals, the factions have increasingly diverged and formalised, with the right becoming more assertive and ideological and the moderates losing ground in most parts of the party.

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Within the federal Labor caucus, not only is everyone factionalised apart from Leigh and fellow ACT MP Alicia Payne, but as they have become all-pervasive, the factions have been tamed. Debates in caucus over policy are virtually non-existent; a few questions to the frontbench can be seen as a lively caucus meeting.

Leigh argues the factionalism at the party’s grass roots risks forcing recruits into an “uncomfortable choice”. Uncomfortable or not, the members make that choice, at least when it comes to the party’s national conference.

Voting for delegates to the conference, to be held in Brisbane on August 17-19, has just finished. There’ll be 402 delegates, half of whom are chosen directly by the rank and file. Of the 402, only about 20 are unaligned with either broad faction.

For the first time since the 1980s, the left will be the largest faction at the conference, with 49% of the total delegates, compared to the right’s 45%. In theory, this gives the unaligned delegates a balance of power. In practice, the factional chiefs will wrangle deals and trade offs. The debate about AUKUS is set to be a major test at the conference, but the factional heavyweights will manage it in a way that ensures it doesn’t embarrass Albanese (one insider makes the point this isn’t new, but how successful conferences have operated historically).

Labor’s blanket factionalism, with its modus operandi, is part of a wider development – the extensive professionalisation of modern politics generally, and the priority it gives to control. This has been a creeping phenomenon.

The government has an army of propagandists (titled “media advisers”) in ministerial officers to control and promote its messages, which are crystallised into comprehensive “talking points” (or swot sheets) for frontbenchers and backbenchers. Ministers are deployed with military precision to occupy the daily media landscape. No trench is left without a soldier.

The sheer volume of the government’s media presence (mainstream and social) disguises the large void in our current knowledge of what is happening behind the scenes.

Once, the media had much more access to the public service to discuss policy (we’re talking about background information, not “leaks”). Governments shut this down, as far as they could, years ago. Ministerial offices jealously guard the flow of information; if public servants are called in to do any media briefing, it is strictly overseen.

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There is access to material through freedom of information, but this has its strict limits and needs reform.

The media know very little about the internal dynamics of the Albanese cabinet. From Albanese’s point of view, this is a triumph. It is a product of a high degree of genuine unity, but it is also a mark of iron discipline.

Sometimes, when journalists hear what’s said in a cabinet, it’s a sign of leadership destabilisation. Remember the spectacular leaks from Tony Abbott’s cabinet, driven by the Turnbull camp’s (successful) undermining. It was the same in the latter days of Bob Hawke.

At other times during the Hawke government, there was a steady flow of information about ministers’ positions on issues and the arguments they were putting, which told a lot about the policy-making process and relations among ministers. For example, from early on in that government, much was known about the relationship between treasurer Paul Keating and Hawke.

We have little insight into the dynamic between the current PM and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. We do know they differed over the Stage 3 tax cuts. But that was early – what about other issues? We’re aware there’ve been strains between Resources Minister Madeleine King and Industry Minister Ed Husic, but they haven’t been given much media attention.

Significantly at the moment: what, if any, cabinet debate is going on about the strategy to boost the Voice, now its support is flagging? If there is not that debate, this says something about the cabinet. In general, we have minimal detail about the Albanese cabinet’s remit. For instance, what was the degree and timing of the full cabinet’s involvement in the planned AUKUS spend? Is the government’s decision-making effectively done in the expenditure review committee and the national security committee, as well as at leadership level?

Of course we can’t put all our ignorance down to control – we, as media, are not marshalling our own forces sufficiently.

It’s an irony. The PM and his ministerial team swarm into every corner of the media. But the media know less about the entrails of decision-making than we often did before the 24-hour news cycle.

Michelle Grattan ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: We see a great deal of the Albanese government, but we don’t know much about what goes on behind the scenes – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-we-see-a-great-deal-of-the-albanese-government-but-we-dont-know-much-about-what-goes-on-behind-the-scenes-210132

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritu Trivedi, PhD Student, University of Sydney

US President Joe Biden has the heart condition atrial fibrillation. This increases his risk of having a stroke five-fold and doubles the risk of a heart attack or dementia.

More than 37.5 million people globally also have atrial fibrillation, but many don’t realise they have it.

For most, the condition has few symptoms and does not limit daily life. However, identifying it and treating it is the only way to reduce its serious health consequences.

Our research, just published in the journal Heart, looks at the importance of managing blood pressure in reducing such risks.

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Health Check: what do my blood pressure numbers mean?

What is atrial fibrillation?

Atrial fibrillation is when the heart beats irregularly, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. It’s the most common heart rhythm disorder and is more common as you get older. But some people develop it in their 30s and 40s.

The abnormal heart rhythm starts in the top chambers of the heart, meaning the heart does not propel the blood forward properly. This, and the erratic movements of these heart chambers, result in blood pooling, and occasionally clots.

The heart can go into atrial fibrillation for short periods of time, and then return to normal rhythm, or stay in this abnormal heart rhythm continuously.

How do I know if I have it?

Some people have lots of symptoms, such as heart palpitations (a feeling of fluttering or pounding heart), breathlessness or even discomfort, and know exactly when they have gone into atrial fibrillation. Their symptoms can stop what they would normally do. But others have no symptoms and don’t know they have atrial fibrillation. We know very little about why some people have symptoms and others do not.

If you have symptoms, discuss these with your GP. Your GP will ask about triggers for your symptoms, your general health and other risk factors, and will likely organise an electrocardiogram (also called an ECG). This is a type of non-invasive test where 12 leads are attached to your chest to measure the electrical activity of the heart.

Generally, your GP will refer you to a cardiologist (heart specialist) or a hospital clinic if they suspect you have a heart rhythm problem, including atrial fibrillation, for further testing and treatment.

Some people say you can detect atrial fibrillation using consumer wearables, such as smartwatches. However, it’s not clear how accurate these are.

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What happens after you’re diagnosed?

Once diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, you will be assessed for serious potential complications, such as an increased risk of stroke.

You’ll be advised to manage any risk factors that worsen atrial fibrillation and increase your risk of stroke. This includes cutting down on alcohol, managing your weight and doing more exercise.

Some people at higher risk of a stroke will be started on blood thinning medicines. Some people may also need to take medicines to control their heart rhythm or have a procedure called “ablation”. This is when wires are passed into the heart to identify and treat the electrical origin of the condition.

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How about high blood pressure?

More than three in five people with atrial fibrillation also have high blood pressure (hypertension). This is another major cause of stroke and heart attack. So managing blood pressure is very important.

In our new research, we analysed data from the electronic medical records from about 34,000 Australian GP patients with both atrial fibrillation and hypertension. We found one-in-three had poorly controlled blood pressure. This places a group already at a high risk of stroke at an even greater risk.

When someone’s blood pressure is poorly controlled, this is usually because their medicines are not adequately bringing down their blood pressure. This could be because doctors are not increasing the number of different types of medicine when needed, or because patients cannot afford their medicines, or forget to take them.

We also found that people who visited the same GP regularly were more likely to have their blood pressure controlled, so were at lower risk of stroke.

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How to recognise a stroke and what you should know about their treatment

Why is this important?

It is important people at the highest risk of stroke – such as those with both atrial fibrillation and high blood pressure – are receiving appropriate treatment to minimise their risk.

Strokes, heart attacks and dementia are still leading causes of death and ill health in Australia. Prevention is so much better than treating them when they develop.

Ritu Trivedi is a recipient of the Commonwealth Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship to support her PhD studies.

Clara Chow receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council. Dr Chow is affiliated with the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Liliana Laranjo receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. What is atrial fibrillation, the heart condition US President Joe Biden lives with? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-atrial-fibrillation-the-heart-condition-us-president-joe-biden-lives-with-208202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, The University of Melbourne

Slower employment growth, faster population growth and a steady rate of unemployment are the main stories from the Bureau of Statistics’ labour force update, released on Thursday.

Employment climbed by 32,600 between May and June, while the population grew 49,900. The rate of unemployment (happily) remains fixed at 3.5 per cent, although to two decimal places, it fell from 3.55% to 3.47%.

This story isn’t new. The waning of the Delta wave of COVID-19 from late 2021 brought a strong recovery in the demand for workers. Even after the immediate bounce-back from lockdowns, employment grew impressively.

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In the nine months from November 2021, total employment increased by an average of 55,000 per month – double the 20,000 to 30,000 common before COVID.

Thereafter, employment growth has grown more slowly, by an average of 35,600 per month since August 2022.

Population growth has climbed as employment growth has slowed. During the nine months to August 2022, in which major restrictions on immigration remained, it averaged 37,200 per month.

After that time, with those restrictions removed, population growth averaged 50,300 per month.

Who is getting work has been changing

Mid-2022 didn’t just mark a change in the pace of employment growth. It also marked a shift in the sources of employment growth.

Up to August 2022, extra workers had been drawn from unemployment and from new entrants joining the labour force, as well as from population growth.

But since August 2022, employment growth has come almost entirely from population growth. The rates of unemployment and of labour force participation have remained largely constant.

Why unemployment didn’t jump

A combination of slowing job growth and faster population growth ought to have pushed up the unemployment rate. But so far that hasn’t happened.

Having hit a low of 3.5% in August 2022, unemployment has stayed there pretty much the whole time since.

The reason is our record level of job vacancies. Fewer new jobs are being created, but an unusually high number of vacancies is keeping demand for workers high.

New entrants to the labour force have been able to take up those vacancies, rather than becoming unemployed.

Where population growth coming from

The higher rate of population growth is coming from increased immigration, a term that encompasses international students and working holidaymakers.

Net overseas migration (the extent to which arrivals exceed departures) averaged 23,270 per month in the first half of 2022, and then 35,200 in the second half.

A big part of the growth is from the return of international students and working holidaymakers.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest reductions in job vacancies came in the occupations where these temporary visa holders make up the largest shares of the workforce.

Since mid-2022, the vacancy rate for food trades workers has fallen from 4.4% to 3.0%, the largest fall by far of any occupation group.

Vacancy rates for hospitality and food preparation workers have each fallen by about three quarters of a percentage point.

Where to from here

Continued (now modest) growth in new job creation, together with the huge backlog of vacancies, might well allow the rate of unemployment to remain around its current level – even with a high rate of population growth.

Whether that does indeed happen depends on how future growth in new jobs is affected by actions of the Reserve Bank aimed at dampening economic growth.

So far, these actions have slowed the jobs market, but haven’t sent it into a tailspin.

Whether that remains the case will be the story to watch in the coming months.

Jeff Borland receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Unemployment is staying low at 3.5%. But for those out of work, here’s why it’s become harder to get a job – https://theconversation.com/unemployment-is-staying-low-at-3-5-but-for-those-out-of-work-heres-why-its-become-harder-to-get-a-job-209835

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Barnett, Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology

The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) is a A$20 billion fund to support Australian health and medical research. It was set up in 2015 to deliver practical benefits from medical research and innovation to as many Australians as possible.

Unlike the other research funding agencies, such the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), most of the MRFF funding is priority-driven. It seeks to fund research in particular areas or topics rather than using open calls when researchers propose their own ideas for funding.

As the Nine newspapers outlined this week, researchers have criticised the previous Coalition government’s allocation of MRFF funds. There is widespread consensus the former health minister had too much influence in the allocation of funds, and there was limited and sometimes no competition when funding was directly allocated to one research group.

The current Health Minister, Mark Butler, has instituted a review. So how should the big decisions about how to spend the MRFF be made in the future to maximise its value and achieve its aims?

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

Assess gaps in evidence

Research priorities for the MRFF are set by the Australian Medical Research Advisory Board, which widely consults with the research sector.

However, most researchers and institutions will simply argue more funding is needed for their own research. If the board seeks to satisfy such lobbying, it will produce fragmented funding that aligns poorly with the health needs of Australians.

A better approach would be to systematically assemble evidence about what is known and the key evidence gaps. Here, the board would benefit from what is known as a “value of information” framework for decision-making.

This framework systematically attempts to quantify the most valuable information that will reduce the uncertainty for health and medical decision-making. In other words, it would pinpoint which information we need to allow us to better make health and medical decisions.

There have been attempts to use this method in Australia to help inform how we prioritise hospital-based research. However, we now need to apply such an approach more broadly.

Read more:
COVID has left Australia’s biomedical research sector gasping for air

Seek public input

A structured framework for engaging with the public is also missing in Australia. The public’s perspective on research prioritisation has often been overlooked, but as the ultimate consumers of research, they need to be heard.

Research is a highly complex and specialised endeavour, so we can’t expect the public to create sensible priorities alone.

One approach used overseas has been developed by the James Lind Alliance, a group in the United Kingdom that combines the public’s views with researchers to create agreed-on priorities for research.

This is done using an intensive process of question setting and discussion. Priorities are checked for feasibility and novelty, so there is no funding for research that’s impossible or already done.

The priorities from the James Lind Alliance process can be surprising. The top priority in the area of irritable bowel syndrome, for example, is to discover if it’s one condition or many, while the second priority is to work on bowel urgency (a sudden urgent need to go to the toilet).

While such everyday questions can struggle to get funding in traditional systems that often focus on novelty, funding research in these two priority areas could lead to the most benefits for people with irritable bowel syndrome.

Consider our comparative advantages

Australia is a relatively small player globally. To date, the MRFF has allocated around $2.6 billion, just over 5% of what the United States allocates through the National Institute of Health funding in a single year.

A single research grant, even if it involves a few million dollars of funding, is unlikely to lead to a medical breakthrough. Instead, the MRFF should prioritise areas where Australia has a comparative advantage.

This could involve building on past success (such as the research that led to the HPV, or human papillomavirus, vaccine to prevent cervical cancer), or where Australian researchers can play a critical role globally.

However, there is an area where Australian researchers have an absolute advantage: using research to improve our own health system.

A prime example would be finding ways to improve dental care access in Australia. For example, a randomised trial of different ways of providing insurance and dental services, similar to the RAND Health Insurance Experiment conducted in the United States in the 1970s.

This could provide the evidence needed to design a sustainable dental scheme to complement Medicare. Now that is something the MRFF should consider as a funding priority.

Read more:
Expensive dental care worsens inequality. Is it time for a Medicare-style ‘Denticare’ scheme?

Adrian Barnett receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund and the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a member of the NHMRC Research Committee; this article represents his own views.

Philip Clarke receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund via grants held at the University of Melbourne.

– ref. Medical Research Future Fund has $20 billion to spend. Here’s how we prioritise who gets what – https://theconversation.com/medical-research-future-fund-has-20-billion-to-spend-heres-how-we-prioritise-who-gets-what-209977

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

The Voice to Parliament reached another milestone this week, with the official essays for the Yes and No cases published online by the Australian Electoral Commission. These will be sent to all Australian electors in the lead up to the vote, which will be in the last quarter of the year

In recent weeks, polls have suggested the “yes” vote is on the slide, and has an uphill battle if it is to be successful.

In this podcast, we talk with two Indigenous senators, The Greens’ Dorinda Cox, and Liberal Kerrynne Liddle. Cox is campaigning for the Voice, while Liddle does not believe a Voice will achieve the practical outcomes those in favour are championing.

Cox, from Western Australia, believes a Voice will deliver more and better practical results for First Nations peoples compared to the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). She says ATSIC was a “boots and all” approach that “gave a lot of power through commissioners and through a governance structure that essentially was different from what’s being proposed”.

“I see the Voice enabling us to provide advice to all sides of parliament to talk through those representations to the executive government and to talk very specifically about what Closing The Gap is.”

Liddle, from South Australia, is a supporter of Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, but has an issue with the referendum proposal. She would rather see an Indigenous Voice legislated, with the “executive government” clause removed. “I think we would blitz that if it was that single [recognition] question and the Voice was actually legislated.”

Liddle has a message for Anthony Albanese. “I would like to see this prime minister stop this divisive form and approach that he’s taken to this, and actually go back and say constitutional recognition, tick, we can all do this.”

“Because if this is defeated, the concept of constitutional recognition may not ever occur.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Battle of the Voice – Greens senator Dorinda Cox & Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-battle-of-the-voice-greens-senator-dorinda-cox-and-liberal-senator-kerrynne-liddle-210061