Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Williams, Associate Professor, Griffith University, Griffith University

Whatever fate awaits Annastacia Palaszczuk over the coming weeks, Queensland’s 39th – and only the second woman – premier will never lose her standing in the Australian Labor pantheon.

Palaszczuk, the state Labor leader since 2012 and premier since 2015, is already Australia’s most successful female political leader. She was the first woman to lead a party into government from opposition anywhere in Australia, the first woman to attain three successive election victories in Australia, and the first head of a majority-female cabinet.

If Palaszczuk can survive the building pressure on her to resign, she could next year become Queensland’s fourth longest-serving – and Labor’s second longest-serving – premier since 1860. But that prospect is becoming increasingly unlikely.

In July, a Freshwater Strategy poll for the Australian Financial Review found just 39% of Queenslanders now approve of Palaszczuk’s leadership, with 47% disapproving – a net negative of eight points.

And an August Resolve Strategic Poll showed 37% of respondents preferring Liberal-National Party Opposition leader David Crisafulli as premier, compared to 36% who preferred Palaszczuk. This was the first time in almost a decade an LNP leader has taken the lead.

What a far cry from the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic. In July 2020, Newspoll found 64% of Queenslanders approving of Palaszczuk’s leadership, with 81% approving of her management of the pandemic and subsequent hard border closures. Just 29% disapproved of her leadership – a net positive of 35 points.

Worse for Labor, Resolve now pegs LNP first-preference support at 38% (up three points since the 2020 election), with Labor at just 32% (down seven). The LNP also has an after-preference lead of 53–47% over Labor.

If this lead is held, it would likely be enough to allow the LNP to win the 14 seats needed for majority government in next October’s election.

Read more:
Did someone say ‘election’?: how politics met pandemic to create ‘fortress Queensland’

A perception of a ‘checked-out’ premier

To outsiders it might appear Palaszczuk – who has dominated Queensland politics like no other since Peter Beattie more than a decade ago – has suffered a rapid fall from grace. But Palaszczuk’s decline has been a slow burn.

A year after securing her third term as premier in the 2020 election, Palaszczuk was wholly untroubled by a virtually unknown opposition leader.

But, by early 2022, Palaszczuk had found herself enmeshed in several integrity crises, including accusations the Crime and Corruption Commission had not been impartial in its investigation of alleged local government corruption, and that senior public servants had allegedly suffered political interference from ministerial staff.

Worse, Palaszczuk appeared slow to respond to the allegations before appointing three separate inquiries. One inquiry, under Professor Peter Coaldrake, published unfavourable findings.

The effect was rapid and seismic: the hitherto Teflon Palaszczuk now looked flawed, and opinion polls soon reflected Labor’s vulnerability. By June 2022, YouGov had revealed a five-point collapse in Labor’s primary vote, with the LNP, now on 38%, leading Labor for the first time.

But as the dust settled on Labor’s integrity issues, the LNP and a conservative news media cleverly switched narratives. Palaszczuk was then framed as a “checked-out”, “red carpet” premier more interested in mixing with celebrities and attending glitzy gala events with her new partner.

That narrative appeared to gain public traction when, in August last year, the media accused Palaszczuk of cancelling a cabinet meeting to spend time on a luxury yacht. The coincidental circumstance of Palaszczuk last week leaving for a holiday in Italy, just as the media storm broke over her leadership troubles, can only deepen perceptions of a “part-time” premier.

As public policy crises have continued to dominate the media over the past year, the accusation that Palaszczuk has taken her eye off the policy ball has only gained further traction. With a soaring cost of living, deepening housing crisis, overcrowded hospitals and budget blowouts in infrastructure projects, it’s little wonder voters have started to turn on her government.

But, more than any other, it’s the issue of youth crime that has most profoundly brought Palaszczuk’s leadership into question. Her government has been roundly criticised for the hastily passed legislation last week that could see children held “indefinitely” in Queensland watch houses – a move that was resisted by Labor’s majority Left faction.

Read more:
Queensland is not only trampling the rights of children, it is setting a concerning legal precedent

Who might step into her large shoes?

In short, Palaszczuk has been Labor’s best asset in Queensland since 2012; now she appears a liability.

Despite unconvincing reassurances from senior government ministers that Palaszczuk will lead Labor to the October 2024 election, the momentum of leadership change now appears beyond the point of no return. It’s almost certain Queensland will have a new Labor premier, possibly by the end of this month.

There appear to be only three candidates:

• Steven Miles, the deputy premier and leader of the Left faction of the party

• Shannon Fentiman, the health minister and a member of the Left faction

• Cameron Dick, the treasurer and head of Labor Forum, a right Labor faction

Dick has long been touted as a future premier but, given the Left has controlled the Labor caucus since 2015, either a Miles or Fentiman premiership is the more likely outcome.

Because Queensland Labor rules around leadership spills are so complicated – a ballot must be held in caucus, among grassroots members and among the unions – it’s likely Palaszczuk will be urged to resign when she returns from her holiday, with a single candidate emerging as her successor.

Either way, the next Labor leader would have very large shoes to fill. Labor had suffered a rout in the 2012 election, with the LNP capturing 78 seats in the 89-seat parliament – the then-largest majority in Australian history. When Palaszczuk put her hand up to lead the seven remaining Labor MPs, nobody would believe she’d topple the once-popular premier, Campbell Newman, just three years later.

Read more:
Who is Annastacia Palaszczuk, Queensland’s likely next premier?

But, by 2015, Queenslanders had been angered by Newman’s proposal to privatise state-owned assets. They also appeared tired of big personalities like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Peter Beattie and Newman. Even those in regional Queensland warmed to a Labor leader who looked and sounded like a friendly next-door neighbour.

Will a leadership change be too little, too late to reverse the fortunes of a Labor Party looking for a fourth term? Probably. But it’s foolish to completely write off the party that has dominated Queensland politics for 28 of the past 33 years.

Paul Williams is an associate with Queensland’s T. J. Ryan Foundation.

– ref. Even if her leadership is now doomed, Annastacia Palaszczuk will still be a Labor legend in Queensland – https://theconversation.com/even-if-her-leadership-is-now-doomed-annastacia-palaszczuk-will-still-be-a-labor-legend-in-queensland-212446

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bhiamie Williamson, Research Fellow, Monash University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images of deceased people. All images featured in this article have been published with respective permissions.

Father’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate men who have shaped and inspired us.

For many Indigenous peoples, this includes our biological father, adopted fathers, as well as our grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends, and more.

Yet Indigenous fatherhood is a contentious topic in white Australia. Even today, mainstream perceptions often frame Indigenous men as dangerous, vagrant and neglectful.

These false representations can be deeply damaging to the psyche of Indigenous men, and potentially erode the fabric of our communities.

Indigenous fathering has emerged as a key priority in my research examining Indigenous men and masculinity. It is a topic of immense personal importance to me as a Euahlayi (Yuwaalaraay) man, a son, brother, uncle, husband and father.

Indigenous traditions of fathering

Stories of fathers are as old as Indigenous societies. Many First Nations in southeastern Australia continue to hold and transmit stories of the Creator, or All-Father, known in different places as Bhiamie, Bunjil or Dharamulan.

Fathering traditions are also evident in some Indigenous languages and kin structures. It is common for some Indigenous children to have not one father but many. This was particularly the case for a child’s patrilineal uncle, who is also known to the child as father.

In the late 1700s, some European explorers observed and recorded the centrality of fathering in Indigenous societies. For example, New South Wales Judge-Advocate David Collins observed Bennelong, a senior Eora man, returning from an outing with his sister’s child on his shoulders before cooking fish while his sisters and their children slept and ate oysters in the sun.

In 1793, Bruny D’Entrecasteaux “witnessed the tokens of tenderness that these simple and kind men displayed towards their children” in Port du Nord, Tasmania.

The evidence of Indigenous fathering in historical accounts can be hard to uncover because it appeared to be so everyday and unremarkable to Europeans and anthropologists. Yet casting an eye over these various recordings of history, from both Indigenous and European records, reveals the existence of strong, consistent and widespread traditions of care, nurture and love between Indigenous fathers and their children.

Breaking the bonds of fatherhood

Colonisation significantly impacted all Indigenous societies. The introduction of foreign diseases, violent frontier conflict, removal of people from Country, and removal of children are well established historical truths.

There were also colonial impacts on Indigenous families. Colonisation caused disruptions to Indigenous fathering in many ways.

Economic conditions meant many Indigenous men were forced to be away from their children for extended periods, such as when working in pastoral or pearling industries.

Legally, Indigenous fathers were replaced as agents of care and responsibility through various protection acts in Australia’s colonies. Discourses of “protection” broke apart Indigenous families, which affected mothers, fathers and extended family and their roles caring for their children.

Introducing rations removed important roles as hunters and providers. Notwithstanding some men who did continue to hunt, these traditional sources of food were supplementary to the rations provided by colonial and religious authorities.

Social and political assaults on Indigenous men as fathers

Last week, references to Indigenous men as “violent black men” and ‘woman bashers” were heard at the CPAC conference.

The racist cartoon by the late Bill Leake showed that even as recently as 2016, a mainstream media outlet such as The Australian considered it acceptable to ridicule and denigrate Indigenous fathers.

The 2007 Northern Territory Intervention demonstrates how demonising Indigenous men can be used as a political weapon. This was done by portraying Indigenous men as neglectful, violent, unsafe, and in need of heavy-handed government responses. “You’ve got to instil responsiblity,” said the then prime minister John Howard.

Positive representations of Indigenous Dads matter

In response to Leake’s cartoon, #IndigenousDads trended on social media platforms. These intensely personal homages of Indigenous fathers presented an antidote to the tsunami of negativity towards Indigenous fathers.

Other important representation of Indigenous men have been through the publication of the book Dear Son by Thomas Mayo, as well as a range of children’s books by men including Adam Goodes, Meyne Wyatt and Briggs. Indigenous performers such as Luke Carroll and Hunter Page-Lochard now feature regularly on the ABC’s Play School.

It is clear Indigenous fathering carries its own meaning and interpretation. Features such as sharing of fathering roles, transmission of culture, the making of young boys into men, and the public affection and displays of love fathers share with children.

I draw from the gendered patterns of Emus to describe these deep constitutions of fathering. Emus are unique in their gendered patterns. During nesting season female emus lay the eggs, but it is the male emus that sit on the nests to warm the eggs and keep them safe. After the eggs hatch, the male emu rears the chicks, raising them into adulthood.

Emus are especially important to some Indigenous groups across Australia. For many, they are creation beings and an important totem. They offer food and resources such as feathers, eggs, and ointments made from fat.

I suggest a new term – “Emu Man” – as an apt description of these deeply embedded Indigenous male roles. This unique and deeply Indigenous masculinity is highly valued and integral to healthy communities.

This Father’s Day, let’s all acknowledge and honour the unique place of Indigenous fathers, and celebrate their place in our families, and contributions to healthy communities.

Let the land blossom with Emu Men once more.

Bhiamie Williamson 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. ‘Emu Men’: a new way to recognise and celebrate Indigenous fathers – https://theconversation.com/emu-men-a-new-way-to-recognise-and-celebrate-indigenous-fathers-211741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shane Rogers, Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University

This Father’s Day you may be rolling out your best “dad jokes” and watching your children laugh (or groan). Maybe you’ll hear your own father, partner or friend crack a dad joke or two. You know the ones:

What is the most condescending animal? A pan-DUH!

Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything!

Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.

Read more:
The lowdown on laughter: from boosting immunity to releasing tension

What are dad jokes?

Dad jokes are a distinct style of humour consisting of puns that are simple, wholesome and often involve a cheesy delivery.

These jokes usually feature obvious wordplay and a straightforward punchline that leaves listeners either chuckling or emitting an exaggerated groan.

This corny brand of humour is popular. There are hundreds of websites, YouTube videos and TikToks dedicated to them. You can even play around with dad joke generators if you need some inspiration.

Read more:
Must love jokes: why we look for a partner who laughs (and makes us laugh)

Why are dad jokes so popular?

People seem to love dad jokes, partly because of the puns.

A study published earlier this year found people enjoy puns more than most other types of jokes. The authors also suggested that if you groan in response to a pun, this can be a sign you enjoy the joke, rather than find it displeasing.

Other research shows dad jokes work on at least three levels:

1. As tame puns

Humour typically violates a kind of boundary. At the most basic level, dad jokes only violate a language norm. They require specific knowledge of the language to “get” them, in a way a fart joke does not.

The fact that dad jokes are wholesome and inoffensive means dads can tell them around their children. But this also potentially makes them tame, which other people might call unfunny.

2. As anti-humour

Telling someone a pun that’s too tame to deserve being told out loud is itself a violation of the norms of joke-telling. That violation can in turn make a dad joke funny. In other words, a dad joke can be so unfunny this makes it funny – a type of anti-humour.

3. As weaponised anti-humour

Sometimes, the purpose of a dad joke is not to make people laugh but to make them groan and roll their eyes. When people tell dad jokes to teasingly annoy someone else for fun, dad jokes work as a kind of weaponised anti-humour.

The stereotypical scenario associated with dad jokes is exactly this: a dad telling a pun and then his kids rolling their eyes out of annoyance or cringing from embarrassment.

Read more:
Kids learn valuable life skills through rough-and-tumble play with their dads

Dad jokes help dads be dads

Dad jokes are part of a father’s toolkit for engaging with his loved ones, a way to connect through laughter. But as children grow older, the way they receive puns change.

Children at around six years old enjoy hearing and telling puns. These are generally innocent ones such as:

Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!

As children age and their language and reasoning abilities develop, their understanding of humour becomes more complex.

In adolescence, they may start to view puns as unfunny. This, however, doesn’t stop their fathers from telling them.

Instead, fathers can revel in the embarrassment their dad jokes can produce around their image-conscious and sensitive adolescent children.

In fact, in a study, one of us (Marc) suggests the playful teasing that comes with dad jokes may be partly why they are such a widespread cultural phenomenon.

This playful and safe teasing serves a dual role in father-child bonding in adolescence. Not only is it playful and fun, it can also be used to help educate the young person how to handle feeling embarrassed.

Helping children learn how to deal with embarrassment is no laughing matter. Getting better at this is a very important part of learning how to regulate emotions and develop resilience.

Modelling the use of humour also has benefits. Jokes can be a useful coping strategy during awkward situations – for instance, after someone says something awkward or to make someone laugh who has become upset.

Read more:
Dads’ time to shine online: how laughter can connect and heal

Dad jokes are more than punchlines

So, the next time you hear your father unleash a cringe-worthy dad joke, remember it’s not just about the punchline. It’s about creating connections and lightening the mood.

So go ahead, let out that groan, and share a smile with the one who proudly delivers the dad jokes. It’s all part of the fun.

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. How ‘dad jokes’ prepare your kids for a lifetime of embarrassment, according to psychology – https://theconversation.com/how-dad-jokes-prepare-your-kids-for-a-lifetime-of-embarrassment-according-to-psychology-212109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Mclaughlin, Adjunct Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Rates of cycling are falling in Australia, a national report released today shows. More people started riding bikes early in the pandemic, but that hasn’t lasted. The percentages of people who cycle are lower now than in 2011.

Less than one in six Australians report riding a bicycle weekly. Just over one in three have ridden in the past year.

During the time of pandemic restrictions, when there was less other traffic on the road, people perhaps felt safer to ride. Creating streets that are less busy, noisy and easier to ride on and cross safely encourages more people to cycle and walk.

Most people want to walk and ride more. Two-thirds of people want more transport funding to go into walking, cycling and public transport.

Even if you’re not interested in riding a bike, you should be worried about this decline. Walking and cycling are part of the solution to several of the most pressing issues facing our cities.

The decline isn’t surprising

The decline in cycling probably shouldn’t surprise us. In the past 40 years, the percentage of children who walk or ride to school has dropped from 75% to 25%.

Furthermore, cycling receives only about 2% of transport budgets. The United Nations Environment Program recommends 20% of transport funding should go to “non-motorised transport”.

Most of our transport funding goes into building wider and longer roads, embedding car dependency. However, making it easier to drive leads to more driving and ultimately more congestion, an effect known as induced demand. The problem even featured in an episode of the TV show Utopia.

Read more:
Cycling and walking can help drive Australia’s recovery – but not with less than 2% of transport budgets

Short trips by car – everyone loses

Most car journeys in Australian cities are short. Two-thirds of these trips could be done by bike in 15 minutes or less.

So, for example, of the 4.2 million daily car trips in Perth, 2.8 million are less than 5km. In Victoria, about half of all trips under 2km are driven – that’s more than 2 million a day.

These short car trips – such as the school drop-off, the short drive to the shops or the local park – are bad for public health, emissions and climate change, road safety and congestion. Walking and cycling can help solve all these problems.

Urban sprawl and car use have a high cost

Urban sprawl makes it less appealing to walk and cycle to our destination, further entrenching car dependency.

Urban sprawl costs governments too. Last week, the New South Wales Productivity Commission reported building homes closer to the city centre, rather than in outer suburbs, can save up to A$75,000 in infrastructure costs.

The extra costs of building farther away include providing schools, roads, parks, water and wastewater infrastructure.

Read more:
Urban sprawl is ‘not a dirty word’? If the priority is to meet all kids’ needs, it should be

3 transport priorities

For people to walk and cycle, we need to provide so-called healthy streets: not too noisy, easy to cross, with clean air and where people feel safe.

In 2022, the Asia-Pacific Society for Physical Activity and cycling advocacy group We Ride Australia proposed three transport priorities for Australia supported by a national alliance of 13 public health, transport, education and climate organisations.

1. Safer default speed limits

The current default speed limit of 50km/h in built-up areas is unsafe and leads to many deaths and injuries each year.

Default 30km/h speed limits in built-up areas are an immediate low-cost way to increase road safety.

Other countries are showing it can be done. For example, this month Wales is set to adopt a default speed limit of 20 miles an hour (32km/h).

Read more:
Busted: 5 myths about 30km/h speed limits in Australia

2. 1,500m school zones

Most students live within 3km of their school. That’s less than a 10-minute bike ride or a 30-minute walk.

However, to boost walking and cycling to school, parents need to feel it’s safe for their children to do so. The solution is to create safe walking and cycling routes with pedestrian priority crossings within 500–1,500m of schools. Streets along these routes are easy to cross and not too busy or noisy.

3. E-bike subsidies

Cutting carbon emissions to limit climate change and air pollution requires us to reduce private car use. Focusing purchase incentives solely on electric cars in Australia is slowing down the race to zero emissions. Indeed, research shows cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for achieving net-zero cities.

E-bikes assist the rider with pedalling, which makes them slightly faster than a regular bike. Typically e-bike users ride greater distances than regular push-bike users.

However, the upfront price of e-bikes is one of the main barriers to buying one.
Providing incentives for people to buy an e-bike would increase their uptake. Research shows a return on investment of $2–$3 for every $1 spent on these incentives.

What else can we do?

As well as the three transport priorities, we can of course take many more actions that would help increase walking and cycling. These measures include: boosting housing density, beautifying our neighbourhoods, programs to build people’s confidence and skills to walk and cycle, such as beginners bike tours, and more frequent public transport.

Read more:
12 best ways to get cars out of cities – ranked by new research

By prioritising walking and cycling for short trips, Australia can reduce the national combined cost of $67 billion a year of traffic injuries and deaths, traffic congestion, air pollution and physical inactivity.

Here are four actions you can take to help boost walking and cycling in your area:

1. look for opportunities where you can walk, wheel or cycle short journeys

2. join a community-led coalition, such as Better Streets

3. score your local neighbourhood for walkability using this tool

4. write to your local MP asking for the three transport priorities to be adopted.

Matthew ‘Tepi’ Mclaughlin receives research funding from the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund and The Government of Western Australia’s Healthway. He also receives salary support through the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. He is a member of the Asia-Pacific Society for Physical Activity and a member of the Active Transport Advisory Group of Westcycle.

Peter McCue receives an Australian Postgraduate Research Award to study a PhD. He is a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Advocacy Committee of the Asia-Pacific Society for Physical Activity.

– ref. Fewer of us are cycling – here’s how we can reverse the decline – https://theconversation.com/fewer-of-us-are-cycling-heres-how-we-can-reverse-the-decline-212260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grant Rigney, Indigenous Knowledge

The federal government has struck a new deal with most of the states in the nation’s largest river system. The agreement, announced last week, extends the $13 billion 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan to rebalance water allocated to the environment, irrigators and other uses.

Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek said the government has:

negotiated a way to ensure there is secure and reliable water for communities, agriculture, industry, First Nations and the environment.

But there is no mention of water for First Nations in the agreement. This follows a history of Indigenous peoples being shortchanged by Murray-Darling Basin planning. Yet again, this latest deal ignores First Nations’ interests, despite millennia of custodianship.

Read more:
Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be extended under a new agreement, without Victoria – but an uphill battle lies ahead

Shortchanged in reforms

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was agreed in 2012 to try and improve the health of the largest and most complex river system in Australia.

It was a historic compromise that sought to address the often conflicting demands of states, irrigators and the environment. But the plan overlooked First Nations rights to own, manage and control water on Country. The plan’s current provisions include only weak requirements for governments to “have regard to” First Nations values and uses.

In 2018 the Turnbull government put $40 million on the table for First Nations. This deal offered a glimmer of hope as it saw the then water minister David Littleproud and Labor water spokesperson Tony Burke commit the funds to support Basin First Nations’ investment in cultural and economic water entitlements.

But despite Labor renewing the commitment as part of its 2022 election platform, the money remains with government and has not been spent. Last week, Plibersek said that when Labor came into government there was “very little work done about how this might happen”, and that “it is proceeding”.

A commitment of $40 million is also a paltry amount in the context of the wider river basin. Water research firm Aither’s 2023 Water Market Report estimates the total value of water entitlements in the southern basin as $32.3 billion, so the government commitment of $40 million is only 0.1% of the total.

Read more:
Water injustice runs deep in Australia. Fixing it means handing control to First Nations

Shortchanged in the market

First Nations organisations have maintained pressure on the federal government and attempted to hold successive ministers to account for unnecessary delays in delivering the funding.

These delays mean the committed funds are decreasing in value.

When Littleproud initially committed the $40 million, the money was equally split between the northern and southern regions of the basin. Aither analysis conducted for the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations shows at today’s prices, the $20 million for Nations in the southern basin can only buy two-thirds of the water that could have been acquired in 2018. In 2023, buying the same volume of water that could have been purchased in 2018 will cost almost $11 million more.

Read more:
Terra nullius has been overturned. Now we must reverse aqua nullius and return water rights to First Nations people

A fair go: investment and reform needed

Limited government investment from other sources has supported some Basin First Nations to develop plans that could guide water use, to nourish their Country, maintain culture, and generate sustainable livelihoods.

However, realising these opportunities means they need water. In an overallocated river system, amid water scarcity and rising prices, this requires genuine political will coupled with necessary reforms and adequate funding.

As another drought looms, and water entitlement prices remain high, more than 40 Basin Nations must share very limited funding that can only acquire a tiny – and diminishing – fraction of their water needs. These deals demonstrate sustained and systemic bipartisan political indifference to First Nations’ inherent rights.

If Plibersek is sincere about delivering “secure and reliable water” for First Nations, she must listen to First Nations people, and actually deliver tangible outcomes. Governments must urgently commit adequate funding for First Nations in the basin to secure water that meets our needs, before future generations are priced out of the market forever.

Funding for cultural flows must be coupled with reform to transform the foundations of water governance and implement the Echuca Declaration. This declaration establishes cultural flows as the “inherent rights” of all First Nations in the Basin.

As a start, the Water Act 2007 needs to be strengthened to enshrine Basin Nations’ authority and ensure their voices are heard.

As the terms of the basin plan implementation are being reassessed and renegotiated, governments have an opportunity not only to listen, but also to deal First Nations in.

Grant Rigney is a citizen of the Ngarrindjeri Nation and Chair of the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN). He is also a member of the Committee on Aboriginal Water Interests and Chair of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority. Grant is a member of the Greens Party. MLDRIN receives funding from the Australian, Victorian and NSW governments.

Dr Erin O’Donnell is a settler who lives and works on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. She is a member of the Birrarung Council, appointed by the Victorian Minister for Water. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE230100622). She has received funding in the past from the state government of Victoria, the Murray Lower Darling Rivers (MLDRIN), the Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations, the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organizations.

Fred Hooper is a Murrawarri man from the Murrawarri Nation. Fred is the Chair of the Murrawarri Peoples Council and former Chair of the Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations (NBAN). He is also a member of the Blak Sovereign Movement. NBAN has previously received funding from the federal and state governments.

Dr Lana D. Hartwig is a settler who lives and works on unceded Yugambeh Country. She is employed by Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN). She has received funding in the past from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organizations.

– ref. Labor’s new Murray-Darling Basin Plan deal entrenches water injustice for First Nations – https://theconversation.com/labors-new-murray-darling-basin-plan-deal-entrenches-water-injustice-for-first-nations-212261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt McGuire, Dean, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University

The federal government has been asking for “bold ideas” to “reimagine” the future of Australian higher education for decades to come.

An interim report for the Universities Accord was released in July. Feedback on this draft is due today.

While there have been many ideas floated by commentators and the review panel (such as a new national university for regional students and a levy on international student fees), there has been less discussion about what our university education system is for.

We think there is an urgent need to talk about how higher education can fuel a “knowledge economy” – an economy based on technical and scientific advances. This is crucial if we are going to move past our economic reliance on carbon.

We are not the only ones calling for a shift. On Thursday, Australian Academy of Science president Chennupati Jagadish told ABC’s Radio National “we need to move towards a knowledge-based economy […] do we really want to be so vulnerable as an economy and as a country?”

Read more:
The Universities Accord draft contains ‘spiky’ ideas, but puts a question mark over the spikiest one of all

What is a knowledge economy?

A knowledge economy is focused on activities that accelerate the pace of technical and scientific advances. Research and development generate products and services which lead to the formation of new companies, new industries and new economic opportunities.

This requires both the discovery of new technologies and the application of these technologies to new and existing industries, in both domestic and international markets.

Australia has a strong history here. We have invented Wi-Fi, solar panels and cochlear implants.

But we need to do more.

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

Economic complexity

The Atlas of Economic Complexity is produced at Harvard University. It is better for countries to be ranked as more complex. The assumption is the more complex a country’s exports are, the less exposed they will be to cheap substitutes from rival nations.

According to 2021 data, we ranked 93rd out of 133 countries, down from 60th in 2000. This is way behind countries such as Japan (first), Germany (fourth), the United Kingdom (eigth) and the United States (14th).

As the Atlas notes, “⁨Australia⁩ is ⁨less complex than expected⁩ for its income level”.

Another huge ongoing area of weakness for Australia is our lack of investment in research. As the interim report notes with concern, Australia’s university research “has become too reliant on uncertain international student funding”.

Currently, Australia invests only 1.8% of its GDP in research and development. The OECD average is 2.7% and other countries invest significantly more. For example, Germany (3.1%), Japan (3.3%), the United States (3.5%), South Korea (4.9%) and Israel (5.6%).

As Professor Jagadish told Radio National on Thursday, Australian investment in research as a share of GDP has declined each year since 2008. “We cannot tolerate [this] if we want to stay as a smart country”.

Translating our research

In a report on innovation released earlier this year, the Productivity Commission noted Australia was a “small open economy with limited (business and public) research capacity [so] many ideas and technologies will come to Australia from overseas”.

This means our efforts should focus on how we apply and encourage the uptake of new knowledge or “knowledge diffusion”. This is about how we make the most of new technologies. An example could be the use of new accounting software to free up staff time, shorten the billing cycle or expand the analytical capacity of a business.

According to the 2022 Global Innovation Index, while Australia ranks 25th for its innovation capabilities, it is way back in 72nd for “knowledge diffusion”.

The best countries in the world for knowledge diffusion are Ireland, Finland, Israel and the Netherlands. Australia should spend more time studying the nature and performance of these small, open economies.

What is the role for universities?

Universities have a crucial role to play in securing this future for Australia. Their mission is already to discover new knowledge through research and disseminate this through teaching and learning.

Australia could learn more by studying US regions like Boston and San Francisco (where there are top-class research universities) and their impact on entrepreneurialism in their local economies. Geography matters when cutting-edge technology firms are looking to attract talented graduates, collaborate with experts and commercialise research innovation.

But it is not just STEM disciplines who will need to be involved. While science and technology are key when it comes to the discovery and development phases, the humanities and social sciences are needed to adapt and translate the research.

The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report notes how the most important skills for workers over the next five years will be analytical thinking and creative thinking and then technological literacy.

Analytical and creative thinking are key to disciplines that dominate the humanities, from history to political science and economics.

What should the Universities Accord do?

In its initial draft, the Universities Accord notes the need to promote “commercial use” of Australian research capability and to “encourage” universities to “move towards” research translation.

In its final report in December, we suggest there is far greater emphasis on the transformation needed to ensure Australia is sustainable and productive into the future.

This means adequate government funding of university research as well as a focus on the skills needed to come up with new ideas and products and then apply them in real-world contexts.

In doing so, the review panel and the government should not forget this will require a focus on humanities and social science skills, as well as the more obvious STEM skill sets.

Read more:
We solve problems in 30 days through ‘research sprints’: other academics can do this too

Matt McGuire is a Board member of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.

Catharine Coleborne was President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH) between 2020 and 2022.

– ref. Australia needs a ‘knowledge economy’ fuelled by scientists and arts graduates: here’s why – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-a-knowledge-economy-fuelled-by-scientists-and-arts-graduates-heres-why-212366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rico Merkert, Professor in Transport and Supply Chain Management and Deputy Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS), University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney

The government’s decision to deny Qatar Airways the right to fly an extra 21 flights per week into Australia’s three biggest cities might just be returning Australia to the old days where we protected Australia’s national carrier at the expense of Australians.

For more than 15 years I’ve had the privilege to research and teach airline strategy in the context of global aviation bilateral air service agreements.

These agreements are essentially trade deals between the 193 governments that are signatories to the 1944 Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation.

The agreements allow designated airlines in the two signatory countries to operate air services connecting them in accordance with the reciprocity principle used in trade agreements, which is broadly: “I’ll let you in if you let me in”.

Australia has traditionally tried to deregulate international aviation, to make air travel easier for both Australians and visitors.

But in July, in an initially announced decision, Transport Minister Catherine King rejected an application for Qatar to double its flights into Australia by providing what amounted to an extra flight a day into Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.

After being asked about the decision, the minister provided four different justifications, one of which was the “national interest”.

Read more:
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Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones this week expanded on this reasoning, saying he didn’t want to drive ticket prices down to the point at which it was “unsustainable to run an airline” and that having Qantas occasionally make a profit was “actually a good news story”.

On its face, this suggests the government is making decisions about landing rights in order to protect the profits of Qantas – a private company it hasn’t owned since 1995. This would be a seismic shift in Australia’s international aviation policy.

A case could be made that this is in breach of the Chicago convention. Regardless, it is damaging to Australia’s international reputation and Australia’s economy.

$1 billion per year in economic damage

By my conservative estimate, the decision will cost Australia’s economy about $1 billion per year in lost income from tourism, business travel and freight.

By my conservative estimate, the decision will cost Australia’s economy about $1 billion per year in lost income from tourism, VRF (visiting friends and relatives) as well as business travel and freight.

My calculations suggest capacity on the Kangaroo Route between Australia and Europe is only back to 70% of where it was before COVID, allowing current operators such as the Emirates-Qantas alliance to charge much more than they could before the pandemic.

Qantas announced last week it would add 250,000 seats to its international network, but not a single one was on flights to Europe.

The extra Qatar Airways flights would have also gone on to New Zealand, adding further capacity to that route and cutting prices for flights across the Tasman.

And it’s not only Qatar Airways. Turkish Airlines, through the Turkish government, has asked for permission to increase of the frequency of its Australian flights from four to 14 a week, providing daily services to Melbourne and Sydney.

Turkey hasn’t yet received an answer.

Extra costs in reputational damage

The message Australia is sending is a dangerous one.

When COVID hit in 2020 and airlines including Qantas grounded their fleets, Qatar Airways temporarily became Australia’s “de facto international airline”, getting Australians home who might otherwise have been stranded. During the pandemic, some Qatar flights arrived in Australia with just 20 seats filled.

Qatar might have expected Australians to remember this and keep flying with them, and it has applied for enough flights to allow it to happen.

By denying Qatar this opportunity (and denying many Australians the opportunity to travel to Europe via Doha), Australia has shown it is prepared to be ungracious, and made it easier for other countries to treat it in the same fashion.

Australia’s number two domestic airline Virgin Australia, is planning a share market float. By appearing to signal it is prepared to go out on a limb to support Qantas against competitors, Australia has perhaps unintentionally sent a powerful message to potential investors – that Virgin’s opponent gets protection it does not.

The weak case for offering Qantas protection

There might be a case for offering Qantas protection if it was at risk of needing a taxpayer-funded bailout to stay afloat. But Qantas has returned to profit – a record A$2.5 billion profit in the year to June, after doubling its revenue.

There might also be a case (and King has made this case) that Qantas needs to be protected because it has just purchased new, quieter “better for the environment” planes on which it will need to see a return and will need to spend a further A$12 billion to A$20 billion on fleet renewal to reach its net-zero target.

But for years (including after last week’s profit announcement) Qantas has been returning capital to its shareholders by share buy-backs instead of using it to buy planes. It thinks it can do both, and perhaps it is making so much profit that it can, but if it can’t do both, it can ease off on returning capital to shareholders.

Another argument (also put by King) is that supporting Qantas will support “long-term, well-paid, secure jobs by Australians in the aviation sector.”

But much of Qantas’s international skilled work is already done offshore including on its premier QF1 flight to London which is maintained by crews from the United Kingdom.

Is there something we don’t know about?

Unless there is some sort of hidden rationale, the decision to deny Qatar Airways extra flights seems inexplicable; and given Australia’s history, unAustralian.

It is important to recognise that these are trade agreements of considerable magnitude and that decisions taken by Australia invite retaliation.

As I keep telling my students, these seemingly-boring bilateral air service agreements can have big consequences if mishandled.

Years of worth of research and international best practice indicate that an open approach to air rights delivers the best economic outcomes, especially for the country doing the opening.

More trade results in a more prosperous Australia which is good for Australian travellers, Australian businesses, and ultimately Australian airlines, too.

Australia used to tell the rest of the world that trade was good. It would need to have a very good reason for behaving differently when it came to air travel.

Rico Merkert receives funding from the ARC and various industry partners. He loves to work with and for airlines, including Qantas and Virgin Australia.

– ref. What price placing the interests of Qantas ahead of Qatar Airways? $1bn per year and a new wave of protectionism of legacy carriers – https://theconversation.com/what-price-placing-the-interests-of-qantas-ahead-of-qatar-airways-1bn-per-year-and-a-new-wave-of-protectionism-of-legacy-carriers-212495

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace McQuilten, Associate professor, RMIT University

When Arts Minister Tony Burke launched the bill introducing Creative Australia, the new organisation at the heart of the Revive Cultural Policy, he did so with a bold statement:

Creative Australia recognises that artists and creatives throughout our great landscape, from metropolitan cities to the red desert, are workers. In exchange for what they give us, they should have safe workplaces and be remunerated fairly.

In 2022, we surveyed 702 visual and craft artists and arts workers, making this the largest single scholarly survey of this cohort in Australia to date. We were interested to find out the ways artists combined income from various sources, within and beyond their art practice.

Our new research identifies three key areas that need to be addressed to ensure fair remuneration for all visual and craft artists. We need to acknowledge the likely under-counting of the number of artists in Australia, the gendered nature of this population, and the complex ways artists earn an income.

Read more:
‘Arts are meant to be at the heart of our life’: what the new national cultural policy could mean for Australia – if it all comes together

Counting the artists

It is impossible to provide a single estimate of the number of visual and craft artists in Australia as different surveys use different definitions of “artist”.

According to the 2021 ABS census, there are 6,793 visual art and craft professionals in Australia, 64% of whom identified as female.

But the criteria used to count being an artist as a profession in the census require art to be the “main job” of the respondent in the week before the census. This leads to an under-counting of artists, as most visual art and craft artists support themselves through other work – either related to their artwork, such as in academia or in arts management, or in an entirely different field. As such, they would not be identified in the census as visual or craft artists.

A more accurate estimate is likely provided by the ABS Survey of Cultural Participation. In this survey, 106,000 Australians reported earning some income from a visual art activity, and 94,800 from a craft activity, in the 2021–22 financial year. These figures cannot be totalled as those engaged in both activities were counted separately. Nonetheless, at a minimum the survey identifies an additional 100,000 visual and craft artists not captured within the census definition.

If all artists are to be remunerated fairly, it is critical Creative Australia ensures support mechanisms extend to the around 100,000 visual and craft artists for whom art making is not their primary occupation.

The gendered nature of the industry

In our survey, we did not impose any requirements that respondents devote a certain amount of time to their art making, nor earn a particular level of income. Instead, we left it open to respondents to self-identify as an artist.

This inclusive definition produced a much higher proportion of female artists than the census, with 73% identifying as female. This aligns with other estimates of the gender breakdown of the industry. The ABS Cultural Participation Survey estimated 67% of people who earned income from visual art activity and 79% who derived income from craft activity were female.

In our survey, 3.1% of respondents identified as non-binary, and so we were not able to collect enough data for further analysis of this cohort.

We found a distinctive experience of female artists compared to their male counterparts, suggesting policy responses need to recognise the gendered nature of art making.

Female artists in our survey reported an average annual income of A$8,507 from their arts practice, compared to the annual income reported by male artists of $22,906.

While earning 37% of male artists’ earnings, women spent 76% of the time male artists spend on their practice (29 hours compared with 38 hours per week).

So, male artists earn more from their art practice than female artists, and proportionately even more when accounting for the hours spent on their practice.

Our research suggests the shadow cohort of visual and craft artists who do not show up in census results are predominantly female. The gendered nature of the visual arts and craft sector must be front of mind in the design of remuneration policies for artists undertaken by Creative Australia.

Read more:
The gender pay gap is wider in the arts than in other industries

How artists earn a living

For many artists, the practice of visual art and craft making does not readily align with traditional concepts of an employee and is not attached to a single workplace.

In our survey, only 30% of respondents spent 100% of their working time as an artist, with 60% receiving at least some income from non-artistic work within and outside the arts sector.

The life of an artist is more likely to look like a combination of multiple part-time, casual and contract jobs, with occasional grant income and artwork sales.

Many visual art and craft artists conduct their practice from their home and operate as a sole trader. For many, outside work is the only way they can support their art practice.

Achieving the goal of remunerating artists fairly is not just about payment for art making. It is also about the other work these artists must undertake to make a living, much of which consists of part-time employment elsewhere in the arts and cultural sector.

Any policy interventions from Creative Australia to support visual and craft artists’ incomes will need to take a sector-wide approach.

Read more:
Male artists dominate galleries. Our research explored if it’s because ‘women don’t paint very well’ – or just discrimination

Grace McQuilten receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project ‘Ambitious & Fair: Strategies for a Sustainable Visual Arts Sector.’

Chloë Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project ‘Ambitious & Fair: Strategies for a Sustainable Visual Arts Sector.’

Jenny Lye receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)”

Kate MacNeill receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)

Marnie Badham receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage Project ‘Ambitious & Fair: Strategies for a Sustainable Visual Arts Sector.’ She is affiliated with Res Artis.

– ref. Under-counting, a gendered industry, and precarious work: the challenges facing Creative Australia in supporting visual artists – https://theconversation.com/under-counting-a-gendered-industry-and-precarious-work-the-challenges-facing-creative-australia-in-supporting-visual-artists-208021

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

Thank goodness for Senate committees. This week, they’ve proved, yet again, to be worth their weight in accountability gold.

On Monday, at an inquiry into the cost of living, senators from both sides gave Qantas boss Alan Joyce a salutary roughing-up, over everything from yet-to-be-returned flight credits to the government’s blocking of extra Qatar Airways flights and Joyce’s contacts with Anthony Albanese. (Subsequently, Qantas has announced it is removing the expiry date on the COVID travel credits.)

On Tuesday, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References
Committee, which is probing the operation of the federal Freedom of Information laws, heard disturbing evidence from former FOI commissioner Leo Hardiman, who months ago resigned only a year into his five-year term.

Hardiman detailed a litany of obstacles in resourcing and culture in the administration of FOI, which he could not overcome.

The regular Senate estimates hearings, which grill bureaucrats, are welcomed and feared, depending where people sit in the political process.

It was Senate inquiries, it might be remembered, that did the deep diving into the PwC scandal and the entrails of other consultancy firms that receive huge amounts of taxpayer money. Labor backbencher Deb O’Neill and the Greens’ Barbara Pocock were forensic in their questioning.

Like most governments, this one arrived in office promising more accountability and transparency. Also like others, in practice it has a penchant for control and secrecy.

It did set up the National Anti-Corruption Commission, and for that it has been rightly praised.

Even there, however, there’s arguably too much secrecy – and that’s leaving aside the minimalist approach to public hearings specified in the NACC legislation.

Surely it will be a problem if we are not told what inquiries the NACC is pursuing.

Serious allegations demand investigation, but if it’s not known whether the NACC has taken the matter up (or passed it to another agency), what can a government do? It can hardly set up another inquiry, given this information vacuum.

Once the NACC has decided on an investigation, there’s a solid case for it to say so – which it has the discretion to do.

Whatever one thinks of secrecy around the NACC, there are plenty of other areas where it is clearly excessive.

Rex Patrick is a former senator who started with the Nick Xenophon Team and later became an independent. He lost his seat in 2022. While in parliament, Patrick fought the Coalition government’s secrecy; out of parliament he is in full pursuit of its Labor successor. He’s able to devote himself to poking numerous bears thanks, in part, to financial backing from business figure Ian Melrose.

Patrick defeated, in a legal judgment, the Morrison government’s attempt to keep secret all the documents of the National Cabinet. After the election, he was still given the runaround, but finally he’s nailed that one. National Cabinet documents are now treated according to ordinary freedom-of-information provisions.

Currently, Patrick is after Anthony Albanese’s official diary, Treasury’s briefing to Treasurer Jim Chalmers on the Stage 3 tax cuts, material on AUKUS and much else besides.

The PM’s diary is particularly interesting. In opposition, then shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus sought then Attorney-General George Brandis’ diary and finally, after some trouble, extracted it.

But Patrick’s attempt to peek more deeply into Albanese’s schedule was blocked, as was another application from the Australian Financial Review.

In a submission to the Senate FOI inquiry, Patrick noted the reason given was that processing “would unreasonably divert” staff resources and also unreasonably interfere with the PM’s work.

Patrick said this “flew in the face” of the Federal Court decision in the Dreyfus case, in which more days of the relevant diary were sought (causing more work for fewer staff). The matter has gone to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The reluctance to publish the PM’s diary is at odds with the release of those of most ministers (including Chalmers and Foreign Minister Penny Wong).

Why should we have leaders’ diaries? Among other reasons, because they show who has access to a government’s top decision-maker. In Albanese’s case, it might even yield the odd clue about his relationship with Alan Joyce – who, incidentally, has been asked by those pesky senators to supply dates of any Qantas contact with the PM over the Qatar matter.

Meanwhile, Greens Senator David Shoebridge is trying to get hold of a report on the national security threats global warming poses. Albanese before the election promised an inquiry into this, and later commissioned one from the Office of National Intelligence. Now, apparently even a redacted version is too sensitive to release – because of national security.

Other crossbench senators, including independent David Pocock, have been interested in this report too. But a move in the Senate to force the issue was stymied by a cosy alliance of government and Coalition. Interesting companionships can be formed in the name of confidentiality.

Separate efforts in the Senate by Shoebridge and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts to obtain documents relating to the March ditching of a Taipan helicopter at Jervis Bay failed. The government said there was an inquiry, which we haven’t seen. Subsequently, another Taipan crashed off the Queensland coast, with multiple fatalities.

Then there’s the politically delicate issue of the passenger manifests of VIP flights. Once, destinations and passenger lists of these flights were routinely made available by governments. That stopped under the Morrison government, and the suppression remains. A review, chaired by the Australian Federal Police and launched in 2022, recommended continued secrecy.

Again, national security is the excuse. But it’s not convincing, review or not. Knowing, well after the event, that a PM took a couple of mates, relatives or political contacts on a flight can give insights into a leader’s use of their privileges, or reveal who’s in a PM’s ear.

To some extent, this secrecy has been stymied. Passenger lists might not be available but destinations of VIP flights are, through tracking apps. At present Deputy PM Richard Marles is under criticism for taking VIP flights to Avalon, near his Geelong base, rather than catching a commercial flight to Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport.

At Tuesday’s Senate Committee hearing, Hardiman said: “FOI may not be considered a sexy subject matter or as being of life-changing importance. […] however, the FOI system is an important adjunct to the doctrine of responsible government inherent in our Westminster system of government.”

At the moment, the problem is not just the serious flaws of the FOI regime, but that the government is not living up to its own commitments to the people’s right to know.

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. Grattan on Friday: It can be a battle to get information from the Albanese government – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-it-can-be-a-battle-to-get-information-from-the-albanese-government-212606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vishal Mehrotra, Assistant Professor, Bond University

In what has been called the most important legal case in the history of the Australian automotive industry, the Federal Court has rejected a $650 million compensation claim against Mercedes-Benz for replacing its traditional dealership model with a fixed-price, direct-to-customer agency model.

It’s a decision that could transform the way roughly a million Australians buy a new car each year – an experience that has been consistent for decades, with shopping around for value and haggling over the price part of the ritual.

Cracks began to appear in this sales model in 2014 with the arrival in Australia of electric car maker Tesla, which sells directly to customers at set prices and has only a handful of bricks-and-mortar shopfronts. Honda followed suit in 2021, switching to fixed prices at its dealerships.

But after Mercedes-Benz shifted to fixed-price sales in January 2022, 38 of its 49 Australian dealerships banded together to seek compensation for changes they argued decimated the value of their businesses.

Read more:
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The parties spent seven weeks in court in 2022. Federal Court judge Jonathan Beach had been expected to deliver his decision at the beginning of the year. It was finally handed down yesterday, after a nine-month delay that highlights the significance of the case.

Justice Beach’s verdict, which runs to 567 pages, is decisive. It dismisses all the dealers’ claims against Mercedes-Benz, describing the case as “forensically complex although legally straightforward”.

Why dealers took Mercedes-Benz to court

Dealerships are independent businesses. As official franchisees, Mercedes-Benz would sell them vehicles at wholesale prices. They would the resell the vehicles at a price negotiated with customers. This allowed them to set their own profit margins.

The basis for the dealers’ compensation claim was that Mercedes-Benz allegedly bullied them into signing “agency agreements” that upended this model.

The new agreements meant Mercedes-Benz took control of the sales process. It retained ownership of the vehicles and set the sales prices, paying dealers a fixed commission on sales. A buyer could buy a car online. Their only contact with a dealership might be to pick up their new vehicle.

The dealers argued this had stripped them of valuable “customer goodwill”.

Goodwill is an intangible asset that represents the value of a business over its book value (based on assets and liabilities). This value can come from brand, reputation, customer and employee relations, intellectual property, or a loyal customer base.

With dealer showroom traffic already declining, dealers contended that reducing their interaction with customers would dramatically affect their profitability.

Mercedes-Benz’s lawyers argued the manufacturer was entitled to make this change, which was not a breach of Australia’s franchise code, and that it acted in good faith, needing to respond to rivals changing their own sales models.

Claims dismissed

While Justice Beach said the dealers’ case was “successful on many issues of fact”, it failed on fundamental issues of law. He dismissed all claims against Mercedes-Benz.

His judgement upholds Mercedes-Benz’s right to cancel its existing franchisee contracts and replace them with agency agreements. He rejected the claim that dealers were forced to sign the new agreements under economic duress.

Just because a dealer was financially worse off under the agency model compared with the dealer model, he said, that did not mean Mercedes-Benz had acted unconscionably or failed to act in good faith.

He also rejected the goodwill claim, because there is no “right at law for a franchisee to be compensated for goodwill on non-renewal of a franchise agreement”.

This judgement has potentially far-reaching consequences for all franchise agreements. It seems to expand the boundaries around what franchisers can and cannot do under their agreements, and what “goodwill” means at the end of such agreements.

In a telling statement, Justice Beach suggested the case brought by the dealerships “although unsuccessful, concerns statutory unconscionable conduct”. He unambiguously stated that “further consideration needs to be given to the terms of the franchising code and possible modification”. This may have important implications for the federal government, which this month embarked on an independent review of the Australian Franchising Code of Conduct with a view to evaluating its current fitness for purpose.

What does this mean for customers?

While many buyers will welcome fixed prices, evidence of their widespread adoption and appeal remains mixed. Fixed-price sales do not appear to blunt Tesla’s momentum, with the Tesla Model Y zooming up the charts to become Australia’s third-best-selling car.

Honda, however, in March 2023 reported a 72% decline, recording its lowest new car sales in its history in Australia.

Read more:
Who’s holding back electric cars in Australia? We’ve long known the answer – and it’s time to clear the road

What’s more, some industry experts say squeezing dealerships out of the sales process could lead to higher prices, given the elimination of price competition between rival dealerships.

Our case study of Mercedes-Benz’s new sales strategy points to the fact that while Australians are growing more comfortable with buying big-ticket items without face-to-face interactions, it is too early to provide a verdict on whether the move to an agency model is good or bad overall for car buyers.

The court verdict makes one thing clear. All parties need to reset and refine their roles and responsibilities in a rapidly evolving consumer landscape. While we know that for the forseeable future there will always be plenty of people lining up to buy new cars, the judgement raises the question of whether their days of buying them from standalone dealerships are numbered.

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. Mercedes-Benz’s legal win over car dealers could transform the way new cars are sold in Australia – https://theconversation.com/mercedes-benzs-legal-win-over-car-dealers-could-transform-the-way-new-cars-are-sold-in-australia-212189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute

“To ensure Australian consumers continue to have access to reliable electricity supplies, it’s critical that planned investments in transmission, generation and storage projects are urgently delivered.”

This week, we heard one of the strongest warnings yet from Daniel Westerman, head of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

So far, media coverage has framed his comments as a warning about the anticipated angry El Niño summer, which is likely to drive energy-intensive aircon use even as our coal plants become less and less reliable.

But this isn’t what the warning is really about. It’s about transmission lines and our sluggish pace of change. Australia’s emissions are falling much more slowly than we’d like to think, if we omit the sometimes controversial land use sector. We’re down just 1.6% below 2005 levels.

Solar and wind farm investment has slowed markedly. This is because we don’t have the right grid – yet. Building the transmission infrastructure needed to slash emissions by 2030 means acting much faster than government is used to.

These aren’t ordinary times. We can’t act as if they are.

Read more:
Australia’s energy market operator is worried about the grid’s reliability. But should it be?

The grid will withstand summer – but bigger threats lie ahead

It’s quite likely the grid will withstand this summer, as long as maintenance is done to keep the old coal clunkers running and to ensure gas peaking plants are ready for times of highest demand. We also have the reserve system, whereby big energy users can be paid not to consume electricity during the hottest days.

There’s no shortage of solar and wind resources in Australia. And there’s no shortage of solar and wind farm projects waiting to be built. But the great renewable build is stalling – not because there’s no demand for cheap power, but because regulatory approvals are too slow and there’s no way to get the power to the cities and heavy industries.

The real problem is we’re not moving fast enough to build the unsexy but vital infrastructure we need: new transmission lines. The old grid was built around big power stations, from hydro in the Snowy Mountains to coal plants near coal mines, with transmission lines connecting them to cities.

But renewable-rich zones are often in different places. What’s more, shifting to a grid full of renewables means building more interconnectors between states, so on a big day for Victoria’s mooted offshore wind farms, for instance, the surplus power can be sent to South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland too.

What’s the delay? After all, we were able to build transmission lines when the current grid was taking shape.

Read more:
A clean energy grid means 10,000km of new transmission lines. They can only be built with community backing

A big part of the issue is community pushback and process. Local farmers and communities are resisting many of the planned new transmission lines.

If we had the luxury of time, it might be possible to get strong community support. But we don’t. Our coal plants are on the way out and no one is going to build a new one. The barrier between us and a clean energy future is getting transmission and storage built, fast.

Labor went to the 2022 election with a $20 billion plan to build the transmission lines envisaged by AEMO in its latest integrated system plan.

Westerman last year listed the five most urgent transmission links:

1. HumeLink to bring Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro power to the grid

2. the Sydney Ring, designed to improve connections between New South Wales’ four largest population centres, Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and Wollongong

3. transmission links from the New England renewable energy zone

4. the Marinus link to better connect Tasmania’s wealth of hydro with the mainland

5. the KerangLink interconnector between Victoria and New South Wales.

Most of these projects have had their own issues, ranging from lengthy approval processes, to heated community calls to put lines underground, to cost blowouts.

One problem is the range of government agencies involved. There’s no single body responsible for making these nation-building projects happen as quickly and happily as possible.

How can we speed up these vital projects?

Here are a few ideas:

• compensate affected landholders. Farmers who agree to host transmission towers get paid. To smooth the build, governments could bite the bullet and expand whom they compensate. Or, as with many other major infrastructure projects, as a last resort, they could compulsorily acquire the easements

• give one agency the responsibility and authority for making these essential projects happen

• ramp up regional training centres to produce the skilled electrical workers we’ll need.

We’ve come a fair way down the road in our efforts to wean ourselves off coal, and, eventually, gas-fired electricity. But it could all be for nought if we don’t get transmission sorted as soon as possible.

Read more:
5 policy decisions from recent history that led to today’s energy crisis

Tony Wood owns shares through his superannuation in companies that may have an interest in these issues. Tony Wood’s employer, Grattan Institute, has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is found at www.grattan.edu.au

– ref. Unsexy but vital: why warnings over grid reliability are really about building more transmission lines – https://theconversation.com/unsexy-but-vital-why-warnings-over-grid-reliability-are-really-about-building-more-transmission-lines-212603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodi McAlister, Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin University

The last decade has seen a widespread rise in the popularity of audio media. Podcasts began to emerge during the 2000s, aided first by technology like the iPod and the launch of dedicated podcast apps, and then the publication of the enormously popular serialised true crime podcast Serial in 2014.

Audiobooks similarly enjoyed a resurgence, abetted by new technology that allowed them to be downloaded to devices. They are now one of the fastest growing sectors of the publishing industry.

Is it any wonder that erotica and pornography have also found their way into the audio space?

Audio erotica apps

A typical piece of audio erotica tells the story of a sexual encounter between two or more protagonists. Some feature extensive narrative build-up, some jump right to the action – and some feature stories with narrative build-up which allow listeners to jump right to the action.

Stories range in length from 30 seconds to over an hour, and range across a broad narrative spectrum. Everything from cosy nights in between established couples to encounters between strangers in public places to erotic takes on Greek mythology.

While audio erotica has existed for some time in enclaves on platforms like Reddit, it is now predominantly associated with dedicated apps. Two of the most prominent are Dipsea (founded 2018 by Gina Gutierrez and Faye Keegan) and Quinn (founded 2019 by Caroline Spiegel).

Both apps were founded by women, centre women in their marketing, and focus on women as their core audience, although not their only audience: Dipsea’s FAQ states it was “designed with women in mind […] but the app is a safe space for all perspectives, preferences, and genders”, while Quinn is “made by women, for the world”.

Dipsea, Quinn and many other audio erotica apps are rooted in an assumption that mainstream visual porn is often misogynistic, exploitative and unfriendly – if not actively hostile – to women. They position their erotic audio content as an alternative rooted in self-knowledge and empowerment.

Read more:
Fifty shades of erotica: how sex in literature went mainstream

Dipsea imagines itself as “an empowering experience that leaves room for your imagination”, while Quinn describes their app as “a place to get to know yourself outside of conventional pornography”.

Both apps liberally use the language of wellness, and have been framed as “Headspace, but make it horny”.

There are many different kinds of audio erotica stories. The apps have detailed tagging and metadata systems, so listeners can seek out the content they desire (at the time of writing, the top three most frequent tags on Quinn are “praise”, “boyfriend”, and “MDom”).

Broadly speaking, though, there are two main kinds of audio erotica: third person erotica, with two (or sometimes more) performers enacting a scene, and second person erotica, where one performer directly addresses the listener.

Intimacy in audio erotica

Audio erotica often creates a sense of closeness between speakers and listeners. Perhaps the most obvious reason for this is because it tells stories about intimate, emotionally-charged sexual encounters.

Another important reason for this is rooted in the technologies associated with audio. In particular, binaural recording techniques (where sound is recorded in three dimensions) and headphones bring the voice of a physically distant speaker into close contact with the listener, often producing the sensation of someone whispering in your ear.

Audios that feature a performer addressing the listener can produce a particularly intimate effect. In Dipsea’s Tender Worship, Patrick confesses to the listener “I feel so connected with you”. In Quinn’s Netflix and Chill, Anonyfun whispers: “I love taking care of you.”

Intimacy is created when performers speak to listeners in a casual familiar tone, tell jokes, chuckle, mumble, yawn, whisper, trip over their words and call listeners terms of endearment like “baby” and “sweetheart”.

These audios also often feature performers asking a question, followed by a few quiet beats, in which the listener is invited to imagine their own response. All of these elements create a fantasy scenario that invites listeners to imagine they are involved in an intimate encounter with the speaker.

Intimacy in ‘Boyfriend Experience’ audio erotica

One of the most popular genres of second-person audio erotica is the “Boyfriend Experience”. Audios in this genre further intensify intimacy, partly because they typically take place in a cosy, gentle and comfortable and care-filled domestic space.

Quinn refers to these audios as having “sweet, loving vibes”. Listeners hear sounds like fireplaces crackling, rain on window panes, bath taps running, bed linens ruffling and sock-clad feet padding across floorboards, which create a cocooning, warm soundscape.

Against this cosy backdrop, the boyfriend experience fantasy unfolds: the story is about a man taking care of a woman (the implied listener). These stories often open with the boyfriend character taking care of household work and readying the home for the woman’s return. In these stories, the boyfriend character is entirely focused on emotionally supporting and sexually satisfying his partner.

For example, Dipsea’s In the Bath features the gentle sounds of Killian preparing a warm bath and tenderly whispering: “lean back and just relax, let me pamper you now. Close your eyes, beautiful. You deserve this.”

In this fantasy domestic world, it’s the male speaker who takes on the bulk of the physical and emotional work of intimacy in order to prioritise the pleasure of his partner.

This notably contrasts with the well-documented reality where women often take on a “second shift” of unrecognised domestic and emotional labour in their partnerships with men. So this is a fantasy of intimacy as well as of being cared for, instead of being in the often maternal position of carer.

There are lots of reasons why people enjoy boyfriend experience audios and audio erotica more broadly. These kinds of intimacy – intimacies which, perhaps, many people do not find in mainstream visual porn – are central to its appeal.

It’s not just the content of the narratives which create this (although, in the case of the boyfriend experience, intimacy is very important to the story), but also the audio mode of delivery.

After all, is there anything more intimate than someone whispering a story into your ear?

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. How audio erotica creates the intimate fantasy of a boyfriend experience, without needing a boyfriend – https://theconversation.com/how-audio-erotica-creates-the-intimate-fantasy-of-a-boyfriend-experience-without-needing-a-boyfriend-210964

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leigh Signal, Professor in Fatigue Management and Sleep Health/Associate Dean, Research, Massey University

For most of us, the prospect of a long-haul flight is exciting, mixed with a few nerves. We’re off somewhere different – perhaps a holiday, maybe to catch up with friends or family. Even work can be more interesting when you’re in a new location.

Of course, you want to arrive fully rested and ready to go. But by its very definition, a long-haul flight involves travelling for a long period of time, often more than 12 hours. If you’re on a flight from New York to Singapore, it can be close to 19 hours.

All that time you’re confined in a seat that’s supposed to recline but feels like it hardly moves, while the seat in front seems to recline ten times lower than yours.

So, what can you do to get a a decent rest?

Accept the situation

The first tip for sleep in this setting is to relax your expectations a little.

Humans are just not well designed to sleep in an almost upright position. Unless you’re lucky to fly in a class with a lie-flat seat, you’re very unlikely to step off a long-haul flight having had a solid eight hours of sleep.

Research by colleagues and myself has shown pilots – who get a bunk to sleep in during their in-flight rest breaks – have light and fragmented sleep. Despite not having great quality sleep, you can be assured our research also shows pilots remain very good at their job throughout a long-haul flight. This, plus findings from many other lab-based studies, tells us that even a short amount of light sleep has benefits.

So, even if you can’t get your usual eight hours during the flight, any sleep you do get will help you feel and function better at your destination.

Also, we’re not great at judging how much sleep we’ve had, particularly if our sleep is light and broken. So you’re likely to have slept more than you think.

Time your sleep and drinks

The timing of your flight, and consumption of alcohol and caffeine will directly impact your ability to sleep on an aircraft.

Assuming you’re adjusted to the time zone the flight departs from, daytime flights will make sleep on board much harder, whereas nighttime flights make sleep easier.

All humans have a circadian (24-hour) time-keeping system, which programs us for sleep at night and wakefulness during the day. Sleeping (or waking) against this biological time-keeping system poses significant challenges.

We do have a natural decrease of alertness in the middle of the afternoon, which makes this a good time to try for sleep on a daytime flight. On nighttime flights it will be easier to sleep once the dinner service is finished, otherwise you will be battling noise, light and the movement of people around you.

Read more:
Explainer: can you pay off your ‘sleep debt’?

As a stimulant, caffeine helps us stay alert. Even if you’re a regular coffee drinker and can fall asleep after drinking caffeine, your sleep will be lighter and you’ll be more easily woken.

On the other hand, alcohol makes us feel sleepy, but it interferes with our brains’ ability to have REM sleep (also known as dreaming sleep). Although you may fall asleep more easily after consuming alcohol, your sleep will be more disturbed once your body metabolises the alcohol and attempts to catch up on the REM sleep it’s missed out on.

What about taking melatonin or other drugs?

Some people find taking a sleeping tablet or melatonin can help on a plane. This is a very personal choice.

Before taking sleeping medication or melatonin you should see your doctor, and only take what’s prescribed for you. Many sleeping medications do not allow perfectly normal sleep to occur and can make you feel groggy and drowsy after waking.

Read more:
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Importantly, melatonin is a hormone our brains use to tell us it’s nighttime. Melatonin can assist with sleep, but depending on when and how much you take, it can also shift your circadian clock. This could shift you further away from being aligned with the destination time zone.

Taking melatonin in your biological afternoon and evening will shift your circadian time-keeping system east (or earlier) and taking it toward the end of your biological night and in your biological morning will shift the circadian time-keeping system west (or later). It gets complicated very quickly!

Prepare your clothes and accessories

Be prepared so you can create the best possible sleep situation within the constraints of an aircraft seat.

Wear comfy layers, so you can take things off if you get too hot or put things on when you cool down, and hang on to that blanket instead of losing it under your seat.

Light and noise disturb sleep, so pack eye shades and earplugs (or a noise cancelling headset) to block these out. Practice with eye shades and earplugs at home, as it can take a few sleeps to get used to them.

A normal and necessary part of the falling asleep process is relaxation, including our neck muscles. When sitting up, this means our heavy heads will no longer be well supported, resulting in that horrible head-dropping experience most of us have had. Try supporting your head with a neck pillow or, if you have a window seat, against the aircraft wall. (Unless you know the person in the next seat well, they are probably not a good option to prop you up.)

Don’t try to force it

Finally, if you wake up and are struggling to go back to sleep, don’t fight it.

Take advantage of the in-flight entertainment. This is one of the few times sleep scientists will tell you it’s okay to turn on the technology – watch a movie, binge-watch a TV series, or if you prefer, listen to music or read a good book.

When you feel sleepy, you can try going back to sleep, but don’t get stressed or worried about getting enough sleep. Our brains are very good at sleeping – trust that your body will catch you up when it can.

Read more:
Jetlag hits differently depending on your travel direction. Here are 6 tips to get over it

Leigh Signal, or the research team she is a member of, have received funding from Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Royal Society of New Zealand, South African Airways, Air New Zealand, Delta Air Lines, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

– ref. How can I get better sleep on long-haul flights? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-i-get-better-sleep-on-long-haul-flights-211821

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of Newcastle

British nurse Lucy Letby was last week sentenced to life in prison for murdering seven infants in her care, and attempting to murder a further six.

As a forensic criminologist, many people have asked me why a medical professional would murder their patients.

While they’re very rare, serial killer healthcare workers often share common traits, and they target a specific, and very vulnerable, victim pool.

While limited research has been conducted on serial killer medicos, there are some trends among serial killers that can help us understand the role of the profession in the act of serial murder.

‘Custodial’ killers

A serial killer is usually defined as someone who kills at least three people in a series, but not in a single event – there needs to be a cooling-off period between the killings. Although the public is generally fascinated by these predators, serial killings are a rare event, comprising fewer than 1% of all murders in any given year in the United States.

Serial killers come from many walks of life, and not all are dysfunctional loners – many are married or in a stable relationship.

A 2014 research paper found serial killers can be understood via several subtypes, including: those who kill for sexually sadistic pleasure; professional killers who are motivated by money and the power they derive from the kill; and, as relevant to Letby, “custodial killers”.

Custodial killers are often healthcare workers who murder helpless or dependent people in their care.

The paper’s author writes of custodial killers:

The most common examples include “angel of death” cases involving nurses in hospitals or nursing homes who surreptitiously murder ill or elderly patients, usually by asphyxiation or medication overdose. This group is likely to contain the highest number of female serial killers.

It’s likely the method of murder is linked to their profession. Healthcare workers have access to medications not available to others, as well as the knowledge to hide their crimes more effectively.

One research group studied 64 female serial killers in the US between 1821 and 2008, and found nearly 40% of them worked in healthcare.

But the question remains, why do they kill? If we look at women specifically, the 2014 research paper suggests that, unlike men who murder as a result of predatory lust and/or compulsive rage, women serial killers are typically driven by histrionic attention-seeking or financial gain.

Letby and healthcare killers

Another research paper specifically studied the characteristics of 16 convicted healthcare serial killers, which the authors defined as “nurses who have been convicted of at least two murders, which they have carried out within a hospital setting”.

While a small sample size, they found 56% were female, and the average age of those being charged was 36 years.

About 44% killed between five and nine victims before being caught, and 75% killed in only one location. Insulin was the most common method of murder, followed by muscle relaxant.

À lire aussi :
Women can be psychopaths too, in ways more subtle but just as dangerous

Letby fits several of these characteristics. She’s a woman, 33 years old, and murdered seven infants. She killed, as far as we currently know, in only one location, and she used insulin to murder some of her victims.

A 2007 book, Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers: Why They Kill, provides a checklist of 22 “red flags” for this group of killers, including:

• secretive/difficult personal relationships

• history of depression or mental instability

• higher incidents of death when they are on shift

• making colleagues anxious or suspicious

• craving attention.

Letby certainly made her colleagues suspicious, and they reported her in the years preceding her arrest. There were more child deaths on her shifts than on those of any other staff member, which is how she was caught.

One criminal psychologist suggested part of the rationale behind the killings may have been to gain the attention of a male colleague, whom prosecutors claimed she had a “crush” on. This would fit with research suggesting attention-seeking is a motive for female serial killers more generally.

Other infamous healthcare killers

Harold Shipman was an English general practitioner who is considered one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history.

He was convicted of murdering 15 of his patients in 2000, but is suspected in the deaths of up to 250 people.

Most of his victims were older women in good health. He killed many by injecting them with lethal doses of diamorphine (medical-grade heroin), after which he falsified their death certificates to indicate they had died of poor health.

Suspicions were raised as the number of his patients dying was very high, as were the number of cremation orders his colleagues were being asked to countersign.

Given the patients he killed were largely in good health, misguided “altruism” cannot explain his crimes.

Niels Högel, a German nurse, is another example. In 2019, Högel was found guilty of using lethal injections to murder 85 of his patients, some of whom he attempted to resuscitate to show off to his colleagues.

Medics who murder are rare

The reason the Letby case (like Shipman’s before it) is causing such significant public interest and horror is because we see medics as trusted professionals.

We put our lives in their hands, and cases such as these cause significant fear when one is found to have breached that trust so fundamentally.

But it’s important to acknowledge they also cause such interest precisely because they are so rare.

While medics who turn serial killer are incredibly prolific, we should not fear unnecessarily for ourselves or our loved ones.

If you are concerned about a medical professional, you should report them to the appropriate authority. High-profile cases such as Letby’s have shown these individuals can be caught and their patterns of behaviour can be identified, and in that way we can protect the most vulnerable among us.

Xanthe Mallett 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. Access and attention: why serial killers like Lucy Letby often work in healthcare – https://theconversation.com/access-and-attention-why-serial-killers-like-lucy-letby-often-work-in-healthcare-212105

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gordon Parker, Scientia Professor, UNSW Sydney

Imagine you, or someone you know, is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. One drug is prescribed, but you have heard another drug is better. What are your next steps? Do you seek evidence? And if so, what type of evidence would you consider?

Around 2% of the adult population have a bipolar disorder. It can create high levels of suffering, carry suicide risks, and persist for decades. Management options vary, and if you search for information online, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the many different views and interpretations of “the evidence” obtained from clinical trials.

Some medications can be extremely helpful for stabilising mood, but they can often have side effects. Certain medications may be more beneficial for certain types of bipolar disorder, but how do you know which “type” you or a loved one has?

Clinical specialists, including psychiatrists, often rely on guidelines authored by professional organisations to evaluate the evidence for treatments. However, there is minimal agreement between many of the current guidelines. A new approach is needed that places emphasis on “real-world” effectiveness and respects the observations of people with bipolar disorder.

Two types of bipolar disorder

As far back as Hippocrates, bipolar disorder has been known to the medical community. Originally called “manic-depressive psychosis”, it is now known as bipolar I disorder. In the mid-1990s, bipolar II disorder was defined. Although this second “sibling” has always existed, it was previously viewed as more of a personality style, and frequently given the label of “cyclothymia”.

Both bipolar I and bipolar II are marked by pronounced mood swings. During “highs”, individuals feel energised and “wired”. They talk more, spend more, and require less sleep but don’t feel tired. They might experience a heightened sex drive, feel more creative, or so “bulletproof” they take more risks. Anxiety seems to melt away.

During “lows”, depression rolls in like a fog. Sufferers may lie in bed for days, lacking any energy. They can’t derive any pleasure in life. Cheerless and battling impaired cognitive capacity, they can be at greater risk of suicide.

The key distinguishing feature between the two bipolar conditions is the presence of psychotic features (delusions and/or hallucinations) in those with bipolar I.

Read more:
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Current treatments

Medication is the main way bipolar disorders are managed.

Melbourne psychiatrist John Cade discovered the effectiveness of lithium as a treatment for manic depression in 1949. This landmark research ushered in the era of condition-specific psychopharmacology.

Psychiatry can proudly claim its status as an evidence-based discipline. Practitioners refer to research-based guidelines to determine the best medications to help stabilise a bipolar disorder. Options now include lithium, three anti-epileptic drugs, multiple antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants. While most guidelines rate lithium highly for both bipolar types, we personally favour lithium as the first choice medication only for bipolar I, and the anti-seizure drug lamotrigine for bipolar II.

Read more:
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But evidence isn’t everything

In 2017, our research group examined 11 guidelines published by professional organisations. All were “evidence-based”, but we found minimal agreement between them, thus raising questions about their validity. New guidelines have been published since then but the trend for minimal agreement continues.

Assessing a psychiatric evidence base is difficult. For medical trials, the treatment being tested is compared against a treatment in common use, and/or against a placebo. Results from multiple trials are aggregated to compare their overall impact.

But the way study participants are selected to participate in trials presents a problem. Recruitment is generally limited to those with milder conditions, those without co-existing disorders, or those taking limited medications. Participants might also sign up to obtain medication at no cost, which may affect their motivation and reporting. Finally, the observations made by managing doctors commonly differ from those made by the patients about the benefits and side effect impact of the drugs given.

So there is a strong argument for the need for “real-world” studies prioritising the views of patients with a bipolar disorder, instead of judging drugs via clinical trials and external raters.

Accounting for side effects

In addition to evaluating the effectiveness of any drug, we need to assess the side-effects. For instance, lithium can be the right medication for some with a bipolar disorder and, as noted, it is the most frequently recommended medication across clinical guidelines. However, it has multiple side effects.

Our 2021 efficacy study compared lithium and lamotrigine in a small sample of patients with bipolar II. For the 28 patients who completed the study, the benefits were similar for the two medications. But 50% of the completers receiving lithium experienced distinctive cognitive impairment – side effects that affected their thinking and reasoning.

This is of particular concern because bipolar disorders are known to be over-represented in creative people and high achievers. We suspect, from clinical observation, that lithium is not the best option for bipolar II, and the first author has long observed it is more cognitively “toxic” for those individuals with a bipolar II condition.

Many of the antipsychotic drugs nominated in guidelines also have major side effects, including weight gain and diabetes. People who are stable while taking these medications without major side effects should not be alarmed. But these risks support a push for more tailored treatments based on real-life costs and benefits, informed by people’s experiences.

Read more:
A poo dose a day may keep bipolar away. When it comes to mental health, what else could poo do?

We want to hear from people with bipolar disorders

All these concerns highlight the need for research focused on “real-world” samples to determine the best treatments that consider each person’s responses to any medication. We are conducting such a study now, in collaboration with the Black Dog Institute. If you are interested, you can access the study here.

Gordon Parker receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

Michael Spoelma 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. Bipolar disorder isn’t the same for everyone. So people should have more say in how they’re treated – https://theconversation.com/bipolar-disorder-isnt-the-same-for-everyone-so-people-should-have-more-say-in-how-theyre-treated-211124

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Quilter, Professor of Law, University of Wollongong

More than 40 years ago, law-makers began listening to sexual violence victim-survivors, advocates and activists when they explained that the traditional criminal law and criminal trial were not serving them well.

In NSW, the Crimes (Sexual Assault) Amendment Act 1981 (NSW) was the first of many statutes introduced to address the gendered biases of the law. This included the unacceptable treatment of victim-survivors when giving evidence that was characteristic of rape trials.

In 2023, on paper, the laws governing offence definitions, evidence rules and trial procedure are very different from those that operated in the 1970s. But how different are things in practice?

We were recently commissioned by the New South Wales government to conduct a study of transcripts from sexual offence trials in the District Court of NSW, as part of a larger review of “the experiences of complainants of sexual offences in the NSW criminal justice system”.

In its 2020 report Consent in Relation to Sexual Offences, the NSW Law Reform Commission emphasised the importance of follow-up research that evaluates whether the intended benefits of legislative reforms are actually being achieved.

This was a rare and important opportunity – a study of this scale based on access to trial transcripts had not been completed since the landmark Heroines of Fortitude report by the then NSW Department for Women in 1996.

In sharing our main findings here, we want to acknowledge the complainants in the sexual offence trials examined in this report. Although we never met them, their stories were at the heart of this study and their voices were present in (anonymised) quotes from transcripts that feature in the full report that was recently published by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

Read more:
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The study

We examined more than 30,000 pages of transcripts from 75 sexual offence trials finalised in the District Court of NSW between 2014 and 2020. Our primary aim was to assess the adequacy of existing arrangements for meeting the legitimate needs and expectations of complainants.

Our findings can roughly be divided into two categories: aspects of trials that have changed for the better, and those that have not (yet) been reformed.

Improvements

We found that procedural reforms designed to improve complainant experience in sexual offence trials were generally operating as intended. This included arrangements such as allowing complainants to give evidence via CCTV from a remote location. Not all complainants want to give evidence in this way (some choose to appear in person in the courtroom), but it is an important measure to reduce the distress of being a witness and ensure witnesses don’t have to be in the same room as the person whom they have accused of sexual violence.

We also saw that complainants regularly had access to a support person, and, with a few exceptions, judges ensured the court was closed to members of the public when the complainant was giving evidence.

In addition, most of the time, judges and lawyers adopted respectful modes of communication with the complainant, and were sensitive to the need for breaks when the complainant was distressed or tired.

“Rape shield” laws contained in the Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) – which are designed to prohibit questions about sexual “reputation” and regulate questions about sexual experience – were generally operating as intended.

Against the backdrop of criticism that these rules are too restrictive, we note that some form of sexual experience questioning was permitted in 50% of trials in this study.

Read more:
Four in ten Australians think women lie about being victims of sexual assault

Trial features that persist

Rape myths and stereotypes were still very prominent in the sexual offence trials we examined. Many of the trials in this study were conducted in a way that was framed by a set of unwritten (and problematic) rules about what a “real rape” looks like and how a “genuine” victim of sexual violence would behave.

Importantly, this wasn’t just a result of how defence lawyers cross-examined the complainant – the prosecution case was also often built on the foundation of one or more “real rape” attributes.

For example, the Crown case often emphasised that the complainant physically resisted the attack, or that the complainant reported the matter immediately –-despite the fact that these are no longer required to sustain an allegation.

The defence often played the other side of the “real rape” coin, highlighting the absence of features traditionally associated with a “genuine” allegation.

Questioning and closing submissions that accused the complainant of lying were common. In 73% of trials, the complainant was accused of fabricating the sexual offence allegation for an ulterior purpose (for example, in one case, to extract compensation to be used for cosmetic surgery).

Defence counsel were permitted to ask questions across a broad range of topics. These included distressing matters such as the complainant’s history of mental illness, substance use, criminal convictions or having had children removed from their care. Questions about prior “flirtatious” behaviour were common, as were questions that suggested the complainant had failed to behave after the event in the ways that a “true” victim would.

Further reforms

Much has changed in terms of how complainants are questioned in sexual offence trials, but there is more still to do.

Our report for the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research identified a number of further reforms that warrant consideration. These include:

1. A modified approach to framing the Crown case, with a greater focus on consent as “free and voluntary agreement”, reduced reliance on “real rape” attributes, and more space for the complainant’s voice.

2. A more robust and restrictive approach to the admissibility of evidence about the complainant and their actions, including what counts as “relevant”.

3. The introduction of pre-trial “ground rules” hearings for all sexual offence trials. These should include advance determinations not only on how questions are asked, but also what topics are covered.

These measures could contribute to the long overdue removal from sexual offence trials of rape myths and stereotypes and unfair scrutiny of complainants.

Julia Quilter receives funding from the NSW Department of Communities and Justice and the Australian Research Council .

Julia Quilter receives funding from the NSW Department of Communities and Justice and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Sexual offence trials have improved, but there is more to be done: new research – https://theconversation.com/sexual-offence-trials-have-improved-but-there-is-more-to-be-done-new-research-211895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xinyu Fu, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Planning, University of Waikato

Despite countries pouring billions of dollars into “protecting” communities, flood-related disasters are becoming more frequent and are projected to become even more severe as the climate crisis worsens.

In fact, many areas that flooded during recent extreme weather events, from Auckland to Henan in China, were deemed to be relatively safe. This should raise an obvious question: to what extent is our existing approach fit for purpose in a changing climate?

Traditionally, managing flooding has relied heavily on building higher levees or increasing the capacity of drainage systems. But this can be a mixed blessing. While they contain water most of the time, when levees or drains exceed their original design capacity, we experience damaging floods.

These technical solutions have tended to operate on a flawed assumption that future flooding can be reliably predicted based on decades of historical flood data. They also create the “levee effect” – a false sense of security that encourages development in still risk-prone areas.

As climate change brings unpredictable rainfall patterns and higher intensities, these historic design assumptions are falling well short of the realities. And it means there remains a “residual risk”, even when infrastructure improvements have been made or planned for.

Red tape and risk

We can use the analogy of wearing a seat-belt to understand residual risk. The belt will reduce harm in case of an accident, but it does not mean you are entirely protected from injury.

Now imagine road conditions and weather are gradually worsening, and traffic volumes increasing. Some might look at the new risk and decide not to drive, but for those already on the road it is too late.

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Most countries are still managing floods just like this: sometimes building higher levees or installing bigger pipes. But development often occurs incrementally, without the strategic investment needed or the room to safely store excess water volumes in urban areas when failure occurs.

Housing development is needed, but too often current (let alone future) flood risk is not adequately considered. Planning controls, or additional infrastructure costs, are routinely referred to as “red tape” that raises costs. As a result, recovery costs are ongoing and residual risk gradually rises.

Weather-related disasters in 2023, including Cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand and wildfires in the northern hemisphere, have led to a new focus on understanding how residual risk is managed. But whether it is even acknowledged or incorporated in planning policy varies from country to country.

National strategy missing

Our research team from the University of Waikato recently undertook a survey with flood risk practitioners in New Zealand to shed some light on this.

New Zealand has little in the way of national-level guidance on managing flood risk. Despite this, survey responses suggest flood risk professionals are aware of the issue. They agree residual flood risk is increasing, mainly due to climate change and ongoing development in flood-prone areas currently designated as “protected”.

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They also agree the current practice of flood risk management needs improving. But there are several barriers, with the lack of a clear national directive on managing flood risk being the most notable in our survey.

Several respondents noted that changing risk management practice is difficult, given the existing institutional framework. This includes the “build more levees” approach to flood planning.

Local governments also vary in their capacity and resources. Many small councils lack quality flood risk information, such as the likely impact of climate change, which is critical for making wise land-use decisions.

As a result, housing and other developments are continuing in risky places. And to keep development costs down, infrastructure is not being systematically upgraded.

Read more:
Incremental environmental change can be as hazardous as a sudden shock – managing these ‘slow-burning’ risks is vital

Planning for residual risk

We expect the New Zealand experience reflects similar trends elsewhere. Practitioners are aware of the growing threat of residual risk and would like more power to manage it. But there is a lack of urgency and resources to upgrade infrastructure. And there is political pressure to enable more housing and reduce red tape.

If these patterns persist, not only will the impacts from future floods become more frequent and expensive, but the insurance sector will retreat further from offering flood policies.

This will eventually leave central governments as de facto insurers-of-last-resort for flooding events. And they will be picking up an increasingly big bill, as already evidenced by the US$20.5 billion deficit faced by the United States National Flood Insurance Program.

Read more:
Creating ‘sponge cities’ to cope with more rainfall needn’t cost billions – but NZ has to start now

Internationally and in New Zealand, attention is shifting to the need to build “sponge cities” or create more “room for water” in flood risk management. But we argue that acknowledging and managing the growing residual risk from climate change is missing from the debate.

A better-informed approach would see stronger guidelines against ill-advised development in flood-prone areas unless the infrastructure investment reduces that residual risk. Development on floodplains can still happen. But land use and investment must account for an uncertain future and lower the overall risk profile, rather than increase it.

The reality of more frequent flooding demands a multi-faceted response that makes cities, towns and rural areas more resilient – and prepared for inevitable infrastructure failure. Residual risk needs to be central to planning if we are to avoid an endless cycle of mopping up, rebuilding and compensating for financial loss.

Xinyu Fu receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund and the Toka Tū Ake Earthquake Commission to conduct research on issues related to flood risk management and future land use planning.

Iain White receives funding from the National Science Challenge: Resilience to Nature’s Challenges – Kia manawaroa – Ngā Ākina o Te Ao Tūroa. He also receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund to research issues connected to flood risk mapping and better decision making, and from Toka Tū Ake Natural Hazards Commission to research how to better incorporate risk into future settlement planning.

Rob Bell receives funding from Toka Tū Ake Earthquake Commission, as an advisor to the University of Waikato team to research issues connected to flood risk mapping, management and future land use planning. Rob was also funded by the Ministry for the Environment to revise the 2023 national Coastal Hazards and Climate Change guidance for local government in NZ.

Silvia Serrao-Neumann receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund and the Toka Tū Ake Earthquake Commission to conduct research on issues related to flood risk management and land use planning.

– ref. Flood protection based on historical records is flawed – we need a risk model fit for climate change – https://theconversation.com/flood-protection-based-on-historical-records-is-flawed-we-need-a-risk-model-fit-for-climate-change-212454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne

Aged-care funding is again on the agenda, with the latest Intergenerational Report predicting Australia’s aged population will triple over the next 40 years. As a community, we will need to spend more on aged care than we do today, with aged-care spending expected to more than double its share of gross domestic product by 2063.

We cannot sleepwalk into this increased spending. It needs to be planned so access is protected and all older people, regardless of income, are able to get the aged care they need.

Aged-care funding should include taxpayer-funded care and resident co-payments. But we need to ensure funding changes don’t reduce access for those on low incomes.

Two distinct types of services

Most experts now accept the two main types of services older people receive in aged care facilities or in their home require different policy responses:

• ordinary costs of living. These would have ordinarily been paid for by older people themselves earlier in their lives, for things like cleaning the house or food preparation. Housing and accommodation is sometimes a special subset of these costs

• care and support. This includes nursing care, podiatry, physiotherapy and other health services, either in the home or in a residential aged care facility. These would generally not have been needed earlier in life.

Read more:
Lump sum, daily payments or a combination? What to consider when paying for nursing home accommodation

Funding ‘care’ services

Medicare is now almost 40 years old. Australians long ago made the choice that hospital and medical care should be publicly funded – and people should not be forced to forgo necessary care because of cost. The same arguments apply to the aspects of aged care which look more like health care.

There is usually some form of health assessment for these services and so consumers don’t initiate these services themselves. Because of this gatekeeping, the arguments for people to pay out-of-pocket for aged care (other than ordinary costs of living) are weak.

It’s also hard for consumers to assess the quality of these services, and so one of the preconditions of a functioning market – the ability for consumers to make informed choices – does not exist.

In these circumstances, funding should come from the public purse. Governments should pay the full costs of care (other than ordinary costs of living) for all aged-care residents and those who receive care in their home.

So how should ‘care’ costs be funded?

Future funding requirements for care should be met through economic growth, or a specific adjustment to taxation revenue, such as increasing company or income tax payable, or reducing inequitable tax loopholes.

An “aged-care levy”, effectively an increase in income tax modelled on the Medicare levy is an alternative option. An aged-care levy might be specifically allocated – or “hypothecated” – to aged care or, as with the Medicare levy, just go into the total pot of Commonwealth revenue.

The downsides of hypothecated taxes are they potentially reduce government flexibility and make it harder for government to set priorities across all areas of government. Direction setting is even harder if the hypothecated tax generates more or less than expected. A focus on a special hypothecated tax creates blinkers, which may mean the full range of potential revenue sources aren’t considered.

However, an aged-care levy may be a politically palatable source of additional revenue. It’s the most equitable and efficient way of increasing Commonwealth revenue to pay for aged care. Its major downside is that it continues the current policy approach that today’s taxpayers pay for the aged-care needs of yesterday’s taxpayers, and this raises issues of “intergenerational equity”.

Read more:
Money’s tight for young people. Adding a Medicare-style levy to everyone’s tax bill is the wrong way to increase aged-care funding

Funding ‘ordinary costs of living’ in later life

Most people meet the full cost of their meals, accommodation, cleaning and so on during their working life, so the normal expectation is that they would meet them later in life too.

However, there are a few reasonable exceptions to the rule:

• some people don’t earn enough to pay for their own accommodation and live in public housing during their middle years
• most people’s income in retirement is lower than their income during their working life. Renters especially may not have enough income to pay for accommodation in later years
• some people are unable to maintain their own homes and need to pay others to do so, at increased cost
• some people might require special foods or different accommodation, and so their costs of living might be substantially higher than previously.

All of this means that ordinary costs of living may need to be subsidised when they weren’t previously.

Currently there is a mish-mash of policies for consumer co-payments for the ordinary costs of living. People in residential aged-care facilities face income and assets tests which determine co-payments, but residents can pay more for additional amenities. Consumers face a bewildering array of choices for contributions toward accommodation (capital) costs.

Contributions to home care are less structured and providers have more leeway about consumer co-payment policies.

Read more:
Aged-care funding reforms must ensure users pay their fair share

Issues relating to accommodation costs for residential care are very complex, as much of a homeowner’s capital is tied up in the family home. This creates transition issues, especially if one member of a couple needs to move to a different type of accommodation. A complex web of payment arrangements for accommodation costs in residential care has evolved, and a shake up of these arrangements is overdue.

So how should ‘ordinary costs of living’ be paid for?

Some form of means- and asset-tested co-payment must be part of the mix, with means and assets including superannuation balances and income streams.

There should also be more consistency across providers in the co-payments consumers have to pay.

Although aged-care policy must balance equity and financial sustainability, the full cost of aged care – including care costs and ordinary costs of living – cannot be met by recipients themselves, so we must be wary of the calls for massive increases in out-of-pocket payments.

Increased contributions from the public purse will be required through income tax, with an aged-care levy one option, or reduced tax loopholes.

Read more:
Our older population will triple in 40 years. But a social insurance model won’t fix the aged care funding crisis

Stephen Duckett is a Life Member of the Brotherhood of St Laurence which, among other things, is a not-for-profit provider of aged care services.

– ref. We need a new way to pay for aged care. But it can’t shut out those on low incomes – https://theconversation.com/we-need-a-new-way-to-pay-for-aged-care-but-it-cant-shut-out-those-on-low-incomes-212017

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Williams, Associate Director, CSIRO Futures, CSIRO

Animals have been used for medical research for thousands of years, dating back to ancient Greece where the first dissections were performed.

These days, one of the main uses of animals is to ensure the safety of medical products before they’re trialled in humans.

But in addition to the important ethical reasons for minimising animal use, the reality is sometimes animals just aren’t that good at predicting human responses. No animal model, for example, has captured all the human characteristics of complex illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (a neuromuscular disease). This makes is hard to develop effective treatments and cures.

Thankfully, researchers are making progress in developing a collection of alternative approaches, called “non-animal models”. A new report from our team at CSIRO Futures examines the potential of non-animal models and the actions Australia will need to take to pursue their use.

Read more:
Can we ethically justify harming animals for research?

What are non-animal models?

Non-animal models are an alternative set of models that use human cells, tissues and data.

These have the potential to better mimic human responses. In doing so, this can more accurately predict if a medical product is likely to fail, allowing reinvestment in products that are more likely to succeed.

Computer simulations or “in silico models” are one example. These can be used across the medical product development process to complement – and in time potentially replace – other model types. They can be used in drug studies to model a drug’s behaviour within the body, from cellular interactions to processes that involve multiple organs.

Complex three-dimensional biological models are also maturing quickly. Examples include:

• organoids – organ “buds” that can be propagated from stem cells or taken from biopsies

• organs-on-chips – cells cultured in a miniature engineered chip. These attempt to replicate the physical environment of human organs.

What can we use non-animal models for?

In theory, we can use non-animal models for everything we use animal models for – and more.

Simple non-animal models (human cells cultured over a flat surface) are already used to help identify drug targets due to their ability to test a large number of compounds and experimental conditions.

In the future, non-animal models will reduce – and eventually replace – animal use across a range of applications:

• screening potential drugs to see how well they work
• toxicology (safety) testing
• helping to screen, select and stratify shortlisted participants for clinical trials. This might include an assessment of their unique response to a potential drug.
• using patient cells to identify the treatment most likely to help that individual.

Outside of medical products designed for humans, non-animal models can also support innovation in veterinary and agricultural medicines, cosmetic testing and eco-toxicology.

An export opportunity for Australia

Non-animal models present an economic opportunity for Australia, where the models, their components, and surrounding services could be exported to the world.

Our novel economic analysis sized the potential Australian market for two non-animal models: organoids and organs-on-chips. Other models were unable to be sized due to a lack of global market data.

We estimate the Australian organoid market could be worth A$1.3 billion annually by 2040 and create 4,200 new jobs.

The organs-on-chips market could be worth A$300 million annually by 2040 and create 1,000 new jobs. This estimate is lower as this technology is currently less advanced but holds the potential to grow significantly beyond 2040.

Read more:
Mechanical forces in a beating heart affect its cells’ DNA, with implications for development and disease

Several Australian entities are already contributing to these opportunities. The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, for example, provides stem cell and modelling expertise as part of reNEW, a €300 million international collaboration.

Another example is from Schott Minifab, an international biotech and medical device company with Australian roots, which has successfully established scaled production of non-animal model components in Australia for domestic and export markets.

Making it a reality

Non-animal models have already begun to complement and replace animal use in some areas, such as identifying drug targets.

However, accelerating their development and adoption across a wider range of applications will require further technical advances to lower cost and validate their performance as superior models.

Australia has several research strengths in this field but we need a concentrated effort to help our research make it through to real world impact.

Our report makes ten recommendations for supporting Australia’s pursuit of these opportunities. Critical activities over the next five years include:

• coordinating local capabilities
• investing in upgraded infrastructure
• creating and collating data that compares animal and non-animal model performance.

Governments, industry and research must collaborate to deliver against these actions. Success will only come from collective efforts.

Read more:
Is it time for Australia to be more open about research involving animals?

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. We won’t always have to use animals for medical research. Here’s what we can do instead – https://theconversation.com/we-wont-always-have-to-use-animals-for-medical-research-heres-what-we-can-do-instead-212182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Saintilan, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

Much of the world’s natural coastline is protected by living habitats, most notably mangroves in warmer waters and tidal marshes closer to the poles. These ecosystems support fisheries and wildlife, absorb the impact of crashing waves and clean up pollutants. But these vital services are threatened by global warming and rising sea levels.

Recent research has shown wetlands can respond to sea level rise by building up their root systems, pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the process. Growing recognition of the potential for this “blue” carbon sequestration is driving mangrove and tidal marsh restoration projects.

While the resilience of these ecosystems is impressive, it is not without limits. Defining the upper limits to mangrove and marsh resilience under accelerating sea level rise is a topic of great interest and considerable debate.

Our new research, published today in the journal Nature, analyses the vulnerability and exposure of mangroves, marshes and coral islands to sea level rise. The results underscore the critical importance of keeping global warming within 2 degrees of the pre-industrial baseline.

Read more:
Not waving, drowning: why keeping warming under 1.5℃ is a life-or-death matter for tidal marshes

What we did

We pulled together all the available evidence on how mangroves, tidal marshes and coral islands respond to sea level rise. That included:

• delving into the geological record to study how coastal systems responded to past sea level rise, following the last Ice Age

• tapping into a global network of survey benchmarks in mangroves and tidal marshes

• analysing satellite imagery for changes in the extent of wetlands and coral islands at varying rates of sea level rise.

Altogether, our international team assessed 190 mangroves, 477 tidal marshes and 872 coral reef islands around the world.

We then used computer modelling to work out how much these coastal ecosystems would be exposed to rapid sea level rise under projected warming scenarios.

What we found

Mangroves, tidal marshes and coral islands can cope with low rates of sea-level rise. They remain stable and healthy.

We found most tidal marshes and mangroves are keeping pace with current rates of sea level rise, around 2–4mm per year. Coral islands also appear stable under these conditions.

In some locations, land is sinking, so the relative rate of sea level rise is greater. It may be double this 2–4mm figure or more, comparable to rates expected under future climate change. In these situations, we found marshes failing to keep up with sea level rise. They are slowly drowning and in some cases, breaking up. What’s more, these are the same rates of sea level rise under which marshes and mangrove drown in the geological record.

These cases give us a glimpse of the future in a warming world.

So if the rate of sea level rise doubles to 7 or 8 millimetres a year, it becomes “very likely” (90% probability) mangroves and tidal marshes will no longer keep pace, and “likely” (about 67% probability) coral islands will undergo rapid changes. These rates will be reached when the 2.0℃ warming threshold is exceeded.

Even at the lower rates of sea level rise we would have between 1.5℃ and 2.0℃ of warming (4 or 5mm a year), extensive loss of mangrove and tidal marsh is likely.

Tidal marshes are less exposed to these rates of sea level rise than mangroves because they occur in regions where the land is rising, reducing the relative rate of sea level rise.

Read more:
Rising seas threaten to drown important mangrove forests, unless we intervene

Let’s give coastal ecosystems a fighting chance

We know mangroves and tidal marshes have survived rapid sea level rise before, at rates even higher than those projected under extreme climate change.

They won’t have long enough to build up root systems or trap sediment in order to stay in place, so they will seek higher ground by shifting landward into newly flooded coastal lowlands.

But this time, they will be competing with other land uses and increasingly trapped behind coastal levees and hard barriers such as roads and buildings.

If the global temperature rise is limited to 2℃, coastal ecosystems have a fighting chance. But if this threshold is exceeded, they will need more help.

Intervention is needed to enable the retreat of mangroves and tidal marshes across our coastal landscapes. There is a role for governments in designating retreat pathways, controlling coastal development, and expanding coastal nature reserves into higher ground.

The future of the world’s living coastlines is in our hands. If we work to restore mangroves and tidal marshes to their former extent, they can help us tackle climate change.

Read more:
Climate change can drive social tipping points – for better or for worse

Neil Saintilan receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Environmental Science Program, and the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation.

– ref. We studied more than 1,500 coastal ecosystems – they will drown if we let the world warm above 2C – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-more-than-1-500-coastal-ecosystems-they-will-drown-if-we-let-the-world-warm-above-2c-211431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe University

We have never been more spoilt for choice when it comes to what we can watch on (streaming) television. But the downside of this gluttony of riches is the sheer overwhelm that can come from having to choose your next show.

Have you found yourself reaching to rewatch an old favourite, just to make the choice easier? Us too.

But fear not, The Conversation’s writers are on the case. In this new series, our experts will be bringing you the best new shows, films and seasons to watch every month.

From comedy to reality television to crime drama, we hope you’ll find your next favourite here.

Glamorous

Netflix

Kim Cattrall showed considerable savvy when, rather than rejoin the cast of Sex and the City, she opted to play Madolyn Addison, the dynamic head of beauty brand Glamorous. The series revolves around a young gender-fluid assistant, Marco Mejia (Miss Benny), who inspires the company to break boundaries while exploring his own uncertainties around sexuality and gender.

On the surface this is even frothier than Sex and the City, and some critics have panned it. Angie Han in the Hollywood Reporter (a publication not known for its commitment to high art) saw it as:

A workplace comedy that has no grasp of how work works, a rom-com that fails to generate a single convincing spark, a Gen-Z coming-of-age saga with the cultural references of a geriatric Millennial.

These objections are like complaints that Midsomer Murders gives an unrealistic depiction of police procedure. I know little about the cosmetics industry, but I suspect it is more accurately portrayed here than the cringing improbabilities of the British royal court in Red, White and Royal Blue.

There is a taken-for-granted queerness of the program: here heterosexuals, led by Cattrall and her ever-faithful chauffeur, are in the minority. The series plays with stereotypes, from the A-list gay boys at Provincetown to the drag queens in Marco’s favourite club. And Han must have a heart of stone to have missed the ongoing heartbreak of Marco’s geeky workmate, Ben.

Glamorous is as camp as Barbie, but far cleverer and more subversive: without a spoiler, it’s worth comparing the way the two end.

– Dennis Altman

Read more:
‘Gay guys can do missionary?’ – how Red, White & Royal Blue brings queer intimacy to mainstream audiences

Starstruck season three

ABC iView (Australia) from September 6 and TVNZ+ (New Zealand) from September 2

The delightful romantic-comedy Starstruck follows the successes, failures and absurdities of an unexpected romance.

The two charismatic, neurotic non-white leads make this a far-from-standard rom-com: Nikesh Patel’s Tom Kapoor is a world-famous British movie star; Rose Matafeo’s Jessie is far more intense, obnoxious and funny than your average rom-com heroine.

Starstruck’s creator and star Matafeo has crafted a world that feels real with inside jokes that invite you in, an ironic sincerity that is sweet but not saccharine, and neurotic characters written with endearing specificity, warmth and humour.

Last season ended with a moment that was equal parts romantic and absurd, as Jessie and Tom reconcile and make out in a pond. But the new season opens with a montage tracing the subsequent two years of moving in together and then drifting apart.

Starstruck understands what makes Jessie and Tom interesting to watch: not domestic bliss, but their awkward banter and difficulty overcoming their mismatched quirks, despite their obvious chemistry and attraction. For those who love a smart, sizzling rom-com in the tradition of Hepburn and Tracy this is a must-watch.

The new season continues the excellent form of the first two seasons, as Tom and Jessie attend a very awkward wedding and end up back in each other’s orbit.
– Jessica Ford

Far North

ThreeNow (New Zealand) and Paramount+ (Australia)

The terrific new New Zealand dark comedy Far North dramatises a bizarre meth-smuggling case from 2016, in which a ridiculously inept gang nearly got half a ton of methamphetamine to market, only to be rumbled by the locals.

Veteran actors Temuera Morrison and Robyn Malcolm are excellent as decent Ahipara couple Ed and Heather, who become embroiled in the bungled plot when local criminals try to get their Chinese bosses out to sea off Ninety Mile Beach to intercept a stranded drug shipment.

If things can go wrong, they do – and events swiftly turn into a cascading comedy of errors.

Creator David White co-wrote a true crime book on the subject, and you can see his eye for detail throughout. The whole thing is run through with a mordant, deadpan sensibility that will have you spitting out your tea with laughter even as you are wincing at some of the more horrific elements of the case.

Impeccably shot, and featuring a wonderfully motley assortment of low-rent crims, desperate drug runners, cartel mobsters and salt-of-the-earth locals, Far North is easily one of the best (and funniest) New Zealand shows in years.

–Erin Harrington

Mother and Son

ABC iView

Mother and Son has long been regarded as one of Australia’s greatest sitcoms.

First airing in 1984, the tale of the ageing Maggie Beare and her hapless son, Arthur, was not only very funny, but revealed the pain, frustration and love that underpinned their relationship.

Read more:
The Mother and Son reboot has fresh things to say about adult children and their ageing parents

For anyone who has cared for an ageing parent – or faced the diminution of their autonomy as they have aged – Mother and Son still strikes a nerve.
Where the original series featured a baby boomer looking after his mother, in the revival, it’s a millennial looking after his boomer mum – a story being played out in homes across the nation.

In the 2023 Mother and Son, Maggie (Denise Scott) is a free-spirited eccentric who almost burned down the family home while cooking dinner for her grandchildren. Childless, unmarried Arthur (Matt Okine), meanwhile, is attempting to start a web business.

The new Mother and Son is likeable, gentle comedy. It has a diverse, multicultural cast and the writing is largely well-observed. Yet in remaking a much-loved classic comedy, the creators have set themselves an impossibly high bar: Scott and Okine, while charming, are no match for Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald.

– Michelle Arrow

Ai no Sato (Love Village)

Netflix

This year we have seen a new wave of interest in reality dating shows with older protagonists. In the US, Gerry Turner, aged 71, has just been announced as the first “Golden Bachelor”. In the UK, the upcoming show My Mum, Your Dad (an Australian version aired in 2022) is being billed as “middle-aged Love Island”.

Perhaps the best example, though, comes from Japan. Ai no Sato, or Love Village, is a take on the stalwart Japanese reality dating format Ainori (Love Wagon). In Ainori, contestants travel the world in a minibus and fall in love along the way. In Ai no Sato, by contrast, contestants (all aged over 35) renovate a house in rural Japan together … and fall in love along the way.

I love Ainori, but Ai no Sato takes things to a new level. Because its contestants are older, they have a deep well of life experience and relationship baggage, which makes for very compelling romance narratives – and, in particular, confessions of love that carry incredible emotional weight.

The vast majority of reality romance shows would treat a love triangle with a 60-year-old woman at its apex as jokey or gimmicky, but I defy anyone to watch this show and not be deeply hoping that Minane finds (in the show’s parlance) the last love of her life.

And if the romance aspect doesn’t interest you? There’s always the house renovation. This house is gorgeous.

– Jodi McAlister

Read more:
The guilty pleasure of watching trashy TV

Unforgotten season five

Binge (Australia) and TVNZ+

There are a lot of British crime dramas out there. You only need to look at the back catalogue of BritBox to see just how extensive it is. There are a lot of excellent series out there (Broadchurch, Happy Valley and Karen Pirie are all exceptional). There is also a lot of chaff, where the premise is more formulaic. This is perhaps why it took me so long to give Unforgotten a go. I was, however, quickly hooked and proceeded to binge the series very quickly.

Each season begins with the discovery of a murder that the historical crimes unit must solve, led by DCI Cassie Stuart (the wonderful Nicola Walker) and DI Sunil Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar).

Initially, the subplots about miscellaneous suspects all seem unrelated and random. However, the investigation (very well plotted out) slowly pieces all these characters together. As the investigation develops, the suspects’ lives, and everyone close to them, are upended.

Season five sees the departure of Walker and new to the team is DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan). The season’s central tension is around her gruffness and the resentment of her not being DCI Stuart, who everyone loved. DCI James must lead her team to investigate the human remains discovered up a chimney in a newly renovated London stately home, which leaves a diverse array of suspects somehow connected to the crime.

For those that love a gripping British crime drama, I highly recommend this series.

– Stuart Richards

Beautiful Disaster

Prime

If Beautiful Disaster, the new film from Cruel Intentions director Roger Kumble, had come out 20 years ago, no one would have paid it much attention. It’s an enjoyably formulaic girl-meets-boy rom-com, but it’s aesthetically drab, looking more like a telemovie (which it is) than a made-for-cinemas release.

However, streaming in 2023 – now the rom-com has disappeared as a mainstay of Hollywood cinema – there’s something refreshingly delightful about it.

Abby (Virginia Gardner) leaves her father, a hopeless gambler in Las Vegas, to set out for college in Sacramento. On her first night at an underground mixed martial arts fight, she bumps into – literally – beefy brawler Travis (Dylan Sprouse, better known as the teen star of Disney’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody).

At first he comes off as an arrogant jerk – not to mention Abby is sprayed with blood when he knocks out his opponent – but, as their relationship develops, his sensitivity becomes evident.

After many expected shenanigans, sexual and otherwise, and following run-ins with gangsters back in Vegas (to which Abby has to return to help Daddy out of a bind), the pair finish up happily ever after.

There is nothing unexpected here, but the charming qualities of the leads and the film’s general good humour carry it, along with cameos from TV stars who had their heyday in teen fare in the 90s and 2000s, including Brian Austin Green and Michael Cudlitz from Beverly Hills 90210, Autumn Reeser from The O.C. and Rob Estes from Melrose Place.

At the same time, only sometimes effectively, Beautiful Disaster thinks through questions around erotic power dynamics in a post-#MeToo era, comically centring on the kind of guilt Abby feels regarding her attraction to Travis.

– Ari Mattes

Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Ari Mattes, Dennis Altman, Erin Harrington, Jessica Ford, Jodi McAlister, and Stuart Richards do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Romantic comedies, Japanese reality television and New Zealand true crime: the best of streaming this September – https://theconversation.com/romantic-comedies-japanese-reality-television-and-new-zealand-true-crime-the-best-of-streaming-this-september-212011

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

A suite of protections for gig workers will be contained in legislation to be introduced into parliament by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke next week.

The government argues the changes balance protections with work flexibility. The new regime will begin from July 1.

The legislation, called the Closing Loopholes Bill, will also include measures on rights for casual workers, stopping wage theft, and preventing companies with enterprise agreements using labour hire to undercut wages.

Business has been campaigning strongly against the new round of industrial relations legislation.

Under the changes, the Fair Work Commission will set minimum standards for “employee-like workers” in the gig economy. These are people who work through a digital labour platform, notably in food delivery, ride share and the care economy.

Businesses will be able to apply to the commission for minimum standards orders tailored to the work performed under them.

The terms the commission will be able to consider for an order include payment, record keeping and insurance. But it would not set minimum standards on overtime rates, rostering, or terms that would change how a worker is engaged.

These workers will also be protected from being unfairly removed from digital labour platforms, and they will be able to ask the commission to resolve disputes.

The government says the changes will allow the commission to respond flexibly to these new, quickly evolving business models.

It stresses they will not affect independent contractors, such as skilled tradespeople, who have a high-degree of autonomy over their work.
Rather, they are aimed at protecting workers who are neither “employees” nor small businesses.

Gig workers are estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands.

Burke said at least 13 gig workers have died on the roads in the last few years..
“We know there is a direct link between low rate of pay and safety: it leads to a situation where workers take risks so they can get more work because they’re struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

“We can’t continue to have a situation where the 21st century technology of the gig platforms comes with 19th century conditions.

“At the moment if you’re classed as an employee you have a whole lot of rights such as sick leave, annual leave and minimum rates of pay. If not, all those rights fall off a cliff. What we want to do is turn the cliff into a ramp.

“We’re not trying to turn people into employees when they don’t want to be employees. But just because someone is working in the gig economy shouldn’t mean that they end up being paid less than they would if they’d been an employee.”

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. Gig economy workers set for new protections in Albanese government’s legislation introduced next week – https://theconversation.com/gig-economy-workers-set-for-new-protections-in-albanese-governments-legislation-introduced-next-week-212541

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

The stakes in the October referendum are high. For Anthony Albanese, who has made the Voice his great social cause of his first term. For Peter Dutton, who has defied those who say he is on the “wrong side of history”.

For those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who look to the referendum for affirmation of their special place in our society, as well as giving them a chance for some tangible improvements in their lives and opportunities.

For Australia’s international reputation.

The latest polling has put the “no” side ahead, after a slide over the months in the initial substantial support for the constitutional amendment. History is on the “no” side. Only eight of 44 referendum questions have been carried since federation.

But the result remains open, at the start of this campaign. Both sides accept there is a substantial bloc of uncommitted voters, as well as others, presently nominally in the “yes” or “no” camps, who are “soft” and thus open to persuasion.

Many voters haven’t yet tuned in; this is unsurprising, especially when the cost of living is dominating so many people’s attention.

The strength of support from younger voters, a lot of them still unengaged, will be a crucial factor in the outcome.

Albanese will be prominent in the campaign, but it won’t fill his calendar, according to his office. This is not an election. Indeed in a few days the PM is off overseas, visiting Indonesia and the Philippines ahead of the G20 meeting in India. The government says it wants this campaign to be grassroots-led. Yes23 already has some 28,000 volunteers in the field door-knocking.

If the “no” side won, it would be a significant blow to Albanese. This might not translate into a longer problem for the Labor vote, because the caravan would move on: people would make their judgements on Labor versus the Coalition on other grounds. But the interesting thing would be whether Albanese’s authority among his colleagues would be diminished. Would cabinet ministers become more inclined to question his judgement?

Looking ahead, a re-elected Labor government would have to think twice, or thrice, about going ahead with a referendum for a republic if it couldn’t carry one for the Voice.

Conversely, a win would strengthen even further the PM’s authority. Dutton would take a hit, especially in current and potential “teal” seats – those seats the Liberals need to win back or prevent from falling at the next election. The Voice has already set Liberals against each other – whichever way the vote goes, Dutton will have to rebuild unity.

The government would try to heap as much blame as possible on the opposition in the event of a “no” victory, but the cost to Dutton would probably be overshadowed by the wider fallout. And blame-shifting would involve saying the electorate got it wrong, which is always tricky.

A loss would be devastating for Indigenous people, even accepting that not all of them support the “yes” case. It would invite despondency, unleash anger, strengthen the radical activists in the Indigenous community, and deeply harm reconciliation. It would be the end of what many saw as a new beginning.

On the other hand, a “yes” result would start another long journey. Most immediately, that would involve putting together the Voice itself, about which the government has only been willing to specify the barest bones. The task wouldn’t be easy, involving fresh consultations with Indigenous people and, almost certainly, a good deal of argument.

That would be followed by activity on treaty and truth telling, to which the government is committed under its pledge of support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a whole.

In future years, the worth of a successful referendum would be judged, in part, by whether the Voice did in fact contribute to noticeably better outcomes in closing the gap in health, education, housing, employment and other markers of equality, fairness and opportunity.

Would it turn out to be a cohesive, informed, influential body, or fall victim to politics, internal or external? In a decade, would it be seen as a failure or a facilitator?

Other countries mightn’t be hanging out for the referendum result, but it will be noticed internationally – or at least, its defeat would be.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop campaigned together in Perth for the “yes” case. A sparky pair, these two, in their very different ways.

Bishop, who is now Chancellor of the Australian National University, warned: “Australia’s international reputation can be affected by a ‘no’ vote.

“I have no doubt that it would be sending a very negative message about the openness, and the empathy, and the respect and responsibility that the Australian people have for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders,” she said.

The referendum campaign will, unfortunately but inevitably, sharply divide the country. For voters, a crucial question should be, what outcome will leave Australia most united afterwards?

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. View from The Hill: Australians go into the referendum divided – can the country emerge united? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-australians-go-into-the-referendum-divided-can-the-country-emerge-united-212448

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edith Jennifer Hill, Associate Lecturer, Flinders University

TikTok can be a confusing place, with users going from extreme yassified glamour, to rotating through 20 eyebrow shapes, to turning into a crispy old man with a simple click. This is all thanks to the magic of filters.

Filters are an integral part of the TikTok experience – and they are coaxing life stories out of users. However, filters have a long history on social media platforms before TikTok. They are a massive part of social media culture and storytelling practices.

The history of filters

Photoshop, first released in 1990, enabled users to edit pictures. The first decade of the 2000s was filled with conversations about editing pictures in advertisements and commercials. Seemingly, people were shocked at the level of editing that professional photos went through.

The 2010s was the age of Facetune. Facetune is an app that allows users to retouch photos. Unlike Photoshop, which takes a certain level of skill to master, Facetune provided a quick, easy and cheap way for everyday people to edit their photos.

Instagram began adding face-altering filters in 2017. What began as bunny ears and exaggerated features (think Snapchat filters) quickly developed into filters that “perfected” facial features. These filters, often conforming to Western beauty standards, would slim the face, sharpen the jawline, enlarge the eyes and whiten teeth.

While early versions of these filters seemed unrealistic and “fake”, recent filters have mastered undetectable face alterations.

Of course, not all filters aim to seamlessly perfect facial features. TikTok’s massive range of filters not only include a wide variety of face alterations (everything from adding sun-kissed freckles to simulating lip injections), but can change anything imaginable: skin, eyes, hair, makeup and yes, even age.

Coaxed affordances

When you create a video on TikTok, you are prompted to an editing screen where you can add voice filters, sounds, visual filters and more. The presence of this editing screen encourages creators to make use of the platform’s features.

These are called platform “affordances” and they are the fundamental things that influence how something can be used. Affordances allow, and often compel, users to share and interact in specific ways online.

On TikTok, affordances dictate how users interact with the platform and with each other. They are the “For You” page, the ability to like and comment, the ability to watch live videos and send creators gifts. They make the platform what it is.

Read more:
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Aimée Morrison, associate professor of language and literature at the University of Waterloo, says we need to consider the “prompts that coax and restrict user actions”, as they shape life stories online just as much as the people who make them. When we watch a TikTok that utilises filters as part of the storytelling, the filter becomes an integral part of the video and is so much more than simply a storytelling device.

On TikTok, filters are coaxed affordances. Trending filters are suggested to users (along with trending audio) to use when they make videos. This is a prompting action from the platform itself that encourage users to create in specific kinds of ways.

Of course, these filters do not function in isolation, and trending formats and audios also play a large role in the types of stories that are created.

Filters as storytelling devices

Filters coax stories from creators, encourage them to talk about distinct topics, look a certain way or share specific stories.

For example, a filter will guess what someone’s “girl dinner” will be, and creators will react and reuse the filter until it predicts only foods the creator likes. While this seems incredibly simple on the surface, this filter is coaxing a life story from the creator. We, the audience, now know more about the person we are watching.

Creators often use make-up and hair filters to differentiate between characters in a story (all played by the same person), or as devices to highlight themselves at different points in time. People can tell stories quickly by using filters, utilising different hair colours or make-up looks to make note of who is speaking.

Popular creator Kendra Matthies is a make-up artist who tells stories about doing make-up for weddings. Using different make-up filters, Kendra plays the bride, bridesmaids, the future mother-in-law and herself (interestingly enough, without a filter).

The filters change your appearance enough that the audience can clearly differentiate between characters in a story. This way, a creator can tell a story with a full cast of characters (and costumes) but only need themselves and their phone.

One trending filter is called “Aged”. This filter shows what the creator would look like at a much older age. A popular dermatologist on the platform, Dr Joyce Dermatologist, or @teawithmd, made a video discussing how this filter was an accurate look into ageing. She breaks down the filter and talks about the process of skin ageing.

Many creators have jumped on this trend, with 20.9 million videos made using this filter. The filter has prompted countless stories to be told by users about their fears of ageing, usually will a comedic twist. TikTok creator @turquoiseprince, for instance, used the filter and spoke happily about how it made them look like their dad.

Like all things online, this filter has also been memed. Another popular filter, titled “old but crispy baby” shows a much less flattering look into ageing. Many creators are reacting to videos talking kindly about ageing by making their own videos using this different filter that presents an exaggerated, “creepy” look at ageing.

Filters and their applications are developing rapidly and are increasingly ingrained in social media culture. While some may decry the use of filters and unrealistic beauty standards, it is undeniable they have wonderful storytelling capabilities.

Edith Jennifer Hill 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. From old and crispy to bold glamour – TikTok filters are helping us tell stories online – https://theconversation.com/from-old-and-crispy-to-bold-glamour-tiktok-filters-are-helping-us-tell-stories-online-211908

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucas Calais Ferreira, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Young people in contact with the criminal justice system – be it under community-based orders or in youth detention – are among the most marginalised in our society. And the health and health-care disadvantage faced by these young people may be evident for years.

Our research found high levels of largely-preventable diseases and avoidable premature deaths for these young people in Australia. This indicates inadequate health care both in youth detention and in the community.

It’s time we provided health care for people in youth detention that’s culturally safe and equivalent to what’s available in the community. That includes access to Australia’s so-called universal health-care scheme, Medicare.

Read more:
Locking up kids damages their mental health and sets them up for more disadvantage. Is this what we want?

Children as young as 10

Australian courts can sentence children as young as ten who are convicted of a criminal offence to a community-based order, or to youth detention.

During the 2021-22 financial year, 4,350 young people aged ten to 18 were detained at some point, typically for eight days or less.

Almost 50% of young people under youth justice supervision are Indigenous, and they are 24 times more likely than non-Indigenous young people to go into youth detention.

Young people in detention commonly have very poor health. This includes high rates of one or more physical and mental health problems, cognitive and neurodevelopmental disabilities, and substance dependence.

Read more:
The social determinants of justice: 8 factors that increase your risk of imprisonment

What we found

In the nearly 25 years of data covered in our study, we found young people with a history of contact with the youth justice system died at a rate more than four times higher than those of the same age and sex in the general Australian population.

We found those most at risk of dying prematurely were Indigenous children, males, and those whose first contact with the youth justice system was before they were 14 years old.

Until now, there’s been a remarkable lack of evidence on the burden of noncommunicable diseases, such as cancers and cardiovascular diseases, among young people during and after contact with the youth justice system. However, we found that compared with their peers, these young people have nearly double the rate of dying from such diseases.

For young Indigenous males, cardiovascular and digestive diseases, including chronic liver diseases, were particularly prominent (and largely preventable) causes of death.

Read more:
First Nations people in the NT receive just 16% of the Medicare funding of an average Australian

What we need

Our findings highlight the need for young people involved with the justice system to access high-quality and holistic health care that’s age- and culturally appropriate. This is essential to identify and manage their complex health conditions, both during periods of supervision and – critically – after return to the community.

Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations are well placed to provide this and to support continuity of care as these children transition in and out of detention.

But the Northern Territory is the only jurisdiction where they are funded to provide health care in youth detention.

Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations are unable to access Commonwealth funding to support health care in detention elsewhere.

Discriminatory exclusion from access to Medicare, which typically prevents access to Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations in detention, is an example of the “inverse care law”. This is when those most in need of high-quality health care are least likely to receive it.

Read more:
Victoria’s prison health care system should match community health care

Progress has been slow so far

Health-care reform in youth justice is clearly and urgently required, but progress has been slow. One reason is the lack of independent oversight of these systems.

Despite ratifying the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture in 2017, Australia has yet to establish the mechanisms required under this protocol to permit independent scrutiny of places of detention.

As a priority, we need to meet our international obligations – through both permitting unfettered access to all youth detention centres and investing appropriately in independent scrutiny – in every state and territory.

Australia is also lagging behind in routine monitoring of health and health care in youth detention. More than five years ago, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recommended producing regular reports on health care in youth justice settings. But there is still no Commonwealth or state/territory funding or mechanism for this critical monitoring.

Read more:
Australia’s twice extended deadline for torture prevention is today, but we’ve missed it again

Why we need to lift our game

Improving the health of this marginalised group is important to improving health equity, closing the gap, and preventing the tragic loss of young lives.

Australia can no longer ignore that some of our most disadvantaged children are dying at a much faster rate than expected, and from causes that are largely preventable. Doing so would amplify cycles of racism and social exclusion.

Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child all children, including those in contact with the youth justice system, have the right to the highest attainable standard of health. We owe it to them to make this a reality.

Lucas Calais Ferreira receives funding from Suicide Prevention Australia.

Stuart Kinner receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Professor Susan Sawyer is a member of the Youth Justice Act Independent Expert Group for the Victorian Government, Department of Justice and Community Safety.

Alex Brown 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. Too many young people who’ve been in detention die prematurely. They deserve better – https://theconversation.com/too-many-young-people-whove-been-in-detention-die-prematurely-they-deserve-better-211046

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Guhlin, Postdoctoral Researcher with Genomics Aotearoa, University of Otago

The genetic mapping of almost the entire kākāpō population has shed new light on specific traits that will help conservation biologists in their efforts to save the critically endangered flightless night parrots.

It also provides a blueprint for conservation genomics of other threatened species.

Kākāpō are remarkable and unusual birds, found only in Aotearoa New Zealand. They only breed every few years, triggered by the availability of certain forest foods such as the fruits of the native rimu tree.

The parrots’ life history and habits, combined with the impact of people, brought them close to the brink when their population dropped as low as 51 during the 1990s.

Thanks to the sustained efforts of the Department of Conservation, in partnership with Ngāi Tahu iwi, the kākāpō population is now up to 247 birds, living on offshore, predator-free islands. Earlier this month, four male kākāpō returned to the mainland for the first time in decades when they were transferred to the Maungatautari sanctuary.

But kākāpō suffer from diseases such as the fungal infection aspergillosis and many of their eggs are infertile.

Our genome analysis provides major insights into the genetic reasons behind these problems and will aid the birds’ recovery.

Read more:
Plant hormone boost for New Zealand’s critically endangered night parrot

Intense species management

Only remarkable conservation efforts have saved kākāpō from extinction – for now.

The extent of the work is astounding. Each bird is tracked and mechanical bird feeders are coded such that only individual birds have access to food prepared specifically for them. Vast amounts of data are recorded and stored, and veterinary hospitals around the country stand by to intervene if a kākāpō becomes ill or injured.

A few years ago, as part of this conservation effort, a crowdfunding project led by the Genetic Rescue Foundation raised money to sequence the genomes of all kākāpō. This was a considerable task, even with only 125 birds alive at the time. Additional generations were added later to bring the total to 169 sequenced individuals.

The aim was to gather as much information as possible on each bird, hoping this would allow better management and identification of risks.

The guardians of this genome data are Ngāi Tahu and the Department of Conservation.
Our team from Genomics Aotearoa applied for access to the data to see if we could develop new tools to help manage kākāpō and perhaps other endangered species.

Read more:
A huge project is underway to sequence the genome of every complex species on Earth

Understanding the genetics of kākāpō biology

We used the most up-to-date tools to identify genetic variation between kākāpō, employing AI technology to mark those areas of the genome that differ between individuals. This allowed us to update the kākāpō family tree and to identify families with unusual genetics.

We studied a range of biological features to link genomic information with observable traits. This has produced a wealth of information on genetic variations affecting growth, fertility, embryo survival and the number of eggs in each clutch.

But we wanted to go beyond genetics to find ways to support the kākāpō recovery team, providing them with science-based tools and advice that will make managing the birds more effective and less resource-intensive.

One important trait is the early growth rate of chicks. Each kākāpō chick that hatches is monitored closely and weighed frequently. We wondered if, from the genomic data, we could predict the growth rates of chicks based on their parents’ genomes.

To do this, we had to consider all other factors influencing growth rates – food sources, whether the birds were hand-reared or not, what island they are on – and remove that variation to see what comes from genetics alone.

Using new probability tools developed for other complex processes, such as predicting traffic flows, we developed a technique that predicts the growth rate of a chick from the genomes of its parents.

This gives the kākāpō recovery team a way to know when a chick is deviating from its expected growth, and to intervene with extra care. Prioritising care using genomics-based information will also help to identify individual birds for transfers to other sites, and to monitor those with poor growth or high disease risk.

Read more:
Back from the brink: how genome research is helping the recovery of the Chatham Island black robin

Looking towards kākāpō’s future

None of this work would be possible without the considerable data the kākāpō recovery team has gathered for this species. This is not always available for other species of conservation concern.

Our work confirms that the active management carried out over the past 45 years has maintained diversity in breeding values. This diversity means that kākāpō have enough genetic diversity and evolutionary potential to cope with future challenges.

The kākāpō recovery programme is now incorporating our data, showing that genomic science can inform the day-to-day decisions of a conservation team.

In the past few months, we have caught up with the sequencing by completing the genomes of all the chicks hatched since the first sequencing effort. These are a test of our predictions and an opportunity to finetune our models to raise the future prospects for the species.

We can’t wait to see if our work is validated in the genomes of the next generations of kākāpō.

None of this work would have been possible without the Kākāpō Recovery Team, international funders and researchers, and Genomics Aotearoa.

– ref. How gene mapping almost all remaining kākāpō will help NZ’s rare night parrot survive – https://theconversation.com/how-gene-mapping-almost-all-remaining-kakapo-will-help-nzs-rare-night-parrot-survive-212451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Associate Professor in Commercial Law and Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The National Party’s newly released tax package makes a clear and politically prudent play for the middle-income vote. Proposing to alleviate the financial pain of this “squeezed middle”, it may be key to determining who forms the next government.

The package attempts to provide some tax relief without fuelling inflation. To pay for the proposed tax cuts, the party would introduce new “revenue measures”. Just what these might cost to set up and administer may be a missing element of the picture.

National has announced four key initiatives as part of its tax plan, with implications for those on middle incomes, as well as those at the top and bottom of the income spread:

• shifting income tax brackets to compensate for inflation

• expanding tax credits to reach more modest income earners

• introducing the “FamilyBoost” childcare tax credit (while ending Labour’s extension of 20 hours’ early childhood education for two-year-olds that was scheduled to start in July 2024)

• increasing Working for Families tax credits for working families (from July 2024).

Relief measures aimed at superannuitants include promising to increase NZ Super annually – although that already happens under the current scheme – and to keep the Winter Energy Payment.

Environmental measures are a mixed bag. The Clean Car Standard or “ute tax” will be abolished, as will the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax. National has also promised not to increase fuel levies in its first term.

The party’s plans for the Emissions Trading Scheme are vague, but polluters will be expected to pay more for the damage they cause in the future. As the tax policy makes clear, short-term concerns about the cost of living trump longer-term considerations about climate change.

Revenue neutral means new taxes

To ensure the package is revenue neutral, four new taxes will be introduced. If the policy is aimed at those who vote, then three of the new taxes are aimed at shifting the tax burden to those who cannot vote.

The Foreign Buyer Tax (FBT) will be levied at a flat rate of 15% on residential properties worth more than NZ$2 million bought by non-residents.

A second stream of revenue will come from a tax on offshore gambling.

And a third will be from cost recovery from immigrants to cover public spending on the immigration system. To be competitive, charges will not exceed 90% of corresponding Australian immigration charges.

The last seems to be least problematic, although questions might be raised about barriers to overseas student entry.

While there are overseas examples of the FBT, National could face logistical hurdles in introducing something similar here. The Vancouver FBT, for example, piggybacks on the state transfer tax (stamp duty) and so there is an existing administrative structure.

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It would be interesting to see whether a low-cost new tax can be introduced without existing infrastructure.

The casino tax seems most problematic. According to this new policy, a National government would establish a “regulatory regime” requiring foreign online betting operators to report their New Zealand income. This proposal seems fanciful.

It is also interesting to compare this initiative with the proposal to scrap Labour’s proposed extension of GST to providers of platform-based services, such as Airbnb. Both proposals are aimed at offshore services but Labour’s seems far easier to implement.

Generally, two of the new proposals appear to gloss over the massive IT costs that tend to accompany new taxes. Establishing a new bureaucracy to chase offshore companies also goes against the reduction of the public sector espoused by ACT, National’s likely partner.

The fourth proposal to scrap depreciation for commercial buildings, introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, is the least National-like initiative. It seems to jar with the reinstatement of favourable tax treatment of rental properties.

Safeguarding the ‘un-squeezed top’

If National’s package is aimed at helping the “squeezed middle”, it is likely to go some way to achieving that goal – and secure votes. What the package does not do is engage with the problem of tax-free wealth.

Just this week the International Monetary Fund once again urged New Zealand to introduce a comprehensive capital gains tax. National’s package favours “the un-squeezed top” by reinstating tax deductions for rental properties, reducing the brightline test to two years, and leaving capital gains untaxed.

Read more:
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And the bottom? National would increase Working for Families tax credits. But as the Child Poverty Action Group have consistently observed, the discrimination against the children of non-working welfare recipients is unjustified and unfair.

Moving the income tax thresholds and extending eligibility for the Independent Earner Tax Credit are welcome. But these will make little difference to the lowest income earners.

Take a single person with no children earning the minimum wage of $22.70 per hour, working 37.5 hours per week ($44,265 a year). They gain around $1.30 a fortnight from the extended Independent Earner Tax Credit, and around $4.30 a fortnight from the income tax threshold movement.

So, roughly $5.60 a fortnight – not enough for a café coffee, let alone that lower priced tank of petrol the National Party policy also promises.

Contrast this with a single person without children who earns $180,000 per year. This person benefits to a greater extent from the movement of the income tax thresholds and gains $40 per fortnight – roughly seven times the gain of someone on minimum wage.

Combined with policies like the removal of the Community Connect public transport subsidies (targeted at young and low-income people) and stopping Fair Pay Agreements, there isn’t a lot here for the least well off. But these are probably not the voters National is after.

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. Taxing questions: is National glossing over the likely cost of administering its new ‘revenue measures’? – https://theconversation.com/taxing-questions-is-national-glossing-over-the-likely-cost-of-administering-its-new-revenue-measures-212529

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

The United States military plans to start using thousands of autonomous weapons systems in the next two years in a bid to counter China’s growing power, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced in a speech on Monday.

The so-called Replicator initiative aims to work with defence and other tech companies to produce high volumes of affordable systems for all branches of the military.

Military systems capable of various degrees of independent operation have become increasingly common over the past decade or so. But the scale and scope of the US announcement makes clear the future of conflict has changed: the age of warfighting robots is upon us.

An idea whose time has come

Over the past decade, there has been considerable development of advanced robotic systems for military purposes. Many of these have been based on modifying commercial technology, which itself has become more capable, cheaper and more widely available.

More recently, the focus has shifted onto experimenting with how to best use these in combat. Russia’s war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the technology is ready for real-world deployment.

Read more:
Ukraine war: drones are changing the conflict – both on the frontline and beyond

Loitering munitions, a form of robot air vehicle, have been widely used to find and attack armoured vehicles and artillery. Ukrainian naval attack drones have paralysed Russia’s Black Sea fleet, forcing their crewed warships to stay in port.

Military robots are an idea whose time has come.

Robots everywhere

In her speech, Hicks talked of a perceived urgent need to change how wars are fought. She declared, in somewhat impenetrable Pentagon-speak, that the new Replicator program would

field attritable autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18 to 24 months.

Decoding this, “autonomous” means a robot that can carry out complex military missions without human intervention.

“Attritable” means the robot is cheap enough that it can be placed at risk and lost if the mission is of high priority. Such a robot is not quite designed to be disposable, but it would be reasonably affordable so many can be bought and combat losses replaced.

Finally, “multiple domains” means robots on land, at sea, in the air and in space. In short, robots everywhere for all kinds of tasks.

The robot mission

For the US military, Russia is an “acute threat” but China is the “pacing challenge” against which to benchmark its military capabilities.

China’s People’s Liberation Army is seen as having a significant advantage in terms of “mass”: it has more people, more tanks, more ships, more missiles and so on. The US may have better-quality equipment, but China wins on quantity.

By quickly building thousands of “attritable autonomous systems”, the Replicator program will now give the US the numbers considered necessary to win future major wars.

The imagined future war of most concern is a hypothetical battle for Taiwan, which some postulate could soon begin. Recent tabletop wargames have suggested large swarms of robots could be the decisive element for the US in defeating any major Chinese invasion.

However, Replicator is also looking further ahead, and aims to institutionalise mass production of robots for the long term. Hicks argues:

We must ensure [China’s] leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, “today is not the day” — and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, now and 2035, now and 2049, and beyond.

A brave new world?

One great concern about autonomous systems is whether their use can conform to the laws of armed conflict.

Optimists argue robots can be carefully programmed to follow rules, and in the heat and confusion of combat they may even obey better than humans.

Pessimists counter by noting not all situations can be foreseen, and robots may well misunderstand and attack when they should not. They have a point.

Among earlier autonomous military systems, the Phalanx close-in point defence gun and the Patriot surface-to-air missile have both misperformed.

Read more:
AI researchers should not retreat from battlefield robots, they should engage them head-on

Used only once in combat, during the first Gulf War in 1991, the Phalanx fired at a chaff decoy cloud rather than countering the attacking anti-ship missile. The more modern Patriot has proven effective in shooting down attacking ballistic missiles, but also twice shot down friendly aircraft during the second Gulf War in 2003, killing their human crews.

Clever design may overcome such problems in future autonomous systems. However, Hicks promised a “responsible and ethical approach to AI and autonomous systems” in her speech – which suggests any system able to kill targets will still need formal authorisation from a human to do so.

A global change

The US may be the first nation to field large numbers of autonomous systems, but other countries will be close behind. China is an obvious candidate, with great strength in both artificial intelligence and combat drone production.

However, because much of the technology behind autonomous military drones has been developed for civilian purposes, it is widely available and relatively cheap. Autonomous military systems are not just for the great powers, but could also soon be fielded by many middle and smaller powers.

Libya and Israel, among others, have reportedly deployed autonomous weapons, and Turkish-made drones have proved important in the Ukraine war.

Australia is another country keenly interested in the possibilities of autonomous weapons. The Australian Defence Force is today building the MQ-28 Ghostbat autonomous fast jet air vehicle, robot mechanised armoured vehicles, robot logistic trucks and robot submarines, and is already using the Bluebottle robot sailboat for maritime border surveillance in the Timor Sea.

And in a move that foreshadowed the Replicator initiative, the Australian government last month called for local companies to suggest how they might build very large numbers of military aerial drones in-country in the next few years.

At least one Australian company, SYPAQ, is already on the move, sending a number of its cheap, cardboard-bodied drones to bolster Ukraine’s defences.

Peter Layton 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. US military plans to unleash thousands of autonomous war robots over next two years – https://theconversation.com/us-military-plans-to-unleash-thousands-of-autonomous-war-robots-over-next-two-years-212444

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

October 14, is the day Australians will head to their polling booths to vote for or against an Indigenous Voice being enshrined in the Constitution.

Anthony Albanese announced the date in a speech in Adelaide on Wednesday, as politicians across the spectrum and Indigenous “yes” campaign leaders rallied around the country.

In this podcast, we are joined by the campaign director for Yes23, Dean Parkin, and former deputy prime minister John Anderson, who sits on the no campaign’s advisory board. We spoke with each of them on the eve of Albanese’s announcement.

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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Battle of The Voice – Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin and former deputy prime minister John Anderson – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-battle-of-the-voice-yes23-campaign-director-dean-parkin-and-former-deputy-prime-minister-john-anderson-212471

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sana Nakata, Principal Research Fellow, James Cook University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and/or images of deceased people.

Today, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced an October 14 date for a national referendum on whether to amend the Constitution to establish a new advisory body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Called the “Voice to Parliament”, the new body would provide advice and make representations to parliament and the government on any issues relating to First Nations people.

The Voice to Parliament has been toted as a vital step toward redressing Australia’s painful history of discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, has said it would also remedy a “long legacy” of failed policies on a variety of issues, from the over-representation of First Nations people in the prison system to poorer outcomes for First Nations people in health, employment and education.

The Voice represents a new approach. Initially proposed in a document called the Uluru Statement from the Heart following a First Nations constitutional convention in 2017, the Voice would be enshrined in the Constitution to ensure it would have a permanent presence and role in Australian government.

This is why a referendum is needed – and why this particular one has been so fiercely debated for years.

Decades of efforts toward equality

In order for a constitutional referendum to be successful, it must garner a majority of votes nationally, as well as a majority of votes in a majority of states (this means four of the six states). Votes in Australia’s two territories – the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory – will count toward the national vote count but not toward the majority of states requirement.

Referendums don’t pass frequently. Only eight out of 44 previous referendums have passed in the country’s history.

The last time Australia voted on a referendum dealing with Indigenous affairs was in 1967.

This referendum made two things possible: the Commonwealth could count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the national census and make laws with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Read more:
The 1967 referendum was the most successful in Australia’s history. But what it can tell us about 2023 is complicated

The referendum passed by a huge margin. With the government able to make laws about First Nations people for the first time, it ensured they would be protected by the Racial Discrimination Act that was passed in 1975. This act prohibits discrimination in employment, housing and access to public facilities, such as swimming pools, cinemas and shops.

But for all the 1967 referendum made possible, progress has been slow.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make up a very small minority of the overall Australian population (less than 4%), so the right to vote has not always ensured political representation.

Although there are currently 11 Aboriginal members of parliament, they cannot represent all Aboriginal people. And there have yet to be any representatives at the Commonwealth level from the Torres Strait Islands (an archipelago between Australia and Papua New Guinea).

Read more:
With 11 Indigenous politicians in parliament, why does Australia need the Voice?

The “yes” and “no” campaigns

In the lead-up to this year’s referendum, the nation has been split along a stark “yes” and “no” divide.

The “yes” campaign has declared it’s time for change, emphasising how governments have consistently failed First Nations communities across the country.

They say better policy decisions result from local communities being heard on matters that affect them. To secure support from a mostly non-Indigenous population, the campaign also presents the Voice as an opportunity for all Australians to come together in support of recognition and democratic renewal.

Arguments against the Voice have been made on two different grounds.

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, a DjabWurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjmara woman, has argued the Voice is a powerless advisory body. She has called for the government to pursue a treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people instead.

However, treaty processes can take many years to progress. For example, the state of Victoria began a treaty process with First Nations people in 2018 and negotiations are only just about to commence.

The official “no” campaign, led by the conservative opposition parties, has depicted the proposed Voice as a body for elites in Canberra, the nation’s capital, which would be divisive for the country and prone to judicial overreach. “Yes” campaigners contend many of the “no” arguments are misinformation.

The significance of the vote

Even after 1967, it remains clear that existing voting rights and political institutions alone cannot represent the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to the federal government.

Internationally, other countries have attempted to create improved political participation and government accountability for Indigenous peoples.

In New Zealand, for example, there is designated Māori representation in the parliament. In Scandinavia, the Sámi parliament represents seven Indigenous nations across Finland, Norway and Sweden. In Canada, First Nations people have both “first-contact” treaties that were negotiated upon European arrival, as well as modern treaties.

The 2023 referendum is the first occasion Australia has considered how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can be meaningfully represented in the federal government. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, it will send a powerful message to rest of the world about how Australians view their country.

Read more:
10 questions about the Voice to Parliament – answered by the experts

Sana Nakata receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. A divided Australia will soon vote on the most significant referendum on Indigenous rights in 50 years – https://theconversation.com/a-divided-australia-will-soon-vote-on-the-most-significant-referendum-on-indigenous-rights-in-50-years-212259

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor emerita, University of Sydney

Australians will go to the polls on October 14 to vote in a referendum on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. We have not voted in a federal referendum since 1999. So what do you need to know?

How is a referendum run?

A referendum is run by the Australian Electoral Commission in the same way as they do elections. That means most people will vote in a polling booth on Saturday October 14 at a local school or community centre. There will probably be a barbecue, with a democracy sausage or two, and a cake stall if you are lucky.

But there will also be pre-poll voting and postal voting, just like in an ordinary election. Voting in a referendum, like an election, is compulsory.

One difference will be that there will only be one ballot paper, and it will be short and easy to fill out. So the queues at polling booths should move quickly.

What will I be voting on?

A referendum is used to ask the Australian people whether they approve of a change being made to Commonwealth Constitution, which is Australia’s ultimate law.

In this case, the amendment doesn’t change existing words, but instead adds new words to the Constitution. If passed, the amendment would insert a new Chapter IX at the end of the Constitution, saying:

Chapter IX — Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

(i) there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

(ii) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

(iii) the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

Despite the rather confusing public debate about other issues, all that voters are being asked to do in a referendum is decide whether or not the above words should be inserted in the Constitution.

Leer más:
10 questions about the Voice to Parliament – answered by the experts

What is the question and how do I fill in the ballot paper correctly?

The ballot paper does not contain the words of the amendment you will be voting on, as in many cases the amendment would be far too long.

Instead, voters are asked to approve the amendment as set out in the proposed law that has been already passed by parliament. That proposed law is identified by its “long title’, which gives a brief description of its nature. In this case, voters will be asked:

A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Do you approve this proposed alteration?

A single box is then provided, and you fill in your ballot paper by either writing “yes” or “no” in that box.

While there are some “savings provisions” that allow votes in other forms to be counted if the voter’s intention is clear, it is best not to risk it. Just follow the directions and vote “yes” or “no” to ensure your vote counts.

If you want to see a copy of the amendment when you are voting, you could bring with you the pamphlet outlining the “yes” and “no” cases that the Australian Electoral Commission is currently sending to each household. It sets out the amendment and the arguments either way.

Giving an informed vote is important. The people who wrote the Constitution entrusted us with the final say about changes to Australia’s most important law, in the expectation that we would perform our constitutional duty responsibly. We shouldn’t betray that trust.

Leer más:
We now know exactly what question the Voice referendum will ask Australians. A constitutional law expert explains

How is the outcome of the referendum determined and when will we know?

All the votes given in polling booths will be counted by hand on the night, so the results should come in pretty quickly, as it is a single ballot paper with a simple “yes” or “no” choice. Pre-poll votes and those postal votes that have already been received will also be counted on the night.

That means we should get a good idea of the result on the night, but if it is very close, we would have to wait some days until the rest of the postal votes arrive and are counted.

All votes go through two counts to double-check results and the counting process can be watched by scrutineers.

Unlike an election, there is a special double majority that has to be met for a referendum to pass.

First, a majority of formal votes across the country (including in the territories) would need to be “yes” votes.

Second, there would have to be a majority of “yes” votes in at least four out of six states (for which territory votes do not count). This means, for example, that 60% of voters in the country could vote “yes”, but the referendum could still fail if a majority of voters in three of the less populous states voted “no”.

What happens if the referendum passes or fails?

If the referendum passes, it is then sent to the governor-general, who gives assent to it. Once that happens, the amendment to the Constitution is made.

The amendment says “there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”. But it also says legislation is needed to determine the composition of the Voice and how it operates. The next step would be consultation about such matters before legislation is enacted to give effect to the Voice.

If the referendum fails, no change to the Constitution is made.

Anne Twomey has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and sometimes does consultancy work for governments, Parliaments and inter-governmental bodies. She was a member of the Constitutional Expert Group, which advised the Commonwealth Government’s Referendum Working Group on the wording of the proposed referendum. She is also a part-time consultant for Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers.

– ref. Australians will vote in a referendum on October 14. What do you need to know? – https://theconversation.com/australians-will-vote-in-a-referendum-on-october-14-what-do-you-need-to-know-195352

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

The fact that altering the Australian constitution requires a vote by the Australian people means that Voice referendum will become a vote about Australian nationhood.

This also means that the underlying question of the referendum is value-laden rather than strictly constitutional: what kind of nation does Australia want to be on the morning after the vote?

This discussion about nationhood is part of the logic of creating a winning coalition out of diverse constituencies that on their own are not big enough to secure a “yes” vote. But it should also be embraced tactically by the “yes” campaign to counter claims that the Voice is divisive.

Progressives tend to be wary of the politics of nationhood. But this doesn’t mean this political terrain should be abandoned to the forces of reaction.

Nationhood is something that conservatives are far more comfortable with than their progressive compatriots. For conservatives, nationhood is not a problematic category. Instead it speaks to unity, togetherness, and a purpose higher than that of the individual.

Read more:
The Voice: what is it, where did it come from, and what can it achieve?

It is for this reason that the “no” campaign has pitched many of its arguments in the frame of unitary nationhood. The message that enshrining a specific form of representation for a particular group in the constitution is divisive resonates with deep-rooted Australian notions of egalitarianism.

So “no” campaign strategists are sticking with this argument as an important corollary to the “Don’t know, vote no” message.

Criticisms of the (very small) sums spent on Welcome to Country ceremonies in the past financial year speak to the emergent “national conservative” base in parts of Australia. But the idea that the Voice contradicts Australian egalitarianism is a heavy-hitting argument, presumably with much wider traction among undecided voters.

For this reason, the “yes” campaign would be well advised to contest this vision of Australian nationhood with a vision of its own. That vision should be inclusive, tolerant and open to plural understandings of sovereignty. Crucially, these values should not be opposed to the idea of Australian nationhood, but made central to it.

We saw that inclusive, tolerant and pluralistic Australia during the World Cup. Of course, sport and politics are very different things. But the positive energy around support for the Matildas shows there is a desire for Australia to present an inclusive vision to the world and importantly, to ourselves.

This vision of Australia is there to be mobilised for positive change that represents an important step towards justice for Indigenous peoples. Justice in the Australian idiom translates to “fairness”. This language about Australia as a “fair nation” will be amplified as we approach the final weeks of the referendum.

Emphasising fairness doesn’t mean denying there is racism in Australia. It means acting in a way that seeks to work with the grain of Australian nationhood to win undecided small-c conservative voters to the cause of the Voice.

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that referendums are ultimately a numbers game. Every vote counts. This makes the creation of the “winning coalition” – a sometimes unusual alliance of voters who would not otherwise vote in similar ways – especially important.

Not everyone thinks about politics all the time. Their engagement may be focused only a few weeks, days or even hours prior to a vote. This means that positive messages about inclusive nationhood, for Indigenous Australians, descendants of settlers, or more recent migrants, can act as an important way to bring undecided voters to the side of change right up to polling day.

Progressives, millennials, centrist conservatives – and not least Indigenous peoples – cannot form a winning coalition in Australia on their own to pass a double-majority referendum. Potential “yes” voters from different backgrounds need a unifying vision to bind them in a temporary alliance to win the referendum, after which they can go their usual political ways.

Visions of inclusive nationhood will become the vehicle for such an alliance. They will create positive connections between diverse voters across Australian society and bring centrist voters to the “yes” camp.

Read more:
Establishing a Voice to Parliament could be an opportunity for Indigenous Nation Building. Here’s what that means

If this sounds naïve, then that may be a price to be paid for winning the vote. Politics is about compromise. Lost referendums in other countries – notably the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom – suggest that leaving the potent force of nationhood to the opposition is to provide it with an open goal.

Harnessing nationhood may sound like riding the tiger to some people. There are of course grounds to be wary of nationalism. But nationhood is largely an empty vessel. It can be filled with diverse ideologies and messages, and not just illiberal ones. It has been famously described as “Janus-faced”, meaning that like the Roman god of time, transitions and doorways, it faces forwards and backwards – it can be progressive as well as regressive.

Framing the Voice referendum in the politics of Australian nationhood will help position the “yes” campaign in the “sensible centre” of the debate. It will complicate the “no” campaign’s promotion of a reactionary vision of Australia. It will help shape the nation that we want to be the day after the vote.

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

– ref. Why the ‘yes’ campaign should embrace the politics of nationhood – https://theconversation.com/why-the-yes-campaign-should-embrace-the-politics-of-nationhood-212006

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today announced that the referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament will be held on October 14. To succeed, a constitutional referendum requires a majority in at least four of the six states as well as a national majority.

I have been tracking 2023 Voice polls in a graph since early July. This graph now shows the referendum date.

A Voice poll hasn’t been conducted since the mid-August Resolve poll that gave “no” a 54–46 lead. But all recent polls have trended to “no”, with the most friendly pollster for “yes” (Essential) showing “no” ahead by 47–43 in their early August poll.

In early May I wrote that just one out of 25 Labor-initiated referendums had succeeded in winning the required double majority. Furthermore, while not succeeding, referendums held by Labor had performed much better when held with a general election than as a standalone vote.

Read more:
While the Voice has a large poll lead now, history of past referendums indicates it may struggle

With the polling trends as they are, it’s very difficult to see “yes” winning a national majority. If “no” wins nationally, the state results don’t matter.

Ticks and crosses referendum issue

The Australian Electoral Commission will instruct voters to write either “yes” or “no” in the space provided on the ballot paper. But in a media release last Friday, the AEC said that, owing to longstanding legal advice, ticks would be counted as “yes” votes, but crosses would be informal.

This legal advice says a tick is used to indicate approval, so it should be counted as “yes”. A cross can indicated disapproval, but can also indicate a choice, such as on government forms. As a cross is ambiguous, it should not be counted.

Analyst Kevin Bonham said the informal rate at the two 1999 referendums was about 0.9%, and these informal votes would have included blank and other clearly informal votes, so the cross informal rate was likely about 0.1%.

The “no” side is now well ahead in polling for this referendum, and that lead is increasing. It’s very unlikely the ticks and crosses issue will affect the result.

Essential poll: 51–43 to Labor including undecided

In last week’s federal Essential poll, conducted August 16–20 from a sample of 1,151, Labor led by 51–43 including undecided (52–42 the previous fortnight). Primary votes were 33% Labor (steady), 33% Coalition (up three), 14% Greens (up two), 5% One Nation (down three), 3% UAP (up one), 7% for all Others (down one) and 6% undecided (steady).

Respondents were asked to rate Albanese, Peter Dutton and Greens leader Adam Bandt from 0 to 10. Ratings of 0–3 were counted as negative, 4–6 as neutral and 7–10 as positive. Albanese was at 37–29 positive (36–27 in June). Dutton was at 35–27 negative (34–27 previously). Bandt was at 36–21 negative (38–21 previously).

In a forced choice, 57% said they were glad Albanese’s Labor government won the last election, while 43% said it would have been better if Scott Morrison’s Liberal government had been re-elected.

By 67–13, voters agreed that professional sportswomen and sportsmen should be paid equally, and by 50–21 they agreed their interest in women’s sport had increased after Australia hosted the women’s soccer world cup.

On regulation of rents, 34% wanted rents frozen until economic conditions improve, 44% allowed to rise once a year by no more than inflation, 11% allowed to rise once a year by any amount and 10% unlimited rent increases.

By 90–10, voters thought they should have a right to know whether content is generated by Artificial Intelligence or not. On benefits and risks, 54% thought AI development has an equal amount of benefits and risks, 36% more risks than benfits and 10% more benefits than risks.

By 52–48, voters said they were financially comfortable over struggling, the first lead for comfortable in this question since late March.

Morgan poll: 53.5–46.5 to Labor

In this week’s federal weekly Morgan poll, conducted August 21–27 from a sample of 1,396, Labor led by 53.5–46.5, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since the previous week. Primary votes were 35% Labor (up 1.5), 35% Coalition (down 1.5), 13.5% Greens (up one), 5% One Nation (down one), 6.5% independents (down two) and 5% others (up two). Labor dropped 1.5 points last week.

NSW: Mark Latham resigns from One Nation

On August 22, New South Wales upper house MPs Mark Latham and Rod Roberts resigned from One Nation, after accusing the party of “defrauding NSW electoral funds”. They will continue to sit as independents in the NSW upper house. Latham had earlier been ousted by Pauline Hanson as One Nation’s NSW leader.

These defections reduce One Nation from three to one NSW upper house MP. Two of their three MPs were elected in 2019, and will be up for election in 2027. Latham was elected in 2023, so his term doesn’t finish until 2031.

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

Victorian Warrandyte byelection: Liberals crush Greens

At the 2022 Victorian state election, the Liberals beat Labor in Warrandyte by a 54.2–45.8 margin. Labor did not contest Saturday’s byelection. The Liberals defeated the Greens by 71.1–28.9, from primary votes of 57.4% Liberals (up 8.9%), 18.6% Greens (up 7.4%), 5.7% Labour DLP (new), 4.1% independent Maya Tesa (new) and 3.9% Victorian Socialists (new). Labor won 33.2% in 2022.

It’s difficult to interpret byelections that are forfeited by one major party, but the Liberals will be happy with the surge in their primary vote. Many Labor voters clearly voted Liberal instead of Greens.

Right likely to win October 14 New Zealand election

I wrote for The Poll Bludger on August 23 that the two main right-wing New Zealand parties are likely to form government after the October 14 New Zealand election, replacing the current Labour government. The right is also likely to win the October 22 Argentine election, while there’s a UK byelection in an SNP-held seat to come.

Adrian Beaumont 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. As referendum set for October 14, ‘yes’ is behind and the poll trends are unfavourable – https://theconversation.com/as-referendum-set-for-october-14-yes-is-behind-and-the-poll-trends-are-unfavourable-212005

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed the Voice to Parliament referendum will take place on Saturday October 14.

This is a critical moment in the referendum’s outcome. The “yes” and “no” campaigns for a Voice to Parliament are about to be supercharged as both sides begin a six-week countdown to voting day.

To give you an idea of what that might look like, a team of political scientists has come together at The Conversation to provide fortnightly updates on various indicators of the state of the two campaigns until polling day.

This includes the key messages that are getting the most public attention – in the news, social media, online ads and opinion polls.

To win, “yes” needs to get a majority of voters in a majority of states. Currently our estimate of the pooling of the national polls has the “yes” vote at about 46 and “no” at 54 (with a margin of error of 2.9%).

There are too few state polls to apply the same analysis, but earlier individual polls such as YouGov suggested Victoria and NSW were more supportive than other states.

What’s happening in the news?

Working with mainstream (print, radio and TV) and social media data from Meltwater, a global media monitoring company, our keyword analytics show that on average the referendum debate is attracting about 5,500 mentions across all media a day since January 1, 2023.

This week it is averaging 7,184 mentions, showing how attention to the debate is slowly building since the start of the year.

To date, public engagement through media and social media posts is more likely to be piqued by criticism of the Voice than support for it.

What’s trending on social media?

An analysis of X (formerly Twitter) data shows key events attracting the most public attention this year were Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s decision not to support the Voice to Parliament, and the subsequent party resignations of Liberals Ken Wyatt, Noel Pearson and Fred Chaney on April 6.

When we look at who and what is getting public attention on Facebook and X, it is most often conservative figures and politicians sharing Sky News reports critical of the Voice.

In the past three months, the top five items that have had the most interactions – tens of thousands of shares each and reaching more than 6 million viewers collectively – on X and Facebook, are:

1. Gina Rinehart being named “Western Australian of the Year”. This was along with Ken Wyatt, who was awarded the “Wesfarmers Aboriginal Award”, which describes him as “a strong advocate for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament”

2. A critical Sky News Australia story accusing RMIT Fact Lab of working with Meta (the owner of Facebook) to “censor Voice debate”

3. One Nation MP Pauline Hanson commenting on a Sky News story featuring Peta Credlin criticising the Voice agenda

4. Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce complaining about the mechanics of voting on the AEC website

5. Nationals MP Keith Pitt referencing a Sky News report to link the Voice to implications for WA Heritage Laws.

These snapshots are concerning because some stories contain misleading information such as Pitt linking the Voice to state laws. But they also show the power of negative stories to attract attention, and the reach of Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News TV stories beyond its paywall.

What’s happening in online advertising?

The “Yes23” campaign is outpacing all other paid referendum campaign groups in its spending.

In three months, most of the “Yes23” campaign’s ads are reinforcing their affirmative message in more supportive states: New South Wales ($176,952) and Victoria ($168,024); followed by ads to the more oppositional states of Queensland ($156,011) and Western Australia ($98,025). About 14% of ad spending is reserved for elsewhere, namely South Australia ($73,528) and Tasmania ($26,739).

However, Yes23’s core messages are more disparate than the “no” ads paid for by Advance Australia for the “Fair Australia” campaign. The “no” ad spend focuses on its stronghold states in Queensland ($33,652) and Western Australia ($27,234), and the possible flip-state South Australia ($16,6712).

While there are many more “yes”(1,009) than “no” (164) ads circulating, the “yes” message is dispersed across 33 different themes, some align (about “listening” and “unity”) but are distinctive enough to be separately categorised.

In comparison, the “no” advertisements cover just seven themes and all are negative. The top three most used messages by both sides – as judged by the number of advertisements – are summarised in Table 1 and overlap in their use of the theme of “unity”, but in opposite ways.

How are the polls looking?

Finally, if we look at how the polls are tracking by pooling together the major polling companies’ data, Professor Simon Jackman finds a loss of 20% in voter support for the “yes” campaign over the past 12 months.

In looking at the key messages, the ad spend, and the polls, we can provide a snapshot of the state of the two campaigns so far.

It is not an exhaustive view of the many actors contributing to the campaign, but it does tell us the “yes” campaign has a lot of ground to cover in the next six weeks if it’s going to succeed.

As with any voting campaign, much can change as public attention sharpens as polling day looms. Until then, we will bring you updates every fortnight.

Read more:
Your questions answered on the Voice to Parliament

Andrea Carson receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Women’s Leadership Institute Australia and Meta. This research is supported by a La Trobe University Synergy grant.

Max Grömping receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP220100050; DP230101777). He is an affiliate of the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), and member of the Electoral Integrity Project‘s International Advisory Board.

Simon Jackman is a past recipient of funding from the National Science Foundation and, currently, LaTrobe University and the Australian Research Council. He is a life member of the Australian Republican Movement.

– ref. Voice referendum: is the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ camp winning on social media, advertising spend and in the polls? – https://theconversation.com/voice-referendum-is-the-yes-or-no-camp-winning-on-social-media-advertising-spend-and-in-the-polls-208956

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

A group of crossbench parliamentarians have revived the idea of increasing the rate of the goods and services tax from 10% or removing exemptions on food, education and health purchases.

The group, which includes Allegra Spender and David Pocock, say increasing the GST rate would raise revenue to lessen government dependence on income tax as the population ages.

Read more:
Slower ageing, slower growth: the Intergenerational Report in 7 charts

Raising more from the GST is among the perennial candidates. In 2015 then treasurer Joe Hockey floated the idea but quickly abandoned it.

It can safely be predicted that this latest push from the crossbench will go the same way – nowhere.

Premiers must agree to rate change

The reason dates back to the debate over introducing the GST in the late 1990s, when opponents predicted the 10% rate would soon be raised, as had happened in New Zealand in the 1980s.

Then prime minister John Howard staved off this objection by designing the GST legislation so any increase in the rate required the unanimous support of all state and territory governments, as well as both houses of the federal parliament.

Getting such agreement is virtually impossible, as Hockey discovered. Even in the unlikely event of an agreement in principle, disputes over how the extra revenue should be shared would almost certainly derail any deal.

It might be possible in theory for the Commonwealth to renege on its deal by amending the GST legislation to remove or modify the states’ veto power. But the likelihood of getting such legislation through the Senate (notionally the “states’ house”) is almost zero.

Removing exemptions would increase cost of living

There remains the option of removing exemptions.

Imposing the GST on health and education would be pointless. For the most part the government would be taxing itself. That leaves only the option of taxing food, strongly supported by free-market economists but rejected by nearly everyone else.

Taxing food would be a bad idea at any time, as it bears most heavily on low-income households. But in a context where the major parties have locked in a massively regressive cut to income tax for the well-off, it would be even worse. And, of course, it would directly increase the cost of living – the exact opposite of what our political leaders are promising.

In the absence of an increased GST, and with many other reforms ruled out following the 2019 election defeat of Labor under Bill Shorten, there seems little alternative but to rely more heavily on income tax.

It has been suggested, with some horror, that the top marginal rate might have to rise to 60%, still well below the rates that prevailed during the boom economy of the decades after 1945.

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Increased reliance on income tax goes against the neoliberal belief that high marginal tax rates are a strong disincentive to work.

But the evidence for this belief is very weak. The bigger problem in our tax-welfare system is the high effective marginal tax rate paid by many families (often well above 60%) caused by the combined effect of income tax and the clawback of means-tested benefits.

Australia will have to choose between some challenging options to pay for the services we will collectively need in the future. But, for good or ill, an increase in GST is not among them.

John Quiggin was a prominent advocate for the exclusion of food from the GST when it was introduced

– ref. We can talk about a higher rate of GST in Australia, but it will never happen – https://theconversation.com/we-can-talk-about-a-higher-rate-of-gst-in-australia-but-it-will-never-happen-212380