Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noel Castree, Professor of Society & Environment, University of Technology Sydney

It made world news last week when a small lake in Canada was chosen as the “Golden Spike” – the location where the emergence of the Anthropocene is most clear. The Anthropocene is the proposed new geological epoch defined by humanity’s impact on the planet.

It took 14 years of scouring the world before the geoscientists in the Anthropocene Working Group chose Lake Crawford – the still, deep waters of which are exceptionally good at preserving history in the form of sediment layers. Core samples from the lake give us an unusually good record of geological change, including, some scientists believe, the moment we began to change everything. For this group, that date is around 1950.

But what didn’t get reported was the resignation of a key member, global ecosystem expert Professor Erle Ellis, who left the working group and published an open letter about his concerns. In short, Ellis believes pinning the start of our sizeable impact on the planet to 1950 is an error, given we’ve been changing the face of the planet for much longer.

The other working group scientists argue 1950 is well chosen, as it’s when humans started to really make their presence felt through surging populations, fossil fuel use and deforestation, amongst other things. This phenomenon has been dubbed the Great Acceleration.

The disagreement speaks to something vital to science – the ability to accommodate dissent through debate.

What’s the debate about?

Would the public embrace the idea that our actions are making the world almost wholly unnatural? The answer, of course, depends on the quality of the science. Since most people aren’t scientists, we rely on the scientific community to hash out debate and present the best explanations for the data.

That’s why Ellis’s departure is so interesting. His resignation letter is explosive:

It’s […] [im]possible to avoid the reality that narrowly defining the Anthropocene […] has become more than a scholarly concern. The AWG’s choice to systematically ignore overwhelming evidence of Earth’s long-term anthropogenic transformation is not just bad science, it’s bad for public understanding and action on global change.

It’s not that Ellis thinks the way we live is problem-free. The central issue, in his view, is that there’s powerful evidence of much earlier global-scale impacts caused by pre- and proto-capitalist societies.

For instance, as Earth systems experts Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin have shown, the violent Portuguese and Spanish colonisation of Central and South America indirectly lowered atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. How? By killing millions of indigenous people and destroying local empires. With the people gone, the trees regrew during the 17th century and covered the villages and cities, expanding the Amazon rainforest.

Why we should welcome honest disagreement in science

Scientists have been debating in recent years over whether the Anthropocene should be deemed an “epoch” with a specific start date, or else an historically extended “event” caused by different human practices in different places, such as early agriculture, European colonisation and the spread of European and North American capitalism worldwide.

Ellis’ resignation stems from this debate. He’s not alone – other group members and experts have also worked to refute the epoch idea.

As philosopher of science Karl Popper and others have argued, productive scientific debate can only occur if there’s space for dissent and alternative perspectives. Ellis clearly believes the Anthropocene group has gone from debate to group think, which, if true, would challenge the free exchange at the heart of science.

Read more:
A Canadian lake holds the key to the beginning of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch

Longer term, a compromise may well be reached. If the Anthropocene group were to shift tack and label the start of the epoch a multi-century event (a “long Anthropocene”), we’d still benefit from having labels for periods such as our current one where the human impact ramped-up significantly.

One issue with such tensions is what happens when they hit the media. Consider Climategate, the 2009 incident in which an attacker stole emails from a key climate research centre in the United Kingdom. Bad faith actors seized on perceived issues in the emails and used them to claim anthropogenic climate change was fabricated. The scientists at the heart of the controversy were cleared of wrongdoing, but the whole affair helped seed doubt and slow our transition away from fossil fuels.

The risk here is that if the public gets only a glancing, oversimplified view of these debates, they may come to doubt the abundant proof of our impact on Earth. It falls to journalists and science communicators to convey this accurately.

As for our trust in science, the case for declaring the Anthropocene will be subject to very close scrutiny and may not be ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the body responsible for separating out deep time into specific epochs.

Stratigraphers such as Lucy Edwards have argued that an emerging epoch isn’t a fit subject for stratigraphy at all because all the evidence cannot, by definition, be in.

What does this tension mean for the Anthropocene?

The epoch versus event debate doesn’t mean we’re off the hook in terms of our impact on the planet. It is abundantly clear we have become the first species in Earth’s long history to alter the functioning of the atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and pedosphere (the soil layer) all at once and very quickly. Species such as cyanobacteria or blue-green algae had huge impact by adding oxygen to the atmosphere, but they did not affect all spheres with the speed and severity we have.

While we did not set out to alter the planet, its implications are profound. Humans are not only altering the climate but the entirety of the irreplaceable envelope sustaining life on the only planet known to have life. This is a complex story and we should not expect science to simplify it for political or other reasons.

Read more:
Why the Anthropocene began with European colonisation, mass slavery and the ‘great dying’ of the 16th century

Noel Castree 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. Did the Anthropocene start in 1950 – or much earlier? Here’s why debate over our world-changing impact matters – https://theconversation.com/did-the-anthropocene-start-in-1950-or-much-earlier-heres-why-debate-over-our-world-changing-impact-matters-209869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Heinemann, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, University of Canterbury

Traditional harvesting sites, or mahinga kai, continue to be used throughout New Zealand to provide food and to share skills and cultural practices between families and generations.

But our new research shows that wild foods concentrate antibiotic-resistant bacteria and could put people at risk.

While water is regularly tested at recreational sites for potential pathogens, wild-harvested foods are commonly overlooked as a source of exposure to antibiotic-resistant microbes.

Wild foods are important to all cultures in Aotearoa. Both aquatic and terrestrial mahinga kai sites provide opportunities for recreation and social bonding. Entire regions may come to rely more heavily on wild foods during disasters that disrupt supply chains.

But there are no guidelines for people who harvest wild foods to inform them about the risk of antibiotic resistance. This needs to change.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria make gastrointestinal infections from eating wild foods or contact infections acquired during harvest or food preparation more difficult, even impossible, to treat.

Read more:
Humans are polluting the environment with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and I’m finding them everywhere

The creeping pandemic of antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health and food security, according to the World Health Organization.

It occurs when bacteria become less responsive to the antibiotics used to prevent or treat bacterial infections. Over time, populations within any species of bacteria emerge with one, then two or more resistances to antibiotics, until we get potentially untreatable super strains.

This process is happening in all bacteria, pathogenic or benign, leading to super strains that are resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Because of the way antibiotic resistance genes clump together, super strains are usually super spreaders of antibiotic resistance.

Read more:
We know _why_ bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, but _how_ does this actually happen?

Bacteria are linked together in a horizontal gene-sharing network. Genes can transfer between members of the same and different species at high frequency. So no matter in which species the resistant gene first appears, it can potentially be transferred to a pathogen.

E. coli on watercress and in mussels and cockles

In conjunction with the local hapū Te Ngāi Tūāhuriri Rūnanga and Environment Canterbury, we monitored waterways used to harvest kai (food) such as watercress. We found both rural and urban streams have high levels of Escherichia coli, a bacterium found in human or animal faeces and commonly identified in freshwater and coastal environments in Aotearoa.

E. coli is used as an indicator for infection risk in water and food. In the sites we studied, concentrations of E. coli were consistently high over many years. These bacteria can cause diseases in their own right, but what makes them a good indicator is that they co-locate in the environment with other pathogenic bacteria and are easy to grow in the laboratory.

We identified E. coli on plants (watercress) and in animals (mussels and cockles) taken for kai. In some samples, up to 20% of the E. coli were resistant to the frontline antibiotic drug ampicillin.

This means infections by one in five E. coli might fail to respond to a frequently prescribed antibiotic, leading to more suffering or medical complications.

We also detected resistance to last-resort drugs such as ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin is usually prescribed to treat bacterial infections when other antibiotics have already failed. Often, the bacteria we found were resistant to drug concentrations that exceeded what could be safely given to a patient.

Safe to touch does not equal safe to eat

Another observation we made was that mahinga kai, particularly shellfish, concentrate bacteria from the water they filter. Large cockles can filter three litres per hour and this concentrating effect was so powerful that we found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the cockles even when we couldn’t detect them in water samples.

Bacteria extracted from cockles were “ingested” during high tide and showed us what the water was like over that time period. In contrast, water samples, such as those used to inform swimming guidelines, represent only the conditions at the time of sampling.

This is important, because rainfall and sewage overflow events transiently increase the number of bacteria in water and may not be picked up during routine monitoring.

Our calculations suggest that existing water safety guidance does not apply to the risk of contracting an antibiotic-resistant infection and could mislead those harvesting wild foods into taking greater risks.

The shellfish in our study were collected from popular sites in Waitaha/Canterbury. Local government monitors these sites and provides guidance on swimming safety. Our work shows that swimming guidance does not substitute for making decisions about whether or not to harvest wild kai.

Read more:
Bacteria ‘shuffle’ their genetics around to develop antibiotic resistance on demand

We need improved guidelines for the safe harvesting and use of wild foods and more strenuous monitoring to protect those who rely on mahinga kai.

To maintain the benefits of harvesting wild foods, we should take a One Health approach that formalises the links between medicine and the environment. It helps to prevent the cause – rather than just the symptoms – of infectious disease and antibiotic resistance.

The problem of contaminated water doesn’t end with aquatic mahinga kai.

These same waters can be used for drinking or irrigation. The climate is warming and resulting floods gather more contamination from cities and farms into waterways.

Mahinga kai sites are not just lifeboats in time of need. They are the canary telling us that we must change our ways.

Jack Heinemann has received funding from Brian Mason Trust, Marsden Fund, and various other government, civil society, philanthropic, and industry sources.

Sophie Joy van Hamelsveld 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. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria in NZ’s wild cockles and watercress put people at growing risk of serious illness – https://theconversation.com/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-in-nzs-wild-cockles-and-watercress-put-people-at-growing-risk-of-serious-illness-209845

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

Andrew Leigh, an assistant minister in the Albanese government, has launched a swingeing attack on the stranglehold the factional “duopoly” has on the Labor Party.

Leigh says the factions’ power is at an all-time high, which suppresses ideological debate, distorts preselections, and discourages people joining the party.

As one of two non-factional members of caucus, it is generally recognised that the promotion of Leigh, who has strong economic qualifications, has been handicapped by not being in the Left or Right.

In a speech to the Per Capita think tank’s John Cain Lunch, released before its Wednesday delivery, Leigh says he’s not arguing factions should be banned but that “not being in a faction should be as valid a choice as joining a faction”.

He says the silence about the factions and their operations “should be a clue. If a group’s practices and deals start to sound like they’ve been plucked from a John le Carre novel, these people should ask themselves whether their shenanigans befit Australia’s most important political party.”

In an excoriating critique of the way factionalism is operating at federal and state level, Leigh says today’s factions “are less likely to broker ideological debates than to try and find a way of avoiding the debate altogether”. He contrasts this with the 1990s feisty debates at NSW ALP conferences, and at national conferences, which showed Labor “was a sufficiently large tent to contain a spectrum of ideological perspectives”.

“If we stifle internal debate, we miss the chance to test our policies among ourselves,” Leigh says.

“As Assistant Minister for Competition, I can’t help but wonder if part of the problem is what we would call an increase in market concentration.” Leigh points to the collapse of the Centre Left faction, which was strong in the 1980s, and the decline of non-factional parliamentarians, producing a duopoly of Right and Left.

“And just as duopolies in the product market hurt consumers through price gouging and profiteering, so too duopoly factions may engage in behaviour that is not in the long-term interests of the party and its membership.

“When factional competition is less intense, dealmaking can replace debate. If factionalism becomes effectively compulsory, the party may become less dynamic.”

Factions can be profoundly undemocratic, Leigh says.

“In some jurisdictions, factions require their members to use a ‘show and tell’ approach to internal Labor Party elections. In the room where ballot papers are handed out, the faction sets up a second table.

“When members are given their ballot paper, they must walk over to the factional table, and hand their ballot paper to a factional official.

“That factional official then fills in their ballot paper, and gives it back to the party member to be deposited into the ballot box. This rule applies to all members of the faction, from new members to ministers. Failure to comply can mean expulsion from the faction.”

In contrast, “no Labor government would tolerate an organisation that set up a table in the corner of the polling station, asking people to volunteer to have their ballot papers filled in for them. We would see it as utterly undemocratic. Yet we tolerate it in our own internal elections.”

Criticising the way the factions carve up seats, Leigh says they are “at their worst when they serve only as competing executive recruitment agencies”.

“In most states, preselection is virtually impossible for people outside the factional system. It’s a case of Left, Right, or Out.”

He highlights the Victorian “Stability Pact” – “an agreement between the factions in which every winnable seat, every party leadership position, and every spot on every committee is divided between the Left and the Right, with a no-contest rule on the other’s possessions.

“Like the nineteenth century colonial powers meeting in Berlin to divide up Africa, the Stability Pact effectively takes away the ability of local members to have their say. Nominally, the party rules say that preselections depend equally on local member votes and the central committee. But if the factions vote together, then even a 90% local member vote can be overridden by a 95% central committee vote.”

Allocating seats to factions is “electorally reckless” because it can lead to failing to field the best person for a particular electorate, Leigh says.

He says factional dominance causes unnecessary division, with the risk of forcing new recruits to the party into an “uncomfortable choice”. Factionalism also has bad consequences in Young Labor and in university Labor clubs, with many campuses having two clubs, one for the Left and one for the Right.

“Factional dominance risks eliminating a tradition with deep roots in the Labor Party: people who simply choose to be part of the party,” Leigh says.

“Most Labor members will never seek a career in parliament or as a party official. They simply want their party to recognise that a non-factional member of the Labor Party is no less worthy than a factional member.

“On election day, these members will staff booths from dawn to dusk. They are motivated not by power, but by altruism. They joined Labor to shape a better nation. They should not be treated as second-class citizens within our party.”

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. Andrew Leigh calls out how Labor’s factional ‘duopoly’ is undermining the party – https://theconversation.com/andrew-leigh-calls-out-how-labors-factional-duopoly-is-undermining-the-party-209972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Fujak, Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University

Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Tuesday that the Victorian government has withdrawn from its commitment to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, citing an anticipated cost blowout from an original estimate of A$2.6 billion to over $6-$7 billion.

Commonwealth Games Australia chief executive Craig Phillips described the decision as “beyond disappointing”. Phillips questions the government’s figures, saying that the cost of running the Gold Coast event in 2018 was $1.2 billion and the 2022 Birmingham Games was $1.8 billion.

The government said existing funding set aside for the games will remain invested in regional projects intended to create an event “legacy”.

Aside from the viability of the 2026 event, Victoria pulling out of hosting the event raises the broader question of whether the Commonwealth Games will survive.

How has this happened?

Victoria secured the Commonwealth Games in April 2022 with a unique multi-region model that sought to bring the event to regional Victoria.

Despite the obvious risks and costs associated with decentralising a major event away from pre-existing infrastructure in Melbourne, Andrews noted at bid submission that

Victoria is Australia’s sporting state, and, if awarded the 2026 Commonwealth Games would demonstrate to the world a new way to deliver the competition.

Andrews made clear the decision to withdraw was entirely financial, stating that the new estimated cost of potentially over $7 billion “does not represent value for money”.

When pressed at his media conference to provide accountability as to how his government’s costing could have been so grossly inaccurate, Andrews said that certain event costs were unforeseeable.

What could not be reasonably foreseen, and was not foreseen, was the costs incurred in terms of services, security, transport […] there were estimates that were made and those estimates are clearly well and truly under the actual cost.

The Commonwealth Games Federation and Commonwealth Games Australia dispute these costs estimates. They signalled the blame for any cost overruns lies with the Victorian government.

The numbers quoted to us today of $6 billion are 50% more than those advised to the Organising Committee board at its meeting in June.

Since awarding Victoria the Games, the Government has made decisions to include more sports and an additional regional hub, and changed plans for venues, all of which have added considerable expense, often against the advice of the Commonwealth Games Federation and Commonwealth Games Australia.

The implications

The decision to withdraw from hosting the event will still incur costs. This includes pre-existing costs related to staffing contracts, renting premises and marketing, as well as to-be-determined contractual break costs as negotiated with the Commonwealth Games Federation.

The financial costs of the withdrawal, however, may pale against the longer-term reputational damage done to Victoria and perhaps Australia more broadly.

This decision may also damage Andrews’ reputation. In proposing an untested regional games delivery model, it was incumbent on the government to adopt a particularly rigorous process to ensure the the event’s viability, which does not appear to have been done.

Is Victoria still Australia’s ‘sporting capital’?

Victoria has long proclaimed itself Australia’s (and even the world’s) sporting capital. The state has developed an unparalleled portfolio of major sport events since the 1980s, and become a global exemplar in executing major events in the process.

But withdrawing from the 2026 Commonwealth Games arguably represents Australia’s most prominent sporting failure of the past half-century, and is a significant reputational blow to Victoria’s sporting pre-eminence.

Read more:
For cities, hosting major sporting events is a double-edged sword

What’s more, in an annual global ranking of sport cities published last month, before the Commonwealth Games decision, Brisbane (15th) leapfrogged Melbourne (23rd) and Sydney (44th) to become Australia’s top ranked.

Brisbane’s success isn’t only attributable to its impending hosting of the 2032 Olympics. Its ranking also recognises that the FIFA Women’s World Cup is being played predominantly in the north-east Australian states due to stadium challenges associated with AFL-orientated Victoria.

Meanwhile, South Australia’s recent sporting successes include the hosting of AFL Gather Round, LIV Golf and recent procurement of the 2024 Super Netball final from Victoria.

Victoria’s grip on the “sports capital” title is increasingly tenuous.

The end of the Commonwealth Games?

Perhaps the most critical question is the viability not only of the 2026 Games, but also the broader Commonwealth Games movement.

Victoria’s withdrawal continues a trend of recent instability. In 2017, the South African city of Durban was stripped of 2022 hosting rights for a failure to meet key obligations around governance, venues and funding.

However, whereas the Commonwealth Games Federation had just under 2,000 days to secure a replacement host for 2022, Victoria’s withdrawal has occurred only 973 days prior to the start of the event.

Read more:
Major sports events: are they worth it?

The movement’s broader existence is perilous given there’s a shrinking pool of host cities. Victoria was the only formal applicant for the 2026 edition.

This is a challenge faced by large sporting events more broadly, with potential applicants increasingly wary of the significant costs.

Even the summer and winter Olympic Games have increasingly struggled to attract applicants. This resulted in the unprecedented move to simultaneously award the 2024 and 2028 summer games to Paris and Los Angeles in 2017 – normally the summer games are awarded to one city at a time.

With seemingly little global appetite to host the event, and broader cultural discussions in Australia and abroad surrounding the role of the monarchy, existential questions surround the Commonwealth Games movement.

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

– ref. ‘Existential questions’: is this the beginning of the end of the Commonwealth Games? – https://theconversation.com/existential-questions-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-commonwealth-games-209961

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

What if Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe and his successor Michele Bullock were able to achieve something truly remarkable – a steady decline in inflation without further interest rate increases, and without bringing on a recession.

It’s suddenly looking possible. Inflation is now coming down so quickly worldwide there’s probably no need to push it down further.

We couldn’t have said that a week ago. Then, the US inflation rate was 4%, well down on the peak of 9.1% a year earlier, but high enough for eminent economists such as former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to say the US would need a mountain of unemployment to bring it down further.

Specifically, Summers said that to control inflation the US would need

five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation – in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment, or five years of 6% unemployment, or one year of 10% unemployment

That was in late June, when US inflation had slipped from 5% to 4.9% to 4% over three months. Then, it was at least arguable that it wouldn’t fall much further without another push.

No longer. Last week, we learned that US inflation plunged yet again to 3% in June. Although other countries’ results for June aren’t out yet (ours is out next week) it’s now no longer easy to argue that progress isn’t real and continuing.

This graph of the latest monthly readings of annual inflation rates shows inflation peaked in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia late last year, and has been coming down fairly steadily since.

Summers and others in the US used to deride those who said ultra-high inflation would go away as “team transitory”. But it is now looking as if that high inflation was indeed transitory, even if the transition took longer than expected.

Driving down inflation has been one of the key forces that drove it up: energy and transport prices, which surged in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

US energy prices have fallen 16.7% over the past year, led down by a 26.5% slide in the price of what Australians call petrol. That’s a saving that will push down Australia’s inflation rate and inflation rates worldwide.

Non-energy and non-food inflation fell as well, suggesting that there isn’t (yet) a psychology of expectations holding US inflation up.

Falling inflation expectations

Here, Australians expect falling inflation, if their answers to the Melbourne Insitute’s monthly expectations survey are to be believed. In June, those surveyed expected inflation of 5.2% in the year ahead, down from 6.3% a year earlier.

This makes Australians less likely than they were to bake high inflation into wage negotiations and other decisions, making it less likely inflation will remain high.

And it ought to be noted that the inflation Australians say they expect has traditionally been much more than what’s been delivered. That’s presumably because most of us notice the prices that are going up more than those that aren’t.

A soft landing, without a recession

The much quicker than expected collapse in US inflation has dramatically raised the likelihood of what’s called a “soft landing” in the US. Here in Australia, it’s what our current Reserve Bank Governor has called staying on the “narrow path” of returning inflation to target in a reasonable timeframe, without a recession.

If that happens, finance journalist Alan Kohler says Lowe and his successor Michele Bullock (who takes over in September) will be the first team at the top of the bank to get inflation down from above 7% without delivering a recession.

There was a recession when the bank tried to get inflation down below 7% in the mid-1970s, in the early 1980s, and in the early 1990s.

That we might be able to pull off yet another first ought no longer to surprise us, after all of the firsts during COVID. Enduring Australia’s (brief) 2020 recession without unemployment climbing above 7% was also a first.

The minutes of the Reserve Bank’s June board meeting released on Tuesday show it is prepared to countenance such a first.

The bank’s board members acknowledged that inflation was “now declining, albeit from a high level”, while falling commodity and shipping prices were cutting cost pressures. All this before the full effect of the bank’s 12 rate rises to date has been felt.

Read more:
Meet Michele Bullock, the RBA insider tasked with making the Reserve Bank more outward-looking as its next governor

Remember, these are minutes of a meeting that took place before last week’s extraordinarily good news from the US. So those board members’ comments hold open the possibility of Australia keeping the bulk of its gains in employment, while getting inflation back down to controllable levels.

The fact that it has never happened before hasn’t stopped the economics team at the ANZ Bank from predicting it – no further rate rises from here on, a continuing slide in inflation, and only a modest uptrend in unemployment.

Read more:
New findings show a direct causal relationship between unemployment and suicide

A ‘Goldilocks’ economy is in sight

The “Goldilocks” outcome – not too hot or too cold, but just right – would be keeping in work most of the Australians who got into work when unemployment fell and getting on top of inflation. If we can manage that, we will have done future Australians an enormous service.

Things get easier when unemployment is low. We get more likely to become more productive, because we’re less resistant to change when unemployment is less of a threat. We get in a better position to help the budget, by taking less in benefits and paying more in tax. And we become more like each other – lessening inequality.

It is looking as if the Reserve Bank has the opportunity to cement low unemployment while controlling inflation. Holding off (and perhaps abandoning) future rate raises will keep it in reach.

Our next official inflation update, due out next Wednesday, will matter a lot.

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

– ref. Australia is on the brink of ending interest rate hikes and an economic first – beating inflation without a recession – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-on-the-brink-of-ending-interest-rate-hikes-and-an-economic-first-beating-inflation-without-a-recession-209877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bartholomew Stanford, Lecturer (Indigenous Knowledges) , Charles Darwin University

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has published the “yes” and “no” pamphlets for the Voice to Parliament on its website. The pamphlet will eventually be printed and must be delivered to every household around the country at least 14 days before the referendum.

The passage of the Voice to Parliament constitutional amendment bill triggered a 28-day period for written arguments for and against the proposed change to the Constitution.

Australian parliamentarians have provided their “yes” and “no” arguments for the Voice, which have been published online with no fact-checking by the AEC. Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers has said

each case will be published in separate, unedited and unformatted documents, exactly as they have been received by the deadline.

The last “yes” and “no” pamphlets to be produced were for the 1999 referendum that asked Australians to replace the monarch as head of state with a republic system of government. With the “no” Voice pamphlet, we are seeing similar themes to the republic “no” campaign – sowing seeds of uncertainty and division in the community.

Professor of government John Higley and political scientist Ian McAllister argue the failure of the referendum in 1999 was due, in part, to the fact Australians generally had a lack of knowledge about the implications of change to our democratic institutions.

This raises the question why we are still using “yes” and “no” pamphlets. Is it time to give them up and move to a mode of communication that is not inherently subject to bias and unsupported claims?

History of the “yes” and “no” pamphlets

In 1911, two questions were posed to the Australian public at a referendum separate to a general election.

The questions were whether to extend the Commonwealth’s powers over trade and commerce and give the Commonwealth the ability to make laws in respect to powerful corporations. Both returned a resounding “no” answer.

The government at the time believed the rejection of both proposals was due to the public being misinformed and the opposition party’s distortion of the key issues.

So, the following year, the government sought to send every elector a document that explained proposed constitutional changes from the “yes” and “no” sides.

Today, the AEC is required under section 11 of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984, to provide each elector with a pamphlet outlining arguments in favour and against proposed constitutional changes.

Read more:
Do governments know what to do with street art?

The Voice to Parliament pamphlet – what is in it?

“No” Pamphlet: “if you don’t know, vote no”

The “no” pamphlet for the Voice to Parliament uses a lot of strong, emotion-invoking language and contains potential misinformation.

For instance, the pamphlet includes the recurring claim the Voice is “legally risky”, despite legal experts disproving this. There is also the repeated assertion of a lack of detail about how the Voice will work, despite this having been addressed by academics and the government.

Another claim that “a centralised Voice risks overlooking the needs of regional and remote communities” runs counter to the assertions of the “yes” campaign that the purpose of the Voice seeks to empower local voices to be heard at the national level.

The pamphlet also expresses concern the Voice will not replace institutions such as the National Indigenous Australians Agency, but will work alongside them, which the campaign thinks will be costly and add an extra level of bureaucracy to Indigenous affairs.

There is also the ongoing about the “unknown” nature of the Voice, who will be appointed to it and how representation will be ensured.

Lastly, there is a section entitled “there are better ways forward”, but it contains no examples of what these better ways could be.

“Yes” Pamphlet: “voting no means nothing will change”

The “yes” pamphlet has reiterated a lot of key points already made by the campaign. One thing it does well is provide examples of where direct Indigenous involvement in decision-making has led to improved outcomes for Indigenous people. It also provides examples of how the Voice could work in practice.

The pamphlet argues past governments have invested billions in programs that don’t work. A Voice will help governments better listen to locals, find solutions and save money in the long run.

Some key details are missing, however. Although the pamphlet states that “members of the Voice will be chosen by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their local area and serve for a fixed period,” the specifics of how this process will work are not addressed.

The pamphlet doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said in the “yes” campaign to date. And although it provides a bit more detail on these key points, it actually has less content than the “no” pamphlet.

Read more:
10 questions about the Voice to Parliament – answered by the experts

Is it time to move away from “yes/no” pamphlets?

Misinformation is a growing issue for discussions around the Voice.

In the past, concerns have been raised about the referendum pamphlet as a way of communicating with voters because it is not examined for accuracy. As UNSW constitutional law expert George Williams warns,

Australians must be cautious when reading these pamphlets. In the past, they’ve often contained hyperbole and wild and exaggerated claims.

The “yes/no” pamphlets have also been characterised by some as antiquated and redundant.

Indeed, many of the points made in the Voice to Parliament cases published today do not offer any new perspectives for the public to consider. Instead, they reiterate arguments for the “yes” and “no” sides by repeating what Australians have heard for the past 12 months.

There is always going to be a level of uncertainty associated with proposed changes to the Constitution. Today, with misinformation about the Voice being circulated on social media, wouldn’t we be better off removing another way for unreliable information to be shared among the public?

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

– ref. The campaign pamphlets for the Voice don’t offer new perspectives. Do they still serve a purpose? – https://theconversation.com/the-campaign-pamphlets-for-the-voice-dont-offer-new-perspectives-do-they-still-serve-a-purpose-209855

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

The Northern Hemisphere summer has brought one extreme event after another – from heatwaves to wildfires and floods. It comes as the world likely heads into an El Niño pattern, which brings a higher chance of hot, dry weather in much of Australia.

So is the weird northern summer a portent of what Australia can expect in a few months?

The extremes in the Northern Hemisphere are linked to persistent weather patterns which allow heat to build in some places and rain to continue in others. On top of this, human-caused climate change is raising temperatures to new heights.

It’s too early to say whether Australia is in for a scorching summer. The predicted El Niño is a worry, but doesn’t guarantee the record-smashing heat we’re seeing in parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

Having said that, continued global warming will bring more record-high temperatures in Australia. So we must remain on high-alert – and ramp up reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Extreme weather across the world

Wild weather in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year is to be expected. However, recent extremes are off the charts.

Major heatwaves are underway in North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia. In California’s Death Valley, temperatures on Sunday reached 53.3℃. Parts of Italy were expected to reach 45℃ on Tuesday, and later in the week could approach Europe’s hottest temperature on record: 48.8℃.

China provisionally reached 52.2℃ on Sunday, shattering the previous record for the country by more than 1.5℃.

Meanwhile, wildfires are tearing through Canada, Greece and Spain, destroying properties and forcing evacuations.

So what’s causing these simultaneous heatwaves across multiple regions? They’re all linked to high-pressure weather systems that are “blocking” or deflecting oncoming low-pressure systems (and associated clouds and rain).

These low-pressure systems have moved to other areas and caused extreme rainfall and flooding. Flooding in South Korea has left 40 people dead and destroyed critical infrastructure. Vermont, in the northeast United States, was also flooded after up to two months of rain fell in a few days.

Alarmingly, the atmospheric patterns driving the extremes in the Northern Hemisphere appear to be getting more common under climate change. On top of this, human-caused global warming is greatly increasing the chance of record-breaking extreme heat events and concurrent heatwaves across many regions.

Read more:
Why are so many climate records breaking all at once?

What this means for Australia

All this begs the question of what might be coming Australia’s way this summer.

There’s one factor working in our favour: the particular atmospheric pattern bringing extremes to the Northern Hemisphere isn’t replicated in the Southern Hemisphere, because we have more ocean and less land.

However, Australia does experience its own “blocking” high pressure patterns which also bring major heatwaves and extreme rain events. Unfortunately we can’t predict these months in advance.

El Niño is a little more easily predicted. Currently, the tropical Pacific Ocean is trending towards El Niño conditions, as waters off the west coast of Ecuador and Peru continue to warm.

El Niño is part of a natural fluctuation in the Earth’s climate system which typically lasts for the best part of a year. It raises the chance of a warmer and drier spring in Australia.

Some meteorological agencies say an El Niño has already arrived. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology is holding off on a declaration, for now. That’s because while the Pacific has fallen into an El Niño pattern, the atmosphere hasn’t yet followed.

But the bureau still puts the likelihood of an El Niño at 70%, and forecasts warmer and drier conditions across much of Australia from August to November.

The extreme weather in the Northern Hemisphere isn’t strongly related to the developing El Niño. But by the time Australia’s summer arrives, we’ll likely see El Niño’s effects in the weather.

What’s more, another driver of Australia’s climate, the Indian Ocean Dipole, is likely to enter a positive phase in coming months.

This phase is associated with warmer seas in the west Indian Ocean. This leads to fewer low pressure systems, on average, over southeast Australia and less atmospheric moisture over most of the continent. This would likely suppress winter and spring rainfall over much of Australia and exacerbate an El Niño’s drying effect.

Not all El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole events bring warm, dry weather. And there isn’t a strong relationship between the magnitude of an El Niño and the lack of rain in Australia. But these background climate conditions raise the chance of a warmer and drier spring.

We can’t yet predict if Australia will swelter this summer. But an El Niño increases the chance of hotter and drier summer conditions, with more heatwaves and a greater frequency of weather conducive to fire spread.

Australia in a warming world

Of course, all this comes on top of human-driven global warming. In Australia, land areas have already warmed by 1.4℃ over the past century, and the cool summers common before 1980 are now far less likely.

In fact, even if global warming is limited to well below 2℃, historically hot summers in Australia will become common.

The Northern Hemisphere’s current extreme weather, and predictions of hotter summers in Australia, are all evidence of humanity’s fingerprints on Earth’s climate. This should spur urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Because if global warming continues, Australia is certain to be hit by more record-breaking heat events – and that is not something we want to experience.

Read more:
Here’s why climate change isn’t always to blame for extreme rainfall

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. A climate expert explains the Northern Hemisphere’s weird, wild summer – and what it means for Australia – https://theconversation.com/a-climate-expert-explains-the-northern-hemispheres-weird-wild-summer-and-what-it-means-for-australia-209862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Awais Piracha, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, Director Academic Programs, Geography Tourism and Urban Planning, Western Sydney University

Residents of the affluent east and north of Greater Sydney have strongly resisted housing development in their suburbs. This NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) resistance has led to urban sprawl in areas of Western Sydney with a well-documented lack of services, infrastructure and jobs.

Recent research showed affluent Sydney communities closer to the city centre are highly influential and organised in resisting development in their neighbourhoods. The result has been a socioeconomically divided city.

Ethnic segregation is a less-talked-about aspect of this divide. Most population growth in Sydney is from non-white new migrants. Dumping them all in the city’s west, when many are suited for and employed in professional jobs, is not only economically unproductive, it also leads to an ethnically segregated city.

Read more:
Jobs deficit drives army of daily commuters out of Western Sydney

The ethnic divide is growing

A recent NSW Productivity Commission report shows less than 20% of new dwellings were built within 10 kilometres of the CBD between 2016 and 2021. Unmet demand is greatest in the inner city. As the chart below shows, most residential development has been in the outer suburbs, 30-40km from the city centre.

NSW Department of Planning and Environment population projections for 2021-2041 suggest the vast majority of population growth is going to be in these outer areas. The projections are based on analysis of historical trends, announced policies and local intelligence.

The map below shows inner local council areas will grow much more slowly than the outer ones. These outer areas also have much higher base populations, so their additional people and residential development are going to be large in absolute numbers.

Inner-city councils areas, such as Mosman (0.06%), Inner West (0.3%), Woollahra (0.24%) and Waverly (0.17%), are forecast to grow by much less than 1% a year. Most outer council areas are forecast to grow by at least 1-2%.

Inner-city areas also have a much higher percentage of white residents. The map below, constructed using 2021 census data for place of birth, shows this disparity.

While place of birth is not a perfect indicator of ethnicity, it is commonly used for and serves the purposes of this sort of analysis. The map clearly shows the outer areas of Sydney have a higher proportion of non-white residents. The wealthier inner areas have a much higher concentration of white residents.

These inner areas also tend to have a higher level of NIMBYism and lower population growth projections.

As the map below shows, the concentration of the non-white population in outer areas is also increasing at a much faster rate.

Read more:
Another tale of two cities: access to jobs divides Sydney along the ‘latte line’

And the trend is set to continue

The national 2022 Population Statement shows Australia’s net overseas migration is estimated to be 235,000 per year until 2032-33. That’s about two-thirds of the nation’s total population growth. The report forecasts about 27% (64,000 a year) of the international migrants will settle in Greater Sydney.

Natural population increase (births minus deaths) for Greater Sydney is estimated to be around 36,000 a year. The net effect of internal migration adds up to around 33,000 people leaving Sydney. So most of the city’s population growth is going to be from international migration.

The Commonwealth’s 2021-22 Migration Program Report shows more than 80% of international migration is from non-white countries (when we consider the top ten countries of origin). Migration data from recent years also indicate this trend is likely to continue or even grow.

Based on the housing growth and immigration projections, we can conclude population growth will continue to be concentrated in outer Western Sydney, and non-white international migrants will account for most of this growth. This will intensify the concentration of the non-white population in these areas, increasing the ethnic divide between the city’s east and west.

It can be argued, then, that limiting housing options for new immigrants to the outer areas of Sydney could be considered systemic racism. System racism occurs “when racially unequal opportunities and outcomes are inbuilt or intrinsic to the operation of a society’s structures”, as one study explained. And it “can emerge with or without intention to harm and with or without awareness of its existence”.

Read more:
Bold and innovative planning is delivering Australia’s newest city. But it will be hot – and can we ditch the colonial name?

By reducing the ethnic divide, Sydney will be better off

The NSW Productivity Commission’s recent report, “Building more homes where people want to live”, argues that the focus on growth areas in Western Sydney is coming at a high cost to both social wellbeing and government budgets. He recommends the government shift its focus to higher-density housing in the CBD and inner suburbs.

Soon after NSW elected a new Labor government in March, Premier Chris Minns stressed the need to counter NIMBYism and build such housing closer to amenities and jobs.

Areas closer to the city centre are where people most want to live. Developing more housing in these areas will make housing there more affordable. It will also reduce the environmental impacts of urban growth.

Continued urban sprawl on former farmlands and natural woodlands in outer Western Sydney is leading to poorer economic, sustainability and climate outcomes. New developments are occurring in areas that are extremely hot in summer and prone to bushfires and floods.

Read more:
Half of Western Sydney foodbowl land may have been lost to development in just 10 years

At the same time, the population in many affluent areas of Sydney has been decreasing and these areas are reported to have lost vitality. They also lack housing for their essential workers.

There is a need for further research on the relationship between ethnic segregation and our decisions on what to build and where. We need to better understand NIMBYs’ motivations for opposing all development in their areas and the systemic racism resulting from this resistance.

George Greiss is Mayor of Campbelltown City Council, Chairperson of The Parks Mayoral Forum, a non-executive director of Local Government NSW and a member of the Liberal Party.

Awais Piracha 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. NIMBYism in Sydney is leading to racist outcomes – https://theconversation.com/nimbyism-in-sydney-is-leading-to-racist-outcomes-207204

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Marriott, Professor of Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Less than three months out from New Zealand’s 2023 election, large political donations have been making headlines. Donations to both the ACT Party and the National Party have significantly outpaced large-scale contributions to other political groups.

Should this be a cause for concern? Studies from overseas indicate those who raise the most money tend to win. And, based on our recent “Doughnation” research, donors know that too. Wealthy New Zealanders admitted to gaining access to the levers of power through political donations.

So do our current campaign finance rules do enough to protect a basic principle of democracy – that we should all be equal in the ballot box?

Not according to an interim report from the Independent Electoral Review, which warns New Zealand’s current electoral laws are still “not as fair as they could be”.

Its final report will be delivered to the government in November – too late to have an impact on the 2023 election.

But if we want future elections to be fairer, here’s what the report found needs to change.

How can we make future elections fairer?

The Independent Electoral Review’s interim recommendations include

• replacing the current broadcasting allocation with a “fairer and more effective form of state funding” for registered parties

• per-vote and base funding for registered political parties

• tax credits for donations up to NZ$1,000

• introducing an expanded Election Access Fund and a new fund to facilitate engagement with Māori communities.

Those changes are additional to several changes to political party finance implemented at the beginning of 2023, ahead of this year’s election.

What changed ahead of this election?

Changes included lowering the reporting threshold for large donations from $30,000 to $20,000 and new requirements around reporting donations above $1,500.

In the first six months of 2023, the main political parties have already received more than $4 million in donations over $20,000.

The National Party benefited the most from political donations, receiving $1,255,587 in large political donations, closely followed by ACT, which received $1,255,000. New Zealand First received $567,304, the Green Party received $496,260 and the Labour Party received $428,844.

These figures reflect the large donations that have to be disclosed within 10 days of receipt. We won’t know the sum total of small donations until well after the election.

How much do large donations sway elections?

Research suggests donations can help political parties win more votes, but that typically this only applies to the more established parties. And, while money matters in New Zealand, it’s not necessarily a straightforward relationship.

Recent data from the United States showed better-than-average fundraising is a strong predictor of better-than-average electoral success, concluding that “money still matters”.

Australia’s Grattan Institute found that over the past five federal elections there, the party with the biggest war chest tended to form government. And an analysis of general elections in France and the United Kingdom between 1993 and 2017 showed increased spending per voter improved candidates’ share of votes.

Read more:
‘They’re nice to me, I’m nice to them’: new research sheds light on what motivates political party donors in New Zealand

New Zealand’s 2017 election also illustrated a strong relationship between money and votes. National received 44.45% of the votes after a $4,579,086 fundraising haul. Labour received 36.9% of the votes and received $1,611,073 in political donations.

But the 2020 election result suggests there are limitations to the relationship between funding and votes, particularly for the two main parties. In 2020, other factors clearly contributed to the electoral outcome. For example, Labour’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have outweighed National’s fundraising advantage.

Some voters’ voices are louder than others

Even if political donations don’t always decide elections, it is fairly well established that money buys access. Work from the Grattan Institute shows that highly regulated industries – such as mining, transport, energy and property construction – provided the highest level of donations to Australian political parties, made the greatest number of commercial lobbying contacts, and had the most meetings with senior ministers.

Access is not the same as influence, of course. It is typically difficult to make a causal connection between donations and influence, except when political scandals occur.

However, research out of the US by Martin Gilens showed that politicians’ decisions do not represent the preferences of poorer or middle-class citizens. Rather, these decisions fall in line with the interests of the wealthiest – a situation that Gilens attributed at least in part to the influence of wealthy donors.

In New Zealand, the Independent Electoral Review’s interim report acknowledged the

risks to public confidence in the electoral system if some people have more access to, or can unduly influence, parties and candidates through political financing.

In a recent opinion piece, former ACT board member Robin Grieve defended political donors as not always being motivated by self-interest, giving an example of a donor wanting to help children in the care of Oranga Tamariki.

Read more:
Over 300,000 New Zealanders owe more than they own – is this a problem?

While there may have been altruistic intent, the issue is still that the donation was made by a wealthy person to a political party with the stated objective of influencing legislation.

Is that fair? In our research exploring the motivations of wealthy donors, some agreed that it was unfair that they could donate while others could not, with one noting a

real problem with people who accumulate a lot of money supporting the systems that have allowed them to accumulate a lot of money.

Another commented that they did not think

that it is right that rich people can distort democracy.

Not everyone was concerned about this situation, with one donor telling us

the fact that some can promote their position more than others doesn’t worry me.

If acted on, the Independent Electoral Review’s recommendations for tighter donations controls and fairer funding for registered parties would help create significantly more transparency in New Zealand’s political donations system.

We believe a move away from a reliance on large individual donors would help increase public trust in the way political parties are funded. It also is likely to help level the playing field of access and potential influence in New Zealand politics.

Lisa Marriott receives funding from the Gama Foundation.

Max Rashbrooke has received funding from the Gama Foundation.

– ref. Tougher donation limits and funding fixes would make future NZ elections fairer for all – https://theconversation.com/tougher-donation-limits-and-funding-fixes-would-make-future-nz-elections-fairer-for-all-209851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom van Laer, Associate Professor of Narratology, University of Sydney

The Australian Electoral Commission has just published the “yes” and “no” pamphlets for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.

So who is the target audience for each case, what are their key messages, and how effective will they be?

I research how people and organisations use communication to effect change via, for example, entertainment or political advertising. When I look at the “yes” and “no” case pamphlets, there are aspects of each that stand out.

Battle of the pamphlets

The “yes” pamphlet leans on the value of expertise to help voters decide. We hear from a senator and elder, a school principal, a filmmaker, the co-chair of the Uluru Dialogues, a former High Court Chief Justice, a professor, three former sports professionals, and numerous members of the Order of Australia. Moreover, many are recognisable names, such as Rachel Perkins, Patrick Dodson, and Eddie Betts.

The members of parliament who wrote the “yes” case consider these experts to have more experience with Indigenous affairs than most voters, and are better informed about it. Their likeability and familiarity also helps put the point across to readers in a more compelling way.

The key strategy of the “no” pamphlet, on the other hand, is “more is better”. It outlines 10 reasons to vote “no”. This is a powerful approach because the subject lends itself to it – that is, the referendum is one a reasonable number of voters really want to think about, and many have concerns about.

In general, persuasive power increases when more reasons are provided. It seems that, according to the MPs who wrote the “no” case: “the more facts you tell, the more you sell”.

Like the “yes” case, the “no” case substitutes the real question voters are being posed with another, more straightforward one. So, voters will ask themselves if the experts possess the expertise needed to provide the advice to vote “yes”. And on the other hand, voters will ask themselves if the number of reasons provided to vote “yes” is high enough and compelling enough.

Whichever has the most rational and emotional pull for each reader will win their vote.

Read more:
Yes/No cases for referendum pamphlet released, as Albanese urges greater effort from yes advocates

The case for ‘yes’

According to classic research, expertise is the principal attribute of credibility. Understanding a subject and knowing what you are doing – that is, competence – enhances your credibility.

This means that if voters have the feeling a person possesses information and experience that they lack, then that expert’s viewpoint can be highly persuasive. In other words, expertise can feel like authority. This is especially so when information is hard to understand.

One study illustrates this nicely. Participants were asked to give their verdict in a mock trial. The case concerned a company suspected of having exposed its workforce to carcinogenic chemicals.

One of the witnesses was an expert, Professor Thomas Fallon. In one version of the trial, he explained in clear language that the chemicals concerned did indeed cause cancer. In another, he used incomprehensible jargon to say the same thing.

In this case, where the arguments put forward were difficult to understand, it was his expertise as a professor that proved decisive. The “jurors” understood little of the actual evidence, but felt that if a professor said it was true, then it must be true.

It is hardly surprising, then, that experts are used in the “yes” case.

The case for ‘no’

Research has shown that the “more-is-better” approach to an argument is primarily useful when the quality of a choice is difficult to ascertain by other means and there is little alternative information. In other words, the authors of the “no” case assume voters do not know how to judge whether the Voice will be a good or a bad thing, and may not consider much other information than this particular pamphlet.

It will come as no surprise to learn that people are more easily persuaded that a standpoint like “the Voice will be bad” is correct if campaigners provide strong arguments for this. You can test this yourself at work by making a simple request to people queuing to use a photocopier:

Excuse me, I have five pages – may I use the photocopier?

Generally about two out of three people asked will allow you to use the copier before them. Now make the same request, but with a reason:

Excuse me, I have five pages – may I use the photocopier because I’m in a hurry?

In that case, almost everybody accedes.

At first sight, this hardly seems astounding: people are more likely to comply with a request if they have a good reason. However, the more-is-better approach is not so much about the substance of an argument as the mere fact that one or more are given. So, for example, when you ask,

Excuse me, I have five pages – may I use the photocopier because I have to make copies?

again, almost everybody complies. That is even though they have not actually received any new information; it just feels like they have.

Other research shows people are also less persuaded by a standpoint backed with three strong arguments than by one with three strong and three weak arguments to support it.

Tom van Laer 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. Expertise v 10-point arguments: how the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps have sold their messages – https://theconversation.com/expertise-v-10-point-arguments-how-the-yes-and-no-camps-have-sold-their-messages-209959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brooke Patterson, Research Fellow, La Trobe University

England women’s soccer captain Leah Williamson and Dutch striker Vivianne Miedema will miss the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which starts this week, due to ACL injuries.

The anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, is a piece of tissue like a rope connecting your shin bone to your thigh bone. It’s only 3cm long and 1cm wide but is the most important stabiliser of the knee, alongside your muscles.

An ACL tear can be a complete or partial. In women’s soccer, they commonly happen during defensive pressing or tackling, or regaining balance on one leg. But more than 80% involve no contact, or indirect contact such as a bump to the shoulder.

Women are more likely to tear their ACL than men playing the same sports, with women soccer players twice as likely to tear their ACL as men.

So how can we reduce the risk of these injuries? And what happens if you injure your ACL?

Read more:
Australian researchers confirm world’s first case of dementia linked to repetitive brain trauma in a female athlete

Why are women more prone to ACL injury?

In the past, factors related to women’s bodies were reported as the main reasons for the higher risk: their anatomy (wider pelvis, slope of the knee bones) or female sex hormones (oestrogen may increase the laxity or looseness of ligaments).

However research has not been able to confirm these factors. We now know the reasons for disparity are complex and multifaceted: women and girls may not develop the same movement skills and muscle function as boys and men in their younger years and across their life.

Other contributing factors include women and girls having fewer opportunities, confidence or support to participate in sports such as football, or activities such as gym training.

Read more:
Female football players are at much higher risk of career-ending ACL injuries – the science on why

How long will you be out for? And what if you’re not an elite athlete?

Most young people (elite and non-elite athletes) will require 12 months off sport to physically recover from an ACL tear. Many will require longer: up to 80% may have ongoing muscle weakness, 40% have ongoing symptoms, and only half return to sport. Women are less likely to return to sport and physical activity than men.

Surgical repair involves taking a small graft from your hamstring, quadriceps, or patellar tendon to replace your ACL.

But if you choose not to have surgery, you can live and be active without an ACL. Research has found non-elite athletes who don’t have surgery can return to the same level of sport and physical function as those who have surgery. (However, this has not been tested yet in elite athletes.)

Whether or not you have surgery, intensive rehabilitation is needed to regain knee muscle strength specific to your sport.

Athletes also need to be psychologically ready to return to sport. Fears of re-injury, lack of confidence and social pressures to return are common, and may negatively affect sport performance and enjoyment.

What can be done about the high rates of ACL injuries in women?

Given the high cost of ACL injuries to women athletes, the best thing we can do is to prevent them.

Injury-prevention programs that address movement patterns and muscle function through training and coaching can reduce the risk of non-contact ACL injuries in women by 67%.

Among women’s soccer players, programs with specific warm-up activities (jumping, landing, change of direction, balance) and muscle strengthening (for hip, core and leg) can reduce ACL injuries by 45%.

Read more:
Mark! Kick! Tackle! The reality of fast-tracking women into elite AFL

Players, parents, coaches, schools, and sporting organisations can freely access injury-prevention programs created for soccer (Perform Plus, FIFA11+), Australian football (Prep-to-Play), rugby (Activate), netball (Netball KNEE) and handball (Knäkontroll). The Get Set app is also great for learning about common injuries and injury-prevention exercise for 55 different Olympic sports.

Research suggests ACL injury-prevention programs are effective regardless of whether they are implemented by a coach or a medical professional.

So why are ACL injuries on the rise?

ACL surgeries have increased by 43% in Australia between 2000 and 2015. In Australia, women’s knee injuries have grown by 3% (compared to 1.3% for men), with the highest growth among girls aged 5–14 years (around 10% a year).

While injury-prevention programs are effective when tested in clinical trials, their use by sporting clubs outside of research projects can be as low as 10–20%.

Sporting organisations should make their members aware of the freely available resources, and support and incentivise coaches to use them at least twice per week for 10–15 minutes, as part of team training.

Providing girls and women with equal opportunities and resources will allow them to develop physical and sport-specific skills in their younger years and throughout their life.

Read more:
Is netball actually bad for knees and ankles? What does the research say?

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. Women soccer players are more likely to tear their ACL than men. Here’s why – and how we can prevent these injuries – https://theconversation.com/women-soccer-players-are-more-likely-to-tear-their-acl-than-men-heres-why-and-how-we-can-prevent-these-injuries-206696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raquel Peel, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland and Senior Lecturer, RMIT University

Text messages showing actor Jonah Hill asking his ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady to consider a dot point list of relationship “boundaries” have sparked an important conversation.

Two different interpretations of these texts are dominating the discussion.

Some have understood Hill’s dot points as a reasonable set of relationship expectations or “preferences” for a partner. Others see Hill’s list of relationship deal-breakers as a controlling behaviour.

So what is a relationship “boundary” and how do you have this conversation with your partner?

Read more:
Stuck in a ‘talking stage’ or ‘situationship’? How young people can get more out of modern love

What are relationship boundaries?

Boundaries are personal and influenced by one’s values. They can be emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual and cultural.

The purpose of creating, understanding and respecting boundaries is to ensure one’s mental health and well-being are protected. Used well, they can keep relationships healthy and safe.

Setting boundaries can also reinforce values and priorities important to you.

Some ‘boundaries’ are controlling and go too far

That said, relationship boundaries can become unsafe for the people involved. Some cross the line into coercive control.

For instance, one might be able to justify to themselves they need to know where their partner is at all times, monitor their communications and keep tabs on their partner’s friendships because they just want to keep their partner safe.

But these are not boundaries; this is coercive control.

If your partner is describing these as their relationship boundaries, you should feel comfortable to say you are not OK with it. You should also feel comfortable explaining what boundaries you need to set for yourself and your relationship to feel safe.

In fact, research has found that even cyberstalking offenders might struggle to acknowledge how their behaviour can be perceived as intrusive by their partner. They may also have trouble understanding how it contributed to their break-up.

My research on how people can sabotage their own relationships revealed a lack of relationship skills is often a key factor in relationship issues.

The same research highlighted how people who fear their relationship is at risk can end up indulging in controlling behaviours such as partner monitoring, tracking how a partner spends their money and emotional manipulation.

In other words, people can sometimes employ unhealthy behaviours with the intention of keeping their partner but end up pushing them away.

Understanding partner and relationship expectations

We might have a vision in mind of an “ideal partner”. But it’s highly improbable one person can ever meet such high standards.

Rigid partner and relationship standards, just like unreasonable boundaries, can cause distress, hopelessness and resentment.

So healthy romantic relationships need clear communication and negotiation. Sometimes, that involves being flexible and open to hearing what the other person has to say about your proposed boundaries.

Relationship boundaries are a life skill that needs constant learning, practice and improvement.

Having a conversation about healthy relationship boundaries

Some mistakenly believe having any relationship boundaries at all is unreasonable or a form of abuse. That’s not the case.

In my research on relationship sabotage, many people spoke about how being able to clearly communicate and set relationship expectations has helped them maintain their relationships over the long term and dispel unrealistic standards.

Communicating expectations can also help people deal with common relationship fears, such as getting hurt, being rejected and feeling disrespected.

But for an important conversation about boundaries to take place, you first need the environment for an open, honest and trusting discussion.

Partners should feel they can talk freely and without fear about what they are comfortable with in a relationship. And, be able to discuss how they feel about a boundary their partner has proposed.

Clarify and discuss

If you’re having the boundary conversation with your partner, clarify what you mean by your boundary request and how it might work in practice. Examples can help. Understanding the nuances can help your partner decide if your boundary request is reasonable or unreasonable for them.

Second, negotiate which boundaries are hard and which are soft. This will involve flexibility and care, so you’re not undermining your or your partner’s, freedom, mental health and wellbeing. A hard boundary is non-negotiable and can determine the fate of the relationship. A soft boundary can be modified, as long as all parties agree.

What constitutes a healthy boundary is different for each individual and each relationship.

Regardless, it is a conversation best had in person, not by text message (which can easily be taken out of context and misunderstood). If you really must have the discussion over text, be specific and clarify.

Before setting boundaries, seek insight into what you want for yourself and your relationship and communicate with your partner openly and honestly. If you’re fearful about how they’ll react to the discussion, that’s an issue.

An open and honest approach can foster a productive collaboration that can strengthen relationship commitment.

Read more:
3 ways we sabotage relationships (and 3 ways to kick the habit)

Raquel Peel 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. What is a relationship ‘boundary’? And how do I have the boundary conversation with my partner? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-relationship-boundary-and-how-do-i-have-the-boundary-conversation-with-my-partner-209856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

The Murray Darling Basin Plan is an historic deal between state and federal governments to save Australia’s most important river system. The A$13 billion plan, inked over a decade ago, was supposed to rein in the water extracted by farmers and communities, and make sure the environment got the water it needed.

But now, less than a year out from the plan’s deadline, it’s in a dreadful mess. Projects have not been delivered. Governments cannot agree on who gets the water, or how. All the while, water in the Murray-Darling Basin will become scarcer as climate change worsens.

The Albanese government was elected on a promise to uphold the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
But earlier this month, Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek conceded the plan is “too far behind” and needs a “course correction”.

I have studied and promoted sustainability measures in the Murray-Darling Basin for 35 years. Here, I outline the five steps needed now to ensure the health of the river system and the people who depend on it.

A refresher: what is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?

The Murray-Darling Basin covers about a seventh of the Australian land mass: most of New South Wales, parts of Queensland, South Australia and Victoria, and all of the Australian Capital Territory. It includes the Murray River and Darling River/Baarka and their tributaries.

These lands and waters are the traditional lands of more than 40 Indigenous nations. Around 5% of the basin consists of floodplain forests, lakes, rivers and other wetland habitats. Vast amounts of water are extracted from the rivers to supply around three million Australians, including irrigating farms.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan became law in 2012, under the Labor government. It is due to be fully implemented and audited by the end of June 2024.

The plan limits the amount of water extracted from the basin. It aims to both improve the condition of freshwater ecosystems and maintain the social and economic benefits of irrigated agriculture.

Under the plan, 3,200 billion litres a year would be returned to rivers – about 14% of total surface water in the basin.

The water was largely to be recovered by buying back water entitlements from farmers. Some 450 billion litres would be retrieved through water efficiency projects.

The plan has twice been amended to reduce the amount of water taken from farmers. The first change, made on questionable grounds, reduced the water recovery target by 70 billion litres a year. The second reduced it by 605 billion litres, with the water to instead be recovered through 36 water-saving offset projects.

Further, the Victorian and NSW governments committed to reaching agreements with farmers to enable water for the environment to safely spill out of river channels and across privately owned floodplains, to replenish more wetlands.

Read more:
Australia has an ugly legacy of denying water rights to Aboriginal people. Not much has changed

So how’s the plan going?

Things are not going well. As of November last year, the offset projects were likely to deliver between 290 and 415 billion litres of the 605 billion litres required. And very little water is getting to floodplains.

And of the 450 billion litres to be retrieved through water-efficiency projects, only 26 billion litres has been recovered.

It means of the 3,200 billion litres of water a year to be returned to the environment, only 2,100 billion litres was being achieved as of March this year – plus the small amount of projected water from offset projects, if it’s delivered.

At a meeting in February this year, the nation’s water ministers failed to agree on how to meet the plan’s deadline.

As governments quibble, the rivers and floodplains of the Murray-Darling suffer. In the past decade, millions of fish have perished in mass die-offs. Toxic algae has bloomed, wildife and waterbirds have declined in numbers and wetlands have dried up. These are all signs that too much water is still being taken from the system.

So how do we get the basin plan back on track? Below, I identify the top five priorities.

1. NSW must get its act together on water plans

Integral to implementing the broader basin plan are 33 “water resource plans” devised by the states. These plans bring the basin plan into legal force and detail how much water can be taken from the system and how it is divided between users such as farmers, communities and the environment.

NSW must produce 20 plans. To date, just five are in place. At least seven plans by NSW were recently withdrawn to be re-drafted.

Until they’re finalised, key measures of the basin plan cannot be implemented. The new NSW Minns government must prioritise the remaining water resource plans and have them accredited by the Commonwealth government.

2. Federal water buybacks must ramp up

The Albanese government is taking steps to improve water recovery under the plan, such as consulting stakeholders and restarting water buybacks. But it must do more.

Both NSW and Victoria will almost certainly miss the 2024 deadline for delivering all infrastructure projects they promised to offset 605 billion litres of water.

The federal government is legally obliged to – and should – purchase additional water from farmers to cover any gap. It must also acquire more than 400 billion litres of water to make up for the shortfall in water efficiency projects.

For this to occur, a Coalition-era cap must be lifted from 1,500 billion litres to enable more federal government water purchases from farmers.

3. Abandon questionable water-saving projects

At least six water-saving projects look unlikely to meet the deadline.

They include a large project proposed by the former NSW government to reduce evaporation at Menindee Lakes, which appears doomed.

Another project at Yanco Creek in NSW has also fallen behind, and four of the nine Victorian projects have been paused.

What’s more, the ecological merit of these projects are contested – as is the scientific rigour of the proposed auditing method. These projects should be abandoned in favour of reconnecting rivers to their floodplain.

4. Reconnect rivers and floodplains

For floodplain wetlands to function, they must be regularly inundated with water. To date, just 2% of these parts of the basin are inundated each year by managed flows (or in other words, intentional water releases by authorities).

The federal government holds water for this purpose. Delivering the water requires compensation for the owners of inundated properties, as well as upgraded roads, bridges and levee banks. Managed inundation can benefit landholders, such as by reducing the impacts of natural floods. But governments must do a better job of communicating these benefits to win support.

The federal government needs NSW and Victoria to help implement their agreement for watering floodplains, but this cooperation has been extremely slow.

Read more:
Damning royal commission report leaves no doubt that we all lose if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails

5. Make information transparent

The data and modelling used to manage water in the basin is complex and is often not publicly available.

In its final report in 2019, a South Australian royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin was highly critical of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. The report found the authority failed to act on “the best available science” when determining how much water could be returned to the environment, and withheld modelling and other information that should have been made public.

Making such information freely available is crucial for accountability and to build public trust.

Time for tough decisions

Each key element of the basin plan has encountered trouble at the implementation stage. The five steps I’ve outlined are essential to rectifying this.

Attention must now also turn to a review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which is legally required in 2026. As well as addressing the problems detailed above, it must address two big issues essentially ignored in the plan to date: the lack of Indigenous rights over water, and water losses due to global warming and other environmental change.

If the Albanese government is to uphold its election promise to deliver the plan, hard decisions – and trade-offs – will be required.

Read more:
Victoria’s plans for engineered wetlands on the Murray are environmentally dubious. Here’s a better option

Jamie Pittock is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and holds other voluntary roles with non-government environmental and natural resource management organisations. He is Chair of the ACT Natural Resource Management Advisory Committee.

– ref. With less than a year to go, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is in a dreadful mess. These 5 steps are needed to fix it – https://theconversation.com/with-less-than-a-year-to-go-the-murray-darling-basin-plan-is-in-a-dreadful-mess-these-5-steps-are-needed-to-fix-it-209328

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

At a time when governments are timid, keener to announce reviews than decisions, it’s refreshing to remember what happened 50 years ago today – on July 18 1973.

Inflation had surged to 14%. Australia’s biggest customer, the United Kingdom, had joined the European Economic Community, agreeing to buy products from it rather than Australia. And the newly formed Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries had doubled the price of oil.

The tariffs imposed on imported goods to protect Australian manufacturers from competition were extraordinarily high. For clothing, they reached 55%; for motor vehicles, 45%.

Then, with absolutely no public indication he had been considering anything as drastic, at 7pm on Wednesday July 18, the recently elected prime minister Gough Whitlam made an announcement.

Every tariff cut by one quarter overnight

From midnight, all tariffs would be cut by 25%. As Whitlam put it: “each tariff will be reduced by one quarter of what it is now”.

If Australian businesses (and the Australian public) were caught by surprise, it was because Whitlam had planned the whole thing in secret.

He had given a six-person committee just three weeks to work out the details.

Although the committee was chaired by the head of the Tariff Board, Alf Rattigan, and included an official from Whitlam’s own department, the department of industry and the department of trade, it met in an obscure location in Canberra’s civic centre rather than in public service offices, where the project might be discovered.

Not included in the committee was a representative of the treasury, which its then deputy head John Stone said “knew nothing” about what was unfolding.

But driving the work of the committee were two academic outsiders – Fred Gruen, an economics professor at the Australian National University and adviser to Whitlam, and Brian Brogan, an economics lecturer at Monash University who was advising the trade minister, Jim Cairns.

Outsiders, not treasury insiders

As economists rather than bureaucrats, Gruen and Brogan were able to see benefits where others saw entrenched interests. Going to the tariff board and asking for extra tariffs, whenever it looked as if your prices might be undercut by imports, had become a reflex action for Australian businesses.

In the words of Gary Banks – later to become head of the successor to the tariff board, the Productivity Commission – “it was not a shameful thing for a conga line of industrialists to be seen wending its way to Canberra”.

Read more:
Half a century on, it’s time to reassess the Whitlam government’s economic legacy

Tariffs were good for business owners (though bad for their customers, who had to pay much higher prices and often got worse goods). Ttey were also good for government – bringing in tax revenue.

Whitlam was more interested in bringing down inflation. His announcement said increased competition would

have a salutary effect upon those who have taken advantage of shortages by unjustified price increases which have exploited the public.

Any firm seriously hurt by the extra imports could apply to a newly established tribunal for assistance, but the tribunal

should not provide relief as a matter of course – that is, simply because the question of relief had been referred to it.

So Whitlam offered “rationalisation assistance” to encourage firms to refocus their operations, and “compensation for closure” where that couldn’t be done and production had to cease.

For displaced workers, the 7pm announcement offered anyone who lost their job retraining, as well as

a weekly amount equal to his [sic] average wage in the previous six months until he obtains or is found suitable alternative employment.

Over the next seven years, manufacturing employment fell by 80,000, but few of those job losses were immediate. Fifteen months after the 25% tariff cut, fewer than 6,000 people had claimed the wage replacement offered on the night of the announcement.

When Whitlam went to the polls a year after the cut in the double dissolution election of May 1974, 122 university economists signed an open letter of support.

It said the general thrust of the government’s policy responses had been in the best interests of the nation as a whole, and added

more importantly, we seriously doubt that the previous government would have had the wisdom or the courage to undertake it. It had certainly given no indication of moving in that direction while it was in power, even though the need for such policies had become obvious.

In its later days in office, the Whitlam government was roundly criticised for its irresponsible public spending. Ironically, in its approach to tariffs in the 1970s, it had taken the first steps in a neoliberal direction that characterised western governments of the 1980s.

By acting boldly after decades of inaction, Whitlam showed what a government could do. It was a lesson his Labor successor Bob Hawke took to heart a decade later, when he floated the dollar, revamped Australia’s tax system and put in place a series of further cuts that reduced tariffs to near zero.

It’s something we see less of today.

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

– ref. How a secret plan 50 years ago changed Australia’s economy forever, in just one night – https://theconversation.com/how-a-secret-plan-50-years-ago-changed-australias-economy-forever-in-just-one-night-209378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Graffam, PhD Candidate in Theatre, Monash University

Lizzo has arrived in Australia for the world tour of her latest album, Special.

If you don’t know Lizzo yet, she shot to fame in 2019 with the release of her third studio album Cuz I Love You. The re-release of sleeper hit Truth Hurts launched Lizzo to number one on the charts and made her a household name. The catchy lyrics still have people around the world singing, “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch”.

Leveraging the popularity of TikTok dances in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, Lizzo’s social media accounts pushed heavy on choreography composed by TikToker @jaedengomezz to promote the newly released track About Damn Time.

About Damn Time ultimately topped the charts globally and won Lizzo the Grammy for Record of the Year.

The message of her music and the image she projects through social media promote self-love and self-empowerment, while explicitly celebrating her size.

Since her rise to stardom, Lizzo has faced constant negative criticism for representing her body in such a way. She has responded by saying, “I’m a body icon, and I’m embracing that more and more every day”.

In examining Lizzo’s career, we can identify a crucial recognfiguration of a “funny, fat friend” trope to the embodiment of a Black, fat superstar.

Thick and juicy

Those familiar with Lizzo may have heard her using the term “fat” to describe her body. She also uses descriptors such as big, thick and juicy. The word fat stands out among these descriptors since we typically employ it as a pejorative, a term intended to bring shame to the person on the other end of it.

So, why the term fat? And should you now be using it to describe bigger bodies like Lizzo’s?

Lizzo’s reclamation of the word is rooted in a queer-feminist led and disability-related activist movement: fat activism.

The fat activist movement emerged in the United States in the 1970s, and includes early figures such as Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran. It exposed the oppressive structures contributing to the marginalisation and stigmatisation of fat people. Fat studies has since emerged as an interdisciplinary field that documents and theorises the work of fat activists.

Fat activists seek to destabilise harmful assumptions of morality and willpower (or a lack thereof), as well as the punitive, shame-based “health” messages that exist around bigger bodies. They do so to push the conversation in new directions and to break down long-existing negative frameworks that inform our understanding of, and feelings towards, fatness.

The (re)positioning of the BMI scale as an antiquated and fraught system to determine “obesity” is one example. The rise of the Health at Every Size movement is another.

In adopting fat as a lead subject descriptor and as a term to self-identify, activists and scholars have argued it is a biological term and thus neutral – it’s stating a fact.

Read more:
No justifications, excuses or box-ticking: the art of a successful celebrity apology

Lizzo has joined a procession of voices in calling out the cooption of fat-positive language by the body positivity movement. For years fat activists have been drawing attention to the assimilationist nature of body positivity and its toxic and exclusionary mechanisms. Critics demonstrate how body positivity centres white, “mid-size” women, who simply demand a seat at the table of acceptance, while amplifying a toxic positivity towards their bodies.

Such an approach has encouraged diet companies and major apparel brands to embrace size inclusive language, so that fat discrimination and oppression is, in turn, rendered invisible in surrounding discourse.

A recent turn towards body neutrality, which neither promotes a positive nor negative spin on body size, has grown in popularity.

Lizzo encourages it, saying, “I don’t need your positivity or your negativity. I don’t need your comments at all. How about that?”

Read more:
Why the body positivity movement risks turning toxic

Fatness in society and culture

It should not, however, suggest all larger-sized people now prefer to be described as fat. There are many people who avoid the term given it’s continuing use in shaming others, including themselves.

We have the added complication that fatness, in many ways, is in the eye of the beholder: conceptions of fatness tend to be individually, socially and culturally shaped. It’s a sliding scale made even more complex by factors such as gender.

For instance, the language existing around fat men is typically less vitriolic than what fat women experience, for example, phrases like “big guy” or “big man”.

When discussing Lizzo, it is vital we acknowledge her identity as a Black, fat woman.

Sabrina Strings in her book Fearing the Black Body traces the racist legacies of fat-phobia and its emergence with the rise of global slave trades during the Enlightenment Era. Academics have also worked to situate Lizzo’s message of self-love and the consistent sexualising of her own body against a history in Western (white) society of treating Black, fat bodies as spectacle: paraded, made abject and shamed.

Lizzo’s embodiment as a self-loving and self-empowered Black, fat woman offers a radical response to such histories.

Her self-described “brand” is Black girl liberation. She places her Black identity before fatness. She says,

I am a Black woman, I am making music from my Black experience, for me to heal myself.

So should we say ‘fat’?

If an individual like Lizzo self-identifies as fat, an invitation emerges for us to also pick up and use the term to describe her body.

Doing so, it feels like we, too, might participate in a process of fat liberation and size acceptance. But in celebrating Lizzo’s fatness, we must not ignore the racist systems that continue to shape our beliefs on fatness, determining what is and what is not an acceptable body size and shape.

The presence of Lizzo in our lives serves to remind us that while we grapple with politics of fatness – who is fat and who we can describe as fat – we cannot remove racism and anti-Blackness from the conversation.

Jonathan (Jonno) Graffam is a dramaturg and director in the area of fat and queer performance. Recent credits include Full Cream (2023) and Cake Daddy (2018/19). He is completing a PhD in Theatre at Monash University with a project titled “Fat Dramaturgies: Queer strategies and methodologies in staging fat performance”, where he looks at examples of radical body size politics (embodied fatness) onstage. He specialises in the field of contemporary dramaturgy and popular performance. Jonno is a Tutor in Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne.

– ref. Lizzo proudly calls herself a ‘fat’ woman. Are we allowed to as well? – https://theconversation.com/lizzo-proudly-calls-herself-a-fat-woman-are-we-allowed-to-as-well-209682

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hoffmann, Professor of Economics, Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, University of Tasmania

The recent investigations into alleged war crimes committed by Australian and UK special forces in Afghanistan have raised urgent questions about the conduct of people serving in the military.

As militaries rethink their structures and the complex role they play in society, they also need to examime what types of people they should be recruiting. Who are the modern soldiers, and why do they choose to serve?

Some of these answers can be found in existing research that defence forces have conducted over the last half century. With the end of conscription in many Western nations, volunteer militaries began to commission studies looking at why people enlist. The findings were meant to make recruitment campaigns more effective.

We recently conducted a research project funded by the Australian Defence Force that examined these studies through a new lens of behavioural science.

The aim of this study went beyond just increasing recruitment numbers, though. Understanding people’s motivations for enlisting can also reveal a lot about the suitability of recruits for the military, given the new demands they face in these roles.

We found that in contrast to the usual portrayal of military recruits as Hollywood- inspired, hyper-masculine mercenary types, many people enlist because of the duty of care for others and the value they place in military service.

Read more:
Australian Defence Force must ensure the findings against Ben Roberts-Smith are not the end of the story

Recruiting for a new model military

The role of militaries has changed in recent years. Today’s threats are frequently not active conflicts between nations, but rather ethnic strife within nations, terrorism and cyber warfare. Peacekeeping and humanitarian missions have also become more common than conventional warfare, with military forces frequently involved in disaster relief and recovery efforts.

The lines around the purpose of a military are now increasingly blurred. As a result, public sentiment and the battle for hearts and minds has become even more important, especially as technology and social media allow domestic audiences to be better informed about what happens in the field.

The now-deceased sociologist Charles Moskos called this the “postmodern military”. It is much leaner and more professional than the armed forces of the past, tasked with new kinds of missions, oftentimes without widespread public support.

New model armies need new model recruits. So, what drives a person to want to voluntarily enlist?

We found the voluminous evidence can be neatly captured by two separate dimensions:

• intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations

• and pro-social versus self-serving motivations.

Serving for thrills and adventure

Intrinsically motivated people do things for their own sake. For example, they might like travelling for the journey itself, rather than to reach a destination.

Independent of outcomes, some recruits are motivated to serve in the military by the idea of service itself. This could include having an inherent interest in the military, learning how to use high-tech machinery and a sense of adventure.

Melbourne University researcher Sara Meger found many foreign fighters have been attracted to international flashpoints like Ukraine because of thrill-seeking.

Some people also sign up for the military out of a personal psychological need for stimulation. One military study shows volunteer soldiers have a greater tolerance for risk-taking than non-volunteers.

Read more:
‘Fit for service’: Why the ADF needs to move with society to retain the public trust

Service as a means to an end

On the other end of this spectrum are those who are driven purely by extrinsic motives. This means doing something in the pursuit of a separate goal, such as financial compensation, or recognition earned through medals.

In Meger’s interviews with foreign fighters on both sides of the Ukraine conflict, she found they were often extrinsically driven by ideology. Serving was a way to support a desired political outcome, such as Ukraine’s self-determination.

Other British and American fighters were driven by the goal of protecting Ukraine – and the Western world generally – from what they saw as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to freedom.

These people consider themselves freedom fighters, like Che Guevara, and will accept extraordinary risks and hardship. They often have military backgrounds, too.

Serving for others vs for oneself

Some soldiers are driven for a pro-social reason, as in they are serving for others. These people can be motivated by altruistic reasons, such as defending one’s country and loved ones at great risk and cost to themselves. Some serve as a way to provide better support to their families.

On the other end of the scale are those with self-interested motivations to serve. These can include personal advancement, income, training and career opportunities. Escapism is another common motive found – many serve to cope with relationship breakdown or financial or family stress.

Extrinsic motivation and self-interest are not the same. Freedom fighters, for example, fight for an extrinsic outcome (winning a war), but might do so out of consideration for others (those who win their freedom).

And intrinsic motivations are not always pro-social. Adventure seekers care about fighting rather than winning, for purely selfish reasons.

Put together, these motivations reveal four service archetypes: the volunteer, the freedom fighter, the professional and the mercenary. But the research suggests most people will have a variety of motivations and lie somewhere between the extremes.

So, who is the ideal soldier?

How do these insights help the military? Defence forces have much to gain from recruiting volunteers with the right mix of intrinsic and pro-social motivations.

The psychological evidence suggests that people with intrinsic motivations lead to a better quality of service. They are motivated by discipline, technical proficiency and professionalism, meaning they are more likely to perform in line with what society expects of them.

But the evidence also suggests these motivations can be “crowded out” when excessive rewards are offered. This means providing an extrinsic incentive for something reduces the intrinsic motivation for it.

For instance, British social policy pioneer Richard Titmuss’s well-regarded analysis suggests that paying people for blood donations takes away their opportunity to demonstrate public spiritedness. This was later confirmed in empircal studies.

On the other spectrum, pro-socially oriented people are well-suited for humanitarian missions or in interactions with civilians caught up in conflict.

Multinational companies and organisations are already using this type of behavioural scientific research to find the best candidates for their workforce. As militaries rethink their purpose to keep up with the times, they can learn much from mulitnationals on this front.

In the postmodern military, recruiting isn’t just about filling the ranks anymore, it’s about finding the right fit for an increasingly challenging profession.

Robert Hoffmann receives funding from the Australian Defence Force.

Lena Wang receives funding from the Australian Defence Force.

Maria Beamond receives funding from the Australian Department of Defence.

– ref. Recruiting for the modern military: new research examines why people choose to serve and who makes the ideal soldier – https://theconversation.com/recruiting-for-the-modern-military-new-research-examines-why-people-choose-to-serve-and-who-makes-the-ideal-soldier-209332

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Scott, Professor of Health Economics, Monash University

MyMedicare is a new voluntary scheme that allows patients to register with their usual GP, in an attempt to improve continuity of care and health outcomes.

From October 1, the scheme will give registered patients access to longer telehealth consultations. Then, from next year, GP clinics with patients who are frequently admitted to hospital or are aged care residents will be able to access additional “blended” funding, which sits outside Medicare’s usual fee-for-service.

MyMedicare was announced in the May budget, with A$19.7 million of funding over four years, alongside a range of other health reforms, including funding for practice nurses to improve team-based care, as well as new incentives to increase bulk billing rates.

We’re still waiting on a lot of detail about how the scheme will function. But here’s what we know so far – and what it might mean for patients and GPs.

What do we know about MyMedicare?

The scheme is voluntary for GPs and patients. In addition to patients opting in, GPs will also need to sign up, and have been able to do so since the start of July. There will be a gradual roll out and it will take three years to cover all of Australia.

Though details are yet to be confirmed, from mid-2024 individual GPs will receive “capitation” payments for patients who have more than ten hospital admissions per year. These patients are likely to have complex needs and multiple conditions and, for various reasons, may not be able to access a GP as much as they should.

Read more:
Health budget has big changes – reviving our worn-out Medicare fee-for-service system and boosting bulk billing

Though not yet confirmed, GPs are likely to receive $2,000 per patient per year, plus a $500 bonus for keeping patients out of hospital. The funding provides incentives for the GP to coordinate their care and provide the patient with access to nursing and allied health if required. It’s hoped this will stop patients going to hospital as often.

There will also be similar payments for providing regular visits to patients in residential aged care facilities.

Will MyMedicare make a difference to patients?

Let’s consider four key areas patients are concerned about:

1) Continuity of care

Research shows greater continuity of care – developing a relationship with and seeing the same provider or team for your care – improves patient outcomes and reduces costs to the health system. People who use MyMedicare to get a regular GP may see some of these benefits.

But many patients already see the same GP or visit the same practice, especially those with chronic conditions. So registration with a practice may not make much difference for this group of patients. What are the other benefits of registration?

2) Reducing hospital admissions

Avoiding hospitals can be beneficial – in hospitals, there are no home comforts, they are inconvenient for you and relatives, there is little privacy, and they can be costly. Patients with ten or more hospital admissions in a year have been targeted as they have more complex chronic conditions and may be from vulnerable populations.

Better access to a GP could prevent patients visiting the emergency department or prevent overnight hospital admissions. Research shows financial incentives for GPs to better manage chronic disease can reduce hospital admissions.

However, hospital admissions could also increase if the scheme identifies significant levels of previous unmet need.

3) Reducing barriers to care

MyMedicare does not directly address many of the barriers to accessing GP services. If GPs are getting paid more and still getting fee for service payments, will MyMedicare patients be guaranteed to be bulk billed? This has not yet been mentioned, but could be an important part of the scheme to attract patients.

People with chronic disease have two to three times higher out-of-pocket costs than those who do not, and 30% of patients with chronic disease would find it difficult to pay for care if they became seriously ill.

Unfortunately MyMedicare will not directly reduce out-of-pocket costs, which may be the real reason why people use “free” emergency department care.

4) Making it clear and easy to sign up

It is also unclear how the process of registration will work for patients. Will patients be offered a choice of alternative GPs? If chosen, will GPs be obliged to take them?

At the moment, there are no public data about out-of-pocket costs and quality of care provided by different GPs, and so it will be impossible for patients to make an informed choice. Information to inform choice on a website would be useful, as is the case for specialists.

It’s also unclear if patients who chose to register will find it harder to move GPs or continue to see other GPs if they wish to. The advantages to patients of MyMedicare need to be made clear to encourage them to register and be supported to exercise informed choice if they wish.

Read more:
If you live in a bulk-billing ‘desert’ it’s hard to see a doctor for free. Here’s how to fix this

Will it make a difference for GPs?

Patient registration can mean a more secure and predictable stream of future income for some patients and also less competition (in terms of “losing” patients to other GPs) and more continuity of care.

Moving away from fee for service towards a blended payment model is widely recognised to support higher value health care.

Yet GPs are wary of moving from fee for service to capitation payment. Capitation payments are fixed, so GPs take on more financial risk if they have more complex patients who are more costly to treat and manage in terms of time and effort. Whether the $2,000, plus $500 bonus, plus normal fee for service payments are sufficient to cover the costs of treating very complex patients is unclear.

Overall, GPs will get more money, and along with the other announcements in the budget, will receive a significant investment of resources invested in primary care.

Our previous research has shown a 5% increase in earnings for GPs is predicted to reduce the total number of GPs by up to 1% (equivalent to around 310 GPs in 2021) at a time of significant GP shortages. If they get paid more, they would prefer to work less.

But this could also be offset because the increase in funding will hopefully make general practice more attractive as a career and so there will be more postgraduate doctors choosing to be a GP.

Voluntary patient registration under MyMedicare has potential to strengthen the relationship between patients and their GP, and focuses on keeping patients out of hospital and properly cared for in residential aged care. But the devil is in the detail and we will need a proper evaluation to determine the impacts on health outcomes, costs and access to health care.

Read more:
What if Medicare was restricted to GPs who bulk billed? This kind of reform is possible

Anthony Scott receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Medibank Better Health Foundation, and the Independent Hospital and Aged Care Pricing Authority.

– ref. Should you register with a GP? What is MyMedicare and how might it change the care you get? – https://theconversation.com/should-you-register-with-a-gp-what-is-mymedicare-and-how-might-it-change-the-care-you-get-206183

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

Anthony Albanese says the Voice referendum campaign will be relatively short and has declared the yes advocates need to be stronger in putting the argument for the change.

The Prime Minister’s latest intervention comes as the yes and no cases for the pamphlet that will go to voters will be released by the Australian Electoral Commission on Tuesday, and the latest Newspoll showed support for the Voice continuing to erode.

The yes and no cases have been prepared by advocates on each side.

The formal yes case paints the Voice as an opportunity to improve the conditions of Indigenous people, while the no case puts strong emphasis on risks.

The yes case declares the proposed change to the constitution is about recognition, listening and results. “Vote Yes for unity, hope and to make a positive difference”, it says.

The no case declares the change legally risky, with unknown consequences, and divisive. “If you don’t know, vote no.”

Albanese indicated a campaign of five to six weeks would be appropriate. “You might have a bit longer than the usual [required] 33 days”, he told Sky. “I don’t think that Australians appreciate very long campaigns”. So he will not announce the referendum date at the Garma festival early next month, and on Monday stuck to his standard line that the vote will be in the final quarter of the year. The speculation has been the referendum is likely to be mid-October.

The pamphlet’s yes case says listening to Indigenous Australians “will mean better results – and better value for money”.

“No-one thinks the Voice will instantly solve everything – but we will finally have the right approach in place,” it says.

“Voting no means nothing will change. It means accepting we can’t do better,” it says. Voters should not risk “more of the same” – worse life expectancy, and worse results in education, employment and health.

“Vote yes to help close the gap.”

Voting yes means “becoming reconciled with our past and moving to a better future”. “Other countries with similar histories, like Canada and New Zealand, formally recognised their own First Peoples decades ago.”

While the yes case showcased the unifying opportunity the change presented, the no case highlighted the potential for division.

“Enshrining a Voice in the Constitution for only one group of Australians means permanently dividing our country,” the no case says.

“It creates different classes of citizenship through an unknown body that has the full force of the Constitution behind it. Many Indigenous Australians do not support this.”

The Voice opens the way for legal appeals and delays, presenting “a risk of dysfunctional government”, and “it opens the door for activists”, the no case says. “Some Voice supporters are upfront in saying this Voice will be a first step to reparations and compensation and other radical changes.”

The no case says recognition of Indigenous Australians “can be achieved without tying it to a risky, unknown and permanent Voice”.

This week’s Newspoll contained further bad news for the government. It had the no vote on 48%, compared to 41% for yes, with 11% “don’t knows”. Last month a Newspoll had support for the no side on 47%, yes on 43%, and 10% in the “don’t know” category.

The latest poll found the yes case doing particularly badly among women (38%) and those in the regions (31%).

Albanese is putting his faith in people becoming more inclined to vote yes when they focus once the campaigning intensifies.

“Most Australians, of course, will focus when the referendum is actually being held. It’s a while to go yet. What we know is that there’s been a considerable no campaign already that is out there just trying to sow doubt,” he said.

“The yes campaign needs to be stronger in putting the case, because we know that referendums in Australia have been difficult to pass – only eight out of 48. But this is a clear and simple proposition for recognition and then listening in order to achieve better outcomes for Indigenous Australians.”

Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who quit the opposition frontbench to campaign for the yes case, on Monday defended leading yes figures from attacks from no campaigners.

He said Thomas Mayo was “being made a trope for the ‘angry Aboriginal man’ who wants to tear down the country.

“The spliced videos of the no case using Thomas Mayo’s words are meant to get you angry, and get you voting against a person, even though this person is not on the ballot paper,” Leeser said.

No campaign strategists have used footage of Mayo previously threatening that politicians would be punished if they ignored an Indigenous advisory body.

Leeser defended Minister for Indigenous Australia Linda Burney from those attacking her as “privileged”.

“We are seeing deeply personal characterisations made about her that would not be made about federal ministers such as Jason Clare, Chris Bowen, or Richard Marles.

“I can’t remember the last time they were called privileged and challenged for somehow rising above their station in life.

“The reality is that Linda has not had a privileged life,” Leeser said, speaking in Wagga Wagga.

On the contrary Burney, born to a single mother and raised by an aunty and uncle in country NSW, “is a reminder of the challenges and difficulties many Indigenous Australians have to overcome every day. And she is a reminder of what can be achieved too,” he said.

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. Yes/No cases for referendum pamphlet released, as Albanese urges greater effort from yes advocates – https://theconversation.com/yes-no-cases-for-referendum-pamphlet-released-as-albanese-urges-greater-effort-from-yes-advocates-209871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

The centrepiece of the Andrews’ government pokie reform announcement is the introduction of a carded system for users of poker machines.

Such a pre-commitment system will require pokie users to register for an account linked to a gaming card which will record a limit of how much they are prepared to lose daily, weekly and monthly.

Once that limit has been reached, the system will not allow further gambling.
Because all pokies in the state are linked, this limit will apply across machines and across venues.

Other proposed reforms include:

• slowing down the spin rate of new machines to a minimum of three seconds (currently 2.14 seconds)

• requiring all venues close between 4am and 10am

• reducing the “load up limit” (the amount that can be credited on a poker machine at any one time) to $100, down from the current $1,000

• the transfer of significant education, research funding, and counselling services away from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.

The government says it wants to undertake “thorough consultation with industry through an implementation working group” before the pre-commitment and reduced load up limits are introduced. This will be a red flag for many public health researchers and practitioners working in gambling harm prevention.

The power of vested interest groups

Harmful commodity industries – tobacco, alcohol, highly processed foods, and gambling – are well resourced. They have a long history of thwarting or watering down important reforms.

For this reason, the World Health Organization urges its members to protect people from the commercial interests of tobacco. This includes rejecting partnerships with industry.

The more time they have, the more likely the gambling industry is to campaign with their considerable strength against these reforms. This worked with great effect in 2010-11 against the then Gillard government’s proposals for a similar harm prevention system.

Read more:
Australia has a strong hand to tackle gambling harm. Will it go all in or fold?

Misinformation, disinformation and endlessly disputing the scientific evidence are all tobacco industry tactics. They delayed reform for many years.

Consulting with a harmful commodity industry on the design of a new system is like consulting with the fox over the design of the new hen house. It’s not going to produce a solution.

It is also puzzling that the government needs to consult on how to introduce precommitment. A voluntary system called YourPlay has been in place for some years, and provides all necessary functions. However, because it’s voluntary, it has very low uptake, and is potentially stigmatising.

For these reasons, it doesn’t achieve what it could. But this system could readily be converted into a universal system.

Doing so would provide pokie users with a set of tools to manage their gambling. This will be particularly useful for those concerned about descending into the spiral of harmful gambling. It is a definite preventive intervention.

Measures being introduced locally and overseas

In Tasmania, the Liberal government surprised all by announcing last year that a pokies pre-commitment system would be introduced by 2024.

The system would apply on all machines in the state from December 2024. It would impose maximum limits of $100 per day, $500 per month and $5,000 per year. Notably, the announcement surprised the gambling industry, which had campaigned fiercely for the Liberal Party in the 2018 Tasmanian election. The system will be provided on a fee-for-service model to venue operators.

In NSW, the former Dominic Perrottet coalition went to the 2022 poll with a detailed proposal to introduce a cashless precommitment system for the state’s pokie venues. This was opposed by the gambling industry – notably the [Australian Hotels Association, and the peak body for clubs, ClubsNSW.

The then ALP opposition backed the industry position, promising a trial of cashless pre-commitment, along with some minor reforms. These ban signage for VIP lounges (code for pokie rooms) and reduce the load-up limit on new machines to $500.

The expert panel to guide the cashless trial in NSW was announced on 13 July 2023. The trial itself is yet to begin.

A system providing precommitment for all forms of gambling in Norway was introduced in 2009. This has been regarded as a notable success, and a similar system has been implemented in Sweden.

Closer to home, the report of the House of Representatives committee inquiring into online gambling in Australia was published recently. It urged the Australian government, among its 31 recommendations, to explore mandatory pre-commitment for online gambling. It also proposed a National Regulator to provide uniform national regulatory standards for gambling.

There’s no doubt momentum for significant reform of gambling is building in Australia. The drivers for this are to be found in the increasing awareness of the nature and extent of gambling harm. This includes the costs of money laundering and associated criminal activity which imposes great harm on the community.

In NSW, the 2022 Crime Commission report into money laundering in pokies clubs and pubs sounded a major alarm. But, more generally, a new focus on using a public health lens to view gambling harm is a major development. The industry’s favoured approach, “responsible gambling”, blames vulnerable individuals for the problem.

Read more:
4 gambling reform ideas from overseas to save Australia from gambling loss and harm

A public health view means the focus is on harmful products, and the way they are marketed, made accessible, and cause harm.

Getting the reforms through

If these reforms are implemented in full, they will dramatically reduce harm. What worries the gambling industry is that it will also reduce their profits, probably quite significantly. This is because their best customers are people experiencing significant harm from the use of their products.

Pokies are responsible for between 51% and 57% of the gambling problems in Australia.

For this reason, tackling pokie harm is an obvious step. Unfortunately, the gambling industry will not accept these changes quietly. Past experience suggests a concerted effort from industry to derail the reforms though procrastination and delay.

The Andrews government already has the wherewithal to implement these reforms quickly. If it’s genuinely committed to reducing harm, it should do so, without further delay.

the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority (the funds for which were derived from hypothecation of gambling tax revenue to research purposes), from the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, and from non-government organisations for research into multiple aspects of poker machine gambling, including regulatory reform, existing harm minimisation practices, and technical characteristics of gambling forms. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Red Crescent Society, and the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand. He was a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project researching mechanisms of influence on government by the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. He has undertaken consultancy research for local governments and non-government organisations in Australia and the UK seeking to restrict or reduce the concentration of poker machines and gambling impacts, and was a member of the Australian government’s Ministerial Expert Advisory Group on Gambling in 2010-11. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling, and of the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm. He made a submission to and appeared before the HoR Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm.

– ref. Victoria cracks down on pokies but supporters fear interest groups could hold the winning hand – https://theconversation.com/victoria-cracks-down-on-pokies-but-supporters-fear-interest-groups-could-hold-the-winning-hand-209857

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media and Journalism, University of Notre Dame Australia

Review: Jailbaby, directed by Andrea James, Griffin Theatre Company

Jailbaby – a new play by Suzie Miller – takes a steely look at what happens to an 18-year-old when his life collides with a criminal justice system that is bad and getting worse.

Jailbaby follows the phenomenal success of Prima Facie, which scrutinised the law’s failure to protect female victims of sexual assault. Following its premiere at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company in 2019, Prima Facie had seasons in London and New York, winning best new play at the United Kingdom’s Olivier Awards.

A one-time lawyer with the Aboriginal Legal Service and Shopfront Youth Legal Centre, Miller’s plays venture into dark places few want to confront.

This new play focuses on jail rape, a crime that is understudied, under scrutinised and underreported. It takes place in an environment where seeking help or speaking up has the opposite of the intended effect.

Read more:
In Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, theatre finds a voice of reckoning on sexual assault and the law

A life of struggle

AJ is a wide-eyed teenager (compellingly played by Anthony Yangoyan). His mother (Lucia Mastrantone) is a recovering drug addict. His violent father disappeared long ago. They live in social housing. They struggle.

AJ has a long record of troubled behaviour, mostly property crimes, which has seen him spend time in juvenile detention. At 18, AJ is highly impressionable – even gullible – and under the thumb of some older, nastier criminals.

When he needs $500 to go on a soccer trip he thinks will transform his life, he chooses the wrong way to get it.

He imagines the “massive smart TV, MacBooks, iPad” he will stuff into a blue IKEA bag “like a Christmas stocking.”

“Ka-ching!” he thinks.

Of course, it doesn’t turn out like that.

Imagined sacred space

The courtroom of the public imagination is like the last sacred space in a secular society.

It is presided over by judges beyond the reach of criticism. People readily imagine a defendant’s case will be carefully considered; that everybody has a lawyer in a sharp suit who will make eloquent pleas and ask searching questions.

In reality, the lower courts are crowded and chaotic. A duty solicitor quoted in recent research paper likened the civil courts to a “zoo”. The criminal courts are worse.

Miller’s play rips right through this veil of illusion.

Despite his age, AJ fails to get bail. He is tried remotely via prison video link. The court appears as a tiny square on a computer screen.

AJ’s lawyer (Mastrantone) tries. But she is already disassociating herself from what she knows will happen. Perhaps this is just the way that lawyers cope.

AJ still thinks, by some miracle, he’ll get off with a warning. His mind is on his upcoming football training session. He doesn’t think the court will take away his big chance to change his life. But, of course, they do.

And in jail, AJ loses everything.

Incarceration in Australia

The back cover of the published script says the play pinpoints “the exact moment when it all goes so, so wrong” for AJ.

But that moment happened long before he took the jersey or the iPhone. It happened long before AJ was born, when politicians decided locking up more – and younger – people made them popular.

Even as the rate of offending in Australia has dropped, the prison rate has steadily climbed.

Read more:
Australia’s prison rates are up but crime is down. What’s going on?

Australia incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than China, Guatemala or the United Kingdom. The United States leads the world in per capita incarceration, but Australia has more people incarcerated who have not been tried or sentenced.

Children as young as ten are incarcerated in some Australian jurisdictions.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the most incarcerated people in the world.

Australian jails are brutalising. They ought to be a measure of last resort. But young people can be sent to jail simply because there are few diversionary programs in regional, remote or rural areas, or because rehabilitation programs may be full.

And it happens in the dark, because newspapers seldom cover the lower courts, unless a celebrity is on trial.

Lower court judgements are rarely published. On busy days, if you blink, you will miss it.

Some lawyers argue this protects the “privacy” of the accused. But when an 18-year-old like AJ is sent to adult jail, that kid has a lot more than “privacy” to worry about.

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

Ominous inevitability

Jailbaby is a high impact theatrical work. It contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault by straight men against younger male prisoners. The level of detail written into these descriptions is risky, but this raw brutality is the play’s strength.

Like a lawyer explaining legal proceedings to a client in the courtroom, Miller tells the audience what is likely to happen to AJ at every stage. This foreknowledge is horrifying, because it makes the audience complicit in the action as it unfolds.

Yet, ultimately it doesn’t quite come together. One of the story strands is underdeveloped, and the middle-class characters (whose home AJ burgles) often feel like uncomfortable caricatures.

There are 14 roles shared between three actors, and perhaps this requires a level of dexterity that contributes to uneven performances.

An ominous inevitability ties the best parts of the play together. We are left with a gut-wrenching sense that, for kids like AJ, the justice system has nothing to do with justice.

Jailbaby is at Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney, until August 19.

The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

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

– ref. The ominous inevitability of Suzie Miller’s new play Jailbaby: often, our justice system has nothing to do with justice – https://theconversation.com/the-ominous-inevitability-of-suzie-millers-new-play-jailbaby-often-our-justice-system-has-nothing-to-do-with-justice-209217

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

It made headlines around the world when the much-hyped Barbie movie contributed to a world shortage of fluorescent pink paint.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When movies or TV shows become cultural phenomena, toymakers jump on board. And that comes with a surprisingly large amount of plastic waste. Think of the fad for Baby Yoda dolls after the first season of The Mandalorian in 2020. When the Barbie movie comes out this week, it’s bound to trigger a wave of doll purchases over and above the 60 million Barbies already sold annually.

Toys are the most plastic-intensive consumer goods in the world, according to a 2014 United Nations Environment Program report.

Worse, very few toys are recycled. That’s often because they can’t be – they’re made of a complex mixture of plastics, metals and electronics. When children get bored, these toys often end up in landfill.

The toll of the dolls

Consider a single Barbie doll. What did it cost to create?

Before the US-China trade war, half the world’s toys were manufactured in Dongguan, a city in China. That included one in three Barbie dolls.

American researchers last year quantified what each doll costs the climate. Every 182 gram doll caused about 660 grams of carbon emissions, including plastic production, manufacture and transport.

The researchers analysed seven other types of toys, including Lego sets and Jenga. By my calculations, emissions on average across all these types of toys are about 4.5 kilograms per kilogram of toys.

Scaled up, this is considerable. In the US, it’s estimated emissions from the plastics industry will overtake those from coal within seven years.

So the question is, how can we cut our emissions to zero as fast as possible to ensure we and our children have a liveable climate – without putting a blanket ban on plastic toys? After all, toys and entertainment add happiness to our lives.

Read more:
The marketing tricks that have kept Barbie’s brand alive for over 60 years

The role for toymakers and governments

To date, there has been little focus on making the toy industry more sustainable. But it shouldn’t escape our notice.

Toy manufacturers can – and should – use low carbon materials and supply chains, and focus on making toys easily dissembled. Toys should be as light as possible, to minimise transport emissions. And battery-powered toys should be avoided wherever possible, as they can double a toy’s climate impact and turn a plastic waste problem into an electronic waste problem. To their credit, some toymakers have cut back on plastic in their packaging, given packaging immediately becomes waste.

In a welcome move, the maker of Barbie, Mattel, launched their own recycling scheme in 2021, allowing buyers to send back old toys to be turned into new ones. This scheme isn’t available in Australia, however.

Toymakers can help at the design stage by choosing the materials they use carefully. Governments can encourage this by penalising cheap, high-environmental-impact plastics. We can look to the European and American bans on BPA-containing plastics in infant milk bottles as an example of what’s possible. Governments can set up effective recovery and recycling systems able to handle toys.

Some plastic-dependent brands such as Lego are unilaterally moving away from petrochemical-based plastic in favour of sugarcane-based plastic. But it’s not a short-term project.

While Barbie dolls had an uptick in popularity during the pandemic years – and will no doubt have another surge alongside the movie – longer-term trends are dampening plastic toy impact. While movies in the 1980s were often “toyetic” – conceived with an eye to toy sales – the trend is on the wane.

Gaming, for instance, has moved to centre stage for many older children. While gaming produces e-waste streams, it is also a likely cause of the longer-term fall in popularity of plastic toys.

What should we do?

If you’re a parent or an indulgent grandparent, it’s hard to avoid buying toys entirely – especially if your child gets obsessed with Barbie dolls after seeing the movie. So what should you do?

For starters, we can avoid cheap and nasty toys which are likely to break very quickly. Instead, look for toys which will last – and which will lend themselves to longer-term creative play. Think of the enduring popularity of brick-based toys or magnetic tiles. Look for secondhand toys. And look for toys made of simpler materials able to be recycled at the end of their lives – or even for the Barbie dolls made out of ocean plastics.

Read more:
How to find the most sustainable and long-lasting children’s toys

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

– ref. In a Barbie world … after the movie frenzy fades, how do we avoid tonnes of Barbie dolls going to landfill? – https://theconversation.com/in-a-barbie-world-after-the-movie-frenzy-fades-how-do-we-avoid-tonnes-of-barbie-dolls-going-to-landfill-209601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deirdre McGhee, Researcher and Senior Lecturer, University of Wollongong, APA Sports Physiotherapist, University of Wollongong

In the to and fro of daily life, an accidental knock to the breast can hurt for a moment. But in the push and shove on the sporting field – such as the upcoming 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup – a blow to the breast can cause breast pain, swelling and bruising.

Coaches, health clinicians and sporting organisations don’t know enough about this silent, female-specific injury. And female athletes involved in sports like soccer or football need to be aware of the potential dangers. Our recent review paper outlines how risks vary as breasts change in structure and function over a lifetime – through puberty, pregnancy, lactation, menopause and following surgery.

Proper management of breast injury involves taking care of breast tissue during recovery and empowering athletes to make informed decisions about their participation in sports, work and leisure activities. First, we need to get a better sense of why and how often such injuries happen.

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

Silent injuries

Breast injuries can happen to women in sporting and occupational settings – and from seatbelt trauma. They are usually silent injuries because although many female athletes experience them (some 50% of female college athletes in a United States study), as few as 10% report them to coaches or medical staff.

As a result, most injuries are not assessed or treated even though they cause symptoms that can last for weeks, negatively affect athletic and work performance and have long-term consequences, including:

• breast fat necrosis (or tissue death), that can result in fibrous lumps within the breast
• breast deformities and asymmetries from either the halting of breast development during puberty or the bursting of breast implants, with both requiring surgery if correction is sought
• damage to the milk ducts of lactating breasts that can affect breastfeeding.

Female athletes also suffer from frictional skin injuries from bras, and from breast pain associated with hormonal changes or excessive breast movement.

But injury does not cause breast cancer

One of the myths about breast injuries is an assumed link with breast cancer. Though an injury may draw attention to previously formed breast lumps or cause a new one, female athletes can be assured there is no evidence breast injuries cause breast cancer.

However, one of the long-term consequences of breast injuries, breast fat necrosis, can be challenging for doctors to distinguish from breast cancer. Female athletes must understand the importance of reporting breast injuries so they can be treated appropriately to minimise the risk of long-term effects.

To effectively monitor breast tissue recovery after a breast injury, female athletes also need to be familiar with the “normal” look and feel of their breasts because women’s breasts are not all the same. This practice of breast self- examination will also assist with the early detection and treatment of breast cancer, which affects one in eight women.

Leer más:
Australian researchers confirm world’s first case of dementia linked to repetitive brain trauma in a female athlete

Protecting breasts

As women’s participation in sports that have been traditionally dominated by men increases, greater awareness about breast injuries is needed. Sporting organisations like FIFA have a duty of care to educate their female players, coaches and medical staff about breast injuries and improve their management and prevention.

Although female-specific, breast-protective garments are commercially available, there is currently no published evidence that they can decrease impact on the breast. Many female athletes and workers wear breast-protective equipment and body armour designed for the male torso. These may not fit women properly. Further research is required to investigate how effective body armour and breast-protective equipment is and to improve their design and fit for the wide range of female breast and torso shapes.

For women’s football and other sports, there needs to be better injury surveillance and records. Doctors, physiotherapists and sports trainers associated with female football teams need to trained to assess and treat breast injuries.

Sporting organisations like FIFA have made progress in supporting and promoting women to return to sports post-pregnancy and breastfeeding. But it is equally essential women are aware of the risks of damaging the delicate and enlarged glandular tissue within their breasts and their breastfeeding capability.

What’s next?

More research is needed to know how frequently breast injuries occur in sports like football, how severe they are or how frequently long-term changes occur. Because the cause and type of injury will be specific to the sport played, injury surveillance in each sport is needed.

But greater awareness and education about breast injuries should not deter women from participating in sport because they can be treated. Female players have worked hard and long to have the opportunity and skills to be involved in football at the World Cup level.

We hope our review and future research can act as a catalyst for sporting organisations like FIFA to raise awareness, educate and investigate breast injuries in women’s football so they can develop evidence-based guidelines, management and prevention strategies. The goal of these should be to maximise long-term breast health, athletic performance and women’s participation at all levels of sporting competition.

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

– ref. Breast injuries are common for female athletes. Here’s why better awareness and reporting are needed – https://theconversation.com/breast-injuries-are-common-for-female-athletes-heres-why-better-awareness-and-reporting-are-needed-208369

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wally Smith, Professor, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

Most of us go online multiple times a day. About half of 18–29 year olds surveyed in a 2021 Pew Research Study said they are “almost constantly” connected.

How are we to make sense of this significant digital dimension of modern life?

Many questions have rightly been asked about its broader consequences for society and the economy. But there remains a simpler question about what motivates people across a range of ages, occupations and cultures to be so absorbed in digital connection.

And we can turn this question on ourselves: why am I online?

What are we doing when we go online?

As the American sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out, asking “What is it that’s going on here?” about human behaviour can yield answers framed at different levels. These range from our superficial motives to a deeper understanding of what we are “really” doing.

Read more:
Ever feel like your life is a performance? Everyone does – and this 1959 book explains roles, scripts and hiding backstage

Sometimes we might be content to explain our online behaviour in purely practical terms, like checking traffic routes or paying a bill. Other times we might struggle to articulate our reasons for going or remaining online.

Why are we continually looking at our phones or computers, when we could be getting on with physical tasks, or exercising, or meditating, or engaging more fully with the people who are physically around us?

The ever-present need to manage our emotions

As researchers of human-computer interaction, we are exploring answers in terms of the ever-present need to manage our emotions. Psychologists refer to this activity as emotion regulation.

Theories of the nature and function of emotions are complex and contested. However, it is safe to say they are expressions of felt needs and motivations that arise in us through some fusion of physiology and culture.

During a typical day, we often feel a need to alter our emotional state. We may wish to feel more serious about a competitive task or more sad at a funeral. Perhaps we would like to be less sad about events of the past, less angry when meeting an errant family member, or more angry about something we know in our heart is wrong.

One way to understand our frequent immersions into online experience is to see them as acts within a broader scheme of managing such daily emotional demands. Indeed, in earlier research we found up to half of all smartphone use may be for the purpose of emotional regulation.

Digital technologies are becoming key tools of emotion regulation

Over the pandemic lockdowns of 2020–21 in Melbourne, Australia, we investigated how digital technologies are becoming key tools of emotion regulation. We were surprised to find that people readily talked of their technology use in these emotion-managing terms.

Occasionally, this involved specially designed apps, for mindfulness and so on. But more often people relied on mundane tools, such as using social media alongside Zoom to combat feelings of boredom or isolation, browsing for “retail therapy”, playing phone games to de-stress, and searching online to alleviate anxiety about world events.

To some extent, these uses of digital technology can be seen as re-packaging traditional methods of emotion management, such as listening to music, strengthening social connections, or enjoying the company of adorable animals. Indeed, people in our study used digital technologies to enact familiar strategies, such as immersion in selected situations, seeking distractions, and reappraising what a situation means.

However, we also found indications that digital tools are changing the intensity and nature of how we regulate emotions. They provide emotional resources that are nearly always available, and virtual situations can be accessed, juxtaposed and navigated more deftly than their physical counterparts.

Some participants in our study described how they built what we called “emotional toolkits”. These are collections of digital resources ready to be deployed when needed, each for a particular emotional effect.

A new kind of digital emotional intelligence

None of this is to say emotion regulation is automatically and always a good thing. It can be a means of avoiding important and meaningful endeavours and it can itself become dysfunctional.

In our study of a small sample of Melburnians, we found that although digital applications appeared to be generally effective in this role, they are volatile and can lead to unpredictable emotional outcomes. A search for energising music or reassuring social contact, for example, can produce random or unwanted results.

A new kind of digital emotional intelligence might be needed to effectively navigate digital emotional landscapes.

An historic shift in everyday life

Returning to the question: what am I doing online? Emotion regulation may well be the part of the answer.

You may be online for valid instrumental reasons. But equally, you are likely to be enacting your own strategies of emotion regulation through digital means.

It is part of an historic shift playing out in how people negotiate the demands of everyday life.

Read more:
Why comparing technology to drugs isn’t simply a question of addiction

Wally Smith receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Greg Wadley receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Why am I online? Research shows it’s often about managing emotions – https://theconversation.com/why-am-i-online-research-shows-its-often-about-managing-emotions-208483

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wally Smith, Professor, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

Most of us go online multiple times a day. About half of 18–29 year olds surveyed in a 2021 Pew Research Study said they are “almost constantly” connected.

How are we to make sense of this significant digital dimension of modern life?

Many questions have rightly been asked about its broader consequences for society and the economy. But there remains a simpler question about what motivates people across a range of ages, occupations and cultures to be so absorbed in digital connection.

And we can turn this question on ourselves: why am I online?

What are we doing when we go online?

As the American sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out, asking “What is it that’s going on here?” about human behaviour can yield answers framed at different levels. These range from our superficial motives to a deeper understanding of what we are “really” doing.

Read more:
Ever feel like your life is a performance? Everyone does – and this 1959 book explains roles, scripts and hiding backstage

Sometimes we might be content to explain our online behaviour in purely practical terms, like checking traffic routes or paying a bill. Other times we might struggle to articulate our reasons for going or remaining online.

Why are we continually looking at our phones or computers, when we could be getting on with physical tasks, or exercising, or meditating, or engaging more fully with the people who are physically around us?

The ever-present need to manage our emotions

As researchers of human-computer interaction, we are exploring answers in terms of the ever-present need to manage our emotions. Psychologists refer to this activity as emotion regulation.

Theories of the nature and function of emotions are complex and contested. However, it is safe to say they are expressions of felt needs and motivations that arise in us through some fusion of physiology and culture.

During a typical day, we often feel a need to alter our emotional state. We may wish to feel more serious about a competitive task or more sad at a funeral. Perhaps we would like to be less sad about events of the past, less angry when meeting an errant family member, or more angry about something we know in our heart is wrong.

One way to understand our frequent immersions into online experience is to see them as acts within a broader scheme of managing such daily emotional demands. Indeed, in earlier research we found up to half of all smartphone use may be for the purpose of emotional regulation.

Digital technologies are becoming key tools of emotion regulation

Over the pandemic lockdowns of 2020–21 in Melbourne, Australia, we investigated how digital technologies are becoming key tools of emotion regulation. We were surprised to find that people readily talked of their technology use in these emotion-managing terms.

Occasionally, this involved specially designed apps, for mindfulness and so on. But more often people relied on mundane tools, such as using social media alongside Zoom to combat feelings of boredom or isolation, browsing for “retail therapy”, playing phone games to de-stress, and searching online to alleviate anxiety about world events.

To some extent, these uses of digital technology can be seen as re-packaging traditional methods of emotion management, such as listening to music, strengthening social connections, or enjoying the company of adorable animals. Indeed, people in our study used digital technologies to enact familiar strategies, such as immersion in selected situations, seeking distractions, and reappraising what a situation means.

However, we also found indications that digital tools are changing the intensity and nature of how we regulate emotions. They provide emotional resources that are nearly always available, and virtual situations can be accessed, juxtaposed and navigated more deftly than their physical counterparts.

Some participants in our study described how they built what we called “emotional toolkits”. These are collections of digital resources ready to be deployed when needed, each for a particular emotional effect.

A new kind of digital emotional intelligence

None of this is to say emotion regulation is automatically and always a good thing. It can be a means of avoiding important and meaningful endeavours and it can itself become dysfunctional.

In our study of a small sample of Melburnians, we found that although digital applications appeared to be generally effective in this role, they are volatile and can lead to unpredictable emotional outcomes. A search for energising music or reassuring social contact, for example, can produce random or unwanted results.

A new kind of digital emotional intelligence might be needed to effectively navigate digital emotional landscapes.

An historic shift in everyday life

Returning to the question: what am I doing online? Emotion regulation may well be the part of the answer.

You may be online for valid instrumental reasons. But equally, you are likely to be enacting your own strategies of emotion regulation through digital means.

It is part of an historic shift playing out in how people negotiate the demands of everyday life.

Read more:
Why comparing technology to drugs isn’t simply a question of addiction

Wally Smith receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Greg Wadley receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Why am I online? – https://theconversation.com/why-am-i-online-208483

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

A federal Newspoll, conducted July 12–15 from a sample of 1,570, gave Labor a 55–45 lead after preferences, a one-point gain for Labor since the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago. Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

Labor’s gain came despite a two-point fall in their primary vote to 36%, with the Coalition also down one to 34%. The Greens and One Nation benefitted, with both up a point, to 12% and 7% respectively, and all Others were also up one to 11%.

In the last two Newspolls, Labor may have been unlucky in the two party rounding given the primary votes. This time Labor was probably lucky to get their 55–45 lead from the primary votes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s ratings were nearly unchanged, with 52% satisfied (steady) and 41% dissatisfied (down one), for a net approval of +11. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s net approval was down two points to -13. Albanese led Dutton as better PM by 54–29, up from 52–32 previously.

The graph below shows Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll since the first Newspoll of this term in July 2022. Newspoll data is from The Poll Bludger’s BludgerTrack. Points on the graph are individual poll results, with a trend line fitted using the statistical software Minitab.

Albanese’s net approval is well down from the over +30 he had in late 2022. It’s likely concerns about high inflation and interest rates have contributed to Albanese’s slide.

While Labor’s lead in Newspoll increased, it dropped in last week’s Essential and Morgan polls. Overall Labor continues to hold a commanding poll lead.

Support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament dropped again in Newspoll, with “no” to the Voice now ahead by 48–41, from a 47–43 “no” lead three weeks ago. Here is an updated version of the 2023 Voice polls by pollster graph that I first published last week.

Morgan poll: 54.5–45.5 to Labor

In last week’s Morgan federal poll, conducted July 3–9 from a sample of 1,410, Labor led by 54.5–45.5, a 1.5-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 35% Coalition, 34.5% Labor, 12.5% Greens and 18% for all Others.

LNP holds Fadden at byelection with small swing to LNP

At Saturday’s federal byelection for the Queensland seat of Fadden, the Liberal National Party defeated Labor by 63.2–36.8, a 2.5% swing to the LNP since the 2022 federal election.

Primary votes were 48.9% LNP (up 4.3%), 22.1% Labor (down 0.3%), 8.9% One Nation (up 0.3%), 7.4% Legalise Cannabis (new) and 6.2% Greens (down 4.5%). None of the remaining eight candidates won more than 1%. This was a dismal result for the Greens, while One Nation failed to benefit from the absence of the UAP (6.6% in 2022).

Analyst Kevin Bonham said the average swing at an opposition-held seat at a byelection that is contested by both major parties is about 1% to the opposition. The average swings in government-held seats are higher owing to the loss of the sitting MP’s personal vote. So the LNP outperformed the average.

In April, Labor’s gain of Aston at a federal byelection was only the second time a federal government had gained a seat from the opposition at a byelection. The two party swing to Labor at Aston of 6.4% contrasts with the small swing to the LNP in Fadden.

Read more:
Labor and Albanese gain in Newspoll after Aston byelection triumph

Aston is located in metropolitan Melbourne, and Labor’s upset win was a continuation of a trend against the Liberals in Australia’s big cities. The Liberals lost four Melbourne seats at the 2022 election, two to Labor and two to teal independents.

Fadden is based on the Gold Coast and is not part of Brisbane. While Australia’s big cities are trending to the left, the rest of Australia is not. Overall, the left trend in our big cities is favourable to Labor, owing to the high percentage of Australia’s population that lives there.

Read more:
Will a continuing education divide eventually favour Labor electorally due to our big cities?

Turnout at the Aston byelection was 85.6%, while in Fadden turnout is currently 67.5% and is likely to only make the low 70s.

UK byelections and Spanish election upcoming in next week

I wrote for The Poll Bludger last Wednesday that there will be three United Kingdom byelections in Conservative-held seats this Thursday. While the Conservatives won all three seats by large margins at the 2019 election, there has been a massive national swing to Labour since.

The Spanish election is next Sunday, and the right-wing parties (People’s and Vox) are expected to defeat the governing left-wing parties (Socialists and Sumar). The right is also ahead in New Zealand, where an election is due in October. The June Greek election was a disaster for the left.

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

– ref. Labor gains in Newspoll 2PP despite primary slide; LNP wins Fadden byelection easily – https://theconversation.com/labor-gains-in-newspoll-2pp-despite-primary-slide-lnp-wins-fadden-byelection-easily-209686

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Doug Drury, Professor/Head of Aviation, CQUniversity Australia

Anyone who has travelled by air in the past ten years will know how stressful airports can be.

You didn’t leave home as early as you should have. In the mad rush to get to your gate, the security screening seems to slow everything down. And to add insult to injury, you’re met with the finicky request: “laptops out of bags, please”.

But what does your laptop have to do with security?

The day that changed air travel forever

Airport security changed dramatically after the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11 2001. Before 9/11, you could pass through security with a carry-on bag full of everything you might need for your holiday, including a knife with a four-inch blade. Indeed, that’s how the 9/11 attackers brought their weapons on board.

After 9/11, screening processes around the world changed overnight. In the US, private security contractors being paid a minimum wage were swapped out for a federalised program with highly trained security personnel. Anything that could be considered a weapon was confiscated.

Around the world, travellers were suddenly required to remove their shoes, belts and outerwear, and take out their phones, laptops, liquids and anything else that could be used as part of an improvised explosive device.

This lasted for several years. Eventually, more advanced screening methods were developed to effectively identify certain threats. Today, some countries don’t require you to remove your shoes when passing through security.

So why must you still take your laptop out?

Airport scanners have come a long way

The machine your bags and devices pass through is an X-ray machine.

The main reason you have to remove your laptop from your bag is because its battery and other mechanical components are too dense for X-rays to penetrate effectively – especially if the scanning system is old. The same goes for power cords and other devices such as tablets and cameras.

With these items in your bag, security officials can’t use the screened image to determine whether a risk is present. They’ll have to flag the bag for a physical search, which slows everything down. It’s easier if all devices are removed in the first place.

A laptop inside a bag can also shield other items from view that may be dangerous. Scanning it separately reveals its internal components on the screen. In some cases you might be asked to turn it on to prove it’s an actual working computer.

With newer multi-view scanning technology, security officials can view the bag from multiple angles to discern whether something is being covered up, or made to look like something else. For instance, people have tried to mix gun parts with other components in an effort to pass checked baggage screening.

Some airports have upgraded 3D scanning that allows travellers to pass their bags through security without having to remove their laptops. If you’re not asked to take out your laptop, it’s probably because one of these more expensive systems is being used.

Nonetheless, amping up the technology won’t remove the lag caused by airport screenings. Ultimately, the reason these are a major choke point is because of the speed at which staff scan the imagery (which dictates the speed of the conveyor belt).

Unless we find a way to automate the entire process and run it with minimal human supervision, you can expect delays.

What about body scanners?

But your bags aren’t the only thing getting scanned at airport security. You are too!

The tall frame you walk through is a metal detector. Its purpose is to uncover any weapons or other illegal objects that may be concealed under your clothes. Airport metal detectors use non-ionising radiation, which means they don’t emit X-rays.

The larger body scanners, on the other hand, are a type of X-ray machine. These can be active or passive, or a combination of both.

Passive scanners simply detect the natural radiation emitted by your body and any objects that might be concealed. Active scanners emit low-energy radiation to create a scan of your body, which can then be analysed.

The kind of machine you walk through will depend on where in the world you are. For instance, one type of active body scanner that emits X-rays in what’s called “backscatter technology” is used widely in the US, but is banned in Australia and the European Union, where only non-ionising technology can be used.

Another type of scanner emits lower-energy millimetre waves, instead of X-rays, to image the passenger. Millimetre wave frequencies are considered to be non-ionising radiation.

Read more:
Air travel exposes you to radiation – how much health risk comes with it?

AI in our airports

AI seems to be all around us lately, and our airports are no exception. Advancements in AI systems stand to transform the future of airport security.

For now, human reviewers are required to identify potential threats in scanned images. However, what if an advanced AI was trained to do this using a database of images? It would do so in a fraction of the time.

Some airports are already using advanced computed tomography (CT) scanners to produce high-definition 3D imagery. In the future, this technology could be further enhanced by AI to detect threats at a much faster rate.

Hypothetically, CT scans could also be used for both humans and their baggage. Could this allow travellers to walk through a body scanner while carrying their bags? Possibly.

Until then, you should probably try your best to leave the house on time.

Read more:
What’s the safest seat on a plane? We asked an aviation expert

Doug Drury 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 do I have to take my laptop out of the bag at airport security? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-have-to-take-my-laptop-out-of-the-bag-at-airport-security-209041

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup kicks off this Thursday night, the first football world cup hosted by Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

New Zealand opens the tournament by taking on Norway in Auckland, while Australia’s Matildas will play Ireland in front of an anticipated 80,000 fans at a sold out Stadium Australia in Sydney.

Despite the persistent delusion of some that politics should be kept out of sport, it has always been suffused with political calculations and meanings. The major question is not whether but what kinds of politics will be played and by whom.

In the lead up to this tournament, world football’s governing body FIFA announced a suite of eight armbands that could be chosen under its Football Unites the World program. Permitted selections, in partnership with various United Nations agencies, include “Unite for Indigenous Peoples” and “Unite for Gender Equality”.

But notably, the OneLove armband associated with LGBTIQA+ rights isn’t among them. That was banned at last year’s Men’s World Cup in Qatar, with captains including England’s Harry Kane threatened with a yellow card if they wore it as planned.

Unlike in Qatar, homosexuality is not illegal in these host countries, but FIFA’s “extensive consultation with stakeholders including players and the 32 participating member associations” produced the same outcome.

Read more:
Why is the Qatar FIFA World Cup so controversial?

Among the latter are three African countries (Morocco, Nigeria and Zambia) where homosexuality is criminalised, as it is in stakeholders including Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia that are increasingly influential in football and other world sports.

Australia’s captain Sam Kerr has been deprived, to her regret, of the opportunity to make a statement with a rainbow-coloured armband.

But 44 players have taken the chance to cooperate with climate advocacy groups Common Goal and Football For Future to help compensate for the environmental impact of their world cup related flights.

Already it’s clear that politics will vie with passes and penalties as major talking points at the biggest sport event in the region since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Indeed, when the esteemed Brazilian team flew into Brisbane two weeks before the first ball would be kicked, their plane’s tail bore pictures of Iranian human rights activists Mahsa Amini and Amir Nasr Azadani. The plane’s body also declared, “No woman should be forced to cover her head” and “no man should be hanged for saying this”.

FIFA scandals and sports diplomacy

FIFA has an ignoble history of corruption, exploitation and ethical malpractice – despite its professed commitment to human rights and transparency.

The BBC podcast Powerplay: The House of Sepp Blatter excruciatingly details the disgrace of the former FIFA President. Just before Blatter was re-elected in Zurich in 2015, the world’s media were treated to the spectacle of FIFA executives being arrested and taken from their hotel under large bedsheets (Blatter then resigned just days after being re-elected).

His successor Gianni Infantino, the object of much mockery after a pre-Qatar World Cup speech identifying with the oppressed, promised to clean up FIFA’s act and reinvent itself as a force for global good. Promoting gender equality in and through football is one such aim. This world cup, both the first hosted by two confederations (Asia and Oceania) and the first in the southern hemisphere for women, seems perfectly to fit that bill.

Read more:
FIFA’s mirage of unity: why the World Cup is a vessel for political protest

It undoubtedly has significant geopolitical implications. With the Pacific region the focus of a contest for influence between the US and its allies and China, sport has emerged as a key bargaining chip. Money for sport aid, development and infrastructure has been flowing into the Pacific islands from all directions.

Australia’s Sports Diplomacy 2030 initiative has been especially keen on Pacific partnerships, not least in football as part of its “Global Strategy with a Pacific Focus”. The Oceania Football Confederation’s and Football Australia’s Legacy Plans frequently invoke the rhetoric of the Pacific family. At the world cup, women will be unusually prominent in the sphere of sports diplomacy.

Political games

The concept of sportswashing entered the popular lexicon quite recently to describe the use of sport, especially by illiberal states including China and Russia, to disguise their abuses of human rights and ingratiate themselves with sports fans around the world.

Read more:
Is Saudi Arabia using ‘sportswashing’ to simply hide its human rights abuses – or is there a bigger strategy at play?

While this is unquestionably the case, sport’s emotional power is harnessed by all countries, liberal democratic and otherwise, to project a more positive image than is generally warranted. This “feel good” global publicity, though, brings intense scrutiny far beyond the football field.

The two settler colonial countries hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup still have much to redress regarding their First Nations peoples, who have called FIFA and their respective associations and confederations to account. The event’s “bespoke” Sustainability Strategy and its “key social, economic, human rights and environmental priorities for the current time and geographical context” will be thoroughly examined.

This world cup is a landmark event that will bring pleasure to many people. An important moment in the recognition and development of women’s football, Infantino has positioned it as a staging post on the path towards gender pay parity by 2027. In this respect, the amount commanded in crucial media (especially broadcast) rights has been less than encouraging.

But one thing is certain – this will not be a politics-free festival of football.

David Rowe 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. Penalties, passes, and a touch of politics: the Women’s World Cup is about to kick off – https://theconversation.com/penalties-passes-and-a-touch-of-politics-the-womens-world-cup-is-about-to-kick-off-209050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Sievert, Research Fellow in Food Systems, Deakin University

Emotions can run high when the topic of how much red and processed meat to eat is raised. For many of us, eating these foods is culturally important – often tied to specific dishes and traditions.

That’s why this week’s landmark new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) is welcome. The report focuses explicitly on what the science says about how red and processed meat affects our health – and the health of the ecosystems on which we depend.

What does it say? Moderation is important. In high-income countries, we tend to eat too much red meat, which boosts the risk of some cancers and heart disease. We should treat processed meat, such as salami, with even greater caution, as the link to cancer risk is even clearer.

If you want a quick take-home, it’s this: eat less red meat, avoid processed meat and choose meat farmed under better conditions. But this is not always easy or affordable for everyone. So most importantly, we need changes to the policies that affect how our food systems operate so that our well-being and the health of the planet are prioritised.

What does the evidence say about red meat and our health?

Red meat is a rich source of many important nutrients, including iron, B-vitamins and all essential amino acids. These are compounds essential for human growth, development and good health.

Importantly, these nutrients are not exclusively found in red meat. Beans and legumes are also high in iron and B-vitamins, though in less easily absorbed form. Many cultures have developed healthy diets without an over-reliance on red meat by including beans and legumes.

In populations that experience food insecurity, red meat can be an important source of nutrition. In these contexts, it doesn’t make sense to advise people to avoid red meat.

But in other parts of the world, red meat intake is too high. Australians are some of the world’s biggest red meat eaters, which puts us at higher risk of chronic diseases such as bowel cancer and cardiovascular disease. Both of these are amongst Australia’s top killers.

Processed and ultra-processed meats such as ham and chicken nuggets come with even greater health risks, especially when consumed in excess. The WHO considers processed meat a Group 1 carcinogen. That means there’s strong evidence linking consumption to cancer risk.

The way we produce red and processed meat comes with a host of other health issues, such as antimicrobial resistance due to overuse of antibiotics, as well as the risk of new zoonotic animal-to-human diseases. Intensive farming done on industrial scales poses particular risks.

What does the evidence tell us about red meat and the environment?

Ruminant livestock need grass, which often means farmers chop down the trees or shrubs previously there, making pasture inhospitable for native species. In feedlots, these animals are often fed on grains or soy. Producing the volumes needed – of both animal feed and livestock – means felling more forests. That’s why we can clearly link increased livestock farming to damaged biodiversity.

There are issues on the climate front, too. Livestock production accounts for up to 78% of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Of this, cattle farming contributes 80%.

In Australia, livestock farming is generally less intensive compared to the United States. Even so, deforestation to make room for cattle is still a major issue in Australia. In the last five years, 13,500 hectares have been cleared for beef cattle operations in Queensland alone.

It doesn’t have to be so destructive. Mixed farming systems, where cattle graze on land covered by trees and native grasses, is less destructive.

So are farming methods built around agro-ecological principles where the health of the land and fairness are prioritised.

As global heating escalates, it will pose increasing challenges for livestock farmers (and livestock animals). Increases in extreme weather have major implications for animal welfare, farmer livelihoods and food security.

What does the evidence say about industrial farming?

Many farmers care greatly about the welfare of their animals and the environment.

But meat production in many parts of the world is now dominated by large corporations. To maximise production, these companies rely on intensive farming techniques such as feedlots and extensive use of antibiotics. These techniques are spreading as low- and middle-income countries such as China and Brazil gain more appetite for meat.

Industrial scale farming comes with real costs. If we can make meat production better, we will lower the risk of antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic diseases, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, and improve the lives of workers and the animals themselves.

Read more:
Organic, grass fed and hormone-free: does this make red meat any healthier?

Knowing this, what should we do?

If we leave the situation as it is, intensive farming and red and processed meat consumption will continue to increase.

But this is not sustainable. To improve the health of people and the planet we need to change how we produce meat. And we need to consume more diverse diets. These changes have to be sensitive to the local context.

Changing what we eat must involve governments. Just as governments have a role in encouraging food manufacturers to avoid carcinogens or dangerous chemical additives, they have a role in promoting healthy diets from food systems that are sustainable over the long term.

What does that look like? It could be investing in agro-ecological farming practices, tackling corporate concentration of meat production, penalising antibiotic overuse and subsidising healthy options like beans and legumes. Taxing the riskiest meat-based foods, such as heavily processed meat, is another option.

Sensible policy-making may also help shift cultural norms in which meat is so highly valued.

Could we just swap red meat for different meat? It’s not that simple. The majority of chickens are intensively farmed, too, meaning antibiotic resistance remains a risk. Ultra-processed plant-based meats may also pose problems for human health.

A better option is to focus on minimally-processed whole foods (think brown rice, nuts and pulses) and sustainably-produced foods from animals. But we need action from the government to make these options affordable and convenient.

Importantly, the WHO report does not say stop eating red meat – it simply lays out the evidence about what it does to your health. It also points to ways of farming livestock that are less destructive and outlines ways to reduce our habitual consumption.

Read more:
Intensive farming is eating up the Australian continent – but there’s another way

Katherine Sievert received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council for previous work related to this topic.

Gary Sacks receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council and VicHealth.

– ref. Talking about eating less red and processed meat provokes strong feelings. That’s why this new evidence-based report is welcome – https://theconversation.com/talking-about-eating-less-red-and-processed-meat-provokes-strong-feelings-thats-why-this-new-evidence-based-report-is-welcome-209234

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marion Stell, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

In the lead-in to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, it is revealing to look back on the media coverage of women’s international soccer to measure how far attitudes have shifted for today’s Matildas.

Media coverage is important. It builds personalities, creates public knowledge, sustains interest, draws crowds, attracts sponsors and generates participation.

Since the 1930s, sports journalists have written articles about sportswomen for major newspapers. These articles record years of player dedication and hard work.

But not all media coverage has treated sportswomen with respect.

The first Australia/New Zealand match

Women’s international soccer surged in the mid-to-late 1970s. The first recognised international soccer game between Australian and New Zealand women was played in October 1979 on a Saturday afternoon in southern Sydney.

The day before the match, a small advertisement appeared on page 68 in the Sydney Sun. Accompanying it, the newspaper profiled only the male referee.

The crowd that attended the match numbered about 200. There were no sponsor banners, corporate boxes or grandstands. There was little media. No dignitaries addressed the crowd. No one remembers if national anthems were played.

The women filed out of the change room in ill-fitting, borrowed men’s uniforms. There was no official team photo. The controlling body, the Australian Women’s Soccer Association, sold a small program for 20c.

When football stalwart Heather Reid and I interviewed many of the players from that game 40 years later, their memories were hazy and uncertain. Even Heather, who had driven from Canberra to watch the match, could not recall specific details.

To fill the gaps of memory we sought out players’ scrapbooks – but we were uncertain what we would find.

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

Collecting the clippings

The leading men’s soccer player and Australian captain in the 1970s, Johnny Warren, amassed numerous scrapbooks filled with clippings, photographs, programs and fan letters.

Warren’s scrapbooks weigh more than 150 kilograms – more than twice his playing body weight.

We believed there had been little press coverage of women playing soccer in this era, and thought: how could women fill even one scrapbook?

What we found surprised us. It was rare for women not to have kept a scrapbook. Australian soccer captain Julie Dolan had a folder of cuttings related to her career, as did many of the Australian and New Zealand team members from 1979.

Here was not a dearth but a wealth of newspaper coverage.

But there was a sting in the tail. While the quantity existed, as I looked closely I found it confronting and unsettling. These scrapbooks contained newspaper clippings that belittled, trivialised and sexualised these women and the sport they played.

Read more:
Women sportswriters were critical to the growth of cricket in the 1930s. How have we gone backwards?

The sexist, underestimating press

The press coverage had recurring themes around appearance, fashion, body parts (especially eyes, legs and hair), sexual attractiveness, implied sexuality and general unwelcome sleaze.

Even a neutral match report would attract a sub-editor’s headline such as “Gorgeous goal getters” or “Fashion on parade at Australian titles”.

Captions to newspaper photos suggested their skills were more about dance than soccer. Press photographs were selected to reinforce this view: “Booted ballet”; “Shall we dance – cha, cha, cha”; “Remove the boots and these ladies could be doing the hustle, the bump or any of the other dance crazes sweeping the nation”.

Male journalists reported the women, although skilled, were “easier on the eye” than their male counterparts.

Players were asked to apply make-up after training for photographers. Femininity was emphasised.

In one article, New Zealand coach Dave Boardman rejected the label his charges were “butch types”.

“They are delightful young ladies,” he said.

The men involved in soccer played by women – the coaches and the referees – were portrayed in news articles as active and in charge. Their opinions mattered most to the press.

Player Pat O’Connor was one of the driving forces behind the growth of soccer in New South Wales, alongside her husband and coach Joe O’Connor. In one article about Pat, the journalist wrote: “Striker Pat has to obey her husband!”

When 24-year-old Bonnie Rae qualified as a referee, the headline read: “Bonnie gets all the whistles”.

AFL legend Lou Richards, commenting on the Victorian team, wrote he wanted “to have a cuddle with those pretty little soccerettes after every score […] I’d be quite willing to act as official trainer and masseur”.

The schoolgirls in the national teams were not spared. Jamie Rosman, just 15 when she was playing for Australia, was described as “attractive”, “leggy” and “dark-eyed”, “a gazelle” and “a model”.

Being in the zone

The articles in these scrapbooks are a toxic time capsule of sexism, misogyny and veiled homophobia. They remind us just how difficult it was for women and girls to navigate a safe space for themselves in soccer in the eyes of the public.

Good football players say they block out noise and play in a bubble – the “zone”. Is this the way the women also coped with the toxic media coverage of their soccer? Does this partly explain hazy memories of the first series in 1979?

When we spoke to the players about their scrapbooks, they recalled often feeling uncomfortable in their interactions with the press. Shona Bass said “I walked away with this unease about the way they had portrayed us […] it was almost patronising, almost scoffing”.

As the Matildas and the New Zealand Ferns move into hosting a historic home world cup, we can look forward to today’s media demonstrating a far greater maturity and higher level of respect.

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

Marion Stell is an appointed member of Football Australia’s Panel of Historians.

– ref. ‘Gorgeous goal getters’: 1970s media coverage of ‘soccerettes’ was filled with patronising sleaze – https://theconversation.com/gorgeous-goal-getters-1970s-media-coverage-of-soccerettes-was-filled-with-patronising-sleaze-208953

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

The Liberals have retained the Gold Coast seat of Fadden, with a small swing towards them, in a result that will be a relief to Opposition leader Peter Dutton.

The outcome indicates that cost of living issues outweighed the negatives around former member Stuart Robert, which Labor hilighted in its campaign.

The result will be some concern to Queensland state Labor because the Liberals made crime an issue in their campaign and also featured Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. The state government faces an election next year.

But the federal government immediately emphasised the swing to the Liberals was modest, playing down the result in a seat that was never expected by either side to change hands.

As of 9pm, the primary vote swing to the Liberals was about 4.6%, with a two-party swing of just over 2%. The average byelection swing against governments where the major parties contest is around 3.6%.

The Liberals went into the byelection with Fadden on a margin of 10.6%.

Before the result, Labor sought to set up a hurdle for the Liberals, saying they would need to get a swing of more than 4, to avoid embarressment.

The new member for Fadden is Cameron Caldwell, a prominent and long-serving local councillor. Dutton hailed the outcome as a “resounding result”, putting it down to cost of living and saying Australians were hurting.

“Labor’s economic experiment is failing Australians. Labor’s energy experiment is failing Australians”, Dutton told Liberal supporters.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, a Queenslander , said it looked like people in Fadden had largely voted as they had in the past.

But he said Labor was “conscious cost of living issues […] haven’t gone away”.

The Fadden win follows Dutton’s debacle in the Aston byelection.

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

– ref. Liberals retain Fadden with a small swing – https://theconversation.com/liberals-retain-fadden-with-a-small-swing-209837

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

The Liberals have retained the Gold Coast seat of Fadden, with a small swing towards them, in a result that will be a relief to Opposition leader Peter Dutton.

The outcome indicates that cost of living issues outweighed the negatives around former member Stuart Robert, which Labor emphasiswed in its campaign.

The result will be some concern to Queensland state Labor because the Liberals made crime an issue in their campaign and also featured Premier Annastacia Palascszuk.

But the federal government immediately emphasised the swing to the Liberals was modest, playing down the result in a seat that was never expected by either side to change hands.

As of 9pm, the primary vote swing to the Liberals was about 4.6%, with a two-party swing of just over 2%. The average byelection swing against governments where the major parties contest is around 3.6%.

Before the result, Labor sought to set up a hurdle for the Liberals, saying they would need to get a swing of more than 4%.

The new member for Fadden is Cameron Caldwell, a prominent and long-serving local councillor. Dutton hailed the outcome as a “resounding result”, putting it down to cost of living and saying Australians were hurting.

“Labor’s economic experiment is failing Australians. Labor’s energy experiment is failing Australians”, Dutton told Liberal supporters.

The Agriculture minister, Murray Watt, a Queenslander , said it looked like people in Fadden had largely voted as they had in the past.

But he said Labor was “conscious cost of living issues […] haven’t gone away”.

The Fadden win follows Dutton’s debacle in the Aston byelection.

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. The Liberals retain Fadden, with a small swing to them – https://theconversation.com/the-liberals-retain-fadden-with-a-small-swing-to-them-209837