Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carlos Diaz Ruiz, Assistant Professor, Hanken School of Economics

In 2017, Louis Vuitton caused a stir in the luxury industry by partnering with the New York skateboarding brand Supreme.

This collaboration became a milestone in the luxury industry, showcasing the potential of unexpected partnerships between luxury brands and an unconventional partner seemingly at the opposite end of the design spectrum, a street wear brand.

The iconic brand raised interest again when, in 2019, it partnered with the video game franchise League of Legends.

It may appear odd for a renowned French luxury design house and a game developer to team up. After all, their audiences are quite different. Whereas anyone with an internet connection can jump into a “free-to-play” game, few can afford a luxury brand.

So why are luxury brands collaborating with street brands, cartoons and video games? Part of the reason is their success with young Asian consumers, who are driving demand for luxury consumer goods.

Given their growing importance for the luxury industry, we conducted a study of unconventional luxury brand collaborations. We wanted to investigate why this strategy appeals to Chinese luxury consumers of the post-1990s generation.

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The study reveals potential opportunities for Australian brands, for instance, through partnerships with old-world luxury brands.

The luxury strategy

Luxury typically brings to mind ultra-expensive products such as yachts and private jets that are not within most people’s reach. However, there is another kind of luxury in which products that are not inherently expensive, like cosmetics, perfume or even chocolate, can be luxurious through their brand’s prestige.

Business managers call this approach the luxury strategy. It has specific rules that luxury managers must follow. One of them is that luxury brands must remain above controversy, using aesthetics and tradition to signal exclusivity. Luxury brands are timeless because they resist the whims of fashion and don’t date.

New ways to convey exclusivity and uniqueness in digital and experiential contexts are emerging. For example, consumption experiences can feel like “a moment of luxury” if they convey a pleasurable escape from day-to-day routines.

As a result, new forms of luxury consumption, like second-hand luxury markets, are popping up.

While luxury brands are known to collaborate with artists, they have been pushing the boundaries of the luxury strategy by teaming up with unexpected non-luxury partners. One early example was between the Swedish fast-fashion retail outlet H&M and designer Karl Lagerfeld in 2004.

A partnership between a designer house and a fast-fashion retailer builds upon each other’s strengths, brand prestige and mass distribution. However, luxury brands are growing more creative with their partnerships.

There are renowned luxury pairings like Fendi x Versace but also pairings with streetwear brands including Adidas x Gucci, with celebrities such as Kanye West x Louis Vuitton, anime characters like Doraemon x Gucci, and now video game franchises like Fortnite x Balenciaga.

These collaborations are becoming increasingly popular, especially with Chinese consumers.

Why do young Chinese consumers love luxury collaborations?

Australian designers and producers of high-end goods must keep young adult Chinese consumers top of mind given the growing importance of Asian consumers in the luxury industry.

Reports by consulting agencies Bain & Company and McKinsey predicted that, by 2025, East Asia can become the world’s largest personal luxury goods market. China alone will consume about half the global market value of luxury goods.

In 2019, McKinsey reported that “Chinese consumers are now the engine of worldwide growth in luxury spending,” driven in part by consumers “born between 1980 and 2015 [who] are reshaping global luxury”.

Our study focused on the generational divide that is a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

The 1990s economic reforms and China’s one-child policy shaped the generation. In 1979, a government program restricted (most) Chinese families to having one child each. The policy was updated to two children per family in 2016 and three in 2021.

During the 1990s, the media called lone children “little emperors” because they became the sole recipient of the family’s attention and financial support.

Analysts often subdivide the cohort into an affluent post-1980s generation consolidating their careers and a post-1990s generation characterised by urban lifestyle and social media savviness.

The post-1990s cohort of Chinese young adults, now in their 20s or early 30s, is characterised by their economic prowess, always-online presence, international mobility, and taste for luxury brands.

We find that Chinese luxury consumers of the post-1990s generation appreciate when luxury brands collaborate with non-luxury partners seemingly at the opposite spectrum of design, image and values. These collaborations are exciting when they are ephemeral, trendy and playful.

Ephemeral collaborations are transitory, existing only for a limited time, and will not reappear. Trendy collaborations help consumers navigate the ebbs and flows of social media to capture novelty and hype. Playful collaborations appeal to a youthful audience by mocking traditions and not being too serious.

In the words of one of our respondents, “Most of my friends in China like these collaborations […] Sometimes they are like: ‘Oh! Wow, your limited edition! Where? How did you get this? Oh my gosh! You must have connections.”

Collaborations are instantly recognisable in social media. When asked why purchase a collaboration, a respondent said: “Selfies (giggles). I mean, I am going to take a selfie with it. You must post it! (giggles). Others will see it and ask me how I got it.”

A rising opportunity for Australian firms

The popularity of unconventional luxury brand collaborations among young adult Chinese consumers opens timely strategic opportunities for Australian designers and producers of high-end goods.

The young adult Chinese segment remains important in Australia because of its purchasing power and influence in redefining luxury. By seeking collaborations that are ephemeral, trendy and playful, Australian brands can meet this segment’s preferences and adapt to the changing rules of luxury.

Read more:
Consumers in Asia buy luxuries for different reasons to the West

Australian brands can also position themselves as attractive partners for fresh collaborations. As global luxury brands seek partners who, in the words of one of our study participants, “bring something new to break through old-fashioned limits”, Aussie brands can offer just that.

Upcoming Australian designers are known for their effortless elegance, down-to-earth aesthetics and their values of sustainability and ethics, making them great potential partners for luxury brands.

Aussie brands and consumers are intrepid innovators in outdoor gear and adventure activities, like water sports, offering hype, trendiness and authenticity.

This sets Aussie brands up well to enter the coveted luxury market, gaining a foothold in the fast-growing Chinese market and opening opportunities worldwide.

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. Unconventional luxury brand collaborations are everywhere. What is the appeal? – https://theconversation.com/unconventional-luxury-brand-collaborations-are-everywhere-what-is-the-appeal-210382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Ireland, Senior Research Scientist at the Australian E-Health Research Centre, CSIRO

Chronic or persistent pain is the main reason people seek medical care in Australia. Yet, most chronic pain is incurable and relies on education, exercise and other interventions for management, making it a complex, common and expensive health challenge.

The challenge is more pronounced in the treatment of children and people with diverse needs, such as those with language deficits and varying learning abilities.

Our team of researchers from CSIRO, RECOVER Injury Research Centre, the Tess Cramond Pain and Research Centre and the Queensland Interdisciplinary Paediatric Pain Service are exploring how therapeutic chatbots can help improve communication between people with chronic pain and health professionals.

To do this, we built a chatbot called Dolores, with a unique feature: a canvas for users to describe their pain with drawings, sketches and doodles. We found that in this case, a picture truly is worth a thousand words.

About Dolores

Dolores’s main function is to help users report data on their own pain and provide personalised education. This can be used to enhance communication between users and health professionals and improve pain management.

Dolores is designed to prompt the user for more information, ask follow-up questions, and generally lead the conversation.

The chatbot tailors its responses to the user. It will respond to children with short answers and a limited vocabulary, and responses will gradually increase in complexity with the user’s age.

As the app often captures sensitive data, it was designed with privacy and ethical considerations in mind.

The technology behind Dolores is very different from the large language models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT. It works from a knowledge base and conversation flow built by occupational, speech and physio therapists, based on diverse experience with clients of different ages.

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Dolores’s “brain” was built with help from hackathons and industry experts to ensure its responses are always focused on meeting the needs of users. Importantly, it will not give incorrect information or “hallucinate” responses.

Pain history

One thing Dolores is used for is to administer what is called a “pain history interview”.

In this process, Dolores asks questions about the onset, location and duration of the user’s pain. It also asks about the sensations and emotions associated with the pain and its impact on daily life, as well as the user’s understanding of pain and their perceptions of different kinds of treatment.

The user can respond to Dolores by talking, typing or drawing. Dolores then produces a transcript which the user can choose to share with their medical professional.

The transcript below was generated using speech recognition from a conversation with an individual living with chronic pain.

Dolores: Could you describe or draw what your pain physically feels like?

Client: Sometimes it’s different … it’s not all the same … then all the days it’s burning tingling

Dolores: Could you tell me or draw how your pain makes you feel? Physically and mentally.

Client: Shit makes me feel like shit

Dolores: And how long have you been in pain for?

Client: Since I was about 15 years old

Dolores: Can you tell me or draw how your pain began?

Client: I am not sure it just began

Dolores: And how does your pain affect your day-to-day life?

Client: It affects everything even down to driving, shopping, taking my kids to school. Even just making a cup of tea

Dolores: What do you believe is the cause of your pain?

Client: Autoimmune disease and follow on disorders from that

Dolores: What do you believe are the best treatments for managing your pain?

Client: Nothing really helps it’s just a matter of learning to deal with it and manage it

While this example was verbal and detailed, some users – particularly children and adolescents – preferred to doodle. For example, a volcano erupting symbolised a pain flare-up; lightning strikes symbolised sharp, sudden pain; and swirls and waves symbolised cyclic pain.

When asking about the impact of pain on daily life, we received an abundance of stick figures and faces depicting sorrow and loss of identity.

The future

In its present state, Dolores can interpret the colours used in a drawing, but not the drawing itself. Research shows red and black, for example, are commonly used when “painting pain”.

So when soliciting more information about a doodle, Dolores might say things like “That’s a lot of red. What is it?”

The next version of Dolores will have sketch recognition, which we believe will give her more insight and provide extended engagement with clients.

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Dolores was received positively in cohorts of patients across different age groups. It will soon be used in the broader chronic pain intervention platform, Pain ROADMAP.

Dolores is a step forward in catering for clients and communities whose language may differ from the clinician and for children and individuals with language disorders, who often have higher rates of chronic pain and have difficulties communicating about their pain.

We believe a chatbot that identifies and conveys the symbols of pain to a clinician can be an effective tool for enhanced communication, leading to more effective pain management.

Nicole Andrews is affiliated with RECOVER Injury Research Centre, The University of Queensland and the Tess Cramond Pain and Research Centre, Metro North Hospital and Health Service.

David Ireland 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. Pictures of pain: how a visual chatbot can help people with chronic pain – https://theconversation.com/pictures-of-pain-how-a-visual-chatbot-can-help-people-with-chronic-pain-210810

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Morris, Professor, Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney

Nationally, about 175,000 households are on the social housing waiting list. An individual usually has to be in “greatest need” to get on the list. Even then, being listed does not mean you will be given the keys to a home any time soon.

This is especially so if an applicant is put on the general waiting list and not the priority list. In New South Wales in June 2022, for example, 57,550 were on the waiting list: 51,031 on the general waiting list and 6,519 on the priority list. The NSW government website indicates people on the general waiting list can expect to wait ten years or more in most locations.

Even people on the priority list can wait a long time, especially if they have special requirements, such as housing with no stairs.

For our research, we interviewed people on waiting lists in NSW, Queensland and Tasmania. Thirty interviewees were on the general waiting list and 49 on the priority list. The interviews covered various themes, but all of the interviewees were asked: “What words would you use to describe your wait for social housing?” This article focuses on their responses to this question.

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Lives on hold

Most interviewees found the endless waiting extremely challenging. It commonly left them feeling powerless, extremely stressed and unable to plan ahead.

Tania* in Queensland, who had escaped domestic violence, powerfully captured the perception of her life being put on hold:

It sucks. […] They [state government housing department] just give you no answers […] It’s stopped our whole life. Running from him [her ex-partner] was hard enough, but asking them [the housing department] for help is ten times worse […] They don’t care. It’s pure and simple. They don’t care. Yeah, as I said, it’s like jail and they’re the screws, whatever they’re called. They’re the ones that run the jail.

Read more:
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Zeynep, in her mid-70s, had been on the waiting list in Queensland for 13 years. Her response was particularly expansive:

Yes, I’ve got a few words. Frustration, disappointment, nerve-racking, just being beside myself sometimes. Why do I have to do this? Why do I have to keep moving and packing and finding places? It’s soul-destroying, really.

A traumatising wait

Single parents found the waiting particularly hard. Thea was in a shelter in Tasmania with her three children. The uncertainty of waiting had shaken her confidence.

It’s been painful […] My anxiety has gone through the roof. It’s affected my mental health […] It makes me feel like I’m not good enough as a parent because I can’t provide a stable home for my children […] If it was just me, I could survive. But when I’ve got three little people that I’ve got to care for and provide for, that’s when it gets hard.

Kylie’s description was similar. She has a child with a disability and had been on the NSW general waiting list for several years.

It’s quite nerve-wracking. It’s quite depressing just for the uncertainty of everything, you know. I feel like so many thoughts that I have in my head I’m just trying to pick the best one. I would say […] it’s kind of traumatic as well, quite traumatic […] why can’t you support me to better my life in order for a child to have a better life and break that cycle, that generational cycle of poverty.

Read more:
Focus on managing social housing waiting lists is failing low-income households

In Tasmania, Basma and her three children were living in crowded transitional housing attached to a women’s shelter. She also described the waiting as traumatic.

It’s trauma. It’s made my health go down. My children and I are always angry. […] It’s terrible.

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‘Getting onto the wait list is a battle in itself’: insiders on what it takes to get social housing

Losing self-esteem and hope

Interviewees said the endless waiting affected how they saw themselves. Jacqui was living in her car in regional NSW.

I think it just it robs you of your pride and your dignity, your peace of mind and it leaves you psychologically exhausted […] being on that waiting list thinking that is today the day […] and then the call doesn’t come. It is like that loss of, you know, self-esteem and loss of hope […] So I think my words [to describe the wait] is my continual shame. You feel shame every day and other than that […] you have to deal with a loss of control over […] your position on the wait list. You have no control over anything.

Many described a sense of hopelessness. Geoff in Sydney has to use a wheelchair and the house he was renting was totally unsuitable. He was despondent about ever getting suitable housing:

I think the word is hopeless. You feel hopeless because you’ve done as much as you can to get the housing [department] to expedite your application, assuming that they have approved my application for priority housing, but there’s no interpretation of that as to what they mean by the priority.

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After 20 months on the priority list, Lily was blunt about the impact on her sense of self:

Yeah, you feel deficient. You feel forgotten. You feel really forgotten, yeah, and if you ring up and it’s about a number and even once they’ve got your file open I can’t remember being addressed by my name very much […] You feel a bit like an outcast.

Josie also talked about being made to feel like a second-class citizen:

Demoralising, because you’ve been trying to do the right thing and do everything that you’re asked. You try so many different approaches and you’re getting brick walls everywhere. And demeaning, because your situation is not properly recognised or catered for. So you almost start feeling like well, we can’t help you, but if you were good enough you wouldn’t be in this situation. [It’s] a nightmare, dreadful. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. Like never, ever, ever.

Clearly, the long wait for social housing is devastating for many people. Day after day of not knowing makes everyday life extremely challenging. The shocking aspect is that the huge shortage of social housing means a substantial proportion of people on the general waiting list could be waiting forever.

* Pseudonyms have been used to protect the confidentiality of participants in the study.

Alan Morris receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. ‘It’s soul-destroying’: how people on a housing wait list of 175,000 describe their years of waiting – https://theconversation.com/its-soul-destroying-how-people-on-a-housing-wait-list-of-175-000-describe-their-years-of-waiting-210705

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Woods, Professor of Health Economics, University of Technology Sydney

Aged-care services will cost taxpayers more than A$35 billion this year. Treasurer Jim Chalmers argues it’s one of the government’s biggest ongoing funding challenges. The last intergenerational report, which looked out over the next 40 years, came to the same conclusion.

In a search for answers, the government has set up an aged-care taskforce to report on how aged care should be funded, and by whom. Its report is due by the end of the year.

The aged-care funding system is complex and covers a wide range of services delivered to older people in their own home, in the community and in aged-care homes. Some services are generally funded by governments, such as health care. Others are more of a private responsibility, such as housing, food, transport and other everyday living expenses.

Even for private expenses, however, there are publicly funded safety nets for people in need. There are also caps which limit the total aged care fees older people pay each year and during their lifetime.

We all agree older people deserve high quality and safe care and support. But for the system to be sustainable, we need to ensure everyone is paying their fair share.

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How is care in the home means tested?

Older people living at home may be assessed as needing health services and personal care. They may also need help with everyday living activities.

Depending on their needs, they become eligible for either Commonwealth Home Support (which provides mainly basic help, including meals, transport, domestic services and social activities) or a Home Care Package (which provides more complex and coordinated health and personal care at one of four levels, depending on the client’s requirements).

For home support, the government has developed fee guidelines which encourage providers to consider the cost of the services and the financial and social circumstances of the clients. Generally, people pay a higher proportion of the cost of their meals and transport and very little for nursing and allied health services such as physiotherapy.

Client contributions have amounted to a little under 10% of total funding each year for the Home Support program.

People receiving home care packages are subject to an income test to see how much they should contribute (though full age pensioners are exempt from the fee). All clients may also be asked to pay a basic daily fee, which can be up to 17.5% of the single basic age pension. While these fees are not mandatory, the government expects people receiving government-subsidised home care to help with the cost by paying fees if they can afford to.

However, research from my colleagues and I at the University of Technology Sydney found older people have been paying only about 2% of the total funding for these packages.

Two factors may account for this. First, there is strong competition in the sector, with providers unwilling to charge up to the level of permissible fees. Second, there is a high and rising level of unspent funds across the packages, creating resistance to paying fees when even the government contribution is not being fully used.

How could this be fairer?

There is an opportunity for change to fairer funding as part of the government’s development of a new Support at Home Program, which will replace the two existing programs in 2025.

At a recent aged care funding summit, my colleagues and I proposed reforms that would keep a strong safety net for those in need. However, new clients with significant income and wealth would be required to make mandatory contributions, rather than the more “optional” current fee arrangements.

The annual and lifetime caps should also be raised. The lifetime caps for income tested home care fees and means tested residential care fees are currently set at a little over $76,000, but there is scope for some older people with considerable means to make greater contributions over the years they are receiving subsidised care services.

Further, we propose that the financial contributions from new Support at Home clients should vary according to the type of support they receive.

Under this model, the costs of health and personal care would be largely publicly funded by taxpayers, similar to universal health-care principles for the general community.

However, people should take greater private responsibility for funding their everyday living costs. Again, this would be subject to a safety net (including for those receiving the age pension).

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What about means testing in aged-care homes?

Currently 63% of aged-care homes are operating at a loss. But those losses are not spread equally across the three main activities of diect care, everyday living and accommodation.

So the funding and means-testing reforms must be tailored to the specifics of each type of activity.

Health and personal care

Direct health and personal care are funded according to the assessed needs of the residents in each home. The care services include nursing, medication management, showering and help with feeding.

The financial returns for providers are, on average, just above the break-even point for providing this direct care. While nearly 95% of the funding comes from taxpayers, this is consistent with the general principles underlying other health policy.

Everyday living

Everyday living services, in contrast, are akin to activities that are a private responsibility for people living in their own homes. This includes the preparation of meals, cleaning, laundry, power and other utilities.

These services have a long history of loss-making for aged-care home providers and yet all residents, irrespective of their means, pay the same Basic Daily Fee (capped at 85% of the single basic age pension).

We argue that, for new residents, the amount charged should be increased to a level where providers can break-even, while leaving the cap in place for those on a pension.

Accommodation

The largest source of losses for providers of aged care homes is from the costs of providing the accommodation itself (the land and building, fit-out, maintenance and periodic refurbishment).

Taxpayers pay providers for the accommodation costs for those in need, which is not dissimilar to providing public housing and rental assistance for those in need in the community.

However, for those with significant income and assets, the current accommodation payments – whether by way of fully refundable lump-sum payments or rental-style daily accommodation fees – are on average both below the cost of providing the accommodation and below the general housing market rates.

There is a strong argument that the cost of their accommodation in aged care homes should be closer to the housing market rates – so long as the quality is also similar.

The government’s Home Equity Access Scheme, including its guarantee of no negative equity, is one way of helping older people with substantial means to meet higher accommodation and other consumer contributions by enabling them to draw down some of the equity of any housing they may own.

The government’s establishment of an aged care taskforce suggests it’s willing to have difficult conversations about how to make aged care funding more sustainable over the longer term. It’s in the interests of the whole community to take this opportunity and ensure subsidised, high quality and safe aged care can be available for our senior citizens when it’s needed.

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Michael Woods is a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Technology Sydney and former Deputy Chair of the Productivity Commission. He has had various government appointments and has received funding from government and stakeholder bodies to undertake research into the reform of aged care.

– ref. Aged-care funding reforms must ensure users pay their fair share – https://theconversation.com/aged-care-funding-reforms-must-ensure-users-pay-their-fair-share-210962

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

Our climate is changing, and airlines are under pressure to reduce emissions from air travel. For many of us, especially in Australia, flying is an essential form of transport, so how can we reduce its environmental impact? Getting to and from the airport is an overlooked aspect of air travel that offers an immediate way to cut total carbon emissions from the trip by a surprisingly large amount.

Our newly published research shows for an average economy passenger flying from Sydney to Melbourne, the carbon emissions from using a fossil-fuelled car to get to and from the airports make up a staggering 13.5% of the total door-to-door emissions. At a global scale, this number reaches 12.1% for long-haul flights and up to 22.8% for short-haul air journeys.

For comparison, in the International Air Transport Association’s 2050 net-zero emission roadmap, 13% of global airline decarbonisation will come from electric and hydrogen propulsion. A further 65% is to come from mass adoption of sustainable aviation fuel. This is fuel produced from non-petroleum-based renewable sources such as some municipal solid waste, woody biomass, fats, greases and oils.

Each of these big lifters requires a mammoth level of investment and technological breakthroughs, and comes with limitations and risks. Some solutions might make air travel prohibitively expensive. Airlines are moving mountains to decarbonise, but there are increasing concerns their net-zero plans might not stack up.

In contrast, a 13.5% emission reduction on a Sydney-Melbourne door-to-door journey today may sound like a dream. Yet our research shows it’s easily achievable if travellers can be persuaded to change how they get to and from the airport.

Read more:
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So how can travellers be convinced to switch?

Research has shown carbon “labelling” helps shift consumer behaviour towards greener choices. It’s a bit like how the nutrition label on the back of our cereal box helps us choose healthier options.

For instance, when searching for a flight on online travel platform Skyscanner, all flight options are displayed with carbon emissions, so consumers can make a more informed choice.

Two recent studies at the University of California, Davis, suggest showing consumers the emission outcomes of different gate-to-gate flight choices, such as aircraft types and transit stops, can prompt them to choose greener flights, reducing emissions by up to 3.8%.

But air journeys don’t start or end at airports. They start at home and end at destinations, or vice versa. Our air-travel carbon emissions are divided into ground and air segments and counted as airport and airline emissions respectively. While airlines focus on gate-to-gate decarbonisation through future technologies, the door-to-door emissions produced by travel to and from airports can be reduced immediately.

Let’s look at an example of a Sydney-to-Melbourne trip. Say you travel from North Sydney to Sydney Airport by car, then fly to Melbourne Airport and catch a taxi to the city centre. That trip emits 82 kilograms of CO₂ door-to-door. But if you use a train, bus or electric vehicle (charged from a renewable source) to travel to and from the airport, the emissions from your trip drop to 71kg: a 13.5% fall door-to-door.

Although travel platforms are increasingly communicating gate-to-gate emissions to consumers, we’re not aware of any that are including door-to-door emissions. Helping climate-conscious consumers understand the door-to-door carbon impact of airport ground connections could drive them to choose greener options such as public transport and electric vehicles.

Read more:
Bucking the trend: Is there a future for ultra long-haul flights in a net zero carbon world?

Give airlines an incentive to inform passengers

Governments and airports have long collaborated in driving consumers towards greener ground transit options. For instance, Transport for NSW has set a 50% emission-reduction target for 2030.

However, consumer adoption of these options has remained low. Most airport trips in Australia today are still made by conventional car.

As consumers, we have relationships with airlines that we don’t have with airports. When it comes to flying, we choose our airline carefully. Yet we rarely think about how we get to the airport.

Airlines are experts in customer communication and engagement. They operate some of the largest frequent-flyer programs in the world. Last time we checked, Qantas had 15 million program members and Virgin had 11 million.

Through these channels, airlines learn about us and how we tick when it comes to making flying choices. This puts them in an ideal position to keep us informed about door-to-door travel and drive the transition towards greener airport ground-connection options. To give them an incentive to do so, their efforts should be recognised through emission accounting.

Read more:
Blue-sky thinking: net-zero aviation is more than a flight of fantasy

A cost-effective way to cut emissions

Travellers using the Sydney Airport train station must pay an access fee, which adds A$15.74 to the cost of the journey. As our paper highlights, the average customer using the airport train removes 2.7kg of CO₂. Achieving the same amount of decarbonisation during the flight using more sustainable aviation fuel – which is more expensive – would cost the customer about the same: between $10 and $16.

So there is an opportunity for airlines to highlight this decarbonisation outcome as a way to persuade travellers to reconsider driving a car or catching a taxi, and instead take the airport train or bus. Airlines could also consider collaborating with airports to build airport charging facilities for electric vehicles as uptake in Australia approaches a double-digit share of new vehicle sales.

This overlooked opportunity to cut door-to-door emissions from air travel has a substantial upside. It deserves far more attention from airlines, airports and consumers.

Rico Merkert receives funding from the ARC and various industry partners.

David Li’s research has received financial supported from iMOVE Australia and in-kind support from Air New Zealand.

– ref. How air travellers can cut their door-to-door emissions right now – by as much as 13% on the Sydney-Melbourne route – https://theconversation.com/how-air-travellers-can-cut-their-door-to-door-emissions-right-now-by-as-much-as-13-on-the-sydney-melbourne-route-211099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Wilson, PhD Candidate in Nanotechnology & Innovation Governance, University of Technology Sydney

There’s growing global concern about potential risks to human health and the environment from a group of industrial chemicals commonly known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals”.

While the full extent of harm from PFAS is still emerging, the fact these chemicals persist in the environment and accumulate in the body is alarming enough. Some scientists believe they will never break down.

Until now, Australia has not restricted the trade or use of most PFAS chemicals. But that’s about to change.

The federal government intends to stop the import, manufacture and use of some types of PFAS within two years. We want to raise awareness and encourage industry to be proactive about finding alternatives. The sooner industry acts on this, the faster we can eliminate PFAS from the products we use and our waste. With untold benefits for people and our planet.

Read more:
PFAS might be everywhere – including toilet paper – but let’s keep the health risks in context

Hang on, what is PFAS again?

PFAS (or per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) are a group of around 9,000 individual chemical compounds found in many everyday products.

These complex substances are made by joining carbon and fluorine atoms, creating one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. As a result, they are stain-resistant, water-resistant, grease-resistant and heat-resistant. That makes them enormously useful in products such as food packaging, non-stick cookware, semiconductors and other electronics, refrigerants, stain or waterproof textiles and cosmetics. PFAS has even been found in toilet paper.

But PFAS chemicals also appear to be toxic. They have been linked to a range of human and environmental health problems.

The use of potentially hazardous chemicals such as PFAS also undermines recycling and the circular economy. Compost made from food and garden organics may be contaminated through packaging and other sources. PFAS in sewage also challenges the use of biosolids as fertiliser on farms.

Read more:
‘Forever chemicals’ have made their way to farms. For now, levels in your food are low – but there’s no time to waste

What is changing and what will this mean?

The federal government recently reviewed the industrial chemical regulatory frameworks protecting human and environmental health. As a result, the federal, state and territory governments established the new Australian Industrial Chemical Environmental Management Standard in 2021.

Chemicals with industrial applications are placed into one of seven categories or “schedules”, according to the level of environmental risk they represent. The standard sets out the measures required to manage such risks.

Schedule 7 is reserved for industrial chemicals likely to cause serious or irreversible harm to the environment.

Last month, the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water announced its intention to regulate three groups of PFAS chemicals and pentachlorobenzene (PeCB) under Schedule 7.

This means businesses will have to stop importing, manufacturing or using these PFAS groups, either as bulk chemicals or in consumer products.

Schedule 7 also states “no essential uses”. This means the chemicals cannot be used, even when it is necessary for the health, safety or functioning of society, or when there are no other available alternatives.

The timing of the proposed Australian restrictions aligns with the EU phase-out. The United States and Canada are also pursuing similar action.

Increasingly, countries are pursuing coordinated regulatory actions that will shift market standards around industrial chemical use and management.

What should business do?

At this stage, research indicates low levels of industry awareness and action globally. Industry risks being caught short, facing the economic and administrative consequences of compliance when new rules come into effect.

Phasing out potentially hazardous chemicals such as PFAS will require careful consideration of both risk and technical function. In many cases, products have been designed around these chemicals. This means substitutions will need to be found. However, businesses also need to be aware of the potential for “regrettable substitution”, where a potentially hazardous chemical is replaced by a similar, but lesser-known chemical that also threatens human health and the environment.

There are some tools available to help find safe alternatives. For example, the European non-government organisation ChemSec has compiled a database of hazardous chemicals that are likely to be regulated in future, if not already, and a marketplace for safe substitutions.

In some cases, avoiding regrettable substitution will necessitate rethinking how the function of a product can be delivered in an entirely new way.

Market-leading businesses are experimenting with recent advances in engineering, material sciences, and technology to redesign products without hazardous chemicals.

For example, outdoor-wear companies have redesigned textiles to deliver waterproof products without PFAS chemicals. The North Face has started using an advanced material called “FUTURELIGHT”, which uses nanotechnology to create a waterproof nano-fibre structure. Helly Hansen introduced “Lifa Infinity Pro” that uses advanced textile engineering to create a hydrophobic (water-hating) material, without having to add chemicals.

Emerging new services design-out problematic products entirely. For example, reusable food packaging services, intended to address the environmental impacts of single-use-packaging, generally use reusable materials such as stainless steel that do not require hazardous chemicals to function.

In support of industry action, governments industry, universities and non-governmental organisations are helping support better chemical management.
For example, ChemSec has convened an Investor Initiative on Hazardous Chemicals to help reduce the impacts of hazardous chemicals, while also reducing financial risks to investors. Or in Australia, the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence is providing tools for business and government to ensure safe, clean supply chains.

Governments also have a role to play in helping business transition away from hazardous chemicals. They can encourage business to take a whole-of-system approach to reducing chemicals across supply chains. This might involve tracking and tracing mechanisms, certification and labelling, or supporting research into safer alternatives.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water is inviting feedback on the proposed scheduling decisions before submissions close on September 1 this year. The government says feedback will help Australian governments and businesses to better manage the environmental risks of these chemicals.

Read more:
You’ve read the scary headlines – but rest assured, your cookware is safe

Rachael Wakefield-Rann receives research funding from various government and non-government organisations. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would financially benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.

Sarah Wilson 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. Controversial ‘forever chemicals’ could be phased out in Australia under new restrictions. Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/controversial-forever-chemicals-could-be-phased-out-in-australia-under-new-restrictions-heres-what-you-need-to-know-210697

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Zunica, Lecturer in Secondary Maths Education, University of Sydney

There is a scene in the film Incredibles 2 where young Dash asks his dad Bob for help with his maths homework. Bob obliges and begins to scribble on a notepad. But Dash quickly points to his textbook and says, “that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it, Dad”.

Frustrated, Bob exclaims

I don’t know that way! Why would they change math? Math is math!

Many parents trying to help their children with maths may be asking the same sort of question.

Pythagoras’ Theorem is as accurate today as it was when it was discovered millennia ago, and it will continue to remain so. But teachers today also teach maths very differently from when parents were at school.

Mental connections not procedures

The teaching and learning of maths has undergone a transformation in past 30 years.

In the past there has been a focus on teaching students procedures, such as times tables and how to work out the circumference of a circle or solve an equation.

We now appreciate the importance of forming mental connections between concepts. For example, when students understand the connection between similar triangles and trigonometry they understand the definition of trigonometric ratios at a much deeper level.

This is because we know today’s learners need to be able to transfer their mathematical understanding to complex, unfamiliar situations.

This means they need to be able to do more than apply a formula and get an answer right. They need to be able to solve problems as they arise.

Problem solving and reasoning

Today, the shift in mathematics education is reflected in key mathematical proficiencies in the Australian school curriculum. These include:

• understanding mathematical concepts and procedures

• being fluent in applying mathematical concepts efficiently and accurately

• drawing on mathematical skills and knowledge to solve challenging questions where solutions are not immediately obvious, and

• developing skills in logical thought, and justifying the use of strategies and conclusions reached.

Read more:
Will I ever need math? A mathematician explains how math is everywhere – from soap bubbles to Pixar movies

Encouraging inventiveness

One practical way teachers are developing students’ mathematical proficiency is by encouraging students to be inventive in the way they solve mathematical problems.

They are deliberately showing students different and multiple ways to represent mathematics problems to give students the space to develop understanding. This also give them an opportunity to reason, model and engage in mathematical thinking.

For example, your child might bring home problems to solve using the area model for multiplication, which looks quite different to a traditional method. For example, we teach how 8×27 can be modelled in parts – 8×20 and 8×7.

When adding numbers, we teach students to deeply understand the place value of each number. Doing so makes our calculations efficient and supports the development of mental strategies for computation.

For example, to add 27 and 5, we can consider that 27 is made of 20 and 7.
Now 7 and 5 can be easily added to get to 12, and the final 20 can be added to obtain an answer of 32.

The world is changing

Maths teaching has also shifted to keep pace with the development of computer technology. This is influencing maths instruction from early childhood, right through to Year 12.

Apart from anything, we know proficiency in information and communications technology is key to educating students for the world they will live and work in.

As an example, the use of dynamic geometry software means teachers can quickly show transformations of graphs, giving students a deeper understanding of how variables work, allowing students to apply these concepts to a wide range of graphs.

Animation is also helping in maths classrooms. The video below shows how the formula for solids of revolution – which are formed by taking an enclosed area and rotating that area about an axis to form a solid – is derived more clearly than could be done using pens and a whiteboard.

How can parents help?

For parents, resist the temptation to react like Bob and get angry about how maths has changed. Instead expect the way children are taught today will be different to how you were taught and that is completely OK.

Knowing this, ask questions of your child, such as can you tell me about the thinking behind this method? Or, how do you know that gets the correct answer?

This will allow your child to show their understanding, reasoning, and communication skills. It will also help you find areas that need addressing, which you can investigate together. Who knows, you might learn some new maths and enhance your own skills!

Read more:
‘Maths anxiety’ is a real thing. Here are 3 ways to help your child cope

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. ‘Why would they change maths?’ How your child’s maths education might be very different from yours – https://theconversation.com/why-would-they-change-maths-how-your-childs-maths-education-might-be-very-different-from-yours-207030

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Siminski, Professor of Economics, University of Technology Sydney

Economics is about organising markets in ways that contribute to social welfare, which means anyone interested in anything from inequality to housing affordability, to health and education systems, or climate change to gender gaps ought to be interested in it.

But economists are far from the most trusted professionals. We are apparently among the least-trusted in the US and midway down the ranking in the United Kingdom.

In Australia, such surveys on our most trusted professions don’t include economists, which itself is noteworthy.

Nevertheless, it’s worth reflecting on why Australians may distrust economists, and the ways in which economics can better serve Australia.

1: Weak diversity and reflexivity

Diversity is imperative for a field that helps make decisions about the allocation of resources.

At high school, economics students are increasingly male, and concentrated in metropolitan and high socio-economic status locations.

Only 0.5% of Indigenous graduates identified economics or econometrics as their main discipline in the 2021 census.

Two-thirds of the Australians employed as economists are male, and although university economics departments have improved recently, they are still notoriously male-dominated.

Compounding this is that – unlike other social sciences – mainstream economics is not a tradition where reflexivity is encouraged.

Reflexivity involves reflecting on one’s background and environment.

Nor are economists often encouraged to reflect on the role of power in the promotion of the ideas they and others espouse, including in the media.

2: The media and conflicts of interest

Economists span academia, government, private and not-for-profit sectors.

But those appearing in the media appear to come disproportionately from banks, other financial institutions, management consultancies and think tanks. Particularly worrying is that some think tanks do not disclose the identity of their donors.

The media seems uninterested in holding them to account for this. In contrast, all reputable academic journals (and The Conversation) require authors to declare any potential conflicts of interest as a condition of publication.

Also worrying is that some think tanks seem particularly ideologically driven.

In my view, the media should be much more critical and discerning in its engagement with economists and potential conflicts of interest.

And more space should be made for academic and public-sector economists.

Choices as to who is quoted should be guided by informed attempts to identify genuine expertise, as well as by diversity considerations. The opposite approach, sensationalism, is irresponsible and detrimental to the public good. And it contributes to distrust in economists.

Equally, academic economists should strive to contribute more to national economic debates. A realignment of incentives within universities would help.

3: Efficiency preferred to equity

Decisions made by governments usually affect both the “size of the pie” (loosely, what economists call efficiency) and how it is shared (equity).

How to balance this trade-off is a question of values, about which economists have no special insight. But we are well placed to summarise the likely distributional implications of policies.

It is true that many economists are at the forefront of research on inequality, but it is also true that economists often focus too much on efficiency.

It is rare for economists to explicitly discuss the implications of government decisions for both. Recent examples are debates about increases to the minimum wage and to JobKeeper payments in the context of containing inflation.

Read more:
The case for boosting JobSeeker for all: younger people report greater financial hardship

4: A heavy international focus

Most of our best and most prominent economists were trained overseas, which is a double-edged sword.

We should continue to help top students to study at the world’s best institutions, and continue to recruit top economists globally. But we should accept that this can come with the price of reduced interest and engagement in Australian issues.

In my view we should balance this by also creating a truly world-class Australian postgraduate training system, perhaps through cross-institutional collaboration, drawing on strengths and creating economies of scale.

Such programs run successfully in Europe. This has been discussed many times by academics in Australia, but it requires government resolve to happen.

5: Declining economics training

It’s also hard to trust economics if you don’t understand it.

Year 12 enrolments in economics have fallen by about 70% since the 1990s. In New South Wales at least, economics has been mostly replaced by “business studies”.

The study of economics has also declined strikingly compared to other fields at universities.

Census data shows that only 1% of university graduates under 40 specialised in economics, compared to 2.5% of those now in their 70s.

Management and commerce degrees are much more popular, producing 23% of graduates across all ages.

While these degrees do include some economics, it is usually in only one or two compulsory units.

6: Overconfidence

While it was once said that every two economists had at least three opinions, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in the discipline, economists seem very sure of themselves in the media.

A large dose of humility would help, and it would help build trust.

The media and consumers of the media should seek out the voices that acknowledge the necessary uncertainties.

Peter Siminski 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. 6 reasons Australians don’t trust economists, and how we could do better – https://theconversation.com/6-reasons-australians-dont-trust-economists-and-how-we-could-do-better-208833

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University

The past decade has been a golden one for Australian horror, bookended by The Babadook in 2014 and the current sensation Talk to Me.

The global premiere of Jennifer Kent’s groundbreaking supernatural bogeyman film at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival caused ripples that became a wave.

The Babadook attracted international acclaim, winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Feature. The Exorcist’s director, William Friedkin, called it the most terrifying film he’d ever seen.

Talk to Me, the directorial feature debut of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, also premiered internationally at Sundance, where it sparked a bidding war.

Now in cinemas, Talk to Me has surpassed industry projections to gross more than US$10 million (A$15.2 million) in North America on its opening weekend, and opened at number four in Australia. Talk to Me’s success story is not just commercial but critical: the film currently has a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

This horror high water mark carries the legacy of Australia’s strong horror history, while signalling the shedding of some cultural biases that have constrained our culture of innovation in spookery.

The Australian New Wave

Australia’s golden horror decade has roots in the Australian New Wave, a particularly productive period for Australian film from the 1970s to the late 1980s dominated by two key horror subgenres on opposing ends of the taste spectrum.

The high-brow Australian Gothic includes critically esteemed dramas Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Walkabout (1971). These films are structured by enigmatic narratives with horror-tinged edges, in which the ethereal beauty of the bush also bears quasi-supernatural menace.

Read more:
Australian Gothic: from Hanging Rock to Nick Cave and Kylie, this genre explores our dark side

Low-brow Ozploitation films were popular in drive-in theatres, but often critically derided for their “tasteless” violence and sex and for cribbing flagrantly from Hollywood horror.

Classics of the genre include Razorback (1984), pitched as “Jaws on trotters” (the film features a murderous bush hog), and Patrick (1978), about a man in a coma with psychokinetic (and psychosexual) powers.

Ozploitation is often seen as the rebelliously gory, commercially oriented antagonist to the Australian Gothic’s highbrow works of art.

Read more:
Our enduring love of Mad Max’s Australian outback: an anarchic wasteland of sado-masochistic punk villains and ocker clowns

Destroying the high/low culture binary

This binary persisted into the early 21st century. The international commercial success of homegrown horror hits such as Saw (2004) and Wolf Creek (2005) was often accompanied by domestic critical derision: Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton refused to review Wolf Creek 2 (2013).

The horror films of the past decade tend to trample over this high/low genre binary.

These films experiment with art cinema aesthetics and deploy narrative strategies of prestige drama, echoing the Australian Gothic. However the supernatural elements are an explicit narrative structuring device, unashamedly emphasising their horror identities.

The ghosts and bogeymen of films like The Babadook, Relic (2020) and Talk to Me provoke shock and disgust, while also poetically expressing psychological turmoils that evade coherent explanation.

In The Babadook, this turmoil erupts from shared grief between mother and son. In Natalie Erika James’ debut feature Relic, a grandmother’s descent into dementia impels the reverberation of spectral traumas across three generations. In Talk to Me, a blossoming teen friendship is possessed by the unquiet spirit of the protagonist’s dead mother.

Alongside this nuanced dramatic core, Talk To Me pushes the boundaries of good taste with gleeful abandon in true Ozploitation style. It features gruesome possession-induced self-harm and more than 100 swear words. The narrative centres on a darkly comic analogy (instead of drug-taking, the teens become addicted to the occult pleasures of the talismanic hand) that would be at home in a grindhouse drive-in.

This play with high/low culture boundaries filters into Talk To Me’s play with audience emotions and expectations.

At times while watching, my body was tensely primed for a gory eye-gouging; instead I was met with a gentle moment of connection between two characters. At other moments, tender sequences give way unexpectedly to viscous spurts of blood.

The ghouls of this golden decade are at home on the red carpets of festivals such as Sundance, yet they also drip with the blood and bodily fluids of their Ozploitation forebears.

A collective energy

Our current golden age of horror has grown out of a collective creative energy.

The Philippou brothers worked on The Babadook as 19-year-olds and credit Kent’s influence as key to their creative approach.

The Babadook was the debut film from Australian production company Causeway Films, and Talk To Me is their latest picture, led by producer Samantha Jennings.

Jennings and Causeway have been critical to the collective currents that have propelled our golden horror decade. They also produced the conceptually layered zombie horror-drama Cargo (2017) and witch folk horror You Won’t Be Alone (2021), Australia’s submission for the Academy Awards for Best International Feature.

This decade of ingenuity has demonstrated Australian horror films can find international success blending the highbrow and lowbrow, yet the constraining thinking of the New Wave-era continues to haunt the local screen sector.

Kent’s The Babadook received a limited release on only 13 screens in Australia after being deemed too “art-house”. James’ internationally acclaimed Relic was not screened theatrically on home soil until three years after its Sundance premiere (a screening I co-organised with ACMI). You Won’t Be Alone might have been Australia’s Oscars submission, but it did not receive a single nomination at our local AACTA Awards.

The last decade has showcased that Australian horror can be worthy of domestic and critical attention and a gory good time with commercial appeal. Perhaps the success of Talk to Me both at the box office and with critics will encourage us to listen.

Read more:
We’re in a golden age of black horror films

Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.

– ref. 10 years of homegrown horror hits: Talk To Me and the golden age of Aussie horror – https://theconversation.com/10-years-of-homegrown-horror-hits-talk-to-me-and-the-golden-age-of-aussie-horror-211031

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jude McCulloch, Emeritus Professor Monash University, Monash University

The ACT government on Monday officially released the report from the inquiry into the prosecution of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. Lehrmann has consistently denied the allegation.

The inquiry is only one of at least seven legal proceedings linked to the high-profile, politically-charged case.

The report’s findings have been reported in the media for several days after the inquiry’s chair, former Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff, provided the report under embargo to selected media without the knowledge of the ACT government. One journalist received the report before it was handed to Chief Minister Andrew Barr.

The ACT government said it’s considering charging Sofonoff in relation to releasing the report to journalists ahead of the embargo.

What did the report find?

The report makes “several serious findings of misconduct” against former Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold.

Despite this, the report found the prosecution was properly brought – in other words, that the decision to prosecute was appropriate. This is significant because whether there was sufficient evidence to charge Lehrmann was a central issue of tension between the police and Drumgold.

The negative findings against Drumgold include that he:

• publicly released the controversial letter he sent to the ACT police chief after receiving a freedom of information request, without consulting with the ACT police chief about its release

• failed in his duty of disclosure to the defence by not providing it with an executive briefing note by Detective Superintendent Scott Moller, who led the police investigation into Higgins’ allegations, and Detective Inspector Boorman’s evidence analysis

• improperly questioned Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds. It was found, among other things, that it was improper to put to Reynolds that she was politically invested in the outcome of the trial

• made public statements of support in relation to Higgins in the wake of the aborted trial that were inappropriate because they “gave rise to a reasonable inference that Mr Drumgold was stating his opinion that he thought that Mr Lehrmann was guilty”

• “knowingly lied” to the chief justice in the lead-up to the trial about the extent of the warning he gave journalist Lisa Wilkinson about a speech she planned to give at the Logies, if she won an award for her reporting relating to Higgins. On winning a Logie, the speech she gave, and its ability to prejudice Lerhmann’s right to a fair trial, led to proceedings being temporarily halted.

The report makes no such negative findings against the police. However, Sofronoff does state:

although I think that police investigators accomplished a thorough investigation, I have found that they made some mistakes. None of these mistakes actually affected the substance of the investigation and none of them prejudiced the case. Some of them caused unnecessary pain to Ms Higgins and others.

Likewise, the report finds the victims of crime commissioner acted appropriately, and her support of Higgins didn’t undermine Lehrmann’s presumption of innocence.

The report makes ten recommendations. Significant among these are:

• the formulation of a policy to define the “threshold to charge” and the “considerations which should inform a police officer’s application of the threshold to a given case”

• that the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions and the ACT police review the Collaborative Agreement between the two agencies, with a view to including a complaints mechanism between the agencies

• that the government enact legislation to codify the scope and content of the obligation of disclosure owed by the prosecution in criminal proceedings

• update policy to provide a process for recording retrial decisions.

Why was the inquiry established?

The inquiry was established last year after a public airing of conflict between ACT police and Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold regarding the Lehrmann case.

Drumgold criticised police attitudes as backwards in their response to Higgins, while detectives believed Drumgold was hostile towards them.

Lehrmann was tried on one count of sexual intercourse without consent in the ACT Supreme Court in October 2022. After all evidence had been heard, and a week into jury deliberations, a mistrial was declared due to juror misconduct.

The charges against Lehrmann were subsequently dropped because of fears about the detrimental impact of a second trial on Higgins’ mental health.

The inquiry’s terms of reference gave it a broad remit, including investigating whether police or the director of public prosecutions had breached their duties.

Read more:
Lehrmann inquiry: what’s a director of public prosecutions or DPP? A legal expert explains

It finds Drumgold breached his duties on multiple occasions. These breaches were partly seen to be motivated by a loss of objectivity in that Drumgold was concerned to protect Higgins.

Drumgold maintained, for example, that his motivation for withholding the Moller report from the defence was that it would have been crushing to Higgins to the extent that it may have meant she was unable to participate in the trial.

Drumgold, who has now resigned, rejects many of the findings, maintaining:

While I acknowledge I made mistakes, I strongly dispute that I engaged in deliberate or underhanded conduct in the trial or that I was dishonest

In my mind, the handling of the case was reflective of the chronic problem in Australia with the way our legal institutions deal with allegations of sexual violence.

Rape myths and the criminal justice system

In all criminal trials, victims are witnesses rather than parties to the action. As such, they have no legal advocate in court. The prosecutor formally acts for the community, not the victim.

The inquiry’s terms of reference were broad enough to consider the experience of Brittany Higgins specifically. For example, there has been a steady leak of Higgins’ private communications, which weren’t part of the public trial process.

The inquiry heard little evidence about the source of the leaks. This is despite the likelihood that such leaks would undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and are deeply distressing to Higgins.

Higgins endured days of brutal cross examination, as is common in sexual assault cases. But the inquiry commented on what, to a lay person, might seem rather technical points in relation to the questioning of Senator Linda Reynolds.

A 2021 report showed the ACT laid charges over alleged sexual assaults at a rate six times lower than the national average.

The inquiry heard that few in the ACT’s sexual assault and child abuse team had sexual assault training, including its most senior officer. It also heard the unit included many junior and inexperienced members because it was used as a training ground.

Read more:
Lehrmann retrial abandoned because of ‘a significant and unacceptable risk’ to Brittany Higgins’ life

Public confidence in the criminal justice system

In setting up the inquiry, the ACT government acknowledged “the need for public confidence in the criminal justice system”.

Chief Police Officer for the ACT Neil Gaughan told police colleagues last week that the preemptive publication of the inquiry report would affect the community’s confidence in the justice system.

Indeed the report, and particularly the early publication of its findings in the media, have wrought further damage to the criminal justice system, brought more harm to those involved, and will most likely undermine confidence in the system.

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

– ref. New report into Lehrmann prosecution mires case in yet more controversy – https://theconversation.com/new-report-into-lehrmann-prosecution-mires-case-in-yet-more-controversy-211033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kwong Ming Tse, Senior lecturer in Department of Mechanical Engineering and Product Design Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

If you ride a bike and want to cut your risk of traumatic head injury, you should wear a helmet. A major Australian review of 40 different studies and 64,000 injured cyclists worldwide showed wearing a bicycle helmet reduces the risk of serious head injury by nearly 70%.

But there’s a bewildering array of designs out there. How do you know if yours is up to scratch or when it’s time to replace it?

I’m a head injury biomechanics researcher who has researched on bicycle helmet designs. Here’s what you need to know about choosing a bike helmet.

Read more:
Over-the-top policing of bike helmet laws targets vulnerable riders

The parts of the helmet

A typical bicycle helmet consists of a plastic shell, foam-like liner and the straps that keep it on your head.

The shell prevents any sharp penetration. The liner – usually made of expanded polystyrene foam or expanded polypropylene – absorbs the impact energy that would otherwise be colliding dangerously with your head.

In Australia, bicycle helmets must be certified to the mandatory Australian and New Zealand standard (the technical name for this standard is “AS/NZS 2063 — Bicycle helmets”).

This is a very robust safety regulation, and means the helmet has to be tested for:

• impact attenuation (how well it absorbs impact),

• load distribution (how well force is spread out over a larger area, so as to reduce the risk),

• strength, and

• effectiveness of the strap retention system (how well the helmet stays on your head).

So check your helmet to see if it says “AS/NZS 2063” on it somewhere (usually on a sticker inside it).

However, it’s worth noting these tests mostly look at the helmet’s ability to reduce the translational force (a force which causes an object to move in a single direction) of a direct impact.

They don’t properly consider the damage done by what’s called “rotational forces” – when the head is hit at an angle, causing it to shift abruptly.

This can cause the brain to rotate inside the skull, leading to severe and irreversible brain damage.

Bike helmet technology is always changing

A recent review by colleagues and I at Swinburne University of Technology looked at bicycle helmet design technologies that may reduce the risk caused by rotational forces.

The best known one is called a “multi-directional impact protection system” (sometimes abbreviated as MIPS). This design allows the helmet shell to rotate around the inner liner, so the helmet absorbs some of the angular forces that would otherwise be transmitted to your head.

You can tell whether a helmet is MIPS-equipped by looking for a small yellow MIPS logo from the outside or a thin yellow liner beneath the pads on the inside.

Another fancy helmet technology is called an “omni-directional suspension system” (ODS), which has double liner layers connected by special rubbery materials. If you want this feature, look for a white, red and black ODS logo on the helmet shell.

Then there are “shearing pads inside” helmets (also known as SPIN helmets), which features silicone-injected pads in a structure that moves inside the shell.

These help redirect rotational forces when the rider’s head is hit in an accident. Helmets with this feature usually have a SPIN logo on the helmet shell or blue strips on the inside.

A few bicycle helmets use special collapsible liners to reduce the stiffness of shearing in the helmet. Helmets that feature this technology may have words like AIM (which stands for angular impact mitigation), WaveCel and HEXR on them.

My team at Swinburne is developing a bio-inspired flexible structure which can potentially be used as a bicycle helmet liner, and we are currently conducting tests in our Impact Engineering Laboratory. We’re also working on a helmet design featuring an inflatable airbag in a traditional bike helmet.

How to pick a helmet

When choosing a helmet in the shop, pick one that fits comfortably yet firmly on your head and can’t be tilted for more than an inch in any direction.

It should be snug but not annoyingly tight; you’re less likely to wear it if it’s uncomfortable.

Ensure the helmet complies with the national or international bicycle helmet standards, which should be stated on the label inside the helmet.

You may consider buying a helmet featuring one of the advanced protection technologies mentioned earlier (things like AIM, MIPS, SPIN or ODS), as these can help mitigate rotation-induced traumatic brain injury if your head gets hit at an angle.

Pick a helmet with a thicker liner, as long as it’s still comfortable enough to wear properly when riding. Thicker liners tend to absorb more impact energy because they have a longer crushing zone (a bit like how a car with a longer hood in the front has a longer crush zone before the impact hits the driver).

Ideally, choose one just firm enough to minimise impact forces without “bottoming out” (where the impact crushes and flattens the liner).

Denser foams resist very hard impacts better before crushing to their ultimate limit. Once a foam reaches its crush limit, the remaining impact energy is transmitted to your head. Softer foams compress or crush more easily in lighter impacts, giving better protection against milder injuries.

You never know what kind of accident you will have, so it’s better to choose a helmet with both dense and soft foam layers in the liner.

Should you replace your helmet every few years anyway?

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission says it might be prudent replace your bike helmet between five and ten years after you bought it.

But an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) spokesperson told The Conversation the lifespan of a bicycle helmet is not set by time alone; it depends on its use pattern.

The ACCC suggests a bicycle helmet should be replaced if:

• it’s showing obvious signs of wear and tear (a helmet that is used more often is likely to show more wear and tear sooner)

• it’s showing sign of damage (cracks, pieces missing, compression of the foam, frayed straps)

• it has been involved in an accident and has received a severe blow (even if it appears undamaged, you should destroy and replace it).

Read more:
Here’s what bike-sharing programs need to succeed

Kwong Ming Tse receives funding from the Australian government and from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Do I have the right bicycle helmet and how can I tell if it’s any good? A bike helmet researcher explains – https://theconversation.com/do-i-have-the-right-bicycle-helmet-and-how-can-i-tell-if-its-any-good-a-bike-helmet-researcher-explains-207928

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Goodwin, Lecturer, The University of Melbourne

Last month, multi-Grammy winner Lizzo graced stadiums across Australia with her electrifying performances. Glowing five-star reviews celebrated Lizzo, the stage name of Melissa Viviane Jefferson, for attracting audiences of that are inclusive and celebrate love. Over the past three years, Lizzo has shifted from cult performer to a global icon with her fourth album and international tour.

Lizzo is known for her unique blend of self-acceptance and body positivity. Her personal brand radiates “unbridled joy and unapologetic self-confidence.” As a vocal supporter of fat positive language, Lizzo has faced significant criticism and hostility online.

However, a recent revelation has sent shock waves through fans and media circles, demonstrating a potential disconnect between her public persona and the behind-the-scenes music industry culture.

Three former dancers have taken legal action against Lizzo, her dance captain, and her production company, Big Grrrl Big Touring, levelling allegations of sexual harassment and the creation of a hostile work environment.

The legal documents, filed in Los Angeles, outline nine charges against Lizzo and her team, many of which fall under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. The charges allege Lizzo and her management pressured dancers into unwanted sexual situations, weight-shamed employees and failed to prevent religious and sexual harassment in the workplace. The dancers also claim that, as their employment was precarious, they felt they had to comply with requests that made them uncomfortable or risk losing their jobs.

Media and fan commentary has underscored the apparent disconnect between the messages of love and self-acceptance promoted by “brand Lizzo” and the reported experiences of the plaintiffs.

While Lizzo disputes their accounts, the issue will now play out in both the courts and social media. In the middle of this, the dancers’ claims resonate with the experiences of many musicians and arts professionals in Australia.

Sexual harassment and bullying in Australian music

In 2022, an independent review of the Australian music industry exposed rampant instances of sexual harassment and bullying.

More than 1,600 individuals participated in the Raising their Voices study, which revealed pervasive inequalities and poor workplace behaviour within the industry. Women and marginalised communities were most likely to be victims of harassment and bullying. Harassment of those associated with the music industry goes beyond workers, extending to audiences and others such as partners and service providers, pointing to a broader cultural concern demanding immediate attention.

Responding to the report, Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke emphasized:

All Australian artists and arts workers deserve safe and equitable workplaces. Safety doesn’t only encompass physical security, but also entails an environment free from harassment and bullying.

Under the umbrella of the new national cultural policy, the government also established the Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces. This institution is tasked with overseeing improvements in pay, safety, and welfare within the arts sector.

Australia’s legal obligations for workplaces are clear. The Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Act 2022, enacted in December 2022, introduced a positive duty for employers to ensure a safe and respectful work environment.

Organisations are required to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and eliminate behaviours that foster a hostile workplace. Importantly, this must be done regardless of any complaints or allegations.

Read more:
Lizzo proudly calls herself a ‘fat’ woman. Are we allowed to as well?

The workplace is more than an office

Two considerations arise when discussing appropriate workplace conduct in the arts. Firstly, the definition of the workplace is crucial. Raising their Voices shows sexual harassment occurs in various settings, including offices, music venues, work-related gatherings, and during tours.

Legally, the concept of a workplace extends beyond the physical location of work. It encompasses “any place where individuals engage in work-related activities associated with their role as a participant.” For touring musicians, this definition goes beyond the stages they perform on, encompassing after-parties and social events.

What you should expect as an artist

Artists should expect an environment free from bullying, harassment and any form of discrimination. All workers must feel safe to exercise their workplace rights and call out any perceived unjust treatment. Some 71% of Raising their Voices respondents felt their career progression was negatively impacted by speaking out.

Workplace behaviours are largely driven by organisational culture, or “the way we do things around here.” A positive culture is one based on respect, clear communication and constructive conflict management.

Leaders are vital in role-modelling acceptable workplace behaviours. In the music scene, where many workers are “gig workers”, leaders play a crucial role. Good leaders demonstrate workplace norms and ensure the organisation has appropriate policies and processes in place.

Read more:
60% of women and non-binary punters and artists feel unsafe in Melbourne’s music spaces

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared at the launch of the national cultural policy, “Arts jobs are real jobs.”

This statement underscores the fact arts workers deserve the same workplace protections as any other industry. Arts leaders must not confuse entertainment with an unrestrained party atmosphere.

It remains crucial for arts workers, whether in management or creative roles, to fully comprehend their rights and responsibilities. Equally important is the recognition that being on tour, despite its allure for audiences, is fundamentally work.

Kim Goodwin 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. Former dancers have initiated legal action against Lizzo, reminding us arts workers deserve the same workplace protections as any other industry – https://theconversation.com/former-dancers-have-initiated-legal-action-against-lizzo-reminding-us-arts-workers-deserve-the-same-workplace-protections-as-any-other-industry-211101

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Walker-Munro, Senior Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Last week, a special Senate committee released a report on foreign interference through social media.

It makes for scary reading. In addition to widely publicised criticisms of WeChat and TikTok – social media platforms owned by Chinese companies – the committee found US-based platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter), Meta, LinkedIn and YouTube have been targeted by foreign interference campaigns.

Yet no one has been convicted for foreign interference since Australian law reforms on this were passed in 2018. So, what’s going on?

What did the report find?

The inquiry heard evidence of actual interference in Australia carried out using social media, such as fake Russian accounts used to stalk Ukrainians in Australia, and death threats made against foreign journalists.

Among its 17 recommendations, the report proposes transparency standards for social media companies. This includes requiring companies to have a physical presence in Australia (such as offices). A lack of this presence was one of the main reasons WeChat couldn’t be compelled to give evidence during the inquiry.

The report also recommends companies which don’t comply with the transparency standards should face massive fines or even be banned from operating in Australia.

TikTok and WeChat were also called out by the committee, with pressure building to ban those platforms from critical businesses like banks, airports and electricity providers. This is in addition to bans already in place for government-issued devices, as well as some of the large consultancy firms that work for the government.

Read more:
Why was TikTok banned on government devices? An expert on why the security concerns make sense

The report also highlights the threat posed by generative AI in fuelling disinformation. On top of this, it recommends a full review of our espionage and foreign interference laws.

Our current foreign interference system

Australia already has some of the toughest laws in the world when it comes to criminalising threats to our national security, like espionage, foreign interference, and stealing classified information. These reforms were introduced in 2018 specifically to address the rising threat posed by foreign actors.

But foreign interference hasn’t gone away. In 2021, parliament was handed another report, this time by the Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security, which looked at national security risks in universities. That report found Australian universities are at risk of being infiltrated by foreign agents looking to steal scientific research and technology.

In 2022, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) revealed its officers had disrupted an actual attempt to interfere with an election in Australia.

A wealthy individual with deep connections to a foreign government had hired an employee to identify electoral candidates who would support the interests of said foreign government. They then plotted to advance the candidates’ political prospects through generous support and favourable articles on foreign language news platforms. But their plans were disrupted by ASIO before they could act.

Despite clear instances of foreign interference occurring in Australia, only two people have been charged under the 2018 laws. The first case alleged that Di Sanh Duong – a prominent member of the Melbourne business community – was in league with Chinese intelligence officers.

The second charge involved Sydney businessman Alexander Csergo, again alleging he provided reports to Chinese intelligence. Both are still awaiting trial.

Why have there been so few cases?

In part, few people have been charged for foreign interference because the evidence needed to prosecute someone might divulge how Australian law enforcement and spy agencies keep their eyes out for this kind of activity.

This is where the laws designed to keep our national security information confidential in court have been strongly criticised.

Prosecutions of this kind also need to be approved by the Attorney-General. It is entirely possible the Attorney-General has declined to prosecute a person because the evidence didn’t stack up. However, that same law doesn’t prevent a person from being charged or held in remand.

Read more:
Why Australia’s tough national security laws cannot stop foreign interference in our elections

Without more details from our security agencies – which aren’t likely to be forthcoming – we may never know how many people have been charged with a foreign interference offence but aren’t subsequently prosecuted because the Attorney-General did not consent to do so.

Another possibility why few people have been prosecuted for foreign interference is that it can be difficult to obtain the evidence needed to prove a particular person committed foreign interference. This is because it is easy to use anonymising technologies when engaging in foreign interference online, so it may not be possible to actually identify who committed the offence.

Even if the person can be identified, if they are located overseas they would have to be extradited to Australia to face prosecution. This can be a challenging – if not impossible – process.

What needs to be done

Further reforms to Australia’s espionage and foreign interference laws probably aren’t necessary. The laws are already strong enough and, if anything, are too broad as they are. For example, they have the capacity to criminalise the legitimate work of journalists and academics. This can undermine core liberal democratic rights such as press freedom and academic freedom.

Rather than reform espionage and foreign interference laws, the government could focus on making changes to regulate the conduct of social media companies. For example, social media companies could be required to take reasonable steps to prevent foreign interference from occurring via their platforms. Failure to do so could be regulated in a number of ways, such as civil and/or criminal penalties if appropriate.

However, in doing so it is important the government works with social media companies to ensure we get the laws right.

In addition to law reform, government needs to resource law enforcement and intelligence agencies so they can take the actions needed to enforce existing foreign interference laws.

New transparency standards and reformed legislation won’t make a difference if the Australian Federal Police won’t – or can’t – investigate and help prosecute those responsible. If the committee’s recommendations go ahead, putting a banning power in the hands of a minister is only helpful when this power gets used.

We shouldn’t forget the power of users either. Australians could consider whether they should join the 30% of WeChat users who have already ditched the platform over interference and surveillance risks.

Additionally, we all have a role to play in fighting disinformation and social media hatred. Being responsible sharers of content and checking our facts could go just as far in combating disinformation as locking up those responsible.

Read more:
3.2 billion images and 720,000 hours of video are shared online daily. Can you sort real from fake?

Brendan Walker-Munro receives funding from the Australian Government through Trusted Autonomous Systems, a Defence Cooperative Research Centre funded through the Next Generation Technologies Fund.

This article was written in Sarah Kendall’s personal capacity as a PhD Candidate at The University of Queensland School of Law. It does not reflect the views of any organisation with which the author is affiliated.

– ref. Foreign interference through social media is an active threat. Here’s what Australia can do – https://theconversation.com/foreign-interference-through-social-media-is-an-active-threat-heres-what-australia-can-do-211036

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Duncan Cook, Associate Professor in Geography, Australian Catholic University

Rocks keep time. Not on our human-scale time, but deep time: the almost unimaginable span of billions of years which have already come and gone.

Let’s say you’re in the far future and you’re looking for evidence of previous civilisations. Where would you look? The first place would be in the rocks.

For decades, experts have debated whether our world-spanning impact on the planet represents the sign of a new geological period, the Anthropocene. Only recently, scientists selected a small lake in Canada as the site that best records our impact.

That’s because the waters of the lake don’t mix, which means sediment falling into the lake is laid down neatly and in incredible detail. Over long periods, the lake’s varved sediments have preserved an excellent, undisturbed record of the Anthropocene.

But what would have to be in those sediments to leave indelible evidence of our presence? Here are five of the markers we’re leaving for the future.

What markers are we laying down in rock?

We break up deep time into parts. Everyone is familiar with periods such as the Jurassic. But what separates them? Usually, a change in the global environment so large it leaves permanent evidence visible in the rock layers. That could be an asteroid strike, gargantuan volcanic eruptions in what is now India or trillions of bacteria injecting oxygen into the atmosphere and making respiration possible.

So to declare that we’re in a new geological epoch – and that we’ve left the balmy post-ice age Holocene behind – requires finding evidence of unmistakably clear markers. Here are five possibilities.

1. Plastics and plastic rocks

Plastics aren’t naturally produced – they’re manufactured from feedstock such as oil, coal, cellulose and fossil gas. Finding plastics in a sediment or rock layer is a clear sign that the layer dates from modern times.

There are also plastiglomerates, the mutant offspring of plastics and rock. These have been found in several places worldwide. They can be produced when plastic is heated, such as in campfires, or in bushfires. But they’re also being found in other places such as creeks.

2. Concrete

Concrete is now the most abundant human-made “rock” on the planet’s surface. Future archaeologists could dig down through mud and detritus to identify when widescale use of concrete first became obvious. This would tell them they’d struck the 20th century. Concrete, of course, has been used for millennia – ancient Roman concrete is still standing in some places. But it didn’t become ubiquitous until recently.

3. Chicken bones

Humans like chicken. As of 2018, we were eating about 65 billion of these birds a year. At any one time, there are 23 billion chickens alive. But why would chicken bones be a telltale sign we were here? Because of how common they are – and because our long reliance on these birds has changed them dramatically. They no longer resemble their sleek jungle fowl antecedents – they’re far larger, grow quicker and eat differently. Broiler (meat) chickens can’t survive without human intervention. These changes are so profound that it’s as if we’ve bred a new species, according to paleobiology and Anthropocene expert Jan Zalasiewicz, who told AFP: “It usually takes millions of years […] but here it has taken just decades to produce a new form of animal.”

4. Plutonium and nuclear residue

Nuclear testing began in the 1940s and accelerated through the 1950s and 60s before being phased out. Testing of new bombs now happens without exploding them. But those decades of testing in the 20th century have left behind a pollution time marker in our environment.

Explosive testing scattered traces of radiation across the entire planet. Plutonium, in particular, makes an excellent marker of 20th century human impact. While it does occur naturally, it’s only at incredibly low levels. The amount of plutonium spread by testing has left a clear spike, like a fingerprint, in the environment. Even now, we can identify samples from the 1950s and 1960s by the presence of plutonium and other radionuclides.

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

5. Fossil fuels and climate change

We’ve been digging up and burning fossil fuels for a long time. People were using coal for heat thousands of years ago. But we really got going during what’s been dubbed the Great Acceleration in the mid-20th century, as many countries got richer, populations exploded, and demand for cars, planes and electricity soared. Burning these fuels leaves behind large volumes of fly ash and carbon particles, which fall to Earth, are laid down in rock in some areas. The carbon (CO2) pollution from burning the fuels will also eventually be recorded in rock. Future civilisations would be able to detect our presence because of the remarkably fast spike in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Markers upon markers

There are many more markers, from sudden shifts in distribution of animal species, soil erosion and pollution, to refined metals, to looming mass extinctions of species.

Even so, the Anthropocene has not yet been declared. And it may never be. That’s because there are still many questions to sort out. Will these markers be recognisable long term? And – as some geologists argue – can we even say this is a distinct epoch, given it’s only just begun in geological terms?

All of this will be hashed out in discussions through this year. By the end of next year, we’ll learn the scientific fate of the Anthropocene.

Read more:
Did the Anthropocene start in 1950 – or much earlier? Here’s why debate over our world-changing impact matters

Duncan Cook receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Plastic rocks, plutonium, and chicken bones: the markers we’re laying down in deep time – https://theconversation.com/plastic-rocks-plutonium-and-chicken-bones-the-markers-were-laying-down-in-deep-time-209788

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cornelia Koch, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Adelaide

Australia will go to the polls later this year to decide whether to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the Constitution. Meanwhile, South Australia created its own First Nations Voice in March.

South Australia used ordinary legislation rather than a referendum. But just like the proposed federal Voice, the South Australian Voice is a response to the call for structural reform in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

What is the South Australian Voice to Parliament, and what can it tell us about how a national Voice might work?

Read more:
The Voice is a simple and enduring idea with a past – and a promise

Who are the members of the South Australian Voice?

The First Nations Voice Act 2023 (SA) actually creates multiple Voices: a state First Nations Voice and several local First Nations Voices. South Australia is divided into six regions, each with a local First Nations Voice.

First Nations people who live in South Australia will vote for members of their Local First Nations Voice. Only First Nations people can stand for election to these Voices.

“First Nations person” is defined using the well-established test from the Mabo High Court case: a person who is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, regards themselves as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, and is accepted as such by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community.

Each local Voice will have two presiding members of different genders, with those presiding members forming the state Voice. This means the state Voice will have 12 members drawn from the local Voices.

The state First Nations Voice will be informed by advisory committees for Elders, Youth, Stolen Generations, and Native Title bodies.

The first elections for the Local Voices will take place on March 16 2024. The state and local Voices will commence their work later in the year.

What will the South Australian First Nations Voice do?

The South Australian Voice will present its views to the state parliament and executive in a range of ways. This may be useful when thinking about how a national Voice might interact with the federal parliament and executive.

The proposed new section 129(ii) of the Commonwealth Constitution provides that the national Voice

may make representations to the parliament and the executive government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

However, the exact form and process of those representations are to be determined in future legislation. The South Australian Voice provides a concrete example of what those interactions might look like.

The South Australian Voice will engage with the South Australian parliament by:

• delivering an annual report and address to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament

• receiving notice of each bill introduced into parliament and having the right to address either, but not both, house of parliament in relation to that bill

• providing parliament, at any time, with “a report on any matter that is, in the opinion of the state First Nations Voice, a matter of interest to First Nations people”. In a process familiar from the operations of some parliamentary committees, the relevant minister must, within six months of receiving such a report, table a report detailing their response and any action taken in response

• providing a report or address on a specific bill if requested by the speaker of the House of Assembly or the president of the Legislative Council.

The South Australian First Nations Voice will engage with the executive government of South Australia by:

• meeting with cabinet at least twice a year

• attending a briefing with the chief executives of relevant government departments at least twice a year

• participating in an annual “engagement hearing”, reminiscent of the budget estimates process, in which presiding members of the Voice can ask questions of relevant ministers and chief executives about the “operations, expenditure, budget and priorities” of administrative units.

The South Australian government will be under no obligation to follow the Voice’s advice – just like the situation for the proposed national Voice.

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

What does this mean for the federal Voice?

The state Voice is completely separate from the proposed national Voice. The state Voice will commence its operations next year, regardless of the result of this year’s referendum.

Having said that, the state Voice helps us to imagine what a national Voice could look like. It is not the only model on the table; guidance can also be drawn from the Calma-Langton Report, existing bodies such as Victoria’s First Peoples Assembly and the Voice Design Principles adopted by federal cabinet.

Critically, while lessons may be drawn from these examples, the design of any First Nations representative body must be led by genuine, meaningful engagement with First Nations communities. The dialogues that culminated in the Uluru statement are an outstanding example of such engagement.

Cornelia Koch receives funding from the Law Foundation of South Australia for community education relating to the Voice referendum. She is affiliated with Heart to Heart, a group of Adelaide Law School students undertaking community education relating to the Voice referendum.

Anna Olijnyk receives funding from the Law Foundation of South Australia for community education relating to the Voice referendum. She is affiliated with Heart to Heart, a group of Adelaide Law School students undertaking community education relating to the Voice referendum.

– ref. How does the South Australian Voice to Parliament work and what does it tell us about how a national Voice might work? – https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-south-australian-voice-to-parliament-work-and-what-does-it-tell-us-about-how-a-national-voice-might-work-210465

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Livingstone, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University

A juicy burger is a staple in many Australians’ diet. Yet research shows regularly eating red meat can increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

But is eating a beef burger worse for your health than eating a lean grass-fed steak? And how much red meat should we really be eating?

Read more:
Talking about eating less red and processed meat provokes strong feelings. That’s why this new evidence-based report is welcome

Types of red meat

First of all, it’s good to clarify that red meat refers to all mammalian muscle meat. So that includes beef, lamb, pork, veal, mutton and goat.

Then we can distinguish red meat types by how the animal has been raised and how the meat is processed. Here are some key terms to know.

Conventional meat, also called grain-fed, is meat from animals that are grass-fed for part of their lives and then given a grain-based diet for the remainder. Most red meat available in major supermarkets is grain-fed.

Grass-fed meat comes from animals that have grazed on pasture for their entire lives. This means grass-fed meat tends to have higher levels of unsaturated fats than conventional meat, and is why some research suggests it’s healthier. Grass-fed meat is also likely to cost more.

Organic meat is seen as a premium product as it has to meet government standards for organic produce. For example, meat labelled as organic cannot use synthetic pesticides or use hormones or antibiotics to stimulate growth.

Processed meats have been preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or by adding chemical preservatives. Examples include sausages, ham, bacon and hot dogs.

What is the nutritional value of red meat?

Red meat contains many nutrients that are important for health, including protein, vitamin B12, iron and zinc. Red meat is a good source of iron and zinc as they are more easily absorbed by the body from meat than from plant foods.

Red meat is often high in saturated fats, but this can range widely from less than 1% to over 25% depending on the cut and whether it’s trimmed of fat or not. Minced meat typically ranges from 2% to 9% saturated fat depending on whether its extra lean or regular.

To limit intake of saturated fats, opt for leaner mince and leaner cuts of meat, such as pork tenderloins or beef steak with the fat trimmed off.

Wagyu beef (which simply translates to Wa = Japanese and Gyu = cow) has been touted as a healthier alternative to conventional red meat, as it tends to be higher in unsaturated fats. But research is limited, and ultimately it still contains saturated fat.

Processed meats, such as bacon, salami and sausages, contain beneficial nutrients, but they are also high in saturated fat, sodium and contain preservatives.

Read more:
Here’s a meaty question – are barbecues bad for your health?

Is red meat bad for your health? And does the type matter?

It’s widely reported eating too much red meat is bad for your health, because it can increase your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

But most of the evidence for this comes from observational studies, which cannot determine whether red meat intake actually causes the condition.

Most evidence is observational because it’s simply not ethical or feasible to ask someone to eat large amounts of meat every day for many years to see if they develop cancer.

So let’s take a look at the evidence:

Heart disease and type 2 diabetes

In a review of 37 observational studies, the authors found weak evidence of an association between eating unprocessed red meat and heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

But for processed meat, a recent review showed that for each additional 50g of processed meat consumed per day, the risk of heart disease increased by 26% and the risk of type 2 diabetes increased by 44%, on average.

Cancer

Leading international organisations have declared there’s strong evidence consumption of red and processed meat increases the risk of colorectal cancer.

For example, in a study of nearly 500,000 people, each additional 50g of red meat consumed per day increased the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. And each additional 25g of processed meat consumed per day, equivalent to a slice of ham, increased the risk by 19%.

While research has linked consumption of red and processed meat with increased risk of other types of cancer, such as lung, pancreatic and breast, the evidence is not consistent.

It also matters how red meat is cooked. For example, cooking a steak over a high heat, especially an open flame, chars the outside. This causes chemical compounds to form that have been shown to cause cancer in very high doses in animal models, and some studies in humans have found an association with increased cancer rates.

When it comes to how the animal was raised or its breed, based on current evidence, it’s unlikely the nutritional differences will have a substantial impact on human health. But research is limited in this area.

Read more:
Yes, we still need to cut down on red and processed meat

How much red meat should you eat?

Our national dietary guidelines recommend the average adult eats a maximum of 455g of cooked lean red meat per week (or less than 65g a day, equivalent to one small lamb chop). This is also what’s recommended by the national Cancer Council.

For heart health specifically, the national Heart Foundation recommends eating less than 350g of cooked, unprocessed red meat per week (or less than 50g a day).

Many dietary guidelines around the world now also recommend limiting red meat consumption for environmental reasons. To optimise both human nutrition and planetary health, the EAT-Lancet commission recommends consuming no more than 98g a week of red meat and very low intakes of processed meat.

Read more:
Should we eat red meat? The nutrition and the ethics

So what does all of this mean for your diet?

The bottom line is that red meat can still be enjoyed as part of a healthy diet, if not eaten in excess. Where possible, opt for unprocessed or lean cuts, and try to grill less and roast more. Consider swapping red meat for lean chicken or fish occasionally too.

If you are looking for alternatives to meat that are better for your health and the environment, minimally processed plant-based alternatives, such as tofu, beans and lentils, are great options.

Read more:
How to get the nutrients you need without eating as much red meat

Katherine Livingstone receives funding from a National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant (APP1173803) and a National Heart Foundation of Australia Vanguard Grant (ID106800).

– ref. Is red meat bad for you? And does it make a difference if it’s a processed burger or a lean steak? – https://theconversation.com/is-red-meat-bad-for-you-and-does-it-make-a-difference-if-its-a-processed-burger-or-a-lean-steak-207927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Narayan, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, The University of Queensland

Earth has just experienced its hottest month since records began and Australia is now gearing up for an El Niño-fuelled summer. Extreme heat isn’t just challenging for humans – it brings suffering to our beloved pets, too.

Research I was involved in examined how climate change affects the welfare of animals, including pets. My colleagues and I used a concept for assessing animal welfare known as the “five-domains model”. It’s a science-based structure for examining an animal’s:

• nutrition
• environment
• physical health
• behaviour
• mental state.

The model evaluates the complete physiological and behavioural responses of animals to environmental stressors. While the effects of climate change on animals have been studied before, ours is the first study to apply the model to animal welfare specifically.

We examined the academic literature and found climate change will harm animals across all five welfare domains. This applies to both wild and domesticated animals, including pets. So let’s take a look at how various types of pets will fare in a warming world – and how we can help them.

Fish

Fish are “ectotherms” – that is, they use external sources of heat to regulate their body temperature. So pet fish are vulnerable to changes in the water temperature of your home aquarium, which may occur during a heatwave.

Extreme water temperatures can cause physical harm to fish. For example, it can increase a fish’s metabolic rate – meaning it needs more oxygen to breathe . It can also cause changes such as slowed growth and reduced feeding.

According to official advice, water in an indoor aquarium should generally be kept at between 20℃ and 25℃ (unless you are keeping tropical fish).

Depending on your budget and aquarium size, you could opt to use a device to control the water temperature. Either way, it’s important to monitor the water temperature regularly.

Also make sure the aquarium isn’t located near a window where it’s exposed to direct sunlight.

Leaving your aquarium unattended for days or weeks in summer can be dangerous, due to the risk of heatwaves. If you’re going on a summer holiday, consider organising a fish sitter to check on the animal regularly.

Birds

Heat stress can change the physiology of birds. For example, research into a wild population of small Australian robins showed during a heatwave, the birds lost body mass and abandoned their nests, and some died.

Heat stress can also cause abnormal behaviour in pet birds such as feather picking, when one bird repeatedly pecks at the feathers of another.

In hot weather, regularly check your bird’s cage to make sure it’s clean and stocked with food and water. If the bird is in an outdoor cage or aviary, ensure it is shaded. And a shallow bird bath will help your feathered friend cool off.

Read more:
Wild bird feeding surged worldwide during lockdowns. That’s good for people, but not necessarily for the birds

Dogs

Dogs and cats can suffer on hot days. That’s especially true if they are:

• older or overweight
• have thick coats
• have short snouts/flat faces (which restricts air flow and makes it harder for them to cool down).

Heat stress can cause canine hyperthermia, which means the dog’s body temperature becomes dangerously hot.

Watch for early warning signs of heat stress such as excessive panting and erratic movements. These symptoms can quickly escalate, leading to heat stroke and possible death.

More than 80% of dog owners report exercising their dogs less vigorously, or for shorter periods, during hot weather. That can help avoid heat-related illness. But don’t reduce your dog’s activity levels too much, as that may lead to other health problems. Just time the walks to avoid the heat of the day.

Refrain from leaving dogs unattended in vehicles, because they can easily overheat. In fact, it’s better to leave your dog inside home on a hot day, as long as they have a cool place to rest and plenty of water – perhaps even with ice cubes in it. And dogs love to cool off in a kiddie pool or under a sprinkler.

If you take your dog out on a hot day, carry a container of fresh, cool water for them. And don’t forget to slip-slop-slap: apply a sparing amount of pet sunscreen to your dogs’ exposed pink skin such as ear tips and nose.

Cats

Like other animals, cats can overheat in hot weather. Symptoms include panting heavily, drooling and a rapid pulse. Like with other animals, if you suspect your cat is suffering from heatstroke, call a vet immediately.

Climate change and associated heat and floods is likely to aid the spread of parasites and illness including tick-borne diseases, flea infestations and heartworm. This puts both cats and dogs at risk.

In hot weather, the advice for cat owners is similar to that of dog owners: ensure your cat has plenty of shade and water, and put pet sunscreen on their ear tips and noses, especially if the cat is white.

If possible, keep the cat inside during the hottest part of the day. Ensure at least one room is cool and ventilated. And in a heatwave, play with your cat either in the early morning or evening, when the temperature has cooled.

A helping human hand

While humans have the capacity to understand and prepare for climate change, pets will need our help to cope. This includes not just the pets listed above, but others too, including reptiles, guinea pigs and rabbits.

As heatwaves and other extreme weather events become more common, the onus is on us to keep our pets safe.

Read more:
How cats and dogs affect the climate — and what you can do about it

Edward Narayan 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. How climate change will affect your pet – and how to help them cope – https://theconversation.com/how-climate-change-will-affect-your-pet-and-how-to-help-them-cope-210724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Collins, Professor of Geology, University of Adelaide

Earth was not always so hospitable. Evidence of how it came to be so beautiful and nurturing is locked in the rocks of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges – a site now vying for World Heritage listing.

Our new research seeks to better understand this near billion-year-old story. We discovered immense planetary upheaval recorded in the ranges.

In two related research projects, we’ve mapped how the continent that later became Australia responded to the most extreme climate change known in Earth’s history. We then dated this event.

The changes gave rise to algae. Their legacy is the oxygen we breathe and the evolution of the first animals more than 500 million years ago. The soft bodies of these animals have been exceptionally preserved at the new Nilpena-Ediacara National Park, which opened in April 2023.

Read more:
Friday essay: histories written in the land – a journey through Adnyamathanha Yarta

A superbasin on the shores of the Pacific

The rocks of the Flinders Ranges formed at the same time as the Pacific Ocean basin. The plate tectonic “dance of the continents” tore North America away from Australia 800 million years ago. This created a valley that became an ocean where sand and mud was deposited.

Geologists call this the Adelaide Superbasin. “Super” because it is huge, and “basin” because it formed a depression where sediment could accumulate.

The superbasin stretches from Kangaroo Island in the south, to north of the Flinders Ranges and from Coober Pedy in the west to the Barrier Ranges of New South Wales in the east.

At special places such as Arkaroola and the national parks of Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges and Ikara-Flinders, rocks of the Adelaide Superbasin tell us how our planet came to be the way it is today.

Read more:
A map that fills a 500-million year gap in Earth’s history

Land of fire and ice

Until about 800 million years ago, Earth was an oxygen-poor but stable planet. So stable, in fact, this time has been nicknamed the “Boring Billion”.

That all changed 716 million years ago. The planet plunged into an 80-million-year Ice Age, the likes of which has never been seen again. It’s known as the Cryogenian Period.

The Cryogenian contains a least two global glaciations when the planet became covered in ice – an occurrence earth scientists refer to as “Snowball Earth”. What caused this incredible cooling is still a mystery. But many researchers think it relates to huge volcanic eruptions that directly preceded the icy conditions. The heavily worn remains of these volcanoes have recently been discovered in Arctic Canada and Alaska.

We know lava from volcanoes reacts with CO₂, dragging it out of the atmosphere. Scientists believe this reversed the pre-historic greenhouse effect and the planet cooled.

Read more:
Ancient volcanic eruptions disrupted Earth’s thermostat, creating a ‘Snowball’ planet

Part One: Picturing the world before the first animals

The first part of our new research reconstructs the shores of the balmy Pacific as this climate shock hit, causing vast ice sheets to lumber north and smother the region for millions of years.

The glaciers ploughed through hills and valleys, planing off the country and leaving behind vast swathes of boulder clay that now forms rocks over much of the Flinders Ranges.

Our research analysed unusual magnesium-rich sedimentary rocks in part formed by microscopic bacteria. Hundreds of millions of years later, small variations in the concentration of critical elements are still preserved. We used these variations to build a picture of highly saline shallow seas rich in bacterial life, but devoid of much else.

Part Two: Dating Snowball Earth

Dating sedimentary rocks is challenging. The grains of sand and pebbles that make up the rock formed elsewhere. They were carried by wind or water to the beach, or river, where they were deposited. Then, gradually, new rock formed.

Using established methods we can date one of the minerals in the sand (zircon). This uranium–lead method gives us the oldest possible age for sedimentary rock. That’s a reliable maximum age, but the true age of the rock could be much younger.

In the second part of our research we combined this established method with a new technique called “in-situ rubidium–strontium dating”. This enabled us to more accurately date the Snowball Earth rocks in the Flinders Ranges called the Sturt Formation.

The new technique attempts to directly date the “glue” that holds the grains of sedimentary rocks together. So we’re using a laser to date minerals that form as the sediment turns to rock. Some of these “authigenic” minerals (minerals that form “in place”) contain tiny amounts of radioactive rubidium. Over time, rubidium changes to strontium by radioactive decay.

Our study dates mudrock deposited within the glaciation. It is the first study to directly date sedimentary rocks that formed during the Snowball Earth event. This mudrock (a part of the Sturt Formation) formed around 684 million years ago.

Our “detrital zircon” method also gave us maximum ages of about 698 million years for a boulder clay below the mudrock, and about 663 million years from a boulder clay above the mudrock. These dates fit with estimates from elsewhere on the globe, suggesting the icy time likely lasted 50 million years.

Put together, the results of these two projects suggest the “Sturtian” glaciation took place between 716 and 663 million years ago and may have been more dynamic than previously thought. It’s likely there were at least two ice-advance and ice-retreat events, or two separate glacial times. So the planet experienced more of a cold period rather than a completely frigid snowball.

The rise of the algae

These two research projects using rocks within the proposed World Heritage area, along with work from many other researchers, develops a picture of the world that led to the evolution of the first animals. The geological processes and their timing helps us understand how the Earth system came to be.

The frozen world of the Cryogenian stressed the microbial life that dominated the oceans way back then. Glaciers ground rock to powder and this powder turned the oceans of the day to a nutrient soup.

So when warmer times came, a previously minor player in the biosphere bloomed. This newcomer was algae, life with cells containing a nucleus. Essentially, seaweed.

They were larger than the life that existed before and better at photosynthesising. They pumped their oxygen waste into the oceans and atmosphere, inadvertently providing the fuel for microbes to combine to form more complex multicellular life forms (metazoans) and ultimately, the first animals.

A place of true world heritage

The rocks of the Flinders Ranges preserve so many stories, from the Dreamtime-formed shapes of the ranges, to the scars of the early mining history.

Our research into these rocks links the interdependence of Earth systems. Here we find stories about how plate tectonics and volcanoes control the climate, how the climate helps feed life with nutrients and how the resulting life changes the chemistry of the ocean and atmosphere, feeding back into powering new forms of life.

The stories locked in the hills of the Flinders Ranges undoubtedly give the region a heritage value to the world. We eagerly await news of world heritage listing, which is not expected until 2025 at the earliest.

Alan Collins receives funding from the Australian Research Council, MinEx CRC, BHP, Santos, Empire Energy, Teck Resources and the NT, SA and WA Governments. He is affiliated with the Geological Society of Australia and the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.

Georgina Virgo received funding from the Geological Survey of South Australia as part of her PhD project at The University of Adelaide.

Jarred Lloyd receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Australian Critical Minerals Research Centre at the University of Adelaide, and his research position is also supported by the SA Government. He is affiliated with the Geological Society of Australia.

– ref. How algae conquered the world – and other epic stories hidden in the rocks of the Flinders Ranges – https://theconversation.com/how-algae-conquered-the-world-and-other-epic-stories-hidden-in-the-rocks-of-the-flinders-ranges-207152

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Cain, Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Arts Education, Australian Catholic University

There is increasing concern about Australian students falling behind in numeracy and literacy.

NAPLAN results show 16.2% of Year 3 students are at or below the national minimum standards in numeracy and 12.9% are at or below the minimum standards in reading. By Year 9, this climbs to 20.4% and 25.1% respectively.

The 2021 early development census also found 22% of Australian children were developmentally vulnerable in their first year of school.

Federal and state governments are currently working on the next National School Reform Agreement, which ties funding to school reforms and starts in 2025. The consultation paper released last month notes with concern:

too many students are starting school behind or are falling behind in minimum literacy and numeracy standards.

It also asks, what can schools do to help those most at risk of falling behind?

Why do students fall behind?

Students can fall behind for a many reasons and these can be complex.

This may be due to a student’s abilities or perhaps they have a developmental issue or impairment. A student may have missed essential concepts through illness or changing schools. Or they may not have a home environment that helps them learn, such as as healthy food, access to books and adequate sleep.

As the consultation paper notes, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, students in regional, rural and remote locations, students with disability and students whose parents have low levels of educational attainment are three times more likely to fall below minimum standards.

The learning gap can also increase over time. Early difficulties with learning can quickly become compounded if they are not addressed.

Students who are behind can lose motivation to learn because they have missed essential concepts and find lessons frustrating. They can also start to exhibit challenging behaviours.

However, learning gaps do not necessarily increase. Australian research published this year shows effective teaching can compensate for early learning difficulties.

How do schools identify students?

Identifying students can happen informally and may occur at any age. At preschool a teacher may notice a student has indistinct speech and recommend hearing testing, language support or both. The assessment of cognitive skills – such as literacy and numeracy – will usually happen when students begin school.

At school teachers might observe children playing counting games and sharing out counters to identify which students have difficultly counting up to five.

More formal assessments might involve a young student reading a short list of real and made-up words. They can also include work samples or individual tests for older students. The results can be compared with others of their age or year level.

Teachers also look at students’ engagement in educational activities and school attendance. Pre-COVID figures from 2019 showed at least 25% of Australian students missed at least one month of school per year.

Read more:
School attendance rates are dropping. We need to ask students why

How can students catch up?

How a student catches up will depend on a number of factors. For those with disability, an inclusion plan can make sure students have the right adjustments and supports to learn. This needs to be updated regularly.

For other students, the process of catching up might begin with meeting their basic needs through providing meals, uniforms and communication in home languages.

More generally, catching students up starts with the principle “know students and how they learn”. Teachers aim for a strength-based approach, which values the knowledge and skills students bring to school.

This draws from home knowledge, interests, and learning preferences to make the curriculum more engaging. For example, if a student has a great interest in sport, maths problems can incorporate data from games.

Students will not learn effectively if they do not feel valued, comfortable and safe.

Literacy and numeracy help

Approximately 20% of students require some additional teaching and support to acquire fundamental language, literacy and numeracy skills.

This may involve classroom, small group or individual support. It is easier and more effective to provide extra support early in students’ schooling, but older students can also benefit from intervention.

Due to teacher shortages, there has been an increase in teachers teaching out of their field of specialisation. We don’t yet know what impact this has had on intervention programs.

Most students can catch up

A 2023 study by the Australian Education Research Organisation and Monash University found approximately 95% of students should be able to meet academic benchmarks with quality classroom programs and research-supported interventions. But students with a history of learning difficulties should be carefully monitored as they may require additional support in the future.

About 5% students will need more nuanced interventions and different teaching approaches. For example, a student with a physical disability might be disadvantaged when asked to write by hand. Working on a laptop instead of persisting with hand writing can help.

Read more:
As students return to school, small-group tutoring can help those who are falling behind

We need a more consistent approach

Australia has a national curriculum but there are differences between what is taught and how it is taught across the states and territories. There are also considerable differences between schools.

This means students who move schools can be disadvantaged. Figures from 2016 show in New South Wales, 7% of all school children changed school at least once during a year.

We need a more nationally consistent approach to the national curriculum. Jurisdictions’ and schools’ have varied philosophies, priorities and needs. But core standards around appropriate teaching approaches and effective interventions are possible.

There is also a need for increased sharing of information with parents and between schools. National student numbers could be used to track enrolment and core national assessment data.

Some parents and schools may be opposed to this idea for reasons of student privacy. Parents may want their children to have a “fresh start” if they change schools.

We acknowledge these concerns, but sharing key assessment data would reduce time re-assessing students in their new school and support strong teaching from day one.

Joanne Quick is a member of Learning Difficulties Australia and the Dyslexia Association Australia.

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

– ref. Too many school students are falling behind: how do we help those most at risk? – https://theconversation.com/too-many-school-students-are-falling-behind-how-do-we-help-those-most-at-risk-210886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Horan, Economic Anthropologist, and contract lecturer, University of Auckland

Aotearoa New Zealand is home to 28,560 registered charities and some 90,000 not-for-profits without charitable registration. From disability advocacy groups and local theatres to sporting clubs, all do vital work in our communities.

Around 89,000 of these are “small” not-for-profits, which means they have under NZ$2 million operating expenses.

My new research found these smaller groups are finding it difficult to open bank accounts, change signatories, get onto online banking, access bank cards, or deposit and withdraw cash, among other issues.

As people from 130 small charities and not-for-profits made clear, accessing effective banking services is too often a matter of luck – but they occasionally stumble across a “golden unicorn” within a bank. Here’s what they said needs to change.

A lack of specialists

Not-for-profits are generally charitable trusts, incorporated societies, or other types of non-profit legal structures. Think your local sports club with a roster of volunteer leaders and support staff that can change each year.

My research included survey data from 120 of those organisations, in-depth interviews with people from 37 different not-for-profits, and 14 stakeholder interviews.

Almost all reported lengthy, unpredictable “runarounds” to get any type of necessary banking process done.

With fewer branches and more basic tasks pushed online, many New Zealanders are finding it harder to do their banking.

But the very nature of small not-for-profits runs counter to normal commercial banking practice. This, combined with a lack of specialised staff at bank branches who understand not-for-profits, means banking is too often really difficult for these organisations.

Read more:
What if we expected financial services to be more like health services?

Research participants reported the majority of front line banking staff weren’t familiar with the banking processes required by small organisations. At the same time, many of the volunteers weren’t familiar with what they needed to do themselves. But they found the rules keep changing and information from banks to guide the process was incredibly difficult to find.

Those interviewed also said banks made it difficult for not-for-profits to comply with anti-money laundering and countering of financing of terrorism legislation. The identification process required by these laws, which should be straightforward, is too often a nightmare.

Interviewees also found bank staff misinterpreted the rules. Bank errors, like missing or misplaced paperwork, were repeated over and over again. This created a number of issues which required repeated visits to the bank branches to sort out.

Banking ‘shouldn’t be the hardest part of saving the world’

One organisation, a small sports club, needed to add a signatory to its accounts.
Achieving this required multiple visits to three different branches of the bank, multiple emails, and long wait-times on calls to the bank’s helpline.

Each interaction was with a different bank representative and resulted in inconsistent information about how to change or add signatories.

Around 60% of survey respondents and organisations we interviewed reported similar frustrations when they wanted to change the signatories on their account.

Another arts and performance organisation lost access to its bank accounts after issues around updating the trustee list were not resolved in the time frames imposed by the bank.

Read more:
Say goodbye to the branch — the future for banking is upwardly mobile

While the not-for-profit was trying to sort out the issue, there appeared to be a lack of communication between the different divisions within the bank. Those who had authority to close the accounts at the bank were not aware of the frantic efforts by the organisation to find a bank person who knew what to do. The arts group was forced to stop operating for a time.

In another case, a new advocacy organisation set up by people with disabilities took months to get its new bank account working.

This group had a basic account after five months. But trouble finding someone to oversee the account setup, along with unclear communications from the bank, meant it took much longer to organise online banking and to have credit and debit cards issued.

This organisation said doing banking “shouldn’t be the hardest part of saving the world”.

But this is how it can feel for smaller not-for-profits.

Relying on a ‘golden unicorn’

My research found most organisations got their banking issues sorted – eventually. This was achieved through sheer determination and perseverance by not-for-profit personnel – and the emergence of a “golden unicorn”.

Golden unicorns are bank staff who understand the inner workings of not-for-profits and their banking needs. They know how to move through the bank’s different silos and are a point of contact for organisations – and other bank staff – who need help solving issues.

Golden unicorns are rare, but all the banks have them. The problem is, banks may not know which of their staff have this capability. As more bank branches close, it is critical banks identify the “unicorns” in their midst and create digital pathways linking them with not-for-profits and other staff.

Once the not-for-profits found their golden unicorn, issues which had already consumed hundreds of hours were quickly resolved. Harnessing these specialists’ capacity gives hours and hours back to the not-for-profit sector. This is also more efficient for banks – freeing up resources to serve other customers.

One research participant said he would love his bank to have this attitude to his and other organisations. “You didn’t create a not-for-profit to spend all this time in the bank; let’s work together to get this done.”

This research was commissioned by Community Networks Aotearoa (CNA) and was funded by grants from J R McKenzie Trust and the Todd Foundation.

– ref. Hunting for a ‘golden unicorn’: how NZ charities find banks constantly get in the way of them helping people – https://theconversation.com/hunting-for-a-golden-unicorn-how-nz-charities-find-banks-constantly-get-in-the-way-of-them-helping-people-209024

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Harris, ARC Future Fellow, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.

“No Fred – No Lawrence – No Corroboree” ran the February 16 1951 headline in the Darwin newspaper The Northern Standard.

Performers from Northern Territory’s Daly region and Tiwi Islands unanimously agreed to withhold their planned public dance show in solidarity with Aboriginal workers’ rolling strikes in Darwin for equal pay and civil rights.

In the weeks before, the strike leaders, Wadjiginy man Lawrence Wurrpen (Urban) and Larrakia man Fred Nadpur Waters, had been detained under the Aboriginals Ordinance Act of 1918 – laws that did not apply to non-Aboriginal people.

From thousands of kilometres away there was further support for the Darwin strike leaders. In Sydney, New Theatre members supported the Darwin strikers by leafleting performances of the ballet Corroboree. In Victoria, members of the Australian Aborigines’ League condemned the “intimidation of the Northern Territory Aborigines” in a protest letter sent to Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

Our new article in The Australian Journal of Politics and History shows how Aboriginal people in 1951 framed cultural practice as labour and as a tool for advocacy for Aboriginal rights stretching across the continent.

Read more:
Fusing traditional culture and the violin: how Aboriginal musicians enhanced and maintained community in 20th century Australia

Aboriginal workers in 1951

The corroboree strike of 1951 followed months of action led initially by Lawrence Wurrpen (Urban), a Wadjiginy man from Delissaville Native Settlement (now known as Belyuen).

Wurrpen led three strikes of Aboriginal workers in Darwin over 1950–51. The strikers demanded fair pay and access to civil rights, particularly the freedom to move about Darwin and the Northern Territory.

At the third strike, on January 24 1951, Wurrpen was arrested and sentenced to four months in jail. On his release under appeal, he was directed to stay within Bagot Compound Reserve in Darwin.

He defied these orders and was arrested for leaving the compound, for disorderly behaviour, and for drinking alcohol.

As the press reports highlighted at the time, no non-Aboriginal person could have been charged with defying orders restricting their movement, nor for drinking alcohol.

Senior Larrakia man Fred Nadpur Waters led a fourth strike in February. A leader of the Larrakia community on whose Country the settlement of Darwin had been built, Waters was keenly aware of the potential of the union movement to support Aboriginal workers’ demands for better pay and working conditions.

But after the strike, the Director of Native Affairs ordered Waters be removed from Darwin. He was sent to the remote Central Australian community of Haasts Bluff (Ikuntji), 1,700 km away.

The corroboree strike emerged in response to the banishment of Waters, drawing further attention to discriminatory treatment of the Aboriginal strike leaders.

Read more:
Enforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia

Ripples in the southeast

In the southeast, leaders of the Australian Aborigines’ League collaborated on performances and protest actions. In solidarity in Sydney, New Theatre members distributed leaflets to audiences of the non-Indigenous ballet Corroboree, being performed at the Tivoli theatre.

The leaflets highlighted the Darwin performers’ refusal to “put on a corroboree,” stating:

the idea of human rights […] demands that we do something more than admire aborigines from the safe distance of the Tivoli auditorium.

This local action linked condemnation of the treatment of Darwin strikers with local struggles for justice.

Other protests linking Aboriginal rights and the arts were also taking place across 1951.

In January, the league protested the exclusion of Melbourne Aboriginal people from programming of the Jubilee Festival and Centenary of Melbourne. Led by Doug Nicholls, the league threatened to parade a float through the streets with:

a chained aborigine guarded by a white man with a whip [to] represent the introduction of Western ‘civilisation’.

Within days, Nicholls was invited to join the Melbourne Centenary Celebrations Committee. He went on to produce the Aboriginal Moomba with Bill and Eric Onus, featuring singing stars Harold Blair and Georgia Lee (Dulcie Pitt), alongside a cast of performers from up and down the east coast.

In March, an article reported on a meeting aiming to create a Council For The Advancement of Aborigines. This Australia-wide organisation would support civil rights for Aboriginal people, advocate for “Jubilee justice” and object to the intimidation of Northern Territory Aboriginal protesters.

Strike action continued in June 1951 when Wiradjuri man Ray Peckham attempted to travel with Melbourne’s Unity Dance Group to East Berlin and was denied a passport.

The Australian Aborigines’ League’s Bill and Eric Onus mobilised Melbourne dockside workers, threatening to “tie up every ship that’s in port and round the shores of Australia”. Peckham’s passport was quickly delivered to the ship.

Read more:
Ablaze review: a powerful, personal portrait of Aboriginal activist and filmmaker Bill Onus

Performing culture for equal rights

Aboriginal performances in the far north and southeast were acts of interconnected resistance to state-based discriminatory policies. We have now mapped these connections in a new website showing how bonds of history and kinship enabled public displays of culture, music and dance.

Through performance and protest, Aboriginal people publicly asserted their continued presence and maintenance of culture even as they fought for equal pay, freedom of movement and citizenship.

The 1951 incidents in the Northern Territory, NSW and Victoria contained the seeds of united national campaigns for citizenship rights that would change the Australian political landscape in years to come.

Performance – when it was staged, and when it was withheld – played a key role in asserting these rights.

Amanda Harris receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Linda Barwick receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Tiriki Onus receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is the grandson of Bill Onus.

– ref. In 1951, corroboree dancers in Darwin went on strike: their actions would reverberate as far as Melbourne – https://theconversation.com/in-1951-corroboree-dancers-in-darwin-went-on-strike-their-actions-would-reverberate-as-far-as-melbourne-208023

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

An extensive federal government crackdown on misconduct will increase maximum penalties for advisers and firms promoting tax exploitation schemes from the present $7.8 million to more than $780 million.

Sparked by the PwC scandal, which involved the consultancy’s use of confidential government information for commercial gain, the planned measures will also expand tax promoter penalty laws to make it easier for the Australian Taxation Office to apply them to advisers and firms who promote tax avoidance.

The time limit for the Tax Office to bring court action on promoter penalties will be increased from four to six years.

Announcing the measures on Sunday, the government said the present tax promoter penalty laws had remained largely untouched since being created in the 2000s and had only been applied half a dozen times.

It described its initiatives, involving multiple ministers, as the “biggest crackdown on tax adviser misconduct in Australian history”.

The reforms are designed to strengthen the integrity of the tax system, boost the powers of the regulators, and make the regulatory arrangements “fit for purpose”.

The government said the PwC scandal had exposed “severe shortcomings” in the regulatory framework, and it wanted to “rebuild people’s faith in the systems and structures that keep our tax system and capital markets strong”.

The legislation will be introduced this year, with consultations starting soon.

The changes will remove limitations in the tax secrecy laws that were a barrier to regulators responding to the PwC affair.

They will enable the Tax Office and the Tax Practitioners Board to refer ethical misconduct by advisers to professional associations for disciplinary action.

Whistleblowers will get protection when they report tax agent misconduct to the Tax Practitioners Board.

The board will have more time – up to two years – to complete complex investigations. Its public register of practitioners will be improved to give more transparency to misconduct by firms and agents.

The government is also homing in on the governance obligations of large consulting, accounting and auditing firms.

Treasury will co-ordinate a whole-of-government response to the PwC affair and the systemic issues raised. Options will be delivered to the government progressively over the coming two years. Consultations will begin in coming months.

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. Tax advisers who promote exploitation schemes to face $780 million penalty – https://theconversation.com/tax-advisers-who-promote-exploitation-schemes-to-face-780-million-penalty-211096

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

The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold, has resigned in the wake of an independent inquiry’s sweeping criticisms of his conduct in the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann.

The report from the inquiry by Walter Sofronoff, a former Queensland judge, commissioned by the ACT government, accuses Drumgold of serious misconduct and dishonesty.

Sofronoff says: “It became clear to me that, at times, Mr Drumgold lost objectivity and did not act with fairness and detachment as was required by his role”.

Lehrmann, at the time a Liberal staffer, was accused of raping his then colleague Brittany Higgins in a ministerial office in 2019. He has consistently denied the allegation. A trial was aborted after misconduct by a juror. A plan for a second trial was then abandoned in light of Higgins’ mental health.

The ACT Attorney-General, Shane Rattenbury, said in a Sunday statement that on Thursday he and Drumgold discussed the report. “In light of the commentary in the report, Mr Drumgold and I agreed that his position as Director of Public Prosecutions was no longer tenable.

“On Friday, Mr Drumgold sent a letter advising me that he would be vacating his position as ACT Director of Public Prosecutions.”

The Sofronoff report, while not yet released (although sent by the inquiry on an embargoed basis to certain media outlets), has been extensively reported.

Drumgold has been provided with the report. The ACT government will make a detailed statement in response to it early this week.

Sofronoff is strongly critical of Drumgold’s intense efforts to keep from Lehrmann’s defence team police material it was entitled to have.

Drumgold “kept the defence in the dark about steps he was taking to deny them the documents,” Sofronoff says.

He added: “Criminal litigation is not a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards.”

Sofronoff says had the defence not managed to obtain the police documents “despite the improper obstruction they faced, and had the documents come to light after a conviction, in my opinion, the conviction would have been set aside on the ground of a miscarriage of justice”.

The report says during his efforts to prevent disclosure, Drumgold sidelined a more senior member of his staff who had raised a query and “procured a youngster to do the job”.

He required “his fledging staff member, newly admitted”, to unknowingly swear an affidavit that failed to comply with the rules.

Sofronoff found Drumgold had lied to the ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, who was conducting the trial, over what he had said to journalist Lisa Wilkinson about the speech she subsequently made when she won a Logie for her interview with Higgins.

Drumgold claimed on the basis of notes said to have been made at the time that Wilkinson was given a warning before the speech. Wilkinson denied this and it came out during the inquiry that Drumgold had later added to the notes. McCallum delayed the trial because of the Wilkinson speech.

“I find that Mr Drumgold knowingly lied to the chief justice,” Sofronoff says.

“I do not accept that Mr Drumgold’s misstatements about the nature of the note were a mere mistake that he made,” he says.

“On any version of the conversation, Mr Drumgold’s response to Ms Wilkinson was wholly inadequate.”

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. Shane Drumgold resigns after sweeping criticisms of his conduct in the Lehrmann case – https://theconversation.com/shane-drumgold-resigns-after-sweeping-criticisms-of-his-conduct-in-the-lehrmann-case-211095

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Nelson, Plant Geneticist, CSIRO

If you walk into a bar in Italy, you might be served a dish of salty, nutritious snacks: lupin beans, a legume that has been eaten around the Mediterranean and in parts of the Middle East and Africa for thousands of years.

Lupins are very high in protein and fibre, low in carbs, have a low glycaemic index, and they’re easy to grow in a variety of climates. However, some varieties also contain high levels of unpleasantly bitter alkaloids.

In new research, an international team of researchers has for the first time identified the “sweetness gene” responsible for low alkaloid levels. This discovery may make it easier to reliably produce more palatable plants.

The search for sweetness

Around 100 years ago, plant breeders in Germany found natural mutations that produced “sweet lupins” with far lower levels of bitter alkaloids. They produced sweet varieties of white lupin (Lupinus albus), narrow-leafed lupin (Lupinus angustifolius, the main type grown in Australia), and the less common yellow lupin (Lupinus luteus).

Over the past 50 years or so, lupins have become more common as food for farm animals. Sweet lupins are good for this, as they don’t require extensive washing to be usable. They are also increasingly eaten by humans – and we are very sensitive to bitterness.

To find the genetic basis for “sweet” lupins, we used a few approaches.

A genetic search

Our colleagues in Denmark studied the biochemistry of the different alkaloids in both bitter and sweet varieties. By looking at the changes in the composition of the alkaloids, we could get an idea of the genes involved.

My own work was on the genetics end. We analysed 227 varieties of white lupin and tested their alkaloid levels.

Then, with colleagues in France, we looked at markers across the lupin genome and tried to associate high and low alkaloid levels with the genetics.

We had clues about where we thought the gene would be, in a certain region of a few dozen genes. There was one we thought looked the most promising, so we designed a lot of DNA markers to work out what sequence varied in that gene.

Eventually we found a very strong link between a change in alkaloid levels and a variation of a single sequence in our gene.

Read more:
Pulses are packed with goodness: Five cool things you should know about them

The final test was to find out whether a variation in this gene would also produce sweetness in other types of lupin. In some other plants we would be able to use genetic modification tools to do this, but for various reasons this is difficult in lupins.

Instead, we went to a company called Traitomic who screened a huge number of seeds of narrow-leafed lupin until they found one which naturally had exactly the mutation we were looking for. And when we tested that plant, it had low alkaloids – confirming we really had found the “sweetness gene”.

A reliable marker

In practice, growing sweet white lupin can be a bit tricky. There are several different strains that have different low alkaloid genes, and if these strains cross-pollinate, the result can be bitter lupin plants once again.

The research gives a reliable genetic marker for plant breeders to know what strains they are dealing with. This means it will be much easier to consistently grow sweet white lupin.

At the moment most of what is grown in Australia is narrow-leafed lupin, in part because the industry had a hard time keeping the white lupin sweet (and in part because white lupin was plagued by a fungal disease called lupin anthracnose). So perhaps in future we’ll see white lupin make a comeback.

Our vision is more cultivation of the high-protein, hardy lupins for consumption by humans.

Read more:
Plant-based patties, lab-grown meat and insects: how the protein industry is innovating to meet demand

Matthew Nelson received funding from Innovate UK to conduct this research while working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Three co-authors of the research are employed by biotech company Traitomic, whose technology was used to screen for candidate mutations.

– ref. Is this the protein plant of the future? New study finds ‘sweetness gene’ that makes lupins tastier – https://theconversation.com/is-this-the-protein-plant-of-the-future-new-study-finds-sweetness-gene-that-makes-lupins-tastier-210985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz proclaimed a “Zeitenwende”, or historical turning point. It resulted in Germany’s first ever official national security strategy.

The equivalent wake-up call in New Zealand was the 2019 Christchurch terror attack. This hammered home, in the most horrific way, that geographic distance and small size no longer protected the country in ways they might have once.

While some countries, such as the United States and Britain, have had serious national security strategies in place for a long time, for others it takes a shock. In 2018, before the Christchurch atrocity, New Zealand’s national threat level was set at “low”.

The Defence Policy Statement from the same year, although far from naïve, reflected a simpler world. This changed with the more sober 2021 Defence Assessment, followed by the defence policy review announced last year into whether current policy, strategy and capability were fit for purpose.

The suite of documents released today – including a first ever national security strategy – provides the answer. In short, New Zealand now faces a very different and rapidly changing world. Business as usual is no longer considered an option.

A new security strategy

In July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its strategic foreign policy assessment, Navigating a Shifting World-Te whakatere i tētahi ao hurihuri. It looks ahead to 2025 and is “intended as a contribution to the national conversation on foreign policy”.

The national security strategy, Secure Together-Tō Tātou Korowai Manaaki, along with a new defence policy and strategy statement, rounds out this revised New Zealand worldview. A soon-to-be-released threat assessment from the security intelligence agencies will complete the picture.

Announcing the new strategy, Defence Minister Andrew Little said: “In 2023 we do not live in a benign strategic environment.” He went on to say:

Aotearoa New Zealand is facing more geostrategic challenges than we have had in decades – climate change, terrorism, cyberattacks, transnational crime, mis- and disinformation, and competition in our region which, up until recently, we thought was protected by its remoteness.

While the new assessments and strategic statements come from different state agencies, they nonetheless speak clearly and coherently about the risks to New Zealand’s security. The national wake-up call, then, rests on four broad pillars of understanding.

1. Geopolitical uniqueness

The first consistent theme concerns New Zealand’s uniqueness. It is a liberal, multicultural democracy based on a bicultural relationship and te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. The nation’s strong sovereign identity is anchored in the Pacific, and it speaks with a strong and independent voice.

The New Zealand people and their socially cohesive society are the country’s most valuable assets. The obligation of guardianship over these, for both present and future generations, means being better prepared for potential external and internal threats.

Ensuring national resilience and security underpins the government’s unprecedented (at least for this century) planning for and prioritising of that preparedness.

Read more:
Approach with caution: why NZ should be wary of buying into the AUKUS security pact

2. Times are changing

The new strategy identifies 12 national security issues, ranging from terrorism and climate change to attempts to subvert New Zealand democracy. While no one challenge is expressly prioritised, there is a clear emphasis on geostrategic competition and the threats to a rules-based international system.

Many of the assumptions about global and regional affairs that have underpinned New Zealand’s foreign policy for a generation or more are coming under real and sustained pressure.

The rules-based order that has allowed the country to thrive peacefully is under stress. The risk of open conflict is heightened, with the wider Indo-Pacific region at the centre of geopolitical contests.

There are also unpredictable but significant risks – especially economic ones – from those tensions, even without a descent into military conflict. And there is the potential for more than one negative event to occur at the same time.

Read more:
The most significant defence review in 40 years positions Australia for complex threats in a changing region

3. Partnerships matter

New Zealand’s security has to be collective, and there is no lurching towards isolationism. More collaborations are likely to address shared security challenges.

The most important relationship is with Australia, which is also rapidly upgrading its defence capabilities. As New Zealand’s closest partner and only formal ally, Australia is “indispensable to New Zealand’s national security”.

The US relationship is also very important, of course. Throughout the new documents, the US is variously described as a “crucial” defence partner in general, and “critical for New Zealand’s security” in the Indo-Pacific and Pacific regions.

Other less immediately obvious security relationships are also noted, including with Singapore, Japan and NATO. The Five Eyes intelligence network (which also includes Britain and Canada) is cast as “an invaluable support to our understanding and ability to respond to emerging and complex security issues”.

The newer multinational security partnerships – namely AUKUS and the “Quad” (US, India, Japan and Australia) – are mentioned. But none of the new documents explicitly state whether New Zealand will or will not join them in the future – other than to say they “may” provide the opportunity for New Zealand to further pursue its interests.

But the Defence Force needs to improve its combat readiness and effectiveness, as well as other military capabilities, and increase its presence in the Pacific. It’s clear greater investment is needed in both the short and medium term, but no dollar figures are attached.

Read more:
ANZUS at 70: Together for decades, US, Australia, New Zealand now face different challenges from China

4. Realism over China

The damage Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused to the international legal framework is clear. But the new strategies and assessments repeatedly highlight the challenge of China.

While peaceful cooperation in areas of shared interest is deemed desirable, China is also recognised as being major driver of geopolitical change, especially in its willingness to be more assertive and willing to challenge existing international rules and norms.

Finally, aspects of China’s operations in the Pacific threaten to fundamentally alter the regional strategic balance. New Zealand must plan and be prepared for this.

Overall, the new assessments and strategy represent a turning point: a recognition security threats are rising and will require new approaches. While the detail is not fleshed out, and no doubt there will be partisan debate as the October election nears, the need for real change has rarely been made so clear.

Alexander Gillespie 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. NZ’s first national security strategy signals a ‘turning point’ and the end of old certainties – https://theconversation.com/nzs-first-national-security-strategy-signals-a-turning-point-and-the-end-of-old-certainties-210885

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

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article mentions people who have passed away. Names have been withheld out of respect for Sorry Business.

The Garma Festival in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory begins today. The annual event brings Indigenous and non-Indigenous people together in celebration of Yolgnu culture, tradition and knowledges.

Garma draws leaders from business, industry, research, education and politics. Over the four-day event there a range of scheduled activities for guests. These include cultural workshops, art exhibits, dance performances, Indigenous cinema, and forums.

Over the years, Garma has grown to include greater focus on important political and social issues relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders communities. Matters such as land rights, truth-telling, and constitutional recognition.

The political significance of Garma cannot be understated with sitting prime ministers often attending (Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Anthony Albanese), as well as First Nations leaders such as Marcia Langton, Noel Pearson, and a senior Gumatj leader, who started the festival, who passed away earlier this year.

Garma has become an important arena for meaningful dialogue, and the discussions that happen at the event reverberate around Australia for the weeks and months following. Recognise, Reconciliation Australia’s constitutional recognition campaign arm, attended Garma in 2013 to garner support for constitutional recognition for Indigenous peoples.

As we wait for the announcement on the referendum date, there is interest about what might emerge from this year’s Garma event.

The history of Garma

Garma was first held in 1999. It was conceived by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, a group formed by the five regional Yolgnu clan groups; Gumatj, Rirratjingu, Djapu, Galpu and Wangurri.

The festival started small but grew into Australia’s largest Indigenous event, bringing thousands of people to remote North East Arnhem Land. A location, 40km from Nhulunbuy, that is culturally significant for the Yolgnu people.

One of the features of Garma is the Key Forum Conference.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Trying to dodge talking about ‘treaty’ could do the Voice campaign more harm than good

The Key Forum Conference

The Key Forum Conference is running again this year and is being facilitated by

• Mayatili Marika, a Rirratjingu Traditional Owner and Yolŋu woman

• Shelley Ware, an AFL and media presenter

• Sean Bowden, a Nortern Territroy lawyer

This conference provides space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous political leaders to engage on important issues and “about the future of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian nation”.
Over the last few events, the Key Forum Conference has been focused on constitutional recognition and the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

It was at the conference in 2017, where then opposition leader Bill Shorten announced:

Labor supports a Voice for Aboriginal people in our Constitution, we support a declaration by all parliaments, we support a truth-telling commission.

At 2018’s event, Deputy Chair of the Yothu Yindi Foundation Djunga Djunga Yunupingu, called for the government to engage in truth-telling and reconciliation, to embrace an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and to move towards treaty-making.

In 2019, a senior Gumatj leader reiterated the Yolgnu’s wishes for greater recognition.

And at last year’s event, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared in his keynote address the “Government’s solemn promise to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart, in full”.

Momentum has been building around constitutional recognition and Garma’s Key Forum Conference has played a major role in bringing this issue to the forefront of public discussion.

So what is happening at Garma this year?

There will certainly be a focus on the Voice to Parliament and the upcoming referendum this year at Garma.

The prime minister and Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney will be in attendance this year. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, however, declined the PM’s invitation to attend.

Dutton explained on 2GB:

I’m not going up there to pretend that I’m somebody that I’m not. I’m a genuine person, I’m straightforward, I’ve looked at this meticulously. I’m not supporting the Voice.

However Dutton’s fellow party member, Julian Leeser, will be in attendance. Leeser will be participating in a panel discussion with MP Marion Scrymgour. In April this year, Leeser stood down from the opposition frontbench to campaign for the Voice, clashing with his party on the issue.

With the announcement of the date for the referendum nearing, this year’s Garma event is sure to foster robust discussions about the Voice to Parliament.

In the coming days we will see what topics were covered at the event, and potentially get a clearer picture of the direction the government is taking on the referendum and other key areas such as truth-telling, Treaty and reconciliation.

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. Garma is a festival of political discussion and celebration of culture. Will the Voice be a central theme? – https://theconversation.com/garma-is-a-festival-of-political-discussion-and-celebration-of-culture-will-the-voice-be-a-central-theme-210715

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Md Safiullah (Safi), Senior Lecturer in Finance, RMIT University

Islamic banks have become an integral part of the financial system in many Muslim-majority countries, as well as in nations with sizeable Muslim minorities such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Australia is poised to join them. From mid-2024,
Islamic Bank Australia is set to offer Australia’s 813,000 Muslims a banking service aligned with their religion’s strictures against profiting from interest or investing in harmful industries such as alcohol or gambling.

The fundamental distinguishing feature of an Islamic bank is its adherence to Islamic, or Sharia, law. As such, Islamic banks differ from their counterparts in four main ways: they do not charge or pay interest; they don’t engage in property speculation or activities such as derivatives trading; they do not invest in businesses that are deemed unlawful by Islam; and they typically appoint a second board specifically to oversee their compliance with these rules.

Why do these rules and conventions exist, and how do they work in practice?

1. No interest

For devout Muslims, conventional banking services are problematic because of the main way most banks make profit – by charging interest on loans.

Islam’s holy book, the Quran, prohibits all transactions associated with interest. The third chapter (the Surah Al-Imran, verse 130) says:

O’ you who have Faith! Do not devour usury, doubled and multiplied, and be in awe of Allah; that you may be prosperous.

Usury refers to lending money at unreasonable interest rates, but the term is sometimes used to mean any charging of interest at all. Judaism and Catholicism have also traditionally outlawed usury, although historically they have allowed more wiggle room in how this is applied.

Sharia law prohibits banks from charging any interest on loans at all. But that doesn’t mean Islamic banks are opposed to earning profit.

To comply with Sharia law, an Islamic bank enters into a joint venture or partnership agreement with depositors and borrowers, which allows sharing of profit and loss between bank and customers.

Islamic banks provide loans under a profit-and-loss contract rather than one involving interest-based repayments. In this arrangement, borrowers pay an agreed share of their profits to the bank.

Similarly, deposits with the bank don’t earn interest, but instead they earn a return that will rise or fall in line with the bank’s overall profits.

Read more:
Islamic finance provides an alternative to debt-based systems

One potential pitfall of this model is it might encourage borrowers to take unnecessary business risks, knowing their bank will share the losses. This, in turn, would potentially reduce the returns to those who have deposited funds with the bank and also increase the credit risk for banks.

To help guard against this risk, borrowers typically agree to allow the bank to act as a partner in the business, rather than simply as a creditor. This lets the bank monitor the business’s performance more closely, and share directly in its profits and losses.

2. No speculative assets

The Quran (Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 275) says:

…Allah has permitted trading and forbidden usury.

From this, Islamic scholars infer that purchasing land or property purely for speculation is not permissible, but buying it to undertake economic activities is allowed. This means Islamic banks cannot engage in the kind of debt-based financing that underpins the home or business loans offered by many Australian banks.

Instead, an Islamic bank can finance a home purchase by taking part-ownership of the property, according to the proportion of the purchase price that was provided by bank finance rather the buyer’s own funds.

Similarly, Islamic banks can provide loans to buy land that will be used for economic activities, but cannot profit purely from land price appreciation.

Shariah law also prohibits Islamic banks from engaging in derivatives trading (trading in financial products such as futures contracts, options or swaps) because this involves speculating on an asset’s market performance, rather than on economic activity itself.

3. No ‘socially harmful’ business

Sharia law does not allow an Islamic bank to finance economic sectors that are deemed harmful to people’s wellbeing, such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, adult entertainment, pork products, or arms production.

4. Islamic corporate governance

Islamic banks typically appoint two boards: a regular board of directors similar to those that govern most banks, and a Sharia supervisory board to oversee compliance with Islamic laws.

What are Islamic Bank Australia’s prospects?

The main challenge for Islamic Bank Australia will be to gain accreditation from the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA), which regulates Australia’s commercial banking industry. The bank says it is planning to apply for this in mid-2024, after which it can open to the public.

Next, it will need to attract a significant client base. As of October 2022 it reportedly had almost 8,000 prospective customers on its waiting list.

The arrival of Sharia-compliant banking will bring some new issues for Australia’s banking sector more broadly.

Australia does not yet have any supervisory body for monitoring Sharia-compliant banking, meaning all responsibility in this area would fall to the bank’s own supervisory board. In many Muslim-majority countries, such as Malaysia for example, a separate Sharia Advisory Council, typically appointed by the country’s central bank, oversees the Islamic finance industry.

Islamic Bank Australia’s Sharia committee has three members: Malaysia-based Ashraf Md Hashim, who also sits on that country’s Sharia Advisory Council; Mohamed Ali Elgari, an Islamic economics academic in Saudi Arabia; and Australia-based Islamic banking scholar Rashid Raashed.

Many other Islamic banks worldwide also have overseas Sharia scholars sitting on their boards. But given the complexity of the role, these appointees will need to be familiar with current practices in Australia’s financial landscape too.

Read more:
Is Islamic banking more risky compared to conventional banking?

A related issue is the question of how Islamic Bank Australia will interact with Australia’s existing banks. Besides adhering to Sharia law, it will also need to comply with all of Australia’s banking regulatory requirements. In doing so, it will inevitably come across interest-based transactions.

For example, Islamic Bank Australia must maintain an account for settling any transactions with the Reserve Bank, and will have to refer to existing benchmarks, such as the underlying interest rate, as references for the dividends and charges applied to customers under its profit-and-loss contracts.

Islamic Bank Australia and existing banks will have to get used to adapting to the rules and customs, but it has been done successfully in other Western countries and so Australia should be no exception.

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. Australia will soon have its first Islamic bank. What does this mean, and what are the challenges? – https://theconversation.com/australia-will-soon-have-its-first-islamic-bank-what-does-this-mean-and-what-are-the-challenges-201867

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samar Aoun, Perron Institute Research Chair in Palliative Care, The University of Western Australia

Although it is associated with dying, palliative care is an approach focused on improving quality of life – or how people feel about and respond to facing a life-threatening illness.

Palliative care aims to prevent and relieve physical, social, emotional, spiritual and existential distress. Palliative care also supports family caregivers during the disease journey and bereavement phase. You might have heard it mentioned for cancer, but it is beneficial for the majority of life-limiting conditions. It has been shown to reduce health-care costs by preventing unnecessary hospital admissions.

Palliative care is not voluntary assisted dying. It does not aim to hasten or prolong death. It is not just for people who are about to die and seeking palliative care does not mean “giving up”. In fact, it can be a profound and positive form of care that the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised as a basic human right. But what does it involve?

Read more:
How to choose a legal decision-maker as you get older – 3 things to consider

Not just for someone’s final days

Palliative care is often seen as a “last resort” rather than a service that empowers terminally ill people to live as well as possible for as long as possible.

The full benefit of this holistic approach can only be realised if people are referred early to palliative care – ideally from the time they are diagnosed with a terminal illness. Unfortunately, this rarely happens and palliative care tends to blur with end-of-life care. The latter is for people who are likely to die within 12 months but is often left to the last few weeks.

Read more:
We all hope for a ‘good death’. But many aged-care residents are denied proper end-of-life care

Palliative care can involve difficult conversations

Palliative care provides a time to ask some usually taboo questions. What kind of death do you want to experience? Who is in your personal network? How will they respond to your life ending? What kind of support can they offer?

Palliative care can be provided at home, hospital, hospice or residential aged care facility, depending on the preference and circumstances of patients and their family carers.

In general, patients are referred by their treating specialist, health professional or GP. Patient preferences for care and what matters most to them are discussed with their doctor or other health professionals and with their loved ones with advance care planning. These discussions can include information on their preferred place of care, preferred place of death, personal care needs such as dietary preferences and religious and spiritual practices.

This helps those caring to make decisions about the patient care when the patient cannot anymore. However, advance care planning can start at any time in life and without a diagnosis.

How palliative care delivery has changed

Once upon a time, we were born at home and we died at home. Death was a social event with a medical component. Now it is close to the opposite. But research indicates a solely clinical model of palliative care (mainly symptom management funded through the health system) is inadequate to address the complex aspects of death, dying, loss and grief.

A public health palliative care approach views the community as an equal partner in the long and complex task of providing quality health care at the end of someone’s life. It promotes conversations about patients’ and families’ goals of care, what matters to them, their needs and wishes, minimising barriers to a “good death”, and supporting the family post-bereavement.

These outcomes require the involvement of family carers, friendship networks and not-for-profit organisations, where more detailed conversations about life and death can happen, instead of the “pressure cooker” rushed environment of hospitals and clinics. Investment could develop stronger death literacy and grief literacy in the community and among health professionals, who may be reluctant to raise or discuss these topics. This would likely see the take up of advance care planning increase, from the current low levels of less than 15% of Australians (25% of older Australians accessing health and aged-care facilities).

One such successful approach is the Compassionate Communities Connectors Program in Western Australia, using trained community volunteers to enhance the social networks of terminally ill people.

Our research trial trained 20 community volunteers (“connectors”) and 43 patients participated over 18 months. In sourcing others to help (who we called “caring helpers”), connectors built the capacity of the community and social networks around patients in need. Caring helpers assisted with transport, collecting prescriptions, organising meals and linked clients to community activities (such as choirs, walking groups, men’s shed). And they helped complete advance care planning documentation. About 80% of patients’ needs were social, particularly around reducing feelings of isolation.

Patients in the trial had fewer hospital admissions and shorter hospital stays.

Read more:
Passed away, kicked the bucket, pushing up daisies – the many ways we don’t talk about death

Tailored to need

Palliative care should be tailored to each person, rather than a one-size-fits-all clinical model that doesn’t respect autonomy and choice.

Many people are dying in a way and a place that is not reflective of their values and their end-of-life is interrupted with preventable and costly admissions to hospital where control and even dignity are surrendered. Palliative care hospitalisations have increased in recent years compared to all hospitalisations, with 65% of such admissions ending with the patient dying in hospital.

It is unrealistic and unaffordable to have a palliative care service in every suburb. There needs to be a shift to a more comprehensive, inclusive and sustainable approach, such as Compassionate Communities, that recognises death, dying, grief and loss are everyone’s business and responsibility.

Samar Aoun is voluntary chair of the South West Compassionate Communities Network, chair of the MND Association in WA and national chair of MND Australia.

– ref. What actually is palliative care? And how is it different to end-of-life care? – https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-palliative-care-and-how-is-it-different-to-end-of-life-care-205488

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University

Asteroids are chunks of rock left over from the formation of our Solar System. Approximately half a billion asteroids with sizes greater than four metres in diameter orbit the Sun, travelling through our Solar System at speeds up to about 30 kilometres per second – about the same speed as Earth.

Asteroids are certainly good at capturing the public imagination. This follows many Hollywood movies imagining the destruction they could cause if a big one hits Earth.

Almost every week we see online headlines describing asteroids the size of a “bus”, “truck”, “vending machine”, “half the size of a giraffe”, or indeed a whole giraffe. We have also had headlines warning of “city killer”, “planet killer” and “God of Chaos” asteroids.

Of course, the threats asteroids pose are real. Famously, about 65 million years ago, life on Earth was brought to its knees by what was likely the impact of a big asteroid, killing off most dinosaurs. Even a four-metre object (half a giraffe, say) travelling at a relative speed of up to 60 kilometres per second is going to pack a punch.

But beyond the media labels, what are the risks, by the numbers? How many asteroids hit Earth and how many can we expect to zip past us?

What is the threat of a direct hit?

In terms of asteroids hitting Earth, and their impact, the graphic below from NASA summarises the general risks.

There are far more small asteroids than large asteroids, and small asteroids cause much less damage than large asteroids.

So, Earth experiences frequent but low-impact collisions with small asteroids, and rare but high-impact collisions with big asteroids. In most cases, the smallest asteroids largely break up when they hit Earth’s atmosphere, and don’t even make it down to the surface.

When a small asteroid (or meteoroid, an object smaller than an asteroid) hits Earth’s atmosphere, it produces a spectacular “fireball” – a very long-lasting and bright version of a shooting star, or meteor. If any surviving bits of the object hit the ground, they are called meteorites. Most of the object burns up in the atmosphere.

How many asteroids fly right past Earth?

A very simplified calculation gives you a sense for how many asteroids you might expect to come close to our planet.

The numbers in the graphic above estimate how many asteroids could hit Earth every year. Now, let’s take the case of four-metre asteroids. Once per year, on average, a four-metre asteroid will intersect the surface of Earth.

If you doubled that surface area, you’d get two per year. Earth’s radius is 6,400km. A sphere with twice the surface area has a radius of 9,000km. So, approximately once per year, a four-metre asteroid will come within 2,600km of the surface of Earth – the difference between 9,000km and 6,400km.

Double the surface area again and you could expect two per year within 6,400km of Earth’s surface, and so on. This tallies pretty well with recent records of close approaches.

Read more:
Asteroid 2023 BU just passed a few thousand kilometres from Earth. Here’s why that’s exciting

A few thousand kilometres is a pretty big distance for objects a handful of metres in size, but most of the asteroids covered in the media are passing at much, much larger distances.

Astronomers consider anything passing closer than the Moon – approximately 300,000km – to be a “close approach”. “Close” for an astronomer is not generally what a member of the public would call “close”.

In 2022 there were 126 close approaches, and in 2023 we’ve had 50 so far.

Now, consider really big asteroids, bigger than one kilometre in diameter. The same highly simplified logic as above can be applied. For every such impact that could threaten civilisation, occurring once every half a million years or so, we could expect thousands of near misses (closer than the Moon) in the same period of time.

Such an event will occur in 2029, when asteroid 153814 (2001 WN5) will pass 248,700km from Earth.

How do we assess threats and what can we do about it?

Approximately 95% of asteroids of size greater than one kilometre are estimated to have already been discovered, and the skies are constantly being searched for the remaining 5%. When a new one is found, astronomers take extensive observations to assess any threat to Earth.
The Torino Scale categorises predicted threats up to 100 years into the future, the scale being from 0 (no hazard) to 10 (certain collision with big object).

Currently, all known objects have a rating of zero. No known object to date has had a rating above 4 (a close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers).

So, rather than hearing about giraffes, vending machines, or trucks, what we really want to know from the media is the rating an asteroid has on the Torino Scale.

Finally, technology has advanced to the point we have a chance to do something if we ever do face a big number on the Torino Scale. Recently, the DART mission collided a spacecraft into an asteroid, changing its trajectory. In the future, it is plausible that such an action, with enough lead time, could help to protect Earth from collision.

Read more:
NASA’s asteroid deflection mission was more successful than expected. An expert explains how

Steven Tingay is affiliated with the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. ‘City killers’ and half-giraffes: how many scary asteroids really go past Earth every year? – https://theconversation.com/city-killers-and-half-giraffes-how-many-scary-asteroids-really-go-past-earth-every-year-208838

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Mary Clancy, Lecturer, School of Psychology, Deakin University

The sending and receiving of intimate images and videos is increasingly becoming a part of people’s sexual relationships – particularly for teenagers and young adults.

Image-based “sexting” has steadily increased over the past few years. Aggregated data from population-representative studies in the United States, which included 110,380 teenage participants, found about one in five teenagers had either sent or received nudes online. Australian studies report similar rates.

The figures are slightly higher among lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. However, minimal data have been collected from the broader queer community, including from trans and gender-diverse people.

Research shows there is little harm associated with sexting when all parties involved have consented, including for teenagers. That said, consent isn’t always properly given and received. In such cases there are increased risks of abuse and sexual violence.

Harm from sexting occurs when there are breaches of consent. At the same time, our work in this space shows navigating consent online is much more complex than it might initially seem.

When sexting can lead to harm

People sext for numerous reasons, such as to flirt, to maintain intimate relationships, or for body image reinforcement. But this act can also be weaponized. Non-consensual forms of sexting include:

• coerced sexting, where someone is forced or manipulated into sexting
• receiving unwanted sexts (also known as “cyberflashing”)
• non-consensual sharing of someone’s sexts with others.

These examples of image-based abuse are highly problematic and harmful to victims. Those who have had their intimate images distributed without their consent (sometimes problematically referred to as “revenge porn”) are more likely to experience stigma, shame, reduced employment prospects, suicidal thoughts or self-harm as a result.

Yet, in two studies published in 2019 and 2021, we found people who share these intimate images are usually either unaware or dismissive of the potential concerns.

These people nominated a range of motivations which could be considered relatively harmless, such as sharing pictures because the person depicted was “hot” (according to 44% of respondents), or seeing it as “not a big deal” (48%), or as a joke (31%).

A case of crossed wires?

Our latest study, published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, found a stark difference between the proportion of people who said they had given consent to have their intimate images shared, and those who said they’d received consent to do this.

Specifically, from our survey of 2,126 young cisgender adults, 8% said they had knowingly given permission for their sexts to be shared. Men (17.7%) were almost six times more likely than women (3.4%) to have consented to this.

In contrast, of those who indicated they had shared another person’s sexts, 20% said they had received prior consent (with no substantial differences between men and women).

When it came to unwanted or unwelcome sexts, women were more likely to non-consensually disseminate these images. This suggests at least some non-consensual forwarding of nudes may relate to not having wanted to receive them in the first place.

We don’t yet have a large enough sample to determine the rates for people outside the gender binary. However, preliminary data from our work suggest their experiences may be similar to those of cisgender women.

Overall, our findings raise important questions about how people conceptualise “consent” when navigating digital spaces. The discrepancy between those who said they received permission to forward someone’s sexts and those who said they gave it suggests something is amiss.

Read more:
It’s time we aligned sexual consent laws across Australia – but this faces formidable challenges

Progress is pending

There is currently little research and minimal legislative clarity regarding how we define and apply digital consent, both in Australia and globally.

Navigating consent online isn’t as straightforward as in face-to-face situations. While the initial exchange of intimate images between two people is often consensual, questions of consent tend to become murkier over time.

For example, what happens if you shared your intimate images happily at the start of a relationship, but it has since gone sour and ended?

Also, since consent can be revoked at any time, should we enforce the deletion of intimate images once the sender revokes their consent? How would this process be managed and monitored?

Further, how would affirmative consent (which has been introduced via legislation in several states) play out online? How do we define “enthusiastic consent” in an online interaction?

This is clearly a topical issue. A federal parliamentary inquiry is under way to address current and proposed consent laws.

Ideally, the concept of online consent would be included within respectful relationship education. Young people should know how to have clear conversations about how their intimate images may be used – both in the present, and in the future when a relationship has ended.

Our ongoing research is focused on finding ways for people to articulate their expectations around consent realistically and effectively. In the meantime, if your intimate images have been uploaded online, or otherwise shared without your permission, there are steps you can take.

If the individual responsible won’t respond or willingly withdraw the images, you can contact the e-Safety Commissioner to have them taken down from online.

There are also legal implications for those who share someone’s intimate images without consent – or threaten to do so. If you’re in this situation, contact your state or territory police as a first step.

Read more:
Mandatory consent education is a huge win for Australia – but consent is just one small part of navigating relationships

Elizabeth Mary Clancy has previously received funding from the Geelong Football Club for the review and evaluation of their CyberCats program, a school-based cyberbullying and sexting prevention program for Yr 7s.

Bianca Klettke has previously received funding from the Geelong Football Club for the review and evaluation of their Cyber Cats program, a school-based cyberbullying and sexting prevention program for Year 7s in the Geelong region.

– ref. 20% of young people who forwarded nudes say they had permission – but only 8% gave it. Why the gap? – https://theconversation.com/20-of-young-people-who-forwarded-nudes-say-they-had-permission-but-only-8-gave-it-why-the-gap-207913

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurel Fox, PhD candidate, The University of Queensland

The Voice is a simple idea. The proposed amendment to Australia’s Constitution is short and sweet.

Yet the referendum debate is at risk of inundation, and too often misses the point. While there are many things the Voice cannot do, there is one thing it can do.

It offers a permanent, public and culturally distinct way forward for Indigenous consensuses to develop and find their rightful place in national politics.

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

The past as prologue to the present

The Voice is rehearsed rather than radical. National Indigenous representative bodies have been on and off the agenda for 50 years. Australia has had three formalised national Indigenous representative bodies between 1973 and 2005. The history of this is significant.

Colonialism radically disrupted traditional governance. While country and culture remain a bedrock of Indigenous identities, from the 1920s an Indigenous-led movement developed an agenda that favoured commonwealth over state power and lobbied for input at the national level.

This occurred alongside the Commonwealth’s increasing involvement in Indigenous affairs, a dynamic entrenched by the 1967 referendum. By 1967, the Commonwealth could not be seen to countenance the formulation of law and policy without Indigenous input.

National governments needed a way to obtain advice from Indigenous peoples. Liberal Prime Ministers Holt, Gorton and McMahon all acknowledged this.

But it was Gough Whitlam who established the first such representative body: the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (1973–1977). Malcolm Fraser replaced this with the National Aboriginal Conference (1977–1985) and Bob Hawke legislated the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (1989–2005).

At their core, these bodies involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders choosing their own representatives to proffer advice to the Commonwealth. While the first two bodies were clipped, each collected Indigenous viewpoints and formulated national agendas.

A smattering of topics covered from the 1970s include land rights, treaty, recognition of colonisation without consent, police brutality, and the forced removal of children from their families.

Yet as much as government needed Indigenous input and advice, without constitutional entrenchment these bodies could be (and were) terminated for political expediency. This insecurity was not just existential; it inhibited the potential of these bodies.

The Voice as constructive

Much debate about the Voice has focused on either party politics, or the desirability of the Voice in improving tangible outcomes. This has come at the expense of considering its potential to construct a “national” Indigenous politics, out of regional and sectoral voices.

Politics is protean. But, at its root, democratic politics is about governing society through representation and compromise. This means a representative Voice is also about constructing a system where mainstream government – executive and parliament – and wider society listens to Indigenous concerns.

John Howard’s recent comments against the Voice unwittingly highlight how it can be positively differentiated from previous representative bodies. He argued the Voice would not “produce anything other than regular stand-offs between what the Voice is asking for and what the government of the day is willing to do”.

Leaving aside disingenuous phrasing (the Voice we are voting on can only offer advice, there is no power to “stand off” against governments), the telling words are “what the government of the day is willing to do”.

Compromise is the essence of politics. If a government or parliament is not willing to accommodate reasonable positions of a representative Voice, then that is a failure of our politics. Not of the Voice.

A core ‘no’ argument is a reason to vote ‘yes’

The official “no” case also unwittingly highlights a key reason to support the referendum, come October. In a classic conservative move, the absence of detail about the internal structure of the Voice is taken to be a reason to be cautious and vote “no”.

But that detail is not important to the principle of a national representative Indigenous body. Excess detail at this point would contradict the principle of parliamentary supremacy, of which conservatives are most protective.

Worse, it would pre-empt the right of Indigenous peoples to hammer out the balance between regional and urban voices or established Indigenous structures and an elective principle.

That is significant, given the 1970s bodies mentioned above were very much constructs of executive governments. Each of the three earlier bodies became, if anything, unduly sensitive to regionalism. Such diversity is important; but a “national” Voice cannot be just a confederation of local concerns.

The Voice proposal does not undercut or establish a body to talk over local voices. These voices were central to its drafting, through consultation processes.

On the contrary, the 2021 Indigenous Voice Co-Design Report (which consulted widely to assay aspirations and models) plumps for two-way interaction between local, state and territory, and the national Voices.

Read more:
Regional communities were central to Uluru Statement, and they must also be for the Voice to Parliament

An enduring idea

The Voice proposal is simple. There are a thousand things it cannot do, and one significant thing that it promises to be.

As an embedded but flexible institution, it would channel an evolving national Indigenous politics, as a representative conduit of many voices speaking up to the behemoth that is the Commonwealth of Australia.

Importantly, it would also put an end to a long political process that has always intended to constitutionally recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a way that is meaningful to them – through a constitutionally enshrined Voice.

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

– ref. The Voice is a simple and enduring idea with a past – and a promise – https://theconversation.com/the-voice-is-a-simple-and-enduring-idea-with-a-past-and-a-promise-210640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anam Bilgrami, Research Fellow, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

Moving yourself or a loved one to a nursing home can be emotional and difficult. While some have their nursing home accommodation costs fully covered by the government (based on a means test), most will have to pay their own way.

The average lump sum room value is A$334,000. Choosing how to pay can make this time even more challenging, particularly for those with low financial literacy.

This is an important and complex decision. It can affect your income, wealth, means-tested aged care fee, and bequests. Here are some things to consider before you decide.

Read more:
Would you pass this financial literacy quiz? Many won’t – and it’s affecting expensive aged care decisions

3 ways to pay

You can pay for a nursing home room in three ways.

You can pay the entire room price as a one-off, refundable lump sum (a “refundable accommodation deposit”, sometimes shortened to RAD). This lump sum is refunded to the resident or their estate when the person leaves the nursing home (if they move or pass away).

The refund is guaranteed by the government, even if a provider goes bankrupt.

People who don’t want to pay a lump sum can instead choose rent-style, “daily accommodation payments” (sometimes shortened to DAP).

These are fixed, daily interest-only payments calculated on the total room price. The rate at which they are calculated is known as the “maximum permissible interest rate” or MPIR.

The maximum permissible interest rate is set by the government and is currently 7.9% per annum. The formula for a daily accommodation payment is (RAD × MPIR) ÷ 365.

Unlike lump sums, daily accommodation payments are not refunded.

The third option is a combination payment. This means paying part of the room price as a lump sum, with daily payments calculated on the remaining room amount. On leaving the home, the part lump sum is refunded to the resident or their estate.

With a combination payment, the consumer can choose to pay whatever amount they like for the lump sum.

The table below shows three different ways someone could pay for a room priced at $400,000.

So which is best? It’s impossible to say. It depends on a person’s circumstances, family situation, finances, preferences and expected length of stay.

Why do some people choose a lump sum?

One downside of a lump sum (or part lump sum) is that choosing this option means this money is not invested elsewhere.

By handing over the lump sum, for example, you forgo returns you could have made by investing this same money into property or stocks over the period of your nursing home stay.

On the other hand, paying lump sum means you get to avoid the daily interest payments (the 7.9% in the table above).

So you could potentially be better off paying a lump sum if you think there’s no way you could make investment returns on that money that are substantially higher than the interest you’d be charged through daily payments.

One advantage of choosing a lump sum is it’s considered an exempt asset for pension purposes; some people may get more pension if they pay the lump sum.

The lump sum, however, does count as an asset in determining the means-tested care fee.

And if you sell your house, remember any money leftover after you pay the lump sum will be counted as assets when you’re means-tested for the pension and means-tested care fee.

Why might some people prefer daily payments?

Not everyone can can afford a lump sum. Some may not want to sell their home to pay one. Some may want to hold onto their house if they think property prices may increase in the future.

Daily payments have recently overtaken lump sums as the most popular payment option, with 43% of people paying this way. However, recent interest rate rises may slow or reverse this trend.

And if a spouse or “protected person” – such as a dependant or relative that meets certain criteria – is still living in the house, it’s also exempt from assets tests for the pension and other aged care fees.

If the home is vacated by a protected person, its value is still excluded from the pension means test for two years (although rental income is still assessed).

If you do not anticipate a lengthy nursing home stay, daily payments may potentially be the easiest option. But it’s best to consult a financial adviser.

What does the research say?

My research with colleagues found many people choose the lump sum option simply because they can afford to.

Those owning residential property are more likely to pay a lump sum, mostly because they can sell a house to get the money.

People who consult financial advisers are also more likely to choose lump sums. This may be due to financial advice suggesting it’s tough to earn investment returns higher than what you’d save by avoiding the interest charged in the daily payment option.

Some aged care providers prefer lump sum payment since they use these to renovate or refurbish their facilities. But providers are not allowed to influence or control your decision on how to pay.

The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care recommended phasing out lump sums as a payment option, leaving only daily payments. While that would reduce the complexity of the payment decision and remove the incentive for providers to sway decisions, it would also reduce consumer choice.

Is there anything else I should know?

Some 60% of people we surveyed found the decision complex, while 54% said it was stressful.

It is best to seek professional financial advice before you decide.

Services Australia also runs a free Financial Information Service that can help you better understand your finances and the payment decision. But it does not give financial advice or prepare plans.

You have 28 days to choose a payment method after admission, and six months to pay if you choose a lump-sum payment.

In the interim, you will be charged daily interest payments on the room price.

Read more:
The private health insurance rebate has cost taxpayers $100 billion and only benefits some. Should we scrap it?

Anam Bilgrami 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. Lump sum, daily payments or a combination? What to consider when paying for nursing home accommodation – https://theconversation.com/lump-sum-daily-payments-or-a-combination-what-to-consider-when-paying-for-nursing-home-accommodation-207405