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

Political advertising for the Voice campaign is ramping up, particularly on social media. So, who is the target audience for each campaign’s ad, what are their key messages, and how effective will they be?

We research how people and organisations use stories to affect change through political advertising or entertainment. We looked at the different ads that have been released so far – by two groups campaigning for “no” and two groups campaigning for “yes” – to see how effective their communication strategies have been.

Advance Australia: fear

Some of the ads released by Advance Australia, a conservative political lobbying group, focus attention on prominent “yes” campaigners like Teela Reid and Thomas Mayo:

These ads aim to make us link Mayo, Reid and, by extension, the “yes” campaign itself with a sense of fear. Ominous music and fat-lettered words like “Rulebook,” “Force” and “Powerful” try to elicit fear of what the other camp would do if the Voice came to be.

Research on the use of fear in negative political communication shows it to be effective in influencing people. Fear is an intense, powerful emotion that encourages passivity – we tend to prefer the status quo if we are afraid. Such a response is seldom reasoned, which can make it difficult to counter in advertising.

The ad above seems to be directed at undecided voters in an effort to harden attitudes against the Voice and encourage them to vote “no”.

Read more:
The campaign pamphlets for the Voice don’t offer new perspectives. Do they still serve a purpose?

Blak Sovereign Movement: a different argument

The Blak Sovereign Movement, which advocates for sovereignty for First Nations people, relies on arguments as a means of persuading voters.

The group wants to persuade Australian voters to vote against the Voice, underpinned by three key premises:

• First Nations people have not given free, prior, informed consent to hold a referendum on the Voice

• First Nations people have never surrendered sovereignty

• First Nations people do not want constitutional recognition without a treaty.

The argument follows a “bottom-up” structure. This means it starts with a specific statement idea (to hold a Voice referendum, Australia needs consent from First Nations people), and from this, a more general, logical conclusion is derived (that it is better to have a treaty first).

Arguments are effective when voters are well-informed and highly motivated. Whether or not this argument resonates with voters depends in part on
whether they believe the premise – that a treaty can happen before a Voice.

The Uluru Dialogue: anticipated pride

The Uluru Dialogue is a group of First Nations people from across Australia who have the mandate of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The key message at the centre of their ads is anticipated pride if the nation votes “yes” on the referendum.

Pride is an emotion regularly exploited in advertising campaigns. Here, it is used to remind voters they can help create a future, more harmonious Australian nation and that will be something of which they can be proud. Voters are essentially being told they can create history.

This emotion has been used effectively in other campaigns to drum up support during wartime. It was also used in advertising during the pandemic to mobilise people to “do their bit” for their country, first through physical distancing and later by getting vaccinated.

Read more:
In a Voice campaign marked by confusing, competing claims, there’s a better way to educate voters

Yes23: fairness

Yes23, a group advocating for Indigenous constitutional recognition, has turned to fairness in its advertising.

Seen as a value Australians hold dear, fairness can play an important role in influencing voters.

Science suggests the key aspect to fairness is integrity. In this ad, Yes23 touches on this sentiment by asking Australians to adhere to certain ethical principles by joining the cause.

Which ads will be most effective?

The fear aroused by Advance Australia will only work provided people perceive Reid and Mayo as a threat, and feel that voting “no” will stop the First Nations movement for political change.

Thinking deeply is necessary for the arguments of the Blak Sovereign Movement to be persuasive. Yet, the Voice is extraordinary enough that some people find it difficult to form an opinion about it that takes full consideration of all the facts.

The Uluru Dialogue uses anticipated pride in order to attract votes. The success of this approach depends mainly on voters’ desire to make a good impression, or be better than others.

Yes23’s appeal to fairness can have a significant impact on the way people vote on the Voice. Feelings of fairness are instinctive and wide-ranging emotions, and ones that are becoming more important in our increasingly complex society.

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. Fear vs pride: how do the Voice to Parliament ads try to influence voters? And is it effective? – https://theconversation.com/fear-vs-pride-how-do-the-voice-to-parliament-ads-try-to-influence-voters-and-is-it-effective-209834

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glen Nagle, Outreach Manager, Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, CSIRO

In 1977, five years before ET asked to “phone home”, two robotic spacecraft began their own journey into space.

Almost 46 years later, after exploring the Solar System and beyond, one of those spacecraft – Voyager 2 – has lost contact with Earth.

All communication with Voyager 2 goes through NASA’s Deep Space Station 43, a 70-metre radio dish at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex operated by CSIRO.

Contact was lost more than a week ago. After intense efforts at NASA and here in Canberra, we have detected a faint “heartbeat” signal from the craft – and we’re confident of re-establishing full contact.

Through the Solar System and beyond

NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft – Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 – were designed to complete a “grand tour” of the Solar System, visiting the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Throughout the billions of kilometres of their journeys, the Voyagers stayed in touch with Earth through the three antennas of the Deep Space Network. One is in Madrid, Spain; a second in Goldstone, California; and the third in Canberra.

Having completed their tasks in 1989, both Voyager 1 and 2 have long since left our Solar System behind. They are now exploring interstellar space – the space between the stars.

Voyager 1 is currently 24 billion kilometres from home, with Voyager 2 not far behind at 20 billion kilometres.

Whispers from space

On July 21, a series of planned commands sent to Voyager 2 inadvertently caused the spacecraft’s antenna to point two degrees away from Earth. As a result, the spacecraft is currently unable to receive commands or transmit any data back to Earth.

Mishaps like this are not uncommon in space exploration. The NASA team is expert at problem solving, and has a good track record of keeping spacecraft flying long after their prime mission has ended.

Read more:
From the edge of the Solar System, Voyager probes are still talking to Australia after 40 years

NASA’s science and engineering teams have dealt with communication drop-outs before, with both Voyagers. Their efforts have already quadrupled the planned 12-year life of the craft, so they don’t think we’ve heard the last from Voyager 2.

It’s an enormous achievement that we still have contact with these spacecraft at all, given their enormous distance from Earth and the relative weakness of the signal received through the big antenna dishes in Canberra. Even when Voyager 2 is pointing at Earth, its signal is already a whisper from space, billions of times weaker than the power generated by a tiny watch battery.

A heartbeat 20 billion kilometres from home

The last time Voyager 2 was out of contact was in March 2020, when the dish at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex was shut down for a scheduled 11-month upgrade project. Ahead of the shutdown, commands were sent to Voyager 2 to program the spacecraft to maintain operations without needing to hear from Earth for an extended period.

Canberra’s Deep Space Station 43 is the only antenna in the world that can communicate directly with both Voyagers. Its sister stations in the northern hemisphere are unable to “see” Voyager 2, because Earth is in the way.

Since Voyager 2’s antenna was tweaked off target, we have been using Deep Space Station 43 to listen intently for any signal. Eventually this effort paid off, with the detection of the craft’s carrier tone – a “heartbeat” indicating Voyager 2 is still transmitting.

Now attempts will be made to relay commands to Voyager 2 and tell it to re-orient its antenna towards Earth.

If those attempts fail, Voyager 2 is already programmed to use the Sun and the bright star Canopus to re-orient itself several times each year. The next scheduled reset will occur on October 15, which should automatically enable communications to resume.

Into interstellar space

The Canberra team feels a very close connection to this distant traveller. We have been with it on every step of its journey so far, and plan to continue to provide mission support for however long the mission lasts.

Voyager 2 was launched on August 20 1977 and reached Jupiter in July 1979, a few months after Voyager 1. It proceeded to Saturn for a flyby of the ringed planet in 1981, and then had encounters with Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in August 1989, ending the so-called “grand tour”.

Read more:
After 45 years, the 5-billion-year legacy of the Voyager 2 interstellar probe is just beginning

As both spacecraft were in good health, they were given an extended mission to reach the edge of our Solar System, where the influence of the Sun’s energy ends. The Voyagers are now in the “clear air” of interstellar space and can, for the first time, make direct measurements of this environment.

The data they have returned are changing our understanding of the Universe. The teams at NASA and here in Canberra are confident there is more science and discoveries to come, when Voyager 2 once again phones home.

Glen Nagle 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. Voyager 2 has lost track of Earth. Only one antenna in the world can help it ‘phone home’ – https://theconversation.com/voyager-2-has-lost-track-of-earth-only-one-antenna-in-the-world-can-help-it-phone-home-210882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Lecturer in Social and Global Studies, RMIT University

How many different ways are there to say “unprecedented”?

Never before has a sitting or former president of the United States been indicted on federal charges. Former and aspiring President Donald J. Trump has now been indicted not once, but three times: once for alleged crimes committed before he assumed office, once for alleged crimes after he left the White House and, as of this morning, once for crimes allegedly committed during his time in office.

The latest charges relate to Trump’s concerted efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. They arose from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s role in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

A grand jury found there was enough evidence to bring forward four federal charges, arguing Trump engaged in “three criminal conspiracies” in the pursuit of “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results”. The charges include: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

Trump is scheduled to appear before a federal court in Washington, DC, on Thursday afternoon (Friday morning Australian time).

In a statement delivered shortly after the indictment was revealed, Jack Smith said the Department of Justice would seek a “speedy trial” – much as he did last time the former president was indicted.

But even if this case, along with the others, does go to trial with all possible speed, none of this is likely to be resolved before the nomination process is complete, and may well continue into the 2024 election.

Federal charges on the campaign trail

Even in what we might unsatisfactorily call a “normal” US presidential election cycle, nominees and results are notoriously difficult to predict. Candidates rise and fall quickly – presumed heirs to the nomination riding high early in the cycle can fall into irrelevance before the primaries even begin. The unprecedented nature of Trump’s second campaign for the Republican nomination blows all efforts to predict any outcomes out of the water.

Right now, Trump is following his familiar playbook – claiming this is all part of an extended conspiracy to keep him out of office by a “liberal elite”. Leaning into a narrative of victimhood, Trump expertly pushes the buttons of his base, and high-profile members of the Republican Party race to defend him, again.

Read more:
Yes, federal charges against a former president are unprecedented – but so is Trump’s political power

Their narrative is consistent and practised: the “left”, apparently convinced it cannot beat Trump in an election, is seeking to take him out of the running. Trump acolyte Senator J.D. Vance, for example, claimed President Joe Biden would “rather throw Donald Trump in prison than face him at the ballot box”.

Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, undoubtedly knows none of that is true. He would also likely know that even if Trump were to be thrown behind bars, there are no legal obstacles to him facing Biden in an election, or even serving as president from a prison cell.

Trump and his supporters insist on his innocence. In a statement released after the indictment, his campaign insisted Trump “has always followed the law and the Constitution”. Never mind that the former president has stated, publicly and clearly, that he would happily “terminate” the Constitution to suit his own ends.

Unsurprisingly, Trump supporters are undeterred. Trump remains, by a long way, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Stake are high for the entire US

Unlike the first time around, if he makes it into the White House again, Trump will come prepared. His team’s plans to purge the federal bureaucracy, centralise power and further undermine democratic processes – in concert with similar efforts already occurring at the state level across the country – are all aimed at consolidating and entrenching Trump’s power.

The Trump team is openly planning for a second term that would catastrophically undermine the institutions and processes of American democracy. At the most basic level, that is what is at stake for the United States with these charges and in this election cycle.

As this most recent indictment put it, processes like the peaceful transition of power are “foundational to the United States democratic process”. While American democracy has always been shaky and uneven, as the indictment continues, it “had operated in a peaceful but orderly manner for more than 130 years”.

Taken together, all this means the United States – and the world – faces another unprecedented election cycle. In all likelihood, there will be more indictments and multiple trials, even as the compounding effects of global boiling reveal themselves, and maybe even as we discover that we are not, in fact, alone in the universe.

There is no telling, really, how this polycrisis will play out as the United States faces its most important elections in a century.

Unprecedented, indeed.

Read more:
For Joe Biden, the indictment of Donald Trump carries a heavy responsibility – and a risk

Emma Shortis is a member of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN).

– ref. With yet another indictment, Donald Trump takes us into ‘unprecedented’ territory once again – https://theconversation.com/with-yet-another-indictment-donald-trump-takes-us-into-unprecedented-territory-once-again-210876

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Soanes, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Dodging dog poo along the local path has become something of an Olympic sport of late. I thought I’d count path-side dog poo on my bike ride the other day and gave up after counting 30 piles in the first kilometre. It really does feel a bit out of control at the moment.

We know leaving dog poo lying around is bad for human health. But have you ever wondered what all this mess means for native wildlife?

It turns out pet poo – including both dog and cat poo – can have a number of negative effects on native plants and animals. And some of these might surprise you.

Read more:
Urban owls are losing their homes. So we’re 3D printing them new ones

1. Unwelcome fertiliser

Just like adding manure to the garden, pet poo left on the ground is a fertiliser. But not all plants thrive on excess.

Australian soils are naturally nutrient-poor and native plants and fungi are incredibly well-adapted to these conditions.

Yes, wildlife go to the toilet in nature too. But the difference is they also eat in nature – they’re part of the system.

Our pets, on the other hand, are fed nutrient-rich meals in our backyards and kitchens and then deliver these outside nutrients into the ecosystem. Pet poo can quickly find its way into waterways, which can drive algal blooms.

Researchers in Berlin estimated that if nobody picked up after their dogs, more than 11kg of nitrogen and 4kg of phosphorous per hectare would be added to urban nature reserves each year – levels that would be illegal for most farms.

2. Lurking disease

Pet cats aren’t off the hook. If you have a roaming kitty, they could be spreading toxoplasmosis – a disease that can cause serious illness and even death in native mammals.

Symptoms include blindness and seizures, and have been observed in kangaroos, wallabies, possums, wombats, bandicoots and bilbies. The disease even increases “risky” behaviours, with infected animals more prone to wandering around the open or being unafraid of predators.

It’s morbidly fascinating. The parasite causing the disease, Toxoplasma gondii, has two phases to its lifecycle. In the first phase, it’s happy hanging out inside pretty much any warm-blooded animal. But to complete the second phase, it has to jump to a cat. The easiest way to do this is to make your current host easy prey, hence the symptoms that debilitate native wildlife or make them prone to dangerous decisions.

Infected cats shed the parasite in their poo. So whenever native animals can come into contact with cat poo, they’re at risk. Researchers from the University of British Columbia found “wildlife living near dense urban areas were more likely to be infected”, citing domestic cats as the most likely culprit.

Worse, the parasite can lay dormant in poo for as long as 18 months, waiting for a host to jump into.

3. Eau de predator

Finally, and probably the most obvious: dog poo might signal to wildlife that predators are about and they should stay away.

Even though dogs are a new predator to Australian wildlife, our native species have had enough experience existing alongside dingoes to consider your pooch a threat.

Recent research shows that in 83% of tests, Australian native mammals recognised dogs as a threat – with dog poo being a common trigger.

This means the signs and smells your dog leaves out and about can affect the behaviour of native wildlife.

For example, bandicoots in Sydney were less likely to visit backyards that had a resident dog, even if it was kept inside at night.

‘What wildlife? What nature? We live in the city!’

It might surprise you to know we share our cities and towns with a huge range of native animals – even rare and endangered ones.

And as people have paid more attention to the nature in their local neighbourhood in recent years, we’re becoming more aware of the wildlife living right beneath our noses.

These species often depend on a seemingly rag-tag collection of urban green patches such as nature strips, utility easements, sports ovals and public gardens.

If these are all littered with smelly signs for wildlife to stay away, places safe for wildlife become even rarer in our cities. Reining in the pet poo problem is an easy way to reduce our impact.

The old adage “take only photographs, leave only footprints” is a good rule of thumb. Pick up after your pet and, importantly, take it with you to the nearest bin – don’t leave plastic bags dangling from fences like ornaments on the world’s worst Christmas tree.

Read more:
The 39 endangered species in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and other Australian cities

Kylie Soanes 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. Leaving dog and cat poo lying around isn’t just gross. It’s a problem for native plants and animals, too – https://theconversation.com/leaving-dog-and-cat-poo-lying-around-isnt-just-gross-its-a-problem-for-native-plants-and-animals-too-208288

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Hajdu, Director of The Sia Furler Institute, University of Adelaide

The 19th century concept of authorship revolved around the romantic view of the artist as a lone genius. In this model, every stroke of the brush, every note played and every word written was the product of a singular creative mind, bearing the unique imprint of its creator.

However, the landscape of artistic creation began to shift dramatically with the advent of the 20th century, with artists like Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and William S. Burroughs pioneering new creative approaches such as aleatoricism, the cut-up technique and “randomness” which began recast the role of the author.

Now, AI technology looks likely to cause as much disruption as the previous revolutions combined.

Just as the artists of the last revolution grappled with their age’s social and spiritual upheavals, our artists today must rise to the challenge and engage the shock of the new that now confronts us all. AI will force artists (along with the rest of us) to examine what it means to be a “creator” and, ultimately, perhaps what it means to be human.

Read more:
Computer-written scripts and deepfake actors: what’s at the heart of the Hollywood strikes against generative AI

Disrupting the artistic landscape

Conceptual art pioneer Marcel Duchamp radically altered the artistic landscape with his work, Fountain (1917) – a urinal signed “R. Mutt”.

He argued that art wasn’t confined to traditional craftsmanship but could spring from the act of selection and presentation.

Composer John Cage took this artistic revolution a step further. His composition 4’33 (1952), where the performer remains silent for four minutes and 33 seconds, is a powerful example of a work that questions the definition of music itself. Cage’s piece isn’t just any random stretch of silence – it is art because Cage himself, a human, framed it, turning the act of listening into a creative process.

Following suit, William S. Burroughs disrupted traditional narratives with his cut-up technique, emphasising the non-linear progression of storytelling and demonstrating that authorship could extend to the reassembling of pre-existing material.

David Bowie famously used this technique for writing lyrics in some of his songs, especially in his work from the 1970s. Songs from albums like Diamond Dogs and Young Americans used cutups to create distinctive, unexpected, and often cryptic lyrics. Bowie would cut up his writings or other texts, rearrange them, and use the resulting fragments as the starting point for his songwriting. This allowed him to break free from linear thought and traditional songwriting cliches and to explore more abstract and unpredictable forms of expression.

These early disruptions laid the groundwork for today’s art and machine learning intersection. They questioned the traditional concept of authorship. Now, technology is challenging it again.

Moreover, this time around, even the role of the audience is likely to change.

Modern art

Jason M. Allen, a digital artist from Pueblo West, became one of the first creators to win a prize for AI generated art. His role was to input a text prompt into the AI tool, which then transformed it into a hyper-realistic graphic based on its training from millions of previously processed images.

In this process, Allen’s creativity came into play in formulating the correct prompts to instruct the AI, effectively guiding or curating the AI’s output.

In this case, the artist becomes a sort of co-pilot, steering the AI’s capabilities to produce a desired output. This new process raises questions about authorship and authenticity in art. It underscores how technology redefines the traditional artistic process, with artists becoming more like orchestrators of complex AI systems.

Modern artists like Laurie Anderson have begun to harness machine learning to create novel works. Anderson’s work, Scroll (2021), is a fusion of religious text and her distinctive linguistic style generated through AI.

In both of these examples, the artist functions like a curator. The manual toil of writing, drawing or composing is replaced by an iterative process of discovery, filtering and refinement of instructions to the system.

These artists are pioneering a shift in the artist’s role. Instead of being the sole creators, artists now guide, shape and direct the creative output of machine learning systems. This transition certainly presents challenges, but it also uncovers a world of new artistic competencies and opportunities.

The future

Looking to the future, we can expect the interplay of art and technology to deepen. Artists who embrace this ever-evolving landscape will contribute their unique perspectives to the development of machine learning and shape our collective relationship with it.

This time around, the revolution will also extend to the audience’s role. Passive viewers become participants in the making and remaking of the art. The very same AI systems that empower artists can empower the audience.

Read more:
Synthetic futures: my journey into the emotional, poetic world of AI art making

Audience members can utilise AI tools to generate art, even if they do not have traditional artistic skills. AI democratises the art-making process, making it accessible to anyone with access to the technology.

This could significantly expand the art world, as more people can become creators, contributing their own perspectives and ideas. One example is a project called Tamper (2019), developed by John Underkoffler for the AMPAS, Getty and other museums. This project lets museum visitors build collages out of material taken from a museum’s collection.

We must prepare the coming generations for this rapidly changing creative landscape, fostering their ability to co-pilot with AI systems. As we move further into the age of machine learning, artists must reclaim their position at the forefront of creative thought and innovation.

Thomas Hajdu received funding from CSIRO to examine educational opportunities at the intersection of creativity and AI.
Thomas Hajdu has collaborated with William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson and John Underkophler.

– ref. From Duchamp to AI: the transformation of authorship in art – https://theconversation.com/from-duchamp-to-ai-the-transformation-of-authorship-in-art-210059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Finn Cameron Gillies Parker, PhD candidate, University of Sydney

Humans have trained domestic animals for thousands of years, to help with farming, transport, or hunting.

But can we train wild animals to help us in conservation work? Wild animals can be taught to recognise dangerous predators, avoid toxic food, and stay away from people.

However, there are few examples of using classical learning techniques to train free-living animals to act in a way that benefits their ecosystem. In our newly published study in Biological Conservation, we trained wild Australian native predatory rats to recognise an unfamiliar species of cockroach prey. It worked – in a simulated cockroach invasion, this training increased predation rates by the rats.

Read more:
Pest plants and animals cost Australia around $25 billion a year – and it will get worse

Growing number of aliens

As humans have engaged in global trade, various species have moved across otherwise impossible-to-cross geographical barriers and into new environments. These species are known as alien species, and their number continues to grow.

Some alien species are relatively harmless in their new environment, and can even positively affect the ecosystem. However, many others have costly and devastating impacts on biodiversity and agriculture.

Not all species that arrive in new environments become established or spread. Even fewer of these species become invasive. Yet we don’t really know why some species are successful and others aren’t, and there are many different theories. One reason some species fail to thrive in new environments is when native species resist, either by eating or simply outcompeting the arrivals.

However, native species can only resist against alien species if they can respond appropriately, which they may not do if they’ve never encountered the invaders before (biologists call this being “naive”).

Naivete can occur when two species with no recent evolutionary or ecological history come into contact with one another. Prey naivete is well documented, and the effect of alien predators on native prey that can’t recognise or escape them is significant.

But the role of native predator naivete in biological invasions is less clear. Native predators may not recognise an alien prey species or lack the ability to hunt them effectively. Sometimes predators may simply prefer to hunt their natural prey. When predators are naive, alien prey can establish and spread unchecked.

Read more:
1.7 million foxes, 300 million native animals killed every year: now we know the damage foxes wreak

Speeding up a natural process

Native predators do eventually learn to hunt alien prey, but this process can take a long time when prey aren’t encountered often.

We wanted to know if we could speed up learning by exposing a free-living native predator to the scent of a novel prey species paired with a reward.

We conducted our study on bushland in the outskirts of Sydney, New South Wales, using native bush rats (Rattus fuscipes) as our model predator. Our chosen alien prey species, speckled cockroaches (Nauphoeta cinerea), don’t live in Sydney and surrounds, so rats have no experience with them.

We housed cockroaches in small boxes for days at a time with absorbent paper on the floor to collect odour. When using them as prey, we froze and tethered the cockroaches to tent pegs, to avoid accidental introduction of cockroaches in the area.

We confirmed the presence of bush rats at 24 locations, and randomly allocated 12 as training sites and 12 as non-training (control) sites. At the training sites, we placed a metal tea strainer with the cockroach smell, and three dead cockroaches as a reward. The tea strainer and cockroaches were tethered to a tent peg in the ground so rats couldn’t carry them away.

We used cameras to observe the rat behaviour, and checked the training stations every one to two days. We also moved the stations so the rats wouldn’t just learn to associate the reward with the location.

Trained for an invasion

Immediately after training, we conducted a simulated invasion at all sites. The invasion involved ten dead and tethered cockroach “invaders”. The number of “surviving” (that is, uneaten) cockroaches was recorded each day for five days.

We compared prey survival rates in sites with trained and untrained rats, and found cockroach prey in training sites were 46% more likely to be eaten than prey in non-training sites.

We also found the number of cockroaches eaten during training was a significant predictor for how many were eaten on the first night of the “invasion”.

We also wanted to ensure we had not just attracted more rats to training sites during the training process. To do this, immediately after the invasion we used cameras to compare rat visits to all sites using a peanut oil attractant. There was no difference between training and non-training sites.

Our study is the first to train free-living predators to hunt species they’ve never seen before. It shows the potential for training our native species to fight biological invasions. More broadly, we think our study adds to the growing evidence that training animals can help to address a variety of problems, such as birds picking up litter and rats sniffing out landmines.

Read more:
Alien invaders: the illegal reptile trade is a serious threat to Australia

Peter Banks receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The Herman Slade Foundation, Birdlife Australia, Northern Beaches Council and Manaaki Whenua.

Finn Cameron Gillies Parker 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. Unique study shows we can train wild predators to hunt alien species they’ve never seen before – https://theconversation.com/unique-study-shows-we-can-train-wild-predators-to-hunt-alien-species-theyve-never-seen-before-210644

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato

Humans typically reserve their practices of mourning for loved ones. But extending these rituals of grief and loss to non-human animals (and our shared habitats) can also help us appreciate being part of the natural world, not separate from it.

So the recent decision to include extinct species in New Zealand’s Bird of the Year – now Bird of the Century – competition offers an opportunity to grieve in another way. In turn, this may help foster an ethic of care for the environment and greater appreciation of what may yet be saved.

The competition began 18 years ago as a modest campaign by environmental group Forest & Bird to draw attention to native birds, many of which are endangered. It has since grown into a national phenomenon.

Various bird species have their own “campaign managers”, celebrities and politicians publicly endorse their favourite feathered creature, and tens of thousands of votes are cast every year.

The hotly contested election has not been without controversy, either. In 2019, for example, the discovery of hundreds of votes being registered from Russia led to claims of election meddling. In 2021, it made headlines for allowing a native bat to enter – to the dismay of many, the bat won.

Last year, the organisers were even threatened with a lawsuit over their refusal to include the extinct huia – a bird last seen in the wild in 1907. A concerned environmentalist wrote to Forest & Bird to say: “We need to be urgently reminded of what we have already lost, if we are to minimise further loss.”

This year’s competition – which opens for voting on October 30 and also marks Forest & Bird’s centenary – answers that call.

Ecological grief

There are five contenders that have died out: the huia, mātuhituhi (bush wren), tutukiwi (South Island snipe), piopio (turnagras) and whēkau (laughing owl). Explaining their rationale, the competition organisers say:

Eighty-two percent of our living native bird species are threatened or at risk of extinction. We cannot let any more end up with the tragic fate of the laughing owl or the huia.

Those five birds represent only a small proportion of the total birdlife lost since first human settlement in Aotearoa around 750 years ago. Fossil record research has concluded that, of the 174 endemic bird species present then, 72 have become extinct.

Adding extinct birds to the Bird of the Year ballot – even if only five – echoes other, similar efforts around the world by people finding new ways to express grief over the loss of nature.

As the global climate crisis rapidly transforms the environment, there have been commemorative practices and rituals more often associated with human loss: funerals and memorial plaques for extinct animal species and vanished glaciers, and monuments to lost landscapes.

Read more:
Life in maars: why it’s worth protecting a spectacular fossil site NZ almost lost to commercial mining interests

Because ecological grief differs from human-centred grief in important ways, it can have an upside. For one, it not only addresses an absence in the present, but it can also encourage pre-emptive action to stop losses yet to come.

Furthermore, ecological grief is often accompanied by feelings of guilt over the harm humans have done to the environment, which can create a strong sense of responsibility for nature, as survey research has shown.

Entanglement with nature

Beyond helping prevent further loss of birdlife, commemorating extinct species through the Bird of the Year competition encourages an understanding of the connections that bind all lifeforms together.

Of course, such ideas only seem new from a Western perspective. Despite the violent disruptions of colonisation, Māori and other Indigenous peoples around the world have continued to hold worldviews where biological beings are interlinked in a complex web of life.

Read more:
Dead as the moa: oral traditions show that early Māori recognised extinction

Expressions of ecological grieving, such as whakataukī (proverbs) mourning the loss of the moa, play an important role in maintaining these worldviews.

The decision to include extinct species in the Bird of the Year competition will likely cause controversy. But saving the planet means moving away from our usual perspectives and ways of thinking.

Olli Hellmann 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. Call of the huia: how NZ’s bird of the century contest helps us express ‘ecological grief’ – https://theconversation.com/call-of-the-huia-how-nzs-bird-of-the-century-contest-helps-us-express-ecological-grief-210698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christobel Saunders, James Stewart Chair Of Surgery, The University of Melbourne

Around one in seven Australian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their life, with 20,000 new breast cancers diagnosed each week.

Mammograms are a key detection tool for early-stage breast cancer and involve placing the breast tissue between two plates and then doing an x-ray.

Scans from mammograms are usually analysed by two doctors. But a Swedish study, published today in the Lancet, found using artificial intelligence (AI) to help analyse the scans detected 20% more cancers and reduced the workload by 44%.

However there is a risk it could detect small cancers in women that would never cause harm, resulting in unnecessary treatment.

How are breast cancers currently detected?

Breast screening using mammography was introduced in Australia more than 30 years ago to detect cancers earlier, allowing more effective and often less invasive treatments. Free mammograms are available to women over the age of 40 and are recommended for all women aged 50-74.

Currently, a mammogram is studied (or “read”) by two doctors (called radiologists) who decide whether the mammogram looks normal or not. If any abnormality is seen, the woman is referred for further tests to a BreastScreen assessment clinic. These tests may include more mammograms, ultrasounds, needle biopsies and sometimes surgery.

Most of those referred are cleared of cancer, but around one in ten are eventually diagnosed with a breast cancer.

This reading and assessment requires a lot of expertise and time, and is performed by an ageing and diminishing workforce who are retiring and leaving the profession. Coupled with a growing population eligible for screening, this adds up to a perfect test bed for an AI solution.

Read more:
Biopsies confirm a breast cancer diagnosis after an abnormal mammogram – but structural racism may lead to lengthy delays

What did the researchers test?

The Swedish study followed 80,000 women aged 40–80 attending a screening program in one area of Sweden.

The researchers set out to test whether AI could better direct a radiologist’s attention to a suspicious, but often very subtle, abnormal area on a mammogram, using a commercially available AI-supported mammogram reading system.

They also looked at whether using AI could replace one of the two radiologists who normally read the mammogram. This would make the process more efficient.

The study was randomised so half of the women received normal screening protocols and the other half the AI-assisted protocol.

So what did they find?

The early findings are very encouraging. In those in whom AI was used, if the AI suggested a suspicious area, the mammogram was still read by two radiologists. But if the AI did not see a suspicious area then only one “live” radiologist read the mammogram.

This saved nearly six months of radiologists’ time. There were 36,886 fewer screenings read by radiologists in the AI supported group (46,345 vs 83,231), resulting in a 44% reduction in the radiologists’ screening workload.

Using the AI software to direct the radiologist attention to abnormal areas also seemed to improve the accuracy of their reading. The AI-assisted reading meant slightly more women were referred for further assessment (2.2% versus 2%) and of those assessed from the AI group, more cancers were seen.

In total, 244 women (28%) from the AI-supported group were found to have cancer, compared to 203 women (25%) in the standard double reading without AI.

Overall, the AI program picked up one extra cancer for each 1,000 women screened (six per 1,000 vs five per 1,000).

Read more:
Cervical, breast, heart, bowel: here’s what women should be getting screened regularly

Risk of overdiagnosis

But just detecting more cancers is not necessarily a good thing if the cancers found are tiny, non-aggressive tumours that may never grow to harm the woman.

Of course what we really want to know is can any new test improve survival from cancer – and make the burden of treatment easier.

“Interval cancers” are faster-growing aggressive cancers that turn up between mammograms. Studies often use the detection of interval cancers as a surrogate for improving cancer survival. But it’s unclear if AI can detect more of these interval cancers.

Until we understand more about these extra cancers the AI detects, these remain open questions.

So, despite the positive signals from this study, we are still not ready to use it in our screening programs without more mature data form this and other work, including data that currently is being collected in Australia.

Read more:
29,000 cancers overdiagnosed in Australia in a single year

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

– ref. AI can help detect breast cancer. But we don’t yet know if it can improve survival rates – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-help-detect-breast-cancer-but-we-dont-yet-know-if-it-can-improve-survival-rates-210800

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beatrice Alba, Lecturer, School of Psychology, Deakin University

Despite progress towards greater gender equality, many people remain stubbornly attached to old-fashioned gender roles in romantic relationships between women and men.

Conventions around heterosexual romance dictate that men should approach women to initiate romantic interactions, ask women out on dates, pay on dates, make marriage proposals, and that women should take their husband’s surname after marriage.

While some might view these conventions as sexist and anachronistic, others find them captivating and romantic.

They reflect differentiated gender roles in which men take the lead and women follow. Feminist critiques of such practices argue that they reinforce male dominance over women in intimate relationships.

So we set out to find out why women might still be attracted to these conventions in the modern world. We surveyed 458 single women in Australia on their preference for these conventions, as well as a range of other attitudes and desires.

The study examined whether these conventions might simply be a benign reflection of women’s personal preferences for partners and relationships. But we also considered the possibility that they might be underpinned by sexist attitudes.

Read more:
No, chivalry is not dead – but it’s about time it was

What do women want from men?

One possible reason women prefer these romance conventions is simply because they are traditional, and people like traditions. However, many of these conventions only really took hold in the 20th century.

Some provide a handy script that we can follow in romantic interactions. They help us to navigate the uncertainty of the situation by removing some of the guess work about who should do what.

Another possibility is that men’s enactment of these romance conventions indicates their likelihood of being a committed and invested partner. It may also signal he has resources available to invest in a relationship (and family), which research shows women find appealing in a partner.

Women like ‘nice’ men

We considered whether women’s endorsement of these romance conventions might be explained by their personal preferences for partners and relationships. Specifically, we predicted that the preference for these conventions would be greater among women with a stronger desire to find a committed and invested partner.

We found women’s desire for an invested partner was indeed correlated with a greater preference for these conventions. This preference was also stronger among those who favoured a long-term committed relationship and disfavoured short-term casual sexual relationships.

We also investigated women’s attraction to dominant men, since these conventions require men to take the lead and play a more active role in romantic encounters. As predicted, women’s attraction to more dominant characteristics in a partner – such as being assertive and powerful – was also correlated with a greater preference for these conventions.

Read more:
Women show sexual preference for tall, dominant men – so is gender inequality inevitable?

But is it sexist?

Previous research has found that sexist attitudes and feminist identity are also relevant.

We found women who preferred these romance conventions were less likely to identify as a feminist. They were also higher on benevolent sexism, which is a chivalrous form of sexism that idealises women, but also views them as less competent and needing men’s protection. We even found that they were higher on hostile sexism, which is a more overt form of sexism towards women.

Importantly, we analysed all these variables together to reveal the strongest predictor of the preference for these romance conventions.

We found women’s desire for an invested partner and a long-term relationship no longer accounted for women’s preference for these conventions. However, women who were less inclined to short-term casual sexual relationships were still more likely to prefer these conventions.

The strongest predictor of the preference for these conventions was benevolent sexism. This is somewhat unsurprising, since these conventions look very much like expressions of benevolent sexism in a romantic context.

Most strikingly, overt or hostile sexism still predicted women’s preference for these conventions.

In short, sexism stood out beyond women’s personal preferences for partners and relationships. This ultimately supports this idea that these conventions may be underpinned by sexist attitudes.

Is romance incompatible with gender equality?

Old-fashioned romance might seem benign and even enchanting. But some might find it problematic if it reinforces inequality between women and men in romantic relationships. We know that even subtle forms of everyday sexism and benevolent sexism are harmful to women’s wellbeing and success.

As society moves towards greater gender equality, we may become increasingly aware of how rigid and restrictive gender roles play out in the context of private relationships.

Some might fear that increasing gender equality means the death of romance. But romance among those with diverse genders and sexualities should reassure us that it doesn’t require a universal and pre-determined script.

Perhaps a more critical understanding of ourselves might help us relinquish our attachment to following a simplistic formula set by others.

Embracing individual differences over inflexible conventions may also allow us the freedom to explore alternatives. We might start to see more egalitarian, or even female-led, romance.

Beatrice Alba 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. Is traditional heterosexual romance sexist? – https://theconversation.com/is-traditional-heterosexual-romance-sexist-210546

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ty Ferguson, Research Associate, University of South Australia

As we revel in much-cherished festive occasions and weekly get-togethers, Australians are unwittingly bearing an increasingly heavy cost – an expanding waistline.

Our new study offers a new perspective on this. We asked 375 adults aged 18 to 65 years to wear a fitness tracker and weigh themselves, preferably daily but at least weekly. The research, published in JAMA Open Network, uncovers the subtle yet significant weight gain patterns of everyday Australians.

When we compare this new research with patterns from the northern hemisphere, it suggests it’s holidays and festive occasions – not just cooler weather – that drives weight gain. Australians show a yo-yo pattern of weight fluctuation that’s associated with poor weight control and poorer health overall.

Read more:
The last 5 kilos really are the hardest to lose. Here’s why, and what you can do about it

A global concern

Obesity is a major health concern worldwide. In Australia, an alarming two-thirds of adults are now overweight or obese. On a global stage, we have some of the highest rates of excess weight and obesity – with OECD data ranking us 8th highest out of the 41 OECD countries based on the most recent data.

People who are overweight or have obesity are at an increased risk of preventable chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and depression and anxiety.

Recognising and understanding the factors that contribute to weight gain are the crucial first steps towards developing effective interventions. To explore this complex issue, we embarked on an in-depth exploration of how the weight of Australian adults fluctuates over a year. What we found was intriguing when compared to overseas studies.

Happy holidays and weighty weekends

Firstly, we noted a prominent weight gain during festive periods. Easter, a time of chocolate eggs and hot cross buns, saw a an average gain of about 244g (0.29% of average participant body weight). The Australian summer months associated with Christmas and New Year, feasts and festivities, had an even larger average increase of approximately 546g (0.65% of average participant body weight).

We also found a weekly cycle, with weight peaking on the weekend, when many people are likely letting their hair down after a busy work week and may be drinking and eating more.

While our study used total body weight, measured using scales, there are other options for tracking body composition. These include waist circumference, skin fold or bioelectric impedence. But these require differing levels of expertise to use.

Read more:
I’ve indulged over the holidays. If I’m healthy the rest of the time, does it matter?

How our weight pattern yo-yos

Seasonal variations were the most striking.

Unlike our counterparts in Europe and the United States, who typically gain weight in winter and lose it in summer, Australians follow a more complex cycle.

Our study, the first to look at to examine changes in weight across a full calendar year in any southern hemisphere country, found Australians are heaviest in summer and lightest in autumn. Weight progressively increases in winter and early spring, only to dip at the end of spring. This pattern, akin to a yo-yo, diverges from the trends observed in the northern hemisphere, where winter overlaps with the common festive periods.

Frequent and significant weight cycling is problematic. It’s not just about the numbers on the scale; it’s the associated health risks that are concerning. Weight cycling, like “yo-yo dieting”, is linked to poor metabolic health and long-term weight gain.

Small weight increases can add up each year. Those gains increase the risk of preventable chronic illness. In our study, approximately a quarter of participants finished the year 2% or more heavier than when they started – an average increase of 1.7kg.

A fresh opportunity

Mapping these “temporal hot spots” presents a unique opportunity to develop more targeted and effective interventions. The periods of weight gain identified in our study (weekends, festive periods and specific seasons) provide key points on the calendar where we could try to curb unhealthy weight fluctuations.

How do we use this information? A great first step would be to concentrate public health campaigns and personal weight management strategies on specific times of year.

Awareness campaigns before and during Christmas and winter could highlight the risks of obesity and provide tips for maintaining a balanced diet, moderate drinking, and staying active amid the festivities. Encouraging regular physical activity during colder months could also help offset seasonal weight gain.

Ultimately, messaging should focus on encouraging sustainable habits like healthy eating, regular exercise, and holistic wellbeing, rather than suggest drastic, short-term fixes. Our study offers an additional tool for creating weight-gain prevention strategies.

As we learn more about the social, cultural and behavioural influences on weight gain, we can tailor our interventions to be more effective.

It’s clear that our love for celebrations comes at a cost. But, armed with new insight, we can still enjoy these beloved traditions while also keeping our health in check. After all, good health is a gift in itself.

Read more:
Exercise is even more effective than counselling or medication for depression. But how much do you need?

Carol Maher receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the National Heart Foundation, the SA Department for Education, the SA Department for Innovation and Skills, the SA Office for the Early Years, Healthway, Hunter New England Local Health District, the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, LeapForward and EML.

Ty Ferguson 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. When Christmas comes so do the kilos. New research tracks Australians’ yo-yo weight gain – https://theconversation.com/when-christmas-comes-so-do-the-kilos-new-research-tracks-australians-yo-yo-weight-gain-210709

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen, Teaching Associate, The University of Melbourne

Last month, the federal government released the annual Closing the Gap data.

According to the report, 34.3% of Indigenous preschoolers were starting school developmentally on track, compared to almost 55% of non-Indigenous Australian students as of 2021.

About 68% of Indigenous people aged 20–24 years had attained Year 12 or equivalent as of 2021, with a target of 96% by 2031.

Speaking about the Closing the Gap report, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney noted her disappointment about the results.

The gap is not closing fast enough. I know many people are frustrated by the lack of progress.

But are these reports asking the right questions? Many Indigenous children who do not speak English at home struggle with English at school. This suggests some poor education outcomes may arise from cross-language difficulties.

Our new study investigated children speaking Kriol.

This is the largest Indigenous language after English in Australia. Kriol-speaking children make up the largest group of Indigenous kids with English as a second language.

What is Kriol?

Kriol is the result of contact in the 19th century between speakers of Indigenous languages and English, and many Kriol words come from English.

Kriol has been called “broken English”. But Kriol is neither “broken”, nor English. It is a separate language with its own grammar and vocabulary.

Recognition of the language barrier experienced by Kriol-speaking children has been delayed by two unfortunate assumptions. One is that Kriol is a dialect of Australian English or Aboriginal English, not a separate language.

The other assumption is Kriol is “highly variable” and speakers use many versions of Kriol – including some that are very similar to English. As a consequence, it has been assumed Kriol-speaking children won’t struggle to learn in English when they get to school.

Read more:
Explainer: the largest language spoken exclusively in Australia – Kriol

Our research

Our research investigated children’s use of Kriol for the first time.

We spoke to 13 children between four and seven. The children were all students at Wugularr School (also called Beswick) in the Northern Territory. The community language in Wugularr is Kriol, but a range of traditional languages are also spoken.

Less than 1% of the population in Wugularr only speak English at home. Children first learn English when they start preschool.

Our findings

We used two game-like activities to test children’s knowledge of Kriol words and sounds.

In one activity we showed the children a picture of a familiar object (such as a door or an apple) accompanied by a recording in Kriol asking, “what’s this?”. The kids then spoke the word.

In the other “game”, we played recordings of Kriol words – some produced the right way, and some produced with an error. For example, “diger” for “tiger” and “abble” for “apple”. We then used a recorded Kriol prompt asking if the lady in the recording said the word the right or wrong way. (The students found this really hilarious – an adult making so many mistakes!)

These activities showed students had a good knowledge of the sounds of Kriol and the correct shape of words in Kriol, which are important pre-literacy skills. This showed they are ready to learn to read, just not in English.

This also demonstrated very substantial linguistic differences between English and Kriol. This means Kriol-speaking children are not speakers of English, and that they do not effortlessly “slide” into a version of Kriol that is “close enough” to pass for English as a consequence of formal schooling in English.

The need for bilingual education

Our research shows Kriol-speaking children face similar difficulties when they start school as children from other non-English speaking backgrounds.

In an ideal setting, students would be given a bilingual education. This means Indigenous children would be able to use their First Language knowledge and cultural knowledge as a foundation for learning.

Teaching assistant and linguist Hilda Ngalmi is a Wubuy/Nungubuyu woman from Numbulwar, where Kriol is widely spoken. She collaborated with us on the research. As she explains:

When I teach kids, I have to explain to them in Kriol first. Because that is the language they understand.

The need for bilingual education for children who speak traditional Indigenous languages has been debated for decades in Australia. Support has waxed and waned and today only a small number schools offer a genuine bilingual education.

However, where it does happen, it is having positive results.

For example, Yirrkala School in Northeastern Arnhem Land teaches students “both ways” in local language Yolngu Matha and English. In 2020, eight students became the first in their community to graduate Year 12, with university entry-level scores.

Not making the most of children’s First Language competence creates additional learning barriers for Indigenous children. If we really want to “close the gap”, our education system needs to support students to learn in a bilingual environment.

Read more:
Why more schools need to teach bilingual education to Indigenous children

Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP130102624 ‘Learning to talk whitefella way’).

Brett Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP130102624 ‘Learning to talk whitefella way’).

Hilda Ngalmi receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP130102624 ‘Learning to talk whitefella way’).

Yizhou Wang 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. ‘That is the language they understand’: why Indigenous students need bilingual teaching at school – https://theconversation.com/that-is-the-language-they-understand-why-indigenous-students-need-bilingual-teaching-at-school-210559

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law. President, Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics., Griffith University

You’ve probably heard that Hollywood writers and actors are striking.

One of the main revelations to outside observers is the hard treatment meted out by production companies (in concert with streaming giants) to artists. Even very successful and sometimes famous writers or actors can struggle to make a living wage, with residuals – the money these artists make when their work is re-aired – dropping precipitously in the streaming era.

One of the key reasons the entertainment industry urges us to support copyright and avoid piracy is to support artists. So what happens to our moral calculations when it turns out industries direct so little revenue to creative workers? Should we really feel morally beholden to pay streaming services that exploit artists?

The strike presents a worthwhile moment to think about why we have copyright, and whether it is a law worthy of respect.

Read more:
How Ronald Reagan led the 1960 actors’ strike – and then became an anti-union president

What is piracy?

Piracy refers to the illegal copying, accessing, downloading, streaming or distributing of another’s created work of entertainment, without transforming that work. (For example, fan fiction often violates copyright, but because it transforms the work, it isn’t piracy.)

Content industries tend to stereotype pirates as rapacious, remorseless thieves. But many pirates pay respect to copyright law’s spirit, if not its black-letter obligations.

Consider four different types of pirates:

• takers take whatever they want without compunction
• samplers pirate only to sample works. Once they find something they enjoy, they purchase it
• finders only pirate works that aren’t otherwise available
• non-payers only pirate works they would never otherwise have purchased (for example, because they do not have the money to pay for it).

These four types of pirates raise different moral concerns, and it can be tricky to tease out the ethics of each. Let’s confine our attention here to taking, which is the most concerning type of piracy.

Is piratical taking of copyrighted works ethical?

Is copyright law morally right?

Perhaps the most obvious question to consider will be whether we agree with copyright. Copyright law has two main moral justifications.

First, copyright might be justified on the basis that it provides incentives to artists to develop their work. The production of new art usually requires significant labour. Without some way of supporting artists for what they do, there would be less art and entertainment for us all to enjoy. This “utilitarian” argument justifies copyright because of its good consequences.

Second, we might think artists deserve to be compensated. If through hard work and talent someone creates something that gives enjoyment and fulfilment to millions, then it seems unfair if they don’t get rewarded. This is a rights-based or desert-based moral justification.

When industry bodies appeal to the need for copyright law to protect and support artists, they are tapping into the moral force of these arguments.

Still, both these justifications are controversial. Reasonable and informed people can disagree with them.

Read more:
From convicts to pirates: Australia’s dubious legacy of illegal downloading

Understanding legitimacy

Suppose we disagree with a law. Do we have the right to ignore it? There are two good reasons to think we don’t have that right.

First, if people only respected laws they already agreed with, then law itself would cease to function. The main reason we have the rule of law is to avoid everyone simply doing whatever they want.

As political theorists such as John Locke argued, such situations quickly descend to violence, as everyone enforces their chosen understanding of rights and obligations. Lawless societies are not nice places to live.

Second, democratically made laws have a special claim to legitimacy. As human institutions, democracies are inevitably flawed. Yet they provide an important way that everyone in a community can come together as equals and play a role in deciding the laws that will bind them.

These two arguments show we can disagree with a law, but still think it should be respected.

So, should we turn to piracy?

Where, then, are we left when we find that many entertainment industries exploit artists, and that little of the money from our purchases trickles through to the artists who created it?

For a start, we have reason to think that such industry bodies are not just being exploitative. They are also being hypocritical and manipulative when they appeal to artists to persuade us to support copyright.

If they really were morally committed to supporting artists, their own behaviour would reflect this.

The lack of support to artists may also prompt us to rethink how well copyright law really serves the justifications presented for it.

Can we go a step further, and say that if entertainment industries are such exploitative hypocrites, we’re entitled to stop handing over our hard-earned cash to access their shows?

If the above arguments are on the right track, then the answer is “no”.

For one thing, copyright law is still the democratically created law of the land. We wouldn’t want other people dispensing with laws and entitlements we cherish and rely on. So we have reason not to break laws that are important to other people.

More specifically, many artists at least make some money from the present system. If we are morally outraged at how little our purchases contribute to their wages, it would be a wildly inappropriate response to stop paying altogether (and thereby strip our contribution to artists down to zero!).

While we should resist resorting to piracy, the Hollywood strikes do invite us to think critically about how well our current laws live up to their justifications, and whether there are other ways we can support artists.

Read more:
Computer-written scripts and deepfake actors: what’s at the heart of the Hollywood strikes against generative AI

Hugh Breakey 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. Is it OK to pirate TV shows and movies from streaming services that exploit artists? An ethicist weighs in – https://theconversation.com/is-it-ok-to-pirate-tv-shows-and-movies-from-streaming-services-that-exploit-artists-an-ethicist-weighs-in-210379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Satherley, Honorary Academic in Psychology, University of Auckland

The closer we come to election day on October 14, the more media focus we’ll see on political polls. Poll results are often used to project the makeup of parliament, despite them being snapshots of the polling period rather than reliable predictions.

Indeed, the accuracy of past political polls in New Zealand has been open to question. And the way results are framed can sometimes cause more confusion than provide useful context.

No poll is perfect. But understanding the quality of a poll and the results it produces requires knowing something about how the poll was designed and carried out.

We recently completed a guide to understanding public opinion polling in New Zealand that describes the important features of polls to look out for. These factors determine their quality and should be considered when making conclusions about the results.

Technical details (sample size, margin of error and so on) about a given poll are usually available. So what information is important to consider? Here are ten things to think about when evaluating a political poll.

1. Sample size

Contrary to common misconceptions, good quality results about the New Zealand population can be obtained from polls with as few as 500 to 1,000 participants, if the poll is designed and conducted well.

Bigger samples lead to less random variation in the results – that is, the differences between the results from a sample of the population compared with the whole population. But bigger samples are more expensive to collect, and they don’t make up for poor sampling design or polling process.

Read more:
This election year, NZ voters should beware of reading too much into the political polls

2. Target population

It should be clear which group of people the results are about. Results about sub-groups (for example, women in a certain age group) should be treated more cautiously, as these are associated with smaller samples and therefore greater error.

3. Sampling method

Sampling design is crucial. It determines how well the poll sample matches the target population (such as people intending to vote). Polls should be conducted with an element of choosing people at random (random sampling), as this achieves the best representation of the population.

Polls that allow for self-selection and that do not control who can participate – such as straw polls on media and social media sites – will end up over-representing some groups and under-representing others. This leads to biased, inaccurate results.

Read more:
Election polls are more accurate if they ask participants how others will vote

4. Sample weighting

When characteristics about the population and the sample are known – such as the percentage of women, age or region – “weighting” increases the contribution of responses from groups under-represented in the sample to better match the population of interest.

This is achieved by making responses from under-represented respondents count more towards the results of the total poll.

Weighting cannot be used, however, to correct unknown differences between the poll sample and the total population. The distribution of population characteristics, like gender and age, are known through the census, and can be adjusted in the sample with weighting.

But we don’t have known population characteristics for other things that may affect the results (such as level of interest in politics). Good sampling design, including elements of random sampling, are the best way to ensure these important but unknown characteristics in the poll sample are similar to the whole population.

5. Poll commissioner and agency

Knowing who paid for the poll is useful, as there may be vested interests at play. Results could be released selectively (for example, just those favourable to the commissioning organisation). Or there may be a hidden agenda, such as timing a poll around particular events.

Equally, we can be more confident in poll results when the polling agency has a strong track record of good practice, particularly if they follow national and international codes of best practice.

6. Poll timing

Knowing when the poll was conducted, and what was happening at the time, is important. Poll results describe public opinion at the time the poll was conducted. They aren’t a prediction of the election outcome.

7. Margin of error

Margins of error are a natural consequence of taking a sample. The margin depends on both the size of the poll sample or sub-sample, and the proportion of the sample selecting a given option. The margin of error is largest for a proportion of 50% and smaller at more extreme values – such as 5% and 95%.

This makes knowing the margin of error for smaller results very important. Minor parties, for example, may be close to the 5% threshold for entering parliament. Knowing the margin of error therefore provides a more accurate picture of where they stand relative to this important threshold.

Read more:
What is a margin of error? This statistical tool can help you understand vaccine trials and political polling

Considering the margin of error is also vital for assessing changes in poll results over time, and differences within polls.

But the margin of error does not account for other sources of error in poll results, including those due to poor sampling methods, poorly worded questions or poor survey process.

The total error in a political poll consists of these other sources of error as well as the sampling error measured through the margin of error. Unless a poll is perfectly conducted (which is highly unlikely), the total survey error will always be larger than the margin of error alone would suggest.

8. Precise question wording

Responses to a poll question can vary markedly depending on how it is asked. So, pay attention to what specifically was asked in the poll, and whether question phrasing could influence the results.

9. Percentage of ‘don’t knows’

Large percentages of “don’t know” responses can indicate questions on topics that poll respondents aren’t well informed on, or that are difficult to understand. For example, the percentage of “don’t know” responses to preferred prime minister questions can be as high as 33%.

10. The electoral context

The composition of parliament is determined by both general and Māori electorate results. Pay attention to the Māori electorates, where polls are often harder to conduct.

Māori electorate results are important, as candidates can win the seat and bring other MPs (proportionate to their overall party vote) in on their “coat tails”.

Finally – watch the trends

Making sense of polls can be challenging. Readers are best placed to interpret the results alongside other polls, past and present. Keeping margins of error in mind, this helps determine the overall trend of public opinion.

Nicole Satherley works for iNZight Analytics which designs and undertakes research, but not market or polling research.

Andrew Sporle works for and owns shares in iNZight Analytics and Matau Analytics which design and undertake research, but not market or polling research.

Lara Greaves consults to iNZight Analytics and works for/owns share in Demos and Data which both design and undertake research, but not market or polling research. She is a member of the Independent Electoral Review panel (this article in no way represents the views of the panel).

– ref. How to read the political polls: 10 things you need to know ahead of the NZ election – https://theconversation.com/how-to-read-the-political-polls-10-things-you-need-to-know-ahead-of-the-nz-election-208738

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor, The University of Queensland

Today is a good day to be Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. UNESCO, the United Nations body expected to vote on whether to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”, instead deferred the decision for another year. This, an insider told French newspaper Le Monde, was largely due to the change in approach between the former Coalition government and Labor.

“It’s a bit like night and day,” the insider said – which was promptly included in Plibersek’s media release.

So, it’s a good day for the government. But is it a good day for the reef? No. The longstanding threats to the world’s largest coral ecosystem are still there, from agricultural runoff, to shipping pollution, to fisheries, although we have seen improvement in areas such as water quality.

But any incremental improvement will be for naught if we don’t respond to the big one – climate change – with the necessary urgency. This year has seen record-breaking heat and extreme weather, with intense heating of the oceans during the northern summer. These intense marine heatwaves have devastated efforts to regrow or protect coral in places like Florida. And our own summer is just around the corner.

Read more:
Seriously ugly: here’s how Australia will look if the world heats by 3°C this century

It is not hyperbole to say the next two years are likely to be very bad for the Great Barrier Reef. It’s already enduring a winter marine heatwave. Background warming primes the reef for mass coral bleaching and death. We’ve already experienced this in 2016-17, which brought back-to-back global mass coral bleaching and mortality events including on the Great Barrier Reef. We can expect more as global temperatures continue to soar.

While the government may congratulate itself on not being the previous one, it’s nowhere near enough. We’re facing D-Day for the reef, as for many other ecosystems. Incrementalism and politics as usual are simply not going to be enough.

What has the government done for the reef to date?

To its credit, Labor has made some marginal improvements to the Great Barrier Reef’s prospects. The list includes: legislating net zero greenhouse emissions, with a 43% cut within seven years; improving water quality with revegetation projects and work to reduce soil erosion; and ending gillnet use in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park by 2027.

Read more:
Warm is the new norm for the Great Barrier Reef – and a likely El Niño raises red flags

For at least a century, cattle, sugarcane and other farmers have relied on rivers to take animal waste and fertiliser runoff away from their properties. In much of Queensland, that means the runoff heads for the Great Barrier Reef instead. We did see some improvement under the Coalition government, which put A$443 million into trying to solve the issue. Labor has put in a further $150 million. But the water quality problem is still not solved.

Ending gillnet use in the marine park is also welcome, given these nets can and do catch and kill sharks, dugongs and turtles. But challenging though these issues are, they pale in comparison to climate change.

Tinkering while the reef burns

When coral is exposed to warmer water than it has evolved to tolerate, it turns white (bleaches) – expelling its symbiotic algae. If the water stays too hot for too long, the corals simply die en masse.

You might have seen the positive reports on coral regrowth during the three recent cooler La Niña years and wonder what the issue is. Isn’t the reef resilient?

Yes – to a point. But after that point, the coral communities collapse. The world is having its hottest days on record. Coupled with a likely El Niño, the reef will likely face the hottest waters yet.

That’s because we still haven’t tackled the root cause. Greenhouse gas emissions are still going up. Year on year, we’re trapping more heat, of which 90% goes into the oceans. Antarctic sea ice is not reforming as it should after last summer. Coral restoration efforts in the United States had to literally pull their baby corals out of the sea to try to keep them alive, as the water was too hot to live in.

Read more:
Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone?

The North Atlantic Ocean is far warmer than it should be, amid a record-breaking northern summer. After the equinox next month, it will be our turn to face the summer sun once more.

Is the Great Barrier Reef in danger? Of course it is. We should not pretend things are normal and can be handled routinely. This year, we’re beginning to see the full force of what the climate crisis will bring. We have clearly underestimated the climate’s sensitivity to rising carbon dioxide levels, and the gloomy predictions I made more than 20 years ago are looking positively optimistic.

And still we fail to face up to the fact that the Great Barrier Reef is dying. We thought we might have had decades but it may be just years. Before 1980, no mass bleaching had ever been recorded. Since then it has only become more common.

Incremental efforts to save the reef, such as looking for heat-tolerant “supercorals”, or replanting baby coral, now look unlikely to work. We don’t have decades or the capacity to find and cultivate resilient corals at scale. And we certainly do not have the massive funding required to replant even a small coral reef.

For people like us who work in the field, it is a devastating time. I now know the feeling of having a broken heart. The pace and intensity of climate change risks rendering all our efforts over the years null and void. It’s almost impossible to look directly at what this will mean for this immense living assemblage, which first began growing more than 600,000 years ago along the Australian east coast.

Giving the government more time to show the reef is improving seems like a fool’s errand. Time is precisely what we don’t have.

Read more:
Corals are starting to bleach as global ocean temperatures hit record highs

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is affiliated with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

– ref. Out of danger because the UN said so? Hardly – the Barrier Reef is still in hot water – https://theconversation.com/out-of-danger-because-the-un-said-so-hardly-the-barrier-reef-is-still-in-hot-water-210787

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melita Jazbec, Research Principal at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney, University of Technology Sydney

Most Australian food waste ends up in landfill. Rotting in the absence of oxygen produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. While some facilities capture this “landfill gas” to produce energy, or burn it off to release carbon dioxide instead, it’s a major contributor to climate change. Valuable resources such as water and nutrients are also wasted.

Composting food waste is the most common alternative. In the presence of oxygen, microbes break down food and garden organics without producing methane. The product returns nutrients to farms and gardens. But composting facilities are limited and struggling to cope with contamination from plastic.

We analysed the capacity of three wastewater facilities in Sydney to process organic wastes from surrounding households and businesses.

We found processing at the wastewater treatment plants could cut 33,000 tonnes of emissions and capture 9,600 tonnes of nutrients. All 14 wastewater facilities in Sydney could be modified to accept food waste, reducing emissions and producing renewable energy.

Read more:
The case for compost: why recycling food waste is so much better than sending it to landfill

Why process food waste at wastewater facilities?

Most wastewater facilities in Sydney use “anaerobic digestors” to treat sewage. Along with producing energy, this type of processing produces nutrient-rich biosolids that can be used for soil conditioning and as fertiliser.

Wastewater facilities are normally built with excess capacity to meet future demand and so could be used to handle food waste.

When the New South Wales government recently assessed the infrastructure needs to process food waste for the Greater Sydney Area by 2030, it identified an additional 260,000 tonnes per year of anaerobic digestion capacity is needed, on top of additional new composting infrastructure.

Currently, there is only one commercial anaerobic digestion plant in Sydney with a processing capacity of 52,000 tonnes per year.

Our study estimated just three wastewater facilities could fill 20% of the identified anaerobic digestion capacity gap required for Sydney by 2030.

Overseas, it is common for wastewater facilities to handle food waste, and in some cases generate more electricity than needed for their operation. These facilities give the excess electricity to the communities from which the food waste is collected and the nutrients back to local farms, creating a circular economy.

While industrial-scale composting facilities are normally located on the outskirts of Sydney, wastewater facilities are distributed throughout the city. This provides an additional benefit as food waste can be processed closer to where it is made, saving on significant transfer infrastructure and transport costs.

Although some changes are required to enable wastewater facilities to accept and process food waste, there are great returns on investment. As a recent economic study for Western Parkland City has shown, upgrading facilities brings wider economic benefits and creates jobs, along with the environmental benefits.

Separate food waste at the source

To maximise anaerobic digestion at wastewater facilities, food waste needs to be separated from other wastes. This is because contamination and non-compatible materials in the waste stream can hinder the microbal processes driving anaerobic digestion.

NSW targets require all businesses making large amounts of food waste to separate it from other waste by 2025. Similarly, all households will need to separate food waste by 2030.

Currently most councils in Sydney offer a garden waste collection service. Only a few provide food waste collection and mostly in FOGO bins (combined Food Organics and Garden Organics waste service). However, the garden organics component of FOGO cannot be easily digested with sewage and would need significant additional pre-treatment before it can be processed.

Urban food organics are normally collected by trucks. This waste stream could potentially be piped to the wastewater treatment plant, with or without sewage. But piped networks were not considered for food waste collection in this study. It’s an interesting area for future research, especially in dense urban areas.

Read more:
We can’t keep putting apartment residents’ waste in the too hard basket

Achieving net zero targets while reducing waste

The three wastewater facilities we studied could generate an estimated total of 38 billion litres of methane a year. This could replace the natural gas used by 30,000 households.

The bioenergy potential of the organic wastes from the study areas was estimated to be 126,000MWh. That is four and a half times more than the energy generated from solar panels installed in the area.

This study shows methane generated by anaerobic digestion can play an important role in the renewable energy mix. It can be used to generate electricity, as transport fuel, or as a natural gas replacement.

The wastewater facility at Malabar in Sydney is the first project in Australia injecting biogas into the gas network, demonstrating its feasibility.

The waste, energy and water sectors are all expected to achieve net zero targets. Reducing food waste and redirecting to more beneficial use works towards these targets.

Harnessing the full potential of anaerobic digestion of food waste at wastewater facilities will require collaboration between these sectors. But as we have shown, it will be worth it.

Read more:
Households find low-waste living challenging. Here’s what needs to change

This research was supported by funding from RACE for 2030, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, NSW Department of Primary Industries, NSW EPA, and Sydney Water.

This research was supported by funding from RACE for 2030, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, NSW Department of Primary Industries, NSW EPA and Sydney Water.

– ref. Here’s how wastewater facilities could tackle food waste, generate energy and slash emissions – https://theconversation.com/heres-how-wastewater-facilities-could-tackle-food-waste-generate-energy-and-slash-emissions-210560

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

Stand by for one of the most important decisions Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the Albanese government will make.

That decision is to commit future governments and the Reserve Bank to full employment, and, more importantly, spell out what that means.

The Australian government hasn’t wholeheartedly and publicly committed itself to full employment since the 1945 Full Employment White Paper, released as the second world war was drawing to a close and Australia was gearing up for peace.

The definition Chalmers chooses – whether it specifies an unemployment rate of 3.5%, 4.5%, or the more ambitious target of 3% I would most like – could reverberate for as many decades as the white paper did in 1945.

Tuesday’s Reserve Bank decision not to increase interest rates further makes it more likely we could end up with a more ambitious target.

Australia’s daunting post-war challenge

The 1945 white paper was prepared for Prime Minister John Curtin by a committee led by the head of post-war reconstruction HC “Nugget” Coombs.

In the 20 years leading up to the war, more than 10% of workforce had been out of work, climbing to 25% during the depression. The committee wanted the all-out mobilisation necessitated by war to be continued into the peace.

Their challenge was to find jobs for the 1 million defence staff who would be returning to civilian life.

Achieving that would require governments to actively stimulate private spending, through their own spending and through monetary and other policies “to the extent necessary to avoid unemployment and the consequent waste of resources”.

That was an idea accepted by both Labor and Coalition governments right through to the 1970s, where unemployment remained as low as 2%. It was also one Coombs himself adopted as the first head of the Reserve Bank of Australia from 1960.

But the employment target Coombs helped write in to the Reserve Bank Act was fuzzy: it simply committed the bank to “the maintenance of full employment in Australia”.

Finally setting a jobs target

Fast forward to March 2023, when the treasurer was handed the review of the Reserve Bank, “An RBA fit for the future”.

That final report pointed out the bank’s target for inflation is specific – defined in a written agreement with the treasurer as “2-3% on average, over time”.

In contrast, the bank’s target for employment has no numbers attached – resulting in inflation getting prioritised.

While it is true that putting a number on a target doesn’t guarantee an outcome, the number put on the inflation target does seem to have helped bring it down.

The RBA review recommended the treasurer’s agreement with the bank be updated, requiring it to adopt an explicit target for “full employment”. That would most likely be expressed via a range of indicators, including the unemployment rate, the underemployment rate, and the tenure of employment.

Chalmers says he will update the agreement and issue the direction by the end of the year. Before then, next month he will make public his own target for full employment via his employment white paper, now being prepared by the treasury.

Read more:
Why there’s no magic jobless rate to increase Australians’ wages

Moving unofficial targets of the past

The numbers that the treasurer and the Reserve Bank adopt will matter enormously. And it’s worth clarifying that the target can’t be an unemployment rate of zero.

There will always be some temporary unemployment as people move between jobs. That’s also the case when people leave industries that are no longer needed – such as thermal coal mining in the years ahead, as our energy mix changes – and go on to retrain for jobs in emerging industries.

Read more:
With unemployment steady at 3.5%, inflation fears shouldn’t stop Australia embracing a full employment target

For a while in the 1990s, the Reserve Bank acted as if full employment meant an unemployment rate of 7%. That was its estimate of the “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment” (also known as NAIRU), the rate needed to stop shortages of useful workers pushing up inflation.

In 2017, the bank cut that estimate to 5% and then 4.5% in 2019. Then, about a year after COVID hit, it appeared to cut it further when Governor Philip Lowe said in 2021 there was a chance Australia could achieve and sustain an unemployment rate in the “low fours”, although only time would tell.

The lower our target, the more secure we will be

The unemployment rate is now 3.5% – a near five-decade low.

If the government and the bank choose to adopt 3.5% as a target, it would put 150,000 more Australians into work than would a higher unambitious target of 4.5% – in perpetuity.

A lower target of 3% (not too far above the 2% Australia achieved from 1940 to 1974) would do much more than put people into jobs and better use our resources.

It would help us adapt to change in the way we are going to need to.

Creating confidence to face change

The 1945 white paper was on to this, at another time of massive transition when the wartime industries were dying and the peacetime industries emerging.

It said an assurance of full employment would

assure workers that the community has need of their services somewhere, and will restore the basic sense of security without which new risks will not readily be undertaken.

It’s a point echoed by Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s former economic advisor, Ross Garnaut, in an address to the Australian Conference of Economists last month.

He said unless there was confidence in high employment, every time an industry or employer was threatened with closure, there would be a cry of “jobs, jobs, jobs” as workers fought to protect what they had.

Read more:
Australia is on the brink of ending interest rate hikes and an economic first – beating inflation without a recession

Garnaut told me it was a lesson he learned from Hawke when he signed on with the prime minister in 1983. Hawke agreed with him that the economy would have to change and some industries would have to die. But Hawke told him he wasn’t going to bring on those changes until unemployment was clearly coming down.

When people knew they could get another job, they would accept change.

Now, as in the 1940s and 1980s, we need that confidence. If Chalmers and the Reserve Bank adopt an ambitious target, they’ll create it and set us up for the challenges ahead.

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

– ref. Australia is about to set its first full employment target – and it will define people’s lives for decades – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-about-to-set-its-first-full-employment-target-and-it-will-define-peoples-lives-for-decades-210783

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreea Lachsz, PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned this article mentions violence towards and death of First Nations people.

According to the most recent statistics from 2020–21, 640 children and 42,090 adults were detained each day across Australia. Of those, 337 children and 12,599 adults were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people.

Some people in Australian prisons and police stations are being subjected to treatment that could amount to torture. This includes prolonged solitary confinement and the use of spit hoods. Last year, the UN Committee Against Torture recommended Australia end the use of spit hoods and prohibit solitary confinement of children.

Torture has been criminalised in Commonwealth legislation, but not at the state and territory level (with some exceptions). This is despite a recommendation from the UN Committee Against Torture.

While progress on criminalising torture across states and territories has stagnated, attorneys-general around the country have so far only agreed to look into the “feasability” of a national ban on spit hoods.

Prohibiting the solitary confinement of children in detention centres is proving to be an even slower process.

The harms of solitary confinement

Torture has a very specific legal meaning under international law. It is defined as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted” for the purposes of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation or coercion, or based on discrimination. This act is done by someone acting in an official capacity, or with their consent.

Prolonged solitary confinement can fall under this definition. It is specifically defined under the UN Mandela Rules on the treatment of people in prison as “confinement […] for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact” for more than 15 consecutive days.

Solitary confinement of detained children and adults with “mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures” is also prohibited under the rules.
Solitary confinement has been proven to cause long-term harm such as anxiety, depression, cognitive disturbances, paranoia and psychosis.

In 2018, Human Rights Watch reported on the use of prolonged solitary confinement in Western Australia, where a woman with a disability was held in solitary confinement for 28 days. Solitary confinement was also used in Australian prisons and youth detention during the pandemic, ostensibly to prevent the spread of COVID.

Solitary confinement in detention centres continues to be used across Australia. It has been used on children in Western Australia despite a court finding the use of lockdowns unlawful. It has also been used on children with disabilities in the Northern Territory.

There have also been reports of an Aboriginal boy with a disability being kept in extended isolation in Queensland’s Cleveland Youth Detention Centre,
likely spending 500 days confined to his room for more than 20 hours a day.

He has reportedly received no treatment because the detention service lacks the capacity to treat people with trauma-related mental health issues.

Torture is a crime and needs to be properly investigated and punished

Criminalising torture at the state and territory level can increase understanding of what actually constitutes torture among prosecutors, prison authorities and police. This can help deter torture and other unlawful practices against people in custody.

But as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture explains in her recent report, there are challenges in prosecuting, and even reporting torture:

Victims may still be in the custody or under the control of the very authorities against whom they are making allegations. Authorities […] may lack impartiality or be under pressure to cover up allegations or to destroy evidence. The risk of retaliatory violence [is] real in many contexts.

An international study on torture prevention found that, even in countries where torture is criminalised, prosecutions are rare.

The UN Committee Against Torture has recommended Australia implement protections against retaliation for reporting torture. It recommends people have “access to effective, independent, confidential and accessible complaint mechanisms”.

The recently updated Istanbul Protocol also provides guidance on documenting and investigating torture, which the UN Committee Against Torture recommends Australia follow.

Read more:
Health care offered to women in prison should match community standards – and their rights

Concrete outcomes for victim-survivors

Crucially, victim-survivors must be provided redress for wrong-doing against them.

Under the UN Convention Against Torture, the obligation to provide redress should include “restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition”.

If someone dies as a result of being tortured, the obligation to provide redress should then be extended to their families or dependants.

While coronial inquests into deaths in custody can identify ill-treatment, they can not order compensation for victims’ surviving families. One example is the inquest into the death of Gunditjmara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman Veronica Nelson.

The coroner found Veronica’s treatment “constituted cruel and inhumane treatment”. Compensation in cases like this often need to be pursued in civil court, as Veronica’s partner, Percy Lovett, is currently doing.

There are opportunities to pursue allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in other courts under Australia’s federal criminal law, or state and territory human rights acts. But whether there will be a prosecution under federal law is at the discretion of the Commonwealth prosecutor. When the federal law was amended in 2018, it was inferred that pre-existing state and territory non-torture criminal laws suffice. So allegations of torture could be prosecuted as other offences by state and territory prosecutors. This would not be compliant with Australia’s international obligations.

A prohibition on torture is not enough

Currently the federal government is considering whether Australia will take the step of finally having a national human rights act. But this will not guarantee Australia will honour international obligations to criminalise torture, prosecute torture and provide redress for victim-survivors.

The Istanbul Protocol describes torture as “one of the most heinous crimes known to humanity”.

Prosecuting torture and providing redress to victim-survivors should be a priority in Australia, especially given the immense power imbalance between governments and incarcerated people.

Andreea Lachsz 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. Criminalising and prosecuting torture could deter practices such as solitary confinement in detention – https://theconversation.com/criminalising-and-prosecuting-torture-could-deter-practices-such-as-solitary-confinement-in-detention-206665

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

If this year’s budget measures are passed by parliament in the current sitting, the government has indicated that the single rate of JobSeeker payment will increase by around $56 per fortnight in September.

This will be the result of the $40 per fortnight increase in basic payment promised in the budget, plus the usual half-yearly indexation increase on the new amount, which this time will be 2.2% – for a total increase of nearly $41.

However, the Opposition has indicated it will oppose the increase and seek to increase the “free area” recipients can earn before losing some JobSeeker benefits, from $150 to $300 per fortnight.

This would cut the increase due in September to the 2.2% from indexation, which would make it about $15 per fortnight.

Late on Monday, the Opposition made clear that if its amendment fails it wouldn’t stand in the way of the government’s plan, but it’s still worth asking which arrangement would benefit whom, and which would be more effective at getting job-seekers into work.

More incentive to work?

Currently, a single person receiving the JobSeeker payment can earn $150 per fortnight before their payment starts to be reduced by 50 cents for each dollar of earnings. Once their earnings exceed $256 per fortnight, the payment is reduced by 60 cents in the dollar.

Once they start to pay income tax, the combination of the reduction in benefits and the increase in tax produces a very high effective marginal tax rate of 67.6%, meaning they lose 67.6% of the extra dollars they earn – much more than the highest-earning worker loses.

Opposition social services spokesman Michael Sukkar said increasing the income test free area before the benefits are reduced would make putting in more hours more rewarding:

There are 808,000 JobSeeker recipients across the nation of which more than 75% have zero reported earnings, with no part-time work. Increasing the income-free area before benefits are reduced incentivises those on working age payments to take up employment opportunities.

Winners vs losers

Given the Opposition says its proposal would cost $2.9 billion less over four years than the government’s, there would obviously be losers compared with the government’s measure.

Those currently without earnings and those already earning up to $150 per fortnight would not immediately benefit – and instead of their payment going up by $56 per fortnight it would increase by about $15 in September, leaving them $41 per fortnight worse off.

People would start to benefit once they earned $150 per fortnight; they would break even when they earned around $200 per fortnight; and they would benefit the most from the Opposition’s proposal when they earned $300 per fortnight or more, keeping $55.60 per fortnight more than at present.

Read more:
How can more people be on unemployment benefits than before COVID, with fewer unemployed Australians? Here’s how

My calculations suggest this means that, at first, the Opposition’s plan would leave about 640,000 JobSeeker recipients worse off, and 168,000 better off.

But if the change in the income test encouraged more people into part-time work, more would benefit – although this would require people without earnings or earning little to find part-time jobs that pay at least $200 per fortnight.

It is hard to see how this could happen for all of them.

Even if all the 430,000 Australian jobs currently vacant were filled by people on JobSeeker who would benefit from the change, more than 200,000 would miss out and be worse off.

Would the change get more people into work?

Implicit in the claim that what the Coalition is proposing would get more people on JobSeeker into work is the assumption that what’s keeping them out of work is insufficient rewards from part-time work. But this might not be the case.

The Bureau of Statistics is now funded to publish statistics on barriers and incentives to labour-force participation on an annual basis, with the most recent publication being for 2020-21.

That survey found the most common reason women were unavailable to start a job or work more hours within four weeks was “caring for children”, while for men it was “long-term sickness or disability”.

Wanting to maintain their level of social security payments is also a reason given for being unavailable for work, but it ranked tenth out of 11 reasons for parents, and seventh out of eight for people with long-term health conditions.

Many on JobSeeker can’t easily seek jobs

As shown in the chart below, the increasing share of people on unemployment benefits for five years or more parallels the growth in the share of people with only a partial capacity to work. It is currently almost 44% of people on JobSeeker, compared with just under 19% in 2012.

People living with a psychological or psychiatric disability or a musculoskeletal or connective tissue condition account for almost 80% of those assessed as having a partial capacity to work.

More than 60% of this group are aged over 45. Most of them are on JobSeeker long-term: 82% have been on it for a year or more, and more than half for five years or more.

The shift of these people to JobSeeker is the result of decisions of successive governments to reduce access to payments including the disability support pension and parenting payment single.

The increase in the threshold age for the age pension has also had a role – forcing people to stay on “unemployment” payments longer before receiving the pension.

Read more:
Australia’s ‘retirement age’ just became 67. So why are the French so upset about working until 64?

The OECD found in 2019 that the most common employment obstacles in Australia were “limited work experience, low skills and poor health”.

While providing good incentives to work is an important part of reducing long-term disadvantage, it isn’t the main part.

What the Coalition is proposing would provide some people more incentive, but it wouldn’t attack the most important barriers.

And it would make one worse.

The government’s Interim Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (of which I was a member) reported this year that the low level of JobSeeker was itself a barrier to employment.

It’s one the Opposition’s proposal would do nothing to reduce.

Peter Whiteford receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Interim Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (EIAC). The views expressed are his own, not those of the EIAC.

– ref. Dutton’s JobSeeker plans would at first leave 640,000 worse off and 168,000 better off – https://theconversation.com/duttons-jobseeker-plans-would-at-first-leave-640-000-worse-off-and-168-000-better-off-210699

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rodrigo Suarez, Senior Lecturer- School of Biomedical Sciences and Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland

Researchers often think how and when their results will be published. However, many research projects don’t see the light until decades (or even centuries) later, if at all.

This is the case of a high-resolution atlas of the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine brain. Carefully processed over 140 years ago, it is finally published today in the journal PNAS.

Similar, but not wolves

Thylacines were dingo-sized carnivorous marsupials that roamed through Australia and New Guinea prior to human occupation. They became confined to Tasmania around 3,000 years ago.

The arrival of European colonists and the introduction of farming, diseases and hunting bounties quickly led to their extinction. The last known individual died on September 7 1936 at Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo. As a commemoration, September 7 became the National Threatened Species Day to raise conservation awareness in Australia.

Read more:
Should we bring back the thylacine? We asked 5 experts

Thylacines looked remarkably similar to wolves and dogs (that is, canids). This is a textbook example of a process known as evolutionary convergence: when the body shapes of animals are really similar, despite them coming from different lineages.

However, whether thylacine brains are also similar to wolves has been very hard to find out, due to a lack of material available for microscopic studies. In the newly published study, my colleagues and I uploaded high-resolution images to a public repository, and studied brain sections prepared for microscopy from a thylacine that died in the Berlin Zoo in 1880.

Kept safe by researchers

Unfortunately, very little information about this specimen was available (for example, its sex and body weight was missing). Details were likely lost during both world wars. But the samples were kept safe by researchers who understood their biological relevance.

Initial custodians likely included German scientists Oskar and Cecile Vogt, whose large privately owned brain sample collection was incorporated into the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in 1914. Vogt – who also studied Lenin’s brain – was the founding director of the institute, prior to the couple escaping the Nazis in 1937.

The institute later became the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and moved to Frankfurt in 1962. There, late neurobiologist Heinz Stephan handed the thylacine material to John Nelson from Monash University (co-author of this study) in 1973, to be returned to Australia.

The original samples are currently held by CSIRO’s Australian National Wildlife Collection in Canberra.

Read more:
Extinct but not gone – the thylacine continues to fascinate us

Brain features reveal a family

So, what did we discover after analysing the samples? Overall, the thylacine brain resembles that of its carnivorous marsupial relatives (dasyurids, like dunnarts, quolls and Tasmanian devils) more than that of wolves or other canids.

The brain region known as the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for planning actions and sensing the environment, is larger than in other dasyurids. Brain regions involved in processing smells also suggest that scavenging and hunting behaviours were important in this species.

These findings show that despite body resemblance, brain features better show the evolutionary relatedness between species.

Making this material openly available allows for anyone to study the thylacine brain and gain a clearer picture of this long-gone species. Our ongoing research using dunnarts is also providing new insights about the development and evolution of the mammalian brain.

Read more:
The Tasmanian tiger was hunted to extinction as a ‘large predator’ – but it was only half as heavy as we thought

Rodrigo Suarez receives grant funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. A 140-year-old Tassie tiger brain sample survived two world wars and made it to our lab. Here’s what we found – https://theconversation.com/a-140-year-old-tassie-tiger-brain-sample-survived-two-world-wars-and-made-it-to-our-lab-heres-what-we-found-210634

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rani Tesiram, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

We’ve all been waiting patiently (and not so patiently) for the latest in Taylor Swift’s “Taylor’s Versions”. At first, these seemed to be just re-recordings so that the pop icon could own her own music. But, as each album was released, small changes to the narrative of the album keep cropping up, leading to growing anticipation over what Swift is going to give us next and how that might change the way we’ve understood the album and the artist’s narrative.

Swift is on a journey to rerecord all of the studio albums released while contracted to Big Machine Records. This process is necessary because her original 13-year contract (signed when Swift was only 15) awarded all of the rights to her masters to the record company and not her. After several failed attempts to buy back her rights, Swift made the decision to re-record, remaster and re-release all ten studio albums released under that contract.

To avoid legal challenges from Big Machine the new releases need to be different enough to be considered new. This comes both in the form of the title change to include “(Taylor’s Version)” and in some instances subtle instrumental, vocal or lyrical changes.

On the new albums, you’ll find a matured, updated sound and songs “From The Vault”, which are previously unreleased tracks similar to B-side tracks sometimes released with remastered albums.

One of the most controversial updates that you’ll find in Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is the lyric change in the song Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version). These changes are seen as positive by many fans, but unnecessary by others.

Remastering and updating

Remastering music offers the opportunity to release an album after it has been filtered through updated technology. Often this means being able to eliminate artefacts in the sound, or fix frequency or balancing issues.

In Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and many other remastered albums, the changes in sound and quality are subtle, but they are there. For example, the specific tone of the intro slide guitar in Dear John (Taylor’s Version) has a deeper and fuller body to it than the original. The mix itself sounds fuller, still dreamy, but the mix is also slightly louder and clearer.

Swift’s vocals also have an extra layer and body to their sound in the newer version as well. This makes her voice sound fuller, but also highlights how her voice is more mature now.

Better than revenge?

In addition to these new orchestrations and mixing of instruments, Swift has taken the opportunity with her Taylor’s Version recordings to update the lyrics in Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version).

Swift alters the original, controversial lyric “But she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” to “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches”. The original lyric was criticised for the seemingly anti-feminist vibe that underpins it.

This time around, Swift has taken the opportunity to rewrite the narrative and shift away from a more obvious criticism of this character’s sexual activity and instead focus on how she was alluring to the male character.

While Swift did not publicly announce this lyric change, it became a topic of conversation surrounding the re-release. The lengthy prologue Swift includes on the album does not even explicitly address the change, but alludes to the change. The lyric change was confirmed by fans who examined the included lyrics when they received their physical copies of the new album.

Swift’s lyrical change has been mostly well received. However, Rolling Stone essayist Larisha Paul argued for the original lyric to be left unchanged as a demonstration of “Swift’s complicated journey through coming to an understanding of intersectional feminism”.

For some fans, this change is welcome because it is a direct recognition of that shifting attitude and, by extension, the greater paradigm shift we’re experiencing as a society that is actively trying to move away from “sexual bullying” and the way it perpetrates misogyny.

Read more:
Why are Taylor Swift tickets so hard to get? The economics are complicated

Shifting the Narrative

Even something as simple as changing the guitar tone in a track or the way it is mixed can greatly change the narrative put forward or interpreted by the listener. Remastered albums are almost always a point of contention because the success of a remaster is heavily dependent on how well the artist pulls it off.

Swift has been using these re-recordings as an opportunity to update the narrative for herself. The first controversial shift of narrative fans really latched onto was the All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) which provided a new perspective on one of Swift’s relationships. It was accompanied by a 14-minute short film/music video to further tell this new narrative.

In this instance, Swift was taking back some of the power she had lost in a relationship. But now, with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Swift is trying to push forward a narrative of positivity and feminism. In the prologue to the album, Swift states that she used Speak Now to speak sincerely about everything that had happened to her up to that point in her life (2010) – all the criticism for her music, doubts about her abilities, and scandal with Kanye West.

The lyric change in “Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)” is only one example of how Swift is changing the narrative she puts out there. Her prologue, coupled with her documentary and all of the other Taylor’s Versions released or yet to come, demonstrate a sincerity and dedication to honesty and strength.

By openly commenting on where she was when she wrote the original Speak Now in the prologue to Taylor’s Version, Swift invites her audience to see how she has grown and stumbled through her own mistakes. The lyric change is only one version of that.

Rani Tesiram is affiliated with 4ZZZ Community Radio.

– ref. Taylor Swift didn’t just update the lyrics for Better Than Revenge – she updated her public image – https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-didnt-just-update-the-lyrics-for-better-than-revenge-she-updated-her-public-image-209684

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Newans, Lecturer, Griffith University

The leisurely sport of Test cricket, in which matches last for several days, has been around for almost 150 years. Over the course of that century and a half, cricket has been reshaped by a few crucial events: the “bodyline” era of the 1930s, the invention of one-day matches and World Series Cricket in the 1970s, and the introduction of the even faster-paced Twenty20 cricket in 2005.

We may be living through another pivotal moment in the history of Test cricket: the advent of “Bazball”, a freewheeling, attacking style of play developed by England coach Brendon “Baz” McCullum.

The aggressive approach is seen as carrying high risk and high reward, with the goal of scoring runs quickly and forcing a conclusive result in a game that often ends in draws when time runs out.

Bazball is only about a year old, and some debate its merits and even its very existence. As statisticians, we can’t determine whether Bazball will transform the sport or fade away – but we’ve crunched the numbers and found evidence England’s new approach does represent a genuine break with the history of Test cricket.

What is Bazball?

After a lacklustre 4-0 loss to Australia in the Ashes series two summers ago, England sacked head coach Chris Silverwood. His replacement was the relatively untested McCullum, a former captain of the New Zealand team known for his fast scoring as a batsman.

McCullum only retired from playing in 2019. He is the first international head coach to have played the majority of his career in the era of the frenetic, high-scoring Twenty20 cricket format.

Read more:
The Ashes: how England cricket’s head coach Brendon McCullum developed his ‘Bazball’ style

With this appointment, England has adopted an extremely attacking style dubbed “Bazball” by Cricinfo editor Andrew Miller. The name has taken off in discussions of the stark shift in England’s play, which has attracted attention among cricket fans around the world.

So what is Bazball? McCullum himself recently told a Perth radio show “I don’t have any idea what ‘Bazball’ is”.

Run rates

To understand what Bazball is, and whether it even exists, we turned to the voluminous statistical history of the game.

At the conclusion of the first Test of this Ashes series, 2,507 matches of Test cricket had been played and nearly 2,500,000 runs scored. Across all those matches, the average number of runs scored per six-ball over (known as the “run rate”) has been remarkably stable.

From 1910 to 1919, on average, 3.03 runs were scored every six balls. By the 1950s this had fallen a little to 2.32 runs per six balls, but it has been slowly increasing ever since.

Over the past 20 years, the run rate has averaged 3.29 runs per over, the highest in Test cricket’s history.

What kind of numbers have we seen in Bazball matches?

Comparing Bazball to the past

It might be tempting to compare run rates directly, but run rates can be affected by many factors, such as the total number of runs scored in an innings and the pitch conditions.

For example, an innings with a larger run total will tend to correspond to more runs per over, as there are a limited number of overs. As a result, there is less variety in run rates for innings with larger totals.

We built a statistical model to predict, and capture the variability of, run rates in Test matches. The model took into account the innings total, the year of play, and the location where the match was played.

We fitted the model to the data for run rate per innings. We only included data since 2000, which we define loosely as “modern cricket”.

Further, we excluded data where the innings total was less than 200, as it can be easier to maintain a very high run rate for a shorter innings. This left a total of 2,659 innings for analysis.

As the charts above show, the model does well at capturing how the mean and variance of run rates changes with year and innings total.

Putting Bazball in context

Next, we can measure how far a given innings deviates from the model’s prediction with a number we call the “run rate score”. If the model represents business as usual, the run rate score shows how “unusual” the innings is.

We are interested in high run rates, so we focused on data points larger than what the model predicts (that is, the highest positive run rate scores). We used a statistical approach that can also capture the estimated uncertainty in the run rate scores.

In the chart above, you can see the top 30 estimated run rate scores. There are some uncertainties in estimating a run rate score, so these are shown by the shaded areas. As you can see by the highlighted bars, there are eight Bazball innings in the top 30. This is quite remarkable, given there are only 20 Bazball innings altogether in our data set of 2,659 innings.

This demonstrates strong evidence that Bazball is a very real phenomenon. Whether Brendon McCullum knows it or not, his team is up to something very unusual

So now that Bazball has faced its toughest challenge yet – the Australian pace attack – and seemingly survived, the final hurdle will be an away series in India in February next year. For now, we will be keeping a close eye on whether other teams follow suit in this revolutionary style of cricket.

Christopher Drovandi is a Professor of Statistics at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and is an Investigator in the QUT Centre for Data Science. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Tim Newans 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. Bazball by the numbers: what the stats say about English cricket’s ambitious but risky change of pace – https://theconversation.com/bazball-by-the-numbers-what-the-stats-say-about-english-crickets-ambitious-but-risky-change-of-pace-208919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Welch, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Auckland

The old joke about “just one more lane” being all that’s needed to solve traffic congestion has been heard a few times since the National Party released its transport policy this week.

The plan is nothing if not ambitious: more and bigger roads worth nearly NZ$25 billion over ten years, including a four-lane motorway from Whangārei to Tauranga at a stated cost of $6 billion.

That might sound like a lot, with the cost per kilometre of road being about $20 million. But recent big road projects suggest it could be a significant underestimate.

Wellington’s Transmission Gully spans just 27km and cost an estimated $1.25 billion – that equates to over $46 million per kilometre. The recently opened Ara Tūhono (dubbed the “holiday highway”) from Puhoi to Warkworth north of Auckland cost about $1.05 billion for just 18.5km – almost $57 million per kilometre.

A four-lane motorway between Whangarei and Tauranga would face more challenging terrain than Transmission Gully or Ara Tūhono and would span much longer distances.

Given the significant cost overruns of recent big roading projects, as well as the time it will take to build these roads, it’s likely the bill will be much more than $6 billion.

Private versus public transport

The opportunity cost of these projects also needs to account for those who don’t – or don’t want to – drive a car.

National’s proposal calls for scrapping most of the “Let’s Get Wellington Moving” project, including a long-planned light rail line. This is on top of the party’s promise that it will axe the proposed Auckland light rail scheme.

Read more:
National’s housing u-turn promotes urban sprawl – cities and ratepayers will pick up the bill

Both light rail proposals have been a point of contention: National argues that additional motorways and tunnelling in Wellington would be more cost-effective, and tunnelled light rail in Auckland has an enormous price tag.

But the transport mode itself is fast, efficient and equitable. A similarly controversial light rail line in Sydney opened a few years ago, with patronage more than doubling in a single year, despite the pandemic.

Public transport pollution is far less than that from personal vehicles. Buses and trains produce about 80% less carbon emissions per passenger kilometre than personal vehicles.

Roads versus climate

Around the same time National was releasing its transport policy, July was confirmed to be the hottest month ever on Earth (though August could replace that soon).

The northern hemisphere is experiencing extreme heatwaves. Some places are reaching the upper limits of human survival. In the American southwest, the pavement got so hot people were treated for second-degree burns.

Records are also breaking around Arctic sea ice melt, with the most significant deviations from historical averages ever recorded. Wildfires have raged across Canada, Sicily, Algeria and other countries.

Read more:
Too big, too heavy and too slow to change: road transport is way off track for net zero

Human-generated carbon emissions have exacerbated these extremes. Of those emissions, almost 25% are from the transport sector, and passenger transport (cars and light trucks) accounts for about 45% of the sector’s emissions.

Given the observable realities of the climate crisis, many have questioned the logic of leaning into road expansion as a policy, especially at the expense of efficient public transport.

More roads encourage more traffic and more driving, often leading to even worse congestion. Expanded road networks also encourage development in lower-density areas by making them more accessible, at least in the short term.

While this is a selling point in National’s transportation plan, it often leads to more car-dependent development that make traffic congestion even worse. Combined with National’s proposal to build housing in “greenfields” zones away from cities, it risks locking the country into a car-dependent, high-carbon future.

Read more:
Electric cars alone won’t save the planet. We’ll need to design cities so people can walk and cycle safely

The EV mirage

National leader Christopher Luxon has made the point that “even electric vehicles need adequate roads”. But this begs a bigger question about relying on EVs to solve transport and climate problems.

Despite years of generous subsidies, battery-electric vehicles still make up just 1.3% of New Zealand’s total fleet. This is nowhere near the numbers needed to make a meaningful dent in transport emissions.

EVs require the same amount of road space and, due to their increased weight, potentially cause more road damage. But EV owners don’t buy petrol, which means they don’t pay excise tax – the same tax that pays for expanding roads.

Even with inflation around 7%, the excise tax has not increased in more than four years, meaning every year the tax’s purchasing power diminishes.

National’s plan to build more roads rather than focus on better public transport is reminiscent of transport policies from the 1950s and 1960s. That era saw the construction of the car-centric cities we now struggle to maintain and move around in.

That era also moved us closer to climate disaster, and generally made transport less efficient and less equitable. In hindsight, massive roading infrastructure projects weren’t the solution they might have seemed 70 years ago. But they have at least provided a lesson in what not to do today.

Timothy Welch 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. 70 years of road-based policies created today’s problems – does National’s transport plan add up? – https://theconversation.com/70-years-of-road-based-policies-created-todays-problems-does-nationals-transport-plan-add-up-210696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Lee, Senior Teaching Fellow, Psychology, Bond University

In recent years, drinkers have become more aware of the health dangers of drinking alcohol, from disease to risky behaviour and poorer wellbeing. Events like the just-finished Dry July, Febfast and Hello Sunday Morning – when people voluntarily abstain from alcohol for periods of time – are growing in popularity and raise awareness about the risks involved in overindulgence.

Many people extend these alcohol-free periods throughout the year by incorporating alcohol-free days into their weekly routines, while still enjoying a drink on the weekends.

But does drinking the same amount spread over the week versus just on the weekends, make any difference health-wise?

How much is too much?

Australian alcohol guidelines and the World Health Organization state there is no safe level of alcohol use. For adults who do drink, the guidelines recommend a maximum of four drinks in one sitting or ten in a week. (A zero-alcohol approach is recommended for under-18s and during pregnancy.)

For some, this may not sound like much at all. One in four Australians exceed the recommendation of no more than four drinks in one session with men more likely to do so than women. This amount can result in alcohol poisoning, damage to brain cells and a higher likelihood of engaging in risky behaviours leading to violence, accidents and unprotected sex.

Read more:
Yes, alcohol awareness campaigns like Dry July can work, but not for everyone

But what about a wine each night?

Even abiding by the Australian alcohol guidelines and drinking in moderation – one or two drinks each day over the week – can be risky. Possible health outcomes of moderated drinking include increased risk of cancer, liver and heart disease, alcohol use disorder, and an increase in the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Everyone processes alcohol at a different rate depending on age, gender, body shape and size. However, for most people, alcohol can still be detected in the blood 12 hours after consumption. When the body is constantly processing the toxins in alcohol, it can lead to a chronic state of inflammation which is linked to physical and mental health risks.

There are several biological mechanisms associated with alcohol’s impact on the brain. Alcohol destroys the fine balance of the bacteria in the gut microbiome, which has been linked to brain health.

Alcohol consumption disrupts the function of the amygdala – a part of the brain important for processing and regulating emotion, including our fear response. When this is impaired we are less likely to pay attention to our fears and more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviour.

Areas involved in language production and comprehension are also affected by alcohol, with too much leading to slurred speech and the inability to comprehend communication from others. When drinking dulls frontal lobe brain function, it can can lead to changes in personality for some people. Blackouts can occur from the influence of alcohol on the hippocampus.

Read more:
‘I take it with a pinch of salt’: why women question health warnings linking alcohol with breast cancer

So, no drinking then?

While sobriety may be the answer for optimal health, depriving ourselves of the things we enjoy can also lead to negative mental health and a higher likelihood we will binge in the future. This is why alcohol-free days are becoming so popular, to balance health risks while also giving us the chance to enjoy social activities.

Including alcohol-free days in your routine can give the body a chance to rehydrate, detoxify and repair itself from the toxic properties of alcohol. Detoxification can lead to improved liver function and sleep quality, less water retention and easier weight control, clearer thinking, improved memory, more energy, clearer skin, a strengthened immune system and decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Alcohol-free days can also create a domino effect by encouraging other healthy behaviours like eating more fruits and vegetables, drinking more water, improved sleep patterns and getting up early to exercise.

6 tips for better drinking balance

If you’re looking to incorporate more alcohol-free days into your routine you could try to

1. set realistic goals. Clarify how many and what days will be your alcohol-free days, mark them on a calendar and set reminders on your phone
2. plan alcohol-free activities and find alcohol alternatives. List all the activities you like that do not include drinking and plan to do these at the times of the day you would normally drink
3. make alcohol “invisible”. Keeping beer out of the fridge and wine and spirits in closed cupboards keeps them from the forefront of your mind
4. seek support and encouragement from your partner and/or family
5. incorporate stress management techniques like meditation and mindfulness. Observe how you feel on alcohol-free days and note positive changes in your physical and mental wellbeing
6. reflect on your progress. Acknowledge and celebrate each alcohol-free day. Allow yourself non-alcoholic rewards for achieving your goals.

Finally, it’s important to know everyone slips up now and then. Practice self-forgiveness if you do have a drink on a planned alcohol-free day and don’t give up.

Read more:
We’re getting really good at making alcohol-free beer and wine. Here’s how it’s done

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. A drink each day or just on the weekends? Here’s why alcohol-free days are important – https://theconversation.com/a-drink-each-day-or-just-on-the-weekends-heres-why-alcohol-free-days-are-important-210193

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

If you’ve been out and about the past few days, you may have noticed Australia is experiencing an unseasonably warm winter. It’s been t-shirt weather across many parts of the country’s east, including Sydney where temperatures topped 25℃ on Sunday.

Meanwhile, at high altitudes, the cover at some snowfields remains lacklustre, even after warm conditions forced a delay to the start of the traditional ski season.

All this comes after the world experienced its hottest month since reliable records began. July brought an incredible 21 of the warmest 30 days ever recorded – prompting the United Nations to declare a new era of “global boiling”.

So what’s going on with the weather in Australia? Should we just enjoy the pleasant conditions, or is it a troubling sign of what’s to come under climate change?

The nice weather, explained

Australia’s unseasonably warm conditions are the result of both natural drivers of our weather and continued global warming.

Since early July, warmer and drier conditions have dominated, due to a high pressure system sitting stubbornly over Australia at the moment. The clear conditions are leading to warmer daytime conditions.

For example, daytime temperatures in Canberra in July – historically known for its cold winters – were the warmest on record, despite frequent frosty mornings. Sydney has just experienced its warmest July on record, too.

The high pressure has caused the air over the continent’s interior to warm. When cold fronts move across the south of Australia they push this warm air ahead of them, bringing warm and windy conditions to southern coastal areas. This is similar to the weather pattern we see in summer when cities such as Adelaide and Melbourne experience their hottest days.

On Thursday, an approaching cold front is forecast to lift temperatures ahead of it to about 23℃ in Adelaide, 20℃ in Melbourne and 18℃ in Hobart. These are very warm temperatures in these locations for early August.

And what about the oceans? Around Australia, oceans are a bit cooler than average in some places including to the northwest of the continent.

But as the image below shows, ocean temperatures are currently above normal in many places around the world, including the west Indian Ocean and the central and eastern tropical Pacific. This indicates a developing El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole – two natural climate drivers that affect Australia’s weather patterns.

This difference in ocean temperatures reduces the amount of atmospheric moisture over southern and eastern Australia. It also makes low pressure systems weaker and less frequent, reducing rainfall over the region.

Over the coming months, warm and dry weather is expected to continue. For the rest of winter and spring, it’s expected to be drier than normal in the southwest of Western Australia and much of the east of the continent. And the whole of Australia is predicted to be warmer than normal during this period. Of course, this doesn’t rule out occasional cool, wet spells.

So is climate change a factor here? Yes. Australia’s land areas have already warmed by 1.4℃ since pre-industrial times. This is the result of humans burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases.

The record winter warmth is part of a long-term upward trend in Australian winter temperatures.

As I’ve written previously, there has been at least a 60-fold increase in the likelihood of a very warm winter that can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

And we’re likely to see more record warm winters as the planet continues to warm.

Read more:
Global warming to bring record hot year by 2028 – probably our first above 1.5°C limit

Looking north

Of course, Australia’s spell of warm weather seems harmless compared to the Northern Hemisphere’s weird and wild summer.

There, simultaneous extreme heatwaves have struck all four continents in recent weeks. Ocean temperatures are well above previous record highs for this time of year. Last week, 1,000 wildfires burned in Canada alone.

The planet’s warmest average temperatures typically happen in July. That’s because the Northern Hemisphere’s large land masses heat up more quickly than the oceans, in response to the high amounts of radiation from the sun. Still, the heat of the last few weeks has been unprecedented.

The heatwaves are linked to high-pressure weather systems that are “blocking” or deflecting oncoming low-pressure systems (and associated clouds and rain). On top of this, human-caused global warming is greatly increasing the chance of record-breaking extreme heat events and concurrent heatwaves across many regions.

Worryingly, a rapid analysis by international experts suggests the extreme heat should not be viewed as unusual, given the effects of climate change. For example, it says China’s recent record-breaking heatwave should now be expected about once in every five years, on average.

Not all extreme weather events can be attributed to human-caused climate change. But the study found climate change significantly contributed to the recent heatwaves in China, North America and Europe.

A sign of what’s to come

The Northern Hemisphere’s heatwaves are very alarming. But Australia’s temperatures are also unusually high for winter – and this is also cause for concern.

Warm winters in Australia can negatively affect some parts of the economy, including the ski industry. It also disrupts flora and fauna and increases the chance of “flash droughts” – where drier-than-normal conditions turn into severe drought in the space of weeks.

The warm, dry conditions may also lead to an earlier start to the fire season in Australia’s southeast.

So while we may appreciate warm winter weather, we mustn’t forget what’s driving it – and how urgently we need to stabilise Earth’s climate by slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more:
Two trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases, 25 billion nukes of heat: are we pushing Earth out of the Goldilocks zone?

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. Why is Australia having such a warm winter? A climate expert explains – https://theconversation.com/why-is-australia-having-such-a-warm-winter-a-climate-expert-explains-210693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Wallis, Professor of International Security, University of Adelaide

During his recent speech at the Solomon Islands National University, Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy said “strategic competition […] is an unavoidable reality for our region”.

July has already seen Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare visit China, French President Emmanuel Macron visit Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia, and United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken visit Tonga (Australia and New Zealand).

This follows visits by an array of leaders and senior officials to the region over the past year. There have been several high-level dialogues, including the historic United States-Pacific Island Country Summit in September 2022.

Reflecting its proximity and historic role, Australia has been at the forefront of this competition. Since launching its “Pacific step-up” in 2018, it has committed billions of dollars (on top of being the largest donor), and instigated a raft of security, infrastructure and other activities.

Read more:
On the Pacific, the new government must be bold and go big. Here’s how the repair work could begin

But too often Australia’s initiatives have resembled whack-a-mole reactions to China’s activities. For example, the government funded Telstra to buy Digicel Pacific after China Mobile expressed interest. It also built the Coral Sea Cable after Huawei bid to lay it, and it re-developed the Black Rock Peacekeeping and Humanitarian & Disaster Relief Camp after China indicated interest. Australia’s Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific seeks to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure lending, motivated by – disputed – claims about “debt-trap diplomacy”.

After a July visit to Solomon Islands, Defence Minister Richard Marles suggested that Australia is “very keen” to whack another mole: helping Solomon Islands to establish a military.

This followed Sogavare signing a policing pact during his visit to China. That pact built on a bilateral security agreement signed in April 2022 that several Australian commentators interpreted as paving the way for a Chinese military base. However, the Solomon Islands government refutes this.

While it is the Solomon Islands government’s sovereign right to establish a military, questions over its likely benefit should give Australia pause. Law and order are best guaranteed by police, and ultimately, by addressing sociopolitical challenges. This includes uneven development and underdevelopment.

Solomon Islands does not share a land border (a justification for Papua New Guinea having a defence force), and its maritime territory is already protected by a police maritime unit aided by the Australia-backed Pacific Maritime Security Programme. While the logistical capabilities of defence forces are useful for humanitarian and disaster relief, given challenges of funding and scale, the most efficient way to provide it would be through developing a regional capability.

Australia may be concerned that China will otherwise step in. But even if Australia does help, it wouldn’t have the right to control a new Solomon Islands’ defence force. And while Australia provided substantial assistance to rebuild Solomon Islands’ police force during RAMSI, that hasn’t stopped China from developing its own relationship with that force, including through providing training and equipment.

There are also a few cautionary tales from elsewhere in the Pacific. The deployment of the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) during the Bougainville conflict exemplified how a military can be used against a domestic population. And coups in Fiji demonstrate how the military can unseat a government. Australia had established the PNGDF during its colonial administration and had provided decades of support to the Fijian military.

Australia has legitimate strategic interests in Solomon Islands and the Pacific more broadly. And it is right to be concerned about China’s activism. But it needs to think carefully about how it responds.

In fact, there are alternative ways for Australia to improve its regional relationships that are far less costly – and risky.

Australia makes it difficult for Pacific people to come to Australia. It hosts temporary Pacific workers under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, as well as Pacific students, many of whom are funded by Australia Awards. But these programs often have culturally, economically, and legally exclusionary consequences.

The Labor government is attempting to improve the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme and enhance the experience of Pacific Australia Award students. Its establishment of the Pacific Engagement Visa that will allocate 3,000 permanent migration places to Pacific peoples annually is welcome. But that scheme has been delayed, and questions about its implementation remain unanswered.

It is time for Australia to implement a visa-waiver program for citizens of Pacific countries. While citizens of certain wealthy countries can apply in advance for free visitor visas (and New Zealand citizens can apply for one on arrival), citizens from Pacific countries are only eligible for expensive visas, which require extensive paperwork.

The contradiction between Australia describing the region as its “Pacific family”, yet making it difficult for Pacific peoples to visit, has generated frustration in the region.

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Indeed, most Pacific countries offer Australians the ability to obtain visitor/tourist visas on arrival. And Pacific leaders have long lobbied for a visa-waiver from Australia.

After all, if Australia genuinely sees itself as part of the “Pacific family”, why do we throw open our door to Europeans and Americans, but not to Pacific people?

A visa-waiver program could also be the precursor to Pacific people being offered visa-free entry similar to what we offer New Zealanders. That would be a genuine act of family “care” and “love”. And something China can’t beat.

Joanne Wallis receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Defence.

– ref. Australia should offer our ‘Pacific family’ access rather than simply reacting to China – https://theconversation.com/australia-should-offer-our-pacific-family-access-rather-than-simply-reacting-to-china-210460

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Treasure McGuire, Assistant Director of Pharmacy, Mater Health SEQ in conjoint appointment as Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Bond University and as Associate Professor (Clinical), The University of Queensland

In the depths of winter we are more at risk of succumbing to viral respiratory infections – from annoying sore throat, common cold and sinusitis, to the current resurgence of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID.

Symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection range in severity. They can include fever, chills, muscle or body aches, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, earache, headache, and fatigue. Most antibiotics target bacteria so are not effective for viral infections. Many people seek relief with over-the-counter medicines.

While evidence varies, guidelines suggest medicines taken by mouth (such as cough syrups or cold and flu tablets) have a limited but potentially positive short-term role for managing upper respiratory infection symptoms in adults and children older than 12. These include:

• paracetamol or ibuprofen for pain or fever
• decongestants such as phenylephrine or pseudoephedrine
• expectorants and mucolytics to thin and clear mucus from upper airways
• dry cough suppressants such as dextromethorphan
• sedating or non-sedating antihistamines for runny noses or watery eyes.

But what if you have been prescribed an antidepressant? What do you need to know before going to the pharmacy for respiratory relief?

Avoiding harm

An audit of more than 5,000 cough-and-cold consumer enquiries to an Australian national medicine call centre found questions frequently related to drug-drug interactions (29%). An 18-month analysis showed 20% of calls concerned potentially significant interactions, particularly with antidepressants.

Australia remains in the “top ten” antidepressant users in the OECD. More than 32 million antidepressant prescriptions are dispensed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme each year.

Antidepressants are commonly prescribed to manage symptoms of anxiety or depression but are also used in chronic pain and incontinence. They are classified primarily by how they affect chemical messengers in the nervous system.

These classes are:

• selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) such as fluoxetine, escitalopram, paroxetine and sertraline
• serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRI) such as desvenlafaxine, duloxetine and venlafaxine
• tricyclic antidepressants (TCA) such as amitriptyline, doxepin and imipramine
• monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) such as tranylcypromine
• atypical medicines such as agomelatine, mianserin, mirtazapine, moclobemide, reboxetine and vortioxetine
• complementary medicines including St John’s wort, S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe) and L-tryptophan

Medicines within the same class of antidepressants have similar actions and side-effect profiles. But the molecular differences of individual antidepressants mean they may have different interactions with medicines taken at the same time.

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Types of drug interactions

Drug interactions can be:

• pharmacokinetic – what the body does to a drug as it moves into, through and out of the body. When drugs are taken together, one may affect the absorption, distribution, metabolism or elimination of the other
• pharmacodynamic – what a drug does to the body. When drugs are taken together, one may affect the action of the other. Two drugs that independently cause sedation, for example, may result in excessive drowsiness if taken together.

There are many potential interactions between medications and antidepressants. These include interactions between over-the-counter medicines for upper respiratory symptoms and antidepressants, especially those taken orally.

Concentrations of nasal sprays or inhaled medicines are generally lower in the blood stream. That means they are less likely to interact with other medicines.

What to watch for

It’s important to get advice from a pharmacist before taking any medications on top of your antidepressant.

Two symptoms antidepressant users should monitor for shortly after commencing a cough or cold medicine are central nervous system effects (irritability, insomnia or drowsiness) and effects on blood pressure.

For example, taking a selective SSRI antidepressant and an oral decongestant (such as pseudoephedrine or phenylephrine) can cause irritability, insomnia and affect blood pressure.

Serotonin is a potent chemical compound produced naturally for brain and nerve function that can also constrict blood vessels. Medicines that affect serotonin are common and include most antidepressant classes, but also decongestants, dextromethorphan, St John’s wort, L-tryptophan, antimigraine agents, diet pills and amphetamines.

Combining drugs such as antidepressants and decongestants that both elevate serotonin levels can cause irritability, headache, insomnia, diarrhoea and blood pressure effects – usually increased blood pressure. But some people experience orthostatic hypotension (low blood pressure on standing up) and dizziness.

For example, taking both a serotonin and SNRI antidepressant and dextromethorphan (a cough suppressant) can add up to high serotonin levels. This can also occur with a combination of the complementary medicine St John’s Wort and an oral decongestant.

Where serotonin levels are too high, severe symptoms such as confusion, muscle rigidity, fever, seizures and even death have been reported. Such symptoms are rare but if you notice any of these you should stop taking the cold and flu medication straight away and seek medical attention.

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Ways to avoid antidepressant drug interactions

There are a few things we can do to prevent potentially dangerous interactions between antidepressants and cold and flu treatments.

1. Better information

Firstly, there should be more targeted, consumer-friendly, online drug interaction information available for antidepressant users.

2. Prevent the spread of viral infections as much as possible

Use the non-drug strategies that have worked well for COVID: regular hand washing, good personal hygiene, social distancing, and facemasks. Ensure adults and children are up to date with immunisations.

3. Avoid potential drug interactions with strategies to safely manage symptoms

Consult your pharmacist for strategies most appropriate for you and only use cold and flu medications while symptoms persist:

• treat muscle aches, pain, or a raised temperature with analgesics such as paracetamol or ibuprofen
• relieve congestion with a nasal spray decongestant
• clear mucus from upper airways with expectorants or mucolytics
• dry up a runny nose or watery eyes with a non-sedating antihistamine.

Avoid over-the-counter cough suppressants for an irritating dry cough. Use a simple alternative such as honey, steam inhalation with a few drops of eucalyptus oil or a non-medicated lozenge instead.

4. Ask whether your symptoms could be more than the common cold

Could it be influenza or COVID? Seek medical attention if you are concerned or your symptoms are not improving.

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Treasure McGuire 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. Taking an antidepressant? Mixing it with other medicines – including some cold and flu treatments – can be dangerous – https://theconversation.com/taking-an-antidepressant-mixing-it-with-other-medicines-including-some-cold-and-flu-treatments-can-be-dangerous-208662

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

Gas connections for all new housing and sub-divisions will be banned in Victoria from January 1 next year. The long-term result of the state government’s significant change to planning approvals will be all-electric housing. The ACT made similar changes early this year, in line with a shift away from gas across Europe and other locations, although the NSW Premier Chris Minns has baulked at doing the same.

Around 80% of homes in Victoria are connected to gas. This high uptake was driven by gas being seen as more affordable and sustainable than electricity over past decades. The situation has changed dramatically as renewable electricity generation increases and costs fall.

Research has suggested for more than a decade that the benefits of all-electric homes stack up in many locations. New homes built under mandatory building energy performance standards (increasing from 6 to 7 stars in Victoria in May 2024) need smaller, cheaper heating and cooling systems. Installing reverse-cycle air conditioning for cooling provides a cost-effective heater as a bonus.

Savings from not requiring gas pipes, appliances and gas supply infrastructure help to offset the costs of highly efficient electric appliances. Mandating fully electric homes means economies of scale will further reduce costs.

Read more:
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How does this ban help?

To achieve environmentally sustainable development, reforms of planning policy and regulation are essential to convert innovation and best practice to mainstream practice. Planning policy is particularly important for apartment buildings and other housing that may be rented or have an owners’ corporation. Retrofits to improve energy efficiency can be difficult in these situations.

Banning gas in new and renovated housing will cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also healthier for households and reduces healthcare costs as well as energy bills and infrastructure costs. The Victorian government suggests the change will save all-electric households about $1,000 a year. Houses with solar will be even better off.

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The government appears to be offering wide support to ensure these changes happen, but this will need to be monitored closely.

Some households will face extra costs for electric appliances and solar panels. The government’s announcement of $10 million for Residential Electrification Grants should help with some of these costs while the industry adjusts.

There will be impacts and benefits for the local economy. Some jobs may be lost, particularly in the gas appliance and plumbing industry. The government has announced financial support to retrain people and they will still have essential roles in the existing housing sector.

Many gas appliances are imported, including ovens, cooktops and instantaneous gas water heaters. Some components of efficient electric products, such as hot water storage tanks, are made locally. Local activities, including distribution, sales, design, installation and maintenance, comprise much of the overall cost.

Read more:
Keen to get off gas in your home, but struggling to make the switch? Research shows you’re not alone

Challenges of change must be managed

Sustainability benefits will depend on what happens with the energy network. We need more renewable energy, energy storage and smarter management of electricity demand.

The shift to all-electric homes may mean winter peak demand for heating increases. Energy market operators and governments will have to monitor demand changes carefully to avoid the reliability issues we already see in summer. However, improving energy efficiency, energy storage and demand management will help reduce this load (and household costs).

While the benefits are clear for new homes, the changes may increase gas costs and energy poverty for residents of existing housing who don’t shift to efficient electric solutions. The government has reconfirmed financial rebates to help households switch from gas.

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In addition, existing housing may face building quality and performance issues. Some may require electrical wiring upgrades as part of the transition.

Social acceptance of some electric appliances may also be an issue. For example, our research has found some households dislike the way heating from reverse cycle air conditioners feels. Others do not like cooking on induction cooktops.

Consumer education and modifications to appliances and buildings may be needed to increase acceptance and avoid backlash.

Some electric appliances are available overseas but not in Australia. Higher demand may increase the range of imports. For example, floor-mounted heat pumps can make heating feel similar to gas heating while still providing effective cooling.

We should not assume electric appliances are all equal. To improve consumer protection, action is needed on weak standards and limited and inconsistent public information. For example, information on noise levels and efficiency under a range of weather conditions must be standardised.

Moving housing away from gas is an important step in the transition to a zero-carbon economy and energy system. Careful management is needed to ensure this transition is effective, accepted and fair.

Continued planning reforms are also essential to ensure environmentally sustainable development of housing and communities. Other urgent priorities include urban cooling and greening, and circular economy approaches to reduce the material and waste impacts of housing and thus the carbon that goes into building and running homes.

Read more:
Turning the housing crisis around: how a circular economy can give us affordable, sustainable homes

Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners and is currently working on a project funded by the Future Fuels CRC exploring the use of gas and electricity in Victorian homes. He is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network.

Alan Pears consults to and advises a number of industry organisations, government agencies and community groups. He has received funding from and has affiliations with government agencies, community groups and industry groups with interests in housing, climate and energy policy. He has received funding from various organisations including ARENA, RMIT University, University of Melbourne, RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre, Victorian and Australian Governments and various industry partners. He is currently working with the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity.

Joe Hurley has received funding from various organisations including the Federal Government, the Victorian Government and various industry partners and is currently working on a project funded by the Australian Research Council on measuring cumulative heat in Australian cities. He is a on the technical advisory committee for the Council Alliance for Sustainable Built Environment.

– ref. Cooking (and heating) without gas: what are the impacts of shifting to all-electric homes? – https://theconversation.com/cooking-and-heating-without-gas-what-are-the-impacts-of-shifting-to-all-electric-homes-210649

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonia Graham, DECRA Fellow, University of Wollongong

It’s impossible to turn on the TV, listen to the radio or scroll social media without hearing about real-world climate impacts. July is the hottest month on record. The United Nations has declared an era of global boiling. Europe and North America are experiencing record-breaking heat waves while Antarctic sea ice levels have fallen to record lows.

Scientists are concerned changes such as these are rapid and irreversible. If heating continues, the climate could reach tipping points and enter new, dangerous states.

Such upheaval can also lead to marked changes in society. As our new research shows, climate change is causing social tipping points: fast, fundamental changes in human values, behaviours, relationships, technologies and institutions that are hard to undo.

We need to use this knowledge to overcome our long dependency on fossil fuels before climate change causes irreversible social upheavals.

Social science shows we’re more likely to be concerned about an issue when we have experienced it, such as being directly affected by fires or floods. But until then, we’re often unlikely to support policies which may radically change everyday life. We can see this in planning for sea-level rise. Coastal communities that have experienced significant coastal erosion are much more supportive of coastal protection policies than those that haven’t.

Understanding social tipping points

Studying social tipping points is hard and messy. Humans and our societies are much less predictable than nature. The status quo is very well entrenched and shifts away from it rarely happen without significant pushback.

But it can happen – especially in times of crisis, as the COVID pandemic demonstrated. Three years ago, many of us shifted to working from home – and the change happened remarkably quickly. Changing back to working in the office every day is turning out to be much harder than first thought.

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Social science tells us natural disasters can provide opportunities for social tipping points. That’s because natural disasters can change how we allocate resources and our expectations of what governments should do.

For instance, the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010 and 2011 drove a new approach to disaster response. The New Zealand government created a recovery agency tasked not only with building back better, but also making sure community wellbeing was taken into account.

How can natural disasters cause social tipping points?

Our research brought two dozen researchers from diverse disciplines together to debate what social tipping points are and how we can respond to them.

To understand the issue, we examined a devastating flood in Germany in 2021. Intense rainfall turned the small Ahr River into a torrent with flows rivalling the Rhine. The flooding killed 134 people and destroyed the livelihoods of thousands.

The disaster was made up to nine times more likely by climate change, because hotter air can hold more moisture to fall as rain.

We found the chaos and damage had led to social tipping points. Local communities called for the right to rebuild houses on higher ground, which led to proposed changes to national construction laws.

Australia’s Black Summer bushfires also demonstrate the link between climate-related disasters and social attitudes.

Over the 2019–2020 summer, more than 24 million hectares were burnt, 33 people died, over 3,000 homes were destroyed and an estimated three billion animals were killed.

It triggered shifts in Australian society, both large and small. For the first time, First Nations cultural burning practices gained real traction as a way to reduce damage from megafires.

Surveys showed the impact of the fires on public opinion. People were less satisfied with the direction of the country and had less confidence in the federal government. They were more likely to rate climate change as a potential threat, and were less likely to support new coal mines.

More broadly, we can see the response to the ozone hole as an example of a positive social tipping point. In the 1970s and 80s, concern about the growing impacts of the ozone hole on human health and the environment resulted in deliberate intergovernmental action. Thanks to these efforts, we have seen the size of the ozone hole stabilise and begin to close.

But social tipping points don’t have to be positive. They can be intensely negative. The Syrian civil war which began in 2011 was triggered, in part, from social tensions emerging from intense and prolonged droughts made more likely by climate change. These tensions – and their climate drivers – haven’t gone away.

What should we take from this?

While it’s vitally important to understand climate tipping points, it can be common to focus on them passively – as if it’s something that will simply happen without any human agency. But this isn’t how it will play out.

Our societies and organisations will be forced into change by climate disruption, whether for good or ill. We need to understand whether social tipping points triggered by climate change are desirable or not. If they pose major risks, we need to understand what we can do to avoid them.

We can see this playing out in the Northern Hemisphere. Media coverage tends to focus on the heatwaves and the stark images of tourists trying to fight fires. But climate upheaval will bring much larger changes to our societies.

It could be more extreme weather, intensified natural disasters and melting sea ice force us to act ever more quickly to avert the worst outcomes. But we could also see dangerous social tipping points – think flows of climate refugees leading to anti-immigration sentiment and skepticism of global cooperation. The future isn’t set.

Read more:
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Sonia Graham receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE200100234) and previously the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the ‘María de Maeztu’ program for Units of Excellence (MDM-2015-0552). She is a member of the Labor party.

– ref. Climate change can drive social tipping points – for better or for worse – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-can-drive-social-tipping-points-for-better-or-for-worse-210641

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Crawford, Senior Lecturer, Management, University of Tasmania

Belonging is about feeling accepted, included and valued.

If students feel like they belong at their university, research shows it plays a crucial role in their overall wellbeing, self-esteem, and motivation to study.

As the Universities Accord interim report says, universities have an “obligation to students to foster belonging”. The draft report also notes “too few” Australians are completing university degrees, with completions of a first bachelor degree “at their lowest since 2014”.

Beyond ensuring campuses are safe and inclusive places to study, our new research looks at what factors can predict a sense of belonging for students.

What is happening to student belonging?

The annual Student Experience Survey tracks Australian students’ sense of belonging to their institution.

In 2022, only 46.5% of undergraduate students said they experienced a sense of belonging at university, and while this is slightly higher than 2021 (42.1%), it remains significantly lower than most other areas of student experience. For example, Australian students rated their overall university experience at 75.9%.

The pandemic and the move to more online teaching certainly had an impact on belonging. But this issue pre-dates 2020 and is not unique to Australia.

It is important to reverse this trend. Feeling like they belong can help students overcome challenges and hardships and guard against not completing their degrees.

Our study

Our research uses data from the Student Experience Survey between 2013 and 2019. We looked at more than 1.1 million undergraduate and postgraduate students during this time.

We used machine learning – a form of artificial intelligence that uses data and algorithms to progressively improve its quality (just like Netflix’s ability to recommend movies based on previous viewing) – to ask what actually predicts student belonging?

Analysis of multiple variables from the national student experience survey suggested several causes and connections.

Students want help to settle in

Students want to know they are welcome at their university from the very start. Our research found support for settling in was an important predictor for belonging.

This can mean inductions, orientations and structured opportunities to meet people. This could look like peer mentoring programs and for international students, mobilising the help of ethnic and religious community organisations.

It is also important for universities to have places on campus for students to interact, as well as clubs and events. On top of this, university teaching staff can complete training in how to facilitate social connections between students.

Our study found ease and helpfulness of enrolment and administration systems were not as important to belonging when compared to human connections.

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Students need meaningful connections

Our research also showed students wanted to interact with their peers.

But we found interactions outside of class were much more important than interaction in class. This might be because student connection opportunities in class may be poor, or they see on-campus socialising as easier without academic pressure.

The study found it was important for all students – domestic or international – to have interactions with local students.

Local students already know the important places, events and sub-cultures of an area. This may be as simple as where to get the best coffee or cheapest takeaway, but helps students feel like they belong in the community.

Group work and belonging

We found some interactions in class are important: our study suggests learning teamwork in class helped students feel like they belonged as it meant students were working together and interacting with their peers.

However, other skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, subject matter knowledge, and work readiness were far less important when it came to belonging.

Demographic indifference?

Research says a student’s personal identity is an important precursor to belonging. That is, we might belong more easily with those who share characteristics with us.

In our study we looked at students’ age, gender and enrolment type.

But we found these were less significant when it came to belonging. It mattered more if students were able to interact with other students.

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Why this matters

While skills development and subject matter expertise are very important for academic outcomes, our research shows when it comes to belonging, students need authentic opportunities to settle into university life and make friends.

In its interim report, the Universities Accord does not look at the commencement or orientation process for students.

It’s final report in December should not miss the opportunity to boost belonging – and thus retention – by focusing on how campuses can include and involve students from the start of their studies. If they do, our research suggests this will have long-term benefits.

Joseph Crawford 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. Help to settle in and friendships beyond class: what makes students feel like they belong at uni – https://theconversation.com/help-to-settle-in-and-friendships-beyond-class-what-makes-students-feel-like-they-belong-at-uni-210632

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bonny Cassidy, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, RMIT University

The Victorian Supreme Court has determined the descendants of Ned Kelly’s family are not a distinctive cultural group with the right to protections of their “intangible cultural heritage”.

The Kelly clan’s bid for recognition was provoked by a proposed tourist development at Glenrowan, the site of the outlaw’s last stand in 1880. The new centre will look at the story of the Kelly gang in the context of Glenrowan’s broader history.

Kelly’s grand-niece, Joanne Griffiths, argues the new structure and landscaping will “disrespect” her family’s “human rights” as cultural “custodians”.

Justice Melinda Richards found Griffiths and the family could not prove practices that would distinguish them as a cultural group. The redevelopment continues as proposed.

Griffiths has claimed the court’s decision is a continuation of the “persecution” meted out to the Kelly family:

If we were Indigenous this wouldn’t be happening.

The case raises fascinating questions about the definition and evidence of White cultural heritage in Australia – and the way we treat sites of colonial history.

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What is White cultural history?

Glenrowan is tucked inside the south-eastern boundary of Yorta Yorta Country, where the Ovens River floodplains meet the rising foothills of the Victorian Alps.

In 1998, the Yorta Yorta were denied native title because, according to Justice Howard Olney, “the tide of history has undoubtedly washed away any traditional rights” to their lands and waters.

The Kelly descendants made no claim to native title. But by invoking their cultural heritage they tasked themselves with the same burden of proof required of First Nations people in fighting for land rights.

The Kelly descendants were not claiming the site as one of public significance. They were instead claiming a familial connection.

There is no doubt Ned Kelly’s descendants share a unique emotional relationship with Glenrowan. That needs no justification or proof.

Many non-Indigenous people like myself feel close to certain places in Australia.

Historian James E Young coined the term “collected memory” rather than “collective memory”.

“A society’s memory,” he says, “might be regarded as an aggregate collection of its members’ many, often competing memories.”

Several Australian authors have explored this collected memory. Luke Stegemann’s Amnesia Road investigates the entanglement of Stegemann’s life and work in the colonial histories of Queensland and Andalusia. Dean Ashenden’s Telling Tennant’s Story examines how the place of his upbringing embodies the impacts of settler colonial legislation.

Collected memory is also enacted in memorials – the statue of politician William Crowther in nipaluna/Hobart is being removed so only the plinth will remain, with signage explaining his contentious history – and in public rituals like Survival Day Dawn Services.

As well as lacking recognition of the Yorta Yorta struggle, the Kelly family’s bid overlooks the ongoing critique by historians like David Dufty of Ned Kelly’s story as a tale of “persecution”.

Anti-Irish racism notwithstanding, Dufty highlights Kelly’s ruthless violence, use of terror in taking hostages and incoherent politics.

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By asking what is distinctive about the Kelly descendants’ right to cultural protections, we are echoing a question posed by Gunditjmara artist Paola Balla:

Tell me what it means to be a white person […] beyond a notion of racial superiority.

White cultural heritage in Australia is made of many memories and histories that intersect with one another, with settlers of colour and with First Nations people.

How we commemorate colonial history

Cases like these raise interesting questions about how we identify – and memorialise – shared heritage.

If the Kelly family took a more nuanced position, they could have opened a public conversation about how we commemorate colonial history, the nuances of historical Irish-Blak solidarities, and a deeper sense of White allyship to First Nations people’s human rights.

With its Big Ned, bark hut museum and janky animatronic diorama, Glenrowan is currently a prime example of what writer and artist Melody Paloma defines as “settler kitsch”.

In Australia, the development of monuments to colonial history continues to be a work in progress.

The proposed development is a chance for a more complex presentation of colonial heritage. The Sovereign Hill living museum is working to illuminate the culturally diverse stories of Ballarat. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery has also sought to face its past by recentering its public program and exhibition spaces around First Nations and particularly Palawa art and culture.

Photographer Jon Rhodes has spent decades documenting the curious histories of municipal and community treatment of sites of First Nations’ cultural heritage, and colonial violence.

An outlier, the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial offers a deeply affective model of how such sites of shared cultural heritage can be rebuilt and maintained by White and Blak communities together.

Perhaps Glenrowan will come to be understood as one such place: always Yorta Yorta; for a moment a place of complicated anti-colonial, White-on-White rebellion; later, a carnival of settler kitsch; and eventually, maybe, a thoughtful site of ongoing history-telling, embedded in Country.

Developments like the one coming to Glenrowan could create tangible answers to the question of what an inclusive and informed experience of White cultural heritage might look like.

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Bonny Cassidy 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. Ned Kelly’s descendants claim cultural heritage rights over the site of his last stand. The Supreme Court disagrees – https://theconversation.com/ned-kellys-descendants-claim-cultural-heritage-rights-over-the-site-of-his-last-stand-the-supreme-court-disagrees-210645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology

Lawyers are fussy about language because it is their job to argue about its implications. The current trial of Lauren Dickason is a case in point, and the jury has a complex task in front of it.

Dickason is charged with the murder of her three young children. She denies the charges, with her defence seeking findings of “insanity” and “infanticide”. The latter may seem like a statement of the obvious, given Dickason does not deny the killings. But the word has a very distinct meaning in law.

What legislation and other sources of law mean is often contestable, and there may be specialised definitions. An added complication is that the rules and words in play may have been formulated decades ago.

This is often the case in criminal law, including the law of homicide and the law relating to insanity. Since homicide trials often have a high profile, public understanding of these complications is important.

Murder and manslaughter

New Zealand’s main homicide law is found in the Crimes Act 1961. But the language used reflects a structure that goes back to English law from centuries ago, and is split into two offences: murder and manslaughter.

Basically, murder is killing someone with “malice aforethought”, and manslaughter is any other culpable killing. (A killing will not be homicide if there is a justification, such as reasonable force in self-defence.)

There were originally three types of malice. “Express malice” was a deliberate killing. “Implied malice” was when the person intended serious harm and showed a lack of care for human life. “Constructive malice”, which appears in US TV shows as the “felony murder rule”, arose from killing when committing another violent offence.

With updated language, we still have that basic structure in New Zealand. But variations were introduced largely to avoid the formerly mandatory death penalty for murder, by allowing the offence to be stepped down to manslaughter.

These are sometimes referred to as “defences” to murder, but they are only partially so because they lead to conviction of another offence.

So, if the person charged was part of a mutual suicide agreement, that is expressly classified as manslaughter. We used also to allow provocation to turn a killing into manslaughter, though only if a reasonable person would also have lost self-control.

That condition was removed after Clayton Weatherston tried to use it in his trial for the 2008 murder of Sophie Elliott.

Infanticide and insanity

Some other countries also allow a manslaughter conviction where someone has a mental disorder that reduces their moral culpability for a killing. New Zealand has never had such “diminished responsibility” – except in relation to infanticide.

Infanticide has a legalistic meaning in the courtroom: it does not mean the killing of an infant. Rather, it is an offence that can only be committed by a woman.

Secondly, it must involve a child of that woman who is under ten years of age. It must involve what would otherwise have been murder or manslaughter.

Read more:
Murder or infanticide? Understanding the causes behind the most shocking of crimes

Crucially, the jury must find that that the woman “should not be held fully responsible” because of the extent to which “the balance of her mind was disturbed” from the effects of childbirth, lactation or any disorder caused by childbirth or lactation.

If this series of steps is met, then the offence is called infanticide, which carries a maximum sentence of three years.

But the legislation also notes that if the defendant’s disorder was so great that there was insanity, then there must be a “special verdict of acquittal on account of insanity caused by childbirth”.

Modern psychiatry and Victorian language

The law relating to insanity still uses language from Victorian times. It applies to all offences, though it is most prominently used in homicide cases.

It requires “natural imbecility or disease of the mind” producing a situation in which the defendant does not know what they are doing, or does not know that it is morally wrong. Clouded understandings do not amount to insanity.

Read more:
How the insanity defence against a murder charge works

It is not limited to disorders arising from childbirth: that is an overlap only in an infanticide setting. The doctors giving expert evidence have to try to mould modern understandings of psychiatry into this outdated legal framework, which has limited nuance to it.

A finding of insanity used to lead to the special verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity”, which in turn usually led to detention in a psychiatric setting. The Rights for Victims of Insane Offenders Act 2021 means the verdict is now “act proven but not criminally responsible on account of insanity”, though with the same consequences.

Read more:
Can juries still deliver justice in high-profile cases in the age of social media?

The jury’s challenge

The task for the jury in the Lauren Dickason trial is not helped by the outdated language, however calmly and professionally the judge seeks to explain it.

Having considered whether the deaths would otherwise have been murder or manslaughter, they will then have to consider whether the expert evidence shows there was some disturbance in her mental health.

If so, and if it was caused by childbirth or lactation, was it far enough down the line to amount to infanticide? Or did it go so far as to amount to insanity? The latter can also arise from a mental disorder not linked to childbirth.

This complexity is a good illustration of why we should value only the opinion of those who hear all the evidence, and who have the task of deciding the verdict.

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

– ref. What does ‘infanticide’ mean in NZ law? And what must the jury decide in Lauren Dickason’s trial? – https://theconversation.com/what-does-infanticide-mean-in-nz-law-and-what-must-the-jury-decide-in-lauren-dickasons-trial-210630

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

Scott Morrison has accused the Robodebt royal commission of making wrong, unsubstantiated and absurd findings against him, in a detailed statement to parliament.

The former prime minister, who was excoriated by the commission, was unrepentant, giving no ground on any of the criticisms Commissioner Catherine Holmes made of him in her report.

He also accused the government of a “campaign of political lynching” to discredit him and his service to the country, once again weaponising “a quasi-legal process to launder [its] political vindictiveness”.

Rising on the first sitting day after the report’s release during the recess Morrison, speaking to a near-empty house, said he rejected the commission’s findings he had allowed cabinet to be misled, provided untrue evidence, and pressured departmental officials.

Morrison was social services minister when the scheme, announced in the 2015 budget, was being worked up. He was an enthusiast for pursuing savings in the welfare area and saw the plan, based on income averaging, as a powerful means to do this.

But the scheme was found to be illegal and, by the time he was prime minister, it had raised $1.76 billion unlawfully from hundreds of thousand of people, and the government was forced to repay a huge amount in total to people wrongfully pursued for money they didn’t owe.

Read more:
Robodebt royal commissioner makes multiple referrals for prosecution, condemning scheme as ‘crude and cruel’

In his statement, Morrison reiterated that when he was social services minister and the plan was being prepared, the final advice to him was that legislation was not required, and he had no reason to doubt the integrity and knowledge of officials. This superceded an earlier minute indicating legislation could be needed.

The commission’s suggestion it was reasonable he would or should have formed a contrary view to this advice was “not credible or reasonable,” Morrison told parliament.

He said when the scheme was announced in the 2015 budget, the Labor opposition did not express concerns about its legality.

“The commission’s finding unfairly and retroactively applies a consensus of the understanding of the lawful status of the scheme that simply was not present or communicated at the time,” Morrison said. “This is clearly an unreasonable, untenable and false basis to make the serious allegation of allowing cabinet to be misled.”

Morrison said the commission’s finding he had given untrue evidence was “unsubstantiated, speculative and wrong”, with the commission seeking to reverse the onus of proof. “I had stated in evidence what I understood to be true, the commission failed to disprove this and simply asserted it unilaterally as fact.”

Arguing the commission’s allegation pressure was applied to officials that prevented them giving frank advice was “absurd”, Morrison said the department had already initiated the proposal before he arrived as minister. “How could I have pressured officials into developing such proposals, while serving in another portfolio?”, he said. “The department had already taken the initiative and were the proponents of the scheme.”

Further, “the Commission’s suggestion that an orthodox policy setting of seeking to ensure integrity in welfare payments would be seen as intimidating to the department and its senior executive is both surprising and concerning. That is their job.”

Morrison said that “at no time did the department advise me as minister of the existence of the formal legal advice prepared prior to my arrival in the portfolio, regarding the scheme.”

He said the “uncontested fact that senior departmental executives withheld key information regarding the legality of scheme from their minister is inexcusable.”

Morrison once again expressed his “deep regret” for the scheme’s “unintended consequences” on individuals and their families.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton told the ABC Morrison had put “a very strong case” of his position, and he had been right to put it in parliament.

The commission has referred a list of people involved in Robodebt for further action, but the names have not been released.

A key top bureaucrat involved in the scheme, Kathryn Campbell, has resigned from the public service in the wake of the report’s condemnation of her.

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

– ref. Morrison labels Robodebt findings against him unsubstantiated and absurd and accuses government ‘lynching’ campaign – https://theconversation.com/morrison-labels-robodebt-findings-against-him-unsubstantiated-and-absurd-and-accuses-government-lynching-campaign-210722