Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Grattan Institute

No one likes spending cuts and tax hikes, but on our estimate the government will soon need more of them if they are going to make a dent in looming A$70 billion a year budget deficits.

A new Grattan Institute report, Back in Black? A menu of measures to repair the budget argues the present combination of low unemployment and high inflation makes this a good time to start to put things in order.

The sooner we do, the sooner we will be well-placed to respond to future economic shocks and avoid pushing costs onto future generations.

We were right to spend big when COVID hit

The massive government support unleashed during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns was essential for supporting households and businesses and helped keep unemployment low and Australia’s 2020 recession mild.

It left us with government debt that, at 23% of GDP, set to climb to almost 32% by the end of the decade, is high by historical standards, but low by international standards.

Our real problem is a structural one of spending growing faster than revenues.
And it was building long before COVID.

Demands on government are set to grow

Costs are inexorably growing for three reasons.

The first is that our expectations are growing as we age and become more wealthy, pushing up spending on healthcare, disability care and aged care.

The second is that many of these services happen to be the hardest to mechanise, meaning there is little we can do to stop them costing more over time.

The third reason is geopolitical and climate developments. The huge AUKUS deal is just the latest manifestation of pressure to ramp up defence spending. Increases in the frequency and severity of natural disasters mean we have no choice but to spend more on emergencies than before.

Combined with higher interest rates that are pushing up the cost of servicing debt, these three forces are set to leave a persistent gap between government revenue and spending of about 2% of GDP according to Treasury calculations. That’s $50 billion per year in today’s dollars, each and every year.

But even that grim forecast looks optimistic.

Grattan Institute estimates suggest the true structural gap exceeds $70 billion per year when extra, largely unavoidable, spending is taken into account – including on AUKUS, overdue wage rises for care workers, more realistic growth in hospital spending, and long-overdue increases in unemployment benefits.

And that’s just the next decade. In the longer term, the budget will come under extra pressure from slower productivity growth, Australia’s ageing population, and climate change.

Higher economic growth and productivity growth would reduce the enormity of the challenge, and Grattan Institute has put forward ideas about how to support this before.

But hoping we will be able to grow our way out of chronic budget deficits is not a prudent approach. While we should try to boost growth, by itself it is unlikely to get the nation’s finances onto a sustainable trajectory.

13 multibillion dollar ideas

The size of the problem, and the political difficulty of budget repair, mean both spending and revenue measures need to be on the table.

Spending cuts have been the focus of budget repair efforts for most of the past decade, so a lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. But there are still savings to be had.

The biggest would come from greater discipline in decisions about what to spend on infrastructure and defence. Better decisions upfront based on economic – rather than political – considerations could save several billion each year.

Buying smaller, more regularly and “off the shelf” would reduce the risks and costs of mega-projects that have a history of massive cost overruns.

Read more:
How can Australia pay $368 billion for new submarines? Some of the money will be created from thin air

Our report identifies a further $15 billion a year of savings measures, including undoing Western Australia’s special GST funding deal, counting more of the family home in the age pension asset test, and improving hospital efficiency and purchasing in health.

But even with substantial spending cuts, tackling Australia’s budget challenge without compromising core services will require more revenue.

The biggest opportunity comes from plugging “leakages” in the income tax system. Tax breaks and minimisation opportunities are growing. Reining in superannuation tax concessions, reducing the capital gains tax discount, limiting negative gearing, and setting a minimum tax on trust distributions could collectively raise more than $20 billion a year.

Read more:
Inheritance taxes, resource taxes and an attack on negative gearing: how top economists would raise $20 billion per year

Reworking the legislated Stage 3 tax cuts so they are less generous at the top end would save another $8 billion per year.

Lifting the age at which people could get access to their super from 60 to 65 and freezing compulsory super contributions at their present level (10.5% of salary) would save at least another $8 billion.

Other options include lifting the rate of goods and services tax (with a compensation package, and the Commonwealth and states sharing the net revenue), winding back fuel tax credits and beefing up the petroleum resource rent tax.

Ordering the whole menu at once would be a recipe for indigestion. But if Treasurer Jim Chalmers chooses just a few items on the menu, we will be well on the way to tackling Australia’s budget problem.

Read more:
Australia needs an honest conversation about tax and budgets – and Jim Chalmers is ready to talk

Kate Griffiths’s employer, Grattan Institute, has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

Danielle Wood and Iris Chan 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. Treasurer Chalmers has a $70 billion a year budget hole: we’ve found 13 ways to fill it – https://theconversation.com/treasurer-chalmers-has-a-70-billion-a-year-budget-hole-weve-found-13-ways-to-fill-it-203331

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

The decision of Julian Leeser, who has resigned from the opposition frontbench to campaign for a yes vote on the Voice to parliament, is both principled and pragmatic.

Principled because only rarely in politics do we see people make a significant personal sacrifice for their beliefs.

Being shadow minister for Indigenous Australians and shadow attorney-general is well short of being a minister. Still, stepping down to the backbench and going against the overwhelming view of your party on a critical issue takes a good deal of political courage.

Who knows what happens down the track – different circumstances could see Leeser’s political career re-flower. But as of now, he has been willing to deliver a blow to his own chances of future advancement.

His position is pragmatic because, as the saying goes, he hasn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The man who received a copy of the Australian Constitution for his tenth birthday is obsessively finicky about that document. He believes the wording of the Albanese government’s proposed question for the referendum is flawed. Specifically, he thinks the new provision would be vulnerable to legal challenge.

He will try to get it changed. It is currently under examination by a parliamentary committee. But he knows significant alteration is extremely unlikely. That, however, is not going to prevent him from campaigning for a yes vote – because he judges the bigger cause is more important.

As he said on Tuesday:

I believe that through empowering people and by building institutions that shift responsibility and decision-making closer to people, we are more likely to shift the dial on Indigenous health, education, housing, safety and economic opportunity.

Among the various reasons Leeser will be an asset to the “yes” case is that he is personally close to leading Labor figures on the Voice, notably Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, and Patrick Dodson. He has worked with Dodson (who is currently on indefinite sick leave) in past years on constitutional recognition and a Voice.

Leeser’s personal position is somewhat similar to that of conservative legal academic Greg Craven, who has also been long involved with these issues. Craven doesn’t like the wording either, but says he will vote yes (although not campaign).

Leeser’s joining the yes case is a fillip for Anthony Albanese and a huge blow for Peter Dutton. For the opposition leader, the situation is diabolical.

Various prominent Liberals around the country are already on the “yes” side, and one would expect more to emerge.

Dutton’s parliamentary party is strongly against the Voice (with a few declared exceptions). But a number of frontbenchers won’t want to be campaigning for the “no” case, because that doesn’t represent their real position or because of political caution.

Whether or not they campaign, shadow ministers are bound to the party decision. So how will the shy ones handle invitations to community forums in the run-up to the vote? They can only plead “another engagement” so often.

The most prominent Liberal moderate, Simon Birmingham, who is opposition leader in the Senate, is in a particularly difficult situation.

Meanwhile, Dutton has to fill the positions of shadow attorney-general and shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, which Leeser had held.

He needs someone with a law degree for the shadow attorney-general job. He could split the portfolios, although that would not be ideal, as the “no” campaign will partly rest on legal points. Paul Fletcher has legal qualifications and, like Leeser, is from New South Wales, so could be a possibility for the shadow attorney-general post. But the Indigenous position would not fit Fletcher, a moderate.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: the high cost of the Liberals’ Voice rejection – for both Peter Dutton and the party

The now-chaotic situation in the Liberal Party comes after the huge rebuff Aston voters delivered in the recent byelection – and there, the Voice wasn’t even on the radar.

In other circumstances, the leader’s position would be in danger. That’s not the case at the moment. The problem is actually more serious.

The messages from Aston, and from Leeser’s stand on the Voice go to something much deeper: how the Liberal party is out of sync, on many fronts, with key parts of the modern Australian electorate, especially people under 40. (This point stands whatever the referendum result.) Getting back in touch requires a massive revamp of the party’s approach and there is little sign it is up to the task.

Leeser on Tuesday succinctly laid out the challenge for the “yes” case on the Voice, saying Australians who remained to be convinced fell into three groups.

The first group are those who are opposed to the Voice – on philosophical and constitutional grounds.

The second group are those who support the Voice in principle – or who want to support it – but who in the vast majority of cases have genuine doubts and questions about the proposal that the government has put forward.

And the third group are yet to engage, but they too have questions and concerns.

Can the “yes” campaign win over enough people from these groups, particularly groups two and three, for the necessary majority of the national vote and majority of states?

Impossible to know at this stage. But some voters will surely be reassured that such a cautious, conservative figure as Leeser, who has demonstrated personal integrity, is giving them permission to vote “yes”, and to not be too fearful of the consequences.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: Julian Leeser shifts his own dial in the Liberal Party – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-julian-leeser-shifts-his-own-dial-in-the-liberal-party-203574

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong joined 50,000 people to march in support of queer rights across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for World Pride in early March. A week earlier, Albanese became the first sitting prime minister to march in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, something he’s done over several decades.

And yet at the same time, in another part of the world, Uganda’s parliament passed a string of draconian measures against homosexuality, including possible death sentences for “aggravated homosexuality”. Any “promotion” of homosexuality is also outlawed.

Read more:
Uganda’s new anti-LGBTQ+ law could lead to death penalty for same-sex ‘offences’

Seven years ago, I co-wrote a book with Jonathan Symons called Queer Wars. Back then, we suggested there was a growing gap between countries in which sexual and gender diversity was becoming more acceptable, and those where repression was increasing.

Sadly, that analysis seems even more relevant today.

A growing gap

Some countries have been unwinding criminal sanctions around homosexuality, which are often the legacy of colonialism. This includes, in recent years, former British colonies Singapore and India.

But others have been imposing new and more vicious penalties for any deviation from stereotypical assumptions of heterosexual masculine superiority (what Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell terms “hegemonic masculinity”).

Anti-gay legislation is currently pending in Ghana, which led US Vice President Kamala Harris to express concerns on a recent visit.

These moves echo the deep homophobia of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has bizarrely linked intervention in Ukraine to protecting traditional values against LGBTQ+ infiltration.

Meanwhile, reports from Afghanistan suggest that anyone identified as “LGBT” is in danger of being killed.

Indonesia recently passed legislation penalising all sex outside marriage. This follows years of anti-queer rhetoric from Indonesian leaders and crackdowns in regional areas.

And while the Biden administration is supportive of queer rights globally, the extraordinary hysteria around trans issues in the Republican Party reminds us the West has no inherent claim to moral superiority.

Read more:
What’s going on with the wave of GOP bills about trans teens? Utah provides clues

Where to next?

Speaking at the World Pride Human Rights Conference, both Wong and Attorney General Mark Dreyfus made it clear Australia would press for recognition of sexuality and gender identity as deserving protection, as part of our commitment to human rights.

Wong also announced a new Inclusion and Equality Fund to support queer community organisations within our region.

Australian governments have usually been wary of loud assertions of support for queer rights. This is partly due to a reasonable fear this merely reinforces the perception that such language reflects a sense of Western superiority, unwilling to acknowledge other societies may have very different attitudes towards gender and sexuality.

Australia is part of the Equal Rights Coalition, an intergovernmental body of 42 countries dedicated to the protection of the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and has supported sexual and gender rights in the country reviews undertaken by the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Australia has a minimal presence in Uganda, and direct representations are unlikely to have much effect. Uganda is a member of the Commonwealth, as are Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, where official homophobia appears to be increasing. But there’s little evidence the Australian government sees this as a significant foreign policy forum, or is prepared to push for sexual rights through its institutions.

As persecution on the basis of sexuality and gender identity increases, more people will seek to flee their countries. Queer refugees face double jeopardy: they’re not safe at home, but they’re often equally unsafe in their diasporic communities, which have inherited the deep prejudices of their homelands.

The UN’s refugee agency reports that most people seeking asylum because of their sexuality are unwilling to disclose this, because of discrimination within their own ethnic communities. This makes it impossible to have accurate numbers. But a clear signal from Australia would be a powerful statement of support – that it understands the situation and welcomes people who need flee because of their sexuality or gender expression.

An official Canadian government document states:

Canada has a proud history of providing protection to and helping to resettle the world’s most vulnerable groups. That includes those in the Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and additional sexually and gender diverse community.

Theirs is a model worth following.

Dennis Altman is Patron of the Pride Foundation, which supports queer refugees and asylum seekers.

– ref. There’s a growing gap between countries advancing LGBTQ+ rights, and those going backwards – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-growing-gap-between-countries-advancing-lgbtq-rights-and-those-going-backwards-203329

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

Australia’s health system is under significant pressure. The Labor government has inherited a system with declining bulk-billing rates for GP visits. These fell from almost 90% of all GP attendances bulk billed in December 2021 to just over 80% a year later.

Significant workforce shortages remain in rural and remote Australia, despite a raft of incentive programs to improve access to health care. In 2021–22, about 3.5% of adults did not see a GP because of cost, with higher rates of missed care outside metropolitan areas.

This means it would be possible to radically alter the Medicare system. One option is to restrict Medicare access to GPs who agree to bulk bill all patients, while allowing those who don’t bulk bill to rely solely on out-of-pocket payments.

A new Medicare agenda should address the problems of fraud, geographical inequity, and bulk-billing decline. This can be done by conceptualising access to Medicare rebates by practitioners as a privilege, not a right.

Read more:
GPs are abandoning bulk billing. What does this mean for affordable family medical care?

Why were policymakers constrained?

Health policy in Australia has been limited for decades by assumed constitutional constraints, which have been talked up by the medical profession to prevent policies they oppose.

After the second world war, the Chifley Labor government began a series of social security reforms. Legislation for one element of the reform – a pharmaceutical benefits scheme – was struck down by the High Court because there was no relevant head of power in the Constitution.

In response, the government proposed amending the Constitution to give it broad social welfare powers. This proposal had bipartisan support and was passed at a referendum in 1946. A new sub-section (xxiiiA) was consequently added to section 51 of the Constitution, giving the Commonwealth power to make laws about:

The provision of maternity allowances, widows’ pensions, child endowment, unemployment, pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits, medical and dental services (but not so as to authorise any form of civil conscription), benefits to students and family allowances.

The parenthetical civil conscription constraint was included following an amendment from the Liberal Party. This was motivated by a desire to prevent the creation of a scheme like the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, which required all GPs to work under contract to government and hospital specialists to be salaried employees.

The presumed constitutional constraint seemed to shape the Labor Party’s thinking about what might be constitutionally possible when designing Medibank, the precursor to Medicare. Despite some members of caucus supporting a salaried hospital system, this was not pursued.

But in 1980 and 2009, the High Court narrowed the meaning of civil conscription. This meant the subsection no longer constrained government power in the way it once had.

Medical practitioners now work in a diverse range of settings, not all of which rely fully on revenue from Medicare. So the nexus between access to Medicare rebates and the ability to work as a doctor has been broken. The government can now expand the constraints it puts on billing rights without it being considered civil conscription.

Read more:
Labor has a huge health agenda ahead of it. What policies should we expect?

A bold way to restructure Medicare

It is time for a complete rethink of how Medicare payment arrangements are designed and regulated, free from the assumed constitutional constraints.

The recent Independent Review of Medicare Integrity and Compliance highlighted that:

the current state of Medicare, and some of the challenges […] are the result of previous attempts to apply discrete and band-aid solutions to single issues over time and a lack of system thinking and consideration.

The band-aid approach no longer works. A fundamental rethink of Medicare is required, moving away from practitioners’ relatively unconstrained and uncapped access to fee-for-service rebates.

Read more:
6 reasons why it’s so hard to see a GP

Presently, all specialists – including GPs – can apply for a Medicare provider number which enables rebate payments for their services, with few constraints.

Rather than an “all comers” approach, a new basis for Medicare could be one where practices sign up to Medicare and agree to meet Medicare’s contractual conditions such as agreement to bulk bill all patients, participation in training future health professionals and in quality improvement programs, and that practices are multidisciplinary. Again, fair remuneration needs to underpin all this.

Participating practices could be paid on a variety of bases, including number and type of patients enrolled, number of patient attendances (enrolled or not), and other payments.

Payment rates would need to be seen as fair by both government and practices.

A participation basis for Medicare, moving away from an unconstrained approach, coupled with adequate workforce planning, could also be used to encourage new graduates to work in locations and specialties in short supply by limiting access to rebates for specialties in locations of oversupply.

This would also facilitate management of fraud and over servicing through contractual controls, rather than cumbersome administrative law processes.

A “participating provider” approach would transform the patient experience. Most importantly, the bulk-billing lottery would end: practices displaying a Medicare sign would bulk bill all patients, not just some.

There would need to be a new deal for doctors too, with remuneration set fairly – not at the whim of government – ending the political fee freezes suffered under the previous government.

Australia’s Medicare fabric has many holes

Although Medicare has served Australia well, it’s beginning to fray at the edges with reductions in bulk billing and provider satisfaction, and geographical shortages.

The old incentive structures have not addressed these problems and now new approaches, which may previously have been thought impossible in part because of the perceived constitutional constraints, must be considered.

What we have is shown is that the policy agenda is more open than might have hitherto been considered. The time is right for these options to be considered.

Read more:
How do you fix general practice? More GPs won’t be enough. Here’s what to do

This article was co-authored by Emma Campbell, former Grattan Institute intern and current LLB/BPPE student at The Australian National University.

Stephen Duckett was a member of the Strengthening Medicare Task Force.

Fiona McDonald receives funding from the Medical Research Council (UK).

– ref. What if Medicare was restricted to GPs who bulk billed? This kind of reform is possible – https://theconversation.com/what-if-medicare-was-restricted-to-gps-who-bulk-billed-this-kind-of-reform-is-possible-203543

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

So, you think you know why rents climbed.

You probably think was skyrocketing interest rates and a tsunami of migration.

It’s true that interest rates have jumped more over the past year than at any time on record, and it’s true that migration has roared back – in the six months to September 2022 (the latest month for which we’ve official figures) arrivals exceeded departures by 170,000.

But here’s the thing. Advertised rents began climbing sharply in late 2021 – six months before the Reserve Bank began pushing up interest rates, and at a time when it was forecast not to.

And net migration was negative back when rents were taking off – the number of arrivals didn’t even match the number of departures.

It’s supply and demand

Something else made rents move.

As it happens, there’s no particular reason to think interest rates would have quickly affected rents even if they had been climbing. If higher rates force some landlords to sell, and they sell to other landlords, the number of properties for rent won’t change. If those landlords sell to owner occupiers who would otherwise rent, they cut both the number of rental properties and the number of renters.

What matters for rents, as for any price, is the demand for and the supply of the product being priced. More demand (more renters wanting properties) and the price climbs. More supply (more properties available for rent) and the price falls.

Read more:
$1 billion per year (or less) could halve rental housing stress

On the face of it, neither demand nor supply was changing much during COVID as rents started climbing. Australia’s population was growing more slowly than at any time in modern history. And, as best as we can tell, the number of properties available for rent was climbing, albeit weakly.

What did change during COVID, according to the research department of the Reserve Bank, was the average number of people per household.

The change doesn’t sound big – the average fell from a bit above 2.6 residents per household to a bit below 2.55 – but applied to millions of households it meant about 140,000 more houses and apartments were needed than would have been.

Average household size (capital cities)

The sudden change was awfully for hard for the building industry to respond to, especially when it was laid low by COVID.

Why did we suddenly want to live with fewer people?

The head of the Bank’s economic division, Luci Ellis, thinks it was COVID itself, and lockdowns. We suddenly became more precious about sharing space.

‘Love the one you’re with’

Ellis says proportion of Australians living in group houses declined and stayed low. Faced with the choice of living with a large number of housemates and just one other person, perhaps a romantic partner, a lot of renters left group houses and shacked up with each other.

As she put it last year:

On the question of who you would rather be locked down with, at least some Australians have voted with their removalists’ van, by moving out of their share house and in with their partner.

There’s more to it of course, but where the supply and demand for anything are roughly in balance (rents had been increasing by less than 1% per year in the four years before COVID, and fell in the first year of COVID) any sudden change in either supply or demand can move prices quickly.

Advertised rents aren’t typical …

Having said that, for most renters prices are still moving slowly. Advertised capital city rents are up 13% over the past year, and average regional rates up 9%. But average rents (the average of what all renters pay) are up only 4.8%.

The rents charged to ongoing tenants climb much more slowly than the rents charged to new tenants, in part because landlords often like their tenants, and in part because for the first year renters are usually on fixed contracts.

But over time as renters move home, and landlords become less squeamish, more and more renters tend to pay the rents advertised. It makes the increase in advertised rents an unwelcome sign of what’s to come.

… but they’re a sign of rents ahead

And it might get worse. Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe says population growth is set to climb to 2%, – about the peak reached during the resources boom.

We won’t be able to build houses anything like that fast. Lowe says the last time Australia’s population surged it took about five years for housing supply to fully respond to housing demand.

We’ve ways of dealing with it of course. One is to re-embrace group homes, another is to delay moving out of our partents’ homes, or to move back in.

But even if this does happen, Lowe says, with typical understatement, that rent inflation – ultra-low before COVID – is likely to stay “quite high” for some time.

Read more:
Rent crisis? Average rents are increasing less than you might think

Peter Martin 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 made rents soar? It might have been COVID, and pairing off – https://theconversation.com/what-made-rents-soar-it-might-have-been-covid-and-pairing-off-203542

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic Zaal, Director, Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute (ASTRI), CSIRO

Australia’s transition to renewables is gathering speed, but there’s a looming problem with storage. We will need much more long-duration storage to get us through the night, once coal and fossil gas exit the system.

We also need to find new and better ways to create heat for industrial processes. Renewables can supply much of that heat during the day, but energy storage will be required to meet industry’s night-time heat needs.

Solar thermal technology has the potential to provide both long-duration storage and industrial heat, yet it has been largely overlooked in the Australian context. That is about to change.

The CSIRO Energy Storage Roadmap identifies a mix of technologies will be required, across sectors, to meet Australia’s energy storage needs, particularly at night. Solar thermal will be an important part of the mix.

Batteries alone won’t cut it. They’re good for short-duration storage, ranging from mere minutes to an hour or two. But you’d need an awful lot of them, at enormous cost, to cover 8-12 hours. Solar thermal becomes cost-effective for long-duration storage at scale, and brings other benefits too.

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

Introducing thermal energy storage

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) identified storage of four to 12 hours’ duration as “the most pressing utility-scale need in the next decade”. That’s what’s required “to manage stronger daily variations in solar and wind output, and to meet consumer demand, also during more extreme days, as coal capacity declines”.

Most people know about lithium-ion battery (chemical) storage and pumped hydro (mechanical) storage. However, thermal energy storage is not well understood or recognised. This is partly due to perceived costs and engineering challenges. However, as concentrated solar thermal plants are built all over the world – 30 are being developed in China alone – the knowledge base is growing.

More than 80% of Australia’s total energy use involves a thermal process:

• combustion of coal and gas for electricity
• combustion of fuels for transport
• combustion of fuels for industrial process heat.

A large proportion of these existing fossil-fuel thermal processes can be met with renewable thermal energy storage.

The CSIRO Roadmap found thermal energy storage was a relatively low-cost solution with multiple applications, including utility-scale power generation, renewable fuel production and industrial process heat.

For utility-scale power generation, the lowest cost technology for eight-hour storage in 2050 is thermal energy storage using concentrated solar thermal power. The cost in 2050 was slightly over A$100/MWh, compared with lithium-ion battery at A$140/MWh and pumped hydro at around A$155/MWh.

For 24-hour storage technologies in 2050, thermal energy storage was again the lowest cost at A$99/MWh, compared with pumped hydro at A$145/MWh or grid-charged electrical (using solar photovoltaics and wind) thermal energy storage at A$150/MWh.

Short-duration storage is likely to remain the domain of lithium-ion battery for at least up to two hours duration, and perhaps as high as four hours.

Here’s how it works

Concentrated solar thermal power uses mirrors to convert sunlight into heat energy. This heat energy is typically stored.

The stored thermal energy can then be used, at any time of day or night, on demand, to produce steam for electricity production, or heat/steam for industrial processes.

The system typically provides for six to 24 hours of operations. What this means is concentrated solar thermal can provide continuous, on demand power and/or process heat 24/7. It can also simultaneously generate power and store heat at the same time.

The stored thermal energy is typically used at night. Concentrated solar thermal systems deployed in China, Spain, the United States, South America, Africa and the Middle East generally have over ten hours of storage, which allows for the overnight generation of renewable power and heat.

Concentrated solar thermal is also a synchronous technology because it uses a traditional spinning turbine (identical to those used in coal-fired power plants). This creates much-needed system-strength and frequency services to the grid. In essence, when coal fired power stations close, concentrated solar thermal is a technology that could continue to provide essential system services.

While more than 100 concentrated solar thermal plants, generating 7GWh of power, have been deployed around the world, the technology has not yet been deployed at scale in Australia. This will soon change with the construction by Vast Solar of a 30MW concentrated solar thermal plant in Port Augusta, supported in part by the federal government. The project will have ten hours of thermal energy storage to generate power for supply to the grid, primarily at night. The project will also provide renewable heat and power to produce more than 7,000 tonnes of green (renewable) methanol each year. (Methanol is an essential chemical building block for hundreds of consumer and industrial products such as paints, carpets, fabrics, building materials and liquid fuels).

Heed the warning

We need to start building long-duration energy storage systems now, so we have secure and reliable power when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. We also need to replace fossil fuels used to create industrial process heat.

Sectors such as mining, industry, transport, agriculture, and households all require secure, reliable, and affordable renewable energy. For many sectors, this need occurs at night, and that necessitates storage.

Read more:
Australia’s 116 new coal, oil and gas projects equate to 215 new coal power stations

Dominic Zaal receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which is a Federal Government funding agency.

– ref. Batteries won’t cut it – we need solar thermal technology to get us through the night – https://theconversation.com/batteries-wont-cut-it-we-need-solar-thermal-technology-to-get-us-through-the-night-203545

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eyal Mayroz, Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney

Violence has again erupted in the Middle East during one of the holiest times of year for both Jews and Muslims.

In recent days, militants in southern Lebanon have fired a large number of rockets at Israel in response to an Israeli police raid on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

Israel blamed the Hamas militant group for the attacks and retaliated by launching air strikes at Palestinian militias in Lebanon – the most alarming cross-border violence in 17 years – as well as at the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

A rare rocket attack then came from Syria, prompting another round of Israeli air strikes against targets there. Clashes also broke out in the West Bank after thousands of Israelis, joined by seven Cabinet ministers, marched to an evacuated settlement there, demanding it be legalised.

The motives behind such provocations include anger, fear, the desire for revenge and frustration. These emotions are driven by the horrors of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories on the one hand, and anger at Palestinian terrorist attacks or unbridled desire for Jewish hegemony on the other.

Extreme interpretations of nationalism or religiosity – and often a combination of both – tend to aggravate these sentiments.

These spasms of violence should be seen as provocations since there is no military solution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Deterrence is what the two main actors, Israel and Hamas, are seeking. Maintaining, achieving or increasing deterrence is key in both sides’ calculations of how to react when violence does break out.

Wedged between provocation, retaliation and deterrence, each side estimates how far it can stretch the line before copping a costly response from the other.

Read more:
Israel is facing twin existential crises – what is Benjamin Netanyahu doing to solve them?

A multitude of calculations

For Hamas, the key calculation is how to escalate attacks against Israel, while still keeping Gaza out of the violence. The aim is to steer the struggle against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories to the West Bank, Jerusalem and into Israel itself.

Recognising this, Israel tries to direct its military responses back to Gaza, as soon as it can establish a link between the provocation and Hamas.

Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon that has a growing partnership with Hamas, has a different set of calculations.

These include its long-standing feud with Israel, a desire to settle old scores (including past assassinations of Hezbollah leaders), religious passions (for example, sensitivities in relation to the Al-Aqsa Mosque), and directives from Iran.

Hezbollah is constrained, however, by Israeli military responses and by the need to reconcile its allegiance to Iran with its accountability to the Lebanese people. Many Lebanese already accuse Hezbollah of prioritising Iranian interests over their own. Being held responsible for a costly Israeli retaliation against Lebanese territories would be problematic for the organisation.

Israel, in turn, also fears another war with Hezbollah, which would be extremely costly. The organisation has a huge arsenal of rockets (estimated at more than 100,000), including high-quality and long-range weapons, which it could fire into Israel at will.

The famed Israeli Iron Dome air defence system would not withstand the power and sheer numbers of these weapons.

Israel’s worst fear, however, is of a concurrent escalation on multiple fronts, with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza in the south, an Intifada-style uprising in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to the west, and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north.

A fourth front could open up in Israeli cities between Israel’s Palestinians, Jews and security forces. And there’s always a possibility of a fifth front being fought against Iranian forces stationed in Syria.

Israel’s preferred approach to these multiple threats would be to try to isolate the different actors by limiting its retaliations to a single provocation at a time. This, however, would not be easy.

Why both sides have avoided escalation thus far

As we’ve seen recently, the tensions between the various sides tend to originate or are exacerbated by provocations from minor actors – Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Jewish nationalists inside Israel, and Palestinian militants in the occupied territories, inside Israel or in southern Lebanon.

In the past, retaliations to such provocations by Israel, Hamas and other groups were, more often than not, measured. That is, they were aimed to project power and resolve internally to avoid being seen as weak by one’s own people. But a measured response also signals to the other side a wish to avoid escalation.

The targets struck in recent outbreaks of violence illustrate this. On the Hamas side, limiting rocket firing to Jewish towns in southern Israel, as opposed to more central cities, signalled a desire to avoid a major escalation. On Israel’s side, aiming at low-level Palestinian targets, as opposed to primary command posts or key leaders, could mean the same.

However, it is unclear how the new hard-line Israeli government will respond to the evolving violence.

At the moment, Israel seems to prefer avoiding escalation. The latest polls show the new ruling coalition is nose-diving in popularity and would fail to gain a majority of seats in parliament if elections were held today. This may explain why the more vocal nationalists appear to be deferring, at least temporarily, to more cautious voices in government.

However, a significant provocation in Al-Aqsa Mosque, or a significant terrorist attack against Jews, could both alter this mind-set.

Read more:
Israel protests: Netanyahu delays judicial reforms over fears of ‘civil war’ – but deep fault-lines threaten future of democracy

Where to from here?

The international community has a critical role to play by forcing or incentivising the various sides into painful but necessary concessions on the (very) long road to peace.

One could appreciate the value of the de-escalation strategies currently in use. However, if the main purpose is to preserve deterrence, then a more honest dialogue within, as well as between, the camps on the risks of violent provocations could offer perhaps better solutions.

In the endless tit-for-tat violent cycle, there are no winners, only losers.

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

– ref. As tensions escalate in the Middle East, can all-out war be averted? – https://theconversation.com/as-tensions-escalate-in-the-middle-east-can-all-out-war-be-averted-203550

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Leif, Senior Lecturer, Educational Psychology & Inclusive Education, Monash University

A major international report says the “disciplinary climate” in Australian schools is among the “least favourable” in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

On Tuesday, the OECD released a profile on education in Australia.

Its findings follow headlines about student behaviour and a federal parliamentary inquiry into “increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms”.

How severe is the problem and what can we do about it?

What does the OECD report say

The OECD report looks at many aspects of Australia’s education system. And identifies many strengths, such as how Australian students view their teachers positively and teachers have comparatively high levels of job satisfaction.

But it also found the “disciplinary climate” in schools in Australia was among the least favourable in the OECD according to student reports.

This is based on a 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) index, which asked students how often noise and disorder occur in the classroom. Australian classrooms scored -0.2 while the OECD average is 0.04.

It also refers to a 2018 TALIS (OECD teaching and learning) survey, which found 37% of Australian lower-secondary school principals reported intimidation or bullying among students occurred at least weekly. Australian teachers also reported feeling less prepared for, or capable of, managing disruptive classroom behaviour than their OECD peers.

Findings from the survey suggest Australian students perceive their classrooms to be more disruptive than they have in the past. It also suggests one of the reasons teachers are choosing to leave the profession is disruptive behaviour.

In separate studies, researchers have found new teachers find it particularly hard to manage disruptive student behaviour.

Read more:
A new review into how teachers are educated should acknowledge they learn throughout their careers (not just at the start)

Do we have a behaviour crisis?

These are important challenges that must be addressed. Post-COVID, teachers have reported student behaviour appears to be getting worse, with students more distracted and less engaged than before the pandemic began.

However, there is currently little data showing how often disruptive behaviour occurs in Australian classrooms, what these behaviours look like, and how teachers currently work to prevent and respond to these behaviours.

It is possible that behaviour issues are happening more in some areas or in some schools, rather than across the board.

Read more:
If Australian schools want to improve student discipline, they need to address these 5 issues

Why do we see poor behaviour?

The development of disruptive behaviour can be influenced by a range of biological, social, environmental, and educational factors. Here are three key reasons why students might engage in disruptive behaviour at school:

1. Students find the school work too difficult

Students with delayed academic skills are more likely to exhibit disruptive and challenging behaviour, and students who display disruptive behaviour may be more likely to fall behind academically.

This connection has been shown to be strongest between a student’s reading skills and disruptive behaviour. This makes sense, because as students’ progress through primary school, they need to demonstrate increasingly advanced language and literacy skills to participate and succeed academically in all subjects.

2. Students are trying to impress their peers

Students are more likely to display disruptive behaviour in schools and classrooms where this is accepted. Researchers talk about the “classroom climate”. These are the values, beliefs and norms that set the behaviour within a classroom setting.

At school (particularly in high school), peer approval is one of the most important variables that can influence student behaviour.

Being disruptive may seem “cool” in some peer groups, and researchers have found that this can promote a culture of student disruption.

3. Students are copying their parents

Students model and learn the behaviours they see. Telling students how to behave well won’t work when the adults in the room are overwhelmed, stressed, and not in control of their emotions.

Recent research suggest teachers and school leaders are facing increasing threats and hostility from parents. Students may witness these parent-teacher conflicts and behave in similar ways when managing conflict at school.

Read more:
‘They phone you up during lunch and yell at you’ – why teachers say dealing with parents is the worst part of their job

What can we do about it?

While behavioural issues are complex, there are practical things teachers and school leaders can do to reduce disruption.

This begins with looking at what can be done to support positive student behaviour, rather than focusing on what you can do to reduce disruption.

The means approaches for supporting improved student behaviour are educative, not punitive. They also promote a sense of predictability and safety in classrooms. This can include:

Limiting distractions

Teachers can change their classrooms to limit distractions and promote positive behaviour. For example:

• rearranging seating to make it easier for students to see the teacher and pay attention

• putting felt pads under furniture to reduce noise levels

• turning off sounds on mobile devices to limit distractions

• adding environmental cues (such as written instructions and checklists) to remind students about what they should be doing.

Teaching behavioural skills

We can’t assume students know how to behave well at school. School is a complex environment and may have different expectations to home.

So teachers can teach behavioural skills the same way they teach academic skills (and teach them early and often). This means giving students instruction, practice, feedback, and encouragement. Specific behavioural skills to teach might include:

• responding to your name when called

• requesting help with difficult tasks

• entering the classroom quietly and beginning a “getting started” task

• showing kindness and respect to peers and staff.

Teachers should also respond to disruptive behaviour or behavioural errors as if they were learning errors and provide an immediate correction. This includes giving the student a chance to practise (or show you) the appropriate behaviour and the providing positive feedback if warranted.

Allowing time for lots of practice

Researchers have found that for a child to learn something new, it needs to be repeated eight times on average.

For a child to unlearn an old behaviour and replace it with a new behaviour, the new behaviour must be practised on average 28 times.
Providing plenty of praise

Research shows praising students for positive behaviours has a high-impact. It is important to make the praise genuine and attached to a specific behaviour.

Getting students involved

The classroom climate can be improved when students play an active role in setting classroom expectations and holding one another to high standards.

This includes asking students what their classroom norms and expectations should be. It could also include:

• encouraging students to acknowledge each other for doing the right thing – a practice known as “tootling”

• making it safe for students to both make mistakes and succeed. Create a culture where students can openly discuss and learn from their mistakes, as well as share their successes

• modelling calm conflict resolution and support students to work through academic and social challenges.

Read more:
Our new study provides a potential breakthrough on school bullying

Erin Leif currently receives funding from the Victorian Department of Families, Fairness, and Housing, and has received funding from the Victorian Department of Education and the Australian Education Research Organisation. Erin Leif is currently the president of the Association for Behaviour Analysis Australia and is an expert advisor to Behaviour Support Practitioners Australia.

– ref. Australian classrooms are among the ‘least favourable’ for discipline in the OECD. Here’s how to improve student behaviour – https://theconversation.com/australian-classrooms-are-among-the-least-favourable-for-discipline-in-the-oecd-heres-how-to-improve-student-behaviour-202946

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Koplin, Lecturer in Bioethics, Monash University & Honorary fellow, Melbourne Law School, Monash University

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, recently invested US$180 million into Retro Biosciences – a company seeking to extend human lifespans by ten healthy years.

One way it plans to achieve this is by “rejuvenating” blood. This idea is based on studies that found old mice showed signs of reversed ageing when given the blood of young mice.

Altman isn’t the only Silicon Valley entrepreneur supporting life extension efforts. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google cofounder Larry Page have poured millions into projects that could profoundly affect how we live our lives.

The first question raised is scientific: could these technologies work? On this front the jury is still out, and there are grounds for both optimism and scepticism.

Read more:
Can ageing really be ‘treated’ or ‘cured’? An evolutionary biologist explains

The second question is just as important: even if lifespan extension is feasible, would it be ethical?

We explain why some common ethical arguments against lifespan extension aren’t as solid as they might seem – and put forth another, somewhat overlooked explanation for why trying to live forever might not be worth it.

Is it worth it if you still die anyway?

One might argue lifespan extension merely pushes back the inevitable: that we will die. However, the problem with this view is that any life saved will only be saved temporarily.

A lifespan extension of ten years is akin to saving a drowning swimmer, only for them to die in a traffic accident ten years later. Although we might be sad about their eventual death, we’d still be glad we saved them.

The same is true of conventional medicine. If a doctor cures my pneumonia, I will eventually die of something else, but that doesn’t mean the doctor or I will regret my being saved.

It’s also worth taking a longer view of where lifespan extension research could lead us. In the most optimistic scenarios put forth by experts, even modest short-term gains could help people add centuries to their life, since the benefits of each intervention could cascade. For example, each extra year of life would increase the likelihood of surviving until the next big breakthrough.

Is it worth it if immortality could get boring?

Many have argued against lifespan extension on ethical grounds, saying they wouldn’t use these technologies. Why might somebody be opposed?

One worry is that a very long life might be undesirable. Philosopher Bernard Williams said life is made valuable through the satisfaction of what he calls “categorical desires”: desires that give us reason to want to live.

Williams expects these desires relate to major life projects, such as raising a child, or writing a novel. He worries that, given a long enough life, we will run out of such projects. If so, immortality would become tedious.

It’s unclear whether Williams is right. Some philosophers point out human memories are fallible, and certain desires could resurface as we forget earlier experiences.

Others emphasise that our categorical desires evolve as our life experiences reshape our interests – and might continue to do so over the course of a very long life.

In either case, our categorical desires, and hence our reason for living, would not be exhausted over a very long life.

Even if immortality did get tedious, this wouldn’t count against modest lifespan extensions. Many would argue 80-something years isn’t enough time to explore one’s potential. Personally, we’d welcome another 20 or even 50 years to write a novel, or start a career as a DJ.

Is it worth it if poor people miss out?

Another worry regarding lifespan extension technologies is egalitarian.

These technologies will be expensive; it seems unjust for Silicon Valley billionaires to celebrate their 150th birthdays while the rest of us mostly die in our 70s and 80s.

This objection seems convincing. Most people welcome interventions that promote health equality, which is reflected in broader societal demands for universal healthcare.

But there’s important nuance to consider here. Consider that universal healthcare systems promote equality by improving the situation of those who aren’t well off. On the other hand, preventing the development of lifespan extension technologies will worsen the situation of those who are well off.

The ethical desirability of equality based on “levelling down” is unclear. The poorest Australians are twice as likely to die before age 75 than the richest. Yet few people would argue we should stop developing technologies to improve the health of those aged over 75.

Moreover, the price of lifespan extension technologies would eventually likely come down.

The real problem

However, we think there’s one serious ethical objection that applies to extreme cases of life extension. If humans routinely lived very long lives, this could reduce how adaptable our populations are, and lead to social stagnation.

Even modest increases in life expectancy would radically increase population size. To avoid overpopulation, we’d need to reduce birth rates, which would drastically slow generational turnover.

As one of us (Chris) has explored in previous research, this could be incredibly harmful to societal progress, because it may:

1. increase our vulnerability to extinction threats
2. jeopardise individual wellbeing, and
3. impede moral advancement.

Many fields benefit from a regular influx of young minds coming in and building on the work of predecessors.

Even if the brains of older scientists remained sharp, their “confirmation bias” – a tendency to seek and interpret information in ways that confirm one’s prior beliefs – could slow the uptake of new scientific theories.

Moral beliefs are also prone to confirmation bias. In a world of extended lifespans, individuals whose moral views were set in their youth (perhaps more than 100 years ago) will remain in positions of power.

It seems likely our society’s moral code is badly mistaken in at least some respects. After all, we think past societies were catastrophically mistaken in theirs, such as when they endorsed slavery, or rendered homosexuality illegal.

Slowing generational turnover could delay the point at which we recognise and fix our own moral catastrophes, especially those we can’t yet see.

Read more:
Life extension: the five most promising methods – so far

Julian Koplin receives funding from Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

Christopher Gyngell via his affiliation with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute received funding from the Victorian State Government via the Operational Infrastructure Support Program. He also receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund.

– ref. The rich are pouring millions into life extension research – but does it have any ethical value? – https://theconversation.com/the-rich-are-pouring-millions-into-life-extension-research-but-does-it-have-any-ethical-value-201774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Hurst, Faculty of Arts Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow, Indigenous and Settler Relations Collaboration, The University of Melbourne

This is the third article in our series explaining Voice, Treaty and Truth. Read the other articles in the series here and here.

Australia has never been good at listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Despite the truths that have already been told in processes like the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody or the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, time and again governments have ignored recommendations designed to address the impacts of Australia’s settler-colonial past and present.

State refusals to respond to truth have led to renewed calls for processes that will detail the impacts of colonisation in the everyday lives of Indigenous people. These calls were an important part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which sought “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”, complimented by “a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”.

As legal scholars Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis have commented, the call for truth-telling in the Uluru Statement is just one part of a wider call for structural reform intended to ensure improvement in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Read more:
What actually is a treaty? What could it mean for Indigenous people?

Why truth?

Beginning in the 1980s, formal truth-telling processes (usually called truth commissions) emerged as a method of reckoning with the past in deeply divided societies around the world. Perhaps the most famous example is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which aimed to address the gross violations of human rights that happened under apartheid.

Truth commissions like this are generally temporary, state-sanctioned inquiries that typically last from one to five years, with a remit to investigate particular events and examine specific violations over a defined period of time. This typically involves collecting testimony from victims and (sometimes) perpetrators.

It is only relatively recently that truth-telling processes have been used as a response to settler colonial violence, most notably via Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which arose after a class action lawsuit on behalf of the roughly 150,000 First Nations children taken from their familes and placed in residential schools.

The Uluru Statement isn’t the first time First Nations on this continent have called for truth-telling. Since colonisation, Indigenous peoples have insisted that Australia must not look away from their experiences of dispossession and survival.

When these truths have been told, however, they have all too often been met with denial, defensiveness or even aggression. For example, when the Stolen Generations inquiry pointed to evidence of the forcible removal of Indigenous children that, it charged, constituted a breach of the UN Convention on Genocide, there was an immediate conservative backlash. The Howard government rejected the findings of the inquiry in one of the earliest salvos against what conservatives have termed a “black armband” view of Australian history.

There is a reason settler governments have been reluctant to engage in truth-telling. First Nations often seek truth as a means of changing an untenable status quo, reshaping society’s attitudes so as to improve their own future prospects and reaffirm their distinct sovereignties and their right to self-determination.

As the non-Indigenous Canadian political scientist Courtney Jung has argued, while settler governments may try to use the conclusion of a truth commission to “draw a line through history”, First Nations seek to build “not a wall but a bridge”, using truth-telling to “draw history into the present, and to draw connections between past policy, present policy, and present injustices”.

Whose truths? What truths?

Broadly speaking, First Nations peoples seek truths that address three key themes: narrative and memory; trauma and healing; and responsibility and justice.

We have described this potential as “the promise of truth”, in which truth-telling leads to a kind of agreement between Indigenous and settler peoples, rather than being a process centred on the state and its violence.

The promise of truth is that it will change national narratives and produce a new, shared collective memory that acknowledges crimes of the past; it will contribute to the healing and recovery of Indigenous people who have been harmed by colonisation and dispossession; and it will compel settlers and their institutions to take responsibility for the harms of colonisation.

This approach stands in contrast to what we have called the “colonisation of truth”, through which truth-telling is seen primarily as rehabilitative of the settler colonial state while obscuring ongoing injustices. When truth is colonised, it may reproduce narratives that restore aspects of settler legitimacy and treat injustices as being solely in the past. Alternatively, this version of truth may treat First Nations people merely as victims, telling stories of harm and trauma without delivering reparation. Or it may suggest that the demand for responsibility and justice has been fulfilled simply by engaging in the truth-telling process, rather than treating the telling of truth as a starting point for a fairer future.

Truth, then, is complex, and what it may achieve in the Australian context is not yet clear. As treaty processes progress in several Australian jurisdictions, the commitment to truth-telling seems likely to be a part of future negotiations. This close connection between treaty and truth is unique to the Australian case and confirms the strongly held belief that truth has transformative potential. We do not yet know whether the linking of truth and treaty will produce the transformation in relationships that is so urgently needed.

Victoria, which announced a commitment to treaty in 2016, is the jurisdiction most advanced in testing this proposition. In 2022, Victoria established the Yoorrook Truth and Justice Commission (Yoorrok is a Wemba Wemba word meaning “truth”), marking a new era in Australian truth-telling focused on the history of invasion and colonisation of First Nations’ territories. Until the creation of Yoorrook, no previous commission, royal commission or inquiry into colonisation in Australia has included the word “truth” in its official title.

Yet still, truth is not a straightforward proposition. “Truth burns,” as Indigenous academic Marcia Langton recently put it. Sometimes, truth-telling is painful and connects directly to harm and injustice.

Read more:
The Voice: what is it, where did it come from, and what can it achieve?

Truth is tricky. It can appear to open spaces for new understandings, while simultaneously shutting these spaces down and reinforcing the colonial status quo.

Ultimately, truth-telling is uncomfortable but necessary, as change in any relationship inevitably is. But this is where the possibility lives. As new truth-telling takes place across this continent we have an opportunity to imagine what it might mean to be in a relationship that does not deny the truth of First Nations’ lives, or the truth of how Australia has come to be.

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. First Nations people have made a plea for ‘truth-telling’. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future – https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-have-made-a-plea-for-truth-telling-by-reckoning-with-its-past-australia-can-finally-help-improve-our-future-202137

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Boraman, Lecturer in Politics, Massey University

Most people today are coping with the rising cost of living individually: cost cutting, looking for a better paid job, taking on “side hustles”, and so on. But not so long ago, many workers globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand approached the same problem in far more collective ways.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s – sometimes referred to as “the long 1970s” – the union movement used strikes to combat the effects on workers of chronic inflation and a deep economic crisis. These were often successful, both in Aotearoa and around the world.

In many ways, the long 1970s were similar to today, a turbulent era of wide-ranging transformation, social polarisation and economic decline. After the long post-war economic boom, the so-called “golden age” of capitalism came to a halt in the late 1960s. A long-term social and economic decline set in after the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Largely in response to this, strike levels reached historic peaks in many countries. As British journalist Andy McSmith wrote of the UK’s 1978-1979 “winter of discontent”, it was simply “irrational not to strike”, given how inflation was eroding pay packets. In Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, inflation averaged 11.5% in the 1970s and peaked at 17.2% in 1980.

Collective resistance wasn’t only organised in workplaces. There were also consumer campaigns such as the Campaign Against Rising Prices in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly organised by (unpaid) women domestic workers, and often supported by unions.

Many unions mobilised to obtain better pay – often because of workers’ demands over declining real incomes. Millions of workers around the world struck to keep their wages level with inflation, in many instances securing pay increases above inflation rates.

Defending living standards

In Aotearoa New Zealand, as historian Ross Webb has argued, the Federation of Labour (FOL) adopted a largely successful strategy of “defending living standards” from the late 1960s to about 1984. They argued that employers and governments were trying to place the burden of the recession on workers and their families.

Union tactics were reasonably canny. They did not simply butt heads with employers set on reducing costs, or governments intent on restricting wage increases through incomes policies.

Instead, they contested the assumption of employers and politicians that inflation was mainly caused by wage increases (the wage-price spiral), rather than a result of companies raising prices, profiteering and passing on the cost of the oil shocks.

Read more:
Inflation is raising prices and reducing real wages – what should be done to support NZ’s low-income households?

There were two tactics in particular that don’t seem to exist in Aotearoa today. The first was targeting stoppages against a particular employer. Once a breakthrough was achieved at one workplace, unions would ensure the gain was made into a broader industry, regional or national standard. Targeted strikes were not as costly or as risky as national or industry-wide strikes, with striking workers supported through weekly union levies.

The second tactic involved broad, nationally-coordinated, cross-union mobilisations. These included general strikes (either city-wide or national) and nationwide demonstrations. These solidarity actions generally focused on unsympathetic or intransigent governments intent on clamping wage increases.

When the Arbitration Court announced a nil general wage order in 1968 (meaning wages couldn’t rise), despite inflation running at about 5%, the FOL organised a limited campaign of targeted strikes against certain employers. Its Wellington Trades Council held a one-day, general, city-wide strike and a stormy protest outside parliament.

General strikes and export bans

Targeted stoppages were often highly effective, especially in strategic industries where profits and production could be quickly halted. For example, meatworkers banned all meat exports to counter the nil wage order. This was the country’s biggest export at the time, accounting for 40% of export revenue.

The export ban, together with many other stoppages, quickly brought results. Workers were granted a 5% increase nationally, just two months after the nil order was announced.

In 1979-1980, a union campaign successfully saw the repeal of the 1979 Remuneration Act, imposed by Robert Muldoon’s authoritarian populist-right government and which enabled the state to unilaterally lower negotiated wage increases between employers and unions.

Read more:
Strikes: how rising household debt could slow industrial action this year

The campaign involved a one-day national general strike in 1979. Some 340,000 to 400,000 workers (75-80% of the FOL’s membership) participated, according to reasonably reliable estimates. It was the most well-supported strike in local history, followed in 1980 by a successful three-month strike by paper mill workers at Kinleith that gained substantial national support.

The final nail in the coffin for the Remuneration Act was the living standards campaign organised by the FOL and the Combined State Unions in 1980. Large protest marches were held around the country, including one that attracted up to 45,000 people during a three-hour, city-wide stop-work action in Auckland.

There were also smaller shop-floor strikes aimed at achieving localised pay agreements to keep up with inflation. These often resulted in piecework or bonus payment schemes, or allowances for clothes, boots and working in dirty or dangerous condition. They all helped enormously with take-home pay.

Read more:
Debate: The forward march of labour restarts with historic strikes in France and the UK

Disputed strategies

These actions drew strong reactions from employers, the state, and from some sections of the community. Conservatives – such as those who took part in the “Kiwis Care” march in 1981 – claimed strikers were greedy, disruptive, destroying the “national interest” and holding the country to ransom. Yet the law-and-order measures employed to contain or repress strikes usually just inflamed unrest.

A more effective response came in the form of economic restructuring and de-industrialisation in the 1980s. Neoliberals argued strikes squeezed profits and production, and restricted management’s “right to manage” the factory and office floor. Employers and politicians used various tactics, such as factory closures, to successfully break unions and undermine workers’ power.

While inflation was tamed in Aotearoa by the early 1990s, it came at the expense of dramatically increased class inequality.

Read more:
Recent pay rises suggest that collective bargaining may be on the way back

Worker resistance to the cost-of-living crisis in the long 1970s is still a polarising and contested subject. Probably the dominant view, voiced by the neoliberal right as well as some on the moderate left, is that workers caused their own demise by striking too much.

Some argued that unions had adopted an “immature” conflict-based strategy that could never win, and that neoliberal restructuring was the inevitable response and outcome. Such a view tends to demonise the strike-prone 1970s as the “bad old days” when supposedly thuggish “unions ran the country”.

But it’s overly simplistic to blame workers for simply trying to keep their pay up with inflation after negotiation strategies failed. Those on the activist wing of unions would counter by arguing workers fought back en masse in the long 1970s to defend living standards. But they were simply defeated in the 1980s by more powerful global and local forces.

The diminished collective

Globally, strikes are perhaps back in vogue. In early 2023, there have already been a “mega-strike” in Germany, a “protect the right to strike” action in the UK, and mass strikes against the raising of the pension age in France. In Aotearoa, teacher unions have mounted a rare coordinated strike. As economic problems deepen, it’s likely more will occur.

So far, however, these strikes against the cost-of-living crisis have not been as large or as widely supported as those of the long 1970s. In high-income countries, strike levels today are generally nowhere near the peaks of that period.

This is, of course, directly related to the astonishing decline of union membership since the 1970s. As a proportion of the whole workforce, union membership in Aotearoa has fallen from a peak of 57.5% in 1979 to 17% in 2021. Strikes are therefore limited to a minority of the workforce, especially in the underfunded public sector.

Little wonder, then, that most people these days are coping with soaring costs by taking individual rather than collective action. It’s also one of many reasons why so many feel powerless to effect deeper and lasting change.

Toby Boraman receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. He is a member of the Tertiary Education Union.

– ref. Strikes, protests and collective action: how fighting a cost-of-living crisis wasn’t always about tightening your own belt – https://theconversation.com/strikes-protests-and-collective-action-how-fighting-a-cost-of-living-crisis-wasnt-always-about-tightening-your-own-belt-203402

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Jongenelis, Associate Professor, Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change, The University of Melbourne

You’re driving your teen home from school when they open up to you about their vaping. What started off as an occasional puff of an e-cigarette has turned into something more serious.

“I was curious and just wanted to try it,” they say. “All my friends were doing it and I wanted to do it too.”

But now they are vaping more often and getting anxious when they can’t access their vape. They want to quit but they aren’t sure how.

Here are some practical tips to help your teen stop vaping.

Read more:
Sex and lies are used to sell vapes online. Even we were surprised at the marketing tactics we found

I don’t want to lecture. But what can I do?

You’ve seen the news and you know e-cigarettes are harmful.

You might want to reprimand your child, or say “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it?”. But you know criticism and lecturing don’t work. So, what do you do?

First, acknowledge it’s a great sign your teen wants to quit and is asking for help. We know motivation is critical to behaviour change.

But if you’re a parent of a teen who isn’t ready to try quitting, you need to work on boosting their motivation to quit first.

Read more:
My teen’s vaping. What should I say? 3 expert tips on how to approach ‘the talk’

Boost their motivation to quit

Talk with your teen about their vaping. Ask them what led to them wanting to quit and their reasons for wanting to give up. You can both use those reasons to help motivate quitting.

Use that knowledge to balance the benefits of quitting with the costs of not quitting. You can do this using a practical exercise.

Discuss potential barriers that might get in the way of quitting.
What is your teen worried will happen if they try to quit? Have they been using vaping to relax and are worried they will become more anxious? Are they worried about losing friends? Do they think they won’t be able to quit?

Once you have an idea of the costs and benefits your child perceives, you’ll be in a better position to help them. For example, if they have been using vapes to relax, help them find other ways of reducing stress.

It might also help to tap into their values and use these to highlight that their vaping isn’t aligned with who they want to be.

For example, if they are skipping class to vape but are usually a diligent student, discuss this discrepancy and the longer-term impact of their dependence (for example, not getting into uni).

Read more:
A parent’s guide to why teens make bad decisions

Set a goal

Once your child is motivated, it’s time to set a goal to quit. Work with your teen to develop a SMART goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, with a Timeframe.

That goal might be to quit vaping by a certain date. But your teen may need to set smaller goals first. This might mean “This week, I will only vape on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

Once achieved, these goals can be made more challenging until gradually, your teen has succeeded in quitting vaping.

Make sure you reward your teen or they reward themselves for achieving their goals, even the small ones.

Next, if your teen has been using nicotine vapes – and many vapes contain nicotine even if they are not labelled as such – they may be addicted.

Contact the Quitline (details below) or see your GP to discuss support for your teen. They may need extra help weaning off e-cigarettes. A nicotine tapering plan may help.

How to handle the setbacks

Your teen will likely have some trouble quitting. Remember those barriers from earlier? Create coping plans. What will your teen do if they are feeling stressed and want to reach for their vape? What will your teen do if they are at a party and are offered a puff?

These strategies may help your teen:

• keeping busy by doing puzzles, drawing, or playing games on the phone

• changing locations. Encourage your teen to get out and about. They can go to the gym, outside for a walk, or head to the footy

• reminding your teen about the reasons they want to quit and the costs of not quitting

• helping them practise saying “no” to a vape

• having snacks or gum they can grab when they have the urge to vape.

Show compassion

There are many reasons people vape. Among them is a vaping industry, with deep pockets, that’s expert at manipulating young people to start and continue vaping.

So be compassionate and try not to judge your teen. Lecturing, criticising and being punitive won’t help them quit. Position yourself as someone they can rely on.

More support and information about quitting vaping is available from
Lung Foundation Australia and
Quitline (ph: 13 7848).

Associate Professor Michelle Jongenelis receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is affiliated with the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, the Public Health Association of Australia, and the World Federation of Public Health Associations’ Tobacco Control Working Group.

– ref. How can I help my teen quit vaping? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-i-help-my-teen-quit-vaping-201558

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Selinske, Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University

Last month, Sir David Attenborough called on United Kingdom residents to “go wild once per week”. By this, he meant taking actions which help rather than harm the natural world, such as planting wildflowers for bees and eating more plant-based foods.

Australia should follow suit. We love our natural environment. But we have almost 10 times more species threatened with extinction than the UK.
How we act can accelerate these declines – or help stop them.

We worked with 22 conservation experts to identify 10 actions which actually do help nature.

Why do we need to act for nature?

If you go for a bushwalk, you might wonder what the problem is. Gums, wattles, cockatoos, honeyeaters, possums – everything is normal, right? Alas, we don’t notice what’s no longer there. Many areas have only a few of the native species once present in large numbers.

We are losing nature, nation-wide. Our threatened birds are declining very rapidly. On average, there are now less than half (48%) as many of each threatened bird species than in 1985. Threatened plants have fared even worse, with average declines of over three quarters (77%).

Biodiversity loss will have far-reaching consequences and is one of the greatest risks to human societies, according to the OECD.

The small choices we all make accumulate to either help or harm nature.

Our top ten actions to help biodiversity

1. Choose marine stewardship council certified seafood products

Why? Overfishing is devastating for fish species. By-catch means even non-food species can die in the process.

Where to start: Look for the blue tick of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or the green tick of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) approval on seafood products where you shop, or use the Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide. Certified products are caught or farmed sustainably.

2. Keep your dog on a leash in natural areas – including beaches

Why? Off-leash dogs scare and can attack native wildlife. When animals and birds have to spend time and energy fleeing, they miss out on time to eat, rest and feed their young.

Where to start: Look for local off-leash areas and keep your dog leashed everywhere else.

3. Cut back on beef and lamb

Why? Producing beef and lamb often involves destroying or overgrazing natural habitat, as well as culling native predators like dingoes.

Where to start: Eat red meat less often and eat smaller portions when you do. Switch to poultry, sustainable seafood and more plant-based foods like beans and nuts. Suggest a meatless Monday campaign in your friend and family group chat to help wildlife – and your own health.

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

4. Donate to land protection organisations.

Why? These organisations protect land in perpetuity. Donations help them expand and do important on-ground biodiversity management.

Where to start: Check out organisations such as the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Bush Heritage Australia, Trust for Nature, and Tasmanian Land Conservancy.

5. Make your investments biodiversity-friendly

Why? Many funds include companies whose business model relies on exploiting the natural environment. Your money could be contributing. Looking for biodiversity-positive investments can nudge funds and companies to do better.

Where to start: Look at the approach your superannuation fund takes to sustainability and consider switching if you aren’t impressed. You could also explore the growing range of biodiversity-friendly investment funds.

6. Donate to threatened species and ecosystem advocacy organisations

Why? These groups rely on donations to fund biodiversity advocacy, helping to create better planning and policy outcomes for our species.

Where to start: Look into advocacy groups like WWF Australia, Birdlife Australia, Biodiversity Council, Environment Centre NT, and the Environmental Defenders Office.

7. Plant and maintain a wildlife garden wherever you have space

Why? Our cities aren’t just concrete jungles – they’re important habitat for many threatened species. Gardening with wildlife in mind increases habitat and connections between green space in suburbs.

Where to start: Your council or native nursery is often a great source of resources and advice. Find out if you have a threatened local species such as a butterfly or possum you could help by growing plants, but remember that non-threatened species also need help.

8. Vote for political candidates with strong environmental policies

Why? Electing pro-environment candidates changes the game. Once inside the tent, environmental candidates can shape public investment, planning, policy and programs.

Where to start: Look into local candidate and party policies at every election. Consider talking to your current MP about environmental issues.

9. Desex your cat and keep it inside or in a cat run

Why? Research shows every pet cat kept inside saves the lives of 110 native animals every year, on average. Desexing cats avoids unexpected litters and helps to keep the feral cat population down.

Where to start: Keep your cat inside, or set up a secure cat run to protect wildlife from your cute but lethal pet. It’s entirely possible to have happy and healthy indoor cats. Indoor cats also live longer and healthier lives.

Read more:
One cat, one year, 110 native animals: lock up your pet, it’s a killing machine

10. Push for better control of pest animals

Why? Pest species like feral horses, pigs, cats, foxes and rabbits are hugely destructive. Even native species can become destructive, such as when wallaby populations balloon when dingoes are killed off.

Where to start: Look into the damage these species do and tell your friends. Public support for better control is essential, as these issues often fly under the radar.

Making a difference

Conservation efforts may seem far away. In fact, our daily choices and actions have a considerable effect.

Talking openly about issues and actions can help these behaviours and habits spread. If we all do a small part of the work and support others to do the same, we will see an enormous effect.

Matthew Selinske receives funding from the Australia Research Council. The research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and from the Victorian Government. Matthew is a board member of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group.

Georgia Garrard receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and from the Victorian Government. She is chair of Birdlife Australia’s Research and Conservation Committee, a member of Zoos Victoria’s Scientific Advisory Committee and a member of the Sustainable Subdivisions Framework advisory group for the Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment.

Jaana Dielenberg works for the Biodiversity Council and previously worked for the Threatened Species Recovery Hub. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and from the Victorian Government.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. She is a Councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a Board Member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF’s Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.

– ref. Nature is in crisis. Here are 10 easy ways you can make a difference – https://theconversation.com/nature-is-in-crisis-here-are-10-easy-ways-you-can-make-a-difference-202855

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Jefferson, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University

Many Year 10 students are beginning to think seriously about what subjects they might pick for years 11 and 12.

These are important decisions – not just because they may form the basis of further university study and career paths. They will also be the focus of the final years of schooling and could turn into the skills students carry forward into their adult lives.

Read more:
Choosing your senior school subjects doesn’t have to be scary. Here are 6 things to keep in mind

This reminds me of a school awards night I once attended. The keynote speaker was a former student who now worked as an emergency trauma surgeon. In Year 12, he studied typical pre-medical school subjects like maths, physics and chemistry. But he also did drama – a choice that was questioned by the school at the time.

The doctor told us how drama turned out to be the most useful subject for him. It had given him the ability to work well with a diverse team in a highly-charged space, whether it be a stage or an emergency room.

This shows how important it is to make informed choices and how it is worth encouraging children to think outside the box.

What’s happening to teenage brains as they decide?

These decisions are happening as teenagers’ brains are going through significant changes. This includes “pruning” of the teenage brain where it gets rid of grey matter it isn’t using.

Alongside this, new neural pathways and connections are created. This means information processing is becoming more efficient.

All this pruning, developing and strengthening varies from person to person and means their interests and passions can change considerably over this period.

What are the rules?

There are a huge number of options to study, from academic subjects that contribute to your ATAR, to vocational education and training courses.

Students and families should familiarise themselves with the core requirements (all students need to study English, for example). Also note some degrees need you to have studied certain subjects or have assumed knowledge prior to commencing study.

Read more:
What actually is an ATAR? First of all it’s a rank, not a score

How can parents help?

Here are some ideas for parents and carers who want to help their children navigate what’s best for them in the final years of school:

• Chat with your child about their interests and passions: it’s understandably challenging for a 15-year-old to map out their life too far ahead. A good place to start is a comprehensive site such as Your Career. This can be a constructive way to together have a look at fields that fall in their line of interest and then discuss

• Be informed of the options: attend any parent information sessions held by the school to ensure you are up to speed with the choices it is offering. Be prepared to advocate for your child when appropriate to enable them to study subjects they enjoy or show and interest in. Remember there is a great deal more flexibility with pathways today and just because someone says your child “has” to do a subject it doesn’t mean it has to be done now

• See the big picture: what does your child want out of the final years of school? Is it the highest possible university entrance rank? Do they want to start developing workplace or trade skills? Understand there are plenty of options beyond school – whether it be vocational training, an apprenticeship, university via an ATAR or going to university via a non-ATAR pathway

• Get input from others: school careers counsellors can provide excellent advice. If your school has one, encourage your child to make an individual appointment. See if your child can talk to people working in fields they may be interested in.

Read more:
‘Thinking about my future is really scary’ – school leavers are not getting the careers support they need

• Be flexible and patient: it’s highly likely your child will change their mind with their subject choices. This is absolutely normal and it’s important for you to listen to and support them as they navigate these challenges. If we are meant to undergo five to seven career changes during our lifetime, then we need to make it safe for our children to do so from the start.

One last thing

Our children are unique and will have their own dreams and aspirations. So their subject choices may not reflect what we’ve done or want them to do and it is important to take a breath and step back from imposing our views on them.

We can point things out like, “if you really want to do engineering it might make sense to study maths now, so you don’t have to do a bridging course”. Or, “you seem to really love design and technology and visual arts”. But ultimately the choice is theirs.

And in fostering our children’s sense of ownership of these choices, we are contributing to their ability to become lifelong learners.

Sarah Jefferson 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. Year 10 students are thinking about their final subjects – here’s how parents can help – https://theconversation.com/year-10-students-are-thinking-about-their-final-subjects-heres-how-parents-can-help-203164

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ou Yang, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

The best word to describe the way Australia taxes alcoholic drinks is “incoherent”.

It was the word used by the 2010 Henry Tax Review to describe a system in which some wine effectively faces no alcohol tax, expensive wine is taxed heavily and cask wine lightly, beer (but not wine) is taxed by alcohol content, brandy is taxed less than other spirits, and cider is taxed differently to beer.

Industry calculations suggest cask wine is taxed at as little as six cents per standard drink, mid-price wine at 26 cents, bottled beer at 56 cents, and spirits at $1.24.

And yet it is cask wine that is often said to do the most damage.

The Henry Review recommended taxing all drinks containing more than a small amount of alcohol at the same rate per unit of alcohol, regardless of type. It was a recommendation backed by specialists in Australia’s tax system.

Implicit, and largely unexamined, in these recommendations is the assumption that alcohol does the same damage in whatever form it is taken.

Our new study, linking drinkers’ risky behaviours to the types of alcoholic beverages they mostly consume, finds this isn’t so.

Damage depends on the type of drink

Using data from six waves of an Australian recreational drug survey, we find that regular-strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a can rank among the highest in their links to both drink-driving and hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours.

Mid-range are mid-strength beer, cask wine, and bottled spirits and liqueurs.

At the bottom are low-strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a bottle, which have the weakest links to risky and abusive behaviours when intoxicated.

Probability of drink driving, by age and beverage type

Some of the relationships vary with the type of damage. While bottled wine is linked to a moderate to high probability of drink-driving, it is also linked to a low probability of hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours.

Pre-mixed spirits in a bottle are related to a low probability of both drink driving and hazardous, disturbing and abusive behaviours. But when account is taken of the gender of the drinkers (so-called alcopops are typically drunk by females), we find them no longer as safe.

Probability of hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviour

Our study suggests that Australia’s haphazard system of taxing alcohol might have got some things right. Beer, which is typically taxed more highly than wine, seems to do more damage.

But it has got some things wrong. Cask wine appears to be significantly undertaxed relative to the damage it does.

More broadly, our findings suggest that if alcohol is to be taxed according to the damage it does, the tax system we adopt will need to be more complicated than a single rate for every unit of alcohol regardless of the form in which it comes.

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. Australia’s system of taxing alcohol is ‘incoherent’, but our research suggests a single tax rate isn’t the answer – https://theconversation.com/australias-system-of-taxing-alcohol-is-incoherent-but-our-research-suggests-a-single-tax-rate-isnt-the-answer-195907

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Lecturer, Screen Studies, University of New England

At the beginning of the first John Wick film, the tools of his deadly trade lie entombed beneath concrete, buried alongside Wick’s worst self – the pitiless assassin only his happy marriage permitted him to retire.

Fans of the series know what happened next. In order to exact his revenge, he destroys his vault with a sledgehammer, revealing an arsenal of guns. The real John Wick is back. Carnage ensues.

The carnage continues in John Wick 4, which is currently in cinemas. The franchise owes much to acclaimed Hong Kong action film director John Woo and the “gun-fu” fighting style his films established, which blends slick pistol skills with kung-fu.

Revenge narratives share well-recognised tropes: a murder, a ghost, madness, a stronger enemy and a vengeful hero. Each Wick film honours these elements separately, while at the same time containing them within Wick himself. Murder is Wick’s business. Motivated by murders, he commits them as revenge. Often.

Visited by the “ghost” of his dead wife (videos of her on his phone), he also functions as a ghost in the minds of his enemies, the mythic Baba Yaga of their nightmares. Driven to extremes, others believe him mad. He is both the vengeful hero and the stronger enemy.

Wick is by turns all these things because in seeking his own revenge, he becomes the object of the revenge of others.

Revenge and consequence

Keanu Reeves’ performance in the first Wick film is never more powerful than when, tied to a chair by his captors, he bellows the righteous justifications of his revenge. Wick does not threaten vengeance, he promises it, shouting “you can either give me your son, or die screaming alongside him!” All that follows in the subsequent films is consequence – the price Wick pays for seeking revenge in the first place.

Revenge tales are deeply satisfying because they permit us to imagine the retribution we might mete out for our own hurts – how we might right perceived wrongs if we only had the courage to act. We cheer on steely heroes and count the cost later. The cost is always high.

The John Wick saga harvests Western tropes, beginning much as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) does, with the mute burial of a wife and reluctant retrieval of weapons. Eastwood’s William Munny is not bent on revenge. Munny is revenge’s servant, a gun for hire, coaxed out of retirement by others. The grim events that follow are awful enough, but it is only when Munny’s friend Ned (Morgan Freeman) is murdered that Munny exacts a terrible revenge all his own.

Read more:
Revenge: the neuroscience of why it feels good in the moment, but may be a bad idea in the long run

The Coen brothers’ fine re-make of True Grit (2010) re-visits the theme. Again, the gunman is a servant (Jeff Bridges’ Marshal Cogburn), this time of 14-year-old Mattie Rose’s (Hailee Steinfeld) revenge. Mattie enlists Cogburn to pursue her father’s killer and pays a terrible price. She loses an arm to snakebite, leads a spinster’s life without hope of family, and in the film’s bleak denouement, arrives too late to even thank Cogburn for saving her life.

Wick is likewise too late to save or thank Marcus (Willem Defoe) in film one, loses a finger in film three, and throughout the series is without hope of family.

In Christopher Nolan’s puzzle film Memento (2000), Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is the amnesiac captive of a revenge narrative he barely comprehends. Nolan’s confounding circular design has Leonard pursuing himself, as both perpetrator and avenger, in perhaps the surest cinematic examination of revenge’s futility.

In the John Wick series, the narrative may be linear, but revenge’s cyclic, repetitive nature is amply demonstrated, confirming John Ford’s quote that “revenge proves its own executioner.”

Revenge as a propellant

In Keanu Reeves, Wick had an established star around whom The Matrix Trilogy had already been built. Mad Max (George Miller, 1979), and Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008), had already confirmed revenge as a kind of industrial propellant, possessing the capacity to launch or re-launch stellar careers like those of Mel Gibson and Liam Neeson.

Mad Max grew so successful it outlasted its star, a role in which other actors have since flexed their muscles. The Taken series neatly resolved the problem of the revenge plot’s exhaustion in advance, by kidnapping rather than murdering Bryan Mills’ (Neeson) family members. After all, family members can always be kidnapped again. They are in Taken 2, before Taken 3 brings the series to its climax.

Read more:
‘Rape-revenge’ films are changing: they now focus on the women, instead of their dads

In these ways, revenge is passed between protagonist and antagonist, from film to film, like a baton, as it is in the John Wick series. The series’ accomplishment is that it synthesises its many influences while asserting its originality.

Audiences have responded. In welding his diverse, multi-cultural world to the revenge narrative, director Chad Stahelski (accomplished martial artist and former stunt double/coordinator for Reeves), has built a billion dollar box-office behemoth as dominant as Wick himself.

At the end of John Wick 4, Wick’s fate is uncertain. While it is determined, the Wickiverse continues to expand. A baton will soon be passed in the spin-off film Ballerina. Now in post-production, it is set between John Wick 3 and John Wick 4. Reeves will play a supporting role. Surely only an epic, deeply personal revenge story could rouse Reeves one more time.

If there is to be a John Wick 5, it will only be because success is the best revenge, and just as surely, revenge is the best success.

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

– ref. How the John Wick franchise fits into the bloody tradition of the revenge film genre – https://theconversation.com/how-the-john-wick-franchise-fits-into-the-bloody-tradition-of-the-revenge-film-genre-203136

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

Ken Wyatt made history when he became the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives in 2010. In 2019, he became the first Indigenous federal cabinet minister when he was appointed minister for Indigenous Australians in the Morrison government.

On Thursday, he made history again, quitting the Liberal Party over its decision to oppose the referendum for the Voice.

Wyatt, who lost his Western Australian seat at the election, had stood beside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when last month he announced the wording for the referendum. In government, he had battled, against internal Coalition headwinds, to advance Indigenous recognition and a Voice.

Wyatt is a cautious, patient man. That he has left the Liberal Party is an indictment of his former colleagues. He told the West Australian:

“I still believe in the Liberal Party values, but I don’t believe in what the Liberals have become”.

A day earlier, faced with a choice on the Voice between the mood in the parliamentary Liberal Party and the mood in middle Australia, especially among people under 40, Opposition leader Peter Dutton opted for the party.

That was probably inevitable. After all, only days ago, after the Aston by-election loss, Dutton said his biggest preoccupation as leader had been holding the party together.

We can’t predict what the Liberals’ rejection of the Voice will do for the referendum, or, ultimately, for the opposition and Dutton’s leadership.

Certainly it will be unhelpful for the “yes” case. Dutton might be out of sync with the community vibe on this issue, but his becoming a leading light of the “no” campaigners – a rag-tag lot at present – will encourage a swag of voters to have doubts and vote no. The question is, how many?

The latest Newspoll shows the yes vote with an overall majority and winning in a majority of states – which it has to do in order to pass.

But the national yes vote was only 54%, and that is before the majority has been stress-tested by a campaign. There is a very long way to go in this marathon.

First Nations people’s call for the Voice has been extraordinarily hard for the Liberals to handle, not just for those from the right, like Dutton. Who can forget Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister at the time of the Uluru Statement from The Heart, declaring that a Voice would be seen as a “third chamber” of the parliament? (Turnbull has sent a “big hug” to Wyatt after his resignation.)

Dutton is often a pragmatist. Thus he was a driver of finding a way through the marriage equality issue. He hadn’t been a supporter of gay marriage, but for him, settling the issue was more important than his personal view. Hence he promoted the idea of the postal plebiscite, admittedly a second-best route to just legislating first up, but a way of getting the job done.

If “Peter the pragmatist” had been uppermost, you’d think he would have sought a non-confrontational way through the Voice issue.

Senior Liberals could have been left to make up their own minds, as in the republic referendum. Dutton could have said he had reservations about central features of the government’s proposal, but for the greater good – for the unity of the country and the pursuit of reconciliation – he would be voting yes although not campaigning.

Critics may or may not be right about the risks in the current wording of the constitutional change, which provides for the Voice to make representations to executive government. Equally, they may or may not be correct in claiming the Voice would make little difference to closing the gap.

But when Indigenous people have invested so much in the Voice, the question becomes: is the downside of denying it to them more damaging than the possibility of it being risky or impotent?

Some Liberals may be worried about its dangers. Others, more likely, just don’t like the idea of it, or want to play politics, and would probably have rejected any wording. Too often, the Liberals simply like to say no, and dig in, as they did (and still do) over measures to address climate change.

A Liberal pragmatist who was also sceptical about the Voice might have calculated that if it were going to present as many difficulties as the critics foresee, it would be a (likely) second-term Labor government that would initially have to deal with them.

Mention of a second-term Albanese government reminds us that, if the Voice referendum is successful, the next term would likely see another referendum – for an Australian republic. That would divide the opposition and present a nightmare for whomever led it at that time.

Dutton has promised to campaign against the Voice, but what does this mean? Will the Liberal Party be spending its scarce funds on the no campaign – money that could be better kept for the next election?

A few Liberal MPs, like Tasmanian Bridget Archer, are signed up to the yes campaign. Others will be active for no. A third group will prefer to keep their heads down, but could find themselves under pressure as the media compile lists of who is on which side and doing what.

The shadow minister on Indigenous Australians, Julian Leeser, has been left in an invidious if not an impossible position.

When he delivered a critique of the Voice to the National Press Club on Monday, Leeser suggested that Wednesday’s party meeting mightn’t make a final decision (after all, a parliamentary committee is examining the legislation, and it’s crazy to have a position ahead of that inquiry reporting); he also indicated he favoured frontbenchers being given freedom to support either side in a referendum campaign.

Leeser didn’t appear with Dutton at Wednesday’s news conference. It was explained he had to return to Sydney for Passover.

As the relevant shadow minister Leeser would be in high demand during the referendum campaign. How would he cope when he has serious reservations about the Liberals’ position?

Jeremy Rockliff might not be a household name to many Australians, but the Tasmanian premier leads the sole Liberal government in the country. He is a declared yes campaigner. Western Australian Liberal leader Libby Mettam has also declared for the yes case.

Fred Chaney, a former federal minister for Indigenous Affairs, has denounced Wednesday’s decision as pandering to the most extreme elements in the party, and called on small “l” liberals – who he said had been “supine” in recent years – to follow Archer’s lead in standing up for the yes case.

Dutton’s success in holding the Liberal show together has been strictly limited. And it has come at the cost of deepening the division in the country.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: the high cost of the Liberals’ Voice rejection – for both Peter Dutton and the party – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-high-cost-of-the-liberals-voice-rejection-for-both-peter-dutton-and-the-party-203419

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

The Liberals have formally decided to oppose the Voice. Peter Dutton has declared he will campaign against it, a high risk strategy when polls are showing a majority of Australians currently support a “yes” vote.

Noel Pearson was scathing of the Liberal Party, calling the decision not to support the Voice “a Judas betrayal of our country”. Moderate Liberal MP Bridget Archer will campaign for the “yes” case.

In this podcast, Michelle Grattan and Senator Simon Birmingham, leader of the opposition in the senate, and one of the few remaining moderates in the party, discuss the Voice, the Aston byelection defeat and “where to now?” for the Liberal Party.

Birmingham wishes more had been done by previous governments, “in the Rudd, Gillard, or Abbott years,” to advance Indigenous recognition.

“If we look at the substance of recognition and Voice, there are vexing issues.”

“They’re also vexing in regards to how you apply them against certain philosophical traits as to whether embedding a different platform for one part of the community in terms of engagement is a liberal or an illiberal concept […] I think there are serious questions there around this.”

“And sadly, as I look at it, I think that achieving national consensus on this topic has only gotten harder and harder over the many years since constitutional recognition was first discussed actively in the Howard government. And in many ways I wish it had been acted upon back then in the Rudd, Gillard or Abbott years.”

Birmingham doesn’t see the Liberal Party being on the wrong side of history in the referendum, but wants to see an open debate. “Australians will make their own mind up and that is at least the beauty of a referendum – we’ll get a clear and decisive result one way or the other as to where Australians stand.”

When asked if a pollster were to call him asking which way he would vote, Birmingham avoids a straight answer, but says he is open to “bipartisanship in working through the details in any referendum”.

“I hope that if there is something that can still be salvaged for national unity out of having a clear bipartisan constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, that that is achieved.”

“I hope if clear evidence comes forward during the parliamentary committee process to narrow the scope of the constitutional change that the government has put forward, that I listen to that evidence and try to convince a reconsideration around some of those factors.”

Birmingham concedes the Liberal Party has a lot of rebuilding to do, a point reinforced by the Aston trouncing. Areas needing attention include the migrant vote, women, and the younger generations, he says.

“We do face a vastly different electorate today to the one of some decades ago, and even not that long ago. If you look at some of the rate of change, the fastest growing segment of the workforce are professional women. And urbanisation has only continued to occur at a higher rate, particularly driven by waves of migration with significant numbers of Chinese Australians, Indian Australians and other cohorts growing in number.”

“Now those changes don’t mean that Liberal values are any less relevant today than they have been in the past […] but we do have to make sure that they are framed in a way that is relevant and engaging to electorates and to the modern electorate that we need to appeal to.”

“I think that means looking at how we can engage younger families and younger voters with effective policies about their economic security and especially in relation to the pursuit of home ownership.”

“That means ensuring that in all of those cases about job security, home ownership aspirations, the other aspirations they have that need to be underpinned by a strong economy. We also need to make sure that all feel included in those discussions, regardless of the background they come from, the migrant background or the construct or nature of their family”.

There’s a big push within the Coalition at the moment to embrace nuclear energy.

Birmingham sees the acceptance of nuclear-powered submarines as pointing to a wide change in attitudes towards nuclear technology.

He says: “I was surprised to be honest, when the AUKUS announcement was first made by the Morrison Government and of course with the recent announcements […] just how accepting and supportive the electorate has been of the use of nuclear technologies in the propulsion of our submarine fleet.”

“From a South Australian perspective, the reality [is] that that will mean work on the installation of the nuclear reactor component of submarines taking place at Osborne in suburban Adelaide moving forward. So I think there is a degree of maturity and understanding attached to these debates, but obviously there are lots of safeguards that need to be attached to any nuclear consideration”.

“Way back in my first speech, [I] was clear that I thought nuclear technology should be on the table with how we tackle some of the challenges of our time and how much has happened in the intervening sixteen years. The affordability and growth of renewable energies has changed dramatically and changed the energy landscape dramatically in that time.”

“I don’t think it makes sense per se to just have a ban on nuclear technologies.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Simon Birmingham on the Voice, Aston, the Liberals, Uranium – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-simon-birmingham-on-the-voice-aston-the-liberals-uranium-203416

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Rowell, Professor in High Energy Astrophyics, University of Adelaide

Long gone are the days when astronomers only studied the skies with simple optical telescopes. Today, unveiling the mysteries of the Universe involves ever-larger and more complex facilities that detect things like gravitational waves and different forms of electromagnetic radiation – the spectrum of energy that includes visible light and X-rays.

One particularly specialised branch of astronomy is gamma-ray astronomy. It does what is says on the tin, searching for gamma rays, which are the most energetic photons (light particles) on the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, they are millions of times more energetic than the light we can see.

In astronomy, gamma rays are produced by some of the hottest, most energetic events in the universe, such as star explosions and black holes violently “feeding” on surrounding matter. While gamma rays are now linked to dozens of different types of sources, in many cases we still don’t know conclusively what kinds of energetic particles are creating these rays.

Excitingly, gamma-ray astronomy is due to get a massive leg up with a new facility. Once the globally distributed Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is complete, it will view the gamma-ray sky with ten times more sensitivity than what’s currently possible.

With more than 60 telescopes, the CTA is expected to provide deep insight into the nature of dark matter – an invisible, hypothetical type of matter making up about 85% of the mass of the Universe. The array could also help solve one of the longest-running mysteries in astronomy: where cosmic ray particles (energetic nuclei and electrons in our galaxy and beyond) come from. Gamma rays are linked to these particles, providing a means to trace them.

Read more:
Why do astronomers believe in dark matter?

Flashes from outer space

Gamma-ray astronomy was born in the early 1960s as space-based satellites were developed to look for energetic radiation from outer space.

NASA’s Fermi mission, launched in 2008 to a low-Earth orbit, has so far catalogued several thousand gamma-ray sources. The Fermi spacecraft continues to provide 24-hour live coverage of the sky, measuring gamma rays with energies reaching several 1,000 giga-electron volts in energy. That’s about one trillion times the energy of visible light.

To study gamma rays with even higher energies, we need to use ground-based methods. Although Earth’s atmosphere shields us against radiation from outer space, we can still detect the secondary effects of this shielding on the ground.

That’s because when a gamma ray interacts with Earth’s atmosphere, it sparks an electromagnetic cascade or “air shower” of more than a billion secondary particles. These particles are mostly electrons and their anti-matter partners, called positrons. These air showers contribute about 30-50% of the natural radiation we experience in our lives.

Making the invisible visible

While nothing can go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, charged particles such as electrons and positrons (anti-electrons) can actually move faster than light when moving through air.

When this happens, a shockwave is created as a flash of blue and ultraviolet light. This flash, called Cherenkov radiation, is named after Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov who first detected the phenomenon in 1934 (and received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics for it alongside two colleagues). The blue glow of Cherenkov radiation can be seen in water cooling ponds surrounding nuclear power reactors.

At ground level, telescopes with large mirrors and sensitive cameras can detect the Cherenkov light produced by a gamma ray striking our atmosphere. These cameras need just about ten nanoseconds to capture a Cherenkov flash against the bright background of starlight and moonlight.

The first Cherenkov telescopes were developed in the 1960s. After many variants, it was the Whipple Telescope in the United States that in 1989 discovered gamma-ray photons coming from the Crab Nebula.

This was the first time gamma rays with energies of more than 1,000 giga-electron volts (or 1 tera-electron-volt, TeV) were detected. Thus, tera-electron-volt gamma-ray astronomy was born.

Searching for the extremes

Today, all three of the world’s best TeV gamma-ray facilities – HESS in Namibia, MAGIC in La Palma, Spain and VERITAS in Arizona – have discovered more than 200 TeV gamma-ray sources. These powerful rays are linked to cosmic regions of particle acceleration, such as pulsars, supernova remnants, massive star clusters, and supermassive black holes in the Milky Way and other galaxies.

HESS has shown our Milky Way galaxy is rich in TeV gamma-ray “light”, including in the centre of the galaxy.

TeV gamma-rays are also seen from mysterious gamma-ray bursts and other fleeting, transient events. These are now informing our understanding of the extreme conditions in which gamma rays are created.

The next-generation CTA will use the lessons learnt from HESS, VERITAS and MAGIC, by extending the number of telescopes deployed on the ground to over 60 telescopes. CTA will also use a combination of three different telescope sizes optimised for three gamma-ray energy bands, providing unprecedented performance and “sharpness”.

It will have arrays at two sites on the ground: one in Paranal, Chile (51 telescopes) in the Southern Hemisphere, and one in La Palma (13 telescopes) in the Northern Hemisphere.

CTA has attracted membership from more than 1,000 scientists, including Australian scientists from seven universities. It’s progressing well, with the first northern telescope already detecting gamma rays from the Crab Nebula and several gamma-ray flares from active galaxies powered by supermassive black holes.

Within a few years we expect to see the first southern telescopes also detecting gamma rays, yielding many more discoveries. With CTA, we will have new insights into where extreme particle acceleration is taking place in our Milky Way.

Read more:
New era of astronomy uncovers clues about the cosmos

Gavin Rowell receives funding from the Australian Research Council to support the Cherenkov Telescope Array.

– ref. A ‘next-generation’ gamma-ray observatory is underway to probe the extreme Universe – https://theconversation.com/a-next-generation-gamma-ray-observatory-is-underway-to-probe-the-extreme-universe-191772

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arantxa Vizcaíno-Verdú, Phd Student in Communication, Universidad de Huelva

Spanish millennial users on TikTok claim they are not Spanish if they do not know eight mythical songs from their country’s history.

Japanese users show their passion for anime by singing any opening or ending song upon randomly reading the title of the series on a piece of paper.

One day, users are creating continuous videos with the “Corn Kid” audio meme. The next, users turn Shakira and BRZP’s song love and breakups into a meme satirising relationships.

These are all examples of “music challenge” memes on TikTok: resharing and remixing responses to music and sharing personal stories.

In our new research, we wanted to find how these challenges have taken over the internet.

Read more:
It’s corn! How the online viral ‘Corn Kid’ is on a well-worn path to fame in the child influencer industry

A social activity

Music has always been a form of expression for humans, even considered as a language itself. It has also been a social activity. Music memes allow this social activity to be global.

We no longer share our musical interests with just our family, friends or colleagues. We now share it with people we barely know from the internet.

And we’re not just sharing the songs, but also the ways we react to them. This gamified angle of sharing music memes on TikTok increases our entertainment value – a competitive element that entices users to participate even more.

Our research looked at the global impact of these memes, collecting music challenges in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. We wanted to know how users used visual, audio, textual and narrative elements to tell stories through music.

The users are not just sharing their knowledge of music. Instead, through music they share insights into who they are as people.

The challenges that bring us together

These memes can be self-referential, like the meme which asks “how addicted are you to TikTok?”

Using songs which have gone viral on TikTok, the meme asks users to identify how many they recognise. The more you know, the more “addicted” you are to the app. This challenge has become a game to demonstrate our self-professed love for – or addiction to – TikTok.

These songs could also represent a certain fandom, asking users to “put a finger down” for each Disney song they recognise in a playlist, or how many K-pop songs they can name.

Other music challenges focus on testing your level of belonging to a group, like “how millennial you are” by the number of songs you know.

Another type of music challenge focuses on users’ musical aptitudes. Can they follow the rhythm by sketching the time signature of the song? Can they skillfully lip-sync without missing any words? Can they sing a song just given its title?

These music challenges can also be a unique form of storytelling: sharing your past heartaches through how many love songs you recognise.

Read more:
Encanto, TikTok and the art of social storytelling: why music is not just for listening anymore

Group connections

By closely studying these trends, we learnt music challenge memes are a way for us to move away from egocentric social media based on likes and comments.

Instead of simply aiming for the most likes and the most comments, users participating in TikTok music challenge memes trends focus on identifying with and fostering a sense of community, connected by their collective interests.

TikTok features a “For You Page” (colloquially known as the FYP) as its main tab: an algorithmically-curated feed programmed uniquely for each user. This algorithm directs us towards subcultures that specifically intersect with our interests, thoughts, tastes and experiences.

Being featured on the FYP is often an accelerated way for users to be noticed by others. As music challenge memes rise in popularity, participating in them is one of the ways to maximise our chances of being algorithmically recommended. And jumping onto viral trends are a way for users to break into other subcultures and genres on TikTok.

Music challenge memes on TikTok foster community connections that flow across musical genres, languages, racial identities and generations. This transforms the “For You Page” system into a “For Us Network” that drives and inspires people through music.

Read more:
How ‘TeachTok’ is helping teachers connect with their students on TikTok

Crystal Abidin receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE190100789). She has previously consulted for ByteDance as an independent researcher on best practices regarding the wellbeing and safety of child influencers, but is not otherwise affiliated with the company.

Arantxa Vizcaíno-Verdú 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. Put a finger down if you know this song: how TikTok music challenge memes build community – https://theconversation.com/put-a-finger-down-if-you-know-this-song-how-tiktok-music-challenge-memes-build-community-201385

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Kettlewell, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney

During the Easter school holidays, scores of learner drivers will hit the roads, with parents carefully logging all their driving hours. Many of us have experienced this process, whether as a learner, a supervisor, or both.

The requirement is particularly high in New South Wales and Victoria, where learners must complete a minimum of 120 hours of supervised driving before they can drive without supervision. This one of the highest requirements for learner drivers in the world.

We set out to answer whether this supervised driving practice actually makes for safer drivers.

Our study evaluated the effect of two significant increases in the minimum supervised driving hours mandate in New South Wales: the 2000 reform from zero to 50 hours, and the 2007 reform from 50 to 120 hours.

Read more:
There’s little to gain and much to lose from lowering the minimum driving age

What we found

By comparing people who turned 16 – the minimum age to obtain a learner permit – just before the policy changed to people who turned 16 just after, we were able to isolate the effect of these policy changes on motor vehicle accidents, while abstracting from other factors that might affect accidents.

Our dataset contained all licensing and crash records in New South Wales over the reform periods. The crash data include all serious crashes – those that led to a hospitalisation and/or a vehicle being towed.

Consider people born in July 1991, or later. They were subject to the 120-hour mandate. But those born slightly earlier were subject to the 50-hour mandate if they obtained their learners’ permit relatively quickly.

If the policy was effective, we would expect to see a sharp drop in crash rates for people who turned 16 after the 120-hour rule came in. But we discovered there was no such drop.

We analysed the data in several ways, all of which suggested no effect of the 2007 reform on crash rates. Because of our large sample size, we were confidently able to rule out any meaningful effects. We did observe a small delay in the average age of obtaining a provisional (P1) license of around one month.

In contrast, the first policy change was effective. We found that increasing supervision from zero to 50 hours reduced the probability of a motor vehicle accident in the first year of unsupervised driving from 6.9 to 5.4 percentage points, a reduction of 21%. However, there was no reduction in the probability of an accident beyond this 12-month window, suggesting the extra experience is helpful initially, but does not change long-term driving habits.

Since young males are at higher risk of crashing than females, we thought there might be differences by sex. In fact, the results were very similar for males and females.

It is important to note that we evaluated the policy mandate, but we cannot guarantee compliance with it. In practice, people may do more hours than required, or may over-report their hours, risking penalties if caught. Widespread non-compliance could undermine the effect of the mandate. However, available evidence suggests that drivers in Australia are largely truthful in their reporting.

Why does this matter?

Motor vehicle accidents are the second leading cause of death for people aged 15-24 years in Australia. Many policies have aimed to lower the risk for young drivers, including the introduction of graduated driver licensing and associated features such as provisional speed limits, passenger restrictions and engine restrictions.

Minimum supervised driving hours is a potentially important tool for improving road safety, but until now has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation. Evaluating this policy is important, as there are costs involved with the mandate.

The obvious cost is the time of learners and supervisors. However, there may be other social costs as well. For example, by placing barriers to obtaining a licence, such policies can limit young people’s access to work and education, and entrench disadvantage, particularly for those from single parent and low income families, or those who have moved out of home and lack access to a licenced driver.

Read more:
What parents need to know about learner drivers: four key lessons

How many hours should the mandate be?

Our findings suggest there are benefits to supervised driving experience. Moving from a regime of zero hours to 50 hours meaningfully reduced the risk of motor vehicle accidents. But moving from a regime of 50 to 120 hours provided no further benefits, suggesting the benefits are diminishing, and the mandate might be too high in New South Wales.

Like us, you might wonder where the 120 hours figure came from. We’re not certain, but a 2011 review by the NSW auditor-general points to a Swedish study. A group of young drivers who reported completing 118 hours of learner practice had a 35% lower accident risk than those reporting between 41-47 hours.

The problem is that it’s hard to attribute this difference in accident risk to the difference in reported hours, because the two groups of drivers were fundamentally different, having self-selected into different policy regimes and having experienced other policy differences as well. In particular, the former group were allowed to start driving a full 1.5 years before the latter group.

Where possible, policy changes should be informed by high-quality empirical evidence, and subjected to rigorous evaluation after they are implemented. For almost 25 years, teenagers in New South Wales have been logging their driving hours, but with little evidence on the benefits, until now.

Our results call for a re-think on how many hours learners should be required to complete, and suggest exploring other avenues for further improvements in the safety of young drivers.

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. 120 hours of supervised learner driving: our research suggests it may be too many – https://theconversation.com/120-hours-of-supervised-learner-driving-our-research-suggests-it-may-be-too-many-203225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney

It’s no surprise exercise is one of the first things we turn to when we decide it’s time to lose weight.

We readily sign up for that gym membership and commit to extra walks with the dog, believing if we exercise enough, the number on the scales will drop.

Perhaps also unsurprisingly, many of us are disheartened when we follow this routine for months and don’t see any change on the scales. This is why I’m frequently asked: does exercise help you lose weight, or is it just diet?

Like all things related to weight loss, the short answer is: it’s complicated.

Read more:
What’s the ‘weight set point’, and why does it make it so hard to keep weight off?

What does the research say about exercise and weight?

There have been many studies over the past 70 years examining the role exercise plays in weight management. Recent research on the topic has predominantly found exercise alone has minimal impact on weight loss.

This includes a meta study examining all the relevant studies in the area, which found those who used exercise alone lost minimal weight compared with those who exercised and also reduced their energy intake.

A 2018 study found substantial weight loss was unlikely when participants followed the minimum governing guidelines for physical activity. This prescribes 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity each week. The overall volume of exercise had to be significantly above the minimum recommended levels in order to achieve significant weight loss without dieting.

Studies show you need to be doing about 60 minutes of moderate activity per day to achieve significant weight loss.

But before you cancel that gym membership, we also need to consider the substantial body of research confirming it’s vital to focus on exercise as part of any weight loss program.

Exercise helps keep weight off long term

Exercise will improve your body composition and prevent muscle decline. Our metabolic rate – how much energy we burn at rest – is determined by how much muscle and fat we have, and muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more kilojoules.

Relying on diet alone to lose weight will reduce muscle along with body fat, slowing your metabolism. So it’s essential to make sure you’ve incorporated sufficient and appropriate exercise into your weight-loss plan to hold onto your muscle mass stores.

Incorporating strength-building resistance training is also important. This doesn’t mean you need to be in the gym every day. Just two days per week and in the comfort of your own home is perfectly fine.

Research confirms moderate-volume resistance training (three sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) is just as effective as high-volume resistance training (five sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) for maintaining lean mass and muscle when you’re following a diet incorporating moderate calorie restriction.

Studies also show physical activity and exercise have a substantial effect in preventing weight regain after weight loss. A longer-term study found those sustaining high exercise levels (expending more than 10,500 kilojoules or 2,500 calories each week, for example by walking 75 minutes per day) maintained a significantly larger weight loss than participants exercising less.

Read more:
Taking a break from your diet helps long-term weight loss

Exercise has overall health benefits

Before you start to see the results of exercise on the scales, you’re almost guaranteed to experience the many physical and mental health benefits that come with exercise.

Even low levels of exercise reduce your chance of developing diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Research shows exercise is just as important as weight loss for improving health, because most diabetes and heart disease risk markers associated with obesity can be improved with exercise, even if you don’t lose weight.

A physically active person with obesity can be considered metabolically healthy if they maintain good blood pressure, cholesterol and insulin levels. There is good evidence to show the risk of early death associated with obesity is largely reduced or eliminated by moderate-to-high levels of fitness.

Alongside improving your health, regular exercise has other physical benefits, such as improving strength and mobility. It also reduces stress levels, and even low levels of exercise will prompt a decrease in depressive symptoms, improve mood and promote better sleep.

This, in turn, will help you manage your diet better, with the boost to your mood helping you choose healthier foods and prevent impulsive food choices.

The bottom line?

Exercise will help you lose weight and prevent you putting on weight again – it’s just that it won’t help you achieve your weight loss goals in isolation.

Exercise is one of the key pillars of long-term weight management. It plays an essential role in weight loss and maintenance, as do our diet and sleep choices.

To encourage more exercise, take up something you enjoy. Be sure to include variety, as always doing the same daily routine is a surefire way to get bored and give up.

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

Dr Nick Fuller works for the University of Sydney and has received external funding for projects relating to the treatment of overweight and obesity. He is the author and founder of the Interval Weight Loss program.

– ref. Does exercise help you lose weight? – https://theconversation.com/does-exercise-help-you-lose-weight-198292

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Stevens, Professor in Ocean Physics, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

The latest synthesis report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it clear we need to prepare for intensifying impacts, while also cutting emissions dramatically.

One beacon of hope is the global growth in renewable energy, with offshore wind in particular with new installations increasing almost six-fold in 2021 compared to 2020.

Aotearoa New Zealand is one of a few regions – with Norway, Iceland, Brazil and Canada – with an already high proportion of electricity coming from renewable sources. However, electricity does not equal total energy and New Zealand must consider a fundamental shift for other parts of its energy spectrum, including industrial heat.

There is no shortage of energy in New Zealand’s marine environment. A current discussion document (calling for public submissions by April 14) signals that offshore wind is poised to build a beachhead in a renewables market historically dominated by hydro power and underpinned by coal.

The technical and environmental challenges of offshore wind power are complex and expensive. Countries such as China, Denmark, Ireland and the UK currently lead the way, but New Zealand’s position in the southwest Pacific Ocean means there’s plenty of wind energy, both on land and at sea.

À lire aussi :
Ireland has the wind and seas to become an offshore superpower

A shift in energy supply

Ara Ake, an energy innovation centre with a mission to assist New Zealand’s decarbonisation, recently held a forum on offshore renewable energy in New Plymouth, the country’s centre for the natural gas sector.

The discussions centred around upcoming changes to the Resource Management Act, which will affect how development in the environment proceeds, and the recognition that any new initiatives need to engage with Te Tiriti and Māori perspectives on how resources are used and who benefits.

The discussion document highlights two regions: the Taranaki Bight and Foveaux Strait. Both locations are relatively shallow and well suited to installations of current technology.

A NZ$4 billion project to build the country’s first 65-turbine offshore wind farm off the Taranaki coast could be completed within a decade, but the document also identifies some potential future regions that are deeper and more exposed to the Southern Ocean.

Potential impacts of offshore wind farms

New Zealand is watching developments at a large Australian offshore wind farm off the coast of Gippsland, which aims to supply 20% of the electricity for the state of Victoria.

But offshore wind generation presents environmental challenges, including possible impacts of large arrays of wind turbines on seabirds and marine mammals. The seas around Aotearoa are home to a greater proportion of seabirds than almost any other populated centre, including many seabird species that breed nowhere else.

À lire aussi :
Australia is poised to be a world leader in offshore wind, but any potential risks to marine life remain poorly regulated

Other potential impacts extend to fisheries. But these depend on the location as ecosystems, fisheries and regulatory structures are unique to specific regions.

But one set of impacts has so far received little consideration. As tides push water past turbine pylons, the resultant wakes affect ocean stirring. This effect can be seen from space.

A recent study for UK offshore wind farms identified how large arrays are affecting the biological functioning of coastal seas.

With growing impacts from a changing climate, we need to ask more nuanced questions. For example, when considering environmental impacts, what baseline should we consider? Will the impacts of any particular development exceed the projected impacts of climate-driven extremes for that region?

Another compound question is how offshore renewables infrastructure will cope with a changing ocean. Climate projections are unequivocal about increasing future storminess and stronger or more frequent tropical cyclones. These will be challenging for all infrastructure, not just marine.

Future thinking

A notable aspect of the current discussions in New Zealand is the use of the term “offshore renewables” rather than “offshore wind”. This allows the focus to include a wider set of renewable energy resources, including next-generation ocean renewables such as wave and tidal energy.

While these approaches are niche compared to established offshore wind power, they bring a diversity of supply that will be vital when building a portfolio of renewable resources to move away from fossil fuels.

À lire aussi :
Offshore wind turbines could number 30,000 by 2030 – new ideas in ocean engineering are needed to install them

This evolution will require people, but New Zealand’s education sector is not producing enough graduates with a speciality in marine engineering. Beyond engineering, there are opportunities for data science, industrial services and infrastructure – and the possibility to develop a research initiative to foster long-term capability and ideas.

The climate emergency is upon us now and the rapidly closing window of opportunity requires a shift in energy perspective if we are to give future generations the best chance of a liveable and sustainable planet.

Craig Stevens receives funding from the Marsden Fund and MBIE (Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment). He is affiliated with AWATEA (Aotearoa Wave and Tidal Energy Association) and the NZ Association of Scientists. He is on the Interim Science Advisory Panel for the CE of the Ministry for the Environment.

– ref. The untapped power of ocean winds – why New Zealand is looking offshore for future renewable energy – https://theconversation.com/the-untapped-power-of-ocean-winds-why-new-zealand-is-looking-offshore-for-future-renewable-energy-202335

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne

When I was growing up monsteras (sometimes known as monsteria) were not all that common, but neither were indoor plants. In fact, monsteras were out of fashion back then – but now monsteras are back and, appropriately, in a big way.

The plants that we know as monsteras, fruit salad plant or Swiss cheese plants (due to their holey leaves) are a rainforest plant called Monstera deliciosa.

They’re originally from Central America, around Mexico, but their iconic large leaves can now be found everywhere in popular culture – from fabric prints and earrings to tattoos and mugs.

So, what’s special about this large and lovely plant? And what’s the secret to keeping one happy and healthy?

Read more:
Multi-coloured plants are suddenly a home decor ‘must-have’. Here’s how to keep them alive

Rainforest climbers

In their natural habitat, monstera are climbers that can scramble through rainforest trees to heights of 25 metres or more.

Their large perforated leaves can be over a metre long, with regular nodes along the stem and roots often growing from these nodes. The roots help them hook onto other plants as they climb to access light.

There are about 50 species in the Monstera genus and some – such as Monstera adansonii (Adanson’s monstera or five holes plant) and Monstera siltepecana (silver monstera) – are popular indoor plants.

The name Monstera dates back to the 1700s, but these days most people associate this part of the name with its massive leaves. They are, after all, real monsters.

These huge leaves develop wherever there is a patch of light and allow the plant to grow quickly and shade out nearby competition.

The species name, deliciosa, refers to its fruit, which tastes a little like a cross between banana and pineapple.

Monsteras are related to the arum lilies and produce white flowers on a fleshy stem (known as a “spadix”) that is surrounded by a cream or white leaf-like structure or bract (known as a “spathe”).

Our first and only monstera began its life with us as a rather small indoor plant given as a gift in 1980. It remained indoors for a year or two, growing well, but then proved too great a temptation for a curious young son.

It was moved in its container (which was, by then, larger than its original pot) into a protected corner of an outside patio.

It had done well indoors, growing in a good quality potting medium, getting plenty of sunlight and regular water. Its leaves had gone from small philodendron-like features into the large and perforated foliage of the Swiss cheese plant.

The move outdoors did it no harm. Good light, regular water, fresh air and protection from winds and frosts saw it flourish into a plant with many large leaves and measuring nearly two metres in height. It filled a corner beautifully.

A forgiving plant

Monsteras are quite forgiving indoor plants. They are quite hardy (like many climbers) but as a tropical plant they like warm, humid conditions and moist, well-drained soils.

They also tolerate shade and so it’s not surprising they do well indoors.

If you have a humus-rich potting medium and provide a climbing frame for them, they can thrive and survive for many years inside. However, you may need to give them a liquid fertiliser every year or two and re-pot them into a larger container.

While they are hardy and relatively easy to cultivate, Monsteras can decline if they become waterlogged.

This can easily happen if you over-water plants and have the container on a dish that gathers water.

Direct sunlight near a window can burn their leaves or lead to scorched patches. Leaves can also be damaged by warm dry air if plants are placed too close to heaters or heating ducts.

Their large leaves may also need dusting as the surfaces can become quite dirty, especially in bathrooms. The occasional prune will prevent the plant becoming too big indoors and removes yellow, burnt and older leaves.

Like many indoor plants, monsteras can benefit from a bit of R-and-R outdoors in a warm, sheltered spot for a few days.

Easily propagated

As a fashionable plant, large monsteras can be quite pricey and variegated forms which grow more slowly are even more expensive.

However, Monstera deliciosa can be readily propagated from cuttings.

The easiest and quickest way of getting a new plant is to take a section of stem with a leaf or two attached and, if possible, with a few developing roots. Place it in a good quality potting mix in a large container.

You can also aerial layer monsteras, which is where you wrap potting mix or sphagnum moss around a node, preferably with some roots, in plastic or cling wrap. Make a couple of slash-like cuts in the stem and when roots develop, take your cutting from the stem.

They grow and establish quickly. So quickly, in fact, they’re considered a weed along some New South Wales rivers.

After being on the patio for several years, the patio was to be demolished for an extension and our monstera either had to go or be planted in the garden.

We chose the latter and planted it in what we thought was an appropriate spot.

The monster responded as only a successful rainforest climber could. It spread, it climbed, it fruited and wherever there was a patch of light, it oriented a giant Swiss cheese leaf to gain maximum benefit for photosynthesis.

It is now over 40 years old, many metres long as it meanders its way through the garden and has been the source of several successful cuttings for family and friends.

Read more:
Trees can be weeds too – here’s why that’s a problem

Gregory Moore 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. I’ve created a monstera! How to care for the ‘Swiss cheese plant’ in your life – https://theconversation.com/ive-created-a-monstera-how-to-care-for-the-swiss-cheese-plant-in-your-life-202851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Zouwer, Visual Artist and Lecturer in Teacher Education, University of Canberra

School holidays can feel like a marathon if all the kids want to do is watch TV, play Minecraft or repeatedly ask you for the iPad.

There are lots of things you can do inside the house that do not involve a screen. And will help ward off any whines along the lines of: “I’m booooooored”.

In a previous piece I talked about how to set up an art studio at home. This time, here are five creative ideas to try in every room of the house.

Read more:
How to set up a kids’ art studio at home (and learn to love the mess)

In the kitchen: make your own paint

Kids enjoy making potions in the garden by adding dirt and flowers and you can have similar fun in the kitchen making paint from ingredients in the cupboard.

Paint is made with pigment and a binder. The first paint on cave walls was made with charcoal, ochre, minerals mixed with water, saliva, blood, animal fat and even wee. The history of paint is fascinating and kids are intrigued by the stories, like how a certain purple (tyrian) comes from the glands of sea snails and how a type of yellow was cruelly made from cow wee, after forcing them to eat mango leaves.

You can make your own paint with spices like turmeric, curry powder and cinnamon or hunt through the house for chalk and eye shadow for a variety of colours.

Grind the pigments up with a mortar and pestle (some will need this more than others but it’s a fun part of the process). Then in a glass or jar, mix your ground pigments with a bit of egg yolk, a teaspoon of vinegar and a small amount of water as a binder and you have made egg tempera – a type of paint the Egyptians discovered and some artists still use today.

Experiment with other spices, berries, grass or charcoal. If it’s colourful, you can grind it and its not too lumpy, give it a go. See how many colours you can make, then make a painting.

Read more:
‘Screen time’ for kids is an outdated concept, so let’s ditch it and focus on quality instead

In the living room: create a box masterpiece

Kids who may not like to draw or paint often love construction. So, collect different types of boxes and see what your child can create.

Apart from the boxes, you will also need masking tape. Kids can tear it themselves, or use a dispenser. Staplers and hole punchers are good connectors too. Also give them some thick markers, fabric scraps and glue to add details to their creations.

One holiday, we lived around my daughter’s construction zone as she worked with cardboard, other items from the recycling bin and things from around the house to make her own house.

In your child’s bedroom: paint a mural

This won’t be possible for everyone, but think about letting your child paint a mural in their bedroom. My mum let us create fantastic scenes in our bedrooms growing up.

Start by mapping out a basic design on paper. This slows the process down, allowing the child to think about what they would like on their walls. But be prepared for the plan to go out the window. Sometimes as artists we respond to the materials when we get them in our hands.

The trick to creating a successful mural with kids is selecting a good colour palette and you really can’t go wrong.

Get some sample-sized pots of water-based interior paint and bristle brushes from the hardware shop. Then tape a drop sheet to the floor and cover anything else you don’t want covered in paint and go for it!

If this is too freestyle for you, have a look at the wonderful “field of flowers” activity in Hervé Tullet’s book, Art Workshops for Children. This is a more structured approach to a collaborative painting and yields beautiful results (it starts with dots, then dots within dots and you end up with a field of flowers).

If this is not possible where you live, consider liquid chalk pens to create murals on the windows. This is so much fun and you can play with tracing things outside the window.

Pick an array of colours and overlap line drawings to build up patterns on the glass. This is so easy to clean too – just wipe it off with a wet cloth.

In the dining room: make a comic

The dining table is the perfect spot for projects and drawing. I find kids love creating comics. The book Making Comics by Lynda Barry has excellent exercises to get you started on comic strips, storyboards and zines.

Zines are mini DIY booklets. You can fill them with ideas using drawing, collage and words. Check out my how to make a zine video done for the National Museum of Australia’s Ancient Greeks exhibition last year.

You could do something similar: take your young person to see an exhibition, collect some flyers or postcards, and then at home cut them up and stick them into a zine. This can extend your child’s museum experience, and provides a chance to discuss and make sense of what you saw together.

Children use drawing to make sense of the world around them. When my son was five, he made a comic about a gallery experience: how he didn’t want to go, how he felt about some of the artworks, and how he was relieved to get out because he was scared by some of the work.

This gave me the opportunity to see how strongly he was affected by the exhibition and we were able to talk about those feelings.

In the bathroom: crack open the shaving cream

Shaving cream is a great medium with endless possibilities for sensory play, which helps brain development, motor skills and more.

You can make slime by adding a cup of glue to two cups of shaving cream and sprinkling a teaspoon of baking powder in the mix, plus two teaspoons of saline solution. Add food dye for a marble effect, make prints and paint with it onto a mirror or bathtub.

You can also use it to make sculptures. Start with a shampoo bottle as your armature (inner structure) and build your form around it. Take photos of the sculptures as a way of recording the ephemeral creations.

Try adding cornstarch to the shaving cream and play with the proportions until you have developed a malleable substance. The transformation of the substance is quite remarkable and kids love the tactile quality of this mixture.

In the end, kids have the best ideas, so just take some time to ask them what kinds of creative activities they might like to explore over the holidays and let them take the lead. The important thing here is to let go, enjoy the process and play – worry about cleaning up later!

Read more:
How to get the most out of sand play: 4 tips from a sculptor

Naomi Zouwer 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. Holiday help! An art expert suggests screen-free things to do in every room of the house – https://theconversation.com/holiday-help-an-art-expert-suggests-screen-free-things-to-do-in-every-room-of-the-house-202947

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Agustin Chevez, Workplace Futures Research Lead, Centre for the New Workforce., Swinburne University of Technology

Sixty years ago the animated series The Jetsons finished its first and only season before being cancelled. Just 24 episodes were broadcast between September 1962 and March 1963. Despite this the cartoon has achieved huge influence in popular culture, with countless reruns, a reboot in the mid-1980s (51 episodes over two seasons) and a feature-length movie in 1990.

The Jetsons was created by the Hanna-Barbara animation studio in Los Angeles as a futuristic version of the studio’s hit series The Flintstones, the first cartoon series to gain a prime-time slot.

But whereas The Flintstones was set in a distant, mythical stone age thousands of years in the past, The Jetsons was set in a very near future – in 2062.

Like The Flintstones, the show was aimed mostly at children, and played with ideas about the future for laughs. It’s not a serious work of futurology. Even so, it’s still an interesting cultural artefact, helping us appreciate our present and our expectations of the future.

The first episode was broadcast just a few weeks after US president John F. Kennedy gave his famous “Moon speech”, promising “to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.

While that promise was motivated by fears of the Soviet Union winning the Space Race, the future depicted is mostly optimistic. Technology holds the promise of a better world.

Among the whimsical technology imagined are flying cars, robot maids, video calls, smartwatches, food printing and space tourism. Some of this seems far-sighted. But there are big blind spots. Those flying cars, for example, still need a driver.

There are three things its creators got glaringly wrong: the place of women in the workforce, how much we will work, and where we work.

Gender stereotypes

Like the Flintstones, The Jetsons revolves around a nuclear family in mid-20th century industrialised society. There’s George (aged about 40), his wife Jane (about 33), their teenage daughter Judy (15), younger son Elroy, a dog named Astro, and a robot maid.

We can calculate that Jane was still in her teens when she became a mother. She’s the head of a recycling company but it doesn’t seem to involve much work. For most part she’s typical TV homemaker.

This is now the norm in only a small number of societies. It seems unlikely the trend in women’s workforce participation will reverse in the next 40 years.

Had the show been made a decade later it’s possible the influence of the women’s liberation movement and books such as Germain Greer’s The Female Eunuch (published in 1970) would have altered this vision of 2062.

In the 1990 movie, for example, Jane is an environmental activist. In a 2017 relaunched comic she is a scientist working on the International Space Station.

Working hours

One explanation as to why Jane doesn’t work is that George, the breadwinner, barely has to work either.

He goes to work just two days a week, for one hour a day, as a “digital index operator”. This involves him pushing buttons to maintain an atomic supercomputer named RUDI (short for “Referential Universal Digital Indexer”).

George’s working hours reflect the optimism of the 1960s that gains made by workers in the first half of the 20th century – with a 40-hour, five-day workweek becoming the norm by the 1950s – would continue in the second half of the century. Optimists hoped productivity gains from automation would mean a “leisure society” by the year 2000.

This has not proved the case, with only marginal reductions in working hours for most since then.

As US economist and sociologist Juliet Schor noted in her 1991 book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, the idea technology alone can lead to working less fails to account for the economic system in which work is done. That is, capitalism is geared towards increasing consumption (and thereby profits). The emphasis has therefore been on making more money as the key to happiness, and therefore working even harder, not less.

We can see this even in the current four-day week movement, which promises the prospect of cutting the 38-hour, five-day workweek to 32 hours and four days, but only so long as the same productivity is maintained.

Trials of this 100:80:100 model (100% of the pay, 80% of the hours, 100% of the productivity) have been heralded a great success, but as work researcher Anthony Veal has noted, big questions remain as to whether these results are applicable across the economy.

Read more:
4-day work week trials have been labelled a ‘resounding success’. But 4 big questions need answers

At this stage, the likelihood of significant reduction in working hours for most people over the next 40 years looks dubious.

Remote work

Even though George only has to work two hours a week, he still has to go to an office (at Spacely Space Sprockets) to push his buttons.

This may reflect the fact the internet and the personal computing revolution were yet to occur. Futurologists didn’t start enthusing about the prospects of remote working until the 1970s.

More importantly, that’s just how things were conceived – work was something done under the watchful eye of management. It also created opportunities to play with familiar motifs involving George’s boss, the short-tempered Mr Spacely, a character similar to Fred Flintstone’s boss, Mr Slate, and Mr Burns in The Simpsons.

Read more:
A short history of the office

Management resistance to remote work was strong up until the COVID-19 pandemic forced a cultural shift.

The future of where and how much we work will no doubt be shaped by technology. But our perceptions and expectations about what can be achieved are just as important.

Agustin Chevez 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 The Jetsons got right, and very wrong, about the future of work – https://theconversation.com/what-the-jetsons-got-right-and-very-wrong-about-the-future-of-work-202608

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toner Stevenson, Honorary history affiliate in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney

A total solar eclipse is a remarkable alignment of our Sun, Earth and the Moon, as the latter casts a perfect shadow across the former.

If you’re in the narrow path of the shadow of the Moon, at the moment of totality you are plunged into darkness. Stars and planets emerge in the sky, and the entire atmosphere changes. This immersion in a total solar eclipse is unforgettable.

As 21-year-old Australian Miriam Chisholm reported in 1922,

I looked up from the telescope just an instant before totality and thought I saw the Corona, a pale fringe around the Sun […] and then the light went out and we saw it in all its glory.

Historically, total solar eclipses were a unique opportunity to conduct scientific research about our Sun, the closest star. Using special instruments called spectroscopes, it was possible to decipher the chemical composition of the gases emitted by the Sun – but only during a total eclipse.

As I write in my recently co-authored book Eclipse Chasers, perhaps the best-known eclipse experiment was the proof of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In the early 20th century this theory could only be tested during the minutes of totality, requiring a clear sky around the covered Sun so you could photograph the stars.

Women in the field

Accounts of well-known historic discoveries in astronomy might leave the impression this work was only undertaken by men. But in the late 19th and early 20th century, women in Australia already participated in astronomy as female “computers” and amateur astronomers. They were deeply involved in scientific expeditions to view total solar eclipses, but it was not easy.

The living conditions were rough, in tents with poor amenities open to the weather, and little or no privacy. The months needed to travel on solar eclipse expeditions meant leaving family responsibilities, one of the reasons it was unusual to find women in the field. When women did participate, they were usually the wives and daughters of male astronomers.

The first Australian woman whose total solar eclipse observations were officially reported was Annie Louisa Virginia Dodwell. She had a Bachelor of Science from the University of Adelaide and gained astronomy knowledge working with her husband George Dodwell, the South Australian Government Astronomer.

Together, they organised the Adelaide Observatory expedition to Bruny Island in Tasmania for the 1910 total solar eclipse. The party arrived by ship and for a month they camped in tents in almost constant rain to prepare. The eclipse day was clouded, nonetheless Annie successfully recorded the change in temperature, the only science of value that was achieved.

In the following years she presented talks about astronomy, published poems and participated in the inaugural International Astronomical Union assembly at the Vatican Observatory in 1922. She arranged the logistics for her husband’s total solar eclipse expedition later that year, during which she transcribed his observations to the newspapers.

Read more:
A century ago, Australia was ground zero for eclipse-watchers – and helped prove Einstein right

Seasoned eclipse chasers in the 1920s

In 1922 an international team of astronomers, led by William Campbell, Director of Lick Observatory, and assisted by the Australian Navy, travelled to a remote location in Western Australia to confirm Einstein’s general theory of relativity during the September 21 total solar eclipse.

There were five women participating in this expedition: Elizabeth Campbell, Jean Chant with her daughter Elizabeth, Eleanor Adams and Mary Acworth Evershed.

While they were the wives and daughter of respective male astronomers, each woman was a seasoned eclipse observer in her own right. They knew how to operate and use technical equipment and contributed substantially to reporting the scientific work.

Elizabeth Campbell organised the supplies and operated spectroscopic and photographic telescope equipment during the eclipse. Eleanor Adams worked with her husband on the large 12-metre eclipse camera. Jean Chant observed the shadow bands and changing brightness of the sky, and Elizabeth Chant operated a prism that polarised light.

Mary Acworth Evershed was an established expert in solar physics and worked alongside her husband, director of the Kodaikanal solar observatory in India. She photographed the spectra of the Sun’s corona. In 1896, on return to England, she published a pocket-sized Easy Guide to the Southern Stars with star maps of the constellations visible from the southern hemisphere.

A long drive across the country

On the other side of the continent, a very different eclipse expedition was organised by 21-year-old Miriam Chisholm with her school friend Frida Tindal. Chisholm’s father, Frank, drove them over 950 kilometres from Goulburn to southern Queensland.

They lost four days when their car was bogged in mud and almost didn’t make it to the line of totality. Thankfully, due to excellent time-keeping and navigation they had a successful eclipse. They drew the Sun’s corona, measured the temperature, observed how animals and birds became quiet and timed the shadow bands. Their report is descriptive, inspiring and filled with detailed observations. It is still a useful guide on how to make the most of a total solar eclipse experience.

On April 20 2023 a total solar eclipse will be visible from Exmouth in Western Australia. This is the first total solar eclipse in Australia since 2012, when thousands of people flocked to northern Queensland. I was there, and for two minutes and five seconds of totality, I experienced a beautiful “diamond ring” effect as the Moon totally covered the Sun, revealing its misty corona.

There are four more total solar eclipses in the next 17 years. Following in the footsteps of early 20th century eclipse chasers, large numbers of Australians will soon be able to share a total solar eclipse experience they will treasure, record and retell throughout their lives.

Toner Stevenson is affiliated with the University of Sydney, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Humanities.
She is currently Vice President of Sydney City Skywatchers, an amateur astronomy society, not-for-profit, and in voluntary capacity. The society was previously called the British Astronomical Association, NSW Branch. This society will be mentioned in the article. She is on the Board of the Australian National Committee of the International Council of Museums, voluntary role.
She is a co-author of the recently published ‘Eclipse Chasers’ book, the research for which informed this article.

– ref. Since the late 19th century, adventurous female ‘eclipse chasers’ have contributed to science in Australia – https://theconversation.com/since-the-late-19th-century-adventurous-female-eclipse-chasers-have-contributed-to-science-in-australia-200552

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saman Khalesi, Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Heart Foundation & Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead in Nutrition, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity Australia

Australians are predicted to spend around A$1.7 billion on chocolates, hot cross buns and other special foods this Easter season.

Chocolate has a long history of production and consumption. It is made from cacao beans that go through processes including fermentation, drying, roasting and grounding. What is left is a rich and fatty liquor that is pressed to remove the fat (cocoa butter) and the cacao (or “cocoa”) powder which will then be mixed with different ingredients to produce dark, milk, white and other types of chocolates.

There are several health benefits and potential problems that come in these sweet chocolatey packages.

Read more:
At chocolate time, we’ve discovered what the brands that score best on child labour and the environment have in common

The good news

Cacao beans contain minerals like iron, potassium, magnesium, zinc and phosphorus and some vitamins. They are also rich in beneficial chemicals called polyphenols.

These are great antioxidants, with the potential to improve heart health, increase nitric oxide (which dilates blood vessels) and reduce blood pressure, provide food for gut microbiota and promote gut health, boost the immune system and reduce inflammation.

However, the concentration of polyphenols in the chocolate we eat depends largely on the cocoa solid amounts used in the final product.

In general terms, the darker the chocolate, the more cocoa solids, minerals and polyphenols it has. For example, dark chocolates may have around seven times more polyphenols compared to white chocolates and three times more polyphenols compared to milk chocolates.

Read more:
Health Check: the good and bad of Easter eggs, chocolate and hot cross buns

But also some bad news

Unfortunately, the health benefits of cocoa solids are easily offset by the high sugar and fat content of modern-day chocolates. For example, milk and white chocolate eggs are on average 50% sugar, 40% fat (mostly saturated fats) – which means a lot of added kilojoules (calories).

Also, there may be some side effects that come with ingesting chocolate.

Cocoa beans include a compound called theobromine. While it has the anti-inflammatory properties responsible for some of the health benefits of chocolate, it is also a mild brain stimulant that acts in a similar way to caffeine. The mood boost it offers may also be partly responsible for how much we like chocolate. Dark chocolate has higher theobromine compared to milk and white chocolate.

But accordingly, overindulging in chocolate (and therefore theobromine) may lead to feeling restless, headaches and nausea.

Read more:
What’s the white stuff on my Easter chocolate, and can I still eat it?

What else is in your chocolate?

Milk and dairy-based chocolates may also cause stomach upset, abdominal pain and bloating in people with lactose intolerance. This happens when we don’t produce enough lactase enzymes to digest milk sugar (lactose).

People with lactose intolerance can usually tolerate up to 6 grams of lactose without showing symptoms. Milk chocolate can have around 3 grams of lactose per 40 grams (the size of a standard chocolate bar). So two chocolate bars (or the equivalent in milk chocolate eggs or bunnies) may be enough to cause symptoms.

It’s worth noting that lactase enzyme activity dramatically declines as we age, with the highest activity in newborns and children. So lactose sensitivity or intolerance may not be such an issue for your kids and your symptoms may increase over time. Genetics also plays a major role in how sensitive people are to lactose.

Allergic reactions to chocolate are usually due to the added ingredients or cross-contamination with potential allergens such as nuts, milk, soy, and some sweeteners used in the production of chocolate.

Symptoms can be mild (acne, rashes and stomach pain) or more severe (swelling of the throat and tongue and shortness of breath).

If you or your family members have known allergic reactions, make sure you read the label before indulging – especially in a whole block or basket of the stuff. And if you or your family members do experience symptoms of an allergic reaction after eating chocolate, seek medical attention immediately.

4 take home tips

So, if you are like me and have a weakness for chocolate there are a few things you can do to make the experience a good one.

1. keep an eye out for the darker chocolate varieties with higher cocoa solids. You may notice a percentage on labelling, which refers to refers to how much of its weight is from cocoa beans. In general, the higher this percentage, the lower the sugar. White chocolate has almost no cocoa solid, and mostly cocoa butter, sugar and other ingredients. Dark chocolate has 50–100% cocoa beans, and less sugar. Aim for at least 70% cocoa
2. read the fine print for additives and possible cross-contamination, especially if allergies might be an issue
3. the ingredients list and nutrition information panel should tell you all about the chocolate you choosing. Go for varieties with lower sugar and less saturated fat. Nuts, seeds and dried fruits are better ingredients to have in your chocolate than sugar, creme, syrup, and caramel
4. finally, treat yourself – but keep the amount you have within sensible limits!

Read more:
The history of chocolate: when money really did grow on trees

Dr Khalesi is supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship (Award No. 102584) from the National Heart Foundation of Australia.

– ref. Here’s why having chocolate can make you feel great or a bit sick – plus 4 tips for better eating – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-having-chocolate-can-make-you-feel-great-or-a-bit-sick-plus-4-tips-for-better-eating-202848

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Bateman, Associate professor, Curtin University

Australia has an ambivalent relationship with dingoes – to some they are almost magical representations of our arid landscapes, responsible for holding back a tide of foxes and feral cats, as found in some studies.

To others they are pests, dangerous marauders of our cattle and sheep. We even argue about what to call them. They also loom large in our national conscience as potential killers of children, as shown by a recent dingo attack on a child on K’gari (Fraser Island).

Why do dingoes attack?

Dingo attacks on humans are very rare, and in most cases where humans have been attacked, the dingoes have become habituated to humans and have perhaps lost some fear of them.

This is usually because they have come to associate people with food, though not necessarily as food. This kind of habituation is seen in many animals across the world, including large carnivores such as bears and coyotes in North America, and even spotted hyaenas in Ethiopia.

The recent attack on K’gari has another facet, though. The child was attacked while sitting in shallow water at the beach, and the event highlights that dingoes can be predators. There is no indication the dingo was trying to take food from the child; it’s possible it was tentatively seeing if the child was suitable as prey.

Children as prey

A 2017 study of dingo attacks on K’gari showed most of the dingoes involved were young ones, and children who were some distance from an adult were often the recipients of attacks.

In 2001, a nine-year-old boy was tragically killed by two dingoes on K’gari when he was standing some distance away from the rest of his family and tripped and fell over. A five-year-old boy who was badly bitten by dingoes on K’gari in 2022 was attacked when his elder brother walked away from him.

In all these cases, although there were other people nearby, the dingoes selected the smallest and most separated person. This suggests that a hunting response was triggered – a child is not much bigger than normal dingo prey (such as wallabies). The dingoes involved were perhaps young and exploratory.

In fact, you can often see such reactions in zoo animals – lions, tigers and other big cats often ignore adult humans looking at them, but become excited when they see a child; the smaller size seems to trigger a predatory response.

How can you stay safe from dingoes?

The bottom line is dingoes are wild animals and can sometimes act as predators towards us, especially the smallest humans.

Dingoes are found across Australia, though they are less common in pastoral areas where lethal control occurs. They tend to avoid people wherever possible. K’gari dingoes are protected for their high conservation value, because they show little evidence of inbreeding with domestic dogs. As a result, these island dingoes are much bolder. Visitors need to treat them with respect.

So how do we stay safe? We should always be on high alert around such animals, especially in places where dingoes are more common and bolder. As with any wildlife, we should leave dingoes alone as much as possible, and keep a respectful distance. We also should avoid leaving food around, which could attract attention in the first place.

But if you do encounter a dingo (or several), here’s what to do:

• stay alert and keep a safe distance
• avoid being alone or, if in a group, don’t spread too far out
• stay close to any children in your group
• don’t run or turn your back on the dingo, as this may trigger an attack.

People often feel they should not act aggressively if approached by a carnivore, but studies on wolves and pumas suggest that shouting and throwing things is actually more likely to prevent an attack – don’t be afraid to resort to this if you feel threatened.

Anything that makes you, or the people with you, seem less like prey – less enticing – is good. Stay safe, but most importantly, respect these animals for the wild creatures they are.

Bill Bateman 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. Dingo attacks are rare – but here’s what you need to know about dingo safety – https://theconversation.com/dingo-attacks-are-rare-but-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-dingo-safety-203233

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity

The cross, or crucifix, is arguably the central image of Christianity.

What’s the difference between the two? A cross is just that – an empty cross. It stands as a statement that Jesus is no longer on the cross and thus symbolises his resurrection.

A crucifix, on the other hand, includes the body of Jesus, to more vividly remind viewers of his death.

Many contemporary Christians, from bishops to ordinary folk, wear some kind of cross or crucifix around their neck and it would be rare to find a church that did not have at least one prominently displayed in the building.

While a symbol of faith, it is not just the pious who wear crosses. Madonna famously wore crucifix earrings and necklaces constantly throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. She is quoted as doing so because she provocatively “thought Jesus was sexy”.

The recent ubiquity of the cross as a fashion item means it is sold at everything from cheap tween fashion stores to that jeweller renowned for its little turquoise boxes, where a diamond cross necklace can run in excess of $10,000.

The 2018 Met Gala’s theme, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and Catholic Imagination, further bestowed religious imagery with fashion icon status by making it central to one of the fashion industry’s key events.

Yet the cross was not always the dominant symbol of Christianity that it is now, and would certainly not have been worn as a fashion accessory by early Christians.

In fact, it took centuries for Christians to begin to depict the cross in their art.

Read more:
Jesus wasn’t white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here’s why that matters

An undignified death

While some want to credit Emperor Constantine for the use of the cross as becoming more widespread after the 4th century, it is not that simple. Part of the answer lies in the nature of crucifixion itself.

While crucifixion included some variety in antiquity, it was typically a form of execution reserved for non-elite, non-citizens in the 1st-century Roman Empire.

Slaves, the poor, criminals and political protesters were crucified in their thousands for “crimes” we might today consider minor offences. The types of cross structures might differ, but as a form of execution, crucifixion was brutal and violent, designed to publicly shame the victim by displaying him or her naked on a scaffold, thereby asserting Rome’s power over the bodies of the masses.

That Jesus suffered such an undignified death was an embarrassment to some early Christians. The apostle Paul describes Jesus’ crucifixion as a “stumbling block” or “scandal” to other Jews. Others would imbue it with sacrificial meaning to make sense of how the one claimed as God’s Son would suffer in this way. But the shame associated with this kind of death remained.

A now infamous piece of graffito, dating to the early 3rd century in Rome, arguably mocks Jesus’ manner of death. Sketched on a wall in Rome, the Alexamenos graffito portrays a donkey-headed male figure on a cross under which is written “Alexamenos, worship god”. The suggestion is that the parody was directed at Christians precisely because they worshipped a man who had died by crucifixion.

Christian images

Felicity Harley-McGowan, an expert on crucifixion and early Christian art, argues Christians began to experiment with making their own specifically Christian images around 200 CE, roughly 100-150 years after they began writing about Jesus.

The slowness to depict Jesus on a cross was not about a general sensibility to the visual arts, although they do seem to have been very selective in what they did portray. Artwork typically depicted biblical stories and used bucolic imagery to show others being rescued from death or to tell the stories of biblical heroes like Daniel or Abraham.

In the 4th century, Christians began to depict other death scenes from the Bible, such as the raising of Jairus’ daughter, but still not Jesus’ death. Harley-McGowan writes:

it is clear that the earliest representations of deaths in early Christian art were pointed in their focus on actions after the event.

Such depictions emphasised healing, new life and resurrection from death. This emphasis is one explanation for why Christians were slow to depict Jesus’ actual death.

One of the earliest extant depictions of Jesus can be found in the Maskell Passion Ivories dating to the early 5th century CE, more than 400 years after his death. These ivories formed a casket panel that includes one death scene amid a range of scenes telling the Jesus story.

Like much previous Christian art, the emphasis remained on Jesus’ victory over death rather than any desire to depict the reality or violence of his crucifixion. One way to show this was to portray Jesus on a cross but with his eyes open, alive and undefeated by the cross; in the Maskell Ivory, Jesus’ alertness is contrasted with the clearly dead Judas.

While there is a 3rd-century magical amulet that includes crucifixion imagery (and there may have been other gems and amulets lost to history that associated his resurrection from death in magical terms), depictions of the cross only began to emerge in the 5th century and would remain rare until the 6th.

As churches began to be built, crucifixes appeared on engraved church doors and would remain the more standard image until the Reformation emphasis on the empty cross.

The cross continues to have a complex history, being used as both a symbol of Christian ecclesial power and of white supremacy by groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

There can be beauty, intrigue, magic and terror in these cross traditions.

On one hand, it stands as a symbol of Christian belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection. On the other, it is a reminder of the violence of the state and capital punishment.

Perhaps, 2,000 years later, it is always both – even when diamond-encrusted.

Read more:
Baby Jesus in art and the long tradition of depicting Christ as a man-child

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

– ref. The crucifixion gap: why it took hundreds of years for art to depict Jesus dying on the cross – https://theconversation.com/the-crucifixion-gap-why-it-took-hundreds-of-years-for-art-to-depict-jesus-dying-on-the-cross-202348