Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Bray, Research Fellow, Australian National University

The federal government introduced the Jobs for Families Child Care Package in July 2018. Then Education Minister Simon Birmingham had said the package would create a “simpler, more affordable, more accessible and more flexible early education and childcare system”.

He said the introduced new activity test and fee subsidy structure would

ensure that taxpayers’ support for child care is targeted to those who depend on
child care to work or work additional hours […] [and] align the hours of subsidised care more closely with the combined hours of work, training, study or other recognised activity undertaken.

The package was also intended to control what had been incessant increases in childcare fees.

When initially announced in 2015, then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described the package as “the most significant reform to the early education and care system in 40 years”.

We were members of a team which conducted an evaluation of the package. This was commissioned by the government and included researchers from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the Australian National University and the Social Policy Research Centre of the University of New South Wales.

The report of the evaluation, released in recent days, found that, while for a majority of families the package had a positive financial benefit, this tended to be relatively modest. And the policy had little impact on longer term costs, access, flexibility or workforce engagement.

The subsidy helped many lower and middle income families

Simon Birmingham said the package was

targeted to those who need it most – low- and middle-income families who are juggling work and parenting responsibilities.

The package introduced a new subsidy structure. For families with incomes of up to $68,163 in 2019-20, the rate of subsidy was 85% of the actual fee or a benchmark price, whichever is lower. The rate of subsidy reduced with income and stopped at $352,453 of total family earnings.

For the subsidy, families had to meet a tighter activity test than in the previous policy. This more closely linked the hours of subsidised childcare to parents’ approved activity such as work and study. In couples the activity level was based on the partner who had the lowest activity.

Parents who did not meet the activity test were still allowed a certain number of subsidised hours per fortnight, but the hours in this new package were lower than under the previously policy.

Read more:
Childcare package neither bold or sustainable

Our modelling used detailed administrative data. It estimated that, relative to the previous subsidy arrangements, about 686,000 families (62.2%) received more childcare subsidy than they previously would have been entitled to.

On average the net annual cost of childcare for these families fell by $1,386 – from $5,412 to $4,026. For the median family in this group, it fell by $1,036 – from $3,472 to $2,436.

But we also identified that costs increased for 323,000 of families (29.2%). The average net costs for these families, who tended to be on higher incomes, increased by $1,261.

We estimated the remaining 95,000 (8.6%) of families had no change to cost.

The effect of the new subsidy arrangements varied across family income. The figure above shows the distinct pattern of the largest average increases in subsidy being recorded for the lower to middle income groups, with declines for those on the highest incomes. This reflects the intent of the package.

Little impact on families working more hours

Families who work more often find they lose much of the extra income they earn due to what is known as an “effective marginal tax rate”. This is where any extra earnings interact with policies including income tax rates, the Medicare levy and the loss of family benefits, combined with the net cost of child care.

Read more:
Mothers have little to show for extra days of work under new tax changes

Our evaluation found, despite some gains, the effective marginal tax rates on employment still remain high. Families on average incomes see half to almost three quarters of any additional earnings being lost through a combination of reduced transfer payments from government, income tax and the cost of having to use more childcare.

As part of our evaluation we used data from various family surveys commissioned by the education department and conducted by ORIMA Research. Our evaluation found some families reported they had increased their level of employment in response to the package. But most said they had made no change and others said they had decreased employment.

This variation is consistent with economic expectations which see the response as being an interaction of an income and incentive effect. Overall there was a slight balance – some 1.5-1.9% towards higher participation. But this was consistent with the historical trend of increasing workforce participation by parents.

Read more:
We need a new childcare system that encourages women to work, not punishes them for it

We found no evidence of the package having reduced the long-term trend towards increasing childcare costs. Its overall impact on childcare costs was relatively small and has already been significantly reduced by rising prices.

More ‘flexible’ hours, but higher fees

Traditionally most child care centres have operated on the basis of charging on a daily basis for a long session of care. The package, including the “allowed hours” under the activity test, was intended to produce more flexible session lengths.

We found while many services did introduce shorter sessions, these were often charged at a higher hourly rate. Frequently the daily fee was the same, or close to that for long session. The more rigid start and finish time of these sessions made provision less, rather than more, flexible.

The reduction in approved hours from 24 hours of care per week to 24 hours per fortnight for those who did not meet the activity test raised some concerns about children losing access to care, or reducing attendance to just one day a week. But we found no evidence of this.

One reason for this was the potentially high proportion of children in this group who were eligible for support through other safety-net mechanisms such as Additional Child Care Subsidy.

Central to the findings of the evaluation was the larger question of the nature and role of childcare. Our evaluation found this had not been addressed in the package.

Read more:
Quality childcare has become a necessity for Australian families, and for society. It’s time the government paid up

Rather, the evaluation concluded there was a need for a clear, coherent and comprehensive policy environment for childcare. This needs to link the important goals of the package relating to workforce participation with other policies related to quality of care and the critical role of measures such as universal access to preschool in child development and in preparation for schooling. To achieve this, strategies must also account for the federal and state divisions in responsibility for childrcare.

The evaluation, the results of which are reported in this article was commissioned and funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. All authors were part of the evaluation team which undertook this.

The evaluation, the results of which are reported in this article was commissioned and funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. All authors were part of the evaluation team which undertook this

Ilan Katz receives funding from The Australian and State Governments, The Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council

The evaluation, the results of which are reported in this article was commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment.

– ref. The 2018 childcare package was partly designed to help families work more. But the benefits were too modest to matter – https://theconversation.com/the-2018-childcare-package-was-partly-designed-to-help-families-work-more-but-the-benefits-were-too-modest-to-matter-179934

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Hingley, Research associate, University of Tasmania

Tonight’s federal budget will include more than A$800 million over ten years to provide a “clear marker” of Australia’s “scientific leadership” in Antarctica.

The funds will go towards drones and helicopters amid mounting (although somewhat exaggerated) concerns over Chinese activity in the region.

Read more:
A krill aquarium, climate research, and geopolitics: how Australia’s $800 million Antarctic funding will be spent

But political assets in the polar region include more than expensive state of the art toys. Earlier this month, one of the most famous shipwrecks in history, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, was discovered in the Weddell Sea – a part of Antarctica claimed by multiple nations.

The Endurance

There is enormous excitement around the discovery of the Endurance.

The wreck provides a physical connection to a great tale of human survival, as it was the vessel used during the British explorer’s 1914-1916 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

It became stuck in the ice and eventually sunk. Remarkably, none of the men died during the ordeal, despite having to camp on the ice for months during an austral winter.

But now the Endurance has been found, who owns it and who should look after it?

The Antarctic Treaty

Antarctica is governed differently from other parts of the world. The Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959, with its first provision stating “Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only”. It also provides for free and cooperative scientific investigation on and around the frozen continent.

Read more:
Finding Shackleton’s ship: why our fascination with Antarctica endures

At the time of signing, seven countries – Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom – had territorial claims in the region. But under the treaty, no country can assert (or deny) a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica.

Despite this strong legal foundation, cultural heritage provides an opportunity for nations – in this case Britain – to assert their past, as well as their intended future, presence in the region.

Historic sites in Antarctica

The Antarctic is governed via annual meetings, attended by signatories to the treaty. At these meetings, countries can designate historic remains as official historic sites or monuments.

At the 2019 meeting, the UK successfully proposed the Endurance wreck as an official historic site, despite not knowing its location or state at the time. After learning of plans by NGOs to search for the wreck, the UK said it wanted to “confirm the protection status of the vessel in the event that it is located”.

The “historic site” status protects:

all artefacts contained within or formerly contained within the ship, which may be lying on the seabed in or near the wreck within a 150-metre radius.

Who is responsible for the sunken ship?

The Endurance22 expedition, backed by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, located the wreck in remarkable condition just over three weeks ago. This expedition had set itself the task of searching for and surveying the shipwreck.

Since 2019, the UK has effectively designated itself as manager of the site – which includes the personal possessions within and all artefacts lying on the seabed nearby. The UK has also stated the wreck should not be not moved or disturbed and only photographed according to strict heritage guidelines.

This is also in line with comments from Shackleton’s granddaughter Alexandra Shackleton, who says there should be no “rummaging” and “whatever there is will stay there.”

These preemptive steps are somewhat controversial because the seabed on which the Endurance rests is an area contested between the UK and Argentina.

Although, by definition, a seabed is not within claimed territory, it rests below waters belonging to claimed territory – meaning the wreck could be interpreted by the wider international community as lying outside of the UK’s jurisdiction.

Also worth noting is that the very heritage trust in charge of the expedition originates from hotly contested territory between the two countries – the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas.

Other complications

Another challenge is posed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This sets out that archaeological and historical objects found at sea should be protected.

Read more:
The wreck of Endurance is a bridge to a bygone age, and a reminder of Antarctica’s uncertain future

The ship used to search for the wreck was provided by South Africa, while funding was provided primarily by UK private and commercial sources. South Africa has signed the convention, while the UK has agreed to abide by its rules, but is not a signatory.

This has created a feeling of unease among the expert community, who understand that even though the wreck is not currently easy to access (for one, it is more than 3 kilometres below the surface), with technological developments, this situation may change.

What happens now?

Ultimately, the management of the site will set a precedent for the treatment of underwater cultural heritage in the region more widely.

The big question policymakers and diplomats now face is whether a line will be drawn when it comes to having not-yet-found shipwrecks internationally recognised as heritage sites.

Two more sites will likely test this question: the San Telmo and the SS Hampson. Spain proposed the San Telmo – a Spanish naval ship that sunk in the Drake Passage in 1819 supposedly carrying the first “humans to live and die” in Antarctica – as an official historic site at the 2021 meeting.

The SS Hampson is expected to be the large unidentified wooden sailing boat wrecked at Hampson Cove, Elephant Island. The UK is again the manager of the site, given it established the cove’s official heritage status back in 1998.

Like the recent discoveries of other wrecks, the Erebus and Terror in the high Arctic, these sunken ships represent more than just deteriorating artefacts.

They provide a way for countries to demonstrate their historical occupation of a region where traditional displays of territorial sovereignty are banned.

Rebecca Hingley is affiliated with the International Polar Heritage Committee.

– ref. Now Shackleton’s Endurance has been found, who determines what happens to the famous shipwreck? – https://theconversation.com/now-shackletons-endurance-has-been-found-who-determines-what-happens-to-the-famous-shipwreck-179752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Anastasiou, Research Dietitian (CSIRO), PhD Candidate (Deakin University), Deakin University

Our world is facing a huge challenge: we need to create enough high-quality, diverse and nutritious food to feed a growing population – and do so within the boundaries of our planet. This means significantly reducing the environmental impact of the global food system.

There are more than 7,000 edible plant species which could be consumed for food. But today, 90% of global energy intake comes from 15 crop species, with more than half of the world’s population relying on just three cereal crops: rice, wheat and maize.

The rise of ultra-processed foods is likely playing a major role in this ongoing change, as our latest research notes. Thus, reducing our consumption and production of these foods offers a unique opportunity to improve both our health and the environmental sustainability of the food system.

Impacts of the food system

Agriculture is a major driver of environmental change. It is responsible for one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions and about 70% of freshwater use. It also uses 38% of global land and is the largest driver of biodiversity loss.

While research has highlighted how western diets containing excessive calories and livestock products tend to have large environmental impacts, there are also environmental concerns linked to ultra-processed foods.

The impacts of these foods on human health are well described, but the effects on the environment have been given less consideration. This is surprising, considering ultra-processed foods are a dominant component of the food supply in high-income countries (and sales are rapidly rising through low and middle-income countries too).

Our latest research, led by colleagues in Brazil, proposes that increasingly globalised diets high in ultra-processed foods come at the expense of the cultivation, manufacture and consumption of “traditional” foods.

How to spot ultra-processed foods

Ultra-processed foods are a group of foods defined as “formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, that result from a series of industrial processes”.

They typically contain cosmetic additives and little or no whole foods. You can think of them as foods you would struggle to create in your own kitchen. Examples include confectionery, soft drinks, chips, pre-prepared meals and restaurant fast-food products.

In contrast with this are “traditional” foods – such as fruits, vegetables, wholegrains, preserved legumes, dairy and meat products – which are minimally processed, or made using traditional processing methods.

While traditional processing, methods such as fermentation, canning and bottling are key to ensuring food safety and global food security. Ultra-processed foods, however, are processed beyond what is necessary for food safety.

Australians have particularly high rates of ultra-processed food consumption. These foods account for 39% of total energy intake among Australian adults. This is more than Belgium, Brazil, Columbia, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico and Spain – but less than the United States, where they account for 57.9% of adults’ dietary energy.

According to an analysis of the 2011-12 Australian Health Survey (the most recent national data available on this), the ultra-processed foods that contributed the most dietary energy for Australians aged two and above included ready-made meals, fast food, pastries, buns and cakes, breakfast cereals, fruit drinks, iced tea and confectionery.

Read more:
The rise of ultra-processed foods and why they’re really bad for our health

What are the environmental impacts?

Ultra-processed foods also rely on a small number of crop species, which places burden on the environments in which these ingredients are grown.

Maize, wheat, soy and oil seed crops (such as palm oil) are good examples. These crops are chosen by food manufacturers because they are cheap to produce and high yielding, meaning they can be produced in large volumes.

Also, animal-derived ingredients in ultra-processed foods are sourced from animals which rely on these same crops as feed.

The rise of convenient and cheap ultra-processed foods has replaced a wide variety of minimally-processed wholefoods including fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, meat and dairy. This has reduced both the quality of our diet and food supply diversity.

In Australia, the most frequently used ingredients in the 2019 packaged food and drink supply were sugar (40.7%), wheat flour (15.6%), vegetable oil (12.8%) and milk (11.0%).

Some ingredients used in ultra-processed foods such as cocoa, sugar and some vegetable oils are also strongly associated with biodiversity loss.

Read more:
It takes 21 litres of water to produce a small chocolate bar. How water-wise is your diet?

What can be done?

The environmental impact of ultra-processed foods is avoidable. Not only are these foods harmful, they are also unnecessary for human nutrition. Diets high in ultra-processed foods are linked with poor health outcomes, including heart disease, type-2 diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer and depression, among others.

To counter this, food production resources across the world could be re-routed into producing healthier, less processed foods. For example, globally, significant quantities of cereals such as wheat, maize and rice are milled into refined flours to produce refined breads, cakes, donuts and other bakery products.

These could be rerouted into producing more nutritious foods such as wholemeal bread or pasta. This would contribute to improving global food security and also provide more buffer against natural disasters and conflicts in major breadbasket areas.

Other environmental resources could be saved by avoiding the use of certain ingredients altogether. For instance, demand for palm oil (a common ingredient in ultra-processed foods, and associated with deforestation in Southeast Asia) could be significantly reduced through consumers shifting their preferences towards healthier foods.

Reducing your consumption of ultra-processed foods is one way by which you can reduce your environmental footprint, while also improving your health.

Read more:
We each get 7 square metres of cropland per day. Too much booze and pizza makes us exceed it

Kim Anastasiou has worked on research funded by a variety of Australian government agencies, industry bodies and private companies.

Mark Lawrence receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the World Health Organization. He is a Board member at Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the organisations with which he is associated.

Michalis Hadjikakou receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Phillip Baker receives funding from The Australian Research Council and the World Health Organization.

– ref. Ultra-processed foods are trashing our health – and the planet – https://theconversation.com/ultra-processed-foods-are-trashing-our-health-and-the-planet-180115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Schuijers, Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law and Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney

The Federal Court recently quashed a duty of care owed by the environment minister to Australian children, to protect them from the harms of climate change.

The duty was attached to Australia’s federal environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. In reversing the decision that had established the duty, the new judgment shone a spotlight on the EPBC Act’s limitations. Or at least, it should have.

Much of the commentary around the judgment focused on lamenting the hands-off position the court took in its unwillingness to delve into so-called political territory.

Less attention was paid to a key take-home message: the EPBC Act gives the minister power to approve coal projects, even if they’ll have adverse effects.

It doesn’t, in a general sense, protect the environment from these effects. It doesn’t protect the public from consequent harm, even if deadly. And it doesn’t, actually, tackle climate change at all.

Alarmed? You should be.

Read more:
Today’s disappointing federal court decision undoes 20 years of climate litigation progress in Australia

Why the duty was quashed

The appeal was heard by three judges, each with a different opinion on why there shouldn’t be a duty.

One key problem was that the class of victims won’t just include the children represented in the case. Currently unborn children will be affected too. The judges also found issues with the minister’s relationship with the children given the intervening steps that will lead to climate change, extreme weather events, and future harm.

To help resolve novel disputes, courts look to previous cases. One case that featured prominently was about protecting the public from contaminated oysters. In that case, a council wasn’t liable for failing to prevent water pollution that caused hepatitis infection. In another case, where there was no way of identifying the source of asbestos fibres that caused mesothelioma, it was found that whoever materially increased the risk of harm could be liable for it.

The fact these were considered the most relevant cases just goes to show how unprecedented the problem of climate change is. There was no case directly on point, which could help with the complex and cumulative cause-and-effects.

The problem of ‘incoherence’

Another important problem for two of the three judges was that the duty wasn’t coherent – meaning consistent or compatible – with the EPBC Act. That’s because the EPBC Act doesn’t squarely address climate change or human safety, and yet the duty concerns precisely those two things.

For decades, it’s been recognised that humans depend on the environment for survival, and that a stable climate system is necessary for life as we know it.

The third judge thought the minister’s obligations, embedded in an environment protection framework, could therefore sit side by side with a duty of care. Our environment, he said, “is not just there to admire and objectify.”

But the other two were dissuaded by their view that the EPBC Act doesn’t in fact protect the environment in a general sense. Nor does it explicitly aim to mitigate climate change. It operates in a piecemeal way, rather than concerning ecosystems as a whole, or our dependency on them.

Can this really be how the EPBC Act operates in practice? Well, yes.

We heard this same message just recently via the ten-yearly, independent review of the legislation. It concluded that the EPBC Act is outdated, and not fit for the purpose of environment protection.

What does the EPBC Act do, then?

For the most part, the EPBC Act is an impact assessment law. It’s triggered when specific environmental matters, like individual threatened species, are likely to be harmed by a proposed project (such as a coal mine). When it’s triggered, it sets in motion a procedural process that requires the minister to consider whether to approve the project given its impacts.

Year after year, nearly every single project that is put forward is approved. In fact, the coal mine that was the subject of the case was approved even before the appeal went to court. This explains why so many, including the independent review, feel the EPBC Act doesn’t really do enough to adequately safeguard against environmental loss.

The review recommended the introduction of science-backed environmental standards. If this happened, it may be easier for courts to judge ministerial decisions, with a legal reference point for what’s considered politically acceptable. It also recommended decision-making incorporate climate scenarios.

A call to action

Back in 2020, I wrote that whether the children win or lose, their case would make a difference.

Although not over yet (they have two more weeks to lodge an application to appeal to the High Court), it already has. It’s drawn attention to the fact that Australia doesn’t have a climate law to protect its children. That it has no law to protect against harmful floods and fire that have already manifest since the case began. And it’s forced the Federal Court to acknowledge the uncontested risks of climate change.

Let’s look at this case as a call to action. The Federal Court has essentially said it can’t act. Reading the judgment closely, there are hints to suggest the High Court might be able to, and that eventually, the law will have to evolve to manage complex causation.

But the decision certainly doesn’t mean the government can’t act. In fact, that’s exactly who the judges indicated must.

Read more:
A major report excoriated Australia’s environment laws. Sussan Ley’s response is confused and risky

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

– ref. Australia’s environment law doesn’t protect the environment – an alarming message from the recent duty-quashing climate case – https://theconversation.com/australias-environment-law-doesnt-protect-the-environment-an-alarming-message-from-the-recent-duty-quashing-climate-case-179964

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Newling, Honorary Associate, History, University of Sydney

In this series, academics explain the ways they are recreating historical practices, and how this impacts their research today.

Old recipes and cookery books are increasingly being recognised as archival records, documenting more than just the food that was eaten in the past. They help us track consistencies and changes in our tastes and traditions, and in the techniques and technologies we employ or rely on to prepare a dish or meal.

Whether hand written or commercially produced, the fact that the recipes were recorded indicates the author felt the resulting foods were worth eating.

When you flick through old Australian recipe books, you will find some of the dishes are familiar, if not the same (“fricasees” and “ragouts” we now know as casseroles), while others, such as flummery and blancmange are echoed in today’s more sophisticated bavarois and pannecotta.

Other dishes which were once common in old cookbooks are curious or even peculiar to the contemporary cook, especially those made with meat cuts that some Australians might balk at: mock turtle soup (made with a calf’s head), brawn (made from a pigs’ head), calves’ feet jelly and boiled tongues being standouts.

As a historian with a Le Cordon Bleu Master’s degree in gastronomy, (which I describe as the study of food and food cultures), I am an intrigued by foods such as these. They are still popular in many other cultures’ cuisines, but have lost their place in Australia’s everyday culinary repertoire.

Why have they disappeared from our menus, and what does their absence from our kitchens, dining tables – and cookbooks – say about contemporary food choices?

Sensory and visceral

I take a very hands-on approach to researching our food heritage. My gastronomy degree is an academic qualification – I am not a formally trained cook, let alone chef. I have an Anglo-Celtic background that has not exposed me to the majority of “lost” dishes mentioned above in the normal course of life.

In order to understand them – and, importantly, the processes involved in making them – reading recipes is not enough. To write or speak about them with any authority, I need to experience them myself.

I do not profess to be exactly recreating the past or replicating the techniques and resulting dishes. Technological and food safety standards have changed the ingredients and necessary equipment to cook with them, but my experimental and explorative “forensic” exercises have been enlightening and instructive.

They have provided me with a far more intimate connection with these dishes and appreciation of the time, skills and effort required to create them – even with modern cooking facilities – than words on a page could ever conjure.

The sensory and, at times, visceral nature of making these dishes has been particularly educational, but often challenging and discomforting.

I recognise now the vague, nondescript but distinctive smell that is emitted when reconstituting jelly crystals as that which emanates from boiling calves’ feet: the fruity flavours and colouring a thin veil for the true origins of animal-derived gelatine.

Just the thought of handling an ungainly, surprisingly large, dense and heavy ox-tongue, trimming away the unsightly connecting ligaments and peeling its thin but leathery skin from the organ makes me uncomfortably conscious of my own tongue’s anatomy.

Cooking whole animal heads – their eyes staring back at me (accusingly? beseechingly?) as the pot bubbled away on the stove – was quite disarming.

Dismembering the pig’s face to retrieve the edible parts for brawn (cheeks, jowls, palate, tongue and snout) is a sticky, slippery and messy job.

While these experiential and embodied forms of self-education have elicited feelings of repugnance, to me they are tangible ways of connecting the past and the present, sharing experiences with cooks who also made these dishes or followed these recipes.

Slippery, slimy and oozy

Emotional responses are of course individual, and imbued with cultural and personal meaning. My feelings of distaste or revolt may not have been experienced by cooks and diners who welcomed these dishes onto their tables.

With the gradual disappearance of local butchers’ shops working with whole animals, our meat, poultry and fish is often sold in plastic packaging, often deboned or filleted with skin removed, trimmed of fat and sinew, ready-portioned, perhaps marinated and ready to cook without further handling.

Moisture sachets and packaging that help absorb fluids and odours make us less tolerant of the natural realities of animal parts that are messy, bloody, sinewy, gristly, viscous, gelatinous, slippery, slimy and oozy.

While convenient and time-saving for consumers, these preparations distance and disconnect consumers from the source animal. We are losing practical skills, but also the sensory connections and emotional sensibilities that come with working with them.

Many meat eaters who are comfortable with conventional flesh-meats recoil at cuts that are reminders of the once-living animal, finding heads, tongues, feet and tails revolting, perhaps horrifying, even barbaric.

Conversely, nose-to-tail dining, which makes use of every edible part of an animal is lauded as a respectful and responsible acknowledgement of the environmental impacts of meat production and a way of honouring the life taken from an animal bred for consumption.

If we consider the adage that food should not simply be good to eat but good to think about – morally and ethically – is resisting or rejecting these foods prejudice or a mark of refined taste? Were past generations crude and uncouth in their tastes and dining habits, or do they in fact hold the higher moral ground, coming face-to-face with the reality of their food sources?

A recipe to try: mock turtle soup

Get a calf’s head as fresh as possible, split it and take out the brains, wash and clean it well and lay it to steep in cold water for an hour. Then put into a stewpan with enough water to cover it, and two or three pints over; set it on the fire to boil, let it simmer 1½ hours; take out the head, and when cold enough cut [the meat] into pieces, from 1 inch square, and peel the tongue and cut it into pieces, only smaller, and put these into a pan till the next day, covered with a little of the liquor.

Then put all the bones of the head, and about 4 lbs of shin beef into the liquor in the stewpan. To this liquor when boiling, must be added the rind of a lemon, 1 turnip, and a little mace and allspice, and a bunch of sweet herbs with white peppers and salt to taste. Let these boil slowly for 5 hours and then strain.

Warm up the next day with the pieces of meat, egg balls and two or three glasses of white wine (sherry preferred).

— Mrs. Arthur Hardy’s recipe. The Kookaburra Cookery Book, The Lady Victoria Buxton Girls’ Club, Adelaide, South Australia. 1912.

Jacqui Newling is a curator at Sydney Living Museums

– ref. Remaking history: cooking slippery, slimy and oozy historical recipes made me uncomfortably conscious of my own anatomy – https://theconversation.com/remaking-history-cooking-slippery-slimy-and-oozy-historical-recipes-made-me-uncomfortably-conscious-of-my-own-anatomy-179283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Rollo, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Quantum technology, which makes use of the surprising and often counterintuitive properties of the subatomic universe, is revolutionising the way information is gathered, stored, shared and analysed.

The commercial and scientific potential of the quantum revolution is vast, but it is in national security that quantum technology is making the biggest waves. National governments are by far the heaviest investors in quantum research and development.

Read more:
Explainer: quantum computation and communication technology

Quantum technology promises breakthroughs in weapons, communications, sensing and computing technology that could change the world’s balance of military power. The potential for strategic advantage has spurred a major increase in funding and research and development in recent years.

The three key areas of quantum technology are computing, communications and sensing. Particularly in the United States and China, all three are now seen as crucial parts of the struggle for economic and military supremacy.

The race is on

Developing quantum technology isn’t cheap. Only a small number of states have the organisational capacity and technological know-how to compete.

Russia, India, Japan, the European Union and Australia have established significant quantum research and development programs. But China and the US hold a substantial lead in the new quantum race.

And the race is heating up. In 2015 the US was the world’s largest investor in quantum technology, having spent around US$500 million dollars. By 2021 this investment had grown to almost US$2.1 billion.

However, Chinese investment in quantum technology in the same period expanded from US$300 million to an estimated US$13 billion.

The leaders of the two nations, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, have both emphasised the importance of quantum technology as a critical national security tool in recent years.

The US federal government has established a “three pillars model” of quantum research, under which federal investment is split between civilian, defence and intelligence agencies.

In China, information on quantum security programs is more opaque, but the People’s Liberation Army is known to be supporting quantum research through its own military science academies as well as extensive funding programs into the broader scientific community.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

Advances in quantum computing could result in a leap in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

This could improve the performance of lethal autonomous weapons systems (which can select and engage targets without human oversight). It would also make it easier to analyse the large data sets used in defence intelligence and cyber security.

Improved machine learning may also confer a major advantage in carrying out (and defending against) cyber attacks on both civilian and military infrastructure.

The most powerful current quantum computer (as far as we know) is made by the US company IBM, which works closely with US defence and intelligence.

Unhackable communication

Quantum communication systems can be completely secure and unhackable. Quantum communication is also required for networking quantum computers, which is expected to enhance quantum computational power exponentially.

China is the clear global leader here. A quantum communication network using ground and satellite connections already links Beijing, Shanghai, Jinan and Heifei.

Read more:
China’s quantum satellite enables first totally secure long-range messages

China’s prioritisation of secure quantum communications is likely linked to revelations of US covert global surveillance operations. The US has been by far the most advanced and effective communications, surveillance and intelligence power for the past 70 years – but that could change with a successful Chinese effort.

More powerful sensors

Quantum computing and communications hold out the promise of future advantage, but the quantum technology closest to military deployment today is quantum sensing.

New quantum sensing systems offer more sensitive detection and measurement of the physical environment. Existing stealth systems, including the latest generation of warplanes and ultra-quiet nuclear submarines, may no longer be so hard to spot.

Superconducting quantum interference devices (or SQUIDs), which can make extremely sensitive measurements of magnetic fields, are expected to make it easier to detect submarines underwater in the near future.

At present, undetectable submarines armed with nuclear missiles are regarded as an essential deterrent against nuclear war because they could survive an attack on their home country and retaliate against the attacker. Networks of more advanced SQUIDs could make these submarines more detectable (and vulnerable) in the future, upsetting the balance of nuclear deterrence and the logic of mutually assured destruction.

New technologies, new arrangements

The US is integrating quantum cooperation agreements into existing alliances such as NATO, as well as into more recent strategic arrangements such as the Australia–UK–US AUKUS security pact and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“the Quad”) between Australia, India, Japan, and the US.

China already cooperates with Russia in many areas of technology, and events may well propel closer quantum cooperation.

Read more:
China’s quest for techno-military supremacy

In the Cold War between the US and the USSR, nuclear weapons were the transformative technology. International standards and agreements were developed to regulate them and ensure some measure of safety and predictability.

In much the same way, new accords and arrangements will be needed as the quantum arms race heats up.

Stuart Rollo 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. Better AI, unhackable communication, spotting submarines: the quantum tech arms race is heating up – https://theconversation.com/better-ai-unhackable-communication-spotting-submarines-the-quantum-tech-arms-race-is-heating-up-179482

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fethi Mansouri, Professor/UNESCO Chair-holder; Founding Director, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

Australia’s political leaders often talk about its multicultural credentials, making sweeping statements about its unmatched success in diversity.

According to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia is the “most successful” multicultural country in the world.

This self-congratulatory speech, however, masks the reality that we are a country with a deep racism problem that is not getting better.

Racism in Australia

My recent co-authored book Racism in Australia Today with Amanuel Elias and Yin Paradies looks at various manifestations of racism in our history and across key institutions.

Australia’s history since 1788 began with brutal acts of racism. Its colonisation was yet another example of white Christians going into other societies thinking they were ethnically and culturally superior. And could therefore take over peoples, resources and cultures.

These attitudes of cultural superiority have not gone away. Indeed,national survey results have seen almost 11% of respondents self-identified as “prejudiced” against other cultures. A further 26% neither agreed or disagreed.

We do have a problem

It is perhaps easy for white people to assume racism is no longer a big issue. There is legislation like the Race Discrimination Act and we have formally abandoned the White Australia Policy. It is illegal to segregate people based on their skin colour and overt racism is thought to be socially unacceptable.

Yet racism remains an everyday experience for non-white Australians.

In 2021, the Scanlon report found an unprecedented rise in respondents’ answers to the question “how big a problem is racism in Australia?”. Some 60% of survey respondents indicated it was a “very big” or “fairly big problem” as opposed to 40% in 2020.

Meanwhile in March 2022, a Diversity Council report found 43% of non-white Australian employees commonly experience racism at work, while only 18% of “racially priviliged” workers reported racism as a problem. This not only highlights how widespread racism remains but how often often dismissed by those benefiting from white privilege.

Racism also plagues Australia’s key institutions, including ASX 200 companies, universities, the public service and federal parliament.

In 2018, the Australian Human Rights Commission found of those who occupy 2,490 of the most senior posts in Australia, 76% per cent have an Anglo-Celtic background, 19% have a European background, less than 5% have a non-European background and 0.4% have an Indigenous background.

Crises and racism

Racism is not a steady phenomenon. We have seen peaks of racism towards particular groups in Australia, coinciding with major crises.

COVID-19 has led to a sharp spike in reported incidents of racism around the world. Many Asian Australians, and particularly Chinese Australians, reported increasing hostility towards them, including vandalism and racist slurs.

Read more:
‘Let’s rip it off her head’: new research shows Islamophobia continues at disturbing levels in Australia

These experiences, in many ways, mirror the significant increase in Islamophobia since the September 11 attacks and the “war on terror”.

In the wake of the 2019 Christchurch massacre, the Human Rights Commission found

80% of Muslim Australians had faced unfavourable treatment based on their ethnicity, race or religion. This racism takes the form of hate, violence or negative comments in public.

But as shocking as these upswings in racism are, even more shocking is our collective failure to develop a credible strategy to address the root causes of racism – be it against Indigenous peoples, refugees, temporary migrant workers or other minority groups.

We remain incapable of even talking about the racism in our midst, let alone what should be done to stop it.

Discrimination costs

The cost of racism to individuals, families and society is immeasurable in many ways.

But we do know racism has an impact on people’s mental health.

When young people are suffering from racism, even if they can turn up to school, they are not likely to feel happy or safe. This has an impact on their academic progress and therefore their further training and career trajectories.

At a macro level, we also know racism costs the national economy billions of dollars. Research shows the economic cost of experiences of racial discrimination was between A$21.1 and A$54.7 billion dollars from 2001 to 2011.

A proper strategy

While many would argue Australia is not a racist country, racism remains a serious problem. So, where is the national vision to fix this?

The first thing we need to do is acknowledge racism does exist across many sectors and we should be able to talk about it in a mature way.

This is, at times, a sensitive and difficult task because some of our political leaders cannot even accept the basic fact that we even have a serious problem.

Racism is not simply an inappropriate behaviour by individuals. It reflects a history of white privilege that has sustained colonial practices and political and cultural oppression of non-white nations.

Therefore, it is absolutely essential we call racism out in the short-term. But more importantly we need a longer-term strategy. One that comes to grips with justice for Indigenous peoples as well as the meaningful social and political incorporation of all groups in Australia, especially those from non-European backgrounds.

As we approach another federal election, it remains to be seen if our political leaders will offer a national strategy that treats racism as a serious threat to social cohesion, human rights and democracy itself.

Fethi Mansouri also talks about racism on the latest episode of Seriously Social podcast by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Fethi Mansouri receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is the UNESCO Chair for Cultural Diversity and Social Justice.

– ref. Racism is still an everyday experience for non-white Australians. Where is the plan to stop this? – https://theconversation.com/racism-is-still-an-everyday-experience-for-non-white-australians-where-is-the-plan-to-stop-this-179769

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Bolleter, Deputy Director, Australian Urban Design Research Centre, The University of Western Australia

Australia’s population is projected to grow to over 50 million people by 2101. This will have enormous implications for the country’s long-term infrastructure planning and prized livability, particularly in the capital cities where most growth is occurring.

Our recently published research examined ways we can start planning for this doubling of our population now, while we still have time to address it. Our survey asked more than 1,000 people where they think these new Australians should live, to gauge their support for different settlement patterns.

We presumed a net-increase of 28 million people over the next 80 years, with half of those people dispersing across existing Australian cities and towns. We then asked our respondents where would they support the other 14 million people living.

The study is the first of its kind to gauge community opinion on these questions at a national scale.

Not surprisingly, our survey found strong opposition to continued growth of the state capital cities. Instead, our participants showed a strong preference for encouraging people to move to new and expanded satellite cities and rail hubs in regional areas. This finding aligns with the general urban-to-regional migration that was kindled by the pandemic.

Our aim was to understand people’s preferences for managing population growth at the national scale, with the hope it will inform a national urban policy to prepare for the coming population surge.

Read more:
New cities? It’s an idea worth thinking about for Australia

Where do we want to live?

We devised our settlement pattern scenarios based on possibilities that have been proposed by academics and policy-makers. Here’s how they ranked in order of popularity with our respondents:

1. Satellite Cities: Due to the affordability and livability issues confronting the state capitals, this scenario siphons long-term population growth to 14 satellite cities like Gold Coast, Geelong and Wollongong. Respondents considered this scenario to be the most sustainable and feasible, while also ensuring livability.

2. Rail Cities: Inspired by rail hubs in other countries, this second placed scenario funnels population growth to 18 regional cities connected to the state and federal capitals by major high-speed rail links (yet to be built).

3. Inland Cities: This scenario distributes population growth to 29 key inland centres, many with at least hypothetical capacity to take on more people.

4. Western Cities: Western Australia comprises one-third of the continent but houses just over one-tenth of the population. Accordingly, this scenario boosts the populations of nine cities and towns along the west coast.

5. Northern Cities: Given northern Australia’s considerable economic output and proximity to Asia, this scenario envisions an increase of the population of the nine largest northern cities.

6. Sea Change Cities: Given the ever-escalating costs of coastal real estate in the capitals, this scenario channels population growth to 25 alternative sea-change cities.

7. Secondary Capital Cities: Given the livability and affordability issues in Sydney and Melbourne, this scenario sees more people moving to the smaller state and territory capital cities.

8. Megacities: Melbourne and Sydney generate the bulk of Australia’s GDP and historically have attracted the most migrants. This lowest-ranked scenario would see this trend continue with concentrated population growth in two future Australian megacities. Respondents universally loathed this scenario.

Why satellite and rail hubs are so appealing

As the rankings show, Australians generally support population decentralisation away from state capitals (in particular Melbourne and Sydney) with the expansion of satellite and rail cities.

Such sentiments could stem from a case of national-scale NIMBY-ism (“not in my backyard”). However, over a third of our respondents were from regional and remote areas, and most of these people supported population growth in their home towns.

Read more:
FactCheck: is Australia’s population the ‘highest-growing in the world’?

We argue that expanding satellite and rail cities is a smart plan for the future because it can achieve equitable distribution of population growth and protect urban livability. Moreover, these schemes allow for better adaptation to climate change by generally avoiding coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea-level rise.

However, expanding regional centres into major cities comes with considerable challenges, such as attracting industries and jobs away from the capital cities, delivering the crucial enabling infrastructure of ports, airports, rail lines, schools, housing and medical centres, and overcoming environmental challenges like water security.

Why we need a national urban policy

This type of ambitious planning requires a national urban policy, which is currently lacking in Australia. Our current population planning is too fragmented and uncoordinated, with states, territories and local governments all having divergent views about our common future. It resembles a patchwork quilt.

As we emerge from the disruptive restrictions caused by the pandemic, which led many to embrace tree- and sea-change moves away from the capitals, there’s no better time to pursue such a coordinated national plan.

There’s already some semblance of political will. The Coalition has spruiked policies for “smart cities” and negotiating “city deals”, which unite local, state and federal governments on key projects. Labor, meanwhile, is fixated on building high-speed east coast rail.

With an election looming, will either party take a harder look at the bigger question here and announce plans for a national urban policy? We can’t pretend this population boom isn’t happening – and our cities need to be ready.

Julian Bolleter receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Robert Freestone receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Our population is expected to double in 80 years. We asked Australians where they want all these people to live – https://theconversation.com/our-population-is-expected-to-double-in-80-years-we-asked-australians-where-they-want-all-these-people-to-live-176889

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

With everything going on over the past couple of years, many people have changed their drinking habits.

We’ve seen an increased demand for support, suggesting more people are trying to cut back or quit.

There are so many options for cutting back or quitting alcohol it’s hard to know what will be most effective.

Read more:
Australians are embracing ‘mindful drinking’ — and the alcohol industry is also getting sober curious

What works depends on how much you drink

Most people successfully quit or cut back their alcohol consumption on their own.

People who drink more frequently are much more likely to have symptoms of dependence and might find it more difficult.

You might be dependent if:

• you can’t easily go a day without drinking alcohol, or find it hard to cut back

• a lot of your social activities include or are based around drinking

• you find yourself thinking about or wanting alcohol a lot

• you find it difficult to control the amount you drink once you start

• you need to drink a lot to feel the effects

• you experience withdrawal symptoms, even mild ones, such as feeling unwell or a slight shaking in your hands when you go a day or two without alcohol.

The more of these signs you have and the more severe they are, the more dependent you’re likely to be. You can check your risk of dependence here.

If you have a mild dependence on alcohol, you may be able to cut back on your own. But if you are moderately dependent, you may need to get some kind of support.

If you are severely dependent, you should seek medical advice before you make any change to your drinking because stopping suddenly can cause severe health problems, including seizures and even death in some people.

For people who are severely dependent, the usual recommendation is to take a permanent or temporary break from alcohol. It may take six months to a year or more before you are able to start drinking again. Some people find it’s better for them not to drink again at all. With severe dependence, there’s a high risk of quickly going back to heavy drinking if you just try to cut back.

If you experience any symptoms of dependence, once you stop or cut back your drinking, you might need specialist treatment or ongoing support to prevent going back to heavy drinking.

Read more:
Heavy drinkers increased their alcohol consumption the most during lockdown – new research

‘Cold turkey’ or reduction?

If you’re not dependent, you should be able to either reduce the quantity or frequency of drinking or quit altogether. You may do this on your own or choose to get some support. If one method doesn’t work, try a different way.

If you experience mild to moderate dependence, every time you have a drink it can become a trigger to drink more. So it’s sometimes easier to increase drink-free days, rather than reducing the quantity on drinking days, or to quit altogether for a period of time.

People who are severely dependent usually require some kind of withdrawal support to stop drinking. It is usually better to stop altogether (“cold turkey”) as long as you have medical support. You can undertake withdrawal treatment in a hospital, at home with the help of a GP or nurse, or via telehealth. Alcohol withdrawal typically lasts about five to seven days.

Zero-alcohol drinks

Zero-alcohol drinks are alcoholic drinks with the alcohol removed but which retain a taste similar to the alcoholic version. There is now a huge variety of options for spirits, beer and wine.

If you are not dependent but are trying to reduce your alcohol intake for health or other reasons, these can be a good option. By replacing some or all of your usual alcoholic drinks with zero-alcohol drinks, you can still enjoy the social aspects of drinking without the health risks of alcohol.

If you are dependent on alcohol, the smell and taste of zero-alcohol drinks can act as a trigger for drinking alcohol. They might make it more difficult to make permanent changes to your drinking.

Read more:
Why are young people drinking less than their parents’ generation did?

Treatment apps and online support

A range of computerised, web-based, and mobile apps have been developed to support people cutting back or quitting alcohol. They have shown promising results in early trials. The benefit of these apps is accessibility, but the outcomes are modest and they seem to work best in conjunction with professional support.

Hello Sunday Morning’s Daybreak program is a large online alcohol support community, accessed through a mobile and desktop app. It’s designed for moderate drinkers who want to cut back or quit. Early research suggests it’s effective in reducing drinking, as well as improving psychological well-being and quality of life.

Some previously face-to-face support groups like SMART Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous have moved online, which has increased accessibility. These are typically more suited to people who are dependent on alcohol.

Psychological interventions

Brief interventions

As little as five minutes of advice from a GP can reduce alcohol consumption by 30%, especially for people who are in the mild to moderate dependence category. So it’s worth chatting to your doctor if you need a little help getting started.

Counselling and psychological therapy

The main treatment type to help with alcohol issues is counselling. Sessions are usually once a week with a qualified professional, such as a psychologist. Sometimes they are delivered in group settings. Counselling is suitable for any level of drinker who is trying to make changes.

Some of the main evidence-based counselling treatments in Australia are behavioural and cognitive therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness-based relapse prevention. These types of treatments have been shown to be at least as effective as medication

Intensive group programs

A number of more intensive group programs are suited to people who are dependent on alcohol or who are having significant problems, including:

• residential rehabilitation, which is usually for people who have tried other treatments unsuccessfully or who may be unsuitable for non-residential treatment because their home life is not supportive of making changes. It has been shown to be effective in increasing abstinence in dependent drinkers

• day programs, which are similar to residential rehabilitation programs but participants live at home and go in each day. These are a relatively new treatment type and there is limited good quality research on their outcomes.

Read more:
Four reasons why your tolerance for alcohol can change

Medication

A number of medications can help people who are moderately to severely dependent on alcohol. They tend to work best in conjunction with counselling.

• disulfiram is an older medication that works on the alcohol metabolism system and induces nausea and vomiting if alcohol is taken at the same time

• acamprosate can help prevent relapse in people who have already been through withdrawal

• naltrexone reduces cravings in heavy drinkers.

Self-help groups

Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step movement has a long history dating back to the 1930s, when there was very little available in the way of real alcohol treatment. There is relatively little research on AA and much of that has been conducted from within the organisation. The known outcomes are modest – the success rate is estimated to be around 10% and the dropout rate appears high.

AA can be helpful for some people and also provides a very well-established peer support network if you need support. It seems to be more effective in conjunction with professional treatment.

There are many options if you are trying to reduce your drinking and no single strategy works for everyone. The best approach is to start with something that looks appealing and feasible to get the outcomes you are looking for. If that’s not effective, try something else or seek professional help.

Read more:
Another Round? What really happens when you microdose alcohol

Nicole Lee works as a consultant in the alcohol and other drug sector and a psychologist in private practice. She has previously been awarded funding by Australian and state governments, NHMRC and other bodies for evaluation and research into alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Hello Sunday Morning. She is a Fellow of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy and was previously President.

– ref. Trying to cut back on alcohol? Here’s what works – https://theconversation.com/trying-to-cut-back-on-alcohol-heres-what-works-179664

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janine Mohamed, Distinguished Fellow and CEO, The Lowitja Institute

The urgency of tackling climate change is even greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and other First Nation peoples across the globe. First Nations people will be disproportionately affected and are already experiencing existential threats from climate change.

The unfolding disaster in the Northern Rivers regions of New South Wales is no exception, with Aboriginal communities completely inundated or cut off from essential supplies.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have protected Country for millennia and have survived dramatic climatic shifts. We are intimately connected to Country, and our knowledge and cultural practices hold solutions to the climate crisis. Despite this, we continue to be excluded from leadership roles in climate solution discussions, such as the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

Read more:
Why the Australian government must listen to Torres Strait leaders on climate change

This continued exclusion is why investigation of the impacts of climate change on First Nations people is needed.

In October last year, the Lowitja Institute, in partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander National Health Leadership Forum and the Climate and Health Alliance, brought together researchers, community members, young people and advocates from across the country at a round-table discussion.

Together, they put together the findings for the Discussion Paper Climate change and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

Read more:
IPCC reports still exclude Indigenous voices. Come join us at our sacred fires to find answers to climate change

How climate change impacts Indigenous peoples

As the paper tells us, climate change threatens our social and cultural determinants of health, including access to Country, traditional foods, safe water, appropriate housing and health services.

Aboriginal health services are already struggling to operate in extreme weather, with increasing demands and a reduced workforce. All these forces combine to exacerbate already unacceptable levels of ill-health within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and compound the historical and contemporary injustices of colonisation.

During the round table, we heard powerful and moving stories from communities on the front line of climate change.

Norman Frank Jupurrurla, a community leader from Tennant Creek, spoke of sacred waterholes drying up, ancient shade trees dying, temperatures rising, inadequate housing, power going out and spoiled essential food and medicines.

Vanessa Napaltjarri Davis, a Warlpiri/Northern Arrente woman and Senior Researcher at Tangentyere Council in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, spoke of changes to the availability of bush foods and medicines – essential to our health and well-being – due to changing temperatures and seasons.

For example, as Norman Frank Jupurrurla wrote:

…now the country is burning, getting destroyed, because of climate change. Already, I cannot see sand goannas any more.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold a deep and painful knowledge of the role dominant culture, racism and colonial power dynamics play within climate change. Although there have been many suggested solutions to climate change, access to these solutions is not equally or equitably available across Australia.

Norman Frank Jupurrurla demonstrated this when he shared the almost impossibly drawn-out process he has completed to become the first person to install solar panels on public housing in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory.

Read more:
What climate change activists can learn from First Nations campaigns against the fossil fuel industry

Indigenous peoples’ voices excluded from climate change conversations

Colonisation has ignored Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being, right down to the weather. Colonisers insisted we live according to just four seasons, instead of the many seasons our people knew and respected.

This experience of marginalisation continues today where we have not been sufficiently included in national and international conversations about climate change, including being pushed to the sidelines at COP26.

The IPCC acknowledged this globally in its report last year. The report states that data and most reporting on climate change do not include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or local knowledge in the assessment findings.

The IPCC’s most recent report looks to recognise this omission and focuses specifically on the importance of our role and knowledge in addressing the climate crisis and the need for climate justice.

Read more:
We need to design housing for Indigenous communities that can withstand the impacts of climate change

The calls from our work are clear. We must elevate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices within climate change action and centre Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as leaders in protecting Country. In the words of Seed Mob, “We cannot have climate justice without First Nations justice.”

In seeking solutions, we must consider how colonial ideologies and practices around climate change can impact on our peoples. As Rhys Jones wrote, “It is not possible to understand and address climate-related health impacts for Indigenous peoples without examining this broader context of colonial oppression, marginalisation and dispossession.”

The Uluru Statement from the Heart, a gift to the Australian People, provides the road map for action:

• We must correct power asymmetries and establish co-governance arrangements and become strong advocates of, not only our interests, but our capabilities to tackle climate change.

• We must restore access to basic rights that will lay the groundwork for action that includes appropriate community participation/decision-making and incorporates cultural, environmental and sustainable design.

• We must weave our knowledges and strengthen partnerships to ensure that our collective wisdom and knowledge as Australia’s First Nations is integrated into climate adaptation and mitigation planning, directly benefitting the whole nation.

Indigenous people know about this continent; we’ve looked after it for millennia.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart gives the opportunity to restore that ancient power – for the benefit of us all and the survival of the planet.

Pat Anderson receives funding from the Lowitja Institute, Batchelor Institute, Remote Area Health Corps, and UNSW-ILC (Uluru Statement from the Heart)

Veronica Matthews receives funding from the NHMRC and the ARC.

Janine Mohamed 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. Indigenous peoples across the globe are uniquely equipped to deal with the climate crisis – so why are we being left out of these conversations? – https://theconversation.com/indigenous-peoples-across-the-globe-are-uniquely-equipped-to-deal-with-the-climate-crisis-so-why-are-we-being-left-out-of-these-conversations-171724

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, The University of Melbourne

You may know of marvellous tree-lined roads that lead into your favourite rural and regional towns. Sometimes they have an arched, church-like canopy, while others have narrow ribbons of remnant vegetation.

But have you noticed they’ve changed over the past decade? Some have gone, some have thinned and others are now declining. This is because in general, roads are not safe places for plants and their ecosystems.

There are the obvious dangers from collisions with cars. But there are also more subtle dangers from road construction and maintenance that increase the chances of plant (and animal) deaths, such as by altering the chemical and physical environment, which introduces weeds and segregates wildlife.

This network of vegetation reserves and corridors along Australian roads must be properly valued and better protected. They stitch the landscapes and ecosystems of our nation together and, as they diminish and disappear, will become an unrecognised part of road toll. We will all be the poorer for it.

Ecosystems found on the roadside

Roadside vegetation are often important corridors connecting wildlife to their habitats. In some cases, they are the last bastions of rare and endangered plant species. Indeed, some of the grass and smaller flowering species of Australia’s once extensive grassy plains only persist on roadside refuges in parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.

These corridors are also important habitats for smaller birds, mammals, insects and reptiles. They not only provide access to food and water sources, but allow breeding with a broader animal population.

Read more:
Destroying vegetation along fences and roads could worsen our extinction crisis — yet the NSW government just allowed it

For example, nine different mammal species have been recorded along the roadside of Victoria’s Strathbogie Ranges, including koalas, brushtail possums, gliders and phascogales.

Roads also increase water run-off and carry nutrients, which can allow a diversity of species to flourish on verges (nature strips). Plants that may not survive elsewhere get a toehold on edge of the bitumen using the precious extra resources it provides.

Australian road authorities often acknowledge the importance of these habitat corridors when roads are set to be upgraded or widened. But when it comes to the crunch, it’s the engineering and bottom line demands that generally win out – and plants invariably suffer.

This has an impact to cultural heritage, too. We saw this all too clearly in 2020 when a Djab Wurrung directions tree was bulldozed in Victoria for a new highway, despite valiant protest efforts.

Likewise, people rallied in Hong Kong to protect a significant banyan tree from removal from railway works. And the 300-year-old Bulleen river red gum, which won the National Trust’s Victorian Tree of the Year in 2019, awaits its fate in a major freeway project.

Read more:
This centuries-old river red gum is a local legend – here’s why it’s worth fighting for

The dangers of roads

Trees are supposed to be cleared according to codes of practice, such as the Australian Standard for Pruning Trees and the Australian Standard for Protecting Trees on Development Sites.

But based on my experiences over many years, when contractors breach one of these protections, there’s rarely enforcement or penalty.

For example, breaches can occur during powerline clearing across Australia, where old roadside trees can be decimated by losing much of their canopy. Trees may not survive such damage and if they do it will takes years for recovery.

Read more:
Dodgy tree loppers are scamming elderly homeowners and hacking up healthy trees. Here’s what you need to know

Clearing roadside vegetation can occur on a monumental scale after bushfires. While burnt, dead trees may be dangerous and need to be removed or pruned, the clearing can far exceed the safety requirement.

Local communities have been left to lament the loss of their green and leafy road reserves from fires, as well as losses to the trees themselves from unnecessary clearing – it’s a double blow.

Herbicide is another very common, but rarely spoken of, cause of death for roadside trees and vegetation, with roadside verges routinely sprayed to reduce weeds encroaching onto the edges of roads and tarmac.

Herbicide spray can drift and kill non-target vegetation, such as crops on adjacent farms and even ancient remnant trees nearby. While such events have occurred in Australia, they are seldom reported and farmers are rarely successful in obtaining compensation for losses.

Vandalism is another major issue, with many local examples of street trees being poisoned, lopped or cut down, for instance, to secure prized coastal views.

This not only affects Australia. In 2012 thousands of roadside and rural trees were illegally poisoned or cut down in the United States by billboard advertisers. Similar advertising-related tree removals also occurred in India.

Love your trees

More of us should take stock of roadside trees: they are links to Australia’s past, refuges of once more widespread natural communities, and remain an important part of cultural heritage.

Importantly, they connect us to a future under climate change. We cannot possibly fight to mitigate global warming without urban trees. If we do not value them, it is inevitable that we will be lamenting an expanding list of endangered species and possible extinctions.

Read more:
Here are 5 practical ways trees can help us survive climate change

Gregory Moore 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. Roadside trees stitch the ecosystems of our nation together. Here’s why they’re in danger – https://theconversation.com/roadside-trees-stitch-the-ecosystems-of-our-nation-together-heres-why-theyre-in-danger-175337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

After two years of entry restrictions, New Zealand is re-opening its borders. Already, New Zealanders can re-enter the country without quarantine; they will be followed by Australians on April 12 and the rest of the world on May 1.

Families will be able to reunite. Grandparents will be able to visit new grandchildren for the first time. And the tourist industry is very keen to get cracking again.

But as international travel resumes, we should make sure flying doesn’t return to 2019 levels. That was incompatible with a safe climate and global emissions targets. At 2019 levels, there would be just ten years of flying left in the carbon budget for 1.5℃.

In 2019, New Zealand aviation emissions were 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), having risen 43% since 2014 to become the sixth highest in the world per capita. At 12% of New Zealand’s total CO₂ emissions, they were a substantial chunk to be dealt with.

Domestic aviation is included in New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS) and carbon budgets. International aviation emissions are measured but are not included in national targets or regulations.

Last November, at COP26 in Glasgow, New Zealand joined the International Aviation Climate Ambition Coalition and committed to:

Preparing up-to-date state action plans detailing ambitious and concrete national action to reduce aviation emissions and submitting these plans to ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] well in advance of the 41st ICAO assembly.

This assembly of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization will take place in September 2022.

How to cut aviation emissions

In a new report, economist Paul Callister and I look at all the options. What would “ambitious and concrete action” to reduce aviation emissions look like for New Zealand?

Change is in the air. There are new proposals for net zero aviation by 2050 from the EU, the UK, the International Air Transport Association, the International Energy Association, and Air New Zealand.

In New Zealand, a two-seater electric plane with a 130km range crossed the Cook Strait for the first time in November last year. Unfortunately, its larger cousins won’t be here soon enough or in large enough numbers to affect emissions overall.

Despite the media attention on electric and hydrogen aircraft, they do not feature strongly in New Zealand’s plans. Larger electric aircraft don’t exist yet and we need to act sooner than they will become available.

Better fuel technology

Offsetting (by planting trees, for example) is a temporary fix. It transfers risk to the next generation and does not get at the root of the problem, which is burning fossil fuels. Most pathways do not rely on much offsetting.

For the next few decades, emissions will be determined by traffic volumes, efficiency and sustainable aviation fuel.

Efficiency can be encouraged by using the most fuel-efficient planes (and possibly banning the others), filling them as much as possible, flying efficiently and increasing the price of fuel through a carbon charge or a sustainable fuel mandate, or both.

Read more:
NZ tourism can use the disruption of COVID-19 to drive sustainable change — and be more competitive

Sustainable aviation fuel is the main technological solution on the table. By 2035, New Zealand could conceivably build two NZ$520 million wood-based biofuel plants, producing 57 million litres a year each, and one 100MW e-fuel plant producing 40 million litres a year. Together they would provide 8% of New Zealand’s jet fuel at 2019 levels of demand.

However, neither of these technologies are yet in commercial use; the first demonstration plants are only now under construction. The uncertainties are large.

Traffic volumes are affected by price and regulation. Industry projections of very high growth (up to 120% by 2050) are not compatible with the Paris Agreement.

The present free ride for international aviation (no GST, no carbon charge, no fuel tax) is an obstacle. But now that the EU is considering a tax on jet fuel, this could change.

Curbing frequent flying

Flying less is the main remaining tool in the toolkit. Air travel is strikingly unevenly distributed. In Europe, 90% of households have aviation emissions of 0.1 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year (equivalent to one Auckland–Sydney return trip every four years); 9% emit 0.8 tonnes (Auckland–LA every two years); and the top 1%, 22.6 tonnes (Auckland–London six times a year).

So less frequent flying, especially by the hyper-mobile, has to be part of the solution. Non-flyers cannot reduce their aviation emissions. The Jump campaign asks people to limit flights to one 1500km return flight every three years, a level derived from a study of urban lifestyles compatible with 1.5℃.

Read more:
NZ tourism can use the disruption of COVID-19 to drive sustainable change — and be more competitive

The natural experiment of the COVID pandemic prompts the question of how essential such frequent flying is to well-being.

Stats New Zealand monitors well-being following international guidelines. While 81% of the population reported high overall life satisfaction in 2018, this rose to 86% in 2021. People adopted substitutes for international travel, including telecommunications, domestic tourism and local tourism.

The economy also grew, up 3.4% from 2019 to 2021.

However, there are confounding factors, namely the government stimulus, social solidarity and knowledge of the health risks of travel.

A recent UK study considers the role of curbing excess energy consumption in a fair transition. After comparing ten possible definitions of “excess”, they conclude that:

excess is whatever people can agree it is, based on ideas of “fairness” and “just” levels of consumption that can be rationalised, defended and justified to others … any policies that are used to target excess consumption and excessive consumers must be similarly reasonable and justifiable, based on the principles of deliberative democracy and exploring options, impacts and fairness with members of the public.

Two key events of the past decade reinforce the urgency of the situation. The first is the proven ability of the New Zealand aviation industry to increase emissions at a staggering rate when unregulated, as observed from 2014 to 2019. The second is COVID. Ensuring that aviation emissions remain permanently well below 2019 levels will make the longer-term task significantly easier.

Robert McLachlan 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 borders open and international travel resumes, will New Zealand’s sky-high aviation emissions take off again? – https://theconversation.com/as-borders-open-and-international-travel-resumes-will-new-zealands-sky-high-aviation-emissions-take-off-again-179941

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hail, Adjunct Associate Professor, Torrens University Australia

A decade ago, and years before Treasurer Josh Frydenberg promised a budget that was “back in the black”, Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised the same thing.

At that time, in the lead-up to the 2012 budget, unemployment was higher than it is today, and inflation and wages growth were so low (1.6% and 2.3%, respectively) as to provide no impediment whatsoever to cutting unemployment further.

Yet Gillard was resolute in her determination to bring in a budget surplus, by which she meant a budget that spent less than it took in.

She titled her speech to Western Australia’s Chamber Of Commerce and Industry and Chamber Of Minerals And Energy “In the Black”

There was “no clearer sign of a strong economy than a surplus”.

It would “protect jobs”, provide a “buffer in case the global economy gets worse”, and allow the Reserve Bank to cut rates, “knowing that an interest rate reduction is good for families and business”.

Indeed, she added:

…let me make this clear once and for all: a budget surplus is not a political target but a potent economic tool.

I sometimes wonder whether she remembers this claim. I nearly asked her once, crossing North Terrace in Adelaide, but I chickened out.

As with Gillard, so with Abbott

Gillard never did get her budget surplus, and she and Kevin Rudd were followed as prime minister by Tony Abbott, who talked of a “budget emergency” that only a run of surpluses could fix.

While in opposition, his finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce had gone as far as to suggest that the debt run up by years of budget deficits (spending more than the government took in) was “getting to a point where we can’t repay it”.

Read more:
Please, no more questions about how to pay off the COVID debt

That was too much even for Abbott, who dumped Joyce as finance spokesman a month later.

Neither Abbott nor his successors Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison ever did get a surplus, although Morrison came close in 2018-19.

The deficits and the way they were financed meant net debt continued to rise and rise. But the government didn’t run out of cash.

And when the pandemic struck, borrowing (and having the Reserve Bank create) hundred of billions to support businesses and their employees turned out not to be a problem.

So why did Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, and for a while Morrison and Frydenberg, have their hearts so set on ultimately unachievable surpluses?

It might be because they didn’t understand how Australia’s money system works. More charitably, it might be because, while they did understand how Australia’s system works, they found it convenient not to pass that knowledge on.

They have been perpetuating the “government as households” metaphor, which ignores the role of the government as a currency issuer as well as a currency user.

In cooperation with its wholly owned central bank, Australia’s government produces Australian dollars. It can’t run out of them.

Budget money can’t run out

The government has good reasons for collecting taxes (to suppress spending that might accelerate inflation) and good reasons for borrowing by issuing bonds (to temporarily withdraw money from the economy). But these don’t include a need to fund its spending.

In truth, every dollar the government spends is a new dollar; every dollar it collects in taxes is a dollar destroyed.

Every bond it sells does nothing more than change dollars into transferable savings accounts at the Reserve Bank.

David Andolfatto, an economist who is vice president of the US Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, puts it this way:

…it seems more accurate to view the national debt less as form of debt, and more as a form of money in circulation.

What this means is that Gillard was nearly right. She just needed to dump the word “surplus”.

The budget is indeed a potent economic tool. Too much spending without offsetting tax will indeed push up inflation. Not enough spending will keep people out of work and risk a recession.

But how much spending is needed relative to tax depends on the economy.

In 2020 and 2021 a willingness to push out much more money than was taken in supported an economy that would otherwise have crashed, and helped bring about two of the most rapid recoveries from recessions and downturns in history.

Horses for courses

What budgets should do depends on how things are, and if we haven’t learned this by now, we should have.

And what else have we learned? That complex global supply chains can be efficient but not necessarily resilient.

Which means a transition away from petrol towards renewables may have benefits beyond the purely environmental. That preventative health, health care and aged care are more important than we might have thought.

We have have also learned about the limits to the powers of the Reserve Bank.

While governments talked of surpluses, we continued to obsess about central banks using official interest rates to control inflation. When it tried to push up inflation, it couldn’t, until recently.

It might be that just as interest rate cuts were not the best way to stimulate inflation before the pandemic, interest rate hikes are not the best way to suppress inflation afterwards.

Higher interest rates impose costs on businesses.

And they actually increase some incomes, including those of savers and high earners who own products linked to treasury bonds.

When high interest rates can suppress inflation, they are likely to do it by triggering a slide in asset prices, including the price of housing assets, which, with household debt high, ought to give policy-makers pause for thought.

Taxing more and reining in government spending might do it better.

Read more:
Memories. In 1961 Labor promised to boost the deficit to fight unemployment. The promise won

In any event, withdrawing money from the economy might not be the right thing to do at a time when when high prices are being driven by global events rather than spending at home.

There’s a lot we should have learned in the past decade, much of it set out in modern monetary theory – something the budget papers are likely to acknowledge quietly, if at all.

Steven Hail 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. This budget, amid talk of deficits, consider the lessons we ought to have learned – https://theconversation.com/this-budget-amid-talk-of-deficits-consider-the-lessons-we-ought-to-have-learned-179310

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

Tuesday’s budget will provide $49.5 million for aged care training for existing workers and people who want to work in the sector.

With aged care beset by a shortage of staff as well as an under-trained workforce the funding, over two years, will be for an additional 15,000 subsidised vocational education and training places.

But the sector’s workforce shortages go centrally to the issue of low wages.

The Australian Aged Care Collaboration, said in a Monday statement workers in the sector “should be getting the pay they deserve and career certainty”.

It said the royal commission into aged care had called for higher wages, better qualifications, and more time for staff to spend with those they were caring for.

“As we approach the 2022 federal election, the government and opposition have both so far failed to commit fully to implement and fund the royal commission’s workforce recommendations,” AACC said.

AACC represents six aged care peak bodies whose membership delivers the majority of aged care services in residential and home settings across Australia.

The budget will be firmly focused on the May election, its centrepiece a cost of living package, with a cut in petrol excise, expected to be temporary, and cash handouts to lower and middle income earners, pensioners and others tipped to be main sweeteners.

The government has already unveiled a $17.9 billion infrastructure package, sparking claims the project funding is politically skewed.

On the economic side the budget will forecast that Australia’s unemployment rate, now 4%, will fall to 3.75% in the September quarter. This would be the lowest rate since August 1974 – and three percentage points below the forecast in the October 2020 budget, delivered in COVID’s first year.

The budget will predict unemployment will stay historically low over the forecast period, and wages growth to pick up to their strongest in a decade. The budget’s deficit will be lower than forecast in the December mid-year update.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Monday:“With more people in work and less people on welfare the budget bottom line is improving after providing unprecedented economic support to Australians.

“But there is more to do and now is not the time to risk the gains we have made in our economic recovery with Labor’s higher taxes.”

Anthony Albanese stressed to reporters the budget reply he will deliver on Thursday “is a speech. It is not an alternative budget.”

However his reply will contain a major policy announcement.

Parliament is back for just one week of sitting, before the election is called for May.

The Senate sitting was brought forward to Monday for a condolence motion for the late Labor senator Kimberley Kitching who died of a suspected heart attack. Her death triggered contested claims that she was bullied by senior Labor women senators, allegedly dubbed “the mean girls” by Kitching and some of her supporters.

In her condolence speech NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who has just lost out in a preselection battle, drew parallels between her troubles and those of Kitching.

“The concept of mean girls is not confined to one political party,” Fierravanti-Wells said.

“I empathised with Kimberley about the bitter internal factional fights within our respective political parties. We both had factional enemies who desperately wanted to see us defeated, and they worked very hard at it.”

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. Budget to give $49.5 million boost for aged care training, but what about wages? – https://theconversation.com/budget-to-give-49-5-million-boost-for-aged-care-training-but-what-about-wages-180133

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Frauenfelder, PhD Candidate in Palaeontology, University of New England

You might think all important dinosaur “discoveries” are made as soon as fossils are collected in the field – that palaeontologists instantly know the significance of what they’ve found.

This is often true. But sometimes, and maybe more often than you’d think, fossils will be stored in museum collections for years before the right researchers come along to “rediscover” them. This was the case for one Australian ankylosaur skull, which we’ve published about today in the journal Frontiers in Earth Sciences.

Originally discovered in 2005 near the regional Queensland town of Boulia, the specimen remained at the South Australian Museum until we enquired about the museum’s dinosaur collection.

Ankylosaurs, the so-called “armoured” dinosaurs, are a group of dinosaurs that lived from the Early Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous – roughly 196 to 66 million years ago.

Compared to other dinosaurs, such as the long-necked sauropods and smaller herbivorous ornithopods, ankylosaur remains are rarely found in Australia and the broader southern hemisphere. So you can imagine our excitement when we “rediscovered” Australia’s second ankylosaur skull.

An analysis of the skull bones and teeth suggests it belongs to the genus Kunbarrasaurus, which also contains the first Australian ankylosaur skull.

Read more:
Introducing Australotitan: Australia’s largest dinosaur yet spanned the length of 2 buses

What were ankylosaurs like?

Ankylosaurs were medium-to-giant herbivorous dinosaurs (anywhere between 200-5,000kg) that walked on four legs and were covered in armoured plates or spikes. Some are recognisable by tail clubs, such as the five-tonne Ankylosaurus magniventris from North America.

Of the 75 recognised ankylosaur species, only five are from the southern hemisphere. Several small and incomplete fossils are spattered across the ancient Gondwana supercontinent – which is now dispersed and broken up into Australia, India (which back then was in the southern hemisphere), Africa, Antarctica and South America.

These fossils offer tantalising hints of what was once a widespread ankylosaur presence in these regions. The five Gondwanan ankylosaur species are Kunbarrasaurus ieversi and Minmi paravertebra from Australia, Antarctopelta oliveroi from Antarctica, Spicomellus afer from Africa, and Stegorous elengassen from Chile.

A dinosaur from Boulia

The bones of the ankylosaur from Boulia were found encased in a large, hard rock called a concretion. Concretions often form around organic matter, and likely helped the initial preservation of the fossil. When it was discovered, all that was visible was a series of rock chunks that could have easily been overlooked.

The collected fossils include limbs, vertebrae, many armoured plates and, excitingly, a partial skull. Along with several skull bones, the skull also includes the impressions of many teeth from the upper jaw.

The entire skull block was scanned at the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne. The synchrotron shoots x-rays at the specimen, generating a series of images that can be processed to reveal the bones in 3D (as seen below).

This technique is often used for fossils that may otherwise get damaged or lose important information if physically removed from the rock.

We analysed the scans and discovered the bones are those of the roof of the mouth (or the palate). We also found several teeth “floating” within the block.

Placing southern ankylosaurs in the family tree

Identifying this new ankylosaur as Kunbarrasaurus suggests this particular dinosaur was potentially more widespread in Queensland than previously thought, and may have existed for more than five million years. But what do ankylosaurs from Australia, and Gondwana more generally, tell us about the group’s evolution as a whole?

As it stands, the vast majority of ankylosaurs are from either North America, Europe, or Asia. And most are from the late Cretaceous (100 to 66 million years ago). However our study suggests a separate and possibly earlier diversity of ankylosaurs in the south, a theory which is supported by recent discoveries from South America and Africa.

The southern radiation of ankylosaurs includes the species from Australia, Chile and Antarctica, all of which together form the group called Parankylosauria.

The importance of the Boulia ankylosaur

Because the fossil block was scanned with x-rays and reconstructed in 3D, we were able to explore aspects of the ankylosaur’s airways, or “choanae”. These were not well preserved in the first and only other known Kunbarrasaurus skull.

Typically ankylosaur choanae are long, located close to the front of the snout and can have multiple openings within the palate. Coupled with complex nasal passages, these features point to the group generally having a keen sense of smell.

However, in the Boulia ankylosaur there is only one opening on each side, and they are located towards the back of the palate. This suggests Kunbarrasaurus did not have the complex nasal system seen in ankylosaurs such as Pawpawsaurus campbelli and Euplocephalus tutus. As such, it may have had a reduced sense of smell compared to most of its northern counterparts.

There is still a lot we don’t know about ankylosaur evolution, especially the Gondwanan species. Perhaps more of these discoveries await us in museum troves.

Read more:
Dinosaurs were already in decline before the asteroid wiped them out – new research

Nicolas Campione receives funding from Australian Research Council.

Phil Bell received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Timothy Frauenfelder 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. Hidden away in a museum, we found the skull of a rare armoured dinosaur that roamed Queensland 105 million years ago – https://theconversation.com/hidden-away-in-a-museum-we-found-the-skull-of-a-rare-armoured-dinosaur-that-roamed-queensland-105-million-years-ago-175317

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

It’s rare that an appealingly minor film wins the best picture Oscar – and a remake of a French film at that – but this year, CODA has done it.

Is it the best film from 2021? Absolutely not! But with best picture decided by preferential ballot (unlike the other awards), it makes sense that a sweet and inoffensive movie could sneak through.

One can imagine that CODA would have appeared at the second, third and fourth spot for numerous critics, unlike favourite The Power of the Dog which, as a divisive film, would have ranked last for many (as it was for this critic).

CODA is well made and very easy to watch, with its narrative following teenager Ruby (Emilia Jones) as she tries to develop her skills as a singer while living with Deaf parents and a Deaf older brother, helping run the family fishing business, and attending high school in their fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

In some respects, it’s nice that a low budget film like CODA won, though its upbeat, formulaic quality as a coming of age film will not appeal to people who like strange, challenging and intense cinema – in other words, works of art.

CODA is comfort cinema, firmly situated in the entertainment camp. But it’s not bad, and in this day and age, that’s pretty good for a best picture winner.

–Ari Mattes

À lire aussi :
From Dune to The Power of the Dog: our predictions for the Oscars 2022 best picture

A speech acknowledging the personal heroes

What people take away from Oscars ceremonies over the last decade is more and more the prepared content, less and less the acceptance speeches.

The award winners have only 45 seconds to speak. They get thrown into a career-defining moment more or less by surprise.

By contrast, the choreographed segments can be arranged so that audiences notice and recall them. This year we had Beyoncé’s all-lime curtain raiser, the minute of silence for #standwithukraine and the hosts’ rapid-fire roasting of celebrities.

There is a broader story about the history of speeches here: they are steadily losing their power as the medium that speaks for a moment.

The standout exception remains moments where a speech takes us outside the expected norm. Will Smith’s angry, ugly confrontation with Chris Rock might become the most talked-about moment of the night, but Troy Kotsur’s acceptance speech for best supporting actor for CODA, delivered in American Sign Language – with his interpreter choking back tears as it unfolded – should be a reference point for many in years to come.

Kotsur acknowledged the heroes of signing in his own life, both at home and at work. His speech gave a very public voice to people who communicate visually: to the Deaf community, to the children of Deaf adults who gave his film its name, and to a stage and screen community that has nurtured talent like his for much longer than most people have recognised.

–Tom Clark

Jane Campion’s second nomination – and first win

The Power of the Dog was nominated for an extraordinary 12 Academy Awards this year, with its director Jane Campion making history as the first woman to be nominated for best director more than once.

Despite collecting the most nominations of all the films this year, The Power of the Dog only came away with one win – Campion’s long overdue directing nod.

Her acceptance speech was notably prewritten, perhaps in an effort to avoid a recreation of her blunder at the Critics’ Choice Awards earlier this month in which she seemed to compare her struggles in male-dominated Hollywood to the challenges faced by Venus and Serena Williams as black female tennis players.

Campion’s award was The Power of the Dog’s sole win. In stacked technical categories like sound, cinematography and production design, it was outperformed by box office giant Dune.

Given The Power of the Dog’s divisive approach to storytelling (host Wanda Sykes quipped she had watched it three times and was only halfway through), it is perhaps unsurprising that The Power of the Dog was not as well received as its many nominations initially suggested.

–Claire Whitley

À lire aussi :
Why Jane Campion’s slow-burn direction works so well in the Oscar-nominated ‘The Power of the Dog’

Very few wins for the musicals

2021 saw the release of an unusually large number of musicals, some of which were nominated for Oscars. With the most nominations (and the biggest budget) was West Side Story, and we also saw Tick… Tick… Boom! and Encanto on the podium.

CODA, while not a musical per se, puts music at the centre of its story, and Summer of Soul (winner of best documentary) brings an important music historical moment back to our knowledge. In the Heights unfortunately missed out on any nominations even though it deserved some in the technical categories. Dear Evan Hansen seems already to have been justly forgotten.

The one original musical (as opposed to stage-to-screen adaptations) among the nominations, Encanto (winner of best animated film), had two of its songs performed in the ceremony: the nominated Dos Oruguitas and the year’s biggest hit We Don’t Talk About Bruno. The latter should have provided some well needed relief from music that alternated between dull (the incidental music) and sombre (the other nominated songs), but the performance was let down by a confusing staging and sound mix and unnecessarily rewritten lyrics.

The box office and award disappointment of most of these musicals puts the future of the genre at risk. If a film as good as West Side Story fails to make back even half its budget, whether producers will continue to risk large-scale musicals is brought into question.

For now, it might only be an animated musical that can seem like a sure thing.

–Gregory Camp

A disappointing best actor winner…

Will Smith is a likeable enough film star, and he’s led numerous blockbusters throughout his career, effectively anchoring superb genre films like Independence Day, Enemy of the State, and Bad Boys.

The problem is, like many charismatic entertainers, this year’s winner for best performance by an actor is not a very good actor. He brings absolutely no nuance or originality to any of his “serious” roles. Everything he does is in his face – he tries to convince us with his eyes, with twitches of his cheeks, with stern or soft intonations of the voice, running through the gamut of expected mannerisms.

His Oscar-winning performance in King Richard is no exception. He offers a run-of-the-mill portrayal as the earnest, slightly cracked but sincere hustling father of the Williams sisters. He expresses emotion and intensity where we would expect it: he is sufficiently convincing in an obvious part in a thoroughly banal biopic.

We should not be surprised by any of this. Since excellent actor Denzel Washington won the best actor award for his role as Alonzo in Training Day (an excellent film, with a solid but very routine characterisation from Washington as the corrupt cop), no one has taken the award very seriously.

–Ari Mattes

… but a wonderful choice for actress

Unlike Smith, winner of the best performance by an actress award Jessica Chastain has acting chops, and her talent is on display in the caricaturish (but very funny) The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

Her embodiment as the real-life televangelist won’t be to everyone’s taste – and neither will the film, as a biopic its scope is already limited by the contours of reality – but Chastain is thoroughly convincing as the deluded but sincere figure who, notably, refuses to ostracise the gay community despite pressure to do so, interviewing pastor Steve Pieters, an AIDS patient, during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Graduating from Juilliard in 2003, Chastain has been impressive in numerous films, from her improvised performance in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life to her intense characterisation as Jo in John Michael McDonagh’s The Forgiven. Chastain is a solid actress whose best work, one hopes, is still to come.

–Ari Mattes

Where was the music?

As a musical event, the ceremony itself left much to be desired. The producers made a play for eclecticism by having three different musical sets: the first hour featured DJ D-Nice; a small band led by music director Adam Blackstone played in the second hour; a pit orchestra played for the rest.

We are used to hearing snippets of the film scores play while winners go to the stage, but this was mostly replaced with innocuous background music (even from the orchestra). We only heard the scores during clips of the nominated films and –perversely – the very shortest clips of all were in the nomination announcements for Best Original Score!

The chance to introduce millions of viewers to these composers’ work was limited to about two chords per score.

Hans Zimmer’s win for Best Original Score for Dune further cements his place in the film scoring firmament. As expected, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas won the award for best original song for No Time to Die, which also has a Zimmer connection (he wrote that film’s score). Their performance of the song in the ceremony was one of its few musical highlights, the composers presenting an intensely focused rendition of their work.

Just like a good film score, the musical programme of an awards ceremony should carefully take the audience on a cohesive aural journey. I hope next year’s producers make better musical decisions.

–Gregory Camp

À lire aussi :
Whoever wins this year’s music Oscar, Hans Zimmer remains the most influential composer working in Hollywood today

From a sea of pastels to bold sartorial choices

Seeing the first arrivals, it seemed that the trend for pastels might rule the fashion of the night.

There was Jessica Chastain in sparkling copper and lavender custom Gucci, Lily James in thigh-revealing pink Versace, Zoë Kravitz in Audrey Hepburn-esque delicate pink Saint Laurent sheath, Kodi Smit-McPhee in powder blue Bottega Veneta and the 15-year-old stars of King Richard, Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney in lilac Miu Miu and pale blue and pink Armani Privé, respectively.

But, as the event progressed the colours became brighter, the silhouettes bolder.

Ariana DeBose was glorious in custom tomato-red Valentino crop top and trousers, a long taffeta cape trailing behind her. She and the iconic Rita Moreno, in Carolina Herrera gown and black and white feather Adrienne Landau hat, made a delightfully striking pair.

Bold sartorial choices also came from Kristen Stewart, who opted for Chanel micro-mini shorts (and quickly swapped her stilettos for brogues); Timothée Chalamet, shirtless with his sequined black Louis Vuitton jacket; and the inimitable Zendaya in a custom, midriff-baring Valentino cropped blouse and glittering silver skirt.

Making a political statement in support of Ukraine, Youn Yuh-Jung presented the dapper Troy Kotsur with his award whilst wearing a #withrefugees blue ribbon pinned to her Chanel dress. (Multiple others wore the ribbon or Ukrainian flag pins or pocket squares).

My highlights: Uma Thurman in a chic Bottega Veneta take on her iconic Pulp Fiction dance scene look. Maggie Gyllenhaal in structured Schiaparelli. And the ever-amazing Lupita Nyong’o looking like an Oscar in gold Prada (made perfect with matching gold spectacles) presenting the award to costume designer Jenny Beavan for her incredible work on Cruella.

–Harriette Richards

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

– ref. Oscars 2022: 5 experts on the wins, the emotions, the music – and the bold frocks on the runway – https://theconversation.com/oscars-2022-5-experts-on-the-wins-the-emotions-the-music-and-the-bold-frocks-on-the-runway-179668

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amandine Schaeffer, Senior lecturer, UNSW Sydney

If you’re among the one in six Australians to experience the bitter pain of a marine stinger such as a bluebottle, you’ll know how quickly they can end a fun day at the beach.

We can’t stop the summer winds that deliver these creatures to our shores, but we can choose the safest spots to swim.

Our recent research provides the first evidence of what transports bluebottles to Australian beaches.

We found the direction a beach faces, relative to wind direction, largely determines how many bluebottles are pushed to shore. We hope these findings will help beachgoers safely plan where to take their next dip.

Delicate ocean drifters

The bluebottle is a jellyfish found mostly along Australia’s east coast.

Most bluebottle stings occur while swimming, and are the top reason people seek assistance from surf lifesavers.

Bluebottles aren’t a single animal. They’re a floating colony of individual organisms, each variously responsible for reproducing, capturing or digesting food and catching the wind.

The bluebottle’s long, trailing tentacles are designed to sting prey and creatures they feel threatened by, including humans.

Bluebottles do not swim, but drift on the ocean’s surface. Their inflated blue bladder is sensitive to aerodynamic forces and acts as a sail.

Currents drive a bluebottle’s long tentacles below the ocean’s surface and wind drives the sail above it.

The bluebottle as a sailboat

A bluebottle’s body, including the tentacles, is not aligned with its sail.

Some sails point to the left of the body, and others to the right. This quirk is thought to help populations survive.

If all bluebottle sails pointed the same way, an entire group might pick up a prevailing wind and be blown to shore. But when half the group has sails facing the other way, some individuals are blown in a different – and hopefully less perilous – direction.

Our previous research sought to shed light on bluebottle drift by examining physical equations that determine how sailboats respond to winds and currents.

That research found wind force can cause right-leaning bluebottles to drift around 50⁰ left of the downwind direction, while left-leaning individuals drift around 50⁰ to the right.

Choose your swimming spot wisely

Our latest research explored how winds and other environmental factors affect bluebottle beaching.

We analysed daily bluebottle numbers and stings at three Sydney beaches – Maroubra, Clovelly and Coogee – over four years. The project was led by Masters student Natacha Bourg.

Bluebottles numbers were highest during summer, peaking a few weeks before maximum ocean temperatures.

Cold temperatures have previously been thought to hinder bluebottle movements. But we recorded bluebottles on beaches in winter and spring, which suggests other factors are at play.

Our research found wind direction was the main factor driving bluebottles onshore. On Australia’s east coast, both northeast and southerly winds bring bluebottles towards the beach.

Crucially, we also found the shape of the coastline, and its orientation relative to prevailing winds, affects the rate of bluebottle arrivals.

Maroubra faces east and is the longest and most wind-exposed of the three beaches. We found a summer north-easterly wind at Maroubra led to a 24% chance of bluebottles the following day.

But at nearby Clovelly beach, the chance was just 4%. Clovelly faces south and sits relatively protected at the end of a narrow bay. However, after southerly winds, the chance of bluebottle encounter there increased to 12%.

Coogee faces south and is smaller than Maroubra. A small rocky outcrop limits exposure to the ocean and therefore exposure to bluebottles.

Overall, bluebottles were most likely to be found at Maroubra, followed by Coogee then Clovelly. This reflects their varying beach lengths and orientation with respect to prevailing winds.

Read more:
There are many ways to treat jellyfish stings – peeing on them isn’t one

Planning your day at the beach

These conclusions can be applied beyond the beaches we studied. By checking beach orientation with wind direction, we can make an educated guess as to whether the chance of encountering bluebottles is high at any beach.

We know bluebottles are pushed around 50⁰ left or right of the wind direction. So a quick drawing in your head or on the sand may tell you which nearby beach is likely to be safest.

But there are exceptions to this rule. Strong ocean currents, for example, can influence bluebottle drift, especially when winds are weaker.

Rips and the circulation of water in surf zones are also linked to bluebottle beaching.

And bluebottles can extend and contract their sails and stinging tentacles which may change the direction of their drift.

So before entering the water, take plenty of precautions against bluebottles and other dangers. Surf Life Saving Australia urges all beachgoers to:

• stop and check your surroundings
• look for rips, large waves, rocks and other hazards
• plan to stay safe, including swimming at a patrolled location
• visit beachsafe.org.au.

Read more:
The blue bottles are coming, but what exactly are these creatures?

Learning more

Further research is needed to better understand bluebottles, including how climate change, and subsequent warming oceans, will affect their drift.

Citizen science provides a powerful opportunity to learn about bluebottle distribution, size and arrival at our beaches.

Next time you see bluebottles at the beach, take photos and upload them to this project in the iNaturalist app.

In this way, you can help researchers discover more secrets of these beautiful marine creatures – which will hopefully lead to fewer painful bluebottle encounters.

Read more:
Going to the beach this Easter? Here are four ways we’re not being properly protected from jellyfish

Dr Jasmin C Lawes works for Surf Life Saving Australia.

Amandine Schaeffer 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. Want to avoid a bluebottle sting? Here’s how to predict which beach they’ll land on – https://theconversation.com/want-to-avoid-a-bluebottle-sting-heres-how-to-predict-which-beach-theyll-land-on-179947

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing and Deputy Head (Learning & Teaching), School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University

As we head towards winter, the likelihood of picking up a pesky cold increases. But COVID changes how we approach sore throats and runny noses.

If you have cold symptoms and return negative rapid antigen tests, isolating isn’t mandatory – but it’s a good idea. But how long should you stay away from others when you have a cold?

Generally, you’re infectious until your symptoms clear, and should stay away until you’re well again. Passing your cold onto others can mean unnecessary COVID testing for them.

Some people may have a lingering cough or other symptoms when they’re past the normal infectious period. If your RAT is clear for COVID and your symptoms linger, it’s a good idea to consult your GP to rule out other infections or complications.

Read more:
Health Check: I feel a bit sick, should I stay home or go to work?

What causes ‘the common cold’?

Unlike other infectious diseases with one specific cause – such as COVID, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2 – the “common cold” is a viral upper respiratory tract infection with a set of classic signs and symptoms, but which is not caused by one specific virus.

The common cold is most frequently caused by more than 100 different human rhinovirus serotypes (viruses within one species with the same number and type of surface proteins).

Colds can also be caused by multiple other viruses including common cold human coronaviruses, parainfluenza viruses, adenoviruses and others.

We repeatedly get colds because when we develop immunity to one type of virus that can cause colds, another comes along to which we don’t have immunity. Some of these mutate over time and “escape” from the antibodies we have produced to a previous infection.

While we tend to think of colds as harmless, in the very young, the elderly or others with less robust immune systems they can cause serious illness. This can result in hospitalisation and can trigger asthma in susceptible people.

How are colds transmitted?

Cold viruses are transmitted through touching your eyes, mouth, nose or food with hands contaminated by viruses, by direct contact with others, or by inhaling contaminated aerosols.

Pre-school children have six to eight (or more) colds per year.

Children appear to be key drivers of community transmission and bring the infection home from pre-school or school.

Adults then take the infections into their workplaces. Poor ventilation in workplaces may increase the risk of exposure to cold viruses.

Colds are more common in autumn, winter and spring, or in the rainy season if you live in the tropics.

Common cold life cycle

The median incubation period (the most common time it takes to develop symptoms) can vary greatly from about half a day to five and half days, depending on which virus is involved.

In a rhinovirus infection it’s roughly two days, although symptoms can occur in as little as half a day.

Generally, you’re likely to be infectious one to two days before developing symptoms and while you have symptoms.

Adults and adolescents usually recover from their symptoms in around seven to ten days. Coughs may last longer for some people, particularly younger children.

What symptoms do you get and why?

Inflammation from the infection can cause a number of symptoms, including a sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, sneezing and cough.

The runny nose occurs because a chemical called histamine makes your blood vessels more leaky. Your snot starts out clear and runny. Over time it will tend to thicken.

As your immune cells fight off the infection, some white blood cells will die, changing snot colour. As the immune response kicks into high gear, white blood cells called neutrophils produce an infection-fighting chemical (myeloperoxidase) that has a green colour.

When lots of neutrophils die in the process of fighting the virus, the myeloperoxidase causes green snot.

If your runny nose persists for an extended period, or you develop facial pain, you may have acquired a sinus infection.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why does my snot turn green when I have a cold?

How to prevent catching and transmitting colds

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend the following precautions to reduce the risk to others:

• stay home while symptomatic (and keep sick kids home from school or daycare). For most people, this will be about seven to ten days

• if you need to cough or sneeze, do so into your elbow. If using tissues, dispose of contaminated tissues and wash your hands afterwards

• wash or sanitise your hands frequently because rhinoviruses can linger on fingers and objects for several hours

• transmission occurs when you’re in close proximity to others. So you may choose to work from home, if possible. If you can’t, keep your distance from your co-workers

• given aerosol transmission is possible, depending on the virus involved, you could also wear a mask at work for a week or two after your symptoms have cleared or if you have returned to work with a lingering cough

• disinfect frequently touched surfaces.

Finally, train yourself to avoid touching your face. One study compared upper respiratory tract infections in two groups – one that handwashed only, and one that handwashed and used a Smartwatch with a sensor to track hand movements and give reminders about not touching the face.

The group with the hand-tracking and reminders touched their faces less frequently and had a 53% reduction in upper respiratory tract infections.

Thea van de Mortel teaches into the Graduate Infection Prevention and Control programs at Griffith University.

– ref. Why do I (and my kids) get so many colds? And with all this COVID around, should we be isolating too? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-and-my-kids-get-so-many-colds-and-with-all-this-covid-around-should-we-be-isolating-too-179302

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jago Dodson, Professor of Urban Policy and Director, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

As high global oil prices, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, drive up the price of fuel and many other things too, there’s pressure on Australian politicians to offer some relief.

There are calls for the federal government to cut the fuel excise (currently 44.2 cents a litre) and for state governments to also respond.

The Tasmanian government is making bus services free for five weeks to offset cost of living increases. In New Zealand the government has halved fares.

But free public transport risks worsening social inequalities in Australian cities by benefiting wealthier households over the less affluent. From an overall welfare perspective, it’s economically regressive policy, contradicting the progressive positioning usually favoured by its proponents.

Read more:
High petrol prices hurt, but cutting excise would harm energy security

Mapping transport networks

On average, about 80% of travel in Australian cities is undertaken by private vehicles, but car dependence differs significantly by area.

People who live in inner and middle suburbs and work in the CBD use public transport at much higher rates than residents and workers in outer and fringe suburban areas.

This is principally because public transport services are generally much better in inner and middle suburbs, and serve CBD-focused journeys well. The further a worker is located from the CBD, the more they are likely to be forced to rely on private automobiles and travel to dispersed workplaces.

Public transport service quality

The first map shows Melbourne’s public transport network service quality. In the green areas, services are frequent and connected; in the black areas, they are residual.

Vulnerability to fuel price increases

The second map shows the economic vulnerability of households to higher fuel prices as well as inflation and mortgage interest rate rises. The areas of greatest vulnerability almost exactly match the areas with poor public transport service.

The third map shows the distribution of Melbourne households by weekly income. There are variations but poorer regions tend to poorly serviced by public transport.

Occupation, income and transport costs

These pattern of households in poorer areas being more dependent on private transport generally apply in every major Australian city (with some variance).

Research we’ve done using census data shows the commuting cost burden – the proportion of income spent on transport – for the average service worker in the retail and hospitality sectors is double that of a professional in the scientific and financial sectors.

The following map shows the commuting patterns for retail and hospitality workers who travel by car. These are highly dispersed, and largely in the areas poorly served by public transport. Making inadequate public transport free won’t help them much.

Now, by contrast, consider the commuting patterns for professional scientific and financial workers commuting by public transport. Free public transport will benefit them greatly.

What needs to be done

So what what would be a less regressive response to higher fuel prices?

In the short term the best response is income assistance, targeted to those who need it most. In the longer term the best response is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and increase household resilience through greater wage and income equity.

Making public transport cheaper is less important than providing better and more equitably distributed services. This could be funded by cancelling road projects that entrench automobile dependence – such as Melbourne’s A$16 billion North East Link toll tunnel project – and spending the money on outer suburban public transport upgrades.

Another change would be to ensure new suburbs are built with good public transport services at the outset. Currently, plans for new growth areas don’t require an accompanying integrated public transport network plan and rollout program. This should be mandatory so there’s public transport in new suburbs from the outset.

Measures could also include incentives to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, but these also require care to ensure subsidies do not just benefit wealthier purchasers who can afford a new car while those on lower income driving older cars miss out.

Read more:
Cut emissions, not petrol tax; fund childcare, not beer. What economists want from next week’s budget

While there’s a push now to slash the fuel excise duty, there’s a long term case for actually increasing it, based on international evidence showing higher fuel taxes do shift travel behaviour away from cars and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

A generalised carbon price could have a similar affect and help drive down emissions. However, the regressive aspects of increased taxation would also need to be addressed through income measures and ensuring the extra revenue is used to improve public transport in oil-vulnerable suburbs.

The authors’ research presented in this article was supported by funding from the National Environmental Science Program Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub and the Australian Urban Infrastructure Research Network.

Tiebei (Terry) Li receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub and the Australian Urban Infrastructure Research Network.

– ref. 5 maps that show why free public transport benefits the affluent most – https://theconversation.com/5-maps-that-show-why-free-public-transport-benefits-the-affluent-most-179847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

The pandemic has been a wake-up call. Now, more than ever, the arts are a part of our daily lives. They are not something only “the elite” enjoy; they are an expression of the human condition.

As part of an interconnected system of collective well-being, it is vital to ensure arts practices continue across our entire community, and that everyone has access to them.

The arts reflect our whole culture, and our cultures are what make us who we are. When our culture is at the heart of our collective life, appropriate funding and support will naturally follow.

To move away from reductive concepts we need to think about what we understand by “the arts” and what they mean to us. What do we understand by “culture” and how does it manifest in our lives?

If we start by asking these questions, we can make more sense of the debate and find a way forward that works in our own unique cultural, social and political context.

Read more:
The year everything got cancelled: how the arts in Australia suffered (but survived) in 2020

There is abundant evidence to show the government’s financial support for the arts and culture has been significantly reduced over many years. Today the arts don’t even rate a mention in the title of the government department responsible for them.

Even worse, grants have been routinely awarded to communities in marginal electorates for party political purposes. Yet we know the arts are a public good and Australia is a wealthy country that can afford to provide adequate funding for them. So what needs to change?

For the past 20 years arts advocates have asked for a national cultural policy or a national arts plan. This has been reinforced by recommendations from two parliamentary committees within the past seven years.

Yet, aside from Labor’s short-lived Creative Australia in 2013, there has been no attempt since 1994 to address the needs of the sector or create a comprehensive plan for the future at a national level.

Read more:
Paul Keating’s Creative Nation: a policy document that changed us

Relying on the political goodwill of governments to bring about change does not seem to be effective. Policy developed by one side of politics can be quickly undone when the opposition comes to power, and little bipartisan progress is made.

Establishing an Australian Ministry for Culture

Many countries resolve this problem with a Ministry for Culture.

An Australian Ministry of Culture might include the arts, First Nations arts and heritage, public broadcasting, film and cultural heritage in its ambit. All these areas are interconnected through their association with “culture”. Placing them together in an integrated and central location would help bring “culture” into the political mainstream.

While there might be concerns a Ministry of Culture could extend government control over arts practice, this could be prevented by use of the arm’s length principle of funding and peer review. Political intervention in grant decisions is in no one’s interest and reduces the credibility of the government and the minister concerned.

As part of a national cultural heritage framework, all major cultural organisations could then be funded directly by the government from within this department.

The list would include our major galleries, libraries, museums, archives and other national entities that are already direct-line funded, such as Screen Australia and the Australia Council.

It could also include the major performing arts organisations, as they also represent aspects of our cultural heritage. That is, the state orchestras, the national opera company and perhaps a national theatre company.

Having a ministry that took responsibility for everything within the ambit of culture would ensure national protocols were put in place to protect the national interest against the commercial interests of private enterprise.

All public broadcasting would be part of this ministry to prevent private market forces from dominating the discourse. Entities such as the ABC, SBS and NITV enjoy public trust and are critical to the national public debate, freedom of expression and the right of citizens to hold politicians and their governments to account.

They have also played a significant role in presenting Australian stories and commissioning work from Australian writers, filmmakers and performers.

SBS has challenged the homogeneous norms of Australian culture and ethnicity and ensured the inclusion of a range of voices in the public space. NITV has provided a voice for our First Nations people and raised awareness and understanding of the culture within the wider population.

Middle-size and smaller arts organisations and individual artists would continue to be funded by the Australia Council; and film would continue to be funded through Screen Australia.

It might also be helpful to establish a new statutory authority, similar to the Australian Foundation for Culture and Humanities that was lost in a change of government 23 years ago. This entity could address the gap between community cultural heritage, local history and community arts, and ensure grants were awarded at arm’s length from political interests.

Obviously, the new entity would not be a cure-all, but it would allow the development of a critical mass of shared interests and knowledge that would benefit the country.

A wealthy country

A plan for future development of the arts and culture is also essential. A plan would allow goals to be set and ensure the decisions of government were proactive rather than reactive.

The pandemic experience has demonstrated that if we don’t develop clear policies, then sectors that are excluded from the political framework, such as the arts, could be sent to the wall.

Australia needs to mature as a nation by taking its arts and culture seriously, and a Ministry of Culture would provide a central platform for the nation’s identity.

We must all take responsibility for caring for our country and our culture. This means placing the arts at the centre of our thinking. We can do this – and we need to do this – to ensure our nation has a positive and creative future.

We are a wealthy country both materially and culturally. We need to acknowledge this and then act upon it, to ensure all future generations can enjoy their culture and practise their arts.

As our First Nations’ people have told us, arts, culture and country are all one.

This is an edited extract of New Platform Paper 2: Arts, Culture and Country, republished with permission from Currency House. The full paper is now available for free on www.currrencyhouse.org.au

Jo Caust has previously received from the Australia Council.
She is a member of NAVA and the Arts Industry Council (SA).

– ref. It is time for Australia to establish a national Ministry for Culture – https://theconversation.com/it-is-time-for-australia-to-establish-a-national-ministry-for-culture-180026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kayla Stefanidis, Research Fellow, University of the Sunshine Coast

Speeding is more common among people regularly exposed to material encouraging speeding, our new study suggests.

Our research, published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, found self-reported exposure to content promoting or encouraging speeding on social media and mass media (e.g., movies, television or gaming) was higher in speeders compared to non-speeders.

Speeders also believed their friends more frequently engaged in speeding.

Speeding is a major road safety problem that contributes to many injuries and fatalities in Australia.

So it’s important to examine factors that may encourage speeding and contribute to making it socially acceptable.

Read more:
Speeding drivers keep breaking the law even after fines and crashes: new research

Self-reported exposure levels significantly higher in speeders

For our study, a total of 628 Queensland motorists (263 men and 365 women aged between 17 and 88 years) completed an online anonymous survey.

The survey included questions about:

• their own speeding behaviour (specifically, how often they exceed the speed limit by more than 10km/h)

• how often they believe they saw content on social media and mass media (such as TV, movies or gaming) encouraging or promoting speeding

• how often they thought their friends exceeded the speed limit.

Overall, the study found:

• half of the sample admitted they exceeded the speed limit more than 10% of the time they drive

• on average, participants believed they came across social media content encouraging speeding behaviour 29% of the time while using social media

• on average, they believed they came across mass media content encouraging speeding behaviour 40% of the time

• on average, they believed their friends exceeded the speed limit 39% of the time

• self-reported exposure levels across all these sources (mass media, social media and friends) were significantly higher in speeders than non-speeders.

Read more:
Caught red-handed: automatic cameras will spot mobile-using motorists, but at what cost?

Unpacking the link between what we see and how we act

Our findings suggest many people believe they are regularly exposed to pro-speeding content online or via friends, and this might increase their risk of speeding in the real world.

The findings are consistent with studies showing social media, mass media and one’s peers can all influence subsequent risk-taking behaviour.

Nevertheless, further research is needed. We are yet to clarify whether increasing exposure to this kind of content directly increases the propensity to speed. Conversely, it could be that people who engage in speeding seek out pro-speeding material because they like it, or notice it more than others because they’re more attuned to it.

We also need to determine if people’s estimations of how often they’re exposed to such images are accurate.

For example, the respondents’ estimation of pro-speeding messages was extremely high, which raises questions about whether some individuals are more sensitive to online content that reinforces pre-existing attitudes or behaviour.

In other words, they might be more likely to notice, process and remember speeding messages, simply because they have favourable attitudes towards speeding or regularly engage in it.

There is clearly a need for future research to examine the impact of online messaging on our attitudes and behaviour. This could help determine how what we see on TV, hear from friends and consume on social media relates to real world driving behaviour.

This research was funded by the Motor Accident Insurance Commission.

James Freeman works at the University of the Sunshine Coast Road Safety Research Collaboration (USCRSRC) that receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC)

Verity Truelove receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC).

– ref. Speeding is more common among people regularly exposed to content encouraging speeding – https://theconversation.com/speeding-is-more-common-among-people-regularly-exposed-to-content-encouraging-speeding-175066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Muneera Bano, Senior Lecturer, Software Engineering, Deakin University

I was recently reading comments on a post related to COVID-19, and saw a reply I would classify as misinformation, bordering on conspiracy. I couldn’t help but ask the commenter for evidence.

Their response came with some web links and “do your own research”. I then asked about their research methodology, which turned out to be searching for specific terms on Google.

As an academic, I was intrigued. Academic research aims to establish the truth of a phenomenon based on evidence, analysis and peer review.

On the other hand, a search on Google provides links with content written by known or unknown authors, who may or may not have knowledge in that area, based on a ranking system that either follows the preferences of the user, or the collective popularity of certain sites.

In other words, Google’s algorithms can penalise the truth for not being popular.

Google Search’s ranking system has a fraction of a second to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages, and index them to find the most relevant and (ideally) useful information.

Somewhere along the way, mistakes get made. And it’ll be a while before these algorithms become foolproof – if ever. Until then, what can you do to make sure you’re not getting the short end of the stick?

One question, millions of answers

There are around 201 known factors on which a website is analysed and ranked by Google’s algorithms. Some of the main ones are:

• the specific key words used in the search
• the meaning of the key words
• the relevance of the web page, as assessed by the ranking algorithm
• the “quality” of the contents
• the usability of the web page
• and user-specific factors such as their location and profiling data taken from connected Google products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps.

Research has shown users pay more attention to higher-ranked results on the first page. And there are known ways to ensure a website makes it to the first page.

One of these is “search engine optimisation”, which can help a web page float into the top results even if its content isn’t necessarily quality.

The other issue is Google Search results are different for different people, sometimes even if they have the exact same search query.

Results are tailored to the user conducting the search. In his book The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser points out the dangers of this – especially when the topic is of a controversial nature.

Personalised search results create alternate versions of the flow of information. Users receive more of what they’ve already engaged with (which is likely also what they already believe).

This leads to a dangerous cycle which can further polarise people’s views, and in which more searching doesn’t necessarily mean getting closer to the truth.

A work in progress

While Google Search is a brilliant search engine, it’s also a work in progress. Google is continuously addressing various issues related to its performance.

One major challenge relates to societal biases concerning race and gender. For example, searching Google Images for “truck driver” or “president” returns images of mostly men, whereas “model” and “teacher” returns images of mostly women.

While the results may represent what has historically been true (such as in the case of male presidents), this isn’t always the same as what is currently true – let alone representative of the world we wish to live in.

Some years ago, Google reportedly had to block its image recognition algorithms from identifying “gorillas”, after they began classifying images of black people with the term.

Another issue highlighted by health practitioners relates to people self diagnosing based on symptoms. It’s estimated about 40% of Australians search online for self diagnoses, and there are about 70,000 health-related searches conducted on Google each minute.

There can be serious repercussions for those who incorrectly interpret information found through “Dr Google” – not to mention what this means in the midst of a pandemic.

Google has delivered a plethora of COVID misinformation related to unregistered medicines, fake cures, mask effectiveness, contact tracing, lockdowns and, of course, vaccines.

According to one study, an estimated 6,000 hospitalisations and 800 deaths during the first few months of the pandemic were attributable to misinformation (specifically the false claim that drinking methanol can cure COVID).

To combat this, Google eventually prioritised authoritative sources in its search results. But there’s only so much Google can do.

We each have a responsibility to make sure we’re thinking critically about the information we come across. What can you do to make sure you’re asking Google the best question for the answer you need?

Read more:
Is Google getting worse? Increased advertising and algorithm changes may make it harder to find what you’re looking for

How to Google smarter

In summary, a Google Search user must be aware of the following facts:

1. Google Search will bring you the top-ranked web pages which are also the most relevant to your search terms. Your results will be as good as your terms, so always consider context and how the inclusion of certain terms might affect the result.

2. You’re better off starting with a simple search, and adding more descriptive terms later. For instance, which of the following do you think is a more effective question: “will hydroxychloroquine help cure my COVID?” or “what is hydroxychloroquine used for?”

3. Quality content comes from verified (or verifiable) sources. While scouring through results, look at the individual URLs and think about whether that source holds much authority (for instance, is it a government website?). Continue this process once you’re in the page, too, always checking for author credentials and information sources.

4. Google may personalise your results based on your previous search history, current location and interests (gleaned through other products such as Gmail, YouTube or Maps). You can use incognito mode to prevent these factors from impacting your search results.

5. Google Search isn’t the only option. And you don’t just have to leave your reading to the discretion of its algorithms. There are several other search engines available, including Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Sometimes it’s good to triangulate your results from outside the filter bubble.

Read more:
Australia’s competition watchdog says Google has a monopoly on online advertising — but how does it work?

Muneera Bano 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. There is, in fact, a ‘wrong’ way to use Google. Here are 5 tips to set you on the right path – https://theconversation.com/there-is-in-fact-a-wrong-way-to-use-google-here-are-5-tips-to-set-you-on-the-right-path-179099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney

The latest National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) quarterly report shows the average plan size per participant fell 4% between 2020 and 2021.

This confirms what many disability advocates have been warning about for some time: that the government is seeking to rein in costs of the NDIS by reducing individual plans.

While 4% does not sound a lot, the impact is being felt more by some groups, and some future changes mean care funding may get worse in the future.

Read more:
Explainer: how much does the NDIS cost and where does this money come from?

Making the NDIS sustainable

For some time, the government has been warning the NDIS is financially unsustainable, with predictions spending on the NDIS could grow to A$40.7 billion in 2024–25. This figure is more than $8.8 billion above what the government estimated the NDIS would cost annually.

There have been criticisms, by disability advocates and also Labour opposition, of these estimates of a cost blowout, so at the end of last year the government commissioned a review of these predictions, known as the Taylor Francis report.

This report confirmed the baseline estimates for the NDIS are likely a moderate underestimate, but the upper predictions are probably a slight overestimate.

The higher than anticipated costs for the scheme seem to be largely driven by a greater number of participants entering the scheme than originally projected, and fewer children (0–14 years) exiting the scheme, rather than increases in participant spending.

Read more:
Women, rural and disadvantaged Australians may be missing out on care in the NDIS

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA – the agency that runs the NDIS) has cited concerns over its financial sustainability, and it appears to be attempting to reduce costs by reducing individual budgets to participants.

Last year we saw the proposed introduction of Independent Assessments fail. The government argued these were an important mechanism to improve equity of access to the scheme, but many in the disability sphere were opposed to these as they were seen as a cost-cutting measure designed to reduce the average plan size.

Read more:
NDIS independent assessments are off the table for now. That’s a good thing — the evidence wasn’t there

Around the same time these measures were being explored, there were reports the NDIA had created a task force aiming to cut growth in funding packages and participant numbers.

The government argues this task force is no longer active, but over the past few months we have seen many NDIS participants report they have had their funding package cut during their regular review.

What does this mean for NDIS participants?

The headline figure of an average of 4% reduction does not seem like a lot, and represents a shift in the average plan from $71,200 in 2020 to $68,500 in 2021. But as that’s an average, some people would be worse affected, and the overall trend is concerning.

Read more:
The NDIS is delivering ‘reasonable and necessary’ supports for some, but others are missing out

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t give much detail on who is experiencing the cuts, but we do know 34% of participants saw a cut of more than 5% in their budget in the last six months of last year. That’s 3% more than in 2020-21 and 10% more than in 2019-20.

There has also been a large increase in the number of people disputing these decisions. Between July 2021 and January 2022, an extra 1,423 people with disability have asked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review, a 400% increase in people disputing their NDIS plan.

Not only do these disputes take time and effort on the part of the individuals contesting plans, but the NDIA also spends a lot on external legal firms to represent them at these reviews. In 2020-21 we saw a 30% increase in spending on legal firms, bringing this amount to $17.3 million.

For individual participants these cuts can be devastating. It means existing supports that facilitate their lives disappear overnight. Some people will lose independence and suffer significant disruption to the lives of them and their entire families. All of this can provoke severe anxiety and distress.

Read more:
Understanding the NDIS: many eligible people with disabilities are likely to miss out

It is not just the individual NDIS participant who feels the impact of packages being cut. One of the original drivers for the scheme was the argument that introducing the NDIS would prove a good return on investment because it would support more people with disability and their families to enter the workforce.

For many, the supports the NDIS has provided to their family members have allowed them to go back to work. But there have been several recent media stories about family members who are going to have to quit work following NDIS cuts and move on to welfare payments. While costs to the NDIS might be lower, the overall government spend will be higher.

More changes ahead

For some, the cuts to plans will also be accompanied by changes that are being made to the NDIS Price Guide. From the middle of this year, disability service workers will need to be paid for a shift that is at least two hours long rather than the previous one hour.

Those who work broken shifts will also get an additional allowance and changes are being made around client cancellation rules. All of these mean participants may find their plans do not go as far as they did before. NDIS participants may be in for a more tough time than ever in the months ahead.

Everyone wants a financially sustainable NDIS, most of all people with disability and their families, but this cannot be achieved by simply cutting individual budgets and causing trauma for people with disability and their families.

Read more:
Understanding the NDIS: how does the scheme work and am I eligible for funding?

Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC, ACT government, ANZSOG and CYDA.

Anne Kavanagh receives funding from NHMRC, ARC, ANROWS, Commonwealth government and Victorian government.

– ref. What we know about the NDIS cuts, and what they’ll mean for people with disability and their families – https://theconversation.com/what-we-know-about-the-ndis-cuts-and-what-theyll-mean-for-people-with-disability-and-their-families-179748

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Gauld, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean, University of Otago

This year significant reforms to New Zealand’s health care system will be introduced. But to achieve its goals of an equitable system, the government needs to make deeper changes than it has proposed.

For two decades, New Zealand has had 20 district health boards (DHBs) planning and funding local services and owning public hospitals, and 30 primary health organisations to coordinate GP and related primary care services. These will no longer exist.

DHB functions will be absorbed within a new national body, Health NZ. GP and primary care services will be delivered through new “locality networks”. A new Māori Health Authority will work on behalf of Māori, planning and funding services, in partnership with Health NZ. A series of regional offices will facilitate the work of Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority.

The reforms are significant and underpinned by important goals: to bring equity and national consistency into the health system, between people and regions, with a strong focus on improving services and outcomes for Māori and other groups. Improving patient experience through better integrating care and processes is also a key aim.

But neither of these goals will be achieved unless issues related to the underlying institutional arrangements are tackled.

Equity requires a better funding model

Let us not forget that the foundations for how healthcare is delivered today in New Zealand were created in a historic compromise between the government and medical profession over 80 years ago when the government sought to create a national health service. The compromise split primary care from hospital services and allowed development of parallel public and private hospital sectors.

Two key changes to the proposed reforms need to be made.

First, in common with the UK and others, New Zealand healthcare is tax funded. This is a simple method where government funding is allocated to the public sector to provide services, some then procured from private providers.

Tax funded systems usually feature public hospital waiting lists and service restrictions, along with considerable government responsibility for planning and providing services. With longstanding under-investment in healthcare services, the UK and New Zealand governments are both being criticised at present for failing to adequately plan for an event such as COVID-19.

Read more:
No one is mourning the end of district health boards, but rebuilding trust in the system won’t be easy

New Zealand’s historic compromise allowed for public hospital doctors to also build a private practice. New Zealanders with private insurance or deep pockets routinely pay to see them, rather than wait for public treatment (some only work publicly; some only private; many work in both sectors). Many conditions will never be treated publicly.

This means considerable suffering and disadvantage, disproportionately falling on Māori, Pacifika and the less well off, which the government hopes to address with its reforms. This will not be possible without massive funding and infrastructure investment and a shift in workforce towards the public sector.

That said, reducing private practice in favour of public is politically untenable; it would require regulation, financial and other incentives. Private specialists do extremely well, leveraging off their public sector roles and training, with back up from the public system and the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).

Instead, a new funding method is needed.

It is time for a national debate around shifting from tax funding to social insurance. This is found in Germany as well as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere. Like ACC, social insurance is agnostic about who provides care and simply funds patients based on need.

Read more:
ACC’s policy of not covering birth injuries is one more sign the system is overdue for reform

If introduced in New Zealand, the private sector could continue to function as it does, alongside public hospitals, but all patients would receive the same access to care regardless of ability to pay.

A fundamental element of social insurance is delivering on equity. Social insurance is funded by payroll and employer contributions with a corresponding drop in taxes. There is no perfect health funding model. Tax funding will not solve our equity challenges, given our institutional structures. Unless the government is prepared to nationalise service provision, social insurance offers an important alternative.

Divided funding will undermine the system

The second necessary change is in the allocation of funding to primary and hospital care. From mid-year, the split between these two sectors will be exacerbated as the two will be funded quite separately, undermining efforts at whole system integration.

Locality networks will presumably be funded where they can show a range of primary care providers are working collaboratively to manage a population. Hospitals will continue to be funded by Health NZ, in partnership with the Māori Health Authority, rather than the DHBs.

Read more:
New authority could transform Māori health, but only if it’s a leader, not a partner

A bold government would combine and place the two funding lines between primary care and hospitals, requiring a collaborative approach to service delivery. This would take away boundaries between primary and hospital care and instead place the focus on how the different providers work to build a system.

The Labour-led government is taking important steps to address challenges in New Zealand’s health system. Goals of equity, service integration and responding to Te Tiriti o Waitangi are laudable.

But it will be a struggle to deliver on these goals without the two key changes outlined above. These would be significant and challenging. Without them, we can predict another round of reforms in future to address the same problems the current efforts will fail on.

Robin Gauld receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

– ref. New Zealand’s health restructure is doomed to fall short unless its funding model is tackled first – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-health-restructure-is-doomed-to-fall-short-unless-its-funding-model-is-tackled-first-179935

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nial Wheate, Associate Professor of the Sydney Pharmacy School, University of Sydney

For the sixth time in the last 25 years, the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching. During bleaching events, people are quick to point the finger at different causes, including sunscreen.

Why sunscreen? Some active ingredients can wash off snorkelers and into the reef, contaminating the area. So could this be the cause of the Barrier Reef’s bleaching?

In a word, no. I reviewed the evidence for sunscreen as a risk to coral in my new research, and found that while chemicals in sunscreen pose a risk to corals under laboratory conditions, they are only found at very low levels in real world environments.

That means when coral bleaching does occur, it is more likely to be due to the marine heatwaves and increased water temperatures that have come with climate change, as well as land-based run-off.

Why have we been concerned over the environmental impact of sunscreens?

After we apply sunscreen, the active ingredients can leach from our skin into the water. When we shower after swimming, soaps and detergents can further strip the these sunscreen chemicals off and send them into our waste water systems. They pass through treatment facilities, which cannot effectively remove them, and end up in rivers and oceans.

It’s no surprise, then, that sunscreen contamination has been detected in freshwater and seas across the globe, from Switzerland to Brazil and Hong Kong. Contamination is highest in the summer months, consistent with when people are more likely to go swimming, and peaks in the hours after people have finished swimming.

Four years ago, the Pacific island nation of Palau made world headlines by announcing plans to ban all sunscreens that contain specific synthetic active ingredients due to concern over the risk they posed to corals. Similar bans have been announced by Hawaii, as well a number of other popular tourist areas in the Americas and Caribbean.

These bans are based on independent scientific studies and commissioned reports which have found contamination from specific active ingredients in sunscreen in the water at beaches, rivers and lakes.

Read more:
There’s insufficient evidence your sunscreen harms coral reefs

Notably, the nations and regions which have banned these active ingredients, like Bonaire and Mexico, have local economies heavily reliant on summer tourism. For these areas, coral bleaching is not only an environmental catastrophe but an economic loss as well, if tourists choose to go elsewhere.

How do we know sunscreen isn’t the issue?

So if contamination concerns over these active ingredients are warranted, how can we be sure they’re not the cause of the bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef?

Put simply, the concentrations of the chemicals are too low to cause the bleaching.

The synthetic ingredients used in most products are highly hydrophobic and lipophilic. That means they shun water and love fats, making them hard to dissolve in water. They’d much prefer to stay in the skin until they break down.

Read more:
Research Check: should we be worried that the chemicals from sunscreen can get into our blood?

Because of this, the levels found in the environment are very low. How low? Think nanograms per litre (a nanogram is 0.000000001 grams) or micrograms per litre (a microgram is 0.00001 grams). Significantly higher levels are found only in waste water treatment sludge and some sediments, not in the water itself.

So how do we reconcile this with studies showing sunscreen can damage corals? Under laboratory conditions, many active ingredients in sunscreen have been found to damage corals as well as mussels, fish, small crustaceans, and plant-like organisms such as algae and phytoplankton.

The key phrase above is “under laboratory conditions”. While these studies would suggest sunscreens are a real threat to reefs, it’s important to know the context.

Studies like these are usually conducted under artificial conditions which can’t account for natural processes. They usually don’t account for the breakdown of the chemicals by sunlight or dilution through water flow and tides. These tests also use sunscreen concentrations up to thousands of times higher – milligrams per litre – compared to real world contamination levels found in collected samples.

In short, laboratory-only studies are not giving us a reliable indication of what happens to these chemicals in real world conditions.

If it’s not sunscreen, what is it?

The greatest threats to the reef are climate change, coastal development, land-based run-off like pesticides, herbicides, and other pollutants, and direct human use like illegal fishing, according to a 2019 outlook report issued by the reef’s managing body.

Reefs get their striking colours from single-celled organisms called zooxanthellae which grow and live inside corals. Importantly, these organisms only grow under very specific conditions, including narrow bands of temperature and light levels. When conditions go outside the zooxanthellaes’ preferred zone, they die and the coral turns white.

As a result, the likeliest cause of this bleaching is climate change, which has increased ocean temperatures and acidity and resulted in more flooding, storms, and cyclones which block light and stir up the ocean floor.

So do you need to worry about the impact of your sunscreen on the environment? No. Sunscreen should remain a key part of our sun protection strategy, as a way to protect skin from UV damage, prevention skin cancers, and slow the visible signs of ageing. Our coral reefs face much bigger issues than sunscreen.

Associate Professor Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the Science Director of Canngea Pty Ltd, chief scientific officer of Vairea Skincare LLC, a Board Director of the Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association, and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents.

– ref. No, sunscreen chemicals are not bleaching the Great Barrier Reef – https://theconversation.com/no-sunscreen-chemicals-are-not-bleaching-the-great-barrier-reef-179938

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

A fancy term for how stories persuade us is through “narrative transportation”.

People get transported through two main components: empathy with the characters, and imagination of the plot.

Empathy is when people develop positive feelings toward a character and identify with the character’s values and fate.

Imagination means people generate vivid images of the things a character does, so they feel as though they are doing it themselves.

The more familiar people are with a story topic and the more they are able to fantasise, the more narrative transportation increases and the more a story can change them.

Soap operas, with their long and involved storytelling and large audience reach, can be uniquely positioned to enable this narrative transportation. For decades, educational content has intentionally been placed in soap operas to spread ideas and bring about behavioural and social change.

Here are five notable examples of the persuasive power of soap operas.

Read more:
Hooked on a book, podcast or TV show? Here’s how the story changes you

1. The Archers

The first recognisable intervention was launched on radio with The Archers.

Launched in 1951 (and still on air today), BBC Radio and the UK Ministry of Agriculture created this “everyday story of country folk” to encourage farmers to try new techniques to increase productivity.

Set in the fictional town of Ambridge, the series follows the lives of the residents who live there, and in particular their work in the nearby towns. Over its run it has included obscure details of pig husbandary and milking-parlour technology alongside its more generalist entertainment.

2. Secret of the Land

Secret of the Land started airing on Egyptian television in 1989, and, like the Archers, the series was established to encourage better farming practices.

At the heart of the show was a funny, but not-too-well-educated farmer. More experienced farmers, including the mayor of the village and an agricultural engineer, humorously critique and reform his not-too-smart agricultural decisions and daily actions in the field.

By showing the older and wiser farmers consulting with government-appointed agricultural experts, the series also successfully increased the experts’ credibility among the viewing farmers.

3. Soul City

In its fourth season, the popular South African soap Soul City (broadcast from 1994 to 2014) portrayed how neighbours might intervene in a domestic violence situation.

The prevailing cultural norm in South Africa at the end of the 90s was for neighbours to not to intervene during the abuse. Partner abuse was considered to be a “private” matter conducted in a “private” space, with curtains drawn and behind a closed front door.

In Soul City, the neighbours collectively decided to break the ongoing cycle of spousal abuse in a neighbourhood home. While an abuser was beating his wife, they gathered around the residence and collectively banged their pots and pans, censuring the abuser’s actions.

This episode highlighted the importance of energising neighbours, who, for cultural reasons, had previously felt powerless.

After this episode was broadcast, towns throughout South Africa reported pot banging to stop partner abuse.

4. Taru

The purpose of the Indian radio soap opera Taru was to promote caste harmony, community development, gender equality, small family size and reproductive health.

Broadcast from 2002 to 2003, the soap revolved around Taru, a young, educated woman who worked for the village health and community centre. Taru was idealistic, intelligent and polite as she worked to empower rural women.

Taru was friends with her coworker, Shashikant, who belongs to a lower caste. The cast villagers discriminated against him, even as he prevented a child marriage and encouraged girls to be treated on par with boys.

Taru’s mother Yashoda was highly supportive of her daughter’s friendship with Shashikant, but Mangla, Taru’s rogue brother, derided Taru’s social work, and ridiculed her friendship with the lower-caste Shashikant.

With Taru, Shashikant, and Yashoda as positive role models, the soap inspired communities to stop child marriages, launch adult literacy programs for dalit (low-caste) women, and welcome dalits to social events.

5. Cut Your Coat

The “well planned family” was the centre of the Nepalese soap Cut Your Coat According to Your Cloth (broadcast between 1996 and 2003), which encouraged spouses to plan their families to suit their own interests and make choices jointly.

In the series, two village elders vied for power, and community members struggled to reconcile contemporary concerns with traditional values. Colourful heroes and villains, and plenty of suspense, kept the audience eager to tune into the next episode.

Among these high-octane stories were subtler storylines about spacing between births and limiting family size. In this way, the series encouraged women to express their aspirations and concerns about reproduction and family in a culture that traditionally offered little opportunity for women to do so. It empowered women to speak openly to people in authority such as health workers and community leaders.

Surveys showed that while the national Nepalese use of contraceptives remained steady around 39%, contraceptive use in the areas where the soap was broadcast rose from 36% to 49%.

Read more:
A very special episode: how TV shows can be powerful tools for public health

Tom van Laer 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. Agricultural productivity, sex education and gender equity: 5 times soap operas enabled social change – https://theconversation.com/agricultural-productivity-sex-education-and-gender-equity-5-times-soap-operas-enabled-social-change-176566

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

Scott Morrison finally got his way at the weekend when the Liberal federal executive agreed to candidates for several key NSW seats being picked by a three-person committee rather than the rank and file having their say.

The executive decision culminates a long and extraordinary saga, in which Morrison’s factional ally, minister Alex Hawke, had obstructed preselection contests being called.

Imminent preselection ballots in Parramatta, Hughes and Eden-Monaro have now been cancelled. A preselection in Warringah was expected to be run, but won’t be held.

The executive decided the PM, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, and a former Liberal federal president Chris McDiven would choose the candidates for these and a number of other NSW seats.

This course flies in the face of a push in recent years for internal democracy within the NSW division, and is expected to bring a backlash from discontented party members.

The shambles which has left a swathe of seats without Liberal candidates until so close to the election reflects the dysfunction of the division due to extreme factional infighting, including the determination of the minority Morrison-Hawke faction to use whatever muscle it could muster to make up for its lack of numbers.

The federal executive resisted intervening for months but eventually had to give in to Morrison’s pressure.

These particular seats are important. Hughes and Warringah are held by crossbenchers; Eden-Monaro is narrowly Labor; Parramatta will be vacant, with the Labor member retiring.

Ironically, Anthony Albanese is trying to shoehorn high profile economist Andrew Charlton, who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, into Parramatta, in the city’s west. This has angered some local Labor party members. Nominations for the Labor candidate, who will be preselected by the ALP national executive, close Monday.

Albanese told reporters at the weekend: “Andrew Charlton is someone who would make a great member of the House of Representatives. […] He would bring an extraordinary capacity.” Charlton was an advisor to then prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Also at the weekend veteran ALP senator Kim Carr abandoned his fight for political survival, announcing he would retire. There has been a prolonged fight over the Victorian ticket, that also put into limbo the late senator Kimberley Kitching’s preselection, which her friends have said put her under considerable stress before her sudden death.

Carr, in parliament since 1993, who was a minister in the Labor government, admitted in a statement he would have liked to stay on. But, he said, “issues with my health have made that inadvisable. In light of recent tragic developments, and following determined urgings from my children, I concluded that it was time for me to reassess my priorities.”

The Senate’s budget week sitting has been brought forward to Monday for condolence speeches for Kitching.

On the Liberal side, the NSW division, in a statewide mass vote, dumped senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells in favour of senator Jim Molan for third place on the Senate ticket.

The third spot will be very difficult to win but Molan, who polled strongly “below the line” last election when he was relegated to an unwinnable spot on the Coalition ticket, would have more pulling power than Fierravanti-Wells.

When Molan later filled a senate casual vacancy he said he would not recontest at this election. It seems likely if he did win Molan, 71, who has been ill, would retire some time into the term, providing a casual vacancy for the Liberals to fill.

The last minute preselection flurries come as the government prepares to deliver on Tuesday the budget that will be its launch pad for the May election.

While voters will be focused on what the budget offers on cost of living, the government will also highlight infrastructure, saying its rolling 10-year infrastructure investment pipeline will increase from $110 billion to over $120 billion. It said on Sunday that the budget would commit $17.9 billion towards new and existing infrastructure projects in the pipeline.

Speculation about cost of living measures centres on cash payments for low and middle income earners, and for pensioners, and some relief on fuel excise.

At the weekend, Morrison was back campaigning in Western Australia where the government has several seats at risk.

Asked whether pensioners would get the planned cost of living bonus Morrison said, “we have got a cost of living package, which works right across the Australian community”,

Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers indicated Labor would not make a fight of budget action on fuel excise, which many experts say would be bad policy.

“The expectation I think broadly […] is some kind of temporary cut to the fuel excise. We’re unlikely to stand in the way of that,” Chalmers told the ABC.

He also made clear a Labor government’s first budget would cut money for contractors and consultants in the public service and for “discretionary funds where ministers have been rorting funding for political purposes rather than for an economic dividend”.

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. Morrison wins battle to head off rank-and-file preselections, as government readies to deliver vote-bait budget – https://theconversation.com/morrison-wins-battle-to-head-off-rank-and-file-preselections-as-government-readies-to-deliver-vote-bait-budget-180100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney

Wimbledon, the most iconic tennis grand slam, is considering its position on the participation of Russian nationals.

The British sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, recently suggested that for any Russian to play at Wimbledon, “assurances” might be needed about their position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Absolutely nobody flying the flag for Russia should be allowed or enabled. We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to try and get some assurances along those lines.

The All England Lawn and Tennis Club is in discussions with the sports minister about the nature of any assurances and whether they would be applied at Wimbledon.

Umpire’s call

It now seems likely that Russian players, including the second-ranked male player, Daniil Medvedev and top women like Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, will be expected to divest themselves of symbols and language linking them with the Russian state, and commit to taking part at Wimbledon as “neutrals”.

Medvedev has taken a step in this direction already, removing the Russian flag from his social media profiles. He also stated a wish for world peace.

However, the generic statement of hoping for peace isn’t the same as taking a position on a war in which one’s country is the antagonist. Medvedev is himself taking a neutral position on a war the British government opposes.

Make no mistake: the Wimbledon tournament – hosted by a NATO country – is more than an exhibition of tennis. It’s also a demonstration of what Britain regards as appropriate, which is unlikely to be diplomacy and accommodation.

Huddleston seems only comfortable with Russian athletes who either oppose the war or do not support it, and thus are prepared to distance themselves from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In or out?

The global angst against Putin has been so profound that sport itself has been compelled to come out behind its customary veil of “neutrality” in political matters. As such, sports organisations around the world have taken positions on the participation of both Russian and Belarusian teams and athletes.

One response has been exclusion, with an expectation that isolating Russian teams from world sport is a necessary affront to the largest military invasion in Europe since the second world war. That’s the position taken by swimming, athletics and soccer.

However, some sports bodies, such as tennis and biathlon, are allowing Russian and Belarusian individuals to compete under the proviso they do as “neutrals”. Tennis bodies have, however, suspended both Russian and Belarusian players from team-based competitions.

Read more:
Sports are political: Reaction and inaction to Putin’s war of aggression

Even the staid International Olympic Committee, which has long refused to take positions on geopolitical matters, implored sporting bodies and event organisers to “not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions”.

Moreover, at the recent Beijing Paralympics, several countries refused to participate against Russian teams, with the result that organisers were pressured into excluding Russian athletes.

Spin or substance?

The All England Lawn and Tennis Club has the capacity to decide entry rules for Wimbledon. It may diplomatically align with the ATP and WTA (the organising bodies of the men’s and women’s tours), or it could ban Russians outright.

All of this is controversial. Some critics have suggested that the human rights of Russian athletes are being denied, as they aren’t responsible for the military activities in Ukraine.

However, some Russian sports stars – whether voluntarily or otherwise – have made their position known. Several have made public appearances sporting the letter Z, which has become a symbol of support for Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Perhaps the most emphatic pro-Putin advocate is Russian chess champion Sergey Karjakin, who took to Twitter to praise his country’s “special military operation”.

By contrast, some Russian sports stars have voiced their disapproval of the war, a perilous stance given this type of dissent is now deemed a crime – with some 15,000 Russian people already arrested.

Strings attached

Countries opposed to Russia’s ongoing demolition of Ukraine have at this point relied on economic sanctions as a principal deterrent. Unfortunately, these measures hurt and harm ordinary Russians.

Some critics argue that the West’s sanctions are hypocritical considering American and allied military interventions in places like Iraq, or Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

From that perspective, global sanctions ought to have been implemented against the United States or Israel, with flow-on implications for sport. Discussions about Ukraine have, therefore, not only focused squarely on Russian imperialism and Putin’s fascism, but also the turpitude of the Washington-led “rules-based order”.

Read more:
FIFA’s suspension of Russia is a rarity – but one that strips bare the idea that sport can be apolitical

Whether the All England Club bans Russian players or accepts them as neutrals, it will have arrived at a decision in concert with the UK’s sports minister, at a time when Britain is supplying arms to Ukraine.

None of this is edifying.

Russian tennis players, if allowed to play, will be under enormous scrutiny both on and off the court. Would a win for Medvedev be a victory for Putin? Would the absence of Medvedev contribute to the anti-war effort?

In the middle of all this are athletes who, like ordinary Russians, may become – perhaps unfairly – the target of sanctions.

But war is the epitome of unfair.

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

– ref. Is banning Russian tennis players from Wimbledon the right call? – https://theconversation.com/is-banning-russian-tennis-players-from-wimbledon-the-right-call-179551

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terri Libesman, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney

In New South Wales, as of June 2021, 42% of children in out-of-home care were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

This stark over-representation has been the subject of multiple child welfare reviews, from Bringing them Home to Family is Culture.

The NSW parliament is now considering a bill, sponsored by Greens MP David Shoebridge, proposing crucial child protection reforms. The legislative assembly passed the bill in late February. Whether it passes the lower house in the coming weeks will be a test of the parliament’s commitment to reducing the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care.

The bill’s passage (or otherwise) will also lay bare the extent of the government’s resolve to address ongoing harms caused by generations of forced, systematic removals of Aboriginal children.

Read more:
Stolen Generation redress scheme won’t reach everyone affected by the policies that separated families

Findings of past reports

Inquiries such as Family is Culture have repeatedly identified three crucial policy changes needed to address the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families in child protection systems across Australia:

1. services must become transparent and accountable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities

2. self-determination in service design and delivery is crucial to ensure culturally safe and trusted services that properly address the needs of families

3. proper funding and resourcing of services is needed to address the legacies of racist laws and policies, which have resulted in intergenerational trauma and poverty.

The NSW bill takes meaningful steps towards addressing recommendations for reform from the Family is Culture review. It does this through its acknowledgement of historical harms and the importance of Aboriginal family and cultural connections. The bill also aims to improve the child protection system’s accountability towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families and communities.

The bill increases legal protections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families at the different stages of their involvement with the child protection system.

Read more:
Stolen Generation redress scheme won’t reach everyone affected by the policies that separated families

What the bill proposes to do

Importantly, the bill clarifies the functions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child and Young Person Placement Principles. The purpose of these principles is to prioritise children’s placement within their own extended family, community and culture.

Yet, there are ongoing, serious problems with compliance with the principles. For instance, just under 50% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in care in NSW are placed with non-Aboriginal carers.

The bill incorporates the five key elements of the principles, which provide clearer provisions for:

1. prevention of children’s separation from families, by providing supports that address underlying causes of child protection concerns

2. partnership with communities, through the involvement of community representatives in the design and delivery of services and in care decision-making

3. ensuring children and families participate in decisions about children’s placement

4. participation of children and young persons and their parents in all key decision-making concerning children’s care and protection

5. maintaining children’s connections with family, community, culture and country, when children are placed in out-of-home care.

The bill also includes important provisions regarding accountability. It requires the NSW Department of Communities and Justice make “active efforts” to support families to access culturally appropriate services, designed and delivered where possible by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations.

Families can apply for a declaration from the Children’s Court of New South Wales that the department has failed to make active efforts. The minister must report such declarations to parliament, and also report on measures taken by the department to prevent children’s separation from their families.

Read more:
Forgiveness requires more than just an apology. It requires action

Steps to help keep families together

Significantly, the bill responds to longstanding concerns about legislative amendments made in 2018, which set a maximum of 24 months for parents to address protective issues, or face permanent removal of their children.

The current bill increases these time frames, allowing parents up to 48 months to address broader protective issues, such as finding safe housing, escaping family violence or accessing services to support mental health and other concerns.

The bill also provides that the Children’s Court must give a representative of the relevant Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community the opportunity to be heard in individual care matters. Importantly, it introduces a rebuttable presumption that removing an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child from their family causes harm. This means that there is a presumption that removal will cause harm unless evidence is presented to the contrary.

The Children’s Court must explain how it has considered this presumption when making care orders, and how it has considered other legal principles concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, including those regarding family and community organisations’ participation and the placement principles.

Read more:
Reunifying First Nations families: the only way to reduce the overrepresentation of children in out-of-home care

Future directions

The bill is not perfect. There remains a worrying lack of oversight for children who are permanently placed under the independent care of a guardian. The legislative assembly did not pass recommendations in Shoebridge’s original bill protecting Aboriginal children from being adopted. The assembly also did not pass Shoebridge’s recommendation prohibiting the accreditation of for-profit out-of-home care agencies and agencies that do not meet minimum standards.

However the bill provides a crucial opportunity. It represents an improved pathway to safety and stability for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who have been failed across decades of reforms.

Moreover, the bill provides measures with respect to accountability and supports for some of the most vulnerable children, which can and should be extended nationally.

Terri Libesman has nothing to disclose.

Eloise Chandler and Wendy Hermeston 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. New bill in NSW could prove crucial to helping reduce numbers of First Nations children in out-of-home care – https://theconversation.com/new-bill-in-nsw-could-prove-crucial-to-helping-reduce-numbers-of-first-nations-children-in-out-of-home-care-170795

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Holland, Associate Professor, Macquarie University

Readers are advised that the following article contains the names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons. This article also contains mention of past deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is also mention of sexual assault.

In November 2019, Police Constable Zachary Rolfe was charged with murder after fatally shooting Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker in the Northern Territory. It was described as the first time a police officer has faced a murder trial in a death in custody case since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.

But Rolfe, whose trial ended with his acquittal this month, is [not the first policeman] to be charged with murder but not be convicted. In fact, to many people, the case carries echoes of previous instances in which a very similar cycle has played out.

The cycle of police violence, murder charge and acquittal reminds us of the last time in Australian history when seven men were executed for the massacre of Aboriginal people in northwestern New South Wales in 1838. They were white settlers, not police, but their execution was described as an act of “judicial murder”. After this, settlers maintained that no white man should in the future be prosecuted for the killing of a black person.

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Remembering Coniston

Members of Walker’s Warlpiri community in Yuendumu, 300km north of Alice Springs, saw historic links between his death and the Coniston massacre in 1928 on a cattle station not far from Yuendumu.

The Warlpiri were among a large group of Indigenous peoples killed by a party of mounted troopers on a punitive expedition led by army veteran Constable George Murray.

The massacre was in retaliation for the murder of a white dingo shooter, Frederick Brookes. An internal police inquiry into the mass shootings of Warlpiri people denied legal aid to the Indigenous communities involved. No inquests were held to ascertain numbers killed and Murray intimated that the killing of Warlpiri was an act of self-defence.

The inquiry concluded there was no provocation for the local Aboriginal people’s hostility to white men, despite it being widely understood that Brookes’ murder was possibly retaliation for the alleged abuse of an Indigenous woman in the community.

Two Warlpiri men, Arkikra and Padygar were charged with Brookes’ murder and were eventually found to be not guilty. The police involved in the massacre were exonerated and reinstated.

A long history of police violence

In a similar episode in the Kimberley two years earlier, a white pastoralist, Frederick Hay, was murdered by Lumbia, an Oombulgarri man, in retaliation for Hay raping Anguloo, Lumbia’s wife.

In response to Hay’s death, two police officers led an expedition that resulted in the deaths of 15 Aboriginal men, women and children. Their bodies were incinerated.

The police officers involved in this attack were charged with murder, but a trial never went ahead. They were instead reinstated. Lumbia, however, was convicted of murder and imprisoned for life.

And in 1934, a white police constable fatally shot Pitjantjatjara man Yokununna at Uluru following his escape from police custody. An inquiry found that, although unwarranted, the shooting was legally justified as an act of self-defence.

Police Constable Bill McKinnon continued with his duties and was eventually promoted to senior inspector.

Read more:
Racism is a public health crisis – but Black death tolls aren’t the answer

Demands for police reform 80 years ago

These cases of police violence in the interwar years led to widespread discontent with policing and the justice system. Reforms were demanded, including the abolition of all-white juries, implementing native courts and the separation of the powers of police and protector, as most protectors of Aboriginal people were police officers.

In 1934, such protests resulted in the aborting of yet another police-led punitive expedition into east Arnhem Land and the High Court overturning a murder conviction for Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda following the death of a white police officer. He later disappeared.

In the midst of these protests, however, A.P. Elkin, the chair of anthropology at Sydney University, described police as “agents armed with the power of life and death”. As recorded on pages 3 -4 of an historical policy document authored by Elkin he noted that those who knew the history of relations between black and white understood that “teaching the natives (sic) a lesson” meant the use of guns and the death of many.

He went on to say,

“If giving the natives (sic) a lesson by sheer force of arms is the only way in which we can establish harmonious relations …, it is time that we realised our own incompetence, let alone our lack of imagination and of a sense of justice.

These words resonate in the Rolfe case, where Walpiri are demanding that guns be removed from police in their dealings with them and in their communities.

No more guns in the NT

The fatal shooting of Walker was justified by Rolfe as an act of self-defence against a violent man allegedly threatening the lives of him and his partner.

For the Warlpiri, it was a continuation of police violence against their communities and the memory of police retribution and its cost. With this context in mind, it might be possible to consider that Walker’s violent response was an act of self-defence, too.

For Walker’s community, the most important lesson was something that their historical experience made all too clear. In the words of elder Ned Jampinjimpa Hargraves:

We don’t want no guns. Enough is enough.

Alison Holland 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 Kumanjayi Walker murder case echoes a long history of police violence against First Nations people – https://theconversation.com/the-kumanjayi-walker-murder-case-echoes-a-long-history-of-police-violence-against-first-nations-people-179289

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Professor Paddy Nixon talk about this week in politics.

They discuss the imminent election-oriented budget, the government’s about-face to finally accept the New Zealand offer to resettle up to 450 people who arrived in Australia by boat, Labor’s win at the South Australian election, and University of Canberra research in the marginal Sydney seat of Wentworth, where a high-profile “teal” candidate is challenging the Liberals.

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. VIDEO: On budgeting and barnacle-scraping – https://theconversation.com/video-on-budgeting-and-barnacle-scraping-180022

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

The draft security agreement between China and Solomon Islands circulating on social media raises important questions about how the Australian government and national security community understand power dynamics in the Pacific Islands.

In Australian debates, the term “influence” is often used to characterise the assumed consequences of China’s increasingly visible presence in the Pacific.

There’s an assumption China generates influence primarily from its economic statecraft. This includes its concessional loans, aid and investment by state-owned enterprises (which partly manifests in Beijing’s involvement of Pacific Islands in its Belt and Road Initiative).

On its face, the leaked draft seemingly proves Chinese spending “bought” enough influence to get the Solomon Islands government to consider this agreement. But such an interpretation misses two key issues.

The role of domestic politics

First, the draft agreement is primarily about Solomon Islands domestic politics – not just geopolitics.

As explained by Dr Tarcisius Kabutaulaka after the November 2021 riots in Honiara, geopolitical considerations intersect with, and can be used to, advance longstanding domestic issues.

These include uneven and unequal development, frustrated decentralisation, and unresolved grievances arising from prior conflicts.

Power in the Pacific is complex. It is not just politicians in the national government who matter in domestic and foreign policy-making.

Take, for example, the activism of Malaita provincial governor Derek Suidani, who pursued relations with Taiwan after Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition to China in 2019. This highlights the important role sub-national actors can play in the both domestic and foreign policy arenas.

Neither Solomon Islanders (nor other Pacific peoples) are “passive dupes” to Chinese influence or unaware of geopolitical challenges – and opportunities. Some do, however, face resource and constitutional constraints when resisting influence attempts.

Australia’s current policy settings are not working

The second key issue is that Australia’s current policy settings are not working – if their success is measured by advancing Australia’s strategic interests.

Australia is by far the Pacific’s largest aid donor and has been on a spending spree under its “Pacific Step-up” initiative.

Australia spent billions leading the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), as well as significant bilateral programs to the country. Yet Australia has not been able to head off Honiara considering the security agreement with China.

Read more:
As Australia deploys troops and police, what now for Solomon Islands?

Perhaps Canberra has not sought to influence Solomon Islands on this matter. But given Australia’s longstanding anxieties about potentially hostile powers establishing a presence in the region, this is unlikely.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has already commented in response to the leaked draft that:

This is our neighbourhood and we are very concerned of any activity that is taking place in the Pacific Islands.

The rumours (subsequently denied) that China was in talks to establish a military base in Vanuatu, and China’s attempt to lease Tulagi Island in Solomon Islands had already intensified Australia’s anxieties. Such concerns partly motivated the government’s investment in the Pacific Step-up.

A closer look at the draft security agreement

The terms of the draft security agreement should make Australia anxious. It goes significantly beyond the bilateral security treaty between Solomon Islands and Australia.

Article 1 provides that Solomon Islands may request China to “send police, police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands” in circumstances ranging from maintaining social order to unspecified “other tasks agreed upon by the Parties”.

Even more concerningly for Solomon Islands’ sovereignty, Article 1 also provides that

relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.

It remains unclear what authority the Solomon Islands government would maintain once it consents to Beijing’s deployment of “relevant forces” to protect Chinese nationals.

Article 4 is equally vague. It states specific details regarding Chinese missions, including “jurisdiction, privilege and immunity […] shall be negotiated separately”.

The agreement also raises questions about the transparency of agreements Beijing makes and their consequences for democracy in its partner states.

According to Article 5,

without the written consent of the other party, neither party shall disclose the cooperation information to a third party.

This implies the Solomon Islands government is legally bound not to inform its own people and their democratically elected representatives about activities under the agreement without the Chinese approval.

The version circulating on social media may prove to be an early draft. Its leak is likely a bargaining tactic aimed at pursuing multiple agendas with multiple actors – including Australia.

Australian High Commissioner Lachlan Strahan met yesterday with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and announced Australia will extend its assistance force until December 2023. It will build a national radio network, construct a second patrol boat outpost, and provide SI$130 million (A$21.5 million) in budget support.

Playing whack-a-mole

While the timing was likely coincidental, it highlights an emerging dynamic in Australia’s Pacific policy: playing whack-a-mole by seeking to directly counter Chinese moves through economic statecraft. Think of Telstra’s recent purchase of Digicel Pacific, headquartered in PNG – a move seen by some analysts as really an attempt to shut China out of the Pacific.

That China has been able to persuade Solomon Islands to consider an intrusive security agreement raises questions about our understanding of how power and influence are exercised in the Pacific.

Read more:
China’s push into PNG has been surprisingly slow and ineffective. Why has Beijing found the going so tough?

If influence is taken to result in concrete behavioural changes (such as entering into a bilateral security agreement), and if Australia is going to “compete” with China on spending, you’d need to ask, for example: how much “influence” does an infrastructure project buy?

This understanding of power, however, is insufficient. Instead, a more nuanced approach is required.

Influence is exercised not only by national governments, but also by a variety of non-state actors, including sub-national and community groups.

And targets of influence-seekers can exercise their agency. See, for example, how various actors in Solomon Islands are leveraging Australia, China and Taiwan’s overtures to the country.

We must also consider how power affects the political norms and values guiding governing elites and non-state actors, potentially reshaping their identities and interests.

The draft security agreement may come to nothing – but it should provide a wake-up call to Australia and its partners.

Old assumptions about how power and influence are exercised in the Pacific need urgent re-examination – as does our assumption that explicitly “competing” with China advances either our interests or those of the Pacific.

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

Czeslaw Tubilewicz 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. Saying China ‘bought’ a military base in the Solomons is simplistic and shows how little Australia understands power in the Pacific – https://theconversation.com/saying-china-bought-a-military-base-in-the-solomons-is-simplistic-and-shows-how-little-australia-understands-power-in-the-pacific-180020

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

As the devastating war in Ukraine continues, Michelle Grattan speaks with ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson about her experiences in reporting her Four Corners episode Despair and Defiance – how she was able to capture this story – and her views on where the conflict is likely to go from now.

Sarah and her team presented a raw portrayal of the conflict and its human toll in Kyiv and elsewhere.

“[In reporting] so much of these things comes down to simple practicalities. Can you get food? Can you get a driver? Can you get out? And once we’d got all of those things in place, we were good to go.”

Ukranian officialdom knows how vital it is to get its story to the world. Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “has understood the importance of telling people the story of what’s happening.”

“The Russians actually shelled people during the evacuations and fired on people. […] The Russians aren’t observing the sort of conventions of war where civilians are able to be evacuated. So getting them out and witnessing that was unquestionably dangerous. It was a dangerous place to be.”

Caught in this horrific situation, ordinary Ukrainians can do little but just think “from day to day” rather than contemplate the future. “‘If I can get through today, what is my plan for tomorrow?’ […] The fear of what lies ahead is so grim that the human can’t – you can’t live with that amount of fear. So in order to function, you keep your horizon nearer.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Sarah Ferguson on reporting from Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-sarah-ferguson-on-reporting-from-ukraine-180023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Moore, Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

From rainforests to savannas, ecosystems on land absorb almost 30% of the carbon dioxide human activities release into the atmosphere. These ecosystems are critical to stop the planet warming beyond 1.5℃ this century – but climate change may be weakening their capacity to offset global emissions.

This is a key issue that OzFlux, a research network from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, has been investigating for the past 20 years. Over this time, we’ve identified which ecosystems absorb the most carbon, and have been learning how they respond to extreme weather and climate events such as drought, floods and bushfires.

The biggest absorbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Australia are savannas and temperate forests. But as the effects of climate change intensify, ecosystems such as these are at risk of reaching tipping points of collapse.

In our latest research paper, we look back at the two decades of OzFlux’s findings. So far, the ecosystems we studied are showing resilience by rapidly pivoting back to being carbon sinks after a disturbance. This can be seen, for example, in leaves growing back on trees soon after bushfire.

But how long will this resilience remain? As climate change pressures intensify, evidence suggests carbon sinks may lose their ability to bounce back from climate-related disasters. This reveals vital gaps in our knowledge.

Australian ecosystems absorb 150 million tonnes of carbon each year

Between 2011 and 2020, land-based ecosystems sequestered 11.2 billion tonnes (29%) of global CO₂ emissions. To put this into perspective, that’s roughly similar to the amount China emitted in 2021.

OzFlux has enabled the first comprehensive assessment of Australia’s carbon budget from 1990 to 2011. This found Australia’s land-based ecosystems accumulate some 150 million tonnes of CO₂ each year on average – helping to offset national fossil fuel emissions by around one third.

For example, every hectare of Australia’s temperate forests absorbs 3.9 tonnes of carbon in a year, according to OzFlux data. Likewise, every hectare of Australia’s savanna absorbs 3.4 tonnes of carbon. This is about 100 times larger than a hectare of Mediterranean woodland or shrubland.

But it’s important to note that the amount of carbon Australian ecosystems can sequester fluctuates widely from one year to the next. This is due to, for instance, the natural climate variability (such as in La Niña or El Niño years), and disturbances (such as fire and land use changes).

In any case, it’s clear these ecosystems will play an important role in Australia reaching its target of net-zero emissions by 2050. But how effective will they continue to be as the climate changes?

How climate change weakens these carbon sinks

Extreme climate variability – flooding rains, droughts and heatwaves – along with bushfires and land clearing, can weaken these carbon sinks.

Read more:
‘Flash droughts’ can dry out soil in weeks. New research shows what they look like in Australia

While many Australian ecosystems show resilience to these stresses, we found their recovery time may be shortening due to more frequent and extreme events, potentially compromising their long-term contribution towards offsetting emissions.

Take bushfire as an example. When it burns a forest, the carbon stored in the plants is released back into the atmosphere as smoke – so the ecosystem becomes a carbon source. Likewise, under drought or heatwave conditions, water available to the roots becomes depleted and limits photosynthesis, which can tip a forest’s carbon budget from being a sink to a carbon source.

If that drought or heatwave endures for a long time, or a bushfire returns before the forest has recovered, its ability to regain its carbon sink status is at risk.

Learning how carbon sinks may shift in Australia and New Zealand can have a global impact. Both countries are home to a broad range of climates – from the wet tropics, to the Mediterranean climate of southwest Australia, to the temperate climate in the southeast.

Our unique ecosystems have evolved to suit these diverse climates, which are underrepresented in the global network.

This means long-term ecosystem observatories – OzFlux, along with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network – provide a vital natural laboratory for understanding ecosystems in this era of accelerating climate change.

Over its 20 years, OzFlux has made crucial contributions to the international understanding of climate change. A few of its major findings include:

• the 2011 La Niña event led to a greening of interior Australia, with ecosystems flourishing from increased water availability

• heatwaves can negate the carbon sink strength of our ecosystems, and even lead to carbon emissions from plants

• land clearing and the draining of peatland systems add to Australia’s and New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions

Critical questions remain

Plans in Australia and New Zealand to reach net zero emissions by 2050 strongly depend on the ongoing ability for ecosystems to sequester emissions from industry, agriculture, transport and the electricity sectors.

While some management and technological innovations are underway to address this, such as in the agricultural sector, we need long-term measurements of carbon cycling to truly understand the limits of ecosystems and their risk of collapse.

Read more:
US scheme used by Australian farmers reveals the dangers of trading soil carbon to tackle climate change

Indeed, we’re already in uncharted territory under climate change. Weather extremes from heatwaves to heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent and intense. And CO₂ levels are more than 50% higher than they were 200 years ago.

So while our ecosystems have remained a net sink over the last 20 years, it’s worth asking:

• will they continue to do the heavy-lifting required to keep both countries on track to meet their climate targets?

• how do we protect, restore and sustain the most vital, yet vulnerable, ecosystems, such as “coastal blue carbon” (including seagrasses and mangroves)? These are critical to nature-based solutions to climate change

• how do we monitor and verify national carbon accounting schemes, such as Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund?

Critical questions remain about how well Australia’s and New Zealand’s ecosystems can continue storing CO₂.

Read more:
‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

Caitlin Moore is affiliated with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN)

David Campbell receives funding from the NZ Ministry for Primary Industries and the Agricultural GHG Research Centre.

Before her retirement as an employee of CSIRO, Helen Cleugh received funding from CSIRO and the Australian government through many programs including the National Environmental Science Programme and TERN.

Jamie Cleverly receives funding from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network and the Queensland Government, and is currently the director of OzFlux.

Jason Beringer receives funding from the Australian Research Council and NCRIS TERN.

Lindsay Hutley receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network

Mark Grant works for the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN).

– ref. In 20 years of studying how ecosystems absorb carbon, here’s why we’re worried about a tipping point of collapse – https://theconversation.com/in-20-years-of-studying-how-ecosystems-absorb-carbon-heres-why-were-worried-about-a-tipping-point-of-collapse-179554

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paula Gerber, Professor of Human Rights Law, Monash University

On Wednesday, a United Nations committee became the first international law body to recognise that criminalising female same-sex sexual activity is a fundamental breach of human rights.

The landmark decision means all countries that criminalise women having sex with other women should immediately repeal these laws.

Which countries criminalise homosexuality?

Seventy-one countries still criminalise homosexual conduct. Many of these are our neighbours – ten in Asia and seven in the Pacific.

Many people assume these laws only apply to men having sex with men, but that’s not the case. Sexual conduct between women is prohibited in the criminal codes of 34 of these 71 countries.

Countries with sharia law such as Afghanistan, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia also essentially criminalise lesbian sex. So there are 43 countries where it’s a crime for women to engage in same-sex sexual activity – almost a quarter of all countries in the world.

The majority of the countries that criminalise same-sex sexual activity are members of the Commonwealth, whose anti-homosexuality laws were introduced by the British Empire.

However, Britain only ever criminalised male homosexual activity, and the expansion of these laws to explicitly include female sexual activity is a relatively recent phenomenon. Countries that have done so include: Trinidad and Tobago (1986), Solomon Islands (1990), Sri Lanka (1995), Malaysia (1998) and Nigeria (2014).

In the past 35 years, ten jurisdictions that previously only criminalised same-sex male sexual intimacy changed their laws to include, for the first time, new criminal sanctions of lesbians and bisexual women.

The laws criminalising same-sex activity between women aren’t just arcane laws that are never enforced. In Malaysia just over three years ago, two women were caned six times for attempting to have sex.

And late last year, a lesbian activist in Iran was arrested while trying to flee to Turkey to seek asylum. Before this, she was detained for 21 days by the Iraqi Kurdistan police following an interview she did with BBC Persian about the situation of the LGBTQ+ community in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The case

The case of Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka was brought by a lesbian activist to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

She argued that Sri Lanka’s criminal laws violated her right to live her life free from discrimination based on her sexual orientation.

The CEDAW committee agreed.

It found the effect of Sri Lanka’s criminal code was that lesbian and bisexual women lived with the constant risk of arrest and detention. And the laws facilitate a culture where discrimination, harassment and violence against lesbians and bisexual women can flourish.

Law is a tool that governments use to communicate to society what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. When the Sri Lankan government declared any sexual intimacy between consenting women is a crime, it signalled to Sri Lankans that vilification, targeting and harassment of lesbians and bisexual women is acceptable, because they are criminals.

The laws not only criminalise same-sex sexual conduct. They also perpetuate homophobia, stigmatise the LGBTQ+ community and sanction gender-based violence against lesbians and bisexual women.

This decision sends a clear message to all governments who think it’s OK to persecute, harass and discriminate against lesbians and bisexual women – you are wrong.

Read more:
Australia has finally achieved marriage equality, but there’s a lot more to be done on LGBTI rights

What now?

Sri Lanka now has six months to provide a written response to the CEDAW Committee setting out the action it has taken, or will take, to give effect to the committee’s decision.

Repealing the specific provision in the criminal law will not be enough. A much more holistic and nuanced response is required. In particular, the government will need to:

• develop campaigns to counter prejudice and stereotypes directed at the LGBTQ+ community

• enact anti-discrimination laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status

• embed human rights education in schools, promoting equality and respect for all regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity

• provide training for police, judges and other law enforcement officials to increase their understanding of, and respect for, the human rights of LGBTQ+ people. This will also enable women to report homophobic crimes to the police without fear of retribution and with the knowledge the perpetrators will be prosecuted

• ensure there are adequate civil and criminal remedies for members of the LGBTQ+ community who are subjected to discrimination and gender-based violence.

Read more:
It’s time to talk about gay reparations and how they can rectify past persecutions of LGBTQ people

The decision in Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka represents a watershed moment in international human rights law and will reverberate around the world.

It’s now beyond dispute that criminalising consensual adult same-sex sexual conduct violates a woman’s right to privacy, dignity and non-discrimination.

All governments have a duty to protect all women, including lesbians and bisexual women, from discrimination, gender-based violence and other harm.

Any country that criminalises the sexual conduct of lesbians and bisexual women, regardless of whether they enforce the laws, is guilty of violating international law.

Paula Gerber is a director of Kaleidoscope Human Rights Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation advocating for the rights of LGBTIQ people in the Asia-Pacific region.

– ref. UN committee rules anti-lesbian sex laws breach human rights in landmark decision – https://theconversation.com/un-committee-rules-anti-lesbian-sex-laws-breach-human-rights-in-landmark-decision-179936

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rochelle Matacz, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Meet Eli. He entered the second year of his life with gusto and now, aged 18 months, he is discovering new things every day including ideas he wants to try out immediately. Like, right now. Waiting is not an option.

Combined with his passion for life he often becomes emotionally overwhelmed and erupts into frequent meltdowns. Words and phrases like “no”, “do it myself” and “mine” are used often.

Sometimes the smallest thing ends with Eli kicking, biting and crying. Although he’s still developing a command of words, he shouts “I don’t love you, Dad!” with devastating accuracy. These outbursts happen at home and out in public.

Research shows tantrums occur in 87% of 18 to 24-month-olds, 91% of 30 to 36-month-olds, and 59% of 42 to 48-month-olds – often on a daily basis.

The “terrible twos” might sound accurate, but branding toddlerhood (18 months to 36 months) this way is an injustice to this group. The generic label fails to grasp the huge developmental growth happening at this age. It also fails to celebrate the developing emotional life of a toddler, at once complex, multifaceted and exhilarating.

Read more:
What’s in a milestone? Understanding your child’s development

What’s going on?

Eli is at a “developmental touchpoint”, where a unique surge in capacities is coupled with behaviour falling apart. At this age, children begin to establish independence while simultaneously needing to learn ways of coping with intense feelings such as fear, anger, frustration and sadness. Researchers are still discovering what a normal trajectory for emotional regulation development looks like, and what might help or hinder it.

Intense, uncontrolled feelings and defiance are normal at this age. But it can be challenging for parents to support their toddlers through this stage.

Focusing solely on a toddler’s behaviour fails to capture the significant role sensitive care-giving plays in social and emotional development in the early years.

A core component of sensitive and responsive parenting is a parent’s capacity to put themselves into the mind of their very young child and understand the child’s behaviour has meaning and is driven by internal experiences such as feelings, thoughts, desires and intentions.

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Jamming with your toddler: how music trumps reading for childhood development

A child’s-eye view

Being able to understand the world from the child’s perspective helps a parent to anticipate, interpret and respond to the child’s behaviour in ways that build a child’s capacity to regulate their emotions.

Eli’s dad didn’t experience tantrums with his first child, who had a calmer disposition, so he finds Eli’s emotional outbursts hard to tolerate. He becomes angry when Eli refuses to do what he is told and yells at him to “stop it!”. This frightens Eli, who sometimes retreats and sometimes escalates in his distress.

Eli’s dad is unaware of his toddler’s internal experiences and is confused by his own “out-of-control” feelings when parenting him. Frequent emotional outbursts coupled with an authoritative parenting style places children at risk of developing more serious emotional and behavioural problems.

Eli’s dad needs to understand that his primary role at this stage is to put his child’s experiences at the centre of his mind. This requires him to try to make sense of what Eli is communicating about himself through his behaviour and to respond in a sensitive way. This can help a child like Eli not be overwhelmed by intense feelings.

3 guidelines for parents:

1. Be aware of your own responses

Tantrums can be emotionally activating for parents. Being aware and making sense of your own feelings will help you to respond sensitively to your child’s distress. When Eli’s dad makes sense of his struggles with managing anger, he is calmer, enabling him to focus on Eli’s emotional experiences.

2. Identify and validate your child’s difficult feelings

Young children need help from their parents to recognise that the feelings they are expressing through their behaviours are just that: feelings that will pass in time. They need help to name them, work out what is causing them and figure out what might help.

3. Search for underlying meaning

Remember not to take emotional outbursts personally. Viewing a tantrum as a means of communication helps parents consider the likely causes of a child’s distress and to think through possible solutions.

Read more:
Having problems with your kid’s tantrums, bed-wetting or withdrawal? Here’s when to get help

Making changes

With new insights, parents like Eli’s dad can can help their child put themselves back together again after emotional outbursts, which may be less frequent. With consistent support, toddlers can learn to tolerate frustration, gain a sense of control of strong feelings and find words to express what is happening inside them.

Parenting a toddler is no easy task. Today’s parents have the advantages of remarkable leaps in neuroscientific and developmental knowledge. However, these can be difficult to access and even more difficult to put into practice. Unwittingly we can fall back into the familiar ways we were parented, or we might attempt try to do the opposite of how we were parented only to find we have lost direction.

Investment in early intervention programs for everyone or at a targeted level where the parent-child relationship is in trouble, could provide the building blocks for lifelong emotional well-being for families and for society.

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

– ref. Yes, the ‘terrible twos’ are full-on – but let’s look at things from a child’s perspective – https://theconversation.com/yes-the-terrible-twos-are-full-on-but-lets-look-at-things-from-a-childs-perspective-177633