These 3 arguments are part of the long game in Trump’s trade wars

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Markus Wagner, Professor of Law and Director of the UOW Transnational Law and Policy Centre, University of Wollongong

Since returning to office in January, US President Donald Trump has doubled down on using trade measures – mostly tariffs – to reshape global trade. He plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on what he has labelled “Liberation Day”, April 2.

The Trump administration claims US producers face higher tariffs and more restrictions abroad than foreign producers when they export to the US.

The administration also examined tax systems such as Europe’s Value Added Tax and Australia’s GST, import regulations and other factors. It believes – mostly wrongly – these unfairly disadvantage American businesses and contribute to the US trade deficit.

As with many Trump initiatives, actual tariffs often change significantly between announcement and implementation, if they are implemented at all.

His reciprocal tariffs have been narrowed to imports from the US’ largest trading partners instead of imports from all countries. There may also be tariffs on specific sectors. Last week, Trump announced 25% tariffs on cars from overseas. At the weekend said he “couldn’t care less” if this made cars more expensive for US consumers.

Coercive control, revenue and re-shoring

President Trump has raised a myriad of puzzling arguments in favour of tariffs. They largely fall into three categories:

The first is the use of tariffs as a coercion tool against other countries. In the first Trump presidency, trading partners were pressured to renegotiate trade agreements such as the renamed but largely identical US-Mexico-Canada agreement.

Similarly, the Trump administration used the threat of tariffs to gain market access, elicit better trade terms or as a form of weaponised trade to achieve unrelated foreign policy goals.

Last week, Trump suggested he would consider a reduction in tariffs on China in exchange for a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner.

The second category is the use of tariffs as a source of revenue. The Trump administration envisions tariffs to be collected by a yet-to-be-created External Revenue Service. This would form the flip side of the powerful and much-maligned Internal Revenue Service.

Trump claims tariffs will be paid by the exporting country. This would be in theory to finance future tax cuts. In practice, tariffs are almost always paid by the importer of goods and usually get passed on to consumers.

There is a potential contradiction between these two rationales. It appears the Trump administration wants to make at least some tariffs permanent. But doing so would almost nullify the use of tariffs as a bargaining chip and coercion tool.

The final category is to encourage companies to “re-shore” production to the US to avoid tariffs and to support US jobs.

This would signal a reversal of what 1994 presidential candidate Ross Perot, speaking of the North American Free Trade Agreement, called the “giant sucking sound going south”. Some manufacturing may return to the US. But the high costs of building new factories, re-routing supply chains and uncompetitive US labour costs will hinder large-scale re-shoring efforts.

A long-term plan?

The Trump administration’s trade moves can be seen as part of a larger strategy to reshape the US domestic and the global economic system.

In a recent speech, US Vice-President JD Vance argued for a structural reshaping of the US economy, to increase domestic innovation capacity.

Vance warned “deindustrialisation poses risks both to our national security and our workforce”. Vance himself sums up this approach by characterising tariffs as a “necessary tool to protect our jobs and our industries”.

This line of argument overlooks a number of critical factors. Tariffs lead to higher prices for consumers. Unless currencies adjust, the inflationary impact could disadvantage the very people that can least afford it.

The same is true if other countries respond to US trade measures by responding in kind, as Canada and the European Union already have.

American farmers and other export-oriented industries will be hard hit. From a strategic perspective, the US position as global leader has suffered a severe blow. Some countries are openly pivoting to its geopolitical and economic rival, China.

If this scenario comes to pass, the US pullback – an outright withdrawal is unlikely – from the highly integrated international trading system might end up a more chaotic version of the UK’s pursuit of Brexit.

A step back in time

The world of liberalised trade that followed the end of the Cold War in 1990 is ending. Countries will turn inwards, prioritising their economic security and resilience. The costs of this turn away from multilateralism and international institutions, however, are not just economic.

The close economic integration we have witnessed post-1990 has led to reduced uncertainty in international economic relations, increased international security and greater prosperity.

A return of the “beggar thy neighbour” policies of the 1930s would be a dangerous path, with the world inching closer to the abyss. “Liberation Day” might push the world over the edge.

Markus Wagner 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. These 3 arguments are part of the long game in Trump’s trade wars – https://theconversation.com/these-3-arguments-are-part-of-the-long-game-in-trumps-trade-wars-252516

In Ancient Greece and Rome, who were the harpies, and why did they stink so much?

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kitty Smith, PhD Candidate in Classical Greek and Roman History, University of Sydney

Krikkiat / Shutterstock.com

Once yelled at women seen to be pestering or annoying – or at feminists questioning and threatening the status quo – “harpy” has long been used as a derogatory term targeting women.

But have you ever wondered what a harpy was in the first place?

Much like similar derogatory titles “siren” and “fury”, the term “harpy” is derived from a group of monstrous female figures from ancient Greek and Roman mythology.

This picture depicts the harpies being driven from the table of King Phineus, a story told in the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, in which Jason and the Argonauts search for the golden fleece.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Rogers Fund, 1967

Who were the harpies?

In Greek and Roman myth, the harpies were a group of animal-human hybrid monsters on par with other such mythological creatures like the sirens, the sphinx, and the centaurs.

Harpies were commonly imagined as an amalgam of a bird’s body, such as wings and claws, with a woman’s head.

The ancient story of the Aeneid, by Latin poet Virgil, describes the story’s hero Aeneas encountering harpies on his quest to found Rome, saying:

Maiden faces have these birds, foulest filth they drop, clawed hands are theirs, and faces ever gaunt with hunger.

This description matches a common design from Greek and Roman art of birds with women’s heads.

In Greco-Roman myth, the harpies were typically tasked with meting out justice on behalf of Zeus and other gods by using their great speed from their wings and sharp talons.

The importance of their claws was likely a result of their name, which was derived from the Ancient Greek word for “snatching” (ἁρπάζω or harpazdo).

As was common of many mythological figures with hybrid features, the way their animal features were portrayed tended to vary across different media (art or literature), different narrative purposes, and over time.

Sometimes the claws were emphasised; other times it was their supernaturally swift wings and voracious hunger.

Harpies were also a common motif in many parts of the Muslim world. This roughly 12th Century statue is from modern-day Iran.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Cora Timken Burnett Collection of Persian Miniatures and Other Persian Art Objects, Bequest of Cora Timken Burnett, 1956

Enforcers of swift justice

The harpies were not nice people. They existed in myth to dish out punishments from the gods.

Their primary target? Phineus, a seer and king of Salmydessus in Thrace, a city believed to have been located on the Western coast of the Black Sea near the modern day Turkish town of Kıyıköy.

His story is told in the Argonautica by ancient Greek author Apollonius of Rhodes. This tale centres on the journey of Jason and the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece.

In the story, Phineus is said to have abused his powers as a seer by sharing too many of the gods’ secrets with mortals.

This was among the most egregious of crimes in the eyes of the gods, so an especially awful punishment was decided upon.

Phineus was blinded and given the dubious gift of immortality while still allowed to age endlessly. And worst of all, he was set upon by the harpies.

Every time Phineus picked up and tried to eat food, the harpies would burst out from the clouds, moving as fast as lightning, and

with their crooked beaks incessantly snatched the food away from his mouth and hands.

The harpies brought a further gift for Phineus: their smell. This supernaturally “intolerable stench” could putrefy food, so any scraps the harpies didn’t grab were left rotting on the table. You couldn’t even stand near it, “so foully reeked the remnants of the meal”.

And while the harpies swooped in and out in seconds, their smell stuck to the rotting food (and probably poor Phineus).

Some ancient poets add a little extra zest and disgust by also suggesting the harpies may have been defecating on the food, and presumably Phineus.

Most notable is Virgil in his text the Aeneid who wrote about “foedissima ventris proluvies”, meaning:

the foulest discharges from their bellies.

This was likely an exaggeration of their bird-like qualities, used to emphasise how disgusting and monstrous they were.

Phineus was eventually given a reprieve from the harpies, by order of Zeus, so he could help the hero Jason on his quest for the golden fleece.

Having completed their job, the harpies then flew to Crete to live in a cave far away from annoying mortals – only being disturbed once by Aeneas on his meandering path to Rome.

The story of Phineus helped harpies become a metaphor for greed.

Those compared to harpies could include greedy house-guests overstaying their welcome, people living extravagantly or frivolously, or even family members taking advantage of wealthy relatives.

Although the harpies were female monsters, the term was not exclusively applied to women, but used to describe groups of greedy people.

Harpies were often associated with greed. In this Renaissance painting, part of a series depicting the Seven Deadly Sins, a harpy-drawn chariot is being used by Gluttony (who has wings, carries a jug and and wears wine leaves in her hair).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Frederic R. Coudert Jr., in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh A. Murray, 1957.

Harpies today

Happily, today the title of “harpy” is falling out of favour as a derogatory term. But the hordes of monstrous, snatching, winged women live on in modern books, games, comics, movies and TV shows.

From video games with swathes of harpy-like creatures snatching and clawing at the protagonist, like the 2020 video game Hades, to characters in stories inspired by Greek and Roman myth, the harpies are sticking around – like a bad smell.

Kitty Smith is a member of the Australian Society for Classical Studies.

– ref. In Ancient Greece and Rome, who were the harpies, and why did they stink so much? – https://theconversation.com/in-ancient-greece-and-rome-who-were-the-harpies-and-why-did-they-stink-so-much-249722

The best space telescope you never heard of just shut down

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Nicole Driessen, Postdoctoral Researcher in Radio Astronomy, University of Sydney

On Thursday 27 March, the European Space Agency (ESA) sent its last messages to the Gaia Spacecraft. They told Gaia to shut down its communication systems and central computer and said goodbye to this amazing space telescope.

Gaia has been the most successful ESA space mission ever, so why did they turn Gaia off? What did Gaia achieve? And perhaps most importantly, why was it my favourite space telescope?

Running on empty

Gaia was retired for a simple reason: after more than 11 years in space, it ran out of the cold gas propellant it needed to keep scanning the sky.

The telescope did its last observation on 15 January 2025. The ESA team then performed testing for a few weeks, before telling Gaia to leave its home at a point in space called L2 and start orbiting the Sun away from Earth.

L2 is one of five “Lagrangian points” around Earth and the Sun where gravitational conditions make for a nice, stable orbit. L2 is located 1.5 million kilometres from Earth on the “dark side”, opposite the Sun.

L2 is a highly prized location because it’s a stable spot to orbit, it’s close enough to Earth for easy communication, and spacecraft can use the Sun behind them for solar power while looking away from the Sun out into space.

It’s also too far away from Earth to send anyone on a repair mission, so once your spacecraft gets there it’s on its own.

Keeping L2 clear

L2 currently hosts the James Webb Space Telescope (operated by the USA, Europe and Canada), the European Euclid mission, the Chinese Chang’e 6 orbiter and the joint Russian-German Spektr-RG observatory. Since L2 is such a key location for space missions, it’s essential to keep it clear of debris and retired spacecraft.

'Bye' appears in the status of Gaia's subsystems as the spacecraft is powered down and switched off for the final time — A final status update from Gaia.
ESA, CC BY-SA

Gaia used its thrusters for the last time to push itself away from L2, and is now drifting around the Sun in a “retirement orbit” where it won’t get in anybody’s way.

As part of the retirement process, the Gaia team wrote farewell messages into the craft’s software and sent it the names of around 1,500 people who worked on Gaia over the years.

What is Gaia?

Gaia looks a bit like a spinning top hat in space. Its main mission was to produce a detailed, three-dimensional map of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

To do this, it measured the precise positions and motions of 1.46 billion objects in space. Gaia also measured brightnesses and variability and those data were used to provide temperatures, gravitational parameters, stellar types and more for millions of stars. One of the key pieces of information Gaia provided was the distance to millions of stars.

A cosmic measuring tape

I’m a radio astronomer, which means I use radio telescopes here on Earth to explore the Universe. Radio light is the longest wavelength of light, invisible to human eyes, and I use it to investigate magnetic stars.

But even though I’m a radio astronomer and Gaia was an optical telescope, looking at the same wavelengths of light our eyes can see, I use Gaia data almost every single day.

I used it today to find out how far away, how bright, and how fast a star was. Before Gaia, I would probably never have known how far away that star was.

This is essential for figuring out how bright the stars I study really are, which helps me understand the physics of what’s happening in and around them.

A huge success

Gaia has contributed to thousands of articles in astronomy journals. Papers released by the Gaia collaboration have been cited well over 20,000 times in total.

Gaia has produced too many science results to share here. To take just one example, Gaia improved our understanding of the structure of our own galaxy by showing that it has multiple spiral arms that are less sharply defined than we previously thought.

Not really the end for Gaia

It’s difficult to express how revolutionary Gaia has been for astronomy, but we can let the numbers speak for themselves. Around five astronomy journal articles are published every day that use Gaia data, making Gaia the most successful ESA mission ever. And that won’t come to a complete stop when Gaia retires.

The Gaia collaboration has published three data releases so far. This is where the collaboration performs the processing and checks on the data, adds some important analysis and releases all of that in one big hit.

And luckily, there are two more big data releases with even more information to come. The fourth data release is expected in mid to late 2026. The fifth and final data release, containing all of the Gaia data from the whole mission, will come out sometime in the 2030s.

This article is my own small tribute to a telescope that changed astronomy as we know it. So I will end by saying a huge thank you to everyone who has ever worked on this amazing space mission, whether it was engineering and operations, turning the data into the amazing resource it is, or any of the other many jobs that make a mission successful. And thank you to those who continue to work on the data as we speak.

Finally, thank you to my favourite space telescope. Goodbye, Gaia, I’ll miss you.

Laura Nicole Driessen is an ambassador for the Orbit Centre of Imagination at the Rise and Shine Kindergarten, in Sydney’s Inner West.

– ref. The best space telescope you never heard of just shut down – https://theconversation.com/the-best-space-telescope-you-never-heard-of-just-shut-down-253343

School phone ban one year on: our student survey reveals mixed feelings about its success

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cara Swit, Associate professor, School of Health Sciences, University of Canterbury

DavideAngelini/Shutterstock

One year after the government banned cellphones from schools to help students focus and reduce distractions in class, we’re beginning to see how it has been implemented and how successful it’s been.

As part of that process, our new research asked young people about the ban. Unsurprisingly, they had a lot to say.

Schools around the world, including in Australia, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, China and parts of the United States, have implemented similar bans. The guiding principle everywhere has been to help students do better in school.

When New Zealand’s ban came into effect in April 2024, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it was time to cut the distractions so kids could learn and achieve.

But studies have shown these bans often don’t work as planned. For example, recent research from the UK involving over 1,200 students found no significant difference in academic grades or wellbeing between schools with strict phone bans and those with more relaxed policies.

With so many questions at the time of the ban about how it would be enforced, we wanted to hear what was going on in schools and what young people really thought. We spoke to 77 young people aged 12 to 18 from 25 schools around the country. Some liked the bans, some didn’t and some weren’t sure.

Mixed feelings

Many students had mixed feelings about the bans. Some admitted the bans helped reduce distractions and gave them a break from using their phones. As one explained,

otherwise, we’ll be on our phone all day, all afternoon, all night, and it won’t be healthy for our minds.

But other students said the ban had created new problems.

First, some students felt stressed and anxious when they couldn’t contact their parents or caregivers during the day. Second, they said the rules weren’t always clear or fair. Some teachers were strict, others weren’t. And sometimes, teachers used their phones in class, but students couldn’t.

That perceived double standard – where teachers can use phones but students can’t – left many of our respondents feeling frustrated and unfairly treated. In some cases, it even made them more secretive about their phone use. One student said,

Even though we’re not allowed to use our phones, everyone is sneaky and uses it anyway.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the cellphone ban would cut distractions so kids could learn and achieve.
Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

A lack of consultation

A lot of students said they weren’t asked what they thought before the bans were introduced. They felt as if adults made the rules without asking them or listening to them. One of our interviewees said,

It feels like they just ban everything, thinking it will fix the problem.

Many didn’t understand the purpose of the ban, especially since they still have to use laptops and other technology in class.

Recent research found more than 80% of students in Aotearoa New Zealand say technology in class is distracting – not just phones.

Already, some students have found clever ways around the phone ban. At one Auckland school, students started using walkie-talkies instead of phones to stay connected with their peers.

Examples like this show bans don’t always change behaviour the way they’re intended to. It can simply make students feel as though adults underestimate how tech-savvy they really are.

Young people as active problem solvers

The young people in our research offered some alternatives to the ban.

Many suggested allowing phones at break and lunch times. That way, they could stay connected without interrupting class. They also said adults needed to model healthy digital habits, not just set the rules.

Based on student responses, it does appear that learning and teaching how to use phones in healthy ways would be more helpful than banning them altogether.

Research from the Digital Wellness Lab supports this balanced approach, emphasising skill building over restriction. But for this to work, adults need support too. Teachers and parents need training and resources to help guide young people – and should also be surveyed on how they feel about the ban.

Banning phones doesn’t fix the bigger issue of helping young people to use technology safely and responsibly. If schools really want to support students, they need to move beyond one-size-fits-all rules.

Our research shows young people aren’t just passive users of technology. They’re active problem solvers. They want to be part of the conversation – and part of the solution.

This would involve replacing top-down bans with meaningful conversations involving young people and adults to build fair and practical digital guidelines, where everyone benefits.

Cara Swit received funding from The Oakley Mental Health Foundation, InternetNZ and the University of Canterbury’s Vision Mātauranga Development Fund to conduct this research.

Aaron Hapuku received funding from The Oakley Mental Health Foundation, InternetNZ and the University of Canterbury’s Vision Mātauranga Development Fund to conduct this research.

Helena Cook received funding from InternetNZ, Oakley Mental Health Foundation and UC Vision Mātauranga Development Fund.

Jennifer Smith received funding from Internet New Zealand and The Oakley Mental Health Foundation.

– ref. School phone ban one year on: our student survey reveals mixed feelings about its success – https://theconversation.com/school-phone-ban-one-year-on-our-student-survey-reveals-mixed-feelings-about-its-success-252179

Step length, a devastating finish and ‘springs in his spikes’: the science behind Gout Gout’s speed

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dylan Hicks, Lecturer & Movement Scientist / PhD Sports Biomechanics, Flinders University

2024 Chemist Warehouse Australian All Schools Championships live stream, Australian Athletics

Every now and then an athlete comes along who makes people wonder, “how are they so fast?”

Let me introduce you to Gout Gout.

Gout is a 17-year-old sprint sensation from Australia, whose blistering 100m and 200m times have drawn comparison to none other than Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt.

While he was edged out over 200 metres in Melbourne last weekend by 21-year-old Lachlan Kennedy – recent 60-metre world indoor silver medallist who is a rising sprinter poised to break the ten-second barrier for 100 metres – Gout’s performances continue to signal a bright future on the track.

In a seven-month period since last August, Gout has:

won silver in the 200m at the World Junior Championships (20.60 seconds, -0.7 metres/second wind)
broken Peter Norman’s long-standing Australian 200m record (20.04 seconds, +1.5m/s)
two weeks ago in Brisbane, smashed through the magical 20-second barrier for the 200m, recording a world-leading 19.98 seconds (+3.6m/s), albeit wind-aided (anything greater than 2.0 metres/second is considered wind-aided).

But what makes Gout so fast?

Is it his explosive start, long stride, top speed or smooth technique?

The answer, as with all athletic outliers, is likely a combination of several unique attributes.

Let’s dive into the science.

The science of sprinting

Sprinting is an ongoing battle of force and mass.

Gravity is pulling the athlete’s body mass down. Meanwhile, the athlete must apply muscular force into the track to keep the body upright.

Research suggests the world’s fastest sprinters generate the highest ground reaction force relative to their body mass and apply it in the shortest period, in the right direction (more horizontally in acceleration and more vertically at top speed).

At 5’11” (180cm) and 66kg, Gout does not display the muscular physiques of past champion sprinters including Asafa Powell (Jamaica), Justin Gatlin (the USA), or Australia’s own Matt Shirvington. Yet his performances suggest is he redefining the archetype of elite sprinting.

For anyone who has run at school, you know the difficulty of holding your top speed for the duration of a 200-metre race.

But Gout defies logic. His speed endurance (maintaining speed) sets him apart from nearly all athletes.

And not just compared to his age group, although he currently sits second on the all-time under-18 200-metre list behind US runner Erriyon Knighton.

Gout’s speed endurance is up there with the best in 200-metre history: Bolt, Michael Johnson or Noah Lyles. Each of them has won multiple Olympic medals.

The fastest official 100-200 metre segment (the final 100 metres of the race) ever run in a 200-metre event is 9.16 seconds by American Lyles, on his way to winning the 2022 world athletics championships in Oregon (19.31 seconds overall).

In Gout’s recent performance in Brisbane, he completed this segment of the race in 9.31 seconds. Bolt and Johnson’s best 100-200 metre segment is 9.27 and 9.20 seconds respectively.

This statistic puts Gout in elite company.

The magic of Gout

Closer analysis of Gout’s performance highlights some sprinting anomalies.

He covers the first 100m of the race in 10.67 seconds, which is quite slow relative to his finishing time of 19.98.

For comparison, when Bolt broke the 200-metre world record in 2009 (19.19 seconds), he ran 9.92 seconds on the curve (and 9.27 seconds on the straight).

But once Gout enters the straight, his magic is on full display.

Gout has an average step length of 2.60 metres. Bolt’s average step length in his 100-metre world record performance was 2.45m, with Lyles displaying a similar result, 2.35m, in his 100-metre win in Paris.

This allows Gout to take between 3.75-4 steps for each ten-metre segment, which he covers at an average speed of 10.8m/s (or 38.8km/h). Like Bolt, his step length is a huge advantage over his competitors.

However, there is a trade-off with step length and step frequency.

Gout’s longer-than-average step length reduces his average step frequency to 4.15Hz (steps per second), much lower than Bolt who averaged 4.47Hz when at his best.

However, research highlights elite sprinters are reliant on either step length or frequency, and athletes should train to their strengths, rather than fixing their weaknesses.

So this may not be an area of concern for the teenager.

Gout also displays a unique coordination pattern in how he interacts with the ground: the way he strikes the track with his feet almost makes it look like he has springs in his spikes.

Well, we all do in a sense.

Elastic energy is stored and released in our Achilles tendon which acts as a muscle power amplifier during running.

Longer Achilles tendon length and stiffness play a huge role in sprint efficiency. This allows athletes to move at faster speeds for longer periods at a reduced energy cost, and may be another one’s of Gout advantages over his contemporaries.

A bright future

At 17, Gout’s performances are out of this world.

The way he generates and maintains speed challenges some conventional paradigms in sprinting – namely that raw power and muscle mass are the primary determinants of speed.

With most elite sprinters peaking in their mid-20s, Gout’s performances at this stage of his career are even more noteworthy.

His success likely highlights the role of his unique coordination patterns, biomechanics, technical efficiency, hard work and great coaching all bundled together.

Gout has already rewritten Australian sprinting history. Next up, he’s taking on the world.

Just don’t blink – he’s that fast, you might miss him.

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. Step length, a devastating finish and ‘springs in his spikes’: the science behind Gout Gout’s speed – https://theconversation.com/step-length-a-devastating-finish-and-springs-in-his-spikes-the-science-behind-gout-gouts-speed-252629

Some Gen Zs are taking a ‘micro-retirement’. It’s one way to address burnout – but it comes with risks

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sugumar Mariappanadar, Senior Academic Researcher – Human Resource Management and Management, Australian Catholic University

For young people in the early stages of their career, the idea of waiting 40 years or more to retire might feel like a marathon. For those already feeling burnt out, it can be an excruciating thought.

So – why not take a break or two somewhere along the way?

The concept of “micro-retirement” is having a moment. While the term appears to have been first coined in 2007, it’s recently found new popularity on social media.

The idea is that retirement doesn’t have to be a fixed, clearly defined period at the end of your working life. Rather, it’s possible to restore your human energy and levels of wellbeing by dipping in and out of it, with small or large career breaks.

Many onlookers have pointed out that the underlying concept is not a new idea. Sabbaticals and other kinds of career breaks have been a feature of the workforce for a long time.

However, the trend gripping some of the Gen Z workforce on social media appears to be slightly different. And while it’s trying to solve some legitimate problems, it could also carry some unique risks.

Taking a break

The notion that rest is crucial – that humans shouldn’t just work themselves into the ground – is very old indeed.

Major religions around the world have long preached the importance of rest and restoration for human beings to survive the hardship of paid work.

Overworked young man rubs eyes looking at laptop — Letting employees get burnt out isn’t a good outcome for anyone.
fizkes/Shutterstock

Career breaks, however, are a bit different from the ordinary rest opportunities we get such as weekends, public holidays and annual leave. There are a few different types.

The first is the full-time career break, such as a sabbatical. This is where an employee, in consultation with their employer, hits pause for an extended period.

This might be to enjoy travel, develop new hobbies or complete training necessary for career progression. However, the company typically continues to pay a salary (or a percentage of it) during the mutually agreed period.

In Australia, many employees are entitled to paid long service leave after serving between seven and 10 years with the same employer, depending on which state or territory they’re in.

Taking a full-time job part-time, can also constitute a kind of career break for some. This is where an employee reduces their working hours or days and earns reduced pay compared to full-time work.

Other types of long-term leave can include parental leave and leave for medical assistance.

In Belgium, a government scheme allows employees to take a career break of up to a year, during which they receive a paid allowance from the government. Previous research into the scheme showed 76% of employees taking full-time career breaks from both public and private sectors were aged between 25 and 49.

People sitting in the sun at a cafe in Belgium — In Belgium, a government scheme allows people to take career breaks.
Werner Lerooy/Shutterstock

Micro-retirement might be different

When Gen Z is talking about micro-retirement, they often aren’t talking about exactly the same thing as a paid, mutually agreed sabbatical.

For many, micro-retirement is a voluntary choice to terminate their employment and support their living through personal savings or government support.

But they are trying to solve similar problems: the health and wellbeing risks associated with pushing too hard – or for too long – at work.

Research by the World Health Organization found the number of deaths from heart disease and stroke that could be attributed to long working hours increased by 29% between 2000 and 2016.

The energy ceiling

My own previous research has examined the “ceiling effect” of human energy. This is when an employee’s energy depletion reaches a tipping point due to their work and begins to affect their wellbeing.

When employees reach the tipping point, or ceiling effect at work, they often use coffee and alcohol as a coping mechanism. This has long-term negative impacts on health.

Sleep also becomes a problem, which can lead to “presenteeism” – where employees show up physically to work but function poorly. This can cost businesses in lost employee productivity.

Flexible or hybrid work can be a double-edged sword that leads to intrusion on home life.

Like any extended break, micro-retirement is a way to replenish or restore the energy depleted. Research into Belgium’s career break scheme found it did improve individual physical and mental health – but it’s important to remember this scheme paid an allowance.

What are the risks?

Micro-retirement might be a new label. But drawing parallels from research into career breaks, there is evidence of so-called “scarring” effects.

This is where the future wages of an individual attempting to re-enter the job market after a career break may be lower than if they had an uninterrupted career.

This can impact physical and mental health, and lead to lower income levels in retirement.

Businesses may not be too inclined to develop policies to implement paid career breaks such as sabbaticals. That may lead more young people to take their own unpaid breaks.

Outside of taking extended breaks, there’s a broader discussion to be had about increasing productivity by redesigning the way we work every day with sustainability and flexibility in mind.

It’s crucial there are ways for employees to disengage from work on a daily basis to restore and replenish their energy.

In addition to his academic post at Australian Catholic University, Sugumar Mariappanadar is a senior sustainability advisor at InSync Australia, where he has advised businesses on environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability business strategy.

– ref. Some Gen Zs are taking a ‘micro-retirement’. It’s one way to address burnout – but it comes with risks – https://theconversation.com/some-gen-zs-are-taking-a-micro-retirement-its-one-way-to-address-burnout-but-it-comes-with-risks-252505

Show your working: how the ‘open science’ movement tackles scientific misconduct

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danny Kingsley, Visiting Fellow, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University

VTT Studio/Shutterstock

In December 2001, a small but lively meeting in Budapest, Hungary, launched a whole new international movement. The resulting Budapest Open Access Initiative opened with the words: “An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good”.

This was the first definition of open access and referred to harnessing the internet to make scientific research openly available, without a subscription. It was a “statement of principle, a statement of strategy, and a statement of commitment”.

More than two decades later, the open access movement has broadened beyond simply research articles. It now incorporates research data, protocols, software and all aspects of the research process. The universal term for this is “open science”.

With its focus on transparency, open science offers part of the solution to the growing problem of scientific misconduct.

A system that enables misconduct

Academic institutions and researchers are focused on a very narrow set of metrics for success. These come down to authorship on a publication being the most valued currency in academia because this is the primary measure towards career progression and academic prestige.

Another industry resulting from these metrics is the international university ranking systems. These are run by commercial organisations that publish lists of universities, which in turn promote their institution as being in the “top X%” of whichever list they have done well in.

Despite widespread criticism, these systems continue to give institutions incentive to reward their academics for publishing in certain journals for the purpose of raising their rank.

With its focus on transparency, open science offers part of the solution to the growing problem of scientific misconduct.
ssi77/Shutterstock

This “publish or perish” push is undermining science.

For example, it has opened up several exploitative industries, such as predatory publishers. These are entities that exploit authors by charging fees for publication without providing adequate editorial services.

Also on the rise are covert entities known as “paper mills”, which manufacture academic articles (either using a human or a machine) and submit them to journals on behalf of paying researchers. This causes serious issues for editors who need to work through an increasing number of rubbish articles to choose which ones are genuine before sending them out for review by other researchers.

These paper mills create major problems for the scientific record. Some experts believe they are also illegal.

Many of the current problems with research integrity were highlighted by a 2024 study, which estimated that as many as one in seven papers is based on suspect data. A whole new area of research called forensic scientometrics has developed to try to identify some of these questionable publishing practices.

Science does have a way of correcting itself through retractions, where a problematic paper is withdrawn from the journal and a retraction notice put up instead. But identifying problem papers is only part of the solution. For example, one 2024 study found less than 5% of all papers identified as retracted were actually removed from journal websites.

University ranking systems give institutions incentive to reward their academics for publishing in certain journals.
Olga Kashubin/Shutterstock

Working openly improves science

So how can making science more open and transparent help?

When we talk about research integrity, we often look to the integrity of the researcher – expecting them to show “moral character”. However, ultimately it is the integrity of the research itself that really matters.

Working in an open environment helps research integrity in several ways.

Making the data used for the work freely available means the work can be better scrutinised. This is something that would have helped prevent the publication of the now-retracted study in The Lancet examining whether the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was effective at treating COVID. The study was retracted after investigations revealed the data the research was based on was deeply flawed and unable to be verified.

Requiring clinical trials to be registered means drug studies that are unfavourable or show no effect cannot be buried.

Reviewing the “instruction manuals” of how research studies are going to be conducted, called the protocols, before the studies are undertaken also ensures more rigorous research. That’s because the quality of the protocols determines the robustness of the work.

These are just a few of the ways open science creates an environment where poor research practice is much harder to undertake.

Working openly won’t necessarily stop bad actors. But it will make it much harder for them to operate without being noticed.

A true paradigm shift

A 2022 study on open access policies in Australian universities showed only 50% had an open access policy at the time, even though this is a requirement under the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

Despite this, there is some hope for open science in Australia.

For example, in 2024, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia convened a roundtable event to discuss how to transition to a fair and equitable open research system. This led to the formation of the National Open Science Taskforce, which is currently co-ordinating open activity in Australia.

Internationally, the European Union was an early advocate for open science, beginning work on the European Open Science Cloud in 2015.

Individual European countries are forging ahead, with The Netherlands having a National Open Science program and Ireland launching its National Framework on the Transition to an Open Research Environment in 2019.

The EU-funded Open and Universal Science is being implemented by a consortium of 18 organisations across the world. It’s due to be completed this year.

Countries worldwide also submitted their first reports last month on their implementation of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.

Open science is a radical departure from traditional research practices. As the summary report of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia’s roundtable event says, transitioning to it requires “a true paradigm and cultural shift”.

But for the sake of improving research integrity, this shift is urgently needed.

Danny Kingsley is a member of the National Open Science Taskforce, a Board member of FORCE11 (Future of Research Communications and eScholarship) and a member of the Royal Society Advisory Group on the Future of Scientific Publishing.

– ref. Show your working: how the ‘open science’ movement tackles scientific misconduct – https://theconversation.com/show-your-working-how-the-open-science-movement-tackles-scientific-misconduct-249020

What are caretaker conventions and how do they limit governments during election periods?

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor Emerita in Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

Now that the election has been called for May 3, parliament has been dissolved and the caretaker government period has commenced. During this period, the caretaker conventions require the government to exercise self-restraint. It must stick to routine government business and not embark on major new commitments.

There are commonly claims in the media that various actions by the government breach the caretaker conventions. Before the accusations start flying, here are the basics to help you make your own assessment.

Why do we have caretaker conventions?

There are two reasons for caretaker conventions. First, once parliament is dissolved, the government can no longer be called to account by parliament. It should therefore be more restrained in its actions while not under parliamentary scrutiny.

Second, as a matter of fairness, the government should not be entering into binding commitments immediately before an election, if they will burden an incoming government. It is unfair for an outgoing government to stack important statutory positions with its own people or enter into contracts that commit a new government to policies it opposes.

When do the caretaker conventions apply?

The caretaker conventions commence from the moment parliament is dissolved. They continue until the election result shows the existing government has been returned to office or a new government is formed.

If there is a hung parliament, it may take a few weeks before we know who will form the new government. If important matters have to be resolved during that prolonged caretaker period, the opposition may be consulted to try to get a cooperative outcome. The existing government, however, retains full legal power to act at all times.

How do the caretaker conventions restrict government actions?

Before each federal election, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet issues a document called Guidance on Caretaker Conventions. It sets out the rules for ministers and public servants.

During the caretaker period, a government must avoid:

making major policy decisions that are likely to commit an incoming government
making significant appointments
entering into major contracts or undertakings, such as entry into treaties or other international agreements.

Whether a decision, appointment or policy is major, is a matter of judgement. In making this assessment, consideration is given to whether it is likely to be controversial or a matter of contention between the government and the opposition. The cost of the decision and its impact on future resources and policies will also be considered.

Both the government and the opposition can still, of course, make election commitments about future action. The caretaker conventions only apply to actions taken within the caretaker period. They also do not apply to decisions made and actions taken before the caretaker period commenced, even if they are only announced after it has commenced.

The public service and the caretaker period

Rules have also developed on the fair use of the public service and public resources before and after elections. Technically, these are not part of the caretaker conventions, which concern self-restraint by ministers. But because they concern fairness in relation to elections, they are often lumped in with the caretaker conventions and they are included within the official guidance document.

These rules are based upon obligations imposed on public servants by statutes and other instruments, such as the Public Service Act 1999 (Cth), and APS Code of Conduct. They require public servants to behave in an impartial and apolitical manner. They also require that public resources not be used to advantage political parties during an election campaign.

It is also customary to restrict the use of government advertising during the caretaker period to necessary matters, and those that do not highlight the role of ministers or promote the achievements or policies of the government.

Two recent examples show how these rules can become controversial during an election campaign. In 2013, the Rudd Labor government was criticised by the opposition for breaching the caretaker conventions by running ads, within Australia, about asylum-seekers not being settled in Australia. The ads were reluctantly approved by public servants under a ministerial direction that they were obliged to obey.

The opposition was happy for the ads to be run in overseas countries, as a source of information and deterrence, but regarded their publication in Australia as partisan and breaching the rules. Opposition spokesperson Scott Morrison called it a “shameless and desperate” grab for votes, with the government spending taxpayers’ money to advertise to the vote-people, rather than the boat people.

On the day of the 2022 election, the Morrison Coalition government instructed the Department of Home Affairs to publish a statement that a boat containing asylum seekers had been intercepted.

It requested that this information be emailed immediately to journalists and tweeted by the Australian Border Force. The issue was highly political. Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a press conference before any announcement had been made that:

I’ve been here to stop this boat. But in order for me to be here to stop those that may come from here, you need to vote Liberals and Nationals today.

Officials published a factual statement about the boat, because they were required to act as directed by the minister. But, as a subsequent investigation revealed, they refused requests to amplify the controversy by sending material to journalists and to publish it on social media, as this would breach their obligations to be apolitical.

Who enforces the caretaker conventions?

The caretaker conventions are not legally binding and cannot be enforced by a court. But some governors-general have given effect to the conventions by deferring action on anything that would breach them. Then, when the election is over, a new government can decide whether to proceed with the matter.

Breaches by public servants of their obligations under codes of conduct and the Public Service Act can have real consequences, such as disciplinary action being taken against them.

While conventions are not legally enforceable, they ordinarily work because there is agreement among political actors that these rules are fair and politically binding on them. Controversy in the media about breaches of conventions can raise public anger. Punishment is left in the hands of the voters.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the Australian Research Council and occasionally does consultancy work for governments, parliaments and inter-governmental bodies.

– ref. What are caretaker conventions and how do they limit governments during election periods? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-caretaker-conventions-and-how-do-they-limit-governments-during-election-periods-251366

Uncertainty and pessimism abound. Will fear be enough to push Dutton into office?

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

Tony Abbott was once unelectable. So were Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

And so was Peter Dutton, not so long ago. But opinion polls over much of 2024 and early 2025 indicated otherwise, and a nightly assault of pre-election political advertising – as my wife and I watched reruns of Law & Order: Criminal Intent – suggested that the Liberals had done their research and needed to humanise their man.

Devotees of Detectives Goren and Eames in that venerable program were able to enjoy briefly reviewing Detective Senior Constable Dutton’s time as a Queensland cop, as well as his splendid business career (which has received some closer scrutiny since) and his more recent meeting and greeting of ordinary Australians as a likeable everyman and all-round good guy.

The ad sometimes played twice in a particular break: the saturation coverage suggested that the Liberals had done rather well with donors. Unfortunately for Dutton, we later gained a deeper insight into the very high priority he attaches to rattling the can for the Liberal Party. Dutton’s decision to attend a fundraiser in Sydney while a cyclone was descending on Queensland did him immense damage, recalling his predecessor’s “I don’t hold a hose, mate” response to the Black Summer bushfires of 2020-21.

If historical precedent is any guide, Dutton’s task should be somewhere between formidable and impossible. When Australians elect their national governments, they can normally assume they are doing so for at least two terms. The last one-termer was the Labor government of James Scullin, elected in October 1929 and sent into oblivion via an election held a few days before Christmas in 1931.

Scullin was a victim of the century’s greatest international economic crisis; governments everywhere faltered or disintegrated under similar pressures. The economic challenges faced by the present Labor government have been more modest. But will it suffer a similar fate to Scullin’s Depression-era administration?

Normally, the rarity of one-termers might have provided Anthony Albanese with a measure of reassurance. But we live in an era where historical precedent seems to count for little.

That was clear enough even at the 2022 election. It was unprecedented in several respects. There was nothing resembling the atmosphere of excitement of 1972, 1983 and 2007 – or, for that matter, 1929 – which had brought Labor governments to power from opposition and awarded them solid or large majorities.

Labor’s majority on the floor of the House of Representatives following the 2022 election was piddling – a mere three seats, and just two after the election of a speaker. Its primary vote was about 32%. It won just five of the 30 available seats in the third most populous Australian state, Queensland.

There had never been a Labor victory like this one. Its exceptionalism haunts Labor’s efforts to gain re-election in 2025.

Labor won in 2022 rather like many state Labor oppositions have won in recent decades. The margin was narrow. The unpopularity of a government, and its leader, was there to be exploited. Again and again, state Labor oppositions have fallen over the line at an initial election, sometimes able only to form minority government: Bob Carr, Mike Rann, Peter Beattie, Steve Bracks and Annastacia Palaszczuk were all examples.

Voters seemed at best grudging in their support, but enough were willing to give Labor a go and then look over the results when a new election came round a few years later. In each case, governments were able to consolidate, sometimes winning landslide victories by establishing their credentials, exploiting incumbency, and building new constituencies.

There were signs Albanese might do the same after May 2022. His slim three-seat majority became a five-seat advantage when Labor’s Mary Doyle won the Aston byelection on April 1 2023 – a seat deep in the traditional Liberal heartland. As late as the Dunkley byelection of March 2 2024, also in Melbourne, the base of electoral support that had seen Albanese into office almost two years before looked to be more or less intact.

Part of the problem for the Coalition seemed to lie with Dutton himself. Would Australians vote for him? Or to put it more precisely: would the kinds of voters in the mainland capital cities who had turned so sharply against Scott Morrison in 2022 shift their votes to a figure as conservative and as bleak as Dutton?

That bleakness always struck me as being a bigger problem than the conservatism. Australians routinely elect conservative prime ministers. They elected Malcolm Fraser when they thought he was a conservative (as indeed he was). Then they elected him twice more. They elected John Howard, who had proudly called himself the Liberal Party’s most conservative leader ever. Then they elected him another three times. They elected Abbott, even if buyer’s remorse quickly followed. They elected Morrison when the Coalition had seemed dead in the water.

But leaders such as Howard and Morrison were much more optimistic than Dutton. They both seemed to think Australia was a pretty good place full of pretty good people and that all things being equal, the future was likely to be pretty good too while there were pretty good blokes in charge (but, of course, it would be much better under a Coalition government, which had the best blokes).

Abbott, to be sure, was more pessimistic – his description of the Syrian conflict as a struggle between “baddies” and “baddies”, and his references to “death cults”, said more about his habit of reducing complexity to melodrama than it did about that Middle East. Yet Abbott’s outlook, at least as expressed publicly while in office, was nowhere near as dismal as Dutton’s.

For Dutton, the enemy is close to home, menacing us in the dark. His bleakness is in a league of its own.

Lech Blaine’s portrait in his Quarterly Essay Bad Cop was convincing: Dutton was a man formed and perhaps damaged by his experience as a policeman, and a political hardman in the habit of painting whole groups of people – commonly politically vulnerable – as a threat to society. Dutton evokes a vision of good people besieged by bad, of the decent and law-abiding as in constant danger of being swamped by the immoral and the criminal – or possibly mugged on their way home from a Melbourne restaurant.

As 2024 unfolded, no one doubted there was sufficient dissatisfaction with Labor building, especially in many outer Australian suburbs, to do the government serious damage at an election. Persistently high interest rates had increased the cost of a mortgage. Inflation had moderated, but living standards had taken a beating. The chattering classes started talking of the inevitability of minority government, but they usually meant minority Labor government. Then they started talking about minority Coalition government, as the polls turned nastier for Labor.

Labor spirits have revived in recent weeks after Dutton’s missteps over Cyclone Alfred, a comfortable victory in the Western Australian election, and opinion polling that shows the ALP ahead on a two-party preferred count. Still, uncertainty abounds.

Albanese often campaigned poorly last time: will he again falter? Dutton, meanwhile, is untested as leader in an election campaign, has little policy on the table, and has a habit of going missing when there are hard questions to be answered.

For me, the key to this election is whether there is a sufficient number of voters, concentrated in the right places, who share enough of Dutton’s pessimism about their own circumstances and, to a lesser extent, about the general state of the country. If, indeed, there is enough congruence between Dutton’s bleakness and theirs, Australia may well have a new government and a new prime minister by winter.

But Dutton’s blessed run might well have now come to an end. Inflation has moderated, the Reserve Bank has made a cut to interest rates, and a sense of scepticism seems to have settled in about Dutton among voters taking a serious look at him as a potential prime minister a few weeks ago.

He now looks more like Old Mother Hubbard with a bare policy cupboard, desperately seeking to shore up the hard right vote against depredations from Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer, than Australia’s answer to Donald Trump.

Frank Bongiorno 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. Uncertainty and pessimism abound. Will fear be enough to push Dutton into office? – https://theconversation.com/uncertainty-and-pessimism-abound-will-fear-be-enough-to-push-dutton-into-office-247360

Brisbane 2032 is no longer legally bound to be ‘climate positive’. Will it still leave a green legacy?

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Foth, Professor of Urban Informatics, Queensland University of Technology

When Brisbane was awarded the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it came with a widely publicised landmark promise: the world’s first “climate-positive” games.

The International Olympic Committee had already announced all games would be climate-positive from 2030. It said this meant the games would be required to “go beyond” the previous obligation of reducing carbon emissions directly related to their operations and offsetting or otherwise “compensating” for the rest.

In other words, achieving net-zero was no longer sufficient. Now each organising committee would be legally required to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than the games emit. This is in keeping with the most widely cited definition of climate-positive.

Both Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 made voluntary pledges. But Brisbane 2032 was the first contractually required to be climate-positive. This was enshrined in the original 2021 Olympic Host Contract, an agreement between the IOC, the State of Queensland, Brisbane City Council and the Australian Olympic Committee.

But the host contract has quietly changed since. All references to “climate-positive” have been replaced with weaker terminology. The move was not publicly announced. This fits a broader pattern of Olympic Games promising big on sustainability before weakening or abandoning commitments over time.

A quiet retreat from climate positive

Research by my team has shown the climate-positive announcement sparked great hope for the future of Brisbane as a regenerative city. We saw Brisbane 2032 as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to radically shift away from the ongoing systemic issues underlying urban development.

This vision to embrace genuinely sustainable city design centred on fostering circular economies and net positive development. It would have aligned urban development with ecological stewardship. Beyond just mitigating environmental harm, the games could have set a new standard for sustainability by becoming a catalyst to actively regenerate the natural environment.

Yet, on December 7 2023, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) initiated an addendum to the host contract. It effectively downgraded the games’ sustainability obligations.

It was signed by Brisbane City Council, the State of Queensland, the Australian Olympic Committee and the IOC between April and May 2024.

The commitment for the 2032 Brisbane Games to be climate positive has been removed from the Olympic Host Contract.
International Olympic Committee

Asked about these amendments, the IOC replied it “took the decision to no longer use the term ‘climate-positive’ when referring to its climate commitments”.

But the IOC maintains that: “The requirements underpinning this term, however, and our ambition to address the climate crisis, have not changed”.

It said the terminology was changed to ensure that communications “are transparent and easily understood; that they focus on the actions implemented to reduce carbon emissions; and that they are aligned with best practice and current regulations, as well as the principle of continual improvement”.

Similarly, a Brisbane 2032 spokesperson told The Conversation the language was changed:

to ensure we are communicating in a transparent and easily understood manner, following advice from the International Olympic Committee and recommendations of the United Nations and European Union Green Claims Directive, made in 2023.

Brisbane 2032 will continue to plan, as we always have, to deliver a Games that focus on specific measures to deliver a more sustainable Games.

But the new wording commits Brisbane 2032 to merely “aiming at removing more carbon from the atmosphere than what the Games project emits”.

Crucially, this is no longer binding. The new language makes carbon removal an optional goal rather than a contractual requirement.

A stadium in Victoria Park violates the 2032 Olympic Host Contract location requirements.
Save Victoria Park, CC BY

Aiming high, yet falling short

Olympic Games have adopted increasingly ambitious sustainability rhetoric. Yet, action in the real world typically falls short.

In our ongoing research with the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, we analysed sustainability commitments since the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. We found they often change over time. Initial promises are either watered down or abandoned altogether due to political, financial, and logistical pressures.

Construction activities for the Winter Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi, Russia, irreversibly damaged the Western Caucasus – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Rio 2016 failed to clean up Guanabara Bay, despite its original pledge to reduce pollutants by 80%. Rio also caused large-scale deforestation and wetland destruction. Ancient forests were cleared for PyeongChang 2018 ski slopes.

Our research found a persistent gap between sustainability rhetoric and reality. Brisbane 2032 fits this pattern as the original promise of hosting climate-positive games is at risk of reverting to business as usual.

Victoria Park controversy

In 2021, a KPMG report for the Queensland government analysed the potential economic, social and environmental benefits of the Brisbane 2032 games.

It said the government was proposing to deliver the climate-positive commitment required to host the 2032 games through a range of initiatives. This included “repurposing and upgrading existing infrastructure with enhanced green star credentials”.

But plans for the Olympic stadium have changed a great deal since then. Plans to upgrade the Brisbane Cricket Ground, commonly known as the Gabba, have been replaced by a new stadium to be built in Victoria Park.

Victoria Park is Brisbane’s largest remaining inner-city green space. It is known to Indigenous peoples as Barrambin (the windy place). It is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register due to its great cultural significance.

Page 90 of the Olympic Host Contract prohibits permanent construction “in statutory nature areas, cultural protected areas and World Heritage sites”.

Local community groups and environmental advocates have vowed to fight plans for a Victoria Park stadium. This may include a legal challenge.

The area of Victoria Park (64 hectares) compared with Central Park (341h), Regent’s Park (160h), Bois de Vicennes (995h).
Save Victoria Park

What next?

The climate-positive commitment has been downgraded to an unenforceable aspiration. A new Olympic stadium has been announced in direct violation of the host contract. Will Brisbane 2032 still leave a green legacy?

Greater transparency and public accountability are needed. Otherwise, the original plan may fall short of the positive legacy it aspired to, before the Olympics even begin.

Marcus Foth receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Senior Associate with Outside Opinion, a team of experienced academic and research consultants. He is chair of the Principal Body Corporate for the Kelvin Grove Urban Village, chair of Brisbane Flight Path Community Alliance, and a member of the Queensland Greens.

– ref. Brisbane 2032 is no longer legally bound to be ‘climate positive’. Will it still leave a green legacy? – https://theconversation.com/brisbane-2032-is-no-longer-legally-bound-to-be-climate-positive-will-it-still-leave-a-green-legacy-246672

‘It is a seriously difficult role and only getting harder’: school principals speak about stress, violence and abuse in their jobs

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Kidson, Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership, Australian Catholic University

Isuzek/Getty Images

School principals around Australia are responsible for about 4.5 million staff and students in almost 10,000 schools. Not only do they oversee students’ progress, but they are also responsible for the performance of staff and the wellbeing of everyone at their school. Their jobs are huge.

As we have previously tracked in our annual survey of principals, their jobs are also extremely stressful and they are subject to regular abuse – often from parents.

Our latest survey shows these trends are not changing. And more than 50% of those we surveyed are seriously thinking about quitting.

Our research

Since 2011, we have surveyed Australian school leaders. This includes principals, deputy principals, and other school leaders such as heads of junior or senior schools.

In our new report, we surveyed almost 2,200 people, which is more than 20% of Australian school leaders. In 2024, we surveyed primary and high school leaders from government, independent and Catholic schools all around the country.

This makes it the most comprehensive data set on principals’ health and wellbeing in Australia. It is also the longest-running survey of its type in the world.

The survey asked almost 2,200 school leaders about their jobs and wellbeing.
Sol Stock/ Getty Images

High workloads and stress

Previous surveys have shown school principals face unsustainably high workloads and high levels of stress. Unfortunately, these trends continue in our latest 2024 results.

School leaders work an average of 54.5 hours a week during term time and 20.6 hours during holidays. They nominated the “sheer quantity of work” as the biggest source of their stress.

This was closely followed by “lack of time to focus on teaching and learning” and “student-related issues”.

As a high school principal from Western Australia told us:

I do love what I do however it is a seriously difficult role and only getting harder.

Generalised anxiety and depression reports have also increased from last year’s survey. Severe anxiety was reported by 14.8% of participants, up from 11.4% in 2023. Moderate depression is reported by 11.1% of participants, up from 10.6%.

Critical incidents

For the first time, our 2024 survey asked principals about the number of “critical incidents” they have to deal with. These are defined as an “often unexpected event that may involve loss or threat to wellbeing or personal goals”.

Nearly three-quarters (73.7%) said they had experienced a critical incident while in their role. The most common type of incident was violence and security threats (43.9%). Suicide and suicidal threats represented 12.6% of reported incidents. Participants also reported medical emergencies (10.3%) and custody or child-protection incidents (7%).

As one NSW principal told us:

I think it is untenable for principals to continue to be under constant stress at this level and am aware that many of my colleagues are also retiring or considering retiring. I have only just turned 59 and would like to work for another 5-10 years but can’t continue due to the ridiculous workload and pressure.

Schools are not safe for principals

An increasing number of principals report being subject to offensive behaviours that are unacceptable in any workplace – let alone one that involves children and young people.

Nearly 55% reported they are subjected to threats of violence, 57% are subjected to gossip and slander, and 35% are subjected to cyberbullying. These are the highest levels we have ever reported.

When asked “from whom”, more than 65% of school leaders said parents and caregivers. Students also contribute, but unfortunately, so do staff. They were the source of 29% of “gossip and slander” reported by school leaders.

As one ACT school leader told us:

The major cause of distress are parents. Parents behave in an unreasonable manner, have ridiculous expectations and think that because they went to school they can therefore run a school. Principals are constantly defending staff from parents. Parents are rarely told to stop and desist by Education Support Offices.

While many principals report loving their jobs, stress and abuse are constant features.
Rawpixel.com/ Shutterstock

Many prinicpals want to leave

In 2023, we first asked the question whether school leaders seriously consider leaving their job. More than half (56%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

It’s pleasing to report this has reduced slightly to 53% nationally, but the trend is, unfortunately, not consistent across the country.

For example, the figure in NSW has dropped from 63% to 51%, but in Victoria it has increased from 48% to 54%. Policymakers across jurisdictions could benefit from working together to address these findings, to see what is working and what is not.

How can we help?

The demands on today’s school principals are significant – the work takes an emotional toll – and this means we need different approaches to supporting them.

It’s why we recommend education departments and school boards provide “reflective supervision” for school leaders. This gives professionals a regular chance to reflect on what they are doing with a confidential and experienced practitioner in the field, which in this case would be another experienced school leader.

This is a widespread practice in other demanding workplaces, such as family violence, healthcare, and child mental health. Practitioners in these fields benefit through improved management of their own wellbeing, which in turn helps them support their clients and patients.

We also need to make sure governments regularly and routinely consult principals about education policy.

Schools and education departments should also explore alternative models to make the job more sustainable. This could include co-principals or job sharing models.

Without change, too many leaders will leave too quickly, without anyone left to replace them.

Herb Marsh receives funding from ARC research grant funding

Theresa Dicke has received funding from ARC and still receives funding from several peak principal associations to complete this research.

Paul Kidson 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. ‘It is a seriously difficult role and only getting harder’: school principals speak about stress, violence and abuse in their jobs – https://theconversation.com/it-is-a-seriously-difficult-role-and-only-getting-harder-school-principals-speak-about-stress-violence-and-abuse-in-their-jobs-253327

Art for art’s sake? How NZ’s cultural organisations can maintain integrity and still make money

By The Conversation -

March 31, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ksenia Kosheleva, Doctoral candidate, Marketing, Hanken School of Economics

When Auckland mayor Wayne Brown said in 2022 that the Auckland Art Gallery had the foot traffic of a corner dairy and cast the institution as an “uneconomic” entity, he conceded he was at risk of “being seen as something of a philistine”.

But the mayor’s comments also highlighted a very real challenge. How can New Zealand cultural organisations secure their future when the value of art and culture is seen through the economic lens of profit?

And does an overemphasis on profit make cultural groups wary of market and strategy, hampering innovation in the art and culture sector?

Our research proposes a concept we call “generative coexistence”. We suggest that when market approaches are integrated thoughtfully, market forces and cultural missions can work together and enable each other.

Why the market vs. culture debate is changing

For years, cultural organisations were shielded from the market by state funding. But while government support remained relatively consistent, there was no consistent funding strategy. With each budget round being akin to a lottery, calls for change are becoming louder.

The 2024 budget included significant reductions in arts funding. Cultural organisations were expected to find new ways to stay viable. However, as art institutions turn to practices like sponsorship, ticketed events and merchandising to boost revenue, there’s understandable concern about a potential loss of artistic integrity.

Yet, market principles and cultural values can be aligned.

In 2023, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra launched a digital platform, NZSO+, to stream performances, open rehearsals and artistic talks. Later that year, the NZSO performed to a flock of farm chickens, to support ethical farming and, simultaneously, modernise its brand image.

The moves raised questions about whether the orchestra’s essence could be nurtured outside of concert halls. At the same time, they showed a possibility for cultural organisations to blend their authentic mission with commercial acumen, without compromising their intrinsic values.

The NZSO’s streaming strategy didn’t just address a budget shortfall. It allowed the orchestra to reach wider, younger and more diverse audiences who might not otherwise engage with classical music. Through this market-driven approach, the symphony orchestra sustained its core mission of bringing music to all New Zealanders.

Our research includes examples of cultural groups from around the world. It captures how, rather than seeing commercialisation as a “necessary evil” undermining the arts, cultural groups can use the tensions that come from the competing demands to produce creative solutions.

Here, generative coexistence allows cultural organisations to adapt in ways that not only keep the lights on but also broaden their impact.

Entry of Te Papa Museum — Wellington’s Te Papa Museum uses blockbuster ticketed exhibitions to attract a wider audience while maintaining its cultural status.
travellight/Shutterstock

Generative coexistence in the arts

We identified three main strategies for organisations in the arts and culture sector designed to help them thrive in a world where financial and cultural goals can seem at odds with each other.

First, organisations need to embrace the commercial potential of cultural products.

When approached thoughtfully, the strong commercial appeal of cultural products can support an organisation’s core mission and create a democratic counterbalance against sponsorship dependency.

Wellington’s Te Papa Museum, for example, creates value through blockbuster ticketed exhibitions that attract a wider audience – such as last year’s Dinosaurs of Patagonia. By using selective commodification processes, Te Papa maintains its educational and cultural status and generates the revenue needed to innovate and expand its reach.

Cultural organisations also need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.

Organisations worldwide experiment with innovating existing business models to allow for creative and operational freedom. For example, performing art organisations are increasingly moving away from legacy models – such as venue-based events with tickets as the key revenue stream – into hybrid and digitally-led ones.

Similarly, galleries and art spaces are opting for nomadic models, eschewing permanent locations but maintaining a strong online presence. This enables cultural actors to adapt and lower reliance on funding while creating cultural value.

Finally, cultural organisations need to look into cross-disciplinary collaborations that align on shared goals. Finding a balance between financial stability and cultural integrity requires recognising opportunities to work together.

How market and cultural values can coexist

The New Zealand arts sector is still cautious about non-intuitive collaborations with adjacent fields, such as gaming, fashion or advertising. But partnering with the tech industry holds the promise of new levels of visitor engagement, while staying rooted in the commitment to community enrichment.

Cultural organisations have to navigate a complex landscape where financial pressures and cultural missions intersect and create tensions.

Our concept of generative coexistence encourages a more flexible view. Examples from around the globe show it isn’t about choosing between culture and commerce. It’s about turning tensions into a foundation for innovation, accessibility and resilience.

Arts and culture are neither luxuries nor commodities, but integral parts of a thriving society. We are certain that New Zealand’s creative sector, which is unique, resilient and economically viable, can secure its place in a future that honours both the power of art and the realities of financial sustainability.

Ksenia Kosheleva receives funding from The Foundation for Economic Education, Finland.

Julia Fehrer and Kaj Storbacka 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. Art for art’s sake? How NZ’s cultural organisations can maintain integrity and still make money – https://theconversation.com/art-for-arts-sake-how-nzs-cultural-organisations-can-maintain-integrity-and-still-make-money-252362

Labor gains lead in post-budget Newspoll; would be one seat short of majority in YouGov MRP poll

By The Conversation -

March 30, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

Labor’s regaining of polling momentum has continued into the first week of the formal election campaign. A national Newspoll, conducted March 27–29 from a sample of 1,249, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago. This is Labor’s first Newspoll lead since July 2024.

Primary votes were 37% Coalition (down two), 33% Labor (up one), 12% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (down one) and 12% for all Others (up two). By 2022 election preference flows, Labor would have led by about 51.5–48.5.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval improved three points to -9, with 52% dissatisfied and 43% satisfied. Peter Dutton’s net approval slid four points to -18. Albanese led Dutton as better PM by 49–38 (47–38 previously).

This is Albanese’s best net approval in Newspoll since September 2024, Dutton’s worst since October 2023 and Albanese’s biggest better PM lead since May 2024. Here is the graph of Albanese’s net approval in Newspoll this term with a trend line.

The budget itself was not well received, with a net 10 points saying it would be bad for the economy (zero for the previous budget in May 2024) and a net 19 points bad for you personally (two previously). However, a net nine points said the Coalition would not have delivered a better budget (six previously).

There have been three polls released since the budget, with Labor gaining the lead in Newspoll, making a big gain for a tie in Resolve, but not gaining in Freshwater. The trend in the polls to Labor prior to the budget was clear, and Newspoll and Resolve confirmed this trend. Here is the poll graph.

The gains for Labor are probably in spite of the poorly rated budget. I believe US President Donald Trump is the most important reason for Labor’s gains in the last month, owing to his tariffs and associated stock market falls.

Resolve poll: Labor makes big gain from outlier for a tie

A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted March 26–29 from a sample of 3,237 (double the usual sample size), had a 50–50 tie by respondent preferences, a five-point gain for Labor from the previous Resolve poll in late February, a pro-Coalition outlier.

Primary votes were 37% Coalition (down two), 29% Labor (up four), 13% Greens (steady), 7% One Nation (down two), 9% independents (steady) and 5% others (up one). By 2022 election flows, Labor led by 51–49, a three-point gain for Labor.

Albanese’s net approval was up 11 points since February to -11, with 49% saying his performance was poor and 38% good. Dutton’s net approval slumped 15 points to -10. Albanese led Dutton by 42–33 as preferred PM, a reversal of Dutton’s 39–34 lead in February. This is Albanese’s biggest lead since April 2024.

The Liberals led Labor on economic management and keeping the cost of living low, but their leads were much reduced. They led on economic management by 36–29 (41–24 previously). On cost of living, the Liberals led by 31–27 (37–25 previously). Treasurer Jim Chalmers had a net +6 approval, while shadow treasurer Angus Taylor was at net -6.

Freshwater poll steady at 51–49 to Coalition

A national Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted March 28–30 from a sample of 1,059, gave the Coalition a 51–49 lead, unchanged from the previous Freshwater poll two weeks ago. An unrounded figure of 50.6–49.4 to the Coalition was provided.

Primary votes were 39% Coalition (steady), 32% Labor (up one), 12% Greens (down two) and 17% for all Others (up one). By 2022 election flows, this poll would be about a 50–50 tie.

In contrast to trends in other polls, both leaders were at -11 net approval, which was down one for Albanese and up one for Dutton. Albanese led Dutton by 46–45 as preferred PM (45.9–42.5 previously).

The Coalition led Labor by six points on cost of living, a two-point gain for Labor. They led on the economy by 11 points, a two-point gain for the Coalition.

The polls below were all conducted before Tuesday’s budget.

YouGov MRP poll puts Labor just one seat short of a majority

YouGov conducted a national MRP poll (multi-level modelling with post-stratification) from February 27 to March 26 from an overall sample of 38,629. MRP polls are used to estimate the outcome in each House of Representatives electorate using huge samples and modelling.

YouGov’s central forecast if the election were held now is Labor winning 75 of the 150 lower house seats, one short of a majority. The Coalition would win 60 seats, the Greens two, independents 11 and others two. Since YouGov’s previous MRP poll that was taken from late January to mid-February, Labor is up nine seats, the Coalition down 13 and independents up four.

The high forecast for Labor is 80 seats and 68 for the Coalition, while the low forecast is 69 for Labor and 55 for the Coalition. This poll is not a prediction of the election result, as the polls could change before the election.

The overall vote share in this MRP poll was 50.2–49.8 to Labor, a 1.9% swing to the Coalition since the 2022 election, but a 1.3% swing to Labor since the last MRP poll. Primary votes were 35.5% Coalition (down 1.9), 29.8% Labor (up 0.7), 13.2% Greens (up 0.5), 9.3% One Nation (up 0.2), 8.3% independents (down 0.6) and 3.9% others (up 1.1).

Although Labor’s share of Greens and One Nation preferences has risen since the last MRP poll, by 2022 election flows this poll would have Labor further ahead, by 51.5–48.5.

Redbridge poll: Labor maintains narrow lead

A national Redbridge poll, conducted March 13–24 from a sample of 2,039, gave Labor a 51–49 lead, unchanged from the previous Redbridge poll in early March. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up one), 34% Labor (up two), 11% Greens (down one) and 17% for all Others (down two).

By 54–29, voters were unable to identify something the Labor government had done since its election in May 2022 that had made their lives better. Of those who could identify something, 36% selected electricity rebates, with 11% for the next most popular.

By 35–23, voters opposed the government placing tariffs on goods imported into Australia. By 68–24, voters were concerned about Chinese naval ships sailing down Australia’s east coast and conducting live fire drills.

Seat polls of teal-held Kooyong and Goldstein

The Poll Bludger reported Saturday that JWS polled the Victorian teal-held seats of Kooyong and Goldstein “a fortnight ago” from samples of 800 each for Australian Energy Producers. In Kooyong, teal Monique Ryan led the Liberals by 51–49, while in Goldstein the Liberals led teal Zoe Daniel by 54–46.

The Kooyong poll agrees well with the YouGov MRP, but the YouGov MRP had Daniel leading by 54.5–45.5 in Goldstein. The March 8 WA election indicated the Coalition would do worse in swing terms in affluent inner city seats.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Labor gains lead in post-budget Newspoll; would be one seat short of majority in YouGov MRP poll – https://theconversation.com/labor-gains-lead-in-post-budget-newspoll-would-be-one-seat-short-of-majority-in-yougov-mrp-poll-253410

View from The Hill: Dutton has questions to answer on gas; Albanese has supermarket answer still hunting for the problem

By The Conversation -

March 30, 2025

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

Peter Dutton is a tease when it comes to the fine print of policies. At least that’s the benign explanation. Critics have a harsher take on why we’re always being told to wait for the detail. They would claim his policies are often thin, or unfolded on the run.

Right now, we’re into the first week of the campaign and we’re still waiting for more on the Coalition’s gas reservation policy, announced in Dutton’s budget reply, as well as precision on its immigration policy and for how much extra it would spend on defence.

Dutton said on Sunday we’d get information on the gas policy in the next “couple of days”.

Danny Price, of Frontier Economics, has been hard at work, putting some modelling together. Price did the modelling for the opposition’s controversial nuclear policy, finding it much cheaper than the government’s energy transition plan. But those numbers depend on the assumptions. That modelling was contested, and no doubt so will be the gas policy analysis.

Whatever the numbers that come out, they won’t include one key figure: what you would (arguably) save on your power bill. The opposition has learned something from Labor’s debacle of promising, before the last election, that its energy policy would save households $275 by 2025.

At the weekend Albanese dismissed Labor’s modelling before the 2022 election as “RepuTex modelling based on the circumstances at the time”. Indeed.

Dutton has, however, suggested his gas policy would reduce the wholesale domestic price from $14 per gigajoule to under $10 a gigajoule. More gas would mean cheaper prices, is its logic.

The opposition’s thinking is that it lands the generality of a policy first, lets the public absorb that, and then produces detail. But the trouble with releasing the detail so late is the Coalition is likely to get bogged down in a confusing and damaging debate over what opponents will say are dodgy numbers and assumptions.

This can lose a day or more and there aren’t that many days in a five-week campaign, especially when pre-polling starts a fortnight before the end.

While Dutton was batting off questions about gas at the weekend, Anthony Albanese swung into his campaign stride in a comfort zone – at attack on supermarkets.

He announced that if re-elected, Labor will legislate against supermarkets being able to price gouge. Not immediately though. There’d be a taskforce to work out the detail.

There’s more than a touch of chutzpah here. We’ve just seen the report of a long inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into supermarkets. It found they were very profitable but it didn’t find price gouging. Its raft of recommendations did not include legislation on price gouging.

This hasn’t deterred the PM, who provided his own definition of the problem. “I got asked today by someone … ‘how do you know what price gouging is?’ Price gouging is when supermarkets are taking the piss off Australian consumers. That’s what it is. That’s what price gouging is. Everyone out there knows. Consumers know. We’ll take action here.”

He did give the rather less colloquial EU definition.“In the EU, a price is unfair and excessive if, and to quote their law, ‘it has no reasonable relation to the economic value of the product supplied’.”

After a fairly ordinary start to the campaign, this week Donald Trump will step right into the centre of it, with his much-anticipated tariff announcement. Australian officials continue to lobby the US; no one is confidently predicting whether or not we’ll be escape the firing line.

Before the Trump announcement will come Tuesday’s first meeting of the new monetary policy board that has been set up under Labor’s changes to the Reserve Bank.

Unlike February, when all the heat was on the bank’s governor to deliver that rate cut (which did come), nobody is expecting another cut yet. Michele Bullock can relax this week.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: Dutton has questions to answer on gas; Albanese has supermarket answer still hunting for the problem – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-dutton-has-questions-to-answer-on-gas-albanese-has-supermarket-answer-still-hunting-for-the-problem-253118

NZ protesters honour killed Gaza journalists – ‘targeted’ say press freedom groups

By Asia Pacific Report -

March 29, 2025

Pacific Media Watch

Global press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza this week, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.

And protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand dedicated their week 77 rally and march in the heart of Auckland to their memory, declaring “Journalism is not a crime”.

Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya, media reports said.

Video, reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.

Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today television was killed earlier on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an Israeli airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.

One Palestinian woman read out a message from Shabat’s family: “He dreamed of becoming a journalist and to tell the world the truth.

“But war doesn’t wait for dreams. He was only 23, and when the war began he left classes to give a voice to those who had none.”

Global media condemnation
In the hours after the deaths, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks.

“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s programme director.

“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour.

“Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”

Honouring the life of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat – killed by Israeli forces at 23 and shattering his dreams. Image: Del Abcede/APR

In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted and killed Shabat and Mansour and labelled them as “terrorists” — without any evidence to back their claim.

The IDF also said that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance fighters in Khan Younis, where Mohammed Mansour was killed.

In October 2024, the IDF had accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant arm of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera and Shabat denied Israel’s claims, with Shabat stating in an interview with the CPJ that “we are civilians … Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”

In its statement condemning the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, the CPJ again called on Israel to “stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press”.

The CPJ estimates that more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began gathering data in 1992.

However, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says it believes the number is higher and, with the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, 208 journalists and other members of the press have been killed over the course of the conflict.

Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.

Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in its genocide in the blockaded enclave since October 7, 2023.

The Israeli carnage has reduced most of the Gaza to ruins and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, while causing a massive shortage of basic necessities.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.

New Zealand protesters wearing mock “Press” vests in solidarity with Gazan journalists documenting the Israeli genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Thousands are feared dead in Myanmar’s quake. Trump’s USAID cuts will cause even more unnecessary deaths

By The Conversation -

March 29, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia

In early 2021, after a decade of political and economic reforms, Myanmar looked like it was finally beginning to shake off the hangover of decades of military rule. Foreign investment was growing, and standards of living were gradually improving.

In February that year, however, the military again grabbed power after ousting Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government in a coup. This sent the country spiralling towards civil war and social and economic collapse.

In the latest addition to the daily misery of Myanmar’s long-suffering people, a huge 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit the centre of the country on Friday. Its epicentre was just outside Mandalay, the county’s second-largest city.

The Thai capital of Bangkok, more than 1,000 kilometres from the epicentre, experienced extensive damage too. Video images showed a collapsing building under construction and sloshing rooftop infinity pools causing waterfalls down high-rise condominiums.

Information on the extent of the damage in Myanmar was slower to emerge, given the junta has largely banned social media and communications apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Signal and X.

The death toll has now passed 1,000 at the time of writing. US Geological Survey modelling, however, suggests there could be more than 10,000 deaths and economic losses potentially exceeding the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Unusually for the isolationist military juntas of Myanmar, its leader, Min Aung Hlaing, immediately issued a call for international assistance.

The junta, however, has full control of as little as 21% of the country in the ongoing civil war, with the rest contested or controlled by ethnic armed groups and resistance fighters. This indicates some hard-hit areas of the country may be inaccessible to international aid.

Compounding these difficulties, the Trump administration has decimated the US Agency for International Development (USAID) activities in the country. This will make it far more challenging to determine the areas most in need and distribute any aid on the ground.

Natural disasters in Myanmar

Along with its history of brutal and authoritarian military rule since gaining independence in 1948, Myanmar is also regularly afflicted by natural disasters.

At least 430 people are believed to have died in floods last September due to the remnants of Typhoon Yagi. In 2023, Cyclone Mocha reportedly killed about 460 of the Rohingya ethnic minority, who are largely confined to government camps in Rakhine state in inhuman conditions.

The worst natural disaster in living memory, however, was Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which left at least 140,000 dead. On that occasion, the military junta resisted international assistance, likely resulting in many unnecessary deaths.

At that time, there was no independent media in Myanmar and it was almost impossible to find out what was actually happening on the ground.

Fortunately, the proliferation of mobile phones in the last decade has allowed information to spread much more widely, even with the junta’s internet blocks and other methods of censorship currently in place.

When Cyclone Nargis occurred – the year after the iPhone was launched – only around 1% of the Myanmar’s population had mobile phones. By the time of the coup in 2021, Myanmar had a smartphone penetration rate of 114%. (This means the country has more smartphones than people.)

Foreign assistance has been compromised

While Min Aung Hlaing has gone farther than his predecessor in 2008 in asking for international help, US President Donald Trump’s actions have ensured that any aid will be far less effective than it would have been two months ago.

On Friday, the same day the earthquake hit, the Trump administration told Congress it would cut nearly all remaining jobs at USAID and shut the agency, closing all USAID missions worldwide.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International and a former USAID official, called the move “a total abdication of decades of US leadership in the world”. He argued the firings would cut “the last remnants of the team that would have mobilised a USAID disaster response” to the earthquake.

In 2024, USAID spent US$240 million (A$380 million) in Myanmar, around one-third of all multilateral humanitarian assistance to the country.

However, since Trump’s inauguration in January, the number of USAID programs in Myanmar has shrunk from 18 to just three. Several NGOs and at least seven US-funded hospitals operating along Myanmar’s border with Thailand have been shut down.

Myanmar’s exiled independent media outlets, which shine a light on the military’s atrocities, have also seen their funding slashed by the Trump administration’s USAID cuts.

What happens now?

The day before the earthquake, Min Aung Hlaing addressed troops at the 80th anniversary of Armed Forces Day Parade. He announced national elections would go ahead in December – a vote that human rights groups are already calling a “sham”.

There is no conceivable way elections of any integrity can be held in the country under military rule or while the civil war continues to rage.

Military-backed parties have been overwhelmingly rejected by Myanmar’s electorate in every remotely free or fair election over the last four decades. This includes the most recent elections held in 2020, won by the National League of Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

While the world should welcome – and urgently respond to – Min Aung Hlaing’s invitation for international assistance, this doesn’t mean the past is forgotten. Thousands of innocent lives have been lost as a result of the military’s unnecessary and destructive 2021 coup.

If the NLD had remained in government, the country would be infinitely more prepared to deal with consequences of this earthquake. Once again, the military’s brutal rule – and Trump’s draconian aid cuts – will no doubt cause more unnecessary suffering and deaths.

Adam Simpson 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. Thousands are feared dead in Myanmar’s quake. Trump’s USAID cuts will cause even more unnecessary deaths – https://theconversation.com/thousands-are-feared-dead-in-myanmars-quake-trumps-usaid-cuts-will-cause-even-more-unnecessary-deaths-253403

Filipino activists praise arrest of ex-president Duterte as first step to end impunity

By Asia Pacific Report -

March 29, 2025

Asia Pacific Report

Dozens of Filipinos and supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand came together in a Black Friday vigil and Rally for Justice in the heart of two cities tonight — Auckland and Christchurch.

They celebrated the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month to face trial for alleged crimes against humanity over a wave of extrajudicial killings during his six-year presidency in a so-called “war on drugs”.

Estimates of the killings have ranged between 6250 (official police figure) and up to 30,000 (human rights groups) — including 32 in a single day — during his 2016-2022 term and critics have described the bloodbath as a war against the poor.

But speakers warned tonight this was only the first step to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines.

Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, and his adminstration were also condemned by the protesters.

Introducing the rally with the theme “Convict Duterte! End Impunity!” in Freyberg Square in the heart of downtown Auckland, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Eugene Velasco said: “We demand justice for the thousands killed in the bloody and fraudulent war on drugs under the US-Duterte regime.”

She said they sought to:

expose the human rights violations against the Filipino people;
call for Duterte’s accountability; and
to hold Marcos responsible for continuing this reign of terror against the masses.

Flown to The Hague
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte on March 11. He was immediately arrested on an aircraft at Manila International Airport and flown by charter aircraft to The Hague where he is now detained awaiting trial.

“We welcome this development because his arrest is the result of tireless resistance — not only from human rights defenders but, most importantly, from the families of those who fell victim to Duterte’s extrajudicial killings,” Velasco said.

Filipina activist Eugene Velasco . . . families of victims fought for justice “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”. Image: APR

“These families fought for justice despite the complete lack of support from the Marcos administration.”

Velasco said their their courage and resilience had pushed this case forward — “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”.

“‘Shoot them dead!’—this was Duterte’s direct order to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). His death squads carried out these brutal killings with impunity,” Velasco said.

Mock corpses in the Philippines rally in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR

But Duterte was not the only one who must be held accountable, she added.

“We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those who orchestrated and enabled the state-sponsored executions, led by figures like Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Lieutenant-Colonel Jovie Espenido, that led to over 30,000 deaths, the militarisation of 47,587 schools, churches, and public institutions — especially in rural areas — the abductions and killings of human rights defenders, and the continued existence of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.”

A masked young speaker tells of many victims of extrajudicial killings at tonight’s Duterte rally in Freyberg Square. Image: APR

Fake news, red-tagging
Velasco accused this agency of having “used the Filipino people’s taxes to fuel human rights abuses” through the spread of fake news and red-tagging against activists, peasants, trade unionists, and people’s lawyers.

“The fight does not end here,” she said.

“The Filipino people, together with all justice and peace-loving people of Aotearoa New Zealand, will not stop until justice is fully served — not just for the victims, but for all who continue to suffer under the Duterte-Marcos regime, which remains under the grip of US imperialist interests.

“As Filipinos overseas, we must unite in demanding justice, stand in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings, and continue the struggle for accountability.”

Several speakers gave harrowing testimony about the fate of named victims as their photographs and histories were remembered.

Speakers from local political groups, including Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez, and retired prominent trade unionist and activist Robert Reid, also participated.

Reid referenced the ICC arrest issued last November against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Gaza genocide, saying he hoped that he too would end up in The Hague.

Mock corpses surrounded by candles displayed signs — which had been a hallmark of the drug war killings — declaring “Jail Duterte”, “Justice for all victims of human rights” and “Convict Sara Duterte now!” Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte is currently Vice-President and is facing impeachment proceedings.

The “convict Duterte” rally and vigil in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Coalition has promised $400m for youth mental health. Young people told us what they need

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bridianne O’Dea, Little Heroes Professor of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Flinders University

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised a Coalition government would spend an extra A$400 million on youth mental health services.

This is in addition to raising the number of subsidised psychology sessions from ten to 20, which had been previously announced.

While extra funding for youth mental health is welcome, it’s important to target this in ways that will make a real difference to young people.

In our recent research, we asked young people about their experiences of waiting for mental health support, how they coped in the meantime, and what would really make a difference while they waited.

Rates of mental illness rising

An estimated one in seven Australian children and adolescents had a mental illness in the past 12 months. Rates of mental illness have also increased over time, particularly among younger generations.

The COVID pandemic led to a rapid rise in the number of children and young people seeing their GP for mental health problems. Visits for depression rose by 61% and eating disorders by 56% compared with before the pandemic.

The number of visits to the emergency department in New South Wales for self-harm, or plans or thoughts about suicide, have also increased since COVID.

The annual Mission Australia Survey reveals young Australians see mental health as one of their biggest challenges, with thousands calling for more support.

But there are long waits for care

Despite the greater demand for mental health treatment in Australia, there is very little information on how long young people wait to access it.

The Australian Psychological Society reported that during the pandemic, 88% of psychologists increased their wait times and one in five were not taking on new clients. This meant about half of people waited more than three months to begin psychological treatment. But this is for clients of all ages.

There is also little information on how young people experience the wait for treatment.

We asked young people about the wait for care

We recently published research on the wait times for mental health treatment for Australian teens.

We asked 375 young people aged 13–17 about the mental health care they have tried to access for their anxiety and depression and how long they waited to start treatment. We also asked them about their mental health while they waited, what helped them cope, and the types of support they received.

We found that on average, teens were waiting more than three months for their first session of treatment. Most teens waited to access psychologists and psychiatrists after a GP referral.

While their wait times varied, nearly all teens felt they waited “too long”.

Longer wait times were linked to poorer mental health, with more than 90% of teens reporting high distress while they waited. Many of the teens felt their feelings of worry and sadness had worsened and they had used risky and unhealthy ways to cope, such as spending more time alone, sleeping more, self-harming, and using alcohol and other drugs.

Most teens did not receive any support from their health-care providers during the wait time, despite wanting it.

One female 17-year-old had waited six months for treatment and told us:

It felt like I was hanging over a cliff and was just told to hold on.

Teens also felt their parents would benefit from greater support during the wait time. But we need more research to better understand how to help families.

Together, these findings show we desperately need to address wait times for young people’s mental health treatment.

Teens know the support they need

If teens are to wait for mental health treatment, they told us they need support while they do so.

Young people wanted more regular contact and “check-ins” from their service providers, someone to talk to during the wait, as well as more useful information on positive ways to cope.

Most teens in our study used digital mental health tools – such as mental health websites, online mental health checks, mobile apps, online chat services and forums – while they waited.

We’re developing digital mental health tools, in consultation with young people and GPs, to support doctors to care for their teen patients when treatment isn’t available right away. We’re testing the system of short digital mental health programs, supportive text messages and peer support in NSW this year.

But not all teens we surveyed found digital mental health tools helpful. So we need to offer teens a range of supports – from their family, their GP, and from their referred service provider – to help them cope while they wait for treatment.

What can governments do?

We must carefully consider when, where and how mental health funds are invested. If governments wish to see more young people treated for their mental health problems, then we need to look at how our health-care system will cope with the growing demand.

We also need national, transparent benchmarks for how long young Australians wait for mental health treatment. Only some health services in Australia have this. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, have something similar to minimise the health risks of young people waiting too long for care.

Ultimately, though, we need to prevent mental health issues from starting in the first place. That would reduce the need for treatment, the very type young Australians are waiting too long for.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Bridianne O’Dea is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Investigator Fellowship (1197249) and a MRFF Millions Minds Mental Health Grant (2035416). Bridianne O’Dea received funding from the Buxton Family Foundation, Australian Unity, the Frontiers Technology Clinical Academic Group Industry Connection Seed Funding Scheme and the UNSW Medicine, Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction Theme and SPHERE Clinical Academic Group Collaborative Research Funding to conduct this research. Bridianne O’Dea is a member of the Australian Society for Mental Health Research and the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions. Bridianne O’Dea’s current work has received pro bono support from Deloitte Digital Australia.

– ref. The Coalition has promised $400m for youth mental health. Young people told us what they need – https://theconversation.com/the-coalition-has-promised-400m-for-youth-mental-health-young-people-told-us-what-they-need-253328

Tobacco excise revenue has tanked amid a booming black market. That’s a diabolical problem for the government

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fei Gao, Lecturer in Taxation, Discipline of Accounting, Governance & Regulation, The University of Sydney, University of Sydney

Tuesday night’s federal budget revealed a sharp drop in what was once a major source of revenue for the government – the tobacco excise.

This financial year, the government expects to earn revenue from the tobacco excise of A$7.4 billion. That’s down sharply from $12.6 billion in 2022–23, and an earlier peak of $16.3 billion in 2019–20.

The government expects this downward trend to continue. Australia’s heavy tobacco taxation has driven many consumers towards illicit cigarettes.

But this is more than just a problem for government coffers accustomed to revenue from the tobacco tax.

It presents a major challenge for a public health policy that has long relied on increasing tobacco excise duty as its primary tool to reduce smoking.

Climbing tax rates, falling revenue

If government revenue from tobacco is falling, it isn’t because we aren’t trying to tax it. Cigarette prices in Australia are among the highest in the world, with taxes making up a substantial chunk of the price.

About $1.40 of the cost of each cigarette represents excise duty. GST is payable on top of that.

Australia’s tobacco excise is indexed every March and September, in line with average weekly ordinary-time earnings.

On top of indexation, the excise rate is currently being increased by
an additional 5% each year, for a period of three years that began in September 2023.

This policy is grounded in the principle that higher costs deter smoking.
And smoking rates have fallen in recent decades. About 8% of Australians aged 14 and over still smoke daily, down from almost 20% in 2001.

Some of that fall has been offset by the rapid ascent of vaping. About 7% of Australians use e-cigarettes – about half of whom vape daily.

But while legal cigarette prices are prohibitively high for some, illegal alternatives are widely available and significantly cheaper. That’s because these unregulated products bypass excise and GST entirely.

Woman smokes disposable electronic cigarette. Bright yellow background — Vaping has soared in popularity as an alternative to smoking.
Natali Brillianata/Shutterstock

Unintended consequences

The estimated value of illicit tobacco entering the Australian market has soared, from $980 million in 2016–17 to more than $6 billion in 2022–23. Of this $6 billion, almost $3 billion entered the market undetected.

The actual decline in tobacco excise revenue, as exposed in the latest budget papers, has been much more significant than previously forecast.

To make things worse, the cost of enforcement is rising. The 2025–26 federal budget allocates an additional $156 million over the next two years to combat illicit tobacco — on top of the $188 million committed in the previous budget.

There are other broader impacts on overall tax revenue. Convenience stores lose legitimate sales to illegal tobacco vendors, resulting in less corporate tax income.

Holding back broader public health efforts

On other measures, Australia has long been a global leader in tobacco control. The first health warnings on cigarette packets appeared in 1973.

In 2006, graphic health warnings were introduced. And in 2011, Australia pioneered plain packaging laws.

Such public health measures are set to get even stronger this year, with new requirements for every individual cigarette sold to have an “on-product” health warning such as “causes 16 cancers” or “shortens your life”.

These new regulations come into effect on April 1 2025, but retailers will have a three-month transition period to phase out existing stock.

The tight transition period may prove challenging for the legitimate cigarette trade.

But it is unlikely those who ply the unlawful trade in illegal tobacco – or their customers – will be particularly bothered by this latest attempt to wean the public off the habit.

No easy solution

The increasing heavy tobacco excise and the new law requiring warning messages on individual cigarettes have the potential to reduce tobacco consumption among those who purchase the product legally.

However, suppliers of black-market cigarettes – who now comprise an estimated 18% of market share – are unlikely to allow this initiative to affect their illegal trade.

The widespread move to vaping, with poor regulation, has further fuelled the black market for both products.

It is going too far to draw parallels with the prohibition era in the United States, when the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol was illegal. This was a brief but disastrous experiment in social engineering with unfortunate and, in retrospect, arguably predictable consequences.

But there are some unfortunate similarities when it comes to Australia’s tobacco tax policy, which has inadvertently encouraged black markets, criminality and organised crime.

Yet for the government, lowering the excise tax to encourage smokers back to legal cigarettes would be completely out of step with its public health objectives. Legal or illegal, black-market cigarettes and vapes still contribute to health risks, undermining the public health goals behind regulatory controls.

– ref. Tobacco excise revenue has tanked amid a booming black market. That’s a diabolical problem for the government – https://theconversation.com/tobacco-excise-revenue-has-tanked-amid-a-booming-black-market-thats-a-diabolical-problem-for-the-government-253329

Policy tracker: how will Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and the independents make Australia better?

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Digital Storytelling Team, The Conversation, The Conversation

➡️ View the full interactive version of this article here

Digital Storytelling Team 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. Policy tracker: how will Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and the independents make Australia better? – https://theconversation.com/policy-tracker-how-will-labor-the-coalition-the-greens-and-the-independents-make-australia-better-253345

Ants in your house? Here’s how they get everywhere – even high up in tall buildings

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Latty, Associate Professor, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

Ants are among nature’s greatest success stories, with an estimated 22,000 species worldwide.

Tropical Australia in particular is a global hotspot for ant diversity. Some researchers believe it could hold some of the richest ant biodiversity on the planet, with an estimated 5,000 species in the tropics alone.

But if ants are so successful out in nature, why do they so often turn up in our homes and even upper-level apartments?

And what can we do to keep them out?

There’s probably an ant near you right now

Ants dominate the planet in terms of sheer abundance.

At any given moment, there are an estimated 20 quadrillion ants alive — that’s 20 followed by 15 zeros.

In fact, for every human being, there are roughly 2.5 million ants.

There are about 22,000 ant species worldwide. This one is called the Green tree ant (Oecophylla smaragdina).
Tanya Latty

So the short answer to “Why are there ants in my house?” is simply this: there are a lot of ants.

We live on a planet where ants outnumber us by an almost unimaginable margin. The fact that a few occasionally wander into our homes shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Ants work from home (yours, that is)

Ants owe much of their success to their highly social nature.

Within the colony, some individuals (female queens and male drones) are responsible for reproduction, while others (workers) are busy caring for the young, cleaning or foraging for food. Workers ants are always female.

An ant sits on a leaf. — Ants may start off outside but at least some will probably eventually end up inside.
Tanya Latty

Ant colonies do not have leaders. They are an excellent example of collective behaviour and swarm intelligence, where individuals following relatively simple rules can collectively achieve far more than any individual could alone.

Just as the individual neurons in your brain can’t compose music, play football, or read articles, the brain as a whole can achieve all these feats and more.

Colonies of co-operating ants are capable of amazingly sophisticated behaviours such as:

building efficient trail networks
building living bridges with their bodies, and
“farming” fungi and aphids (small, sap-sucking insects that feed on plants).

Ants even outperform humans on some cooperative cognition tasks.

Credit: Wonder World.

The highly social nature of ants is a big part of their success — and a key reason why they are so good at finding their way into our homes.

Each colony contains thousands of intrepid workers, many of which are constantly searching for new food sources. If even a single ant discovers a valuable resource in your home, it can quickly share that information with its nest mates.

Different ant species use different methods of communication, but the ones that most often invade our homes tend to use “pheromone trails”.

When an ant finds a food source, she returns to her nest leaving little drops of pheromones as she goes; this trail guides other ants from their nest directly to the food source.

This highly efficient communication system means a single ant can rapidly recruit thousands of its nest mates to any food it finds.

Ants may also come inside in search of water, particularly when the weather is hot.

Some species prefer to build their nests in humid environments, which might explain why they are often found in bathrooms.

I once discovered an entire colony of sugar ants nesting inside my aquarium filter! The combination of high humidity and an enclosed structure made it an ideal place to build a nest.

On the flip side, heavy rains can flood ant nests, prompting colonies to seek drier ground — sometimes leading them straight into our homes.

One ant talks to another ant. — Ants are incredible communicators.
Dhe Tong/Shutterstock

I live in an upper-floor apartment. How did ants get in?

Many ant species are exceptional climbers, thanks to tiny adhesive pads and fine hairs on their feet.

These specialised structures allow ants to stick to walls and find footholds even on surfaces that appear smooth to the human eye.

Remarkably, some canopy-dwelling ants have evolved a behaviour known as “controlled descent” which protects them when they fall. By adjusting the position of their abdomens, falling ants can steer their trajectory, directing themselves back toward the tree trunk and safety.

Ants walk along a vertical wall. — Ants often have tiny adhesive pads and fine hairs on their feet, which help them stick to walls.
Mob_photo/Shutterstock

How do I keep ants out of my house?

Well, good luck. No matter what you do, ants will probably enter your house at one time or another.

Finding a few ants in your home doesn’t mean your house is dirty. We simply live on a planet that is absolutely teeming with ants.

To minimise unwanted ant visits, start by eliminating any potential food sources that could feed a hungry ant.

Store all food in sealed airtight containers, clean behind the fridge and inside/under the toaster, avoid leaving pet food out longer than needed and make sure your bins are securely sealed.

Ants have tiny stomachs, so even small crumbs or the residue from spilled sugary drinks can be enough to entice them back.

If ants seem to be following each other in a line, try disrupting their chemical trail using vinegar or bleach. Be warned, however: ants are very good at repairing broken trail networks.

Seal any small cracks or entrance points that might allow ants to get into your home and make sure your windows and doors have well-fitting fly screens.

Insecticidal baits can kill ant colonies, but before you deploy the nuclear option, ask yourself: what harm are the ants really doing?

Most common home-invading ants do not sting and are pretty harmless. They can usually be redirected simply by removing their food source.

Ants are nature’s clean-up crew, tirelessly scavenging waste and helping to maintain a healthy, balanced ecosystem.

They also play important roles as predators and seed dispersers.

Before reaching for insecticides, consider whether a few ants in your house are truly a problem.

Tanya Latty co-founded and volunteers for conservation organisation Invertebrates Australia, is former president of the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour and is on the Education committee for the Australian Entomological Society. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Saving our Species, and Agrifutures Australia.

– ref. Ants in your house? Here’s how they get everywhere – even high up in tall buildings – https://theconversation.com/ants-in-your-house-heres-how-they-get-everywhere-even-high-up-in-tall-buildings-250625

Travelling overseas? You could be at risk of measles. Here’s how to ensure you’re protected

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Archana Koirala, Paediatrician and Infectious Diseases Specialist; Clinical Researcher, University of Sydney

Julia Suhareva/Shutterstock

On March 26 NSW Health issued an alert advising people to be vigilant for signs of measles after an infectious person visited Sydney Airport and two locations in western New South Wales.

The person recently returned from Southeast Asia where there are active measles outbreaks in several countries including Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.

The NSW alert follows a string of similar alerts issued around Australia in recent days and weeks.

If you’re travelling overseas soon, you could be at risk of measles. Here’s what to know to ensure you’re protected.

First, what is measles?

Measles is one of the most contagious viral illnesses. It spreads through the air when a person breathes, coughs or sneezes. On average, one person can infect 12 to 18 others who are not immune.

Initial symptoms include fever, a runny nose, cough and conjunctivitis. Then a non-itchy rash usually starts around the hairline before spreading around the body.

Measles is most common in children, and they’re also most vulnerable to getting very sick with the virus. Measles is severe in around one in ten children. Complications can include ear infection, diarrhoea and pneumonia, and, more rarely, encephalitis (brain swelling).

However, adults can also catch and spread the disease, making up 10–20% of measles cases during outbreaks.

Vaccination has saved millions of lives

The first measles vaccine was licensed for public use in 1963, and it changed the trajectory of this disease. In the 21st century alone, measles vaccination is thought to have saved more than 60 million lives globally.

The measles vaccine is free through Australia’s National Immunisation Program. It’s routinely given at 12 and 18 months of age. The first dose is combined with mumps and rubella (the MMR vaccine) and the second adds protection against chickenpox, or varicella (MMRV).

False suggestions the measles vaccination is linked with disorders such as autism have been thoroughly disproven. The vaccine is very safe and highly effective.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses there is.
fotohay/Shutterstock

However, because the vaccine is made from a live virus, people with weakened immune systems (for example, those receiving chemotherapy for cancer or pregnant women) cannot have the vaccine even though they’re at higher risk of severe measles. Their safety depends on high community immunisation rates to reduce the spread of the virus.

Because measles is so infectious, at least 95% of the population needs to be immune to prevent its spread.

Immunity occurs from either two doses of measles vaccine or past infection. Measles vaccination was introduced in Australia in 1968. Most adults born before the mid-1960s would still be immune from a past infection. But vaccination is recommended for everyone else who is not immune.

Immunity gaps are opening up

Gaps in immunity to measles have opened up around the world due to challenges in delivering routine immunisations during the COVID pandemic, and, in some cases, reduced acceptance of vaccination.

In 2023 only 83% of the world’s children received at least one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday, down from 86% in 2019. This is not enough to halt spread.

The withdrawal of US government funding from many global health programs, including a measles surveillance network that supports testing and outbreak responses, is throwing fuel on the fire.

In Australia, small but progressive declines in the uptake of childhood vaccines over the past five years and immunity gaps in other age groups means our risk of outbreaks in increasing.

Rates of childhood vaccination coverage have been declining slightly.
Inna photographer/Shutterstock

For example, coverage of the MMR vaccine at 24 months declined 0.4 percentage points between 2022 and 2023 (from 95.3% to 94.9% in Indigenous children and 95.1% to 94.7% in children overall).

On-time vaccination rates – within 30 days of the recommended age – are also falling. The proportion of children who had their MMR vaccine on time dropped from 75.3% to 67.2% for non-Indigenous children and 64.7% to 56% for Indigenous children between 2020 and 2023.

Measles outbreaks are increasing in Australia and across the world

Measles cases are rapidly rising across the globe and more cases are arriving from overseas into Australia. So far in 2025, 37 cases have been reported compared to 57 in all of 2024, 26 in 2023 and seven in 2022. Most cases have been imported from overseas, but we’ve ascertained eight cases so far in 2025 were locally acquired.

Many of the countries experiencing the largest measles outbreaks are popular travel destinations for Australians, including India, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam.

But few countries are free of measles. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and various countries in Europe are all tackling outbreaks.

As the incubation period – the gap between exposure and symptoms – is around seven to ten days, travellers may enter the country without knowing they’re about to become ill and potentially spread the virus to others.

Protecting yourself and your family

Although the usual age for the first measles dose is 12 months, the MMR vaccine can be given to babies as young as six months who are travelling to measles hotspots or during outbreaks.

This early measles vaccine dose does not replace those given at 12 and 18 months, but will help protect the infant in the interim.

It’s important all adults, particularly those planning overseas travel, know their vaccination or infection history. If you don’t, talk to your health-care provider about being vaccinated.

Everyone who doesn’t have immunity from an infection should have two lifetime doses. Some adults, including those who have migrated from overseas, may have had none or only one dose when they were younger. If you’re unsure, there’s no harm in receiving a vaccine if you’ve had measles or have been fully vaccinated already.

If you come back from overseas and need medical care, inform your health-care provider about your symptoms and recent travel before attending a clinic in person.

Archana Koirala has worked on projects funded by the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care and NSW Health. She is the chair of Vaccination Special Interest Group and a committee member of Australian and New Zealand Paediatric Infectious Diseases Group of the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases.

Kristine Macartney is the Director of the Australian National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS). NCIRS receives funding from the Australian government Department of Health and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, NSW and other state and territory health departments, Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization, the NHMRC, the MRFF and the Wellcome Trust.

– ref. Travelling overseas? You could be at risk of measles. Here’s how to ensure you’re protected – https://theconversation.com/travelling-overseas-you-could-be-at-risk-of-measles-heres-how-to-ensure-youre-protected-252802

Gavin Ellis: Forensic detail on NZME but where are the guarantees?

By David Robie -

March 28, 2025

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

KNIGHTLY VIEWS: By Gavin Ellis

Excoriating is the word that may best describe expat Canadian James Grenon’s 11-page critique of NZME. His forensic examination of the board he hopes to replace and the company’s performance is a sobering read.

You may not have seen the letter. At the time of writing, it was still sitting behind The New Zealand Herald’s Premium paywall. It is, however, available through the New Zealand Stock Exchange. You can access it here.

Grenon is highly critical in a number of areas that he breaks down into sections in the letter. The headings include:

“The combined performance of the two core businesses has been mediocre, to sliding, for the past eight years, despite a temporary period of covid gains.”

“There has been a consistent pattern of over promising and under delivering since covid.”

“Public disclosure is weak, with a slant that I interpret as supporting the status quo.”

Grenon’s letter includes an analysis of NZME’s share price in relation to the perceived value of its OneRoof real estate marketing arm, and the company’s dividend policy. He claims “the disclosure on these two critical elements is, in my opinion, lacking or even misleading”. He also criticises levels of management-level remuneration and high levels of staff turnover which he says “does not suggest a happy working environment”.

NZME’s board has yet to respond to the letter stating — in a note to the New Zealand Stock Exchange accompanying the release of Grenon’s letter — that it will do so in its notice to shareholders before the annual general meeting on April 29.

Were that the sum total of his challenge to the present board, it might be characterised as simply a move to improve the group’s financial performance and its return to shareholders. Much of what he says will, in fact, resonate with ordinary shareholders worried about the group’s financial performance and direction. It may well attract even more votes at the April AGM than he currently commands.

However, there is an enormous caveat hanging over any support for Grenon’s initiative.

He states categorically in his letter that he does not propose to act as a passive board chair (yes, there is an assumption that he will head an entirely new board). Instead, he leaves a strong impression he will be an executive chairman, in effect if not in name.

“I propose to be very active at the management level, leading a board and team that will delve into the operational details so as to be able to challenge management . . . This approach to governance is the only realistic way to ensure NZME gets a fresh set of eyes questioning every aspect of operational effectiveness and shareholder value creation.” The italics are mine and are highlighted for reasons I will return to shortly, but the import is clear: James Grenon and his team will have a finger in the pie.

The second reason for exercising caution on any endorsement of the Canadian’s move relates to the three paragraphs he groups under the heading “Journalism”.

On the surface, he promises better journalism, saying his intention is that “more quality content should be produced, not less”.

In contrast to NZME’s recent announcement to “set a new tone and build positive social momentum for New Zealanders”, our proposal will lift the company’s journalistic standards, resulting in the production of higher quality news content, characterised by independent, trustworthy and balanced perspectives. There will also be material for entertainment value as well. Then all the content will be used in any number of ways to generate proﬁt.

He also applauds the “audience leading ratings of NZME’s audio segment”.

All of this sounds laudible, until one asks the simple question: How?

He has yet to give any specific answers. A request from the journalists’ union E Tū for assurances simply led to Grenon asking more questions about what the union meant by “editorial independence”.

However, let’s return to what Grenon means by his references to NZME’s journalism.

If he means the board will limit itself to supporting an annual budget that will allow NZME’s editors to independently produce the sort of content to which his letter alludes, all well and good.

If he means the aims set out in his letter will be transmitted to editors as an expectation of their approach to journalism, no problem.

However, when read in conjunction with the intentions I italicised above, there are strong indications that he intends to be at least meddlesome and, at worst, to dictate editorial direction and content. There is a signal to his editorial preferences in the fact that he applauds radio ratings that are firmly anchored by NewstalkZB’s right-leaning content.

Nowhere in Grenon’s letter is there any undertaking to observe the principles of editorial independence that certainly permeated The New Zealand Herald when I was editor a couple of decades ago and which I inherited from a long list of predecessors. Nowhere is there recognition that NZME has responsibilities to the general public. Declining trust is seen only in terms of the impact on profits.

Responsible and accountable journalism is something editors and their staff hold in trust on behalf of society. They seek audiences for the dual purposes of spreading that journalism to the general public and, in the process, producing the profits that ensure its ongoing sustainability. Done well, it is a virtuous circle.

However, like all circles, once any part of it is fractured it collapses. If Mr Grenon views the editorial department in the same way he sees every other aspect of NZME’s business, he would be in boots and all. Then it would be only a matter of time before the circle falls in on itself.

James Grenon’s bid deserves support only if he gives cast-iron guarantees of editorial independence, and that requires more than a letter of reassurance. Mere words are not enough.

Well-founded concerns for the future of a vital component of our journalistic infrastructure will be allayed only by changing the constitution of NZME to prevent directors from instructing any employee on editorial policy or operational matters. That protection would be all the more vital if now-stalled discussions over the purchase of Stuff’s titles and associated digital outlets are resumed after NZME’s board battle is resolved.

Both Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand have statutory protection against ministerial interference in editorial matters. The community deserves the same protection from board interference in private sector media in the public interest.

That, however, has never been a given and many news media enterprises rely on a mixture of tradition and peer pressure to ensure their journalists are insulated from undue influence.

The New York Times, for example, has a proud tradition of editorial independence but that owes more to the Salzberger family than to the company’s articles of association. The Daily Mail and General Trust have a tradition whereby its editors are appointed by the editor-in-chief in consultation with the board chairman, who also by tradition has been Viscount Rothermere (currently the fourth holder of the title). Each editor then controls the content of the respective titles. The editor-in-chief of The Guardian is not appointed by the board but by the Scott Trust, which owns the newspaper group, and reports directly to it.

I commend to Grenon and his fellow board aspirants an essay on editorial independence by the chairman of the New York Times Company, A G Salzberger. You can access it here.

For NZME to have effective guarantees of editorial independence, its articles would need to have a failsafe mechanism to prevent the sort of override that Rupert Murdoch affected with his news acquisitions. Such a mechanism might be special recourse to the Media Council in the event of an attempt by directors to interfere. The council could then independently investigate whether there had been a breach of the company constitution. Disclosure of such a breach could be damaging to both directors and the company.

The combination of protective governance plus an independent review process would allay most of the fears generated by Grenon’s utterances and his past brief encounters with news media — a former shareholding in the right-wing aggregator site The Centrist, and financing of legal action against mainstream media.

NZME shareholders and the public of New Zealand should be very wary if no such undertakings are forthcoming.

Disclosure: I was formerly a shareholder in the previous parent company of the group but do not currently hold shares in NZME.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Café Pacific with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

What is Australian bat lyssavirus? Can I catch it from bat poo? What if bats roost near me?

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamish McCallum, Emeritus Professor, infectious disease ecology, Griffith University

Last week, Queensland Health alerted the public about the risk of Australian bat lyssavirus, after a bat found near a school just north of Brisbane was given to a wildlife carer group.

The bat later died, but it was not confirmed whether it carried the virus.

This is not unusual. Volunteer wildlife carers respond to thousands of calls from the public every year after encountering sick, injured and orphaned bats. And testing them all routinely for the virus is not warranted or feasible.

Here’s what you need to know about the risk of catching Australian bat lyssavirus and how it can be treated.

What is bat lyssavirus?

Australian bat lyssavirus belongs to the same group of viruses that includes rabies – one of the most notorious diseases humans can catch from animals. Rabies causes about 59,000 deaths worldwide a year, mainly after dog bites. It is almost always fatal once symptoms appear.

Australian bat lyssavirus was discovered in 1996. There have been only three confirmed cases of the virus in humans in Australia, the most recent in 2013. All three were fatal.

Fortunately, because Australian bat lyssavirus and rabies are so closely related, the preventative measures that have been developed internationally against rabies can also protect humans from the effects of Australian bat lyssavirus.

Australian bat lyssavirus and rabies have a long incubation period (the period between exposure to infection and appearance of symptoms). If preventative treatments are given during the incubation period, they are highly effective in preventing disease and saving lives.

Such treatment reduces what is already a very low risk of illness and death to effectively zero.

Illustration of rabies virus — Australian bat lyssavirus and rabies (pictured here) are closely related.
nobeastsofierce/Shutterstock

How could I be exposed to the virus?

The virus is present in the saliva of some Australian bats, including the large flying foxes (fruit-eating bats) and some smaller bats that eat insects. But the proportion of bats infected by the virus is normally very low – less than 0.5%.

Infected bats may become sick and die, but some may appear unaffected. In other words, you can’t always tell just by looking at a bat whether it’s infected or not. However, there is evidence the virus is present at a higher level in sick bats than in healthy ones.

You cannot be exposed to the virus by being under a flying fox roost, even if the bats poo on you. You cannot be exposed by having bats in your roof or in a shed.

Bat poo on a fence — No, you can’t catch Australian bat lyssavirus from bat poo.
Anna Evangeli

But the virus can be transferred to a human via either a scratch or bite. That’s if an infected bat scratches or bites you, or if their saliva is transmitted to an existing wound.

So you do need to be careful if you come across a sick or injured bat, or you find a child playing with a bat.

There is no evidence the virus regularly infects dogs and cats, although rabies does.

Nevertheless, given that Australian bat lyssavirus is a close relative of rabies and that rabies will infect most mammals, the possibility that it may sometimes spill over to mammals other than humans cannot be eliminated.

For example, in 2013 two horses in the same paddock became infected and had to be euthanised. The source of infection was not identified.

So you should also seek advice if you see an animal such as a dog or cat play with a dead or injured bat. Contact a wildlife care group for advice about the bat and a vet to discuss post-exposure treatment for your pet.

Woman taking dog for walk in park or forest — If your dog plays with a dead or injured bat, seek advice from your veterinarian to be on the safe side.
Lazy_Bear/Shutterstock

How great is the risk?

It is important to put the risk posed by Australian bat lyssavirus into perspective.

Although each of the three deaths known to have been caused by the virus since 1996 is tragic, in 2017-2018 alone, 12 people in Australia died from
bee or wasp stings.

Bats play an important role in our ecosystems. Without the pollination and pest control services bats provide, our increasingly fragmented native forests would struggle to recover after fires, and we’d need to use more pesticides on our crops. There is also no evidence bat lyssaviruses are increasing in Australian bat populations.

Is the risk to humans changing?

However, as we encroach upon natural habitats via land clearing we are likely to have increased contact with wildlife, including bats.

Mass mortality events in bats in Australia – such as those in recent years caused by extreme heat or bat paralysis syndrome (thought to be caused by bats ingesting an environmental toxin) – are likely to lead to increased contact between people, their pets and vulnerable bats.

The risk to human health is therefore likely increasing, albeit from a very low level.

What should I do?

First, don’t panic. Infection is extraordinarily rare and will continue to be so.

Second, don’t interfere with bat populations. Do not pick up sick or injured bats and do not allow your children or pets to play with them. Keep your pets inside at night to minimise potential contact with bats.

Third, if you or a member of your family is bitten or scratched by a bat, or suspect you have been, seek medical attention, including post-exposure treatment. People who regularly handle bats, such as wildlife carers or researchers, should be vaccinated in advance. They are also trained to handle bats safely and use appropriate personal protection equipment.

If you find a sick or injured bat, contact your local wildlife rehabilitation group or veterinarian.

Hamish McCallum receives funding from the US NSF and fron the EU Horizons program. His work on bat virus disease ecology has previously been funded by the US NSF and DARPA

Alison Peel receives funding from the US NIH. Her work on bat virus disease ecology has previously been funded by the ARC, US NSF and DARPA

Cinthia is a volunteer wildlife carer for a not-for-profit organisation based in Southeast Queensland that works with bats.

– ref. What is Australian bat lyssavirus? Can I catch it from bat poo? What if bats roost near me? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-australian-bat-lyssavirus-can-i-catch-it-from-bat-poo-what-if-bats-roost-near-me-252632

Fitting the ‘missing puzzle pieces’ – research sheds light on the deep history of social change in West Papua

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dylan Gaffney, Associate Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology, University of Oxford

Owing to its violent political history, West Papua’s vibrant human past has long been ignored.

Unlike its neighbour, the independent country of Papua New Guinea, West Papua’s cultural history is poorly understood. But now, for the first time, we have recorded this history in detail, shedding light on 50 millennia of untold stories of social change.

By examining the territory’s archaeology, anthropology and linguistics, our new book fits together the missing puzzle pieces in Australasia’s human history. The book is the first to celebrate West Papua’s deep past, involving authors from West Papua itself, as well as Indonesia, Australasia and beyond.

The new evidence shows West Papua is central to understanding how humans moved from Eurasia into the Australasian region, how they adapted to challenging new environments, independently developed agriculture, exchanged genes and languages, and traded exquisitely crafted objects.

A map of West Papua — Archaeological evidence shows that people migrating from Eurasia into the Australasian region came through West Papua.
Dylan Gaffney, CC BY-SA

Early seafaring and adaptation

During the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 million to 12,000 years ago), West Papua was connected to Australia in a massive continent called Sahul.

Archaeological evidence from the limestone chamber of Mololo Cave shows some of the first people to settle Sahul arrived on the shores of present-day West Papua. There they quickly adapted to a host of new ecologies.

The precise date of arrival of the first seafaring groups on Sahul is debated. However, a tree resin artefact from Mololo has been radiocarbon dated to show this happened more than 50,000 years ago.

Genetic analyses support this early arrival time to Sahul. Our work suggests these earliest seafarers crossed along the northern route, one of two passages through the Indonesian islands.

Maps showing human dispersal to West Papua during the Pleistocene epoch, about 50,000 years ago, and during the Lapita period, more than 3,000 years ago. — Human dispersal to West Papua during the Pleistocene epoch (about 50,000 years ago) and during the Lapita period (more than 3,000 years ago).
Dylan Gaffney, CC BY-SA

Interestingly, the first migrants carried with them the genetic legacy of intermarriages between our species, Homo sapiens, and the Denisovans, a now extinct species of hominins that lived in eastern Asia. Geneticists currently dispute whether these encounters took place in Southeast Asia, along a northerly or southerly route to Sahul, or even in Sahul itself.

In the same way modern European populations retain about 2% of Neanderthal ancestry, many West Papuans retain about 3% of Denisovan heritage.

As the Earth warmed at the end of the Pleistocene, rising seas split Sahul apart. The large savannah plains that joined West Papua and Papua New Guinea to Australia were submerged around 8,000 years ago. Much of West Papua’s southern and western coastlines became islands.

Social transformations during the past 10,000 years

As environments changed, so did people’s cuisine and culture.

We know from sites in Papua New Guinea that people developed their own agricultural systems between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, at a similar time to innovations in Asia and the Americas. However, agricultural systems were not universally adopted across the island.

New chemical evidence from human tooth enamel in West Papua shows people retained a wide variety of diets, from fish and shellfish to forest plants and marsupials.

One of the key unanswered questions in West Papua’s history is when cultivation emerged and how it spread into other regions, including Southeast Asia. Taro, bananas, yams and sago were all initially cultivated in New Guinea and have become important staple crops around the world.

A man working under the light of a lamp, examining excavated artefacts at Mololo Cave. — Moses Dialom, an archaeological fieldwork collaborator from the Raja Ampat Islands, examines excavated artefacts at Mololo Cave.
Tristan Russell, CC BY-SA

The arrival of pottery, some 3,000 years ago, represents movements of new people to the Pacific. These are best illustrated by iconic Lapita pottery, recorded by archaeologists from Papua New Guinea all the way to Samoa and Tonga.

Lapita pottery makers spoke Austronesian languages, which became the ancestors of today’s Polynesian languages, including Māori.

New pottery discoveries from Mololo Cave suggest the ancestors of Lapita pottery makers existed somewhere around West Papua. Finding the location of these ancestral Lapita settlements is a major priority for archaeological research in the territory.

A rock paintings from the coast of West Papua, showing distinct hand prints in ochre. — Rock paintings provide evidence of social change in West Papua.
Tristan Russell, CC BY-SA

Other evidence for social transformations includes rock paintings and even bronze axes. The latter were imported all the way from mainland Southeast Asia to West Papua around 2,000 years ago. Metal working was not practised in West Papua at this time and chemical analyses show some of these artefacts were made in northern Vietnam.

At all times in the past, people had a rich and complex material culture. But only a small fraction of these objects survive for archaeologists to study, especially in humid tropical conditions.

A montage of images showing the places people settled in West Papua, including montane cloud forests (upper left), lowland rainforests (upper right), mangrove swamps (lower left) and coastal beaches (lower right). — People settled diverse environments around West Papua, including montane cloud forests (upper left), lowland rainforests (upper right), mangrove swamps (lower left) and coastal beaches (lower right).
Dylan Gaffney, CC BY-SA

Living traditions and the movement of objects

From the early 1800s, when West Papua was part of the Dutch East Indies, colonial administrators, scientists and explorers exported tonnes of West Papuan artefacts to European museums. Sometimes the objects were traded or gifted, other times stolen outright.

In the early 1900s, many objects were also burned by missionaries who saw Indigenous material culture as evidence of paganism. The West Papuan objects that now inhabit museums in Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand are connections between modern people and their ancestral traditions.

Sometimes these objects represent people’s direct ancestors. Major work is currently underway to connect West Papuans with these collections and to repatriate some of these objects to museums in West Papua. Unfortunately, funding remains a central issue for these museums.

Many West Papuans continue to produce and use wooden carvings, string bags and shell ornaments. Anthropologists have described how people are actively reconfiguring their material culture, especially given the presence of new synthetic materials and a cash economy.

West Papuan archaeologists in the field: (A) Klementin Fairyo, left, is setting up a new excavation. (B) Martinus Tekege excavating pottery. (C) Sonya Kawer with wartime archaeology. (D) Abdul Razak Macap, right, sieving for archaeological artefacts at Mololo Cave. — A montage of images showing West Papuan archaeologists in the field. (A) Klementin Fairyo, left, is setting up a new excavation. (B) Martinus Tekege excavating pottery. (C) Sonya Kawer with wartime archaeology. (D) Abdul Razak Macap, right, sieving for archaeological artefacts at Mololo Cave.
Klementin Fairyo, Martinus Tekege, Sonya Kawer, Abdul Razak Macap, CC BY-SA

Far from being “ancient” people caught in the stone age – a stereotype propagated in both Indonesian and international media – West Papuans are actively confronting the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Despite our new findings, West Papua remains an enigma for researchers. It has a land area twice the size of Aotearoa New Zealand, but there are fewer than ten known archaeological sites that have been radiocarbon dated.

By contrast, Aotearoa has thousands of dated sites. This means West Papua is the least well researched part of the Pacific and there is much more work to be done. Crucially, Papuan scholars need to be at the heart of this research.

– ref. Fitting the ‘missing puzzle pieces’ – research sheds light on the deep history of social change in West Papua – https://theconversation.com/fitting-the-missing-puzzle-pieces-research-sheds-light-on-the-deep-history-of-social-change-in-west-papua-250616

Everything you say to an Alexa speaker will be sent to Amazon – starting today

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Reid, PhD Candidate, School of Cybernetics, Australian National University

Amazon has disabled two key privacy features in its Alexa smart speakers, in a push to introduce artificial intelligence-powered “agentic capabilities” and turn a profit from the popular devices.

Starting today (March 28), Alexa devices will send all audio recordings to the cloud for processing, and choosing not to save these recordings will disable personalisation features.

How do voice assistants work?

A voice assistant works by constantly listening for a “wake word”, such as “Alexa”. Once woken, it records the command that is spoken and matches it to an action, such as playing a music track. Matching a spoken command to an action requires what computer scientists call natural language understanding, which can take a lot of computer power.

Matching commands to actions can be done locally (on the device itself), or sound recordings can be uploaded to the cloud for processing. On-device processing has improved substantially in recent years, but is still less accurate than using the cloud, where more computer power is available.

Amazon is making two changes today

Alexa devices send recordings to the cloud by default. However, some high-end Echo models previously supported a setting called “Do not send voice recordings”.

If this setting was enabled, all recordings were processed locally. In practice, only a tiny fraction of Echo users (around 0.03% had this turned on.

In the first change, this setting is being disabled, and all recordings will be sent to the cloud.

Once in the cloud, recordings can be deleted or saved.

Saved recordings are used for Amazon’s Voice ID feature, which distinguishes between speakers in the same household and aims to provide a personalised experience.

Alexa users also have a setting called “Don’t save recordings”, which, if enabled, deletes cloud recordings once they’re processed. In the second change, if the “Don’t save recordings” setting is enabled, Voice ID will stop working, and with it, access to personalised features such as user-specific calendar events.

This two-step change means Alexa users need to make a trade-off between privacy and functionality.

Alexa loses a lot of money

Put simply, Amazon needs Echo devices to start making money.

As US voice assistant expert Joseph Turow has detailed, Amazon began selling Echo devices very cheaply as a “loss leader”. Amazon says it has sold more than 500 million Alexa devices, but between 2017 and 2021 alone the company lost more than US$25 billion on the project.

Amazon is looking to generative AI to turn the business around, with a US$8 billion investment in OpenAI competitor Anthropic.

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky in discussion with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. — Amazon has invested US$8 billion in AI developer Anthropic.
Amazon

In February, Amazon launched a new AI-powered Alexa+ system. It promises more natural interaction and the ability to carry out tasks such as booking flights. Alexa+ is currently only available in the United States.

“Agentic capabilities” such as booking flights require detailed profile information about the user on whose behalf they are acting. This would include details such as preferred products or services.

Voice ID and data from spoken commands assist Amazon in tying preferences to a particular person.

An AI-powered intermediary

How will Alexa+ help Amazon make money? The first way is via direct subscription fees: the service will eventually only be available to Amazon Prime members or people who pay US$19.99 per month.

But what may prove more important is that it will help Amazon to position itself as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. This is what Amazon already does with its existing e-commerce platform.

It’s easy to see the system in action when you search for a product on Amazon’s website. Alongside items sold directly by Amazon, you are presented with products from multiple sellers, each of whom pays Amazon to be listed.

Everybody pays the platform

Agentic capabilities are likely to have a similar business model. Service providers – such as airlines or restaurant reservation companies – would pay Amazon when Alexa+ refers customers to them.

Amazon’s move is part of a broader phenomenon termed “platform capitalism”. This takes in the crowdsourced content of social media platforms, “sharing economy” businesses such as AirBnb, and the automated gig work of the likes of Uber.

Platform capitalism has delivered benefits for consumers, but in general the greatest benefits flow to those who own the platforms and design their infrastructure, services and constraints.

How to protect your privacy

After receiving a US$25 million fine from the US Federal Trade Commission for retaining childrens’ voice recordings in contravention of US laws, Amazon has overhauled Alexa’s privacy settings.

The settings can be viewed and changed from the Alexa app on your smartphone, under “More > Alexa Privacy”. Alexa users may wish to review the settings in “Manage
your Alexa Data” to choose how long recordings are saved for and which
voice recordings to delete. Recordings may also be deleted using a voice
command.

As Alexa+ becomes available more widely, users will need to decide whether they are comfortable sharing data about their preferences with Amazon to enable agentic capabilities.

Child setting surrounded by soft toys with a colourful Echo Dot smart speaker. — Some Alexa privacy settings are still available.
Amazon

What are the alternatives?

For users who are uncomfortable with the privacy settings now available with Alexa, a private voice assistant may prove a better choice.

The Home Assistant Voice Preview is one example. It gives people the option to have voice recordings processed on-device, but offers less functionality than Alexa and can’t work with as many other services. It’s also not very user-friendly, being aimed more at technical tinkerers.

Users may face a trade-off between privacy and functionality, both within Alexa itself and when considering alternatives. They may also find themselves grappling with their own place in the increasingly inescapable systems of platform capitalism.

Kathy Reid receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program (AGRTP) for her doctoral work and is a recipient of the Florence Violet McKenzie scholarship.

She currently contracts on a part-time basis to Mozilla Common Voice as a linguistic engineer. She is a past President of Linux Australia, Inc., an organisation dedicated to supporting open source communities and practices in the region. She was previously Director of Developer Relations at Mycroft.AI, a privacy-focused voice assistant, and held shares in the company, which is now dissolved. She has previously contracted with NVIDIA as a speech data specialist. NVIDIA provided hardware for Echo devices prior to 2021.

– ref. Everything you say to an Alexa speaker will be sent to Amazon – starting today – https://theconversation.com/everything-you-say-to-an-alexa-speaker-will-be-sent-to-amazon-starting-today-252923

Trump is interested in joining the Commonwealth. It’s not up to him – or even the king

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University

It seems Britain has one key inducement to offer US President Donald Trump: a state visit hosted by King Charles.

One can only imagine what the king thinks of this, but he will undoubtedly maintain a stiff upper lip and preside over several lavish dinners.

Following reports of this offer, which would make Trump the only US president to be twice hosted by a British monarch, stories surfaced that the US might become an associate member of the Commonwealth.

There has been no official confirmation of this, but the story has been floated in several British newspapers.

What is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth came into existence as a means of retaining links with former British colonies, so there is a certain historical justification for the idea.

Almost all of Britain’s former colonies are now members of the Commonwealth of Nations, with Ireland and the US notable exceptions.

The Commonwealth is an organisation that ties together 56 countries, including a few in Africa that have been admitted despite not having been British colonies.

Of the 56, only a minority recognise the British king as their head of state, a point local monarchists are reluctant to acknowledge.

Indeed, some members of the Commonwealth, such as Malaysia, Brunei and Tonga, have their own hereditary monarchs.

In theory, all members are democratic, and several, such as Fiji, have at times been suspended from membership for failing on this count.

Whatever doubts we might have about the state of US democracy, it is hard to argue the US would fail to meet a bar that allows continued membership to states such as Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

The Commonwealth is largely seen as less important than other international groupings, and its heads of government meetings are often skipped by leaders of the most significant members.

Other than turning up to the Commonwealth Games, few recent Australian prime ministers have paid it much attention, compared to our membership of the G20 or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Nonetheless, the Commonwealth does include a remarkable range of countries ranging from significant states such as India, Canada and South Africa to the many island states of the Pacific and the Caribbean.

While its work is largely unreported, it does provide a range of international assistance and linkages that otherwise would be out of reach for its smaller and poorer members.

Why is Trump interested in joining?

Trump, it can be assumed, has no interest in the Commonwealth as a means of better working with states such as Namibia and Belize.

The attraction seems to be linked to his strange reverence for royalty and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the British sovereign.

King Charles is head of the Commonwealth through agreement of its members, probably in recognition of the extraordinary commitment his mother showed as the Commonwealth developed out of the old British Empire. Indeed, she clashed several times with her British ministers because of her loyalty to the Commonwealth.

But unlike the king’s British – and Australian – crown, this is not a position that belongs automatically to the British monarch.

So, while inviting Trump to Windsor Castle may be the gift of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, admission to the Commonwealth would require the agreement of all its members.

Given Trump’s demands to acquire Canada and to punish South Africa for recent land expropriation law, it is hard to imagine unanimous enthusiasm.

Most member states are cautious about being too closely linked to either the US or China, although Australia might end up the last true believer in US alliances. Others, such as Ghana and Pakistan, depend considerably on Chinese aid.

In a world dominated by increasingly autocratic leaders, a middle power like Australia needs as wide a range of friends as possible. Most of us have only a vague sense of what the Commonwealth entails.

Like all international institutions, the Commonwealth often seems more concerned with grand statements than actual commitment.

But there is value in a global organisation whose members claim to be committed to:

democracy and democratic processes, including free and fair elections and representative legislatures; the rule of law and independence of the judiciary; good governance, including a well-trained public service and transparent public accounts; and protection of human rights, freedom of expression, and equality of opportunity.

Would Trump’s America meet those demands?

Dennis Altman 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. Trump is interested in joining the Commonwealth. It’s not up to him – or even the king – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-interested-in-joining-the-commonwealth-its-not-up-to-him-or-even-the-king-253217

Albanese calls May 3 election, with cost of living the central battleground

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

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

Australians will go to the polls on May 3 for an election squarely centred on the cost of living.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Governor-General Sam Mostyn at Yarralumla first thing on Friday morning.

Later he told an 8am news conference at parliament house the election choice was “between Labor’s plan to keep building or Peter Dutton’s plan to cut.

“Only Labor has the plan to make you better off over the next three years,” he said. “Now is not the time for cutting and wrecking, punching down.”

Less than a week after the federal budget and following an earlier delay caused by Cyclone Alfred, the formal campaign starts with government and opposition neck and neck and minority government considered a real possibility.

But in recent days, the government has gained more momentum and Labor enters the campaign more confident than at the start of the year.

The aggregated January-March quarterly Newspoll had the Coalition leading Labor 51-49%, but Albanese leading Peter Dutton as preferred PM 45% to 40%. Polling only shows a snapshot of the present, and the campaign itself could be crucial to the election result.

This is the fourth consecutive election launched off the back of a budget, with both sides this week bidding for voters’ support with big handouts.

Labor pushed through legislation for its $17 billion tax cut, the first stage of which comes in mid next year. Opposition leader Peter Dutton in his budget reply promised a 12-month halving of excise on petrol and diesel and a gas reservation scheme.

Labor goes into the election with 78 seats in the lower house, and the Coalition with 57 (counting the seats of two recent Liberal defectors). The large crossbench includes four Greens and half a dozen “teals”.

With a majority being 76 seats in the new 150-seat parliament, the Coalition needs to win 19 seats for an outright majority. This would require a uniform swing of 5.3% (although swings are not uniform). A swing of less than 1% could take Labor into minority. The Coalition would need a swing of about 3.6% to end with more seats than the government. While all states are important if the result is close, Victoria and NSW are regarded as the crucial battlegrounds.

If the Coalition won, it would be the first time that a first-term government had been defeated since 1931, during the great depression.

Since the end of the second world war, while all first term governments have been reelected, each saw a two-party swing against them.

One challenge for Albanese is that he has only a tiny majority, providing little buffer against a swing.

The combined vote of the major parties will be something to watch, with the vote steadily declining from 85.47% of the vote just 19 years ago at the 2007 election, to only 68.28% at the 2022 election.

Labor won the last election with a two-party vote of
52.13% to the Coalition’s 47.87%.

As of December 31 2024, 17,939,818 Australians were enrolled to vote.

The start of the formal campaign follows a long “faux” campaign in which both leaders have been travelling the length and breadth of the country non-stop, with the government making a series of major spending announcement but the opposition holding back on policy.

Marginal seats based on the redistribution

– ref. Albanese calls May 3 election, with cost of living the central battleground – https://theconversation.com/albanese-calls-may-3-election-with-cost-of-living-the-central-battleground-250774

View from The Hill: uninspiring leaders, stressed voters and the shadow of Trump make for an uncertain contest

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

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

The usual story for a first-term government is a loss of seats, as voters send it a message, but ultimate survival.

It can be a close call. John Howard risked all in 1998 with his GST, and almost lost office, despite having a big majority.

But you have to go back to 1931 to find a first-term government thrown out.

So, going into this campaign, Anthony Albanese has the weight of history on his side. But modern day politics is volatile, and the voters are cranky, which has in recent months given the opposition hope it could run the government close or even defy the odds.

Government and opposition start the formal campaign with the polls close on the two-party vote. In the past few weeks, the government has improved its position, arguably to be now in the lead. If the election were held today, Labor would probably win more seats than the Coalition, and form government.

But the margins are narrow. With the next parliament, like this one, expected to have a large crossbench, present polling is pointing towards a minority government as a likely outcome. Things can change during a campaign.

Albanese started the term with substantial public goodwill – although his majority was razor thin, and his 2022 election owed more to the unpopularity of then prime minister Scott Morrison than to any real enthusiasm for Labor.

If one had to point to the single biggest political mistake the prime minister made, it was his over-investment in the Voice referendum. Whatever one thinks of the proposal itself, Albanese let it distract from what was a growing-cost-of-living crisis. The referendum was probably always destined to fail, but Albanese and the “yes” side were also out-campaigned by the “no” forces, strongest among them opposition spokeswoman Jacinta Price.

Albanese never properly recovered from the Voice’s defeat.

Early in the term the government was complacent about its opponents, believing Peter Dutton was unelectable. Indeed, that was a widespread view, including among many on the conservative side of politics. It underestimated Dutton’s strategic and tactical skills, the changing nature of the electorate, and how deeply the cost-of-living crisis – with its dozen interest rate rises under Labor, on top of one under Morrison – would bite.

Suburbia up for grabs

What was once ALP heartland, outer suburbia, is now up for grabs. Many of the tradies have become conservatives, to whom Dutton’s blunt, black-and-white political pitch is not just acceptable but potentially attractive.

Labor’s appeal to working people in this campaign is that that the worst is over on the economy, with unemployment still low and real wages in (slightly) positive territory. The latest national accounts figures showed Australia’s per capita recession, which had lasted seven quarters, was over. The February interest rate fall has also been a plus for the government: it may not be a big vote changer but it has reinforced Labor’s argument that things are going in the right direction.

The question remains: will people buy the story of life getting better when they are still not back to where they were a few years ago, and continue to feel under the financial pump?

This week’s budget and Dutton’s reply have homed in on cost of living. The government has come up with modest tax cuts, starting mid next year. These were legislated in a rush before parliament rose, so the Coalition was forced into saying it would repeal them. Dutton countered by promising an immediate cut to the excise on petrol and diesel. The opposition leader also used his budget reply to open another front in the battle over the energy transition, with the promise of a gas reservation scheme.

In the past month or two, there has been some change in the political atmosphere. Dutton’s momentum seemed to have stalled. The tight internal disciple he had maintained frayed somewhat, with messages over some policy and internal fears Dutton had left policy announcements too late.

Will voters think they don’t know enough about Peter Dutton?

The risk for Dutton is that people will fear they’re buying a pig in a poke. He has run a small target strategy; leaders (Howard in 1996, Abbott in 2013) have won on these before.

But if Dutton’s policy offerings in the campaign fall short, or his policy doesn’t stand up to the forensic scrutiny that comes in a campaign, he is likely to stall. So far, Dutton has established himself as a strong negative campaigner but he has yet to come through as a positive alternative prime minister.

His signing up to Labor’s $8.5 billion bulk-billing initiative was an example of a short-term tactic to neutralise an issue that raised questions about the Coalition’s inability to produce its own health blueprint.

The government will mobilise industrial relations against the Coalition, arguing Labor has delivered benefits to workers that a Coalition government would attack. This is risky for Dutton. His plans for slashing the public service, curbing working-from-home and removing the right to disconnect will fuel Labor’s negative campaigning, which will focus too on Dutton’s general plan to cut spending.

The Trump factor

A major unknown is what impact overseas events will have on this election. There has been a general swing to the right internationally. But the Trump factor has become a danger for Dutton.

His opponents seek cast Dutton as Trump-lite. The opposition leader is a critic of Trump on Ukraine, and he’s aware Trumpism is now politically scary for many voters. Nevertheless, Dutton’s pre-occupation with the size of the public service and his emphasis on cuts (without giving detail) will, to some voters, sound like echoes (albeit faint) of Trump. Labor claims its focus groups show people have been increasingly seeing Dutton as Trumpist.

Trump this week announced tariffs on foreign cars (not a worry to Australia, which doesn’t make any anymore). Next week he’ll announced the next stage in his tariff policy. This will feed into the election campaign. The extent it does will depend on whether Australia is directly hit. The government is busy with intense last-minute lobbying.

The cost of living is front and centre in the election, but the recent appearance of Chinese ships near Australia and their live-fire exercise has contributed to making national security and defence (especially how much we should be spending on it) issues as well, although second tier for most voters.

Major attention in this election will be on the performance of independents. Half a dozen so-called teals seized Liberal seats in 2022, and it would be very hard for the Coalition to obtain a majority without regaining some of them. The Melbourne seats of Kooyong and Goldstein will be especially closely watched. In New South Wales, one teal seat has already been lost through the redistribution.

The teals ran last time on climate change, integrity, and equity for women. This election, climate is less to the fore in the voters’ minds, while we now have an anti-corruption body, the National Anti-Corruption Commission. And there is no Scott Morrison, who was a lightning rod for the Liberals’ “women problem”. So in terms of issues, the teals have a harder case to make than before.

On the other hand, people remain deeply disillusioned with the major parties, and the teals have had plenty of time to dig into their seats. The general “community candidate” movement has strengthened and broadened. Whatever its precise composition, the new House of Representatives is expected to have a large crossbench.

In the event of a hung parliament, the crossbench will come into play. This means its potential members, especially the teals, will be under pressure during the campaign to indicate what factors they would take into account in deciding to whom to give confidence and supply. They are likely to keep their cards close to their chests.

The election will also test whether the hardline positions the Greens have taken, on local and foreign issues, have alienated or attracted voters. The Greens are at an historic high with four seats in the lower house. The three of those that are in Queensland will be on the line.

Given the closeness of the polls as the formal campaign starts, what happens in the coming five weeks, and notably the personal performances of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton could be crucial to the outcome. This is not one of those elections where either side can be confident it has the result in the bag.

– ref. View from The Hill: uninspiring leaders, stressed voters and the shadow of Trump make for an uncertain contest – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-uninspiring-leaders-stressed-voters-and-the-shadow-of-trump-make-for-an-uncertain-contest-250775

Australians almost never vote out a first-term government. So why is this year’s election looking so tight?

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pandanus Petter, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University

Now that an election has been called, Australian voters will go to the polls on May 3 to decide the fate of the first-term, centre-left Australian Labor Party government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

In Australia, national elections are held every three years. The official campaign period only lasts for around a month.

This time around, Albanese will be seeking to hold onto power after breaking Labor’s nine-year dry spell by beating the more right-leaning Liberal Party, led by Scott Morrison, in 2022.

Now, he’s up against the Liberals’ new leader, a conservative with a tough guy image, Peter Dutton. It’s looking like a tight race.

So how do elections work in Australia, who’s contesting for the top spot and why is the race looking so close?

For Albanese, the honeymoon is over

Albanese was brought into power in 2022 on the back of dissatisfaction with the long-term and scandal-prone Liberal-National Coalition government.

At the time, he was considered personally more competent, warm and sensible than Morrison.

Unfortunately for Albanese, the dissatisfaction and stress about the cost of living hasn’t gone away.

Governments in Australia almost always win a second term. However, initially high levels of public support have dissipated over the first term. Opinion polls are pointing to a close election, though Albanese’s approval ratings have had a boost in recent weeks.

At the heart of what makes this such a tight contest are issues shared by many established democracies: the public’s persistent sense of economic hardship in the post-pandemic period and longer-term dissatisfaction with “politics as usual”, combined with an increased focus on party leaders.

Around the world, incumbents have faced challenges holding onto power over the past year, with voters sweeping out the Conservatives in the United Kingdom and the Democrats in the United States.

Australia has faced some similar economic challenges, such as relatively high inflation and cost-of-living problems.

Likewise, Australia – like many other established democracies – has long-term trends of dissatisfaction with major parties and the political system itself.

However, this distaste with “business as usual” manifests differently in Australia from comparable countries such the UK and US.

Australia’s voting system

In Australia, voting is compulsory, and those who fail to turn out face a small fine. Some observers have argued this pushes parties to try to persuade “swing” voters with more moderate policies, rather than rely on their faithful “bases” and court those with more extreme views who are more likely to vote.

In the UK, by comparison, widespread public distaste with the Conservatives, combined with low turnout and first-past-the-post voting, delivered Keir Steirmer’s Labour Party a dramatic victory. This was despite a limited uptick in support.

And in the US, turnout in the 2024 election was only about 64%. Donald Trump and the Republicans swept to power last year by channelling a deep anti-establishment sentiment among those people who voted.

And the country is now so polarised, that the more strongly identifying Democrat and Republican voters who do turn out to vote can’t see eye to eye on highly emotionally charged issues which dominate the parties’ platforms. Independent voters are left without “centrist” options.

Because Australia’s voting system is different, Dutton is unlikely to follow Trump’s far-right positioning too closely, despite dabbling in the “anti-woke” culture wars.

It also explains why Albanese’s personal style is usually quite mild-mannered and why he’s unlikely to present himself as a radical reformer.

However, neither man’s approach has made them wildly popular with the public. This means neither can rely on their own popularity to win over the public.

Another factor making Australia distinct is that voters rank their choices, with their vote flowing to their second choice if their first choice doesn’t achieve a majority. This means many races in the 150-seat lower house of parliament are won from second place.

Similarly, seats in the Senate (Australia’s second chamber, with the power to amend or block legislation) are won based on the proportion of votes a party receives in each state or territory. This gives minor parties and independents a better chance at winning seats compared to the lower house.

This means dissatisfaction with the major parties has in recent years created space for minor parties and a new crop of well-organised independents to get elected and influence policy. In 2022, around one-third of voters helped independents and minor parties take seats off both the Liberals and Labor in the inner cities.

To win government, Dutton will need to get them back, or take more volatile outer-suburban seats off Labor.

The big policy concerns

Against this backdrop, Australian voters both in 2022 and today have a fairly consistent set of policy concerns. And while parties want to be seen addressing them, their messaging isn’t always heard.

The 2022 Australian Election Study, run by Australian political researchers, revealed that pessimism about the economy and concerns about the cost of living were front of mind when Australians voted out the Liberal-National Coalition government last federal election.

This time around, one might think some relative improvement in economic factors like unemployment and cuts to interest rates would put a spring in the prime minister’s step.

However, the public is still very concerned about the day-to-day cost-of-living pressures and practical issues such as access to health care.

The government’s policy efforts in this direction – for example, tax cuts and subsidies for power bills – have so far not strongly cut through.

What have the major parties promised?

Comparing the parties’ platforms, Labor is firmly focused on economic and government service issues to support people in the short term.

Although expected to announce the election earlier, Albanese was handed the opportunity of delivering an extra budget by a tropical storm in early March. This included spending promises foreshadowed earlier, as well as a new modest tax cut as an election sweetener.

In the longer term, Labor has promised significant incentives to improve access to free doctor’s visits and focused on investments in women’s health, as well as technological infrastructure.

Labor is also encouraging more people to fill skill shortages through vocational education and promising to make the transition to renewable energy, while simultaneously supporting local manufacturing.

The Coalition, for its part, has been critical of these long-term goals and promised to repeal the newly legislated tax cuts in favour of subsidies for petrol. It has focused its message on reduced government spending, while strategically mirroring promises on health to avoid Labor attacks on that front.

Dutton has also proposed cuts to migration to reduce housing pressures and a controversial plan to build nuclear power plants at the expense of renewables.

Will these differences in long-term plans cut through? Or are people focused on short-term, hip-pocket concerns?

This election, whatever the result, will not represent a long-term shifting of loyalties, but rather a precarious compact with distrustful voters looking for relief in uncertain times.

Pandanus Petter is employed at the Australian National University with funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Australians almost never vote out a first-term government. So why is this year’s election looking so tight? – https://theconversation.com/australians-almost-never-vote-out-a-first-term-government-so-why-is-this-years-election-looking-so-tight-250249

Australia’s embrace of independent political candidates shows there’s no such thing as a safe seat

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University

At the last federal election, Australia elected the largest lower house crossbench in its post-war federal history.

In addition to four Greens MPs, Rebekah Sharkie from the Centre Alliance and Bob Katter (with his own micro-party), there were ten independent MPs, seven of them new to parliament. These MPs have the freedom and flexibility to vote on every piece of legislation without having to adhere to any party-room pledge.

Micro-parties and independents also fared well in the Senate in 2022, thanks in part to the fact that we use proportional representation to elect our senators. In a half-Senate election with 40 vacancies, six went to the Greens, one to Independent ACT candidate David Pocock, one to United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet and one to Pauline Hanson in Queensland.

Defections during the 47th parliament grew the crossbench even further. Five former Coalition MPs and Senators have moved to the crossbench, one over allegations of sexual harassment, one over the Voice to Parliament referendum and three over bruising preselection defeats.

Senator Fatima Payman defected from the Labor Party last year, citing problems with the party’s stance on Palestine, and has now set up the Australia’s Voice party.

Getting elected

Independents hardly enjoy a level playing field in federal elections. Brian Costar and Jennifer Curtin pointed out in their book, Rebels with a Cause, that independent candidates lack equal access to the electoral roll, do not initially benefit from the public funding that flows consistently to the major parties, and cannot be listed above the line on the Senate ballot paper unless they form a group or party.

Unless they are party defectors with a seat in parliament already, independent candidates also lack the advantages of incumbency. Previous research from the Australia Institute has shown the dollar value of an incumbent MP’s entitlements (in terms of their salary and those of staff, printing and travel allowances, public exposure), is about $2.9 million per term.

Once elected, though, Independents have shown the major parties that they can be very hard to beat. Helen Haines and her predecessor as Member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, have won four consecutive elections between them. Zali Steggall, who famously beat former prime minister Tony Abbott in the electorate of Warringah in 2019, has been re-elected once, and the people of metropolitan Hobart have returned former public servant and whistleblower Andrew Wilkie to Canberra five times in a row.

No safe seats

Political parties and journalists have conventionally treated certain seats as “safe” (if the winning party’s vote two-party preferred margin was 60% or higher), others as “fairly safe” (if the winning party’s 2PP margin was between 56% and 60%) and others as “marginal” (those won by less than 56% at the previous election).

But the days of safe and marginal seats are over. These terms belong to an age of two-party contests and more predictable preference flows. As Bill Browne and Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute have pointed out, the major party vote share has now “crossed a threshold” below which the idea of “safe seats” becomes redundant.

Independent candidates can win with a relatively low share of the primary vote. In 2022, community independent Kylea Tink won the electorate of North Sydney with 25% of the primary vote, having ranked favourably, but not first, on many voters’ ballots.

Holding on?

Several contests involving current crossbenchers may prove nationally influential in the event of a hung parliament. Tink, whose electorate has been abolished in a routine redistribution, will not be among the incumbents hoping to hold their seat.

The Liberal Party, by some accounts, perceives the Perth seat of Curtin, won by community independent Kate Chaney in 2022, as an important litmus test for the future. January saw a “surge in volunteers and donations” for Liberal candidate Tom White’s campaign, according to media reports.

Elsewhere, the Liberals are attempting to meet incumbent community independents with candidates that more closely resemble them. The Liberal candidate for Warringah, Jaimee Rogers, is, like the sitting member Zali Steggall, a former athlete with a public profile. Wentworth candidate Ro Knox, a former Deloitte consultant, will run against Allegra Spender, whose own pitch for re-election has emphasised tax reform and productivity.

In Victoria, Monique Ryan, who won the seat of Kooyong from then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg, will this time face Amelia Hamer, a local woman, professional and grand-niece of former Victorian premier Rupert Hamer.

There are exceptions to that pattern. Former RSL President James Brown was preselected as the Liberal candidate for Mackellar, currently held by community independent Sophie Scamps. And in Goldstein, there will be a rerun of the previous contest between community independent Zoe Daniel and her Liberal predecessor Tim Wilson.

At least three of the major party defectors in both houses are hoping to keep their seats, too. Gerard Rennick, formerly a Coalition senator who was denied a winnable spot on the Liberal National Party ticket, has registered the Gerard Rennick People First Party ahead of his bid for re-election this year. Rennick has pointed out that this will get his name “above the line” on the Senate ballot paper.

Former Liberals Ian Goodenough and Russell Broadbent have both indicated they will run as independents to defend their seats – Moore and Monash respectively – from their erstwhile colleagues.

Room for growth?

Despite the watershed result in 2022, the crossbench may grow yet. Fundraising group Climate 200 is reported to be backing up to 35 candidates across the country, and an army of volunteers has already begun to mobilise in support.

Health professional Carolyn Heise will hope that, with the support of the new campaign fundraiser the Regional Voices Fund, her second campaign in the regional electorate of Cowper may land her in parliament alongside Indi MP Helen Haines.

The retirement of shadow minister Paul Fletcher as member for Bradfield in inner-Sydney makes for a particularly interesting contest in that electorate. Gisele Kapterian, who won Liberal preselection against Warren Mundine, will campaign against community independent Nicolette Boele, who would need a swing of only 5% in her favour to win on her second attempt.

In Victoria’s western district, community independent Alex Dyson will attempt for the third time to win the seat of Wannon from shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan. Dyson came close in 2022 and would need only a 4% swing (two-candidate preferred) to win this time.

In 2022, community groups supported independent candidate Penny Ackery in her campaign against then-minister and now shadow treasurer Angus Taylor. The two-candidate preferred vote left the seat “relatively safe” (in old terms), but declining support for the Coalition saw the state electorate of Wollondilly (within Hume’s borders) elect community independent Judy Hannan in a “surprise win” at the 2023 state election.

There is plenty of potential for surprise victories and shock defeats at the forthcoming election. Community independents are running in at least four Labor-held seats. What should surprise nobody is that every vote in every seat will count on election day.

Joshua Black is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australia Institute.

– ref. Australia’s embrace of independent political candidates shows there’s no such thing as a safe seat – https://theconversation.com/australias-embrace-of-independent-political-candidates-shows-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-safe-seat-250751

Can Peter Dutton flip Labor voters to rewrite electoral history? It might just work

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

They are neither as leafy nor as affluent as much of the Liberal heartland, but Peter Dutton believes the outer ring-roads of Australia’s capitals provide the most direct route to power.
He has been telling his MPs these once-safe Labor-voting suburbs are where the 2025 election can be won.

From the moment the Queenslander assumed control of the Liberal Party in 2022, he was intent on this suburbs-first strategy, even if it seemed historically unlikely and involved repositioning his formerly business-loyal party as the new tribune of the working class. As he told Minerals Week in September 2023:

The Liberal Party is the party of the worker. The Labor Party has become the party of the inner city elite and Greens.

This has been Dutton’s long game. It’s an outsider approach reminiscent of what US President Donald Trump had achieved with disaffected blue-collar Democratic supporters in the United States, and what Boris Johnson managed by turning British Labour supporters in England’s de-industrialised north into Brexiteers and then Conservative voters.

A political gamble

It was not the obvious play but it may prove the right one.

After a tumultuous period in which the Liberals had cycled through three prime ministers and ignored a clear public clamour for policy modernisation on women, anti-corruption and climate change, the Morrison government had been bundled from office.

Morrison hadn’t merely failed to attract disengaged undecideds in the middle-ground, but had haemorrhaged engaged constituents from some of Australia’s safest Liberal postcodes.

Nineteen seats came off the Coalition tally in that election, yet Labor’s gain was only nine.

Something fundamental had happened. Six new centrist independents now sat in Liberal heartland seats – all of them professional women.

Numerically, they formed a kind of electoral Swiss Guard around the new Labor government’s otherwise weak primary vote and thin (two-seat) parliamentary majority.

In a sharp visual contrast to the Coalition parties, women made up around half of Anthony Albanese’s new Labor government and he moved to prioritise the very things on which the Coalition had steadfastly refused to budge – including meaningful constitutional recognition of First Peoples.

Albanese, it seemed, had tuned in to the zeitgeist. He would even go on to break a 102-year record a year later, becoming the first PM to increase his majority by taking a set off the opposition in a byelection. One more urban jewel shifted out of the Liberals’ column.

Dutton, however, never blinked.

His first press conference as leader in 2022 had been notable for the absence of the usual mea culpa – a suitably contrite acknowledgement that he’d heard the message from erstwhile Liberals who had abandoned their party for more progressive community independents.

Instead, Dutton confidently responded that the 2025 election would be decided not in these comfortable seats but in the further-flung parts of Australia’s cities where people make long commutes to work and struggle to find adequate childcare and other services.

It was a bold strategy because it meant targeting seats with healthy Labor margins.
Canberra insiders wondered privately if this was brave or simply delusional. Some concluded it could only work as a two-election strategy.

Many asked where a net gain of 19 seats would come from if not through the recovery of most or all of what became known as the “teal” seats?

Yet the combative Liberal continued to focus on prising suburbanites away from Labor with a relentless campaign emphasising the rising cost-of-living under Labor.

Three years later and even accounting for the first interest rate cut in over four years, it is Dutton’s strategy that has looked the more attuned to the electoral zeitgeist.

So much so that he goes into this election with a realistic chance of breaking another longstanding electoral record: that of replacing a first-term government.

This hasn’t been done federally since the Great Depression took out the Scullin Labor government of 1929-1931.

It’s all about geography

While only votes in ballot boxes will tell, the Coalition’s rebounding support appears to have come from the outer mortgage belt, just as he predicted.

These voters absorb their political news sporadically via social media feeds, soft breakfast interviews, and car-radio snippets.

These are media where Dutton’s crisp sound-bite messaging around cost-of-living pressures has simply been sharper and more resonant than Labor’s.

And it is by this means that these voters may have picked up that a Dutton government would seek to deport dual citizens convicted of serious crimes, stop new migrants from buying property (a policy first ridiculed as inconsequential by Labor and since copied), and cut petrol excise, temporarily taking around $14 off the price of a tank of fuel.

These voters may have noticed Dutton’s campaign against the supermarket duopoly, which includes the option of forced divestiture for so-called “price-gouging”.

Recently, he added insurance conglomerates to that divestment hit-list.

And they might have heard his dramatic nuclear “solution” to high energy costs and emissions (in reality, devilishly complex and expensive).

On top of these, semi-engaged voters might recall Dutton’s culture-war topics for which he has regularly received generous media minutes, including:

his opposition to what he called “the Canberra Voice”
his defence of Australia Day
his refusal to stand in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags
his oft-made claim that a Greens-Teals-Labor preoccupation with progressive issues has left the cost-of-living crisis unaddressed.

Beyond such rhetoric, Dutton has had little to say in detailed policy terms. But will that matter? However comprehensive, Labor’s list of legislated achievements has, arguably, achieved even less purchase in the electoral mind.

Polls taken as the election campaign neared showed Dutton’s Coalition was well-placed to win seats from Labor in suburban and outer-suburban areas of Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney, as well as regional seats in the NSW Central Coast.

These include seats such as Tangney and Bullwinkel in outer Perth; McEwen and Chisolm in suburban Melbourne, and as many as seven seats in NSW – mostly on the periphery of Sydney or in the industrial Hunter Valley region.

There may be other seats to move also. Liberal sources say they like their chances in Goldstein, currently held by the Teal, Zoe Daniel. And with a recent conservative turn in the Northern Territory election to the CLP, seats like the ultra-marginal Lingiari and the numerically safer Solomon could also be in play.

A YouGov MRP poll reported by the ABC on February 16 put Dutton’s chances of securing an outright majority after the election at 20%.

It measured the Coalition’s two-party-preferred support at 51.1% over Labor on 48.9%. That represents a swing towards the Coalition of 3.2%. But it is where the swing occurs that matters most.

Seat-by-seat assessment of the YouGov results suggested the Coalition would be likely to win about 73 seats (median), with a lower estimate of 65 and an upper estimate of 80, if a federal election was held today.

The same modelling indicates Labor would go backwards, holding about 66 seats in the next parliament, with a lower estimate of 59 and an upper estimate of 72. This is just one, albeit unusually large poll, but it will concern Albanese that even on its upper margin of Labor seat holds, he would not retain a majority.

Of course, the campaign can change things and already, the delayed start caused by Cyclone Alfred introduced further variables in the form of a federal budget, replete with income tax cuts.

A succession of polls conducted through March point to a Labor recovery with a Redbridge poll of 2,007 respondents, taken over March 3–11 putting Labor ahead 51%–49%. The same poll however showed a majority of people worry that the country is heading in the wrong direction.

The final contest

In political circles, people talk about momentum in campaigns, and say things like “the trend is our friend”. If true, that electoral amity has leaned decisively towards Dutton for the past year, and only recently to Labor.

But caution is always advised. Election counts invariably throw up oddities – swings being more (or less) marked in one state compared to others, and seats retained (or lost) against a broader national trend on the night.

Such surprises give the lie to the concept of uniform swings and makes prediction of a final seat count more difficult.

If the polling consensus is broadly correct – rather than being the result of herding – and the source of Dutton’s rising support is former Labor suburbs, the question is, will those vote gains materialise at sufficient scale to translate into seat gains?

If so, this election could redraw the political map and require new thinking about major party voting bases, policies and strategies into the future.

The final outcome seems likely to turn on three things:

Dutton’s ability to stay on message about the cost-of-living through the campaign when others in his team, buoyed by Trump’s war on wokeness, want to raise tendentious social issues.
Albanese’s effectiveness in convincing wayward Labor voters that Labor has in fact delivered, that the economy has turned the corner, and that Dutton’s comparative toughness is code for budget cuts that would hit them hardest.
Unforeseen events – at home or abroad.

The Liberal leader is surprisingly well-placed. But remember, he is coming from a long way back.

Mark Kenny 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. Can Peter Dutton flip Labor voters to rewrite electoral history? It might just work – https://theconversation.com/can-peter-dutton-flip-labor-voters-to-rewrite-electoral-history-it-might-just-work-248664

Reliable science takes time. But the current system rewards speed

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Chin, Senior Lecturer, College of Law, Australian National University

Lately, there have been many headlines on scientific fraud and journal article retractions. If this trend continues, it represents a serious threat to public trust in science.

One way to tackle this problem – and ensure public trust in science remains high – may be to slow it down. We sometimes refer to this philosophy as “slow science”. Akin to the slow food movement, slow science prioritises quality over speed and seeks to buck incentive structures that promote mass production.

Slow science may not represent an obvious way to improve science because we often equate science with progress, and slowing down progress does not sound very appealing. However, progress is not just about speed, but about basing important societal decisions on strong scientific foundations. And this takes time.

Unfortunately, the pressures and incentives modern scientists face are almost universally against slow science. Secure, permanent university jobs are scarce, and with budget cuts, this appears to be getting worse.

As a result, the pressure to publish has never been higher. Indeed, in my yearly performance meetings, I am asked how many articles I’ve published and what is the status of the journals I published in. I am not asked how robust my methods are and how discerning my peer reviewers were.

The problems with fast science

Our current “fast science” approach has produced a host of problems.

Much as with fast food, scientists are incentivised to produce as much science as possible in as little time as possible. This can mean cutting corners. We know, for instance, that larger samples lead to more trustworthy results because they are more likely to be representative of the relevant population. However, collecting large samples takes time and resources.

Fast science is also associated with gaming the system. As a hypothetical example, an educational scientist might collect data to find evidence for their theory that a new teaching style promotes better learning. Then, they look at the data and realise the intervention did not quite improve learning. But if you squint at it, there might be a trend if you drop a couple of pesky outliers that didn’t see a benefit. So, they do just that.

This an example of what’s known as a “questionable research practice”, because it’s not considered outright fraud by conventional standards. Surveys in many fields suggest these practices are widespread, with about 50% of scientists saying they have engaged in them at least once.

Fast science is also associated with more obviously unethical practices.

Reports of fabricated data are likely due, in part, to scientists trying to publish as quickly as possible. An industry has even sprung up around scientific fraud – what are known as “paper mills”. These organisations produce articles around fabricated data and then sell authorship to those papers.

Scientist in a dark lab preparing a vaccine. — Surveys have shown about 50% of scientists have engaged in questionable research practices such as slightly tweaking research data.
National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

Why trustworthy science takes time

So, what does slow science look like and how can it help?

The late English statistician Douglas Altman provided one of the most famous descriptions of the slow science mantra: “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”.

In many ways, it is the opposite of fast science: large samples and careful, well-documented, transparent practices.

Recall the hypothetical example of the scientists testing a new education practice. Rather than immediately jumping into data collection, the slow practice would be to first write a “registered report”. In other words, scientists would write out their theory and how they propose to test that theory, and send that out for peer review prior to collecting data.

The journal would then follow the normal process of soliciting peer reviews and allowing the scientists to revise their report in response to those reviews. Then, the authors would collect data, with publication in the journal being assured as long as they follow the agreed upon methods.

There are two major benefits to registered reports: it allows for peer feedback while it is still possible to improve the study and it removes an incentive to engage in questionable or fraudulent practices. Using the registered report format can take longer. But it is associated with more credible findings.

Two other slow practices worth mentioning are conducting research in a way that is reproducible and correcting errors in the existing body of research.

In theory, all science should be reproducible. That is, scientists should share their methods and data such that other scientists can both verify that work and build on it (developing new recipes, to continue the analogy to slow food).

Similarly, cleaning up the scientific record is incredibly important. For the same reasons that chef Gordon Ramsay likes to a clean a kitchen out before improving it, science needs to get a handle on what existing findings are reliable before we can build on them.

This means carefully going through existing publications to find studies that show indications of being fabricated or otherwise unreliable. This sleuthing is rare among university scientists because it does not typically result in publications. But it is highly important.

Scientist with white and grey hair peering into a microscope. — Slow science is the opposite of fast science: large samples and careful, well-documented, transparent practices.
National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

Slow science is slowly gaining steam

Currently, it requires bravery to engage in slow science.

Universities are keen to move up the university rankings lists. Those rankings are driven by publishing. So, universities hire, promote and retain their scientists based on their publications. This makes it risky to slow down.

There are, however, some reasons to hope. Movements are afoot to redefine research quality to take into account more aspects of slow science.

The Declaration on Research Assessment is a worldwide initiative to move away from ranking systems that ignore the principles of slow science.

Grassroots organisations are also creating platforms for more open and exacting peer review.

And advocates for more careful research practices have recently been appointed to important positions, such as with research funders and academic journals.

These developments are worth following and building upon because society does not need heaps of low-quality science. It needs science that deserves trust.

Jason Chin is affiliated with the Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch and Open Science (AIMOS), a charity that promotes the study and improvement of research methods. AIMOS is a co-founder of the open peer-review platform, MetaROR.

– ref. Reliable science takes time. But the current system rewards speed – https://theconversation.com/reliable-science-takes-time-but-the-current-system-rewards-speed-249497

The Coalition wants to increase Medicare psychology rebates from 10 to 20 sessions. Here’s what happened last time

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Enticott, Associate Professor, Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation, Monash University

The most disadvantaged Australians have long experienced higher rates of mental illness than the broader population. But they also access fewer mental health services.

Increasing everyone’s access to mental health care led to the creation of the Better Access initiative, which subsidised psychology sessions under Medicare. Officially called Better Access to Psychiatrists, Psychologists and General Practitioners through the Medicare Benefits Schedule, the Howard government launched the initiative in November 2006.

During COVID, the former Morrison Coalition government temporarily expanded the yearly cap on the number of psychology sessions, from ten to 20. The Labor Albanese government reverted to ten sessions at the end of 2022.

Now the Coalition says if elected at this year’s polls, it will take the number of sessions back to 20.

But did capping sessions at 20 increase access to mental health care, especially for disadvantaged Australians? Or are there more effective ways to achieve this?

How does it work?

Australians can access up to ten rebated psychology sessions annually. Patients need to have a mental health treatment or management plan from their GP or psychiatrist.

The Australian Psychological Society recommends consultation fees of around $311 for a standard 46- to 60-minute consultation.

The typical Medicare rebate is $141.85 per session with a clinical psychologist and $96.65 with other registered psychologists. (All psychologists are university qualified mental health professionals, but clinical psychologists have more qualifications.)

Psychologists can choose their own fees. They can bulk bill (no out of pocket cost for patients) or charge consultation fees, leaving some patients hundreds of dollars out of pocket for each session.

How did access change during COVID?

To assess the changes during COVID, we need to consider three components: number of people accessing services, service use rates (number of sessions per population) and the average number of sessions per patient.

1. Number of people accessing services

In 2020-21, all states saw a 5% jump in the number of people accessing Medicare mental health services, coinciding with the first year of the COVID pandemic.

In the three years prior to this, there was an average yearly increase of about 3% more people.

However, a 2022 independent evaluation of the Better Access initiative showed that between 2018 and 2021, new users declined from 56% to 50%, with the steepest drop between 2020 and 2021.

This reduction in new users coincided with the temporary increased cap to 20 sessions.

Australians from disadvantaged backgrounds continued to have poorer access to psychologists than those from wealthier population groups, despite an increase in the number of sessions.

2. Service use rates (number of sessions per population)

Service use rates tell us how much a particular service is being used each year. To compare service use rates between different years, and because the Australian population is growing yearly, we report service use rates per 1,000 people in the population.

In 2020-21, service use rates for clinical psychologists and other psychologists increased by 18%. This was a large increase compared to the typical 5% increases in previous years. This persisted in the next two years.

When the cap on number of sessions was reduced to ten sessions, there was a small drop in service use rates, but it didn’t return to the pre-pandemic levels.

Therapist talks to client — Most clients use ten or fewer sessions a year.
Ben Bryant/Shutterstock

3. Average number of sessions people used

The increase in services occurring in the first two years of the COVID pandemic (and around the time as the cap temporarily increased from ten to 20 sessions), resulted in a small increase in the average number of sessions per patient.

In the ten years between 2013-14 and 2022-23, average number of sessions with a clinical psychologist increased from five to six sessions whereas the average number of sessions with other psychologists increased from four to five sessions.

Importantly, more than 80% of people received fewer than ten sessions.

What does this tell us?

Overall, most people used ten or fewer sessions, even when up to 20 sessions were available.

Some extra services were provided to existing clients during COVID and this may have actually prevented new people from receiving services.

So the evidence suggests simply increasing the number of rebated psychology sessions from ten to 20 for everybody isn’t the most effective approach.

What should Labor and the Coalition do instead?

We don’t limit the number of chemotherapy sessions for cancer patients, so why do we cap evidence-based psychological treatments for mental illness?

Instead of capping access to Medicare rebates for mental health care, access should be based on a person’s needs and treatment outcomes. The number of sessions should be determined collaboratively between the person and the provider, ensuring people receive the appropriate level of evidence-based care for their condition.

Measure outcomes

Currently in Australia for Medicare-funded mental health services, we only measure service activity. Patient outcomes are not collected, which hinders the development of value-based mental health care.

Without collecting outcomes, current initiatives to address inequities are only partially informed and may not work as intended.

We urgently need to establish a set of outcomes (patient-reported outcome measures and experience measures) through consensus with the community, providers, professional organisations and governments.

Address affordability

We should also address inequities, such as gap fees that act as barriers to accessing services.

Greater rebates and bulk billing incentives for vulnerable people can assist those with less money.

Offer other evidence-based support

Evidence also suggests people with mild to moderate mental health problems can benefit from psychological and social supports provided by people who are non-health-care professionals, such as the Friendship Bench and digital mental health programs.

We need to develop and invest in a range of services that cater to differing levels of need. This would ensure more specialised services are available for those with higher complexity or severity.

– ref. The Coalition wants to increase Medicare psychology rebates from 10 to 20 sessions. Here’s what happened last time – https://theconversation.com/the-coalition-wants-to-increase-medicare-psychology-rebates-from-10-to-20-sessions-heres-what-happened-last-time-249606

How can I tell if my child is too sick to go to school?

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Sturgiss, Professor of Community Medicine and Clinical Education, Bond University

As a GP and mum to two boys I have many experiences of trying to navigate the school morning when my boys aren’t feeling well. It always seems to happen on the busiest days.

None of us want to send our child to school when they are not well – I hate the thought of my kids feeling sick in the classroom and also the idea they might make other children sick.

Lots of families have someone for whom illnesses are more dangerous. They might have a weakened immune system because they are going through cancer treatment or suffer from another illness.

But it can be hard to tell. A child might be dramatically crying “my tummy HURTS” one minute and racing around with their sibling the next. Or you might wonder if they are angling for some time off in front of the TV.

How can you tell if your child is too sick to go to school?

A young girl coughing — None of us want to send our child to school when they are not well.
Pixel Shot/ Shutterstock

Symptoms to look out for

In school-aged children here are some symptoms to consider.

Fever: if your child feels hot to touch, or you have a thermometer showing a fever (a temperature above 38 degrees), then they shouldn’t attend school.

This is even if you are giving them regular paracetamol or ibuprofen to keep their temperature down. Your child won’t feel comfortable at school with a fever and they have a high chance of making others unwell.

Vomiting and diarrhoea: children should stay home until it is at least 24 hours since their last vomit or runny poo. This is to reduce the spread of viral gastroenteritis (or stomach flu) and to make sure your child can stay hydrated and well. If your child is vomiting or has diarrhoea, it also is important to keep a close eye on them to make sure they are improving and to seek medical care if they are getting worse.

Runny noses: a runny nose without a fever might be a sign of hayfever, especially if your child has other symptoms like itchy eyes or sneezing. On its own, this is not a reason to stay home.

But a new runny nose with a fever is a reason to stay home. Many infections, including influenza, COVID and even measles can start with a fever and runny nose, although usually it signals a common cold.

The common cold needs rest, fluids and encouraging your child to keep their nose clear with gentle blowing or saline sprays. And a reminder, the annual flu vaccine is an excellent way to protect your family from the serious consequences of the “proper flu”.

Cough: there are many different reasons for a child to cough. This includes infections such as COVID, whooping cough and influenza and non-infectious reasons such as hayfever and reflux. If your child has developed a new cough, and especially if they are also feverish, this is a reason to keep them at home. A cough that doesn’t go away after two weeks should also be checked out by your GP.

Tiredness: mostly on Fridays, my kids are tired after a busy week – much like me! Tiredness can be an early sign of a lurking infection or some other health issue. But on its own is probably not a reason to keep your child home. However, ongoing tiredness is a good reason to have your child checked out by your GP as there are many causes from poor sleep to iron deficiency.

Poor appetite: kids’ appetites can vary so wildly, especially when they move into growing phases. Not wanting to eat breakfast in the morning might be an early gastro infection, a sign of constipation or nervous butterflies for the day ahead. If your child is otherwise OK, with no tummy pain, fever or tiredness, then a lack of appetite for breakfast is not a solid reason to stay home.

A young boy pouts, while lying on the couch with a phone and a blanket. — It’s common for kids to feel tired, but this on its own is not a reason to skip school.
Andrew Will/ Shutterstock

Watch out for school refusal

I find it helpful to let my child know if they stay home, they will need to stay in bed with no screens to rest and get well. This tends to separate the “truly feeling unwell” days from the “just hoping to have a rest” days.

But feeling unwell in the morning – particularly in the tummy, tiredness or unexplained headaches – can be an early sign something might not be going smoothly for your child at school or home.

School refusal is a serious problem where a child is completely overwhelmed and unable to attend school. It can come on gradually or suddenly. Talking with your child’s school is a critical first step if you are concerned about school refusal – it should be a conversation that happens promptly and your school should have procedures for helping you to manage it.

Phone a friend

If you’re not sure, consider giving a trusted friends or family member a quick call to talk things over.

You can also contact Healthdirect on 1800 022 222 (or 13 Health if you are in Queensland). This is a national phone service open 24 hours for anyone who has symptoms and needs advice on what to do next.

Liz Sturgiss receives funding from the NHMRC, MRFF, RACGP Foundation, Diabetes Australia and VicHealth that is unrelated to this article. She is affiliated with Australian Journal of Primary Health (CSIRO), Australian Prescriber, RACGP, NAPCRG, Guidelines Development Committee for the review and update of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, Adolescents and Children in Australia and Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care.

– ref. How can I tell if my child is too sick to go to school? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-i-tell-if-my-child-is-too-sick-to-go-to-school-252731

25 years into a new century and housing is less affordable than ever

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Housing and Economic Security, Grattan Institute

Of all the problems facing Australia today, few have worsened so rapidly in the past 25 years as housing affordability.

Housing has become more and more expensive – to rent or buy – and home ownership continues to fall among poorer Australians of all ages.

Housing makes up most of Australia’s wealth, so more expensive homes concentrated in fewer hands means growing wealth inequality, with a marked generational divide.

To unwind inequality, we need to make housing cheaper, and that means building much more of it.

Housing has become more expensive

The price of the typical Australian home has grown much faster than incomes since the turn of the century: from about four times median incomes in the early 2000s, to more than eight times today, and nearly 10 times in Sydney.

Housing has also become more expensive to rent, especially since the pandemic.

Rental vacancy rates are at record lows and asking rents (that is for newly advertised properties) have risen fast – by roughly 20% in Sydney and Melbourne in the past four years, and by much more in Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.

Home ownership is falling fast among the young

Rising house prices are pushing home ownership out of reach for many younger Australians.

In the early 1990s it took about six years to save a 20% deposit for a typical dwelling for an average household. It now takes more than 12 years.

Unsurprisingly, home ownership rates are falling fastest for younger people. Whereas 57% of 30–34 year-olds owned their home in 2001, just 50% did so by 2021. And just 36% of 25–29 year olds own their home today, down from 43% in 2001.

And home ownership is falling fastest among the poorest 40% of each age group.

Fewer homeowners means more inequality

People on low incomes, who are increasingly renters, are spending more of their incomes on housing.

The real incomes of the lowest fifth of households increased by about 26% between 2003–04 and 2019–20. But more than half of this was chewed up by skyrocketing housing costs, with real incomes after housing costs increasing by only 12%.

In contrast, the real incomes for the highest fifth of households increased by 47%, and their after-housing real incomes by almost as much: 43%.

Wealth inequality in Australia is still around the OECD average but has been climbing for two decades, largely due to rising house prices.

In 2019–20, one-quarter of homeowning households reported net wealth exceeding $1 million. By contrast, median net wealth for non-homeowning households was $60,000.

Since 2003–04, the wealth of high-income households has grown by more than 50%, much of that due to increasing property values. By contrast, the wealth of low-income households – mostly non-homeowners – has grown by less than 10%.

The growing divide between the housing “haves” and “have nots” is largely generational. Older Australians who bought their homes before prices really took off in the early 2000s have seen their share of the country’s wealth steadily climb.

This inequality will get baked in as wealth is passed onto the next generation.

Some Australians will be lucky enough to inherit one or more homes. Others – typically those on lower incomes – will receive none.

To unwind inequality, we need to make housing less expensive

We haven’t built enough

Australians’ demand for housing since the turn of the decade is a story of historically low interest rates, increased access to finance, tax and welfare settings that favour investments in housing, and a booming population.

But one widely-blamed villain – the introduction of the 50% capital gains tax discount in 1999, together with negative gearing – is likely to have played only a small part in rising house prices.

That’s because the value of these tax advantages – about $10.9 billion a year – is tiny compared to Australia’s $11 trillion housing market.

Instead, the biggest problem is that housing construction in recent years hasn’t kept up with increasing demand.

Strong migration over the past two decades has seen Australia’s population rise much faster than most other wealthy countries in recent decades, boosting the number of homes we need. Rising incomes, and demographic trends such as rising rates of divorce and an ageing Australia, have further increased housing demand.

Yet Australia has one of the lowest levels of housing per person of any OECD country, and is one of only four OECD countries where the amount of housing per person went backwards over the past two decades.

This is largely a failure of housing policy. Australia’s land-use planning rules – the rules that dictate what can get built where – are highly restrictive and complex. Current rules and community opposition make it very difficult to build new homes, particularly in the places where people most want to live and work.

More homes would mean less inequality

Fixing this will allow mores home to get built, moderate house price growth, and reduce barriers to home ownership. In turn, this will reduce the inequalities created by our broken housing system.

Easing planning restrictions is hard for governments, because many residents don’t want more homes near theirs.

The good news is that the penny has started to drop and state governments – particularly in Victoria and New South Wales – are making meaningful progress towards allowing more homes in activity centres and on existing transport links.

But now the real test begins: how will governments respond to the backlash from people who would prefer their communities to stay the same?

How well governments hold the line against the so-called NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) will tell us a lot about what we can expect to happen to inequality in Australia in the future.

Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the federal and Victorian governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute’s activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities, as disclosed on its website.

Joey Moloney and Matthew Bowes 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. 25 years into a new century and housing is less affordable than ever – https://theconversation.com/25-years-into-a-new-century-and-housing-is-less-affordable-than-ever-250067

Why Muslims often don’t celebrate Eid on the same day – even within one country

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zuleyha Keskin, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Charles Sturt University

Eid is a special time for Muslims. There are two major Eid celebrations each year: Eid al-Fitr is celebrated at the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, and Eid al-Adha is connected to the dates of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Eid, which means “festival” or “feast” in Arabic, is a celebratory occasion for more than one billion Muslims worldwide. However, in some countries, especially multicultural ones like Australia, Muslims don’t always celebrate Eid on the same day. Here’s why.

Worshippers pray outside the Taj Mahal on Eid al-Fitr. Muslim emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the mausoleum in 1631 to hold his wife’s tomb.
Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Eid comes 10-12 days earlier each year

Beyond different groups celebrating on different days, the timing of Eid celebrations also shift as a whole each year. That’s because Islam follows the lunar calendar, based on the moon’s cycles – unlike the Gregorian calendar, which follows the sun.

As such, dates on the Islamic calendar come 10–12 days earlier each year. This means the dates of both Eids also move about 11 days forward each year.

In terms of the Islamic calendar:

Eid al-Fitr happens on the 1st of the month of Shawwal (the 10th month), which comes right after the month of Ramadan.
Eid al-Adha happens on the 10th of Dhul-Hijjah (the 12th month), during Hajj.

What about local discrepancies?

Since Islam follows the lunar calendar, determining the start of each Islamic month, and the dates of both Eids, requires sighting the new crescent moon, which comes directly after the new moon (the phase in which the moon is invisible).

But there are different methods for doing this, and different scholarly interpretations regarding what method is best. These variations are the reason one group in a community might celebrate on a Sunday, while others may celebrate on a Monday.

The Islamic month of Ramadan lasts 29 to 30 days, from one sighting of the crescent moon to the next. Moon sighting approaches can vary between countries, communities and even households.
Shutterstock

Some Muslims believe each country should rely on its own local moon sighting.

This means if the new crescent moon is visible in neighbouring countries, but not in Australia (such as if it’s hidden behind clouds), then Australia should celebrate a day after its neighbours. The organisation Moonsighting Australia follows this method, only declaring Eid when the moon is seen locally.

However, others argue if the moon has been sighted anywhere in the world, it should be accepted by all Muslims as the start of the new Islamic month. Some Muslims in Australia opt for this “global moon sighting” approach, following Saudi Arabia’s Eid announcement even when the moon is not sighted locally.

As far back as the early centuries AD, people in the Arab world used astrolabes to survey the skies. This instrument belonged to Yemeni sultan, mathematician and astronomer Al-Ashraf Umar II (circa 1242-1296).
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Apart from the question of where the crescent moon is sighted, there are also different views over how it should be sighted. Many scholars believe in physically sighting it with the eyes, as was practised during the time of Prophet Muhammad.

But some Muslim countries, such as in Turkey and parts of Europe, use astronomical calculations to predict the new moon’s birth. This allows them to pre-set the date of Eid months, or even years, in advance.

Australia versus majority-Muslim countries

In Muslim-majority countries, deciding the day of Eid happens at a government level.

For example, in Saudi Arabia, the Supreme Court officially declares the date based on moon sighting reports. This decision sets the timing for Eid prayers and public holidays for the entire nation, allowing for unified celebrations across the country.

But Muslims in Australia come from diverse cultural backgrounds, and hold varying views regarding how the moon should be sighted. Some may follow the Eid announcement from their country of origin. Others may rely on local announcements, or on dates set by peak bodies such as the Australian National Imams Council.

One 2023 report published by the ISRA Academy surveyed more than 5,500 Muslims in Australia to understand how they determined the date of Eid.

The findings reveal notable differences across communities. Respondents from the Arab community were almost evenly split between following their local mosque (28.5%) and the Australian National Imams Council (28.0%), with a slightly lower percentage (23.9%) following Moonsighting Australia. Only 0.6% followed their country of origin.

Among the Turkish community, 16.1% followed their country of origin, while the largest proportion (28.5%) relied on a local mosque or Islamic organisation. But given Turkish mosques tend to follow Turkey’s state religious institution, Diyanet, most Australian Turks (44.6%) ultimately align with Turkey’s decision on Eid.

Of the others, 18.8% followed Moonsighting Australia and 14.6% following the national imams’ council.

In the African Muslim community, 48.4% followed Moonsighting Australia, while 32.8% relied on a local mosque, and 11.7% on the imams’ council.

Eid celebrations will keep evolving

While celebrating Eid on different days may seem divisive and fragmenting, there are positive aspects to this.

For one thing, it means Australian Muslims actively seek out information from various religious authorities. This reflects a high level of public engagement in religious decisions – rather than following blindly.

The strong influence of organisations such as the Australian National Imams Council and Moonsighting Australia also suggests local religious institutions are a trusted source for guidance.

Moreover, the high percentage of Muslims now following Moonsighting Australia indicates a trend towards a localised determination of Eid. And this trend will likely become stronger with the emergence of third- and fourth- generation Australian Muslims who are less connected with their ancestral homelands.

Only time will tell whether most Australian Muslims will eventually celebrate Eid on the same day. In the meantime, families and communities continue to navigate these differences with understanding and respect.

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

– ref. Why Muslims often don’t celebrate Eid on the same day – even within one country – https://theconversation.com/why-muslims-often-dont-celebrate-eid-on-the-same-day-even-within-one-country-248227

Grattan on Friday: an ‘arms race’ of promises as prime minister set to call election

By The Conversation -

March 28, 2025

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

Oops. Anthony Albanese’s own department pre-empted its boss on Thursday. Some unfortunate official, pressing the wrong button, posted on X that the government was in “caretaker” mode, although the prime minister had not yet called the election.

There was a grovelling apology from the department, saying it was trying to find out why the error occurred.

No matter. The department was only a day early. Albanese goes to government house on Friday for an election on May 3.

Indeed, most players and observers had expected, before cyclone Alfred, that the campaign, with its “caretaker” period, would be well under way by now.

Instead, we’ve had this budget week that’s seen an auction of handouts.

First, the budget announced the tax cuts, which are more than a year away, and will be delivered in two stages, They are, to use Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ description, “modest”.

Then came Peter Duttlon’s counter hit – a halving of the excise on petrol and diesel, briefed out ahead of his budget reply. The benefit would come more quickly – but would only last a year. This is a recycled, extended version of the Morrison government’s 2022 excise cut. Labor supported the 2022 move, but rejects Dutton’s proposal.

The budget we nearly didn’t have gave Chalmers the stage to strut his stuff. Budget weeks traditionally belong to treasurers who, among other things, do a walkabout through the ranks of the journalists who are “locked up” and ploughing through the embargoed budget documents. So some old hands were surprised when the PM appeared with a senior staffer to do his own walkabout. Precedents didn’t come to mind.

Labor sought to wedge the Coalition by pushing through legislation to enshrine the tax cuts. The Coalition voted against them in parliament, then declared if elected, it would repeal them. Dutton has confirmed he won’t be announcing any policy for tax cuts closer to the election.

For the Liberals, to be seen opposing an income tax cut is unusual and risky. It’s made for campaign slogans. “The only thing they don’t want to cut is people’s taxes,” Albanese declared. “Labor is the party of lower taxes.” Both sides will be watching their polling carefully in coming days to see whether this stand rebounds against the Liberals.

The opposition believes its excise reduction will hit the mark, especially in the seats it is most targeting – those in the outer suburbs where people drive a lot.

But Kos Samaras, from the Redbridge political consultancy, predicts people will see this “arms race” of hand outs as providing just band-aids, with the measures likely to cancel each other out.

Apart from the excise measure the other big initiative in Dutton’s reply was his plan for a gas reservation scheme.

This is designed to fill what has been an apparent big hole in the opposition’s energy policy. It has its ambitious (many would say unrealistic) nuclear plan for the long term. But if it is arguing it would be able to bring down energy bills any time soon, it needs a here-and-now policy to do so.

Its answer is to turn to gas. That requires ensuring a reliable and adequate supply for the local market, to drive down the price.

“Gas sold on the domestic market will be de-coupled from overseas markets to protect Australia from international price shocks,” Dutton said in his Thursday speech. “And this will drive down new wholesale domestic gas prices from over $14 per gigajoule to under 10 per gigajoule.”

Dutton told the ABC after his address that the price fall could be achieved by the end of this calendar year.

That estimate sounds like a hostage to fortune. Precision can be dangerous when it comes to energy promises. Who can forget that number Labor put out so confidently before the last election – a $275 fall in household power bills?

Critics will find all sorts of issues with Dutton’s east coast reservation scheme, including that it would be heavily interventionist and there’s no guarantee it would work. Labor says Dutton is reheating one of its old plans, and that the government has the gas situation under control anyway.

The opposition says its plan is in line with warnings on gas supply released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on Thursday.

The potential effectiveness of Dutton’s gas plan will be highly contested. What is not in dispute is that the partisan divide over the energy transition will be one of the central issues of the campaign.

This week the prime minister has had a spring in his step. The polls have improved somewhat, and the “vibe” seems to be with him. Responding to a challenge from a couple of podcasters, he playfully put the phrase, “delulu with no solulu” into a speech to describe his opponents. Never mind that middle-aged politicians sound slightly absurd when they try to be hip. Albanese is a confidence player and at the moment his confidence is up.

The tactical games aren’t just around the tax cuts. Calling the election first thing Friday carpet bombs Dutton’s budget reply.

And once the election is called, parliament will be prorogued and that will scrap the Friday sitting of estimates committees, denying the opposition an opportunity to quiz officials about the budget and other matters. (On Thursday, the “caretaker” fiasco became public during an estimates hearing, surprising officials from the PM’s department who happened to be appearing at the time.)

For his part, Dutton understands the odds against him.

Political scientist Rodney Tiffen, in an analysis of federal campaigns from 1972 to 2022, found no example where an opposition had started the campaign roughly equal in the polls and won, and three where it had lost (1980, 1987, and 2004). “All winning oppositions started the campaign already ahead,” Tiffen writes in a chapter in The Art of Opposition.

In his budget reply, Dutton delivered one revealing line: “This election is as much about leadership as it’s about policy”.

Dutton casts himself as the leader who would make the tough decisions. “I will lead with conviction – not walk both sides of the street,” he said.

“I will be a strong leader and a steady hand – just as John Howard was.”

Dutton might see Howard as his role model, but it will be a big leap of faith for many voters to see the opposition as a contemporary Howard.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: an ‘arms race’ of promises as prime minister set to call election – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-an-arms-race-of-promises-as-prime-minister-set-to-call-election-251257

Researcher warns over West Papuan deforestation impact on traditional noken weaving

By Asia Pacific Report -

March 28, 2025

Asia Pacific Report

A West Papuan doctoral candidate has warned that indigenous noken-weaving practices back in her homeland are under threat with the world’s biggest deforestation project.

About 60 people turned up for the opening of her “Noken/Men: String Bags of the Muyu Tribe of Southern West Papua” exhibition by Veronika T Kanem at Auckland University today and were treated to traditional songs and dances by a group of West Papuan students from Auckland and Hamilton.

The three-month exhibition focuses on the noken — known as “men” — of the Muyu tribe from southern West Papua and their weaving cultural practices.

It is based on Kanem’s research, which explores the socio-cultural significance of the noken/men among the Muyu people, her father’s tribe.

“Indigenous communities in southern Papua are facing the world’s biggest deforestation project underway in West Papua as Indonesia looks to establish 2 million hectares of sugarcane and palm oil plantations in the Papua region,” she said.

West Papua has the third-largest intact rainforest on earth and indigenous communities are being forced off their land by this project and by military.

The ancient traditions of noken-weaving are under threat.

Natural fibres, tree bark
Noken — called bilum in neighbouring Papua New Guinea — are finely woven or knotted string bags made from various natural fibres of plants and tree bark.

“Noken contains social and cultural significance for West Papuans because this string bag is often used in cultural ceremonies, bride wealth payments, child initiation into adulthood, and gifts,” Kanem said.

West Papua student dancers performed traditional songs and dances at the noken exhibition. Image: APR

“This string bag has different names depending on the region, language and dialect of local tribes. For the Muyu — my father’s tribe — in Southern West Papua, they call it ‘men’.

In West Papua, noken symbolises a woman’s womb or a source of life because this string bag is often used to load tubers, garden harvests, piglets, and babies.

Noken string bag as a fashion item. Image: APR

“My research examines the Muyu people’s connection to their land, forest, and noken weaving,” said Kanem.

“Muyu women harvest the genemo (Gnetum gnemon) tree’s inner fibres to make noken, and gift-giving noken is a way to establish and maintain relationships from the Muyu to their family members, relatives and outsiders.

“Drawing on the Melanesian and Indigenous research approaches, this research formed noken weaving as a methodology, a research method, and a metaphor based on the Muyu tribe’s knowledge and ways of doing things.”

Hosting pride
Welcoming the guests, Associate Professor Gordon Nanau, head of Pacific Studies, congratulated Kanem on the exhibition and said the university was proud to be hosting such excellent Melanesian research.

Part of the scores of noken on display at the exhibition. Image: APR

Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem, Kanem’s primary supervisor, was also among the many speakers, including Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai of Lagi Maama, and Daren Kamali of Creative New

The exhibition provides insights into the refined artistry, craft and making of noken/men string bags, personal stories, and their functions.

An 11 minute documentary on the weaving process and examples of noken from Waropko, Upkim, Merauke, Asmat, Wamena, Nabire and Paniai was also screened, and a booklet is expected to be launched soon.

The crowd at the noken exhibition at Auckland University today. Image: APR

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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