Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aakansha Zala, The University of Queensland

Maybe you feel worn out. Perhaps you’re also having trouble losing weight. Generally, you just don’t feel 100%.

Could it be Hashimoto’s disease? This common autoimmune thyroid disorder is when your immune system (which fights off viruses and bacteria), mistakenly attacks a part of your body. In this case, it’s your thyroid – a gland located at the base of your neck – and can cause low thyroid hormones levels (hypothyroidism).

Hypothyroidism affects one in 33 Australians and Hashimoto’s is one of the most common thyroid conditions in first-world countries.

While symptoms can be subtle, untreated Hashimoto’s can cause long-term problems with your heart, memory and fertility. Here is what you need to know.

Read more:
My scan shows I have thyroid nodules. Should I be worried?

What happens when you have Hashimoto’s?

Your thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped gland in the neck. It is essential in regulating things like muscle function, digestion, metabolism, the heart and lungs. In children, thyroid hormones are also needed for normal growth and development.

Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, named after the Japanese doctor who discovered it in 1912, is also known as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. The disease can cause the immune system to mistakenly produce proteins called antibodies (thyroid peroxidase and thyroglobulin). These can cause inflammation and long-term damage to the thyroid gland. Over time, as thyroid tissue is inflamed and/or destroyed, there can be a decrease in the production of thyroid hormones (hypothyroidism).

Hashimoto’s can present subtly at first. If you only have antibodies with no change in thyroid levels, it is likely you won’t have any symptoms.

However, as the disease progresses, you may experience fatigue, weight gain (or difficulty losing weight), increased sensitivity to the cold, constipation, dry skin, muscle aches, irregular or heavy menstrual cycles, enlarged thyroid (goitre) and occasionally hair loss, including at the ends of your eyebrows.

Read more:
Why am I so tired and when is it time to see the doctor about it? A GP explains

What causes Hashimoto’s thyroid disease?

Several risk factors can contribute to the development of Hashimoto’s including:

• genetic risk – your risk is higher if you have family members with Hashimoto’s

• gender – women are up to ten times more likely than men to develop the disease

• age – you are more likely to develop the disease from 30 to 50 years of age

• autoimmune condition – having another autoimmune condition like systemic lupus, Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease increases your risk

• excessive iodine intake and radiation exposure may also increase risk in people who are already genetically at greater risk.

What are the long-term risks?

Long-term, untreated Hashimoto’s thyroiditis can cause heart issues, higher cholesterol levels, nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy), reduced cognition and infertility.

In pregnancy, Hashimoto’s has a higher risk of pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure affecting several organs), premature birth, placental abruption (when the placenta separates from the inner wall of the uterus before birth) and, in severe cases, pregnancy loss.

The disease has also been linked with an increased risk (but low incidence) of the lymphocytes of the thyroid turning into cancer cells to cause thyroid lymphoma.

How is Hashimoto’s diagnosed?

Diagnosis can be confirmed with a blood test to check thyroid levels and antibodies.

Thyroid peroxidase antibodies are commonly present but about 5% of patients test antibody-negative. In those people, diagnosis depends on the thyroid levels, clinical presentation and ultrasound appearance of general inflammation. An ultrasound may not be required though, especially if the diagnosis is obvious.

Three hormone levels are tested to determine if you have Hashimoto’s.

Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) is produced by the brain to speak to the thyroid, telling it to produce two types of thyroid hormones – T3 and T4.

If you have either relative or absolute thyroid hormone deficiency, a test will show the stimulating hormones as high because the brain is trying to get the thyroid to work harder.

Can it be treated?

The management of Hashimoto’s depends on the severity of the thyroid levels. Up to 20% of the population can have antibodies but normal thyroid levels. This is still Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, but it is very mild and does not require treatment. There is no current treatment to reduce antibody levels alone.

Because thyroid peroxidase antibodies increase the risk of abnormal thyroid levels in the future, regular thyroid testing is recommended.

When the thyroid stimulating hormone is high with normal thyroid hormone levels it is termed “subclinical hypothyroidism”. When it is paired with low hormone levels it is called “overt hypothyroidism”. The first is a mild form of the disease and treatment depends on the degree of stimulating hormone elevation.

Overt hypothyroidism warrants treatment. The main form of this is thyroid hormone replacement therapy (levothyroxine) with the dose of the drug adjusted until thyroid levels are within the normal range. This is usually a lifelong treatment but, once the dose is optimised, hormone levels usually remain relatively stable.

In some people with very enlarged thyroid glands causing compressive symptoms (such as difficulty swallowing or breathing), thyroidectomy (surgical removal of the thyroid) is considered.

Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is a common condition caused by your body’s immune system incorrectly damaging to your thyroid and can go undetected. Long-term, untreated, it can cause issues with your heart, cognition, and fertility. It can be diagnosed with a simple blood test. Speak to your doctor if you have any concerns as early diagnosis and treatment can help prevent complications.

Read more:
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Aakansha Zala 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. Fatigue? Unexplained weight gain and dry skin? Could it be Hashimoto’s disease? – https://theconversation.com/fatigue-unexplained-weight-gain-and-dry-skin-could-it-be-hashimotos-disease-218342

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nickola Overall, Professor, University of Auckland

Do your attitudes about women and men influence how you parent your children?

Perhaps you think women are warmer and more supportive and so naturally better caregivers. Perhaps you see men as stronger, more independent, and better able to protect and provide for families.

But thinking women and men are different can do a lot of harm.Nowhere is this more obvious than in how some people view the roles of parents.

In this traditionalist world view, men should be physically strong, seek resources and status, and provide for their family. On the flip side, women should serve their partners and nurture their children.

And people who break with these gendered norms can face criticism from those who hold these views – also known as “hostile sexism”.

The term refers to overtly negative or misogynistic attitudes toward women. People inclined to hostile sexism more strongly agree with statements such as:

• most women fail to appreciate fully all that men do for them
• women seek to gain power by getting control over men
• women exaggerate problems they have at work
• once a woman gets a man to commit to her she usually tries to put him on a tight leash
• women are too easily offended.

But how do parents with these hostile attitudes fare in the job of parenting? Our new research has found that hostile sexism can harm parenting. And it’s not just dads with more sexist attitudes. Mothers with sexist attitudes can cause problems as well.

How does hostile sexism affect parenting?

There is evidence that sexist attitudes contribute to gender inequalities by generating discrimination, harassment, and violence toward women.

Research also shows that men who hold more hostile sexist views commit increased levels of violence toward intimate partners.

But while there is a growing understanding of how hostile sexism might harm women, the way it might affect behaviour toward children has been largely ignored. This is starting to change.

For example, during the first COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand, men with higher levels of hostile sexism reported more aggressive parenting when they were isolated at home with their families.

Read more:
Gentle parenting can be really hard on parents, new research suggests

But self-reports measure what parents think they do, which is only weakly associated with how they actually interact with their children.

“Gold standard” behaviour assessments involve video recording parents interacting with their child. Trained observers then rate how warm, engaged and responsive parents are to their child.

In two studies, we used these behavioural methods to examine how hostile sexism influenced parenting.

We recruited 376 families with heterosexual parents and a five-year-old child from the Auckland community. Each child’s father and mother first completed scales assessing hostile sexism that included the statements listed above.

We then recorded parents undertaking family tasks, such as playing games or building a cardboard tower with their child. A team of trained coders independently rated how much fathers and mothers were warm, engaged and responsive to their child.

Both parents’ hostile sexism is harmful

Fathers who reported higher hostile sexism exhibited less responsive parenting towards both daughters and sons. They expressed less warmth, were less engaged with their child, were less sensitive to their child’s needs, and were more intrusive or controlling.

But mothers who held hostile sexist views also demonstrated less responsive parenting, showing less warmth, engagement, and sensitivity toward their children.

We propose two potential reasons for the unexpected effects of mother’s hostile sexism.

Mothers with higher levels of hostile sexism believe they should follow the father’s authority. Following the father’s lead during family interactions may detract from mothers attending to their children’s needs.

Another possibility is that mothers higher in hostile sexism believe they should be the primary caregiver and so limit fathers’ involvement in family interactions. Known as maternal gatekeeping, this could involve mothers controlling or criticising how the father is engaging with their child.

Enforcing their caregiving role may interfere with mothers being responsive to their children.

These findings have important consequences for children. Responsive parenting is pivotal to healthy child development. Less responsive parenting predicts greater behavioural problems, emotional difficulties, and lower health and wellbeing in children.

Read more:
Exhausted, disconnected and fed up – what is ‘parental burnout’ and what can you do about it?

Improving gender equality and child wellbeing

Our findings indicate that reducing beliefs about rigid gender roles, and whether fathers or mothers should have power, could allow parents to be more responsive to their children.

Changing gender roles and beliefs is challenging. Interventions designed to reduce hostile sexism typically involve showing that gender stereotypes are untrue or that gender inequality is harmful. But these intervention studies are ineffective.

However, parents generally do love and care about their children. So understanding what sexist attitudes mean for parenting and children’s wellbeing may offer motivation for parents to rethink their sexist attitudes.

Nickola Overall has received funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.

– ref. Men and women who hold sexist views are less responsive as parents: new research – https://theconversation.com/men-and-women-who-hold-sexist-views-are-less-responsive-as-parents-new-research-216622

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Kilah, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, University of Tasmania

“Gravy Day” is a relatively new date in the Australian calendar. Paul Kelly’s song How to Make Gravy tells the story of a prisoner (Joe) writing to his brother on December 21. Joe laments missing the family Christmas celebrations and asks who will make gravy for the roast lunch in his absence.

While a roast may not be everyone’s idea of the perfect Christmas feast, “Gravy Day” does give the opportunity to discuss the chemistry involved in making gravy – a thickened sauce made from drippings collected from roasted meats.

Read more:
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Give my love to Angus (beef?)

Roasting meat sets off a cascade of chemical reactions, producing myriad new flavour chemicals. More than 1,000 flavour compounds have been identified in roasted meats.

Each chemical gives its unique characteristics to the taste and smell of the finished roast. The chemical 12-methyltridecanal helps give roast beef its “beefy” flavour, while the sulfur-containing compound 2-methyl-3-furanthiol is more often found in roast chicken.

There are three main types of chemical reactions taking place when roasting meats that produce flavour chemicals.

The Maillard reaction is responsible for both colour and flavour. This broad reaction type takes place between amino acids from the protein and sugars and simple carbohydrates found in the meat.

The Maillard reaction is also the chemistry responsible for many favourite flavours, including roasted coffee, chocolate, steak, toast and more.

A hundred degrees, even more maybe

The other main type of reaction occurring in a hot oven is the breakdown of fats by “lipid degradation”. This can form hundreds of different chemical compounds. Many of these chemicals are described as “fatty”, “tallowy”, or smell like fried foods.

The unique fat profiles found in different animals translate to the profile of flavour chemicals that form from lipid degradation when roasted. Further flavour compounds can arise through the third type of reactions combining products of Maillard reactions and lipid degradation.

One specific flavour compound identified as having a “gravy aroma” is known as 3-mercapto-2-methylpentan-1-ol. This compound comes from roasted vegetables, so including some veggies in your roasting pan will give you more depth of gravy flavour. Also, “cutting onions” is a useful excuse if listening to How to Make Gravy gets you feeling emotional.

The treasure and the trash

Roasting meats causes the fats to “render” and separate from the meat as a liquid. The fat pools in the tray with flavour-rich meat juices.

While the fat and the water both carry flavour compounds, too much fat can give the finished gravy an unpleasant mouth feel, or can separate into layers when served.

It’s worth pouring off the pan juices into a jug to allow the fat to separate from the liquid so you can control how much fat you’re adding. Be sure to dispose of the excess fat responsibly – don’t pour it down the drain.

Just add flour…

Flour (or, more specifically, starch) is the secret ingredient of a good gravy. Starches are large complex chemicals that are made up of lots of sugars joined together.

Starch granules are tightly packed and swell greatly when they absorb water. The swollen starch molecules forms a gel-like network that traps water and oil to give a thickened gravy.

Wheat flour is most often used as the starch source. Corn and arrowroot starch can also be used. They have a higher percentage of starch than flour and a more neutral flavour.

Wheat starch typically requires a larger quantity to be added and longer cooking to form a paste. Whichever starch you use, don’t add it too quickly or without mixing as you’ll form lumps.

…salt, red wine, and a dollop of tomato sauce

Salt is a common ingredient when preparing roast meats, both on the surface of the meat to draw out moisture and as a flavouring agent. The pan juices are typically concentrated as part of the gravy making process.

Make sure you taste the gravy before seasoning, as salt will be concentrated by heating.

Additional flavour components can be introduced by adding red wine, sherry, stock, or tomato sauce. These ingredients will broaden the flavour profile through sweetness (sugar), acidity (vinegar, citric and malic acids), and umami in the case of tomato sauce (natural glutamates, such as those found in MSG). Some folk even add Vegemite to their gravy for an extra umami boost.

I bet it will taste the same

If you happen to have screwed up your gravy this time, or are after convenience, then you can turn to an instant gravy powder. The main ingredient is typically maltodextrin or another corn-derived (and possibly chemically modified) starch.

Shelf-stable powdered fats, salt, colours, and a range of flavour additives will be present in varying amounts depending on the style and price point of the product.

The advantages of the instant version are speed and uniformity due to the carefully controlled commercial production.

So unlike Joe’s concerns for his family’s gravy, an instant gravy will be more likely to taste the same, regardless of who ends up making it.

Read more:
How to make the perfect pavlova, according to chemistry experts

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

– ref. How to make gravy (using chemistry) – https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-gravy-using-chemistry-219589

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

Have you ever bumped into someone with the same birthday as you? What about someone sharing a birthday in your workplace? How common is a shared birthday, anyway?

The birthday problem, as it’s called by mathematicians, reveals problems with our understanding of number theory, probabilities and our assumptions of how the world works. It comes back to how counter-intuitive maths is for a lot of people.

In the birthday problem you are asked “what’s the minimum number of people in a room to get better than 50% chance of two people having the same birthday?” A simple question with a puzzling answer.

To get a more intuitive understanding of this problem we’ve created an interactive simulation, below. It arranges birthdays along a line, with January on the left and December on the right.

The intuitive answer is the wrong one

When the birthday problem is described to maths students for the first time, the majority of responses are that a group of 183 people is needed to have a better than even chance of two people having the same birthday.

The thinking here is: 183 is half of 365 (number of days in the year). Students assume they only need to compare others against a single person – themselves, and then try to match their birthday with other people.

If you use this assumption, you need to find 183 people to have an even chance of finding a person matching with you. However, when students understand that not every combination has to be with yourself – for example, person 2 and person 5 might be the right combination – it becomes clearer the number needed is lower than 183.

Combinations do not scale linearly

If you’ve been playing with the interactive above you may have come across the answer to the birthday problem: only about 23 people are needed for a greater than 50% chance of a shared birthday. But how can this be if there are 15 times more days in the year?

We’ve created another interactive below to visualise how the connections between people in a room do not scale linearly as you add more people. Play around with adding a node and see if you can guess how many connections should be added.

It should give you a better grasp of factorial growth through multiplication, which is the area of number theory that underpins the birthday problem.

Large numbers are hard to comprehend

The COVID-19 pandemic showed the world most of us have a limited understanding of exponential growth when presented with models of what could occur if the pandemic were left unchecked.

There are many great examples of the ill-understood power of exponential growth, but one I often use is asking this question: would you take $1 million on the first day of the month only, or one cent on the first day of the month, doubled each day until the end of the month (30 days)?

Nearly all people choose the $1 million lump sum. However, if you choose the one cent option, you end the month with approximately 10 times more money due to the effect of exponential growth.

In a similar tale, the supposed inventor of chess requested to sell their game to a king for some rice. They proposed placing a single grain on the first tile and doubling it each tile. The amount of rice on the final tile would be the sale price.

As you can see below, that number can very quickly become larger than the entire world’s rice supply.

Asking ‘what comes next’ is seldom simple

Another real world example of counter-intuitive mathematics was on the roulette wheels in Monte Carlo in 1913. There was a run of 26 straight black results, which is improbable but not impossible.

One striking aspect of the story is that gamblers increasingly bet on red as the run of blacks continued, thinking red was “due”. However, the mathematics says otherwise. Each spin of the roulette wheel has no memory of what happened before, so the chance of red appearing does not increase as time goes on. In short, lots of people lost money that night!

However, some situations do rely on the probabilities of what came before. For example, in the Monty Hall problem you are trying to win a car, which is hidden behind one of three doors (the others have goats). You are given the option to pick a door, then shown a different door with a goat.

The question is: should you stay with your first pick or switch doors? Try it out with the game below.

The assumption here is that after Monty shows you the goat then the odds of winning a car if you switch or stay are 50/50 – there are only two doors left and one of them has a car.

But that doesn’t take into account the likelihood that you originally picked a goat to begin with. Thus the chances of your next choice are informed by your previous choice.

Becoming numerate is important

These examples demonstrate the importance of being “numerate”, defined as being able to reason with numbers and being able to apply this reasoning in a range of contexts. The importance of developed numeracy skills cannot be understated, with correlations to better overall life outcomes such as employment, income, health and well being.

If people are highly numerate, they can understand how our world works at a deeper level, even if it doesn’t feel like it should work that way. Also, they are likely to have a better idea of what actions will yield the desired results in certain situations.

So, keep turning your mind to mathematical and numerical problems, they may just come in handy one day.

Benjamin Zunica 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. How many people need to be in a room for two to share a birthday? It’s less than you think. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/how-many-people-need-to-be-in-a-room-for-two-to-share-a-birthday-its-less-than-you-think-heres-why-218250

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexey D Muraviev, Associate Professor of National Security and Strategic Studies, Curtin University

China’s expanding naval presence in the Pacific Ocean and the South and East China seas has become a major focus for Australia, the US and its allies.

Australia’s latest strategic defence review, for instance, was prompted, in part, by the rapid modernisation of China’s military, as well as its increasing naval presence in the South China Sea.

According to the US Department of Defence’s most recent annual report to Congress, China’s navy has been strengthened with the addition of 30 new warships over the past 12 months. By 2030, the total number of ships is expected to increase to 435, up from the current 370.

But China is not the only potentially adversarial maritime power that is flexing its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region. Russia is becoming a cause for concern, too, even though the 2023 strategic review did not mention it.

My latest research project, Battle Reading the Russian Pacific Fleet 2023–2030, recently commissioned and published by the Royal Australian Navy, shows how deeply the Russian military is investing in replenishing its ageing, Soviet-era Pacific Fleet.

Between 2022 and October 2023, for instance, it commissioned eight new warships and auxiliaries, including four nuclear-powered and conventional submarines. On December 11, two new nuclear-powered submarines formally joined the fleet, in addition to the conventional RFS Mozhaisk submarine, which entered service last month.

These figures may not look as impressive as the new Chinese vessels mentioned above, but it’s important to recognise that the Russian Navy has the unique challenge of simultaneously addressing the needs of four fleets (in the Arctic and Pacific oceans and Black and Baltic seas), plus its Caspian Sea flotilla.

Furthermore, Russia’s war in Ukraine has not had a considerable impact on the Pacific Fleet’s ongoing modernisation or its various exercises and other activities. Between early 2022 and October 2023, for instance, the Pacific Fleet staged eight strategic-level naval exercises, in addition to numerous smaller-scale activities.

Read more:
Russia is a rising military power in the Asia-Pacific, and Australia needs to take it seriously

Rebuilding its powerful navy, partnering with China

In addition to rebuilding its once-powerful navy, the Russians are committing enormous resources to building up naval ties in the Indo-Pacific and strengthening their key maritime coalitions.

In recent months, for instance, a naval task group of the Pacific Fleet embarked on a tour across southeast and south Asia. This tour made international headlines, but was effectively overlooked by the Australian media.

The Russian warships spent four days in Indonesia, then staged their first-ever joint naval exercises with Myanmar and another exercise later with India. The ships then visited Bangladesh for the first time in 50 years, followed by stops in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The tour signals a widening of Russia’s scope in the region, though its most important naval partner remains China.

According to my findings, between 2005 and October 2023, the Russian and Chinese navies have taken part in at least 19 confirmed bilateral and trilateral (also involving friendly regional navies) exercises and three joint patrols. The most recent was carried out in mid-2023, when the Russian and Chinese joint task force was deployed to the north Pacific, not far from the Alaskan coast.

Implications for Australia and its allies

Canberra’s preoccupation with China should not make us blind to other potential adversaries that could threaten our national security in the medium to long term.

According to my estimates, by the time the Royal Australian Navy commissions its first Hunter class frigate and the first Virginia-class, nuclear-powered attack submarine begins operations in 2032, the replenished Russian Pacific Fleet would have a battle force of at least 45 core warships.

This is expected to include 19 nuclear-powered and conventional submarines, supported by minor combat and auxiliary elements. Most of these units would be newly designed and built.

This clearly shows that if war someday breaks out in the Pacific, the Russian Pacific Fleet could present a formidable challenge to Australian and allied naval fleets in the western and northwestern Pacific, as well as the Arctic.

Australia’s decision to acquire nuclear-powered platforms from the United States and United Kingdom suggests our intent to support and engage in long-range maritime operations with our allies, possibly as far as the northern Pacific and Arctic oceans.

And in times of crisis short of open war, Russia will also have more assets to support operations around Southeast Asia and in the Indian Ocean, extending its reach closer to the Royal Australian Navy’s areas of immediate concern.

Finally, the deepening naval cooperation between China and Russia could become a risk factor in its own right as the two countries seek to counter the AUKUS security pact. This is especially true with the possibility of expanded joint naval operations in the Pacific.

Read more:
After AUKUS, Russia sees a potential threat — and an opportunity to market its own submarines

Despite the tyranny of distance between Australia and Russia, we are no longer irrelevant in Moscow’s strategic planning. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu made this clear in recent remarks blasting AUKUS as a threat to stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

This means Australia’s navy and its maritime ambitions are increasingly being viewed as a risk factor to the Kremlin.

During the Cold War confrontation in the Asia-Pacific, the Soviet Union’s naval power in the region was a primary point of strategic concern for Australia, the US and its allies. This is once again proving to be true. Canberra can’t afford to ignore these developments any longer.

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

– ref. Australia can no longer afford to ignore Russia’s expanding naval power in the Pacific – https://theconversation.com/australia-can-no-longer-afford-to-ignore-russias-expanding-naval-power-in-the-pacific-217913

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Poulton, Senior Lecturer, Brain Mind Centre Nepean, University of Sydney

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is more often diagnosed in children. That might make you wonder if people grow out it as they reach adulthood.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that involves difficulties focusing attention (for study or work) and/or sitting still or keeping impulsive actions in check. This means people with ADHD are different and the differences are there for life. But development is a dynamic process because people change, mature and develop their skills.

If people have ADHD, the way it affects them can change over time too.

Read more:
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When kids change, ADHD can be easier to spot

As children’s skills develop, differences due to ADHD may become easier to spot.

So hyperactivity may not be noticed in a baby who waves their arms and legs around, but once the child develops new skills and starts to run and climb, the hyperactivity may be obvious.

As children develop their cognitive skills, like listening and understanding and learning to talk, they have to learn from other people. This requires the child’s attention. As a child progresses through school, the demands on their attention increase.

Finally a person has to function independently as an adult. This may involve a career, running a household and raising a family.

ADHD can’t be formally diagnosed until it affects a person’s functioning. This will depend on the balance of their natural abilities and the demands of life.

So a bright child may not have to try very hard while learning to read and write. But as the child progresses through school, lapses in concentration, particularly if prolonged, may mean that important information is missed.

If this is happening a lot, the person may struggle to keep up, particularly if catch-up studying at home requires a “super-human” level of effort due to their difficulty with concentration.

Other children may struggle with the more fundamental learning or tasks and may be diagnosed earlier.

Read more:
You might have heard ADHD risks being over-diagnosed. Here’s why that’s not the case

Brain differences and checklists

Studies of people with ADHD show subtle differences in the overall size of the brain and the sizes of some of the structures such as the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, caudate and hippocampus (which help coordinate emotion, learning and behaviour).

The brain also matures more slowly. These changes are so small they cannot be used for diagnosing ADHD. But they do demonstrate ADHD is real.

So the key to diagnosing ADHD is in the answer to the question: is this person having difficulties in managing in life (functional impairment) due to their impulsiveness or difficulties with attention?

Generally, impairment is assessed based on whether the person:

• is considered capable of higher achievement; that is they could or should do better
• behaves in a way that causes unreasonable stress or disruption in class or at work
• behaves in a way that unreasonable stress or disruption in the family
• behaves in a way that significantly affects peer relationships
• is aware of having difficulties and has low self-esteem.

Read more:
How hormones and the menstrual cycle can affect women with ADHD: 5 common questions

ADHD can appear differently over time

A person’s ability to manage will change over time. The formal diagnosis of ADHD is dependent on meeting the required number of diagnostic criteria as well as showing functional impairment.

This may involve a symptom checklist. Globally, around 5% of children and 2.5% of adults meet the full diagnostic criteria for ADHD.

A person’s ADHD may only be diagnosable at particular stages of their life when the demands on their abilities are greatest, particularly at transitions such as moving into a new educational stage or starting a new job.

ADHD is most often diagnosed in primary school children, with more boys diagnosed than girls.

So if ADHD is stable, why is it hard to consistently diagnose?

As people mature they develop coping strategies, which can make their ADHD much less obvious. Some adults may not meet enough of the diagnostic criteria, because they have learned effective coping strategies.

For example, when asked whether they often lose things necessary for tasks or activities (such as keys, their glasses or phone) they may respond “No”. But this is because they always put their keys on the same hook as soon as they get home, and they keep their mobile phone or glasses on a lanyard around their neck.

Others might have learned to control some of their impulsive behaviour. But they may still show ADHD-related functional impairment.

ADHD used to be considered solely a condition of childhood and the diagnostic criteria are biased towards identifying hyperactive boys. The criteria are less applicable to adults and as a result, adults who were treated in childhood but no longer meet the full diagnostic criteria may be considered to have ADHD “in remission” even when they continue to experience ADHD-related difficulties.

The current diagnostic criteria are not sensitive enough to identify ADHD consistently.

In the future, instead of an over-reliance on symptom checklists for diagnosis, clinicians should seek to understand the person’s lived experience of the way their attentional difference affects their daily functioning – and how it might change over the years as demands shift and successful strategies develop.

Alison Poulton is a board member of the Australasian ADHD Professionals Association. She has received personal fees and non-financial support from Shire/Takeda; and book royalties from Disruptive Publishing (ADHD Made Simple).

– ref. Do kids grow out of ADHD as they get older? – https://theconversation.com/do-kids-grow-out-of-adhd-as-they-get-older-218692

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Edwards, Research Fellow Bushfires, Charles Darwin University

As the semi-arid Pilliga Scrub burns in New South Wales, many of us are thinking about fire once again. It’s an El Niño summer in the hottest year on record. And there’s a remarkable amount of grass drying out and ready to burn.

Over the past few years, more rain than usual has fallen over vast regions of Australia’s rangelands, the arid and semi-arid regions that account for most of our land mass.

These rains have triggered an enormous boom in native grasses. But it’s also boom time for introduced species such as buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) in the deserts, and Gamba grass (Andropogon Gayanus) in the savannas. These fast-growing grasses have outcompeted native grasses in many areas.

As they dry out, they become fuel for grass fires. Fuel loads have become extreme, especially in areas where invasive grasses are abundant. Already this fire season, enormous tracts of rangelands have burned, covering an area the size of Spain.

Our bushfire-mapping site has captured the rangeland fire season so far. Fast-moving grassfires recently hit South Australia. These grassfires can have fronts hundreds of kilometres wide. Yet this is only the beginning of the summer fire season.

Arid lands and buffel grass

When we think of fire in Australia, we often think of bushfires raging through a forest. But grassfires are very common once you leave the coast.

In Australia’s northern savannas, research has shown the direct link between fires, dried grass fuel at the end of the dry season in October, and how much rain fell over the year. Put simply, more rain leads to more grass, which usually leads to more fire.

These past few La Niña years have dumped enough rain to trigger major grass growth in the deserts – producing enough fuel to carry very widespread fire.

Buffel grass has made the problem far worse. This tussock grass native to parts of Africa and Asia was introduced for pasture, as it grows fast, roots deeply, spreads easily and needs less rain than other grasses. But these traits have now made it the biggest risk to biodiversity in arid Australia. Buffel has been a declared weed in South Australia since 2015, and the Northern Territory is considering whether to follow suit.

Management burns are needed to reduce the hazard but are increasingly difficult to implement. Buffel grass grows right up to trees and regrows quickly, promoting hotter and more frequent fires. Fire encourages buffel to regrow, which creates a grass-fire cycle. Native plants and fauna can’t adapt to this.

Read more:
The buffel kerfuffle: how one species quietly destroys native wildlife and cultural sites in arid Australia

Buffel also grows more evenly across a landscape, rather than in patches like many natives. At a fine scale, this means fire damage is worse, with more trees and shrubs killed. At a broader scale, areas invaded by buffel grass create links between flammable native plant communities previously separated by open patches.

The result? Fires can spread across larger tracts of land from a single ignition point, as we saw in Tjoritja National Park (West MacDonnell) in 2019.

Because fires spread so easily, management burns become much more risky and also more damaging to native shrubs and trees – even in winter. That’s a problem, because we need these burns to reduce fuel loads. More intense and wide-ranging fires are likely to injure or kill more native animals, both directly and from the loss of shelter and food after the fire.

Fires can start from lightning – or from simply driving through long, dry grass. Historical weather and fire information indicates central Australia is in for a long hot summer.

How much fire might we see? In 2011, a year when we saw similar fuel loads, about 45% of arid and semi-arid lands had burned by the end of the summer.

Gamba grass on the savanna

In northern Australia’s tropical savannas, there’s a similar problem: fast-growing Gamba grass. This African tussock grass can grow up to four metres high. It’s invading new areas rapidly – government surveys show it increased from about 1,500 sites to more than 9,000 sites in six years in the Greater Darwin Region.

When Gamba dries out, the fuel loads it creates are many times greater than native grasses. Gamba is now widespread throughout the greater Darwin rural area, including large areas of Litchfield National Park.

When Gamba grass burns, the fire runs so hot it can kill tall trees and devastate biodiversity. It’s also more dangerous for firefighters. The high fuel loads produce very high greenhouse gas emissions and harmful pollutants such as particulate matter.

Unlike Buffel, Gamba is a declared weed in the NT. The territory government is putting in considerable effort to reduce the damage it does through prescribed burning and requiring property owners to control Gamba.

Unfortunately, these control efforts have a cost. Days with very high levels of air pollution in Darwin are increasing each year, caused by the burning of Gamba to reduce fuel load and the chance of big fires later in the dry season. Polluted air is damaging human health.

To combat this, we need to use weather forecasting to advise volunteer firefighters (who do most of the prescribed burns) of the best time to burn.

As the heat of summer continues, we can expect to see more extensive grassfires in central and northern Australia. Highly flammable invasive grasses will make them worse still. We cannot ignore the changes they are making to central and northern fire regimes.

Read more:
The summer bushfires you didn’t hear about, and the invasive species fuelling them

Andrew Edwards receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Charles Darwin University.

Christine Schlesinger receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Ellen Ryan-Colton has received funding from the Ecological Society of Australia (Holsworth wildlife research endowment, and Jill Landsberg Trust), Ten Deserts Project and Alinytjara Wilurara Landscape Board.

Peter Jacklyn receives funding from the Clean Energy Regulator and National Emergency Management Agency.

Greg Barber 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. Invasive grasses are worsening bushfires across Australia’s drylands – https://theconversation.com/invasive-grasses-are-worsening-bushfires-across-australias-drylands-215530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Van Bergen, Head of School of Education and Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Wollongong

School is out and Santa is on his way, but there’s still a bit of a wait before he wriggles down that chimney. The days before Christmas are both exciting and challenging for children and families.

How can you manage kids’ excitement in this last build-up to Christmas? What should you do if emotions run over? And how might you respond if all the focus on Santa means some kids start asking if he is real?

Help kids manage outbursts

Parents and carers may notice children are adorably ridiculous at this time of year (or maybe just ridiculous).

Each day brings a swirling mix of tears, laughter, shouts and tired panda eyes. Sleep patterns can also be disturbed across the Christmas break, with late nights and early mornings leading to extra tiredness.

For younger (and even older) children, temper tantrums may be more common.

If your child does have an outburst, give them some time to cool off. Although it can be tempting, try not to enforce harsh punishments in the moment. An angry threat to cancel Christmas (“I’m going to tell Santa not to come!”) may be matched by an equally angry response by your child.

Instead, come back when you are both calm, acknowledge how they and others might be feeling and discuss how best to manage those emotions (“If you are feeling very excited, go outside and run around instead of hitting your brother”).

Also be conscious of your own emotions. Children often model the emotions and behaviours they see from others. So, despite all the things you have to do at the moment, try and pause, relax and seek out opportunities for joy in this festive season.

Read more:
Parents make mistakes. So what does ‘good enough parenting’ look like?

Help children explore questions about Santa

Of course, Christmas holds a range of deeper meanings for religion and family. But a key source of excitement in the lead up to Christmas is Santa. The magical world of Santa, reindeers and elves sparks particular joy for kids.

If your child is in early primary school, you might be worrying “what happens if Stella discovers the truth”?

Try not to let this become a family stressor.

Children begin making distinctions between fantasy and reality in preschool, although often continue to believe in Santa for longer: particularly if parents promote these beliefs.

In one study, children who no-longer believed were interviewed about how they had felt when they realised Santa was not real. Some felt momentarily bad or disappointed but more than half reported feeling happy or relieved to know the truth. They had been wondering anyway.

If children are questioning their beliefs already, consider exploring this with them by asking “what do you think?” Either way, negative emotions tend to be short-lived: indeed, many children continue to pretend to believe in Santa just for fun.

Help manage holiday expectations

For those at home before Christmas, complaints of boredom may already have set in. These are particularly challenging for parents who are still working.

Some children may be happy playing with siblings. For other children, it can help to create routines to manage their expectations. This might include times you will be available to play with them, excursions and free play. Include children in the negotiations and help them to manage excitement by creating a list of activities they would like to complete.

For families already away on holidays, the challenges are different but real. An expectation of relaxing bliss can sometime contrast with a reality that is more intense.

Interviews with Danish children and their parents about their trips away reveal both joy and tension, with closer living quarters and 24/7 activities bringing social overload and frayed tempers over time.

Routines can help here too, even if they differ from those at home. Map out when you will be sharing fun activities together and build in quiet time to soothe frayed nerves.

Plan Christmas Eve

For all children, Christmas Eve is likely to see a clash of excitement and emotion. Help children to plan out any family rituals beforehand, including what time they will go to bed.

For those with siblings, help them to plan who will complete what tasks. This might include chopping carrots for reindeer, pouring milk for Santa, or lighting special Christmas candles. Ensure the negotiations are fair and everyone is happy.

Above all, enjoy. Stories of stress and conflict related to Christmas abound, yet research shows an abundance of positive emotions across the period. ‘Tis a most wonderful time of the year.

Read more:
8 tips to navigate Christmas if you have a fussy eater or child with allergies

Penny Van Bergen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and NSW Department of Education.

– ref. Santa Claus is coming to town! How to help kids manage the big build-up to Christmas – https://theconversation.com/santa-claus-is-coming-to-town-how-to-help-kids-manage-the-big-build-up-to-christmas-220047

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc Olynyk, Director of Financial Planning, Deakin Business School, Deakin University

Australia’s superannuation and retirement income system is complex and difficult to navigate.

Retirees need to make decisions on numerous issues where they have less than full information and understanding, both financial and non-financial. They also require access to retirement products to help them manage and balance income needs against longevity risk.

Recognising these issues, the government released a discussion paper this month seeking views on three key issues:

1. helping super fund members navigate the retirement income system

2. supporting superannuation funds to deliver better services

3. making retirement income products more accessible.

Australia has one of the largest and most sophisticated pension systems in the world. Valued at more than A$3.5 trillion as at September 2023, and is the 5th largest pension scheme in terms of asset size.

It is also the 5th most highly rated retirement income system internationally behind the Netherlands, Iceland, Denmark and Israel.

What is wrong with the super system?

But while the super system ranks highly in terms of integrity and sustainability, the numbers are not as flattering when it comes to “adequacy”.

Adequacy is the level of income available to retirees depending on their different circumstances. According to a recent study, Australia is ranked 20th out of 47 worldwide on the adequacy index.

Reform in the pre-retirement phase of Australia’s retirement income scheme is ongoing and designed to support accumulating wealth for retirement.

These ongoing reforms have been designed to make superannuation easier to understand and to reduce much of the decision making required. They’ve been needed because of an apparent lack of skills, interest and financial literacy among Australians.

While the message that we need to save to be comfortable in retirement is getting through, the lack of information about how to manage these savings once we retire means many retirees are left to navigate the complex system as best they can.

Given the complexity and volatility of Australia’s financial system, it’s hardly surprising many of the decisions made by retirees don’t produce the best financial results. For example, more than 84% of retirement savings are held in account-based pensions which, if not properly managed, can run out. This is despite government and community awareness that outliving your savings is a real possibility.

About 50% of retirees currently withdraw at the minimum pension rate, which means many people experience a lower standard of living than what would normally be expected with the super they have accumulated. This can result in wealth not being used and instead being passed on to the next generation.

Help is needed now because the retiree sector is booming

Over the next decade there is going to be a big increase in the number of people retiring and transitioning from the accumulation phase of their super to the pension phase. It’s estimated 2.5 million Australians will move to the retirement phase in this period.

Read more:
Super has become a taxpayer-funded inheritance scheme for the rich. Here’s how to fix it – and save billions

Following the 2014 Financial System Inquiry, the government introduced the Retirement Income Covenant in 2022 to force super fund trustees to develop a strategy that would provide better retirement outcomes for their members.

The strategy is based on retirees maximising their expected retirement income, managing expected risks to their retirement income and having flexible access to super funds during their retirement.

A 2022-23 review conducted by Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission found while trustees were providing more help to retirees, overall there was a lack of progress and urgency among trustees to improve retirement outcomes.

Read more:
Should I put more money into my super? What are the benefits and can I take it out before retirement if I need it?

How the system could be improved

Several proposals have been put forward to improve the experiences and decision-making of retirees. These have included:

• improved support from and education by superannuation fund trustees

• changing how people view their super savings from an accumulation of wealth to a system that enables drawdown of retirement savings over time to fund expenses.

• providing an automatic rollover of retirement savings into an income-stream instead of allowing a lump sum withdrawal on retirement

• expanding existing income products (that are starting to be offered by several financial institutions) which combine providing investment choice with a pension for life

• setting up a MyRetire product that would run parallel to MySuper and provide a simple and cost-effective retirement income system for less engaged members. MySuper only applies to the accumulation phase. Once a member starts an income stream in retirement, their MySuper account ceases

• improving access to financial planning advice which is shown to play a significant role in preparing Australians for retirement.

The government, superannuation industry and the community all have a greater role to play in improving the financial outcomes and experiences of retirees.

With Australia’s ageing population, the need to better support retirees to achieve a dignified retirement is becoming more urgent.

All Australians expect and deserve a financially secure retirement.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Jim Chalmers says Australians will be better off next year

Marc Olynyk is Chair of the Financial Planning Education Council (FPEC). FPEC has been accrediting higher education courses and supporting research in financial planning for more than 20 years. FPEC seeks to raise the standard of financial planning education, and promote financial planning as a distinct learning area, as a profession, and as a career of choice for new students and career changers. FPEC is comprised of representatives from the higher education sector, financial planning practice, and professional associations. Fpec receives administrative support from the Financial Advice Association Australia.

– ref. It’s not just about accumulating super. Australians need to learn how to spend their retirement savings – https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-about-accumulating-super-australians-need-to-learn-how-to-spend-their-retirement-savings-219217

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

For some, December 25 is a solemn day, key on the Christian calendar, involving important traditions to be treated with reverence. But for many, Christmas is a time for unbridled fun: Santa, presents, and the random grump next door who suddenly decorates his house in an overwhelmingly delirious light display. For a month, we embrace with childlike delight things that for the rest of the year we would dismiss as kitsch, tacky, too bright, too shiny.

Christmas films reflect these differing approaches to the season. There are the solemn, wholesome type, the model for which is Frank Capra’s marvellous It’s a Wonderful Life. There are cynical big budget comedies, trying to skewer the consumerism with which the holiday is now associated while maintaining a sentimental “Christmas cheer for all” ending, like Surviving Christmas and Christmas with the Kranks. And there are sweet comedies, films such as Elf and The Santa Clause, that cloak their gags in a more or less touching sense of wonder.

And often the best Christmas films aren’t “Christmasy” at all. They either go against the cliches – Black Christmas by Canadian auteur Bob Clark, who also made possibly the greatest Christmas film of all time, A Christmas Story – or are positioned tangentially in relation to the holiday (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon).

Read more:
Here’s why Christmas movies are so appealing this holiday season

Straight to the small screen

The telemovie has dominated the genre for the past 50 years or so. Sometimes these are excellent. The House without a Christmas Tree, from 1972, is a fantastic film starring Jason Robards. But usually, like the Olivia Newton-John vehicle A Mom For Christmas, they offer, at best, pleasantly distracting images and sounds to have in the background while you wrap presents.

The reign of the Christmas telemovie (now the Christmas made-for-streaming movie) is partly the result of networks looking for cheap fodder to program in December. But there’s also something about the telemovie aesthetic – the plots ludicrous and maudlin, the low-budget design, the characters so cheerful you could scream – that fits the kitsch flavour of pop-Christmas.

Usually these films – with titles such as Trading Christmas, Christmas All Over Again, and The National Tree – feature hokey narratives, the endings mawkish to an extent unacceptable outside of the silly season, the aesthetic extremely low-rent.

Some deliberately play up their kitsch elements and explode into camp extravaganzas – like the inimitable (and limitlessly pleasurable) Santa with Muscles, in which Hulk Hogan dressed in a sleeveless Santa suit fights mad scientists in order to save an orphanage. Though Santa with Muscles was briefly released theatrically in the Unites States, it found its viewers through TV repeats.

Netflix has made several made-for-TV Christmas movies in recent years, many of them unwatchable. For the ones that work, their success usually hinges upon the charm of the leads. Vanessa Hudgens in The Princess Switch, for example, is so infectiously likeable that we forget (or forgive) the absolute absurdity of the material.

There has been a slew of recent Australian Christmas movies made for Stan, including Christmas Ransom, Christmas on the Farm, and A Sunburnt Christmas, each sparkling about as much as a lump of coal in a stocking. This year’s new offering from Stan, Jones Family Christmas, doesn’t fare much better.

Read more:
Christmas Ransom: I quite enjoyed watching this (terrible) new Aussie Christmas film

Jones Family Christmas

From the opening ditty – Clive Smith’s extremely irritating “It’s Christmas in Australia and I am upside down” – Jones Family Christmas’ deliberate Australian dagginess is pretty hard to stomach.

We get it. This is Australian Christmas. There are “redbacks” and “mates rates”, people are “happier than a pig in shit.”

The narrative is predictable but unassuming. Matriarch Heather Jones (Heather Mitchell in a low-key, oddly touching performance) tries to hold her family together over Christmas in the midst of interpersonal turmoil and bushfires encroaching on their rural Victorian property.

The film plods through such a plethora of dumb cliches – rusty tractors, joeys, laconic parents suppressing family tensions and tragedies – that it all feels terribly laboured. But the cinematography is effective and the acting solid, and the whole thing has enough charm balancing its silly humour to make a watchable if forgettable film, its schmaltzy, sentimental narrative bow appropriately wrapping it up.

In any case, one of the major redeeming features of these made-for-Stan Christmas movies is that they don’t imagine they’re doing anything more than they’re doing: providing some entertaining and cheerful Christmas pap.

A Savage Christmas

This year Binge is following Stan’s lead, securing the first rate Christmess, fresh from its cinema release, and the truly terrible A Savage Christmas, which fails to work across almost every element.

Writer-director Madeleine Dyer’s feature film debut, A Savage Christmas follows the children of rich Australian parents Brenda (Helen Thomson) and James (David Roberts) as they return to their family house for Christmas – mainly to secure their expected $10,000 Christmas cheque.

Davina (Thea Raveneau), their trans daughter, hasn’t been home for three years. She drags her trans boyfriend Kane (Max Jahufer) in tow. Jimmy (Ryan Morgan), the Savage’s son, is an ex-cop-turned wannabe rapper who owes money to a gangster, and daughter Leia (Rekha Ryan) is an Instagram-style princess-mum whose life is secretly falling apart.

Past resentments predictably arise amid the simmering tension in occasionally funny but mainly uninteresting and off-putting ways.

Like Jones Family Christmas, the film fits firmly in the “families are messy, everyone has issues” Christmas sub-genre – think of The Family Stone or Christmas with the Coopers. But while those films were buoyed by excellent stars, solid writing and a style that big budgets can buy, A Savage Christmas is characterised by amateurish performances, uneven comedy, and a repellently smug tone.

Its point is so obvious – everyone is messed up in their own way and those who appear less messed up are often more so – it feels about as subtle as an axe to the face. It’s trying to be a mixture of fresh, cynical, wry and edgy, but feels empty and mean-spirited.

The comedy is mostly puerile – a major gag is a sweet potato carved like a phallus knocking the head off a Baby Jesus ornament – and there are no believable moments, no character touches, to sustain any emotion or sense of drama. It completely lacks the dramatic heft needed to make it feel like these characters are worth caring about in any capacity – and it seems to want you to care.

There are a handful of moments where the film allows you to breathe, where it ceases to feel like a heavy-handed discourse machine willing to suspend all verisimilitude in order to make its point, and Darren Gilshenan gives a beautifully unhinged performance as the deranged Uncle Dick.

The cinematography and production design are efficient – there’s nothing technically wrong with the film – but it fails hopelessly as both a comedy and as a feelgood film of a broken family beginning to heal. A Savage Christmas would give Crackers a run for its money as the worst Australian Christmas film to date.

If you feel like watching a new Australian Christmas film, Christmess is infinitely better than both A Savage Christmas and Jones Family Christmas, covering similar terrain with much more subtlety, intelligence, style and good humour. More evidence that a bigger budget does not necessarily equal a better film.

And if it’s simply Hallmark-style trash you’re after – true Christmas telemovies, warmly embracing the saccharine spirit of the holiday – there’s a plentiful supply of these across the major streaming services.

Read more:
Christmess is undoubtedly one of the best Christmas films to emerge – from anywhere – in recent years

Ari Mattes 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. Telemovies have dominated Christmas movies for 50 years – so why are the Aussie straight-to-streaming ones this bad? – https://theconversation.com/telemovies-have-dominated-christmas-movies-for-50-years-so-why-are-the-aussie-straight-to-streaming-ones-this-bad-219963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yohanna Villalobos, Postdoctoral research fellow, Lund University

If you really want to know how much Australia contributes to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, you have to study all the “sources” and “sinks”.

Sources release CO₂ into the atmosphere, while sinks take it out. There are sources from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, and there are natural sinks such as plants absorbing CO₂. You can tally it all up on a balance sheet to find the net result. Are we adding to CO₂ levels in the atmosphere, overall? And if so, by how much?

It’s an enormous undertaking, but not impossible. We have just published the most comprehensive assessment of Australian CO₂ sources and sinks. It covers the decade from 2010 to 2019, and it reveals some surprising features.

Astonishingly, we found the net annual carbon balance of the entire continent switches from year to year. Australia can be a large net source of CO₂ one year and a large net CO₂ sink the next, in response to our increasingly variable climate. That makes it harder to detect long-term trends and understand whether our natural carbon sinks are growing or decreasing.

Read more:
Fossil CO₂ emissions hit record high yet again in 2023

What is the contemporary carbon budget?

Our research reveals what we call the “contemporary carbon budget” for Australia.

This budget is different from the “remaining carbon budget”, which refers to the CO₂ that can still be emitted before we exceed a certain level of warming.

We constructed the contemporary budget using a wide variety of data and modelling approaches. We needed to estimate the carbon “fluxes” (sources and sinks) of land-based ecosystems, freshwater bodies, and of human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land clearing and revegetation.

We also used global assessments, Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, and trade statistics. And we used atmospheric and satellite CO₂ information to constrain the dynamics of the Australian carbon balance, as well as other satellite-based data to estimate Australia’s fire emissions.

We developed this carbon budget with the best available data and scientific tools. However, large uncertainties such as data gaps and model limitations remain for some of the estimates. We report all uncertainties in the research paper.

Carbon in, carbon out

The biggest CO₂ source from Australia’s human activities is fossil fuels, with an average of 403 million tonnes of CO₂ for the decade 2010-19. That can be broken down into coal (44%), oil (34%), gas (18%), gas flaring (3%) and cement (1%).

Emissions from wildfires (natural) and prescribed burning (human-caused) were 568 million tonnes of CO₂ a year which, unlike fossil fuels, are largely offset by subsequent vegetation regrowth. This led to a net CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere of 36 million tonnes a year. CO₂ emissions from the Black Summer fires in 2019 were exceptionally high at 951 million tonnes, much of which has already returned to vegetation after three years of above-average rainfall.

Rivers, lakes and reservoirs – both natural and human-made – are also sources of CO₂, contributing 82 million tonnes.

Natural forests, savannas and the large expanses of rangelands all contributed to removing vast amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere at a rate of more than 388 million tonnes a year.

Coastal ecosystems “blue carbon” such as mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses soaked up 61 million tonnes of CO₂ a year, further adding to Australia’s CO₂ sinks. However, estuaries, including tidal systems, deltas and lagoons, released 27 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The oceans surrounding Australia are also strong CO₂ sinks, removing about 183 million tonnes of CO₂ a year. This highlights the important role of the oceans, in addition to the land sink, in slowing the buildup of atmospheric CO₂ due to human emissions.

Exported carbon

Every year, about 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ are exported in the form of fossil fuels, primarily coal and natural gas.

A further 22 million tonnes of embedded CO₂ are exported every year in products such as wheat, wood pellets and livestock.

When these exported fossil fuels and products are consumed overseas, they release their carbon content into the atmosphere as CO₂.

However, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and rules supporting the Paris Agreement only require nations to report emissions released from their own territory. Emissions from exports are counted by the countries where the fossil fuels and products are eventually consumed.

The flip-flop carbon dynamics

We have long known about the “boom and bust” dynamics of Australia’s vegetation growth as it responds to periods of above-average rainfall and drought.

But we never imagined the entire nation could flip-flop so quickly from being a very strong and globally significant CO₂ sink, as in the La Niña of 2010-11, to being a major source of CO₂. But that’s precisely what happened as drought and fire changed the carbon accounts of Australia, during the southeast drought of 2018-19 and the following Black Summer fires in 2019.

Read more:
A staggering 1.8 million hectares burned in ‘high-severity’ fires during Australia’s Black Summer

What this tells us about the path to net zero

When we put all of the land-based CO₂ sources and sinks together, overall Australia was a net source to the atmosphere of 200 million tonnes of CO₂ a year during 2010-19. This drops to 140 million tonnes of CO₂ a year if we count the sinks from coastal ecosystems.

This means CO₂ sinks are partially offsetting fossil fuel emissions. This is something we have also estimated at the global scale, where about one-third of global fossil fuel emissions are removed by terrestrial land-based CO₂ sinks.

While this highlights the important role natural CO₂ sinks play in slowing climate change, it does not imply we have less work to do to reach the net zero emissions target.

That is because natural CO₂ sinks are already accounted for in estimates of the remaining carbon budgets and decarbonisation pathways to stabilise the climate. Accordingly, the Paris Agreement calls for achieving a balance between anthropogenic emissions and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases, the so-called net zero target.

The large year-to-year variability of Australia’s non-anthropogenic carbon dynamics also underscores the need for a comprehensive and long-term monitoring and modelling observatory system to track the evolution of sources and sinks. We need high quality data supplementing the National Greenhouse Accounts to support decisions around how to use Australia’s natural assets to mitigate climate change.

Read more:
Carbon removal is needed to achieve net zero but has its own climate risks

Yohanna Villalobos receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program (NESP) and CSIRO Australia.

Benjamin Smith receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Swedish Research Council, European Union and R&D funding programs of the New South Wales Government.

Pep Canadell receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program – Climate Systems Hub.

Peter Briggs receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program – Climate Systems Hub and is a member of the ACT Greens.

– ref. Carbon in, carbon out: Australia’s ‘carbon budget’ assessment reveals astonishing boom and bust cycles – https://theconversation.com/carbon-in-carbon-out-australias-carbon-budget-assessment-reveals-astonishing-boom-and-bust-cycles-219592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Suddenly the talk in global financial markets has spun from “when will interest rates next rise?” to “how soon before they fall?”.

Some commentators are flagging the shift as a “pivot party”.

This change has been most prominent in the United States. It was prompted by the Federal Reserve, the US equivalent of the Reserve Bank of Australia, releasing its latest “dot chart”. This shows most members of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee expect their interest rate would be lower by the end of 2024.

The recent review of the Reserve Bank in Australia wanted more transparency. But, after the whacking former Governor Phil Lowe got when he wrongly predicted rates would stay low until “at least” 2024, I doubt his successor Michele Bullock will be keen to publish a similar chart.

Even so, financial markets in Australia are also now implying interest rates will fall over the course of next year.

The latest indicators

The Australian economy has continued to slow according to the latest national accounts. Consumer spending did not increase at all in the September quarter, despite an increase in population. Exports contracted. Overall GDP grew by a mere 0.2%.

The news from the labour market was mixed. There was a solid rise in employment in November. The hours worked data, however, have been basically flat for the past six months.

The government maintained fiscal discipline in the mid-year budget update released last week. They saved rather than spent almost all the extra revenue from higher than expected commodity prices.

The minutes of the Reserve’s latest meeting on December 5 show the board noted “encouraging signs of progress” in returning inflation to the target.

Subsequent events have suggested inflation will likely continue on its downward trajectory, which means the Reserve has increased interest rates enough.

Another development since the Reserve last met is an update of the
Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy between Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the board. This sets out the common understanding between them about Australia’s monetary policy framework.

Much of this statement carries over the existing framework. The bank’s primary tool is its cash rate target and it is varied to achieve a medium-term inflation target of 2-3%. Employment considerations influence how quickly it is regained when shocks move inflation away from it.

The statement explicitly refers to the midpoint of the target, reflecting a suggestion in the recent Reserve Bank review. Some commentators have interpreted this as indicating the bank cannot cut rates as its forecast for inflation only has it reaching the top, not the middle, of the range by the end of 2025.

Read more:
The 7 charts that show Australians struggling as saving falls to near zero

I disagree. The bank has always aimed at the midpoint of the target as the most likely way to ensure inflation averages within it. If the board was happy at its December meeting to have reached 3% by the end of 2025 on its way to achieving 2.5% later, there is no reason for it to change this view in February.

So what will the Reserve Bank do?

On balance, the economic news does not suggest the Reserve Bank will feel a need to raise rates in February. But with inflation still high, and plenty of uncertainty, they are unlikely to cut rates any time soon. The bank does not generally make sharp U-turns with the average gap between the last interest rate increase in a cycle and the first cut being ten months.

At its next meeting, on February 5-6, the Reserve board may have a new member, deputy governor Andrew Hauser, and a new adviser, chief economist Sarah Hunter. They share a British background so will be familiar with the Bank of England model, which influenced the Reserve Bank review.

The impact of (eventual) lower interest rates

The movements in the Reserve Bank’s interest rate matters most to the third of households with a mortgage. Most of these have variable rate loans where the interest rate closely follows that set by the Reserve. An interest rate cut would ease the cost-of-living pressures they have been facing.

A household with the average loan size of around A$600,000 would have seen their monthly repayments rise by almost $1,700 since early 2022. This would drop by $100 if rates were cut by 0.25%.

While the impact on mortgagees always gets the most attention, interest rates affect other members of the community too.

Read more:
Will the RBA raise rates again? Unless prices surge over summer, it’s looking less likely

Lower interest rates mean a lower income to retirees dependent on interest on their savings. They tend to boost the prices of assets such as shares and houses. They encourage borrowing and spending and reduce incentives to save. They tend to lower the exchange rate, making imports more expensive for Australians but our exports cheaper to foreigners. The net impact is generally to lower unemployment.

A lot of people are therefore looking forward to an interest rate cut. But they should not be holding their breath.

Financial markets may be getting prematurely excited. The last thing the Reserve Bank would want is to find themselves having lowered rates too quickly and see inflation turn back up, necessitating the interest rate cut to be reversed. More likely, they will wait for inflation to drop much closer to their target before there is any easing of interest rates.

John Hawkins is a former senior economist at the Reserve Bank and has worked as an economic forecaster at the Bank for International Settlements and the Australian Treasury.

– ref. Interest rates will eventually fall but it’s a bit early for borrowers to break out the champagne – https://theconversation.com/interest-rates-will-eventually-fall-but-its-a-bit-early-for-borrowers-to-break-out-the-champagne-220038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, The University of Melbourne

Joko Widodo, popularly known as “Jokowi”, has served as Indonesia’s president for almost a decade. He is hugely popular, garnering around 80% in some polls. But the constitution bars him from serving a third term in office.

Repeated proposals in recent years years to amend the constitution to allow Jokowi to run again have gained little public or political traction. This leaves him unable to contest the next presidential election in February.

Key powerbrokers, however, have been keen to make the most of the tens of millions of votes that Jokowi commands – and maintain his inner circle’s influence after he leaves the palace next year.

Perhaps their most conspicuous strategy to do this has been to install Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as vice presidential running mate for Prabowo Subianto, now ahead in the polls with a huge lead of 20 points.

Read more:
The professor, the general and the populist: meet the three candidates running for president in Indonesia

Concerning legal moves

Getting Gibran into that position required the co-option of one of Indonesia’s most respected judicial institutions – the Constitutional Court.

The main roadblock for Gibran (and Jokowi) was that the election law imposed a minimum age of 40 for presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

In a case challenging that age limit, Chief Justice Anwar Usman, Jokowi’s brother-in-law and Gibran’s uncle, intervened to ensure a majority of judges would reverse the court’s position in three previous decisions.

As a result, the election law was altered to permit younger candidates to stand if they had previously held office as head of a sub-national government. Gibran, 36, just happens to have served as mayor of Solo in central Java, a job his father once held, and so the decision meant he could now run for vice president.

The decision has trashed of the reputation of the Constitutional Court, raising questions about its continuing credibility and future, with witty hackers changing its name on Google Maps to the “family court”.

However, not all judges agreed with the decision. Three judges dissented, with some raising questions about Anwar’s behaviour and his obvious conflict of interest. Public outrage over the decision led to the court’s ethics tribunal removing him from his position as chief justice last month.

Read more:
A twist in Indonesia’s presidential election does not bode well for the country’s fragile democracy

Yet, Anwar remains one of the nine judges on the court, the decision he is accused of “fixing” stands, and Gibran’s nomination as a vice presidential candidate can probably not be reversed.

Worse, the national legislature has been debating amendments to the Constitutional Court statute that could enable the removal of the dissenting judges. Ironically, this might be through the imposition of a minimum age requirement on Constitutional Court judges. One of the court’s most respected judges, Saldi Isra, is under the proposed age, and appears to be a target.

Jokowi picks a side

From the outside, it may seem like Gibran and Prabowo are strange bedfellows. Prabowo is a former son-in-law of the dictatorial former president Soeharto. He is a cashiered former general who has long been accused of serious human rights abuses, including alleged killings in East Timor, Papua and even the capital, Jakarta.

Prabowo has never faced trial, although several of his men were tried and convicted. He has denied the allegations against him.

Ironically, he was also Jokowi’s bitter opponent in the past two elections, which polarised Indonesia. Prabowo’s refusal to accept his electoral defeats in 2014 and 2019 led to dramatic challenges in the Constitutional Court.

Read more:
Indonesia’s presidential election dispute: Prabowo’s plan to challenge election result may be in vain

But the enmity between Jokowi and Prabowo seemed to evaporate almost immediately after the court challenges failed, with Prabowo pragmatically accepting the job of defence minister in Jokowi’s cabinet.

Now, Jokowi appears to have decided that Prabowo, of all people, offers the best chance to build a dynasty to keep some sort of hold on power. Certainly few see Gibran – largely silent or inarticulate in public appearances – as serious leadership material. He is widely assumed to be a proxy for Jokowi.

This dynasty-building exercise has involved a massive and expensive campaign that many complain has co-opted government agencies and programs to promote Prabowo and Gibran.

It has also involved reinventing Prabowo, a one-time special forces general, as a gemoy (cute) grandpa, with viral video clips showing him dancing and playing with kittens.

Jokowi’s alignment with Prabowo (through his son) is all the more surprising given Jokowi was a longtime member of PDI-P (Indonesian Democracy Party – Struggle). PDI-P is Indonesia’s largest political party. It twice successfully nominated Jokowi for the presidency, and it has its own candidate, Ganjar Pranowo, in February’s election. Party rules require Jokowi to support him.

By abandoning Ganjar for Prabowo (who has his own party, Gerindra), Jokowi will effectively be stealing votes from PDI-P and declaring war on its boss, the formidable – and vengeful – former president, Megawati Soekarnoputeri, the daughter of Indonesia’s first president. She will fight hard to maintain her party’s power and influence.

Is Indonesia’s democracy under threat?

Despite the political chaos these moves have sparked, Jokowi’s bet that his loyalists and the general public don’t really care about constitutional crises or claims of dynasty building seems to be paying off.

Of course, votes could still shift in the next month and a half. However, there is a sense the momentum created by Jokowi’s support for Prabowo may make his victory inevitable. Some former critics are already quietly changing sides to ensure a share of the spoils.

Jokowi has previously said “our democracy has gone too far”. And Prabowo has openly called for a return to the model of Suharto’s authoritarian New Order.

So, a Prabowo-Gibran victory may be good news for the elites now in power, but it will likely be bad news for Indonesian democracy. It will confirm – and probably accelerate – the regression that most observers, including Freedom House, agree is already advanced under Jokowi.

Many voters seem untroubled by this. Indonesia’s post-Soeharto “Reformasi” wave of democratisation is mere history for Indonesia’s Gen Z, who appear to have limited interest in all that was achieved two decades ago and no experience of living under authoritarianism.

But the activist legal NGOs that form Indonesia’s policy “brains trust” are depressed and anxious. Certainly, some are protesting, and a few are even challenging the court decision that allowed Gibran to run.

However, many are intimidated by criminal charges that members of Jokowi’s administration have brought against critics with increasing frequency in recent years. From the perspective of civil society, Jokowi’s strategists seem to have a fix in place and dark and difficult times lie ahead.

Tim Lindsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Simon Butt receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Is Joko Widodo paving the way for a political dynasty in Indonesia? – https://theconversation.com/is-joko-widodo-paving-the-way-for-a-political-dynasty-in-indonesia-219499

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Patrick Rule, Research Affiliate, Monash University

Baleen whales are the titans of the ocean, the largest animals to have ever lived. The record holder is the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), which can reach lengths of up to 30 metres. That’s longer than a basketball court.

However, throughout their evolutionary history, most baleen whales were relatively much smaller, around five metres in length. While still big compared to most animals, for a baleen whale that’s quite small.

However, new fossil discoveries from the Southern Hemisphere are beginning to disrupt this story. The latest is an unassuming fossil from the banks of the Murray River in South Australia.

Roughly 19 million years old, this fossil is the tip of the lower jaws (or “chin”) of a baleen whale estimated to be around nine metres in length, which makes it the new record holder from its time. This find has been published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

What are baleen whales?

Most mammals have teeth in their mouth. Baleen whales are a strange exception. While their ancestors had teeth, today’s baleen whales instead have baleen – a large rack of fine, hair-like keratin used to filter out small krill from the water.

This structure enabled baleen whales to feed efficiently on enormous shoals of tiny zooplankton in productive parts of the ocean, which facilitated the evolution of larger and larger body sizes.

The ‘missing years’ of whale evolution

Various groups of toothed whales terrorised the ocean for millions of years, including some that were the ancestors of the toothless baleen whales. Yet at some time between 23 and 18 million years ago these ancient “toothed baleen whales” went extinct.

We aren’t exactly sure when, as fossil whales from this episode in Earth’s history are exceedingly rare. What we do know is immediately after this gap in the whale fossil record, only the relatively small, toothless ancestors of baleen whales remained.

Scientists previously thought baleen whales kept to relatively small proportions until the ice ages (which began from about 3–2.5 million years ago). But the majority of research on trends in the evolutionary history of whales is based on the reasonably well-explored fossil record from the Northern Hemisphere – a notable bias that likely shaped these theories.

Crucially, new fossil finds from the Southern Hemisphere are starting to show us that at least down south, whales got bigger much earlier than previous theories suggest.

An unexpected find

More than 100 years ago, palaeontologist Francis Cudmore found the very tips of a large pair of fossil whale jaws eroding out of the banks of the Murray River in South Australia. These 19-million-year-old fossils made their way to Museums Victoria and remained unrecognised in the collection until they were rediscovered in a drawer by one of the authors, Erich Fitzgerald.

Using equations derived from measurements of modern-day baleen whales, we predicted the whale this fossilised “chin” came from was approximately nine metres long. The previous record holder from this early period of whale evolution was only six metres long.

Together with other fossils from Peru in South America, this suggests larger baleen whales may have emerged much earlier in their evolutionary history and the large body size of whales evolved gradually over many more millions of years than previous research suggested.

The Southern Hemisphere as the cradle of gigantic whale evolution

The large whale fossils from Australasia and South America seem to suggest that for most of the evolutionary history of baleen whales, whenever a large baleen whale shows up in the fossil record, it is in the Southern Hemisphere.

Strikingly, this pattern persists despite the fact the Southern Hemisphere contains less than 20% of the known fossil record of baleen whales. While this is an unexpectedly strong signal from our research, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise when we consider living baleen whales.

Today, the temperate seas of the Southern Hemisphere are connected by the chilly Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica and is extremely productive, supporting the greatest biomass of marine megafauna on Earth.

Around the time baleen whales started evolving from big to gigantic, the strength of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current was intensifying, eventually leading to the present day powerhouse Southern Ocean.

Today, baleen whales are ecosystem engineers, their huge bodies consuming tremendous amounts of energy. Upon death, these whales provide an abundance of nutrients to deep-sea ecosystems.

As we learn more about the evolutionary history of whales, such as when and where their large size evolved, we can begin to understand just how ancient their role in the ocean ecosystem may have been and how it could shift in tune with global climate change.

Read more:
The true origins of the world’s smallest and weirdest whale

James Patrick Rule currently receives funding from an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UKRI Fellowship, and previously received funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Project.

Erich Fitzgerald received funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage Project that supported part of this research.

– ref. 19-million-year-old fossil jaw bone hints the biggest whales first evolved somewhere unexpected – https://theconversation.com/19-million-year-old-fossil-jaw-bone-hints-the-biggest-whales-first-evolved-somewhere-unexpected-219961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louie Ye, Clinical Fellow, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The University of Melbourne

The vagina is an internal organ with a complex ecosystem, influenced by circulating hormone levels which change during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, breastfeeding and menopause.

Around and after menopause, there are normal changes in the growth and function of vaginal cells, as well as the vagina’s microbiome (groups of bacteria living in the vagina). Many women won’t notice these changes. They don’t usually cause symptoms or concern, but if they do, symptoms can usually be managed.

Here’s what happens to your vagina as you age, whether you notice or not.

Read more:
Friday essay: grey-haired and radiant – reimagining ageing for women

Let’s clear up the terminology

We’re focusing on the vagina, the muscular tube that goes from the external genitalia (the vulva), past the cervix, to the womb (uterus). Sometimes the word “vagina” is used to include the external genitalia. However, these are different organs and play different roles in women’s health.

Read more:
Vulvas, periods and leaks: women need the right words to seek help for conditions ‘down there’

What happens to the vagina as you age?

Like many other organs in the body, the vagina is sensitive to female sex steroid hormones (hormones) that change around puberty, pregnancy and menopause.

Menopause is associated with a drop in circulating oestrogen concentrations and the hormone progesterone is no longer produced. The changes in hormones affect the vagina and its ecosystem. Effects may include:

• less vaginal secretions, potentially leading to dryness
• less growth of vagina surface cells resulting in a thinned lining
• alteration to the support structure (connective tissue) around the vagina leading to less elasticity and more narrowing
• fewer blood vessels around the vagina, which may explain less blood flow after menopause
• a shift in the type and balance of bacteria, which can change vaginal acidity, from more acidic to more alkaline.

Read more:
Essays on health: microbes aren’t the enemy, they’re a big part of who we are

What symptoms can I expect?

Many women do not notice any bothersome vaginal changes as they age. There’s also little evidence many of these changes cause vaginal symptoms. For example, there is no direct evidence these changes cause vaginal infection or bleeding in menopausal women.

Some women notice vaginal dryness after menopause, which may be linked to less vaginal secretions. This may lead to pain and discomfort during sex. But it’s not clear how much of this dryness is due to menopause, as younger women also commonly report it. In one study, 47% of sexually active postmenopausal women reported vaginal dryness, as did around 20% of premenopausal women.

Other organs close to the vagina, such as the bladder and urethra, are also affected by the change in hormone levels after menopause. Some women experience recurrent urinary tract infections, which may cause pain (including pain to the side of the body) and irritation. So their symptoms are in fact not coming from the vagina itself but relate to changes in the urinary tract.

Read more:
How long does menopause last? 5 tips for navigating uncertain times

Not everyone has the same experience

Women vary in whether they notice vaginal changes and whether they are bothered by these to the same extent. For example, women with vaginal dryness who are not sexually active may not notice the change in vaginal secretions after menopause. However, some women notice severe dryness that affects their daily function and activities.

In fact, researchers globally are taking more notice of women’s experiences of menopause to inform future research. This includes prioritising symptoms that matter to women the most, such as vaginal dryness, discomfort, irritation and pain during sex.

Read more:
Vaginas, pheromones and TikTok: what is the strange new trend of ‘vabbing’?

If symptoms bother you

Symptoms such as dryness, irritation, or pain during sex can usually be effectively managed. Lubricants may reduce pain during sex. Vaginal moisturisers may reduce dryness. Both are available over-the-counter at your local pharmacy.

While there are many small clinical trials of individual products, these studies lack the power to demonstrate if they are really effective in improving vaginal symptoms.

In contrast, there is robust evidence that vaginal oestrogen is effective in treating vaginal dryness and reducing pain during sex. It also reduces your chance of recurrent urinary tract infections. You can talk to your doctor about a prescription.

Vaginal oestrogen is usually inserted using an applicator, two to three times a week. Very little is absorbed into the blood stream, it is generally safe but longer-term trials are required to confirm safety in long-term use beyond a year.

Women with a history of breast cancer should see their oncologist to discuss using oestrogen as it may not be suitable for them.

Read more:
Your vagina cleans itself: why vagina cleaning fads are unnecessary and harmful

Are there other treatments?

New treatments for vaginal dryness are under investigation. One avenue relates to our growing understanding of how the vaginal microbiome adapts and modifies around changes in circulating and local concentrations of hormones.

For example, a small number of reports show that combining vaginal probiotics with low-dose vaginal oestrogen can improve vaginal symptoms. But more evidence is needed before this is recommended.

Read more:
Health Check: should healthy people take probiotic supplements?

Where to from here?

The normal ageing process, as well as menopause, both affect the vagina as we age.

Most women do not have troublesome vaginal symptoms during and after menopause, but for some, these may cause discomfort or distress.

While hormonal treatments such as vaginal oestrogen are available, there is a pressing need for more non-hormonal treatments.

Dr Sianan Healy, from Women’s Health Victoria, contributed to this article.

Martha Hickey previously received research funding for a study of an ultrasound device for vaginal dryness (Madorra)

Louie Ye 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. What happens to your vagina as you age? – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-to-your-vagina-as-you-age-212198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Beban, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey University

Who does which household chores – or who does the most – is a perennial source of tension for many couples. From cleaning the toilet to taking out the trash, it’s sometimes the little things that can cause the biggest trouble.

Not without reason, either. Research shows women still do the bulk of the housework and caregiving in most heterosexual couples. And this unequal labour can lead to burnout, health problems and financial stress.

We also know same-sex couples often have a far more equitable division of labour than heterosexual couples. But it’s not clear how same-sex couples manage to achieve this fairer split of household chores.

Our recent research aimed to shed some light on this. We surveyed same-sex couples in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, and identified three key factors that enabled them to share the chores in ways they both feel is fair.

The couples in our study focused on achieving a sense of fairness and equality over time, rather than a strict 50-50 split. They all had different patterns of dividing tasks. However, they shared some common strategies that offer valuable lessons for any couple, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

1. Keep changing things up

We know that when couples negotiate roles based on their individual availability and what they like doing – or what they least despise – it contributes to a sense of fairness and satisfaction.

Same-sex couples we interviewed embraced flexibility when it comes to dividing housework. They negotiated chores based on their specific needs, preferences and availability. Flexibility is key – if the person who usually takes the children to swimming lessons has a lot on at work, the other partner would step in.

Beyond the day-to-day, same-sex couples often play the long game, balancing unpaid labour with each other’s career progression. Some couples in our study planned their working and family lives so both partners could progress at work by taking turns as the main caregiver when their children were born.

Others recognised that task specialisation – such as one person always doing the taxes, and the other always cooking – could lead to dependence and rigidity. So they consciously practised task sharing to avoid this.

Read more:
How last night’s fight affects the way couples divide housework

2. Communicate

Couples who engage in honest conversations about their labour responsibilities tend to view their household division as fair. On the flip side, negative communication – aggression, avoidance or criticism – fosters a sense of unfairness.

In our research, effective and open communication was key to achieving an equitable division of unpaid labour. But these conversations weren’t always easy.

Couples who felt guilty about not doing enough around the house, or frustration with their partner for not pulling their weight, found simple conversations could become emotionally intense.

Read more:
Yet again, the census shows women are doing more housework. Now is the time to invest in interventions

We all have different standards of cleanliness, gender socialisation and family background that shape how we approach housework. And this can also make it difficult to understand a partner’s perspective or expectations.

Couples in our survey navigated disagreements through candid conversations, transforming conflict into opportunities for greater mutual understanding and agreement.

It’s not just about talking, but also about regular “check-ins” to see how each person is feeling about the labour load, and renegotiating things when household circumstances or feelings change.

3. Remember unpaid labour is valuable

Housework is often devalued when compared with paid work. Previous research has shown how undervaluing housework diminishes the quality of relationships.

Same-sex couples in our research sought to revalue unpaid labour by assigning it equal worth to paid labour. As one person said:

The domestic tasks, we might not enjoy them, but we both value them equally. We both think they are important.

Some couples actively acknowledged and appreciated difficult and time-consuming tasks, such as their partner cleaning the bathroom. Participants also found value in unpaid labour beyond the chores themselves, viewing them as acts of love, and found joy in small tasks.

One couple even turned household chores into a game, writing tasks on slips of paper and randomly selecting them from a bag – including enjoyable activities like walks or coffee breaks as rewards.

This not only lightens the mood but is also a strategy for involving children with less fuss.

Read more:
Why married mothers end up doing more housework when they start out-earning their husbands

4. Do a stocktake of the unpaid load

We often fall into patterns of domestic labour without realising it. In our study, we found completing simple time-use surveys and discussing them can illuminate disparities in responsibilities.

Why not try it yourself? List down the household tasks done last week, including physical chores (like shopping or cleaning), emotional tasks (caring for children or pets), and mental tasks (planning meals, managing finances).

Estimate the time both you and your partner spent on each task. Then, have a heart-to-heart about who is doing what, how you both feel about it, and how it can be fairer.

Lessons for all couples

Adapting these strategies in heterosexual relationships isn’t easy. Deep-seated gender norms and societal expectations about the feminine “homemaker” and masculine “breadwinner” can be tough to shake.

And same-sex couples are more likely to both be working part-time rather than having one partner at home and one working.

But that’s the challenge – to redefine and negotiate labour in a way that works for your unique relationship. Start by tossing out the old gender scripts about who should do what. Next, open a dialogue about chores.

Flexibility, communication and revaluing unpaid labour are strategies available to everyone.

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. Same-sex couples divide household chores more fairly – here’s what they told us works best – https://theconversation.com/same-sex-couples-divide-household-chores-more-fairly-heres-what-they-told-us-works-best-219477

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

In the United States, one of the men vying for the presidency faces 91 criminal charges in four concurrent criminal cases. He uses openly fascist language, and has mused about “terminating” the Constitution. Just last week, he said that should he win the election, he would be a “dictator” for day one of his presidency (but not after that).

He currently sits four percentage points ahead of the incumbent president.

Last week, a Wall Street Journal poll of 1,500 US voters found that, in a hypothetical head-to-head, Democratic President Joe Biden would attract 43% of votes compared to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s 47%. When five independent candidates were added to the mix, Biden’s projected vote dropped to 31%, compared to Trump’s 37%. The same poll measured Biden’s current approval rating at 37%.

In a country that prides itself on being the “oldest democracy in the world,” how is it possible that an explicit anti-democrat is outpolling the democratically elected president? Why is Biden so unpopular?

There are some obvious, immediate answers to this question. While not many of the truisms of the 1990s retain their relevance, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign dictum that “it’s the economy, stupid” retains a lot of explanatory power.

While the big indicators of economic recovery and success are tracking reasonably well in the United States – gross domestic product is up, inflation is down, and unemployment is at its lowest level since 1969 – these numbers just don’t line up with Americans’ material experiences.

That’s why the Biden administration is scrambling to sell the positive message of “Bidenomics”. They are struggling to sell that message at least in part because while those policies, such as Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, are having an impact, they haven’t been enough to reduce rampant inequality.

Read more:
Bidenomics: why it’s more likely to win the 2024 election than many people think

These perceptions – real and imagined – of an economy that doesn’t work for the majority of Americans are colliding with other crises in the United States that, sometimes fairly and sometimes not, are being laid at the feet of the president.

There is the ongoing trauma of a pandemic that killed over one million Americans; of gun violence; and of deaths of despair. And for young people especially, there is the sense of betrayal that a president who promised to be a generational bridge has not lifted young people up, has not done enough on climate, and proudly proclaims his Zionism in the face of unspeakable horror being perpetrated in Gaza by the right-wing Israeli government.

In what we might unsatisfactorily call a “normal” election cycle, this polycrisis would be enough of an explanation for recent polling.

But the possibility that an openly authoritarian candidate might win the highest office in the world’s most powerful democracy, even if it is an imperfect one, is not “normal”. Given the stakes of this election, there has to be more at play.

Polling consistently shows that Americans are deeply worried about the state of their democracy. At the end of 2022, for example, an NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll found that a vast majority of Americans – eight in ten people – see American democracy as under threat.

Experts agree that they are right to understand the 2024 presidential election in these terms. American democracy has always been fragile, and it is now at as dangerous a point as at any other moment in its history.

It is these long threads of American history that connect to the present. For many, if not all, of his supporters, Trump’s seemingly untouchable popularity comes because, not in spite of, his particularly American brand of anti-democratic white supremacy.

Understanding Trump’s popularity with these voters means confronting what Fintan O’Toole has described as the “unresolved contradictions of American history”. By that he means the legacy of slavery, the Civil War, the undoing of Reconstruction, and the unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement.

Trump is popular precisely because he sits at the intersection of American history – the mutually reinforcing trends of white supremacy, exceptionalism and conspiracy.

At his strongest, Biden understands and acknowledges this. Biden speaks clearly and consistently of the threat Trumpism poses to American democracy. Twice in recent history, in the 2020 presidential elections and the 2022 midterms, voters have agreed with him.

Read more:
Polls say Trump has a strong chance of winning again in 2024. So how might his second term reshape the US government?

When it comes down to it, those voters may well agree with him once more. We can say with reasonable certainty that Biden’s “disaffected Democrats” won’t turn out for Trump. And we know from experience that polls are incomplete snapshots of intention and sometimes fail to capture other motivating factors.

The real risk is that this time around, Biden’s message of threat mitigation will not be enough. As the United States’ immediate polycrisis collides with its old one, Biden’s tendency to fall back into old tropes of American exceptionalism has started to ring hollow, and only reinforces existing perceptions that, at 81, he is too old to run again.

As he seeks out a second term, the president’s apparent inability to articulate a coherent alternate vision for the future of his country may well be critical.

While those four percentage points might not seem like much, and will likely keep moving until November, they’re representative of a very big problem for the future of American democracy.

Emma Shortis is Senior Researcher in International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute.

– ref. Biden’s burden: four percentage points, a struggling economy and a fragile democracy – https://theconversation.com/bidens-burden-four-percentage-points-a-struggling-economy-and-a-fragile-democracy-219496

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland

Sun exposure can accelerate ageing, cause skin burns, erythema (a skin reaction), skin cancer, melasmas (or sun spots) and other forms of hyperpigmentation – all triggered by solar ultraviolet radiation.

Approximately 80% of skin cancer cases in people engaged in outdoor activities are preventable by decreasing sun exposure. This can be done in lots of ways including wearing protective clothing or sunscreens.

But not all sunscreens work in the same way. You might have heard of “physical” and “chemical” sunscreens. What’s the difference and which one is right for you?

Read more:
How should I add sunscreen to my skincare routine now it’s getting hotter?

How sunscreens are classified

Sunscreens are grouped by their use of active inorganic and organic ultraviolet (UV) filters. Chemical sunscreens use organic filters such as cinnamates (chemically related to cinnamon oil) and benzophenones. Physical sunscreens (sometimes called mineral sunscreens) use inorganic filters such as titanium and zinc oxide.

These filters prevent the effects of UV radiation on the skin.

Organic UV filters are known as chemical filters because the molecules in them change to stop UV radiation reaching the skin. Inorganic UV filters are known as physical filters, because they work through physical means, such as blocking, scattering and reflection of UV radiation to prevent skin damage.

Read more:
Explainer: how does sunscreen work, what is SPF and can I still tan with it on?

Nano versus micro

The effectiveness of the filters in physical sunscreen depends on factors including the size of the particle, how it’s mixed into the cream or lotion, the amount used and the refraction index (the speed light travels through a substance) of each filter.

When the particle size in physical sunscreens is large, it causes the light to be scattered and reflected more. That means physical sunscreens can be more obvious on the skin, which can reduce their cosmetic appeal.

Nanoparticulate forms of physical sunscreens (with tiny particles smaller than 100 nanometers) can improve the cosmetic appearance of creams on the skin and UV protection, because the particles in this size range absorb more radiation than they reflect. These are sometimes labelled as “invisible” zinc or mineral formulations and are considered safe.

So how do chemical sunscreens work?

Chemical UV filters work by absorbing high-energy UV rays. This leads to the filter molecules interacting with sunlight and changing chemically.

When molecules return to their ground (or lower energy) state, they release energy as heat, distributed all over the skin. This may lead to uncomfortable reactions for people with skin sensitivity.

Generally, UV filters are meant to stay on the epidermis (the first skin layer) surface to protect it from UV radiation. When they enter into the dermis (the connective tissue layer) and bloodstream, this can lead to skin sensitivity and increase the risk of toxicity. The safety profile of chemical UV filters may depend on whether their small molecular size allows them to penetrate the skin.

Chemical sunscreens, compared to physical ones, cause more adverse reactions in the skin because of chemical changes in their molecules. In addition, some chemical filters, such as dibenzoylmethane tend to break down after UV exposure. These degraded products can no longer protect the skin against UV and, if they penetrate the skin, can cause cell damage.

Due to their stability – that is, how well they retain product integrity and effectiveness when exposed to sunlight – physical sunscreens may be more suitable for children and people with skin allergies.

Although sunscreen filter ingredients can rarely cause true allergic dermatitis, patients with photodermatoses (where the skin reacts to light) and eczema have higher risk and should take care and seek advice.

Read more:
There’s a serious ethical problem with some sunscreen testing methods – and you’re probably not aware of it

What to look for

The best way to check if you’ll have a reaction to a physical or chemical sunscreen is to patch test it on a small area of skin.

And the best sunscreen to choose is one that provides broad-spectrum protection, is water and sweat-resistant, has a high sun protection factor (SPF), is easy to apply and has a low allergy risk.

Health authorities recommend sunscreen to prevent sun damage and cancer. Chemical sunscreens have the potential to penetrate the skin and may cause irritation for some people. Physical sunscreens are considered safe and effective and nanoparticulate formulations can increase their appeal and ease of use.

Yousuf Mohammed receives funding from U.S FDA grants. This article reflects the views of the author and should not be construed to represent views or policies.

Khanh Phan 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. What’s the difference between physical and chemical sunscreens? And which one should you choose? – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-physical-and-chemical-sunscreens-and-which-one-should-you-choose-217097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

A striking development in recent years has been the increasing role of state governments in responding to global crises.

The announcement by newly installed Queensland Premier Steven Miles of an ambitious 75% by 2035 emissions cut target is a case in point.

The renewed centrality of state governments became dramatically evident as the COVID pandemic unfolded, where the states responded strongly while the Commonwealth often seemed paralysed.

But it is also true of the response to climate change, where successive national governments have been unable or unwilling to take serious action. The only notable exception – the 2012 carbon price under the Gillard minority government – was extracted by the Greens in return for their support.

Does it matter who does the work? Yes. State efforts can take us a long way towards cutting emissions. But we need federal policies on nationwide issues such as electrifying transport.

How did we get here?

Several decades of neoliberal reform and the mantra of new public management – bringing business-style competition to the public service – have hollowed out the capacity of the national government to do anything directly. Instead, they have to rely on contractors and consultants, limiting any real federal capacity for decisive policy action.

By contrast, hollowing out has been much more muted at state level, where the need to provide schools, hospitals, police and other services have kept governments closer to the actual business of policy delivery.

This pattern of Commonwealth inertia and state activism goes back as far as the 2008 Garnaut Review of Climate Change, commissioned by state governments in response to the Howard Coalition government’s unwillingness to act.

The Labor government took over support for the review after the 2007 election, but the Rudd Government was unable to secure bipartisan support for climate policies.

When the Coalition was back in office from 2013 to 2022, climate denialists in their ranks sought to do the minimum possible without openly rejecting global efforts to stabilise the climate.

By 2022 it was clear Australia would easily exceed our Paris Agreement commitment of a 26% reduction on 2005 emissions through land use change and the rise of renewables. Even so, the power of the denialists was such that the government’s backbench would not consent to an official increase in the target.

As a result, the new Albanese government could commit to a substantially higher target of 43% without any significant policy effort.

Instead of the carbon price Opposition Leader Bill Shorten had promised in 2019, Albanese offered an upgrade to the Safeguard Mechanism, introduced by the Coalition. Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen has ruled out modest steps such as ending the sale of internal-combustion engine cars by 2040.

Almost all states and territories now have 2030 emission cut goals more ambitious than the national 43% target:

• New South Wales: 50%
• Victoria: 50%
• South Australia: at least 50%
• Western Australia: 80% below 2020 levels
• Australian Capital Territory: 65–75% below 1990 levels
• Tasmania: achieved net zero in 2015.

Until last week, Queensland was the odd state out, with a 2030 target reduction of only 30% relative to 2005. The new goal – 75% by 2035 – moves Queensland from the back of the pack almost to the front.

Read more:
COP28 deal confirms what Australia already knows: coal is out of vogue and out of time

Can Queensland really move so quickly?

The first step towards achieving this goal was largely symbolic: the knockback of a new coal-fired power station proposed by mining magnate Clive Palmer. The proposal was almost certainly unviable, as it assumed the use of economically questionable carbon capture and storage technology.

The easiest option is to accelerate the transition away from existing coal power plants. In Queensland, it’s made easier because coal generators are owned by the state.

To achieve a 75% reduction target, the government’s clean energy agency, CleanCo, will have to be expanded substantially, and coal power put out to pasture faster than already planned.

If the state fully greens its power sector, that would remove 45% of the state’s emissions.

There are harder emissions to cut. It will need policies encouraging heavy industry to shift towards carbon-free energy sources such as electricity and hydrogen derived from wind and solar energy. The necessary technologies exist for industries such as steelmaking and cement, but have yet to be fully developed.

But the really hard challenge will be when new coal mines and gas fracking projects are proposed.

When buyers burn fossil fuels exported from Queensland, these emissions don’t count towards the state’s targets. But what does count are fugitive emissions of highly potent methane, which have been systematically underestimated. Using satellites, the International Energy Agency has estimated Australia’s methane emissions from coal mines to be 81% higher than official estimates, and 92% higher than official estimates of emissions from fracking and oil extraction.

Even by Queensland’s own conservative estimates, these emissions accounted for 11% of the entire state’s total in 2018.

Miles has promised new fossil fuel projects will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

What do we need the Commonwealth for?

State ambition will take us a fair distance, but not the whole way. On electrification of transport, states will need the Commonwealth government to lead since vehicle standards are set nationally.

Queensland’s fresh ambition puts us in the paradoxical situation where all of Australia’s states are committed to doing more than the Commonwealth. That is, in part, because states are able to do more.

But with the next federal election less than two years away, a slump in the polls and a very thin record of policy achievements, we may yet see the Albanese government leave behind its timidity and take braver action.

Read more:
Two charts in Australia’s 2023 climate statement show we are way off track for net zero by 2050

John Quiggin is a former Member of the Climate Change Authority

– ref. From COVID to climate: Queensland’s new emissions pledge shows state governments are once again leading change – https://theconversation.com/from-covid-to-climate-queenslands-new-emissions-pledge-shows-state-governments-are-once-again-leading-change-220040

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stella Boyd-Ford, Research Fellow with the Grow&Go Toolbox, The University of Queensland

Food-focused celebrations like Christmas can be very stressful for parents with children who can’t eat just everything. Perhaps they are selective eaters or have allergies and intolerances.

On top of making sure their children get enough to eat and don’t eat anything they shouldn’t, family reactions and judgement can be overwhelming.

However, parents can navigate these situations and foster healthy eating habits with a few strategies.

1. Set expectations early

Gently discuss your child’s needs with the celebration host beforehand.

This helps friends and family understand what is helpful and unhelpful when supporting your child’s eating.

Setting boundaries around conversations about your child’s eating habits can be beneficial. For example, you can ask people not to comment on how much or little your child eats. Most people appreciate the heads up and are willing to accommodate.

Read more:
Food allergy and intolerance: five common myths explained

2. Have a plan B

If Christmas lunch is going to be overwhelming, or you can’t ensure the food served will be something your child can eat, it might be easier to feed your child beforehand.

This allows you to relax and join the celebrations without worrying about your child going hungry. Alternatively, you can bring along a selection of foods for your child to ensure they can participate in the mealtime, without the pressure of trying new foods or having limited options.

Including some familiar foods in the spread ensures that there’s something on the table your child is comfortable with.

3. Minimise anxiety

Holidays can be a time of increased anxiety, especially for selective eaters. Kids may find it challenging to cope with changes in routine and the excitement of the day.

Try and minimise changes to normal routines where you can, and make sure you and your child get some down time between activities. When children are anxious, they are less likely to want to eat.

4. Focus on togetherness

Reduce the food focus by emphasising the importance of connection and togetherness during mealtimes. This helps creates a relaxed environment, which helps your child associate mealtimes with positive emotions rather than pressure to eat.

It might help to have some talking points such as Christmas cracker jokes, highlights of the of the year, or what we are most looking forward to in the new year (rather than just talking about the food).

Read more:
How can kids have a healthier Halloween? And what do you do with the leftover lollies?

5. What are other guests doing?

The presence of other people can change a behaviour, this is what reseachers call “social facilitation”. We see this when children are more adventurous when eating with their peers at school or daycare compared to at home.

Festive events offer opportunities for children to observe others enjoying a variety of foods.

6. Lots of things to try

Despite concerns, festive occasions often provide incidental, low-pressure situations for children to explore new foods.

Use this time to encourage them to see, touch, smell and taste various treats. This can foster food acceptance at their own pace.

7. Give children food-related jobs

Research suggests being involved in food preparation can increase eating enjoyment and reduce picky eating.

So ask your kids to help with simple food preparation, serving food, clearing away plates and mixing ingredients. This allows your child to have sensory exposure and be part of the experience, with no expectation they must eat the food.

8. Be vigilant about allergens

It’s okay to be vigilant about checking labels for any ingredients that might cause a reaction in your child. Ask family members to label foods that contain potential allergens, especially if you have older children serving themselves.

Remember to be careful with buffet-style meals as the risk of cross-contamination is higher as serving utensils could be moved between dishes.

Everyone deserves to enjoy the holidays, including parents and children. So don’t hesitate to do what you need to ensure your and your child’s wellbeing.

You can find more information for managing a picky eater at the Grow & Go Toolbox.

Stella Boyd-Ford receives funding from the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care through a Preventative Health Grant

Clare Dix receives funding from the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care through a Preventative Health Grant

– ref. 8 tips to navigate Christmas if you have a fussy eater or child with allergies – https://theconversation.com/8-tips-to-navigate-christmas-if-you-have-a-fussy-eater-or-child-with-allergies-219118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Suddenly the talk in global financial markets has spun from “when will interest rates next rise?” to “how soon before they fall?”.

Some commentators are flagging the shift as a “pivot party”.

This change has been most prominent in the United States. It was prompted by the Federal Reserve, the US equivalent of the Reserve Bank of Australia, releasing its latest “dot chart”. This shows most members of its policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee expect their interest rate would be lower by the end of 2024.

The recent review of the Reserve Bank in Australia wanted more transparency. But, after the whacking former Governor Phil Lowe got when he wrongly predicted rates would stay low until “at least” 2024, I doubt his successor Michele Bullock will be keen to publish a similar chart.

Even so, financial markets in Australia are also now implying interest rates will fall over the course of next year.

The latest indicators

The Australian economy has continued to slow according to the latest national accounts. Consumer spending did not increase at all in the September quarter, despite an increase in population. Exports contracted. Overall GDP grew by a mere 0.2%.

The news from the labour market was mixed. There was a solid rise in employment in November. The hours worked data, however, have been basically flat for the past six months.

The government maintained fiscal discipline in the mid-year budget update released last week. They saved rather than spent almost all the extra revenue from higher than expected commodity prices.

The minutes of the Reserve’s latest meeting on December 5 show the board noted “encouraging signs of progress” in returning inflation to the target.

Subsequent events have suggested inflation will likely continue on its downward trajectory, which means the Reserve has increased interest rates enough.

Another development since the Reserve last met is an update of the
Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy between Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the board. This sets out the common understanding between them about Australia’s monetary policy framework.

Much of this statement carries over the existing framework. The bank’s primary tool is its cash rate target and it is varied to achieve a medium-term inflation target of 2-3%. Employment considerations influence how quickly it is regained when shocks move inflation away from it.

The statement explicitly refers to the midpoint of the target, reflecting a suggestion in the recent Reserve Bank review. Some commentators have interpreted this as indicating the bank cannot cut rates as its forecast for inflation only has it reaching the top, not the middle, of the range by the end of 2025.

Read more:
The 7 charts that show Australians struggling as saving falls to near zero

I disagree. The bank has always aimed at the midpoint of the target as the most likely way to ensure inflation averages within it. If the board was happy at its December meeting to have reached 3% by the end of 2025 on its way to achieving 2.5% later, there is no reason for it to change this view in February.

So what will the Reserve Bank do?

On balance, the economic news does not suggest the Reserve Bank will feel a need to raise rates in February. But with inflation still high, and plenty of uncertainty, they are unlikely to cut rates any time soon. The bank does not generally make sharp U-turns with the average gap between the last interest rate increase in a cycle and the first cut being ten months.

At its next meeting, on February 5-6, the Reserve board may have a new member, deputy governor Andrew Hauser, and a new adviser, chief economist Sarah Hunter. They share a British background so will be familiar with the Bank of England model, which influenced the Reserve Bank review.

The impact of (eventual) lower interest rates

The movements in the Reserve Bank’s interest rate matters most to the third of households with a mortgage. Most of these have variable rate loans where the interest rate closely follows that set by the Reserve. An interest rate cut would ease the cost-of-living pressures they have been facing.

A household with the average loan size of around A$600,000 would have seen their monthly repayments rise by almost $1,700 since early 2022. This would drop by $100 if rates were cut by 0.25%.

While the impact on mortgagees always gets the most attention, interest rates affect other members of the community too.

Read more:
Will the RBA raise rates again? Unless prices surge over summer, it’s looking less likely

Lower interest rates mean a lower income to retirees dependent on interest on their savings. They tend to boost the prices of assets such as shares and houses. They encourage borrowing and spending and reduce incentives to save. They tend to lower the exchange rate, making imports more expensive for Australians but our exports cheaper to foreigners. The net impact is generally to lower unemployment.

A lot of people are therefore looking forward to an interest rate cut. But they should not be holding their breath.

Financial markets may be getting prematurely excited. The last thing the Reserve Bank would want is to find themselves having lowered rates too quickly and see inflation turn back up, necessitating the interest rate cut to be reversed. More likely, they will wait for inflation to drop much closer to their target before there is any easing of interest rates.

John Hawkins is a former senior economist at the Reserve Bank and has worked as an economic forecaster at the Bank for International Settlements and the Australian Treasury.

– ref. Interest rates will eventually fall but it’s a bit early for mortgagees to break out the champagne – https://theconversation.com/interest-rates-will-eventually-fall-but-its-a-bit-early-for-mortgagees-to-break-out-the-champagne-220038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cherine Fahd, Associate Professor Visual Communication, University of Technology Sydney

At a recent electronic music performance, the English duo Rob Brown and Sean Booth, who perform as Autechre, plunged Sydney’s City Recital Hall into darkness.

Prior to the performance, I was made aware through the ticket information that the set would be played in the dark. This information made me eager to shut my eyes and completely immerse myself in a pure auditory experience.

However, I wasn’t prepared for the absence of the usual photographic opportunities that come with such events.

Capturing cultural events through smartphone snapshots has become almost instinctive. It’s a common sight to witness thousands of people with raised arms, recording performances for sharing on social media.

The phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” reflects the need to validate an experience by photographing it to share. Yet, in the context of the Autechre concert, this rule couldn’t be applied.

Like everyone else, I refrained from raising my phone to capture the performance, the stage or the light show simply because there were none. Not even the musicians were visible! Only the faint green glow of the emergency exit signs illuminated the recital hall.

Autechre offered not only an auditory feast but also respite from having yet another experience mediated through my phone. My need to photograph everything was thwarted for an hour of sonic bliss.

Read more:
10 months and hundreds of subjects: how I took portrait photography to the streets of Parramatta

Photography detox

This departure from a vision-centric sensory experience was compelling. We are often absorbed in our screens and, if we aren’t, we are witnessing others engrossed in theirs.

This concert created a different communal presence. As I focused on my own auditory journey, I also attuned to the people around me. In the absence of smartphone distraction I wondered whether they felt a deep relief to have nothing to photograph.

The Autechre experience wasn’t like going to the movies, where phones are silenced and we swap the small screen of our smartphones with the big screen of cinema. There was no screen, no image – only sound.

I’m reminded of a period earlier this year when I decided to detox from photographing. The detox lasted two months. My aim was to get off my phone and be more present in my life.

A so-called photographer by profession, it was a challenging endeavour. But then again, we are all photographers today. I imagine it would be challenging for anyone, given how photographing as an act is deeply embedded in daily life and communication with others.

During the detox I observed how the absence of photographing affected me. It led me to quickly explore other forms of creative expression, such as writing lists and jotting down experiences in words. It was a valuable experience, replacing one artistic outlet with another.

The photography detox also shed light on the social aspects of photographing. As someone who actively shares photos on Instagram and sends daily pictures to my friends, I understood that not having new photos to share affected my sociability. I became quiet and withdrawn.

With my gregarious family humming with photo exchanges on WhatsApp, I found myself responding with emojis rather than photographic images. The detox revealed how I use photography to speak to others; how vital photographing is to expressing my personality.

It wasn’t just about photographing to remember; it was an impulse – a reflex triggered by excitement, anxiety, boredom or a need to connect.

I felt the same twitch to reach for my phone throughout the Autechre concert.

Read more:
Why are ‘photo dumps’ so popular? A digital communications expert explains

Completely unphotographable

The late French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy explored how listening turns us inward, while sight directs us outward. In his 2007 essay Listening Nancy asks:

Why, in the case of the ear, is there withdrawal and turning inward, a making resonant, but, in the case of the eye, there is manifestation and display, making evident?

This question resonates deeply with the concert experience. Autechre provided a forced blackout and an hour to listen without the burden of having to “evidence” myself listening.

The lack of photo ops reminds me of Daniel Libeskind’s architectural provocation Voided Void, or Holocaust Tower, in Berlin’s Jewish Museum. Visitors enter the tower in small groups, and the irregularly shaped claustrophobic space is closed off by a heavy door. Once inside, we were left in complete darkness, with only a sliver of light filtering in from the ceiling.

In this concrete chamber, every sound was magnified, my heart beat louder and faster, the sound of my shoes on the floor echoed I was alive. My camera was useless.

The Autechre concert encapsulated what the controlled absence of photography and visual stimulus affords. I found myself immersed in complex sounds and literally feeling the physical vibrations of the bass.

With nothing to see with my eyes, I had nothing to photograph. The experience was akin to deep meditation. This made me realise that, despite the lack of sociability experienced during my photo detox, taking photos rarely takes me inward.

I also admit that I was among those who frantically photographed the previous act and the stage manager who stood under a photogenic light when instructing us to go to the bathroom before Autechre’s piece.

I also saw people photographing the concert poster near the box office. How else were they to evidence where they’d been and what they’d seen? In the arts, creating visual content that is photogenic and Instagrammable is the norm.

Autechre were radical in creating an artwork that was totally ephemeral and completely unphotographable.

Cherine Fahd 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. I’m a photographer who wanted to be more present in my life – so I put down the camera – https://theconversation.com/im-a-photographer-who-wanted-to-be-more-present-in-my-life-so-i-put-down-the-camera-212534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Cantrell, Senior Lecturer — Writing, Editing, Publishing, University of Southern Queensland

This article contains mentions of the Stolen Generations, and policies using outdated and potentially offensive terminology when referring to First Nations people.

Aunty Ruth Hegarty, or Ruthie, was four-and-a-half years old when she was forcibly removed from her mother, Ruby, under the auspices of Queensland’s Aboriginals Protection Act (1897).

The Act, as it was known, dispossessed thousands of Indigenous Australians of their heartlines and their homes by segregating them to government reserves that have been compared by past residents to concentration camps.

Is That You, Ruthie?, written and directed by Leah Purcell, one of Australia’s most important theatremakers, is an adaptation of Aunty Ruth’s memoir. It is a harrowing account of a mother and daughter’s attempt to repair their fractured relationship after being separated from their culture, their Country, and each other.

Read more:
Indigenous Australia is deadly – and Leah Purcell shows it

Giving stage to the dormo girls

Purcell’s bold new play remembers the Stolen Generations of Indigenous women and children who were interned for more than 70 years at Barambah station, later known as Cherbourg, 250 kilometres northwest of Brisbane.

The story of the self-called dormitory girls, or “dormo girls”, is the story of the irreparable damage caused by the sanctioned removal and control of First Nations families and the dormitory system’s cruel legacy of the separation of children from their mothers.

The play opens in 1930, in the grip of the Great Depression, when a young Ruby (Chenoa Deemal) arrives with her six-month-old daughter Ruthie at the Barambah mission – “just for a little while” – on the advice of the local police sergeant, who is also the ironically titled “Protector of Aboriginals”.

When she is four-and-a-half, Ruthie (Melodie Reynolds-Diarra) is separated from Ruby, and they spend the next 30 years trapped in parallel lives.

Following their separation, mother and daughter are housed in separate dorms. They can see each other, but are forbidden to touch or talk.

In a narrative spiral that moves back and forward in time, the pair oscillate in and out of each other’s lives as their relationship becomes increasingly estranged.

Separately, they are trained and later hired as domestic servants to aid the expanding white settlement.

After years of exploitation as “domestics”, both are denied access to their wages in a form of multi-generational financial abuse that is now recognised as the Stolen Wages.

When mother and daughter finally reunite, they are forced to face the painful realisation that they are strangers. Their relationship, irreversibly severed, is never the same.

In the play’s final scene the actors step forward out of character to remind us this story is not a work of fiction – a necessary and important moment when Australia’s history is still often met with defensive denial and resistance.

Two hearts breaking

Purcell, a self-described “truth-teller”, has perfected the art of adaptation. She is perhaps best known for her interpretation of The Drover’s Wife, which she has adapted three times to the page, stage and screen.

Read more:
The Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson brings a Black woman’s perspective to Australian frontier films

In Ruthie, over the course of 90 minutes, she strips down Hegarty’s memoir to its powerful core: the story of two hearts breaking. But Purcell’s play, like its origin material, is also a story about the enduring and ineffable connections that bond women who share profound trauma and grief.

Building on the tradition of Ningali Lawford-Wolf’s Ningali (1994), Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman’s The Seven Stages of Grieving (1996), and Jane Harrison’s Stolen (1998), Purcell interjects genuine moments of humour in a work that highlights the fraught nature of forgiveness and the cultural significance of both resistance and resilience.

The work interweaves traditional song and dance in a testament to the courage and resilience of the young girls who lost their mothers and in turn became sisters who, in their own words, simply looked after each other.

As Aunty Ruth reflects in her memoir:

Our lives were governed by the same policies, and what happened to one, happened to all of us. We were treated identically, dressed identically, our hair cut identically. We were dormitory girls.

Purcell and Hegarty share the same creative agenda: both women blend the personal with the political through autobiographical storytelling and the power of witnessing.

A collaborative creation

Importantly, in her newest work, Purcell preserves the protocols of Indigenous storytelling by using collaborative theatre to combine oral history with documentary techniques. Aunty Ruth, now 94, collaborated on the script and contributed to the creative process.

The projection of archival material from Aunty Ruth’s government file – visitation requests, travel permits, letters from the Superintendent – bridge the theatrical and historical worlds of the play, and unite the emotion of the dramatic retelling with the authority and authenticity of the archive.

At a post show discussion with Aunty Ruth, Purcell invoked the audience’s obligation to bear witness. “You cannot deny this woman her story,” she said, “because she’s sitting right here.”

In this way, the play’s title, Is That You, Ruthie?, is an important recognition of the past as much as it is a haunting inquisition that demands we listen.

Is That You, Ruthie? by Oombarra Productions played at QPAC, Brisbane. Season closed.

Kate Cantrell 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. Leah Purcell’s Is That You, Ruthie? is a powerful look at ‘dormitory girls’ separated from Country and family – https://theconversation.com/leah-purcells-is-that-you-ruthie-is-a-powerful-look-at-dormitory-girls-separated-from-country-and-family-219965

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rolf Gerritsen, Professorial Research Fellow, Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University

When it was announced this afternoon that the Northern Territory’s Chief Minister Natasha Fyles had resigned, few could say it was unexpected.

She has been under increasing pressure on several fronts, chief among them the failure to disclose shares she held, prompting accusations of having a conflict of interest.

In the role for around 18 months, Fyles’ Labor government has been in the spotlight for everything from increased crime rates in Alice Springs to the controversial decision to approve fracking in the Beetaloo Basin.

So what’s behind Fyles quitting the territory’s top job, and what’s next for the government?

Read more:
High Court, then what? NT remote housing reforms need to put Indigenous residents front and centre

A surprise ascent to leadership

Fyles was sworn in as chief minister in May 2022, following the resignation of Michael Gunner.

She won the leadership against expectations, despite being Gunner’s protege. The left faction, which has a majority of two in the party caucus, had backed Nicole Manison. But two members defected and voted for Fyles instead, securing her victory in the leadership ballot.

Fyles has been the member for Nightcliff since 2012 and held a range of important portfolios before her promotion, including health and Attorney-General.

Her leadership style has been not unlike most of the new generation of politicians: speaking in short, sharp sentences with authoritative confidence.

But she’s overseen some odd and sometimes unpopular decisions.

The $11 million Nightcliff Police Station was built in her electorate, despite being just a seven-minute drive from Casuarina station. Allegations of pork-barrelling were quick to follow, especially after reports emerged of the facility having half the staff promised.

There was also the matter of the Palmerston Hospital, which opened in 2018, when Fyles was health minister. It’s since been plagued by understaffing and underfunding.

Two key undoings

Smaller controversies aside, there have been two main pressure points for Fyles’ leadership.

The first is crime in remote communities, especially the much-publicised plight of Alice Springs.

While the issue is hardly unique to the city, the national interest generated by the removal and reinstatement of the alcohol bans shone a large and often unflattering light on crime rates across the Northern Territory.

Read more:
‘Cheap police’: Four Corners shows the dangers of private policing in the NT and why First Nations people are more at risk

The fact the federal government intervened to create the role of the Regional Controller – a role the Commonwealth funds and manages – shows how little confidence they had in the territory government.

The second, more recent problem is the revelations around Fyles’ potential conflicts of interest.

It was revealed earlier this week the chief owns shares in South32, a company that owns a manganese mine on Groote Eylandt. She hadn’t disclosed this, despite appearing to have owned them since 2015.

Locals have been lobbying for years for the mine to be tested for its potential impact on human health, but to no avail.

It wasn’t even the first instance in the past month of undisclosed shares coming to light. In November, Fyles divested her minor stake in gas company Woodside Energy.

But the final nail in the coffin came last week, when matters swirling around Fyles were referred to the territory’s corruption watchdog.

One of her senior political advisors, Gerard Richardson, co-owns a company that lobbied on behalf of mining company Tamboran – a company that has large stakes in multiple projects in the NT.

While she dug her heels in, the news went down like a lead balloon in the electorate, and likely in the party room too.

A salvagable government?

Politics in the Top End is a strange beast. Fyles stepping down as leader doesn’t necessarily mean she takes the government down with her.

The way politics plays out in the territory has long been down to the happiness or unhappiness of key interest groups.

With some electorates containing just 5,000 people or so, the blessing (or lack thereof) of recreational fishers or the police association, for example, can have a disproportionate affect.

So in choosing its next leader, the Labor party will be considering who appeals most to the most important groups.

Read more:
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That’s why the current Minister for Recreational Fisheries (among many other things), Joel Bowden, might be in with a shot. The former Richmond footballer might have the right appeal with those who are most electorally influential.

But the government will have to contend with an increase in environment-focused politics in the lead-up to the next election in 2024.

Conservationist issues have gathered momentum in the past few years and their potential impact should not be underestimated. Greens and conservationists appear to be gaining increasing Indigenous support.

The next leader will need to be agile enough to deal with these newer forces, but compelling enough to win the party a third term in government.

Rolf Gerritsen 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. Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles has resigned. How did we get here? – https://theconversation.com/northern-territory-chief-minister-natasha-fyles-has-resigned-how-did-we-get-here-220137

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

In 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) truly entered our daily lives. The latest data shows four in five teenagers in the United Kingdom are using generative AI tools. About two-thirds of Australian employees report using generative AI for work.

At first, many people used these tools because they were curious about generative AI or wanted to be entertained. Now, people ask generative AI for help with studies, for advice, or use it to find or synthesise information. Other uses include getting help coding and making images, videos, or audio.

So-called “prompt whisperers” or prompt engineers offer guides on not just designing the best AI prompts, but even how to blend different AI services to achieve fantastical outputs.

AI uses and functions have also shifted over the past 12 months as technological development, regulation and social factors have shaped what’s possible. Here’s where we’re at, and what might come in 2024.

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AI changed how we work and pray

Generative AI made waves early in the year when it was used to enter and even win photography competitions, and tested for its ability to pass school exams.

ChatGPT, the chatbot that’s become a household name, reached a user base of 100 million by February – about four times the size of Australia’s population.

Some musicians used AI voice cloning to create synthetic music that sounds like popular artists, such as Eminem. Google launched its chatbot, Bard. Microsoft integrated AI into Bing search. Snapchat launched MyAI, a ChatGPT-powered tool that allows users to ask questions and receive suggestions.

GPT-4, the latest iteration of the AI that powers ChatGPT, launched in March. This release brought new features, such as analysing documents or longer pieces of text.

Also in March, corporate giants like Coca-Cola began generating ads partly through AI, while Levi’s said it would use AI for creating virtual models. The now-infamous image of the Pope wearing a white Balenciaga puffer jacket went viral. A cohort of tech evangelists also called for an AI development pause.

Read more:
The Pope Francis puffer coat was fake – here’s a history of real papal fashion

Amazon began integrating generative AI tools into its products and services in April. Meanwhile, Japan ruled there would be no no copyright restrictions for training generative AI in the country.

In the United States, screenwriters went on strike in May, demanding a ban of AI-generated scripts. Another AI-generated image, allegedly of the Pentagon on fire, went viral.

In July, worshippers experienced some of the first religious services led by AI.

In August, two months after AI-generated summaries became available in Zoom, the company faced intense scrutiny for changes to its terms of service around consumer data and AI. The company later clarified its policy and pledged not to use customers’ data without consent to train AI.

In September, voice and image functionalities came to ChatGPT for paid users. Adobe began integrating generative AI into its applications like Illustrator and Photoshop.

By December, we saw an increased shift to “Edge AI”, where AI processes are handled locally, on devices themselves, rather than in the cloud, which has benefits in contexts when privacy and security are paramount. Meanwhile, the EU announced the world’s first “AI Law”.

Read more:
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Where to from here?

Given the whirlwind of AI developments in the past 12 months, we’re likely to see more incremental changes in the next year and beyond.

In particular, we expect to see changes in these four areas.

Increased bundling of AI services and functions

ChatGTP was initially just a chatbot that could generate text. Now, it can generate text, images and audio. Google’s Bard can now interface among Gmail, Docs and Drive, and complete tasks across these services.

By bundling generative AI into existing services and combining functions, companies will try to maintain their market share and make AI services more intuitive, accessible and useful.

At the same time, bundled services make users more vulnerable when inevitable data breaches happen.

Higher quality, more realistic generations

Earlier this year, AI struggled with rendering human hands and limbs. By now, AI generators have markedly improved on these tasks.

At the same time, research has found how biased many AI generators can be.

Some developers have created models with diversity and inclusivity in mind. Companies will likely see a benefit in providing services that reflect the diversity of their customer bases.

Growing calls for transparency and media standards

Various news platforms have been slammed in 2023 for producing AI-generated content without transparently communicating this.

AI-generated images of world leaders and other newsworthy events abound on social media, with high potential to mislead and deceive.

Media industry standards that transparently and consistently denote when AI has been used to create or augment content will need to be developed to improve public trust.

Expansion of sovereign AI capacity

In these early days, many have been content playfully exploring AI’s possibilities. However, as these AI tools begin to unlock rapid advancements across all sectors of our society, more fine-grained control over who governs these foundational technologies will become increasingly important.

In 2024, we will likely see future-focused leaders incentivising the development of their sovereign capabilities through increased research and development funding, training programs and other investments.

For the rest of us, whether you’re using generative AI for fun, work, or school, understanding the strengths and limitations of the technology is essential for using it in responsible, respectful and productive ways.

Similarly, understanding how others – from governments to doctors – are increasingly using AI in ways that affect you, is equally important.

Read more:
Artificial intelligence is already in our hospitals. 5 questions people want answered

T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

Daniel Angus receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

– ref. 2023 was the year of generative AI. What can we expect in 2024? – https://theconversation.com/2023-was-the-year-of-generative-ai-what-can-we-expect-in-2024-219808

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University

A recent investigation from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has revealed an extensive network of YouTube channels promoting pro-Chinese and anti-US public opinion in the English-speaking world.

The operation is well-coordinated, using generative AI to rapidly produce and publish content, while deftly exploiting YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system.

How big is the network?

Operation “Shadow Play” involves a network of at least 30 YouTube channels with about 730,000 subscribers. At the time of writing this article the channels had some 4,500 videos between them, with about 120 million views.

According to ASPI, the channels gained audiences by using AI algorithms to cross-promote each other’s content, thereby boosting visibility. This is concerning as it allows state messaging to cross borders with plausible deniability.

The network of videos also featured an AI avatar created by British artificial intelligence company Synthesia, according to the report, as well as other AI-generated entities and voiceovers.

While it’s not clear who is behind the operation, investigators say the controller is likely Mandarin-speaking. After profiling the behaviour, they concluded it doesn’t match that of any known state actor in the business of online influence operations. Instead, they suggest it might be a commercial entity operating under some degree of state direction.

These findings double as the latest evidence that advanced influence operations are evolving faster than defensive measures.

Influencer conflicts of interest

One clear parallel between the Shadow Play operation and other influence campaigns is the use of coordinated networks of inauthentic social media accounts, and pages amplifying the messaging.

For example, in 2020 Facebook took down a network of more than 300 Facebook accounts, pages and Instagram accounts that were being run from China and posting content about the US election and COVID pandemic. As was the case with Shadow Play, these assets worked together to spread content and make it appear more popular than it was.

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Is current legislation strong enough?

The current disclosure requirements around sponsored content have some glaring gaps when it comes to addressing cross-border influence campaigns. Most Australian consumer protection and advertising regulation focuses on commercial sponsorships rather than geopolitical conflicts of interest.

Platforms such as YouTube prohibit deceptive practices in their stated rules. However, identifying and enforcing violations is difficult with foreign state-affiliated accounts that conceal who is pulling their strings.

Determining what is propaganda, as opposed to free speech, raises difficult ethical questions around censorship and political opinions. Ideally, transparency measures shouldn’t unduly restrict protected speech. But viewers still deserve to understand an influencer’s incentives and potential biases.

Possible measures could include clear disclosures when content is affiliated directly or indirectly with a foreign government, as well as making affiliation and location data more visible on channels.

How to spot deceptive content?

As technologies become more sophisticated, it’s becoming harder to discern what agenda or conflict of interest may be shaping the content of a video.

Discerning viewers can gain some insight by looking into the creator(s) behind the content. Do they provide information on who they are, where they’re based and their background? A lack of clarity may signal an attempt to obscure their identity.

You can also assess the tone and goal of the content. Does it seem to be driven by a specific ideological argument? What is the poster’s ultimate aim: are they just trying to get clicks, or are they persuading you into believing their viewpoint?

Check for credibility signals, such as what other established sources say about this creator or their claims. When something seems dubious, rely on authoritative journalists and fact-checkers.

And make sure not to consume too much content from any single creator. Get your information from reliable sources across the political spectrum so you can take an informed stance.

The bigger picture

The advancement of AI could exponentially amplify the reach and precision of coordinated influence operations if ethical safeguards aren’t implemented. At its most extreme, the unrestricted spread of AI propaganda could undermine truth and manipulate real-world events.

Propaganda campaigns may not stop at trying to shape narratives and opinions. They could also be used to generate hyper-realistic text, audio and image content aimed at radicalising individuals. This could greatly destabilise our societies.

We’re already seeing the precursors of what could become AI psy-ops with the ability to spoof identities, surveil citizens en masse, and automate disinformation production.

Without applying an ethics or oversight framework to content moderation and recommendation algorithms, social platforms could effectively act as misinformation mega-amplifiers optimised for watch-time, regardless of the consequences.

Over time, this may erode social cohesion, upend elections, incite violence and even undermine our democratic institutions. And unless we move quickly, the pace of malicious innovation may outstrip any regulatory measures.

It’s more important than ever to establish external oversight to make sure social media platforms work for the greater good, and not just short-term profit.

Read more:
Facebook’s algorithms fueled massive foreign propaganda campaigns during the 2020 election – here’s how algorithms can manipulate you

David Tuffley 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. An AI-driven influence operation is spreading pro-China propaganda across YouTube – https://theconversation.com/an-ai-driven-influence-operation-is-spreading-pro-china-propaganda-across-youtube-219962

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology

The new coalition government has made its campaign promise to crack down on gangs a priority in its 100-day action plan. But whether the new “get tough” policy genuinely plugs gaps in existing legislation is very much open to question.

The policy was laid out in a letter of expectations to the police commissioner from new police minister Mark Mitchell in early December, including: banning gang patches in public, stopping public gang meetings, and preventing gang members communicating with each other.

The government also promises extra police powers to search for guns, and to make gang membership an aggravating feature at sentencing.

We all have a right to be safe from harm, including harm by gangs. But there are already many relevant offences in the law that exist to protect the general public.

No need for new law

First, it is already an offence to be in a criminal gang. Section 98A of the Crimes Act 1961 allows up to ten years’ imprisonment for participating in an “organised criminal group”. This involves three or more people who aim to commit serious violence, or who benefit from offending, liable for at least four years’ imprisonment.

As with most serious criminal offences, a guilty mind is required: you have to know it is a criminal group, realise your involvement might contribute to criminal activity, and also be aware the criminal activity might help the criminal group.

Read more:
New Zealand needs a new gang strategy – political consensus would be a good start

It is also a criminal conspiracy to agree to commit offences. And our “joint enterprise” law in section 66(2) of the Crimes Act means those who agree to commit one offence are also guilty of other foreseeable offences committed by the group.

There are also many offences against public order in the Summary Offences Act 1981, including disorderly or offensive behaviour, and associating with those convicted of theft, violence or drugs offending.

As well, there is the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Act 2013. This bans gang insignia in or on premises operated by central and local government, including schools, hospitals and swimming pools, but not Kāinga Ora housing.

Guns and gangs

The Arms Act 1983 makes the privilege of obtaining a firearms licence dependent on being a “fit and proper person”; gang membership and convictions already mean this test is not met.

Section 18 of the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 allows the police to search any person or place if they reasonably suspect a breach of the Arms Act.

And when it comes to sentencing, section 9(1) of the Sentencing Act 2002 already requires judges to consider an offence to be worse if committed as part of organised criminal activity.

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 allows the seizure of criminal gains even if there has not been a conviction.

In short, if arresting our way out of a problem works, there are already many criminal justice tools. We should also note that the apparent growth in gang membership has occurred despite these various offences and powers.

Rights and their limits

We also need to ask whether the new anti-gang measures breach fundamental principles such as human rights. These are part of New Zealand law, through the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the common law. They also reflect international standards that New Zealand has agreed to respect.

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes proclaiming gang affiliation. There is also the right to associate with others, and to assemble peacefully.

But all of these rights have to be balanced against other interests. The Bill of Rights Act sums this up by allowing “reasonable limits” that “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”.

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Essentially, legislation that restricts rights requires a legitimate purpose. This is usually easy to show. But it is also necessary to consider whether such restrictions work and do so in a way that is proportionate to the breach of rights.

We have an idea what the courts might say. For example, in Morse v Police, the Supreme Court decided burning the New Zealand flag during an Anzac Day parade to protest New Zealand involvement in Afghanistan was not offensive behaviour, because it did not go beyond what people should be expected to tolerate in a democracy.

And in Schubert v Wanganui District Council, the High Court decided the ban on gang patches in all public places in the district went too far; the evidence did not show that something more tailored would have been as effective.

Tackling membership is the challenge

The government might suggest its main aim is to extend the 2013 legislation banning gang patches in government premises to all public places. But that legislation is probably acceptable because it has limits.

The Bill of Rights Act also protects against discrimination. Here we have to recall that Māori are disproportionately imprisoned, and disproportionately affected by socioeconomic factors (including abuse in state care and incarceration) that seem linked to gang recruitment.

Read more:
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Since it is likely that action against gangs will affect Māori to a greater extent, a Waitangi Tribunal claim may be expected.

To abide by existing human rights provisions in the law, the government will need to craft various exceptions to the ban on gang patches, or to people meeting or communicating with each other.

Alternatively, if it is comfortable with breaches of human rights, it can make that clear. This is possible because the Bill of Rights Act can be sidestepped by parliament using legislative language that precludes consistency with such rights.

This would still leave the law in breach of New Zealand’s international obligations, with resulting reputational damage.

But we should also be mindful that criminal justice powers represent an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. People’s right to be safe is more likely to be secured by other steps that turn people away from gang membership in the first place.

Kris Gledhill is currently working on a project relating to the Sentencing Act 2002 the expenses for which are funded by the Borrin Foundation. He is also a co-opted member of the Criminal Bar Association’s Executive Committee. The views expressed in this article are his own.

– ref. NZ’s new government is getting tough on gangs – but all the necessary laws already exist – https://theconversation.com/nzs-new-government-is-getting-tough-on-gangs-but-all-the-necessary-laws-already-exist-217557

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong

Until the 1960s, railways dominated freight across every distance bar the shortest. Much freight went by sea, and some by truck.

But then trucking grew, and grew, and grew, while rail’s share of freight outside mined ore has shrunk and domestic shipping freight is diminished. By the mid-70s, trains carried only about 23% of domestic non-bulk freight (such as consumer goods) and trucks took 65.5%.

By 2021–22, trains took just 16.7% and trucks took almost 80%. Just 2% of freight between Melbourne and Sydney now goes by rail, while road freight is projected to keep growing.

That’s a problem, given heavy trucks are big emitters. Rail uses roughly a third of the diesel as a truck would to transport the same weight. Transport now accounts for 21% of Australia’s emissions. While electric cars and the long-awaited fuel efficiency standards are projected to cut this by seven million tonnes, trucking emissions are expected to keep growing.

It won’t be easy to change it. But if we improve sections of railway track on the east coast, we could at least make rail faster and more competitive.

How did road freight become dominant?

Since the 1970s, the volume of freight carried by Australia’s rail and road have both grown. But rail’s growth has largely been in bulk freight, such as the 895 million tonnes of iron ore and 338 million tonnes of coal exports in 2022–23.

Road freight has grown enormously due largely to non-bulk freight such as consumer goods. Freight carried by road has grown from about 29 billion tonne-kilometres in 1976–77 to 163 billion tonne-kilometres in 2021–22. (A tonne-kilometre measures the number of tonnes carried multiplied by distance). In that period, non-bulk freight carried by rail increased from about 10 to 34 billion tonne-kilometres.

Why? An official report gives key reasons such as expanding highway networks and higher capacity vehicles such as B-doubles.

Spending on roads across all levels of government is now more than A$30 billion a year.

Federal grants enabled the $20 billion reconstruction of the entire Hume Highway (Melbourne to Sydney), bringing it up to modern engineering standards. A similar sum was spent on reconstructing most of the Pacific Highway (Sydney to Brisbane).

Read more:
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What do our trains get? In 2021–22, the Australian Rail Track Corporation had a meagre $153 million to maintain its existing 7,500 kilometre interstate network.

This is separate from the 1,600km Inland Rail project which will link Melbourne to Brisbane via Parkes when complete. If the massive Inland Rail project is completed in the 2030s, it could potentially cut Australia’s freight emissions by 0.75 million tonnes a year by taking some freight off trucks. But this freight-only line is some way off – the first 770km between Beveridge in Victoria and Narromine in New South Wales is expected to be complete by 2027.

As a result, the authority maintaining Australia’s interstate rail tracks is “really struggling with maintenance, investment and building resilience”, according to federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King.

This makes it harder for rail to compete, as Paul Scurrah, CEO of Pacific National, Australia’s largest private rail freight firm has said:

Each year, billions in funding is hardcoded in federal and state government budgets to upgrade roads and highways, which then spurs on greater access for bigger and heavier trucks […] Rail freight operators pay ‘full freight’ rates to run on tracks plagued by pinch points, speed restrictions, weight limits, sections susceptible to frequent flooding, and a lack of passing opportunities on networks shared with passenger services

What would it take to make rail more viable?

By 2030, road freight emissions are expected to increase from 37 to 42 million tonnes, while railway emissions stay steady at four million tonnes.

The need to cut freight emissions has been recognised by the Australian government, which has accelerated a review of the national freight and supply chain strategy.

To date, much attention in Australia and overseas has centred on finding ways to lower trucking emissions.

There are other ways. One is to shift some freight back to rail, which forms part of Victoria’s recent green freight strategy. This will be assisted by new intermodal terminals allowing containers to be offloaded from long-distance trains to trucks for the last part of their journey.

The second way is to improve rail freight energy efficiency. Western Australia’s long, heavy iron ore freight trains are already very energy efficient, and the introduction of battery electric locomotives will improve efficiency further. Our interstate rail freight on the eastern seaboard is much less efficient.

While the Inland Rail project is being built, we urgently need to upgrade the existing Melbourne–Sydney–Brisbane rail corridor, which has severe restrictions on speed.

To make this vital corridor better, there are three main sections of new track needed on the New South Wales line to replace winding or slow steam-age track. They’re not new – my colleagues and I first identified them more than 20 years ago.

These new sections are:

1. Wentworth – about 40km of track stretching from near Macarthur to Mittagong
2. Centennial – about 70km of track from near Goulburn to Yass
3. Hoare – about 80km of track from near Yass to Cootamundra.

If we replaced 260km of steam-age track with these three sections and another 10km elsewhere, we would cut two hours off the Melbourne–Sydney freight transit time. Energy use would fall at least 10%. Better still, faster tilt trains could then run, potentially halving the Sydney–Melbourne passenger trip to 5.5 hours.

Track straightening on the Brisbane–Rockhampton line in the 1990s made it possible to run faster tilt trains and heavier, faster freight trains.

One challenge is who would build this. This year’s review of the Inland Rail project amid cost and time blowouts has raised questions over whether the ARTC is best placed to do so.

One thing is for sure: business as usual will mean more trucks carrying freight and more emissions. To actually tackle freight emissions will take policy reform on many fronts.

Read more:
Shifting freight to rail could make the Pacific Highway safer

Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies and has received funding from two rail-related CRCs as well as the ARC. He is affiliated, inter alia, with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

– ref. Australia’s freight used to go by train, not truck. Here’s how we can bring back rail – and cut emissions – https://theconversation.com/australias-freight-used-to-go-by-train-not-truck-heres-how-we-can-bring-back-rail-and-cut-emissions-219332

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sanjoy Paul, Associate Professor, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

With inflation driving up the cost of living, many are dreading not just the hassle of a big grocery shop, but also the bruising cost.

But while Australians struggle with their budget and spending, several major supermarkets made large profits in 2022–23. Coles and Woolworths, for example, made net profits of A$1.1 billion and A$1.62 billion, respectively.

Allegations of price gouging by Australian supermarkets have even led to a Senate inquiry into supermarket pricing.

Coles chief executive Leah Weckert has promised to appear at the inquiry, saying the company “works hard to keep prices affordable for Australian households […]” and is ready to “engage in an informed discussion on the factors that influence supermarket pricing.”

Woolworths Group chief executive Brad Banducci, meanwhile, said he welcomes the chance to explain to the Senate “how we are working to balance the needs of our customers, our team and our suppliers in the context of economy-wide inflationary pressure”.

But why wait until a Senate inquiry to explain all that? There’s an opportunity now for the big supermarkets to be more transparent about how they decide what prices to put on products.

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Allegations of price gouging

It’s not just politicians and customers complaining about supermarket prices.

Australian farmers have also accused Coles and Woolworths of price gouging for fruits and vegetables, claiming supermarkets profit too much from their crops.

The National Farmers’ Federation has called for greater transparency from the supermarkets on how they decide prices.

A recent survey by AUSVEG (the peak industry body for the Australian vegetable and potato industries) found 34% of vegetable growers are considering leaving the industry in the next 12 months as they struggle to turn a profit.

When asked about calls for more transparent pricing, a Woolworths spokesperson told The Conversation:

We publish both our average gross margin and EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) margin transparently in our public financial reports.

Supply chain costs are different for every product and they are constantly fluctuating, as are our buying costs in the case of fresh food like fruit and vegetables.

Shoppers are very savvy. We operate in a highly competitive industry and we know our customers will – and do – shop around to find the best value.

As we start to see the rate of inflation ease, we will continue to focus on delivering savings to our customers.

Coles was also contacted for comment but did not reply before publication deadline.

Factoring in many costs

When a retailer buys products from their suppliers, it involves a supply chain that includes supply, manufacturing, transportation and distribution, warehouse and storage.

There are several costs – such as product costs, transportation fees, labour, rent, inventory and more – involved at every step of the process.

The supermarket must factor in all costs, as well as its profit margin, when it sets the selling price for a product.

Organisations usually have these cost breakdowns as part of their internal decision-making – but they don’t typically disclose these calculations to their customers.

Not disclosing the cost breakdowns

The problem for supermarkets is that when they don’t disclose details such as their buying price or supply chain costs, it can contribute to anger among customers and suppliers.

Apple and Pear Australia Limited – the national peak industry body for apple and pear growers – has called for retailers to demonstrate greater price transparency, saying, “frustration at the behaviour of the major retailers has again angered many growers”.

Of course, supermarkets use several pricing strategies to win customer support – such as locking in prices for a certain period of time, everyday low prices on key products, specials, price-matching and discounts.

Supermarkets spend millions of dollars on these price-related advertisements, but perhaps they would get more community support by simply disclosing cost breakdowns on their websites and in-store to show their commitment to transparent and fair pricing.

Transparent and fair pricing

Research shows price transparency helps businesses build trust with their customers.

Many major retailers already have this information for internal decision-making, so could display this online and in stores.

Yes, prices change constantly due to factors outside their control – such as fuel prices, shipping problems or even supply chain issues linked to global conflict. But being more open with customers about these issues could help repair relationships and their public image.

Perhaps there may even be a role for government, which could collaborate with supermarkets and retailers to develop policies for transparent and fair pricing.

Everyday Australians deserve to be treated fairly and given the information they need about how major supermarkets price their products, so they can make informed decisions at the checkout.

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Sanjoy Paul 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. Amid allegations of price gouging, it’s time for big supermarkets to come clean on how they price their products – https://theconversation.com/amid-allegations-of-price-gouging-its-time-for-big-supermarkets-to-come-clean-on-how-they-price-their-products-219316

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hazel Keedle, Senior Lecturer of Midwifery, Western Sydney University

In theory, pregnant women in Australia can choose the type of health provider they see during pregnancy, labour and after they give birth. But this is often dependent on where you live and how much you can afford in out-of-pocket costs.

While standard public hospital care is the most common in Australia, accounting for 40.9% of births, the other main options are:

• GP shared care, where the woman sees her GP for some appointments (15% of births)
• midwifery continuity of care in the public system, often called midwifery group practice or caseload care, where the woman sees the same midwife of team of midwives (14%)
• private obstetrician care (10.6%)
• private midwifery care (1.9%).

Given the choice, which model would women prefer?

Our new research, published BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, found women favoured seeing the same health provider throughout pregnancy, in labour and after they have their baby – whether that’s via midwifery group practice, a private midwife or a private obstetrician.

Read more:
More than 6,000 women told us what they wanted for their next pregnancy and birth. Here’s what they said

Assessing strengths and limitations

We surveyed 8,804 Australian women for the Birth Experience Study (BESt) and 2,909 provided additional comments about their model of maternity care. The respondents were representative of state and territory population breakdowns, however fewer respondents were First Nations or from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds.

We analysed these comments in six categories – standard maternity care, high-risk maternity care, GP shared care, midwifery group practice, private obstetric care and private midwifery care – based on the perceived strengths and limitations for each model of care.

Overall, we found models of care that were fragmented and didn’t provide continuity through the pregnancy, birth and postnatal period (standard care, high risk care and GP shared care) were more likely to be described negatively, with more comments about limitations than strengths.

What women thought of standard maternity care in hospitals

Women who experienced standard maternity care, where they saw many different health care providers, were disappointed about having to retell their story at every appointment and said they would have preferred continuity of midwifery care.

Positive comments about this model of care were often about a midwife or doctor who went above and beyond and gave extra care within the constraints of a fragmented system.

The model of care with the highest number of comments about limitations was high-risk maternity care. For women with pregnancy complications who have their baby in the public system, this means seeing different doctors on different days.

Some respondents received conflicting advice from different doctors, and said the focus was on their complications instead of their pregnancy journey. One woman in high-risk care noted:

The experience was very impersonal, their focus was my cervix, not preparing me for birth.

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Why women favoured continuity of care

Overall, there were more positive comments about models of care that provided continuity of care: private midwifery care, private obstetric care and midwifery group practice in public hospitals.

Women recognised the benefits of continuity and how this included informed decision-making and supported their choices.

The model of care with the highest number of positive comments was care from a privately practising midwife. Women felt they received the “gold standard of maternity care” when they had this model. One woman described her care as:

Extremely personable! Home visits were like having tea with a friend but very professional. Her knowledge and empathy made me feel safe and protected. She respected all of my decisions. She reminded me often that I didn’t need her help when it came to birthing my child, but she was there if I wanted it (or did need it).

However, this is a private model of care and women need to pay for it. So there are barriers in accessing this model of care due to the cost and the small numbers working in Australia, particularly in regional, rural and remote areas, among other barriers.

Women who had private obstetricians were also positive about their care, especially among women with medical or pregnancy complications – this type of care had the second-highest number of positive comments.

This was followed by women who had continuity of care from midwives in the public system, which was described as respectful and supportive.

However, one of the limitations about continuity models of care is when the woman doesn’t feel connected to her midwife or doctor. Some women who experienced this wished they had the opportunity to choose a different midwife or doctor.

What about shared care with a GP?

While shared care between the GP and hospital model of care is widely promoted in the public maternity care system as providing continuity, it had a similar number of negative comments to those who had fragmented standard hospital care.

Considering there is strong evidence about the benefits of midwifery continuity of care, and this model of care appears to be most acceptable to women, it’s time to expand access so all Australian women can access continuity of care, regardless of their location or ability to pay.

Read more:
Birthing on Country services centre First Nations cultures and empower women in pregnancy and childbirth

Hazel Keedle is affiliated with the Australian College of Midwives. Funding for this study was from a School of Nursing and Midwifery Partnership Grant through Western Sydney University, The Qiara Vincent Thiang Memorial Award and Maridulu Budyari Gumal SPHERE Maternal, Newborn and Women’s Clinical Academic Group funding.

Hannah Dahlen has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Commission, the Australian Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund (funding and for this study and funding from a School of Nursing and Midwifery Partnership Grant through Western Sydney University), The Qiara Vincent Thiang Memorial Award and Maridulu Budyari Gumal SPHERE Maternal, Newborn and Women’s Clinical Academic Group funding.

– ref. Women want to see the same health provider during pregnancy, birth and beyond – https://theconversation.com/women-want-to-see-the-same-health-provider-during-pregnancy-birth-and-beyond-217803

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Russian and Belarussian athletes will be able to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics if they are politically neutral. The decision from the committee’s executive board reversed an earlier ban.

The IOC made this change even though the Russian National Olympic Committee remains suspended from competition for its violation of “the territorial integrity of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine”. For its part, Russia rejects the decision.

The committee’s decision has enraged Western leaders, particularly those in Ukraine. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused the committee of effectively giving “[…] Russia the green light to weaponize the Olympics”.

While it might seem like a good idea not to hold individual athletes responsible for the decisions of governments, the decision is more complicated that it appears.

Read more:
Refugee team offers a way for Russian and Belarusian dissidents to compete at the Paris Olympics

Athletes caught in the middle

More than 30 Western nations, including Australia, have previously called for a complete ban on Russian participation in the Games.

IOC President Thomas Bach defended his decision by arguing “individual athletes cannot be punished for the acts of their governments”.

The ruling came with strict conditions. Athletes must not be open supporters of the Russian invasion and they cannot be affiliated with Russian or Belarussian military or security services.

They cannot compete under their home country’s flag, or with national emblems or anthems.

The committee estimates that only 11 athletes – six Russians and five Belarussians – will qualify under these regulations.

The committee has been slowly working towards this policy since the spring of 2023.

The call may seem reasonable. After all, why should Russian and Belarussian athletes, especially those not supportive of the invasion, suffer from the actions of their government?

But it’s not quite that cut and dry.

Different, inconsistent approaches

The rule change seems inconsistent. As the committee continues to ban the participation of Russian teams, not all neutral Russian and Belarussian athletes will be able to participate.

Sporting federations can also continue to ban Russian and Belarussian athletes from competition and therefore qualification for the Games. World Athletics President Seb Coe confirmed that the organisation will continue to ban them.

By contrast, World Taekwondo and World Judo have both allowed Russian and Belarussian athletes to compete in qualification.

In September, the International Paralympic Committee also decided neutral athletes can compete.

What can Ukraine’s allies do?

With the Paris 2024 games only seven months away, the IOC’s decision seems final. But frustrated Western leaders have other options.

In the past year, Western officials have threatened to boycott the Olympics if Russian and Belarussian athletes competed.

There is a long history of politically motivated Olympic boycotts and threatened boycotts. In 1980, the United States and 66 other countries boycotted the Moscow games in response to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Eight other countries, including Australia, competed under an Olympic flag to signal their opposition to the invasion.

Read more:
In a year of sporting mega-events, the Brisbane Olympics can learn a lot from the ones that fail their host cities

In 1984, in response, the Soviet Union and its allies boycotted the summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

A boycott of the Paris Olympics would be devastating to the organisers, but it remains very unlikely. France is a Western nation and a strong supporter of Ukraine. President Emmanuel Macron recently encouraged the European Union to continue supporting the beleaguered nation.

As a more palatable approach, Western leaders could ban athletes from Russia and Belarus from competing in international athletic competitions in Western Europe in the run-up to the games. This would likely make it impossible for any athletes from those countries to qualify for spots in Paris.

As historian Heather Dichter has shown, travel bans have a long history in the Olympics.

In the 1960s, there was a NATO-wide ban on East German athletes travelling to compete in events in Western European countries. This effectively barred them from participation in several major sporting competitions and from qualifying for the Olympics.

Some Western leaders have already attempted to use this strategy against Russian and Belarussian athletes. Polish President Andrzej Duda refused to issue visas to Russian and Belarussian fencers for a qualification competition in June. The International Fencing Federation moved the matches to Bulgaria where the neutral athletes could compete.

Read more:
Gender inequality will still be an issue at the Paris 2024 Olympics — despite the Games being gender-balanced

As a more drastic step, French officials could simply ban all Russian and Belarussian athletes from travelling to Paris during the Olympics. The committee would likely have no recourse at this late date.

It would would align with the approach of some other EU member nations that ban Russian tourism and travel.

However, the French National Olympic Committee would likely oppose such a move. They might worry that it threatens the viability of their likely future 2030 Winter Olympic Games.

At a time when so much international attention has turned to the Israel/Hamas war, will leaders, however frustrated, do anything in response?

Only time will tell, but one thing’s for sure: whatever happens will be carefully calculated to account for the vast array of geopolitical moving parts.

Keith Rathbone 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. ‘Politically neutral’ Russian athletes can now enter the Olympics – but don’t expect many to compete – https://theconversation.com/politically-neutral-russian-athletes-can-now-enter-the-olympics-but-dont-expect-many-to-compete-219796

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

Is your dog bothered by something but you can’t work out what? Do you wish they could tell you?

There’s a huge range of dog “talking” buttons on the market that now claim to let your dog do this. A very basic kit will set you back about $15, while more sophisticated ones can cost hundreds of dollars.

But is there any evidence these products work?

How the buttons work

The idea behind these buttons is simple. You record yourself speaking a word such as “treat” or “outside” into each button, after which the word is played back each time the button is pressed. Your dog can supposedly be trained to understand the words coming from the buttons, and use them to communicate with you.

Talking buttons are an example of augmentative and alternative communication. To put it simply, they’re a method of communication that doesn’t use speech. In humans, similar devices are valuable for people with autism or intellectual disability, or those suffering from a stroke or other neurological condition.

Can dogs learn complex communication?

A dog could figure out to press talking buttons through a process called operant conditioning – the same process used to teach dogs simple commands such as “sit”. When a dog performs a behaviour and receives something they want, such as a treat, they’re more likely to continue that behaviour.

The idea of dogs “talking” to humans with buttons was started by Christina Hunger, a speech language pathologist who understood the use of augmentative and alternative communication devices. Hunger claims to have taught her dog Stella more than 50 words and phrases up to five-words long.

Understanding human language is too complex a task for a dog. Sometimes it may seem like dogs can very perform complex tasks – such as driving a car – when they link simple behaviours learned through operant conditioning. But they’ve just learned simple behaviours that are linked together – they haven’t learned how to drive.

Read more:
Anxious dogs have different brains to normal dogs, brain scan study reveals

Alternative explanations

There are simple explanations for what may seem like complex behaviour in animals. For one thing, animals excel in picking up our body language. As a result, they may appear to understand more than they actually do.

Clever Hans the horse is the perfect example. Hans gained prominence in the early 1900s for allegedly being able to do mathematics. Even his trainer believed he could count. It was only when the trainer was no longer present that people realised Hans was relying on involuntary cues in the trainer’s body language to “solve” problems, and couldn’t actually count.

Dogs are probably even better than horses at picking up on our body language cues. As the first domesticated species, they’ve spent thousands of years working out what we’re likely to do next. Just think of all the times your dog has rushed to the door even before you’ve picked up their leash.

When we train dogs to use talking buttons, they’re probably learning using operant conditioning to some extent. For example, they learn that pressing a button can lead to a reward.

But in cases where dogs seem to be able to string multiple buttons together to say something advanced, or where they can press the “right” button when asked, they’re likely just responding to their owner’s body language. And they probably wouldn’t be able to replicate the behaviour if a new pet-sitter was making the command.

We need more data

Federico Rossan, director of the Comparative Cognition Lab at UC San Diego, is working on a large project analysing results from dogs using talking buttons.

Although FluentPet (a business that sells pet communication products) is involved, the study is reported to be independent. That means a person who doesn’t have a conflict of interest will analyse and report the results.

Data collection started in late 2020, but so far no evidence has been published. Until then, the best “evidence” we have for these products is anecdotal reporting coming from dog owners who are probably biased (since they’d like to think their dog is very clever).

Read more:
If humans disappeared, what would happen to our dogs?

Could it do any harm?

It matters when we treat our dogs differently depending on what we think they are thinking.

One example is when we assume dogs feel guilty for certain actions. For instance, when you come home and your dog has chewed up your favourite rug, they might look “guilty” as you scold them, but they’re actually just responding to your reaction. Studies have shown dogs can’t experience the human emotion of guilt.

That’s why you shouldn’t punish your dog when you come home to a chewed-up carpet. They won’t associate your yelling or smacking with their action from hours earlier.

The reality is some dogs will simply be more interested in interacting with talking buttons than others. There’s no good reason to think these dogs are therefore smarter than others.

Should I buy talking buttons?

If you can recognise and account for the potential risks mentioned above, then buying talking buttons won’t do any harm to you or your dog (apart from putting a dent in your wallet).

That said, there are myriad ways to communicate with your dog without needing such a device. Chaser the border collie learned how to retrieve 1,022 toys by name without an augmentative device.

However you do it, spending time with your dog using positive reinforcement training will benefit both of you. Dogs are amazing, unique animals with whom we can communicate in all kinds of ways, and they don’t need to understand our language for this.

Susan Hazel receives funding from the Waltham Foundation and is associated with the Dog & Cat Management Board of South Australia, RSPCA South Australia and Animal Therapies Ltd.

Eduardo Fernandez receives funding from the Waltham Foundation.

– ref. Do dog ‘talking buttons’ actually work? Does my dog understand me? Here’s what the science says – https://theconversation.com/do-dog-talking-buttons-actually-work-does-my-dog-understand-me-heres-what-the-science-says-219807

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

As Christmas approaches, so does the challenge of healthy eating and maintaining weight-related goals. The season’s many social gatherings can easily tempt us to indulge in calorie-rich food and celebratory drinks. It’s why we typically gain weight over Christmas and then struggle to take it off for the remainder of the year.

Christmas 2023 is also exacerbating cost-of-living pressures, prompting some to rethink their food choices. Throughout the year, 71% of Australians – or 14.2 million people – adapted their eating behaviour in response to rising costs.

Fortunately, there are some simple, science-backed hacks for the festive season to help you celebrate with the food traditions you love without impacting your healthy eating habits, weight, or hip pocket.

Read more:
When Christmas comes so do the kilos. New research tracks Australians’ yo-yo weight gain

1. Fill up on healthy pre-party snacks before heading out

If your festive season is filled with end-of-year parties likely to tempt you to fill up on finger foods and meals high in fat, salt, and sugar and low in nutritional value, have a healthy pre-event snack before you head out.

Research shows carefully selected snack foods can impact satiety (feelings of fullness after eating), potentially reducing the calories you eat later. High-protein, high-fibre snack foods have the strongest effect: because they take longer to digest, our hunger is satisfied for longer.

So enjoy a handful of nuts, a tub of yoghurt, or a serving of hummus with veggie sticks before you head out to help keep your healthy eating plan on track.

2. Skip the low-carb drinks and enjoy your favourites in moderation

Despite the marketing promises, low-carb alcoholic drinks aren’t better for our health or waistlines.

Many low-carb options have a similar amount of carbohydrates as regular options but lull us into thinking they’re better, so we drink more. A survey found 15% of low-carb beer drinkers drank more beer than they usually would because they believed it was healthier for them.

A typical lager or ale will contain less than 1.5 grams of carbohydrate per 100 ml while the “lower-carb” variety can range anywhere from 0.5 grams to 2.0 grams. The calories in drinks come from the alcohol itself, not the carbohydrate content.

Next time you go to order, think about the quantity of alcohol you’re drinking rather than the carbs. Make sure you sip lots of water in between drinks to stay hydrated, too.

3. Don’t skimp on healthy food for Christmas Day – it’s actually cheaper

There’s a perception that healthy eating is more expensive. But studies show this is a misconception. A recent analysis in Victoria, for example, found following the Australian Dietary Guidelines cost the average family A$156 less a fortnight than the cost of the average diet, which incorporates packaged processed foods and alcohol.

Read more:
Trying to spend less on food? Following the dietary guidelines might save you $160 a fortnight

So when you’re planning your Christmas Day meal, give the pre-prepared, processed food a miss and swap in healthier ingredients:

• swap the heavy, salted ham for leaner and lighter meats such as fresh seafood. Some seafood, such as prawns, is also tipped to be cheaper this year thanks to favourable weather conditions boosting local supplies

• for side dishes, opt for fresh salads incorporating seasonal ingredients such as mango, watermelon, peach, cucumber and tomatoes. This will save you money and ensure you’re eating foods when they’re freshest and most flavoursome

• if you’re roasting veggies, use healthier cooking oils like olive as opposed to vegetable oil, and use flavourful herbs instead of salt

• if there’s an out-of-season vegetable you want to include, look for frozen and canned substitutes. They’re cheaper, and just as nutritious and tasty because the produce is usually frozen or canned at its best. Watch the sodium content of canned foods, though, and give them a quick rinse to remove any salty water

• give store-bought sauces and dressings a miss, making your own from scratch using fresh ingredients.

4. Plan your Christmas food shop with military precision

Before heading to the supermarket to shop for your Christmas Day meal, create a detailed meal plan and shopping list, and don’t forget to check your pantry and fridge for things you already have.

Eating beforehand and shopping with a plan in hand means you’ll only buy what you need and avoid impulse purchasing.

Read more:
Bring a plate! What to take to Christmas lunch that looks impressive (but won’t break the bank)

When you’re shopping, price check everything. Comparing the cost per 100 grams is the most effective way to save money and get the best value. Check prices on products sold in different ways and places, too, such as nuts you scoop yourself versus prepacked options.

5. Don’t skip breakfast on Christmas Day

We’ve all been tempted to skip or have a small breakfast on Christmas morning to “save” the calories for later. But this plan will fail when you sit down at lunch hungry and find yourself eating far more calories than you’d “saved” for.

Research shows a low-calorie or small breakfast leads to increased feelings of hunger, specifically appetite for sweets, across the course of the day.

What you eat for breakfast on Christmas morning is just as important too – choosing the right foods will help you manage your appetite and avoid the temptation to overindulge later in the day.

Studies show a breakfast containing protein-rich foods, such as eggs, will leave us feeling fuller for longer.

So before you head out to the Christmas lunch, have a large, nutritionally balanced breakfast, such as eggs on wholegrain toast with avocado.

At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.

Read more:
5 ways to make Christmas lunch more ethical this year

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

– ref. 5 ways to avoid weight gain and save money on food this Christmas – https://theconversation.com/5-ways-to-avoid-weight-gain-and-save-money-on-food-this-christmas-219114

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fergus Green, Lecturer in Political Theory and Public Policy, UCL

For years large fossil fuel producers — including Australia — have expanded fossil fuel production while maintaining rhetorically that the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But global emissions are overwhelmingly caused by the extraction, transport and burning of fossil fuels. Unless fossil fuels are phased out, emissions will grow and the climate crisis will worsen.

At COP28 climate negotiations in Dubai, which wrapped up last week, this fact finally became the centre of attention. And fossil fuel producers were feeling the pressure — forced to defend their expansion of fossil fuels or change their tune.

Interestingly, Australia seems to be doing the latter, at least rhetorically. While successive governments have worked assiduously to keep fossil fuel production out of the spotlight at the UN talks, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said Australia supports the global phasing out of fossil fuels in energy systems by 2050. Clearly eager to avoid being seen as the villain at the talks, Bowen named Saudi Arabia as the main blocker to an agreement on phasing out fossil fuels.

But the text of COP decisions matters much less than the actions states and companies take. Australia — one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of fossil fuel-based carbon dioxide — is fuelling the problem, not solving it. Currently, Australian companies are moving to expand fossil fuel production: more than 100 major coal, oil and gas projects are in planning, at a cost of around A$200 billion. Some of these are “carbon bombs,” likely to add huge quantities of emissions.

Why Australia faces charges of hypocrisy

The Albanese government has already approved a number of new fossil fuel projects, embracing the fossil fuel expansionism of its conservative predecessors. But now that Australia has declared support for a global phase-out of fossil fuels, it must curtail its own exports or face continued charges of hypocrisy.

How could Australia do that while managing the fallout? Interestingly, Bowen’s rhetoric at COP contained the seeds of an answer: a “phase out of fossil fuels is Australia’s economic opportunity as [a] renewable energy superpower”. In line with this sentiment, Australia should adopt the mission of leading the Asia-Pacific region to a prosperous future by simultaneously phasing out its fossil fuel exports while phasing up its clean energy exports; by becoming a clean energy superpower instead of a dirty energy one.

Doing so would require a dramatic shift in Australia’s international climate posture: from a defensive, parochial, technocratic stance aimed at protecting fossil fuel expansion to proactive, outward-looking and pragmatic leadership; from merely focusing on its own territorial emissions to using all powers at its disposal in its sphere of influence.

Read more:
Hard-fought COP28 agreement suggests the days of fossil fuels are numbered – but climate catastrophe is not yet averted

First a new project ban, then a net zero plan

Our coal and gas exports are entirely within our sovereign control, and give us enormous leverage over our regional trading partners. No one is suggesting stopping fossil fuel exports overnight. But we could start by banning new projects, and then convening our regional partners to work out a plan to phase out existing production and consumption. Australian leadership would involve supporting our neighbours —through investment, trade and aid —to ensure their populations can access energy from zero-carbon sources, just as we’re aspiring to do at home.

Phasing out fossil fuel exports is thus best conceptualised as part of a shift in our foreign and trade policy aimed at securing our and our region’s prosperity against the existential threat of climate change — and amid a global pivot to clean energy. Call it “cooperative decarbonisation”. Viewed in this light, the typical objections to a fossil fuel phase-out in Australia look pathetic.

The weak objections to a phase-out

The first objection claims we are not responsible for the overseas emissions produced from burning our exported coal and gas. This falsely conflates Australia’s national interest in reducing emissions globally with its international legal responsibility for reporting emissions locally.

Nothing in the Paris Agreement prevents a country from taking actions that would reduce or avoid emissions in another country. It is reckless and self-defeating to concern ourselves only with emissions produced on our territory when our power to influence global emissions is so much greater. Let’s hope that Bowen’s rhetorical shift at COP28 signals acceptance of this fact.

The second objection is that leaving our fossil fuels in the ground will not affect global emissions, because if we don’t sell our coal and gas, someone else will. Aside from its immorality (the “drug dealer’s defence”), the objection defies Economics 101: if you reduce supply of a product, its price goes up, causing demand to contract. Other countries might supply some of the shortfall, but Australia is such a big producer that it is implausible to think we could exit the coal and gas markets without dramatically reducing global emissions.

Moreover, it’s shortsighted to think of fossil fuel export policy in isolation from the wider foreign policy choices we face. Australia’s current foreign policy is to promote our coal and gas exports: we literally pay public servants to help multinational companies sell more coal and gas. But if we gave our diplomats the nobler mission of leading our region’s decarbonisation, our leadership would help to make trade in fossil fuels redundant.

The last oft-heard objection is that phasing out fossil fuel production would cost too much. The foreign-owned corporations that produce most of our coal and gas pay little tax and employ relatively few people, while capturing billions of dollars in state and federal government subsidies. Scaling up as a clean energy superpower could bring more economic growth, jobs and tax revenue than would be lost from fossil fuels — especially if we taxed the fossil fuel industry properly on its way out.

Read more:
Hyped and expensive, hydrogen has a place in Australia’s energy transition, but only with urgent government support

Phase-outs can be done: lessons from overseas

Denmark, France, Ireland and Costa Rica are among a number of countries that have foregone new fossil fuel exploration and production opportunities; others are working to phase out existing operations. Doing so is undoubtedly challenging: firms, workers and the communities in which fossil fuel operations are located understandably tend to resist policies that would close their industry.

But government support can smooth the transition. The Spanish government, for instance, negotiated a “just transition agreement” with unions and businesses to phase out coal mining, support affected workers and invest in their communities. My coauthors and I found this strategy actually increased the government’s vote share at a subsequent election in the coal regions.

A phase-out of fossil fuel production is entirely feasible for a country with our resources, skills and diverse economy. The standard objections provide fossil fuel companies, and the politicians they’ve captured, with convenient excuses for cashing in while the planet — and Australia — burns. It’s time, instead, for bold actions that lead us and our region to a prosperous, fossil-free future.

Read more:
COP28 deal confirms what Australia already knows: coal is out of vogue and out of time

Fergus Green is affiliated with the Powering Past Coal Alliance – is a coalition of national and subnational governments, businesses and organisations working to advance the transition from unabated coal power generation to clean energy. He is a member of the Alliance’s Just Transition Expert Group.

– ref. From laggard to leader? Why Australia must phase out fossil fuel exports, starting now – https://theconversation.com/from-laggard-to-leader-why-australia-must-phase-out-fossil-fuel-exports-starting-now-219912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Leuzinger, Professor of Environmental Science, Auckland University of Technology

New Zealand’s per-capita contribution to carbon emissions is very high by international comparison. But so too is its potential to mitigate climate change by planting forests to quickly sequester large amounts of carbon.

There is sometimes passionate debate about how best to do this. Should we continue establishing radiata pine plantations, or focus instead on planting New Zealand native trees?

Arguments for and against each option exist – but there is also a third way that could achieve the best of both worlds: planting radiata pine forests that are not harvested, but instead transitioned over time into native forests through targeted management.

We need to cut emissions drastically. But we also need to remove as much CO₂ from the atmosphere as possible, especially over the next 20 years. A transitional forest model is a powerful way to help achieve this.

Farming carbon using trees

As trees grow they absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere and lock the carbon into wood, leaves, roots and soil.

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) provides income from growing trees to store carbon. It is a key tool for meeting domestic and international climate change targets, including the 2050 target set by the Climate Change Response Act 2002.

A newly planted native forest will absorb approximately 40 tonnes of atmospheric CO₂ per hectare over ten years. By contrast, an exotic radiata pine forest will achieve five to ten times this amount over the same period.

Read more:
Meeting the long-term climate threat takes more than private investment – 10 ways NZ can be smart and strategic

In other words, to absorb a given quantity of carbon during the early stages of reforestation, it will take five to ten times more farmland using natives. Because of this enormous advantage of exotics over natives, there is a place for exotic carbon farming.

Some object to pine planting on purely aesthetic grounds – they just don’t like the look of radiata forests. And we agree there are some places where pine is just not appropriate for the landscape. But the urgency to mitigate climate change means we need to turn as much unprofitable pasture into forest as possible.

Radiata forests are also criticised for being monocultures that lack biodiversity. But the pasture they replace is also a monoculture that contains even less biodiversity. Planting trees on pasture also reduces gross emissions by reducing animal stock and therefore methane emissions.

We can’t plant too many trees

A year of emissions in Aotearoa New Zealand equals 78.8 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent, based on 2020 figures. To offset this for a ten-year period would require planting roughly 20 million hectares of pasture in native trees, then waiting ten years for them to grow.

The total area of Aotearoa is 26.9 million hectares, with 3 million of those being mountains. Therefore, another treeless country of a similar size would be required to fully offset its emissions using native trees alone. Using radiata pine would require 2 to 4 million hectares.

At an individual level, just one return trip from Auckland to London for one person will produce approximately 11 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. To offset this would require planting over a quarter of a hectare (almost an acre) of native trees, and waiting ten years for them to grow.

On current projections, Aotearoa will need to purchase 100 million tonnes of offshore carbon credits to meet its international commitments. According to Treasury calculations, this will cost between NZ$3.3 billion to $23 billion between now and 2030.

Obviously, the country cannot offset all its emissions by planting trees, native or exotic. Reducing emissions in the first place is the priority. But from a climate perspective, we cannot plant too many trees of any kind.

Read more:
We’re burning too much fossil fuel to fix by planting trees – making ‘net zero’ emissions impossible with offsets

Restoring biodiversity over time

One of the criticisms levelled at exotic carbon forests is that the carbon storage is not permanent because of the shorter lifespan of pine. But pine plantations in New Zealand can keep accumulating carbon for at least a century if they’re not harvested.

Also, the carbon storage is permanent if exotic forests are transitioned into self-sustaining native forests. This process occurs naturally, but can and should be accelerated by targeted management.

Because radiata pine needs a lot of light to grow, its own seedlings will not establish beneath its canopy. Therefore, pine will naturally decline over time and
gradually be replaced by native forest, a process that occurs naturally but takes many decades.

Read more:
Cyclone Gabrielle triggered more destructive forestry ‘slash’ – NZ must change how it grows trees on fragile land

To provide crucial structural and species diversity, and to expedite the transition process, native trees requiring plenty of light need to be planted, and pine trees need to be thinned. This is nothing like commercial harvesting, so the problems associated with forestry “slash” do not arise.

Fruiting natives will attract birds and enhance seed dispersal. At the same time, the income from carbon credits through the ETS can be used for further plantings, and also to fund intensive animal pest control – a critical step towards rebuilding native forests.

Eventually, this strategy will provide both permanent carbon storage and carbon capture that continue way beyond a century. But within decades we would also see the return of large areas of highly biodiverse native forests.

Sebastian Leuzinger is a professor of ecology at Auckland University of Technology and occasionally consults for New Zealand Carbon Farming. He has received funding from the Royal Society in the past.

Len Gillman is co-chair of the Waitakere Ranges Pest free Alliance. He has acted as an independent consultant for local government and carbon farmers on climate change mitigation, climate effects mitigation and native forest restoration ecology.

– ref. Planting pine or native forest for carbon capture isn’t the only choice – NZ can have the best of both – https://theconversation.com/planting-pine-or-native-forest-for-carbon-capture-isnt-the-only-choice-nz-can-have-the-best-of-both-217772

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Scholes, Associate Professor and ARC Principal Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University

Are you sure you want Frozen again? You’ve already seen it 20 times!

Do you find your children asking to watch the same TV shows and movies, or play the same video games over and over (and over again)? Perhaps you also find yourself thinking it would be better if they had a more varied screen-time diet.

The good news is, it’s perfectly OK for children to watch and repeat. In fact, it can help them learn.

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

Children learn through repetition

Children have a lot to learn about themselves and the world. A big part of the way they do this is through repetition.

This applies to learning to walk, talk and read. But it can also be said for TV shows, movies and video games with a storyline such as Stardew Valley.

Children may start by learning about the plot. On subsequent viewings they may pick up more details about the characters, the songs, the context or even the subtle twists and turns of the plot.

So this offers children insights into different characters, stories and ideas. These different perspectives offer valuable opportunities for learning about people and the world.

Repeat watching also enables immersion into a make-believe world that provides comfort. Just like adults might enjoy catching up on old episodes of Seinfeld or Friends, or watching Love, Actually each Christmas.

A unique opportunity

When a child watches something over and over, this also opens up unique learning opportunities because they get to know the story so well.

Once a child is very familiar with a storyline, they can have deep discussion to help them think critically about what they are watching, especially once they’ve reached primary-school age.

Together, you can share ideas and consider alternative viewpoints to those offered in the story. Together, you can also question the assumptions in the characters’ actions and the storyline.

This will help your child’s critical thinking and help them evaluate information in the rest of their lives. It can also help them weigh up positive and negative attributes of characters, plots and beliefs that form part of the storyline.

Ultimately, this can help your child learn to reason and make judgements about controversial issues, and hopefully learn to do this in a respectful way.

How can you talk to your kids about their favourite shows?

If you want to have a thorough discussion with your child about their favourite program or game, set aside some time when you are not rushed.

Prepare by watching the program or movie, or playing the game before the discussion. Show excitement at the prospect of this time with your child and be prepared to listen carefully.

It is important for the discussions to be a two-way exchange where you both listen to each other (and not just a parent telling the child what the story is about or alternatively nodding along while the child gives their version).

The trick is to ask questions that do not have one right answer. Many stories bring up issues of ethics, morals, conflict, relationships, social issues and offer insights into the life of others. You could ask your child:

• what they think the message in the story might be? Then ask them to justify their response with evidence from the story

• about alternative perspectives. For example, maybe the movie was about the way someone’s actions affect others (rather than the power of magic or the triumph of goodies over baddies or the importance of family. Or maybe it was all of these things.)

You could also ask:

• why they think character A did B? Then ask them if they agree with the actions or would have done something different themselves. Then ask them to justify their answer.

The aim is to discuss alternative messages and justify the response with examples from the story.

In this way you are helping your child make meaning in their world – a vital skill as they grow up.

So, next time the same show or movie goes on again, relax. It may be annoying for you to hear the same songs or storyline for the 1,000th time, but there are benefits for your child.

Read more:
TV can be educational but social media likely harms mental health: what 70 years of research tells us about children and screens

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Laura Scholes has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Is it OK to let my kids watch the same show over and over again? – https://theconversation.com/is-it-ok-to-let-my-kids-watch-the-same-show-over-and-over-again-218042

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie University

Fifty years ago this week, the first blockbuster of the Australian new wave hit Australian cinemas. Directed by Tim Burstall and starring Graeme Blundell, Alvin Purple was a bawdy sex comedy about an unprepossessing young man who was irresistible to women.

It was a hit, screening for months after its release. A sequel, Alvin Rides Again, quickly followed in 1974, and a short-lived television series aired in 1976.

However, the jiggling flesh and bed-hopping antics of Alvin Purple were probably not what Australian politicians had in mind when they devised policies to create a local film industry in the late 1960s.

A wave of new nationalism

In the wake of global political and economic shifts, including the United Kingdom’s decision to join the European Common Market in 1973, Australia undertook a reevaluation of its national identity. Intellectuals and politicians believed culture, and film in particular, could foster this process and promote Australia to the world in an era of “new nationalism”.

The Holt and Gorton Liberal governments established the Australian Council for the Arts in 1967 and the Australian Film Development Corporation (AFDC) in 1970.

This embrace of government support for the arts was new. Government funding expanded the national significance and box office reach of Australian cinema. The Australian Film Development Corporation was encouraged to back popular, rather than arthouse films, with the aim of growing a commercially viable film industry.

The impact of this investment was quickly felt: while just 17 feature films were made in Australia in the 1960s, more than 150 were made in the 1970s.

Alvin Purple was the first big hit of this new era in Australian film, a standard-bearer of the new nationalism. As with so many images of Australian identity, such as the Anzac and the bushman, the new nationalism was represented by a white bloke: in this case, the Ocker. The Ocker was keen on colourful language, beer and women, in that order.

The Ocker was crucial to the new film industry, just as he had been the new radical Australian theatre of the late 1960s. Many of those involved in theatre would go on to shape Australian film, including Burstall and Blundell.

Australia’s new cinema classification system – which replaced the older system of strict censorship – was the second key ingredient in Australian cinema’s new wave. The Ocker films were almost all bawdy comedies which took advantage of the new R rating for films introduced in 1971. Alvin Purple’s abundant nudity – what one reviewer described as “boobs and pubes” – was one of the reasons it became a hit.

Read more:
Paul Hogan and the myth of the white Aussie bloke

An Aussie sex comedy

In making Alvin Purple, Tim Burstall wanted to create “a sex comedy with […] purely Australian ingredients”.

Alvin Purple is indeed an Australian sex comedy but the joke is on Alvin: despite his view sex is “overrated”, he is bewilderingly irresistible to women of all ages, from screaming schoolgirls to the wife of his school principal, to the psychologist he sees in a bid to avoid sex.

To a generation of Australians raised on The Benny Hill Show (as I was), Alvin Purple looks like just another 70s sex comedy. It was as unpopular with critics as it was a hit with Australian audiences. But dig a little deeper and we can see how the film not only responded to the rise of the women’s movement, but also how it became a touchstone for feminists who were outraged by Australia’s sexist culture.

The central conceit of Alvin Purple – that he is an average bloke who is utterly irresistible to women – was an appealing male fantasy in an era of sexual liberation. Almost every female character in the film wants to have sex with Alvin. Director Burstall admitted to Cleo magazine in 1975 that Alvin Purple was a fantasy, “and if you want to get heavy, a male chauvinist fantasy”.

In the film’s opening scene, Alvin is riding a tram and, looking around at the alluringly dressed female passengers, complains:

How can you keep your mind off [sex] when it’s being flung at you every moment of the day?

Indeed, the women around him seem to invite his objectifying gaze: one woman wears a t-shirt reading “women should be obscene and not heard”, and Alvin fantasises about ripping another woman’s shirt open to expose her bare breasts. The film conflated the sexual revolution with women’s liberation.

For some Australian feminists, Alvin Purple was a symbol of Australian sexism. In 1974, two feminist protesters picketed the set of Burstall’s next film with placards reading “smash sexist movies” and “Burstall sexist shit”.

Sandra Hall, reviewing the film for The Bulletin described it as

cheerfully sexist […] there is flesh everywhere but the motivations are made of cardboard and the women are universally stupid.

In spite of, or perhaps because of this, Alvin Purple remains one of Australia’s highest-grossing films of all time. It is one of only three films made in the 1970s to make it into Screen Australia’s list of 100 top grossing local films.

Alvin Purple demonstrated Australians were ready to embrace local stories on their cinema screens. But the film’s legacy is complicated by its thin and stereotypical representation of women.

We cannot simply write the film’s sexism off as a product of a different time when women were criticising it for that very reason when it was released. Alvin still placed men at the centre of Australian stories, and that’s something we’re still wrestling with, 50 years on.

Read more:
Don’s Party at 50: an achingly real portrayal of the hapless Australian middle-class voter

Michelle Arrow receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Alvin Purple at 50: how ‘boobs and pubes’ led Australian screen’s sexual (and sexist) revolution – https://theconversation.com/alvin-purple-at-50-how-boobs-and-pubes-led-australian-screens-sexual-and-sexist-revolution-218420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Kyron, Research Fellow, School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia

Traditional approaches to preventing suicide have focused on “who is at risk?” The aim is to identify an individual and to help them get support.

But that approach doesn’t seem to be working. Australia’s suicide rates have remained stubbornly high. There was an increase in the rate of suicides from 2012 to 2022.

We often do not know who is most vulnerable to suicide, and if we do, we struggle to efficiently target resources to them when they need it most. So we need a fresh approach.

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question all this time. Rather than asking “who is at risk?” we should also ask “when is a person at risk?”

We know depression increases suicide risk, but on a given day most depressed people will not consider suicide. We need to know when a person’s risk has risen to help them access support immediately.

Our preliminary research conducted in a Perth psychiatric hospital, and published recently, suggests this might be worth pursuing.

Read more:
Focusing on people at ‘high risk’ of suicide has failed as a suicide prevention strategy

What we did

We conducted a “proof of concept” study involving inpatients at the psychiatric hospital Perth Clinic. Patients were invited to complete questionnaires on iPads in each room. Over more than a decade, more than 20,000 patients participated in the study, resulting in about 350,000 completed questionnaires.

We then examined questionnaire data from 110 inpatients who attempted suicide in the hospital over an average 25-day period. These patients were typically female (78%) and had a diagnosis of major depression or an anxiety disorder. They were 14 to 77 years old.

Of note, nurses had rated roughly half as having “no” to “low risk” of suicide, based on interviews with patients.

We then looked for patterns in the data to see if we could see who and when someone was at increased short-term risk of attempting suicide.

Read more:
How do I do ‘suicide watch’ at home?

What we found

We found that on the day of a suicide attempt, a person’s perception they were a burden to friends and family increased greatly.

The day before a suicide attempt, patients reported an increased loss of hope in their lives. They perceived they could not change things that mattered to them.

We used this data to develop an algorithm to monitor spikes in these and other key risk factors that may signal increased short-term risk of suicide attempts.

This algorithm, now live in the hospital, alerts staff to at-risk patients to facilitate targeted and immediate interventions when the risk of attempted suicide is at its highest.

Read more:
How to ask someone you’re worried about if they’re thinking of suicide

How can we apply these findings?

Key signals we identified as indicators of short-term risk of suicide – perceptions of burden or hopelessness – are often not matched by reality.

While people may think they are a burden, their friends and family members disagree. Far from being burdened, those friends and family are the ones who struggle to know how and when to give the assistance they desperately want to provide. Likewise, a perception of hopelessness is often transient and doesn’t always reflect reality.

So clinical staff can work with patients to help them re-evaluate these misguided beliefs, and to collaboratively develop coping strategies.

For instance, a core belief of “I am a burden” is replaced by “I wouldn’t think a loved one was a burden if they were suffering.”

Read more:
What makes a good psychologist or psychiatrist and how do you find one you like?

Where to now?

The aim now is to trial our approach in a larger number of psychiatric patients, across multiple sites across Australia, to see if this gives staff enough time to intervene and prevent imminent suicides.

We’re also hoping to test our methods in the community. This includes predicting the risk of suicide among school students, and remotely monitoring people at risk of suicide who present to primary care, such as their GP.

For instance, we are working with GPs to extend Perth Clinic’s daily monitoring system to track the symptoms of GP patients between appointments. Through this approach the GPs can monitor the effectiveness of medications or identify periods of heightened risk that can be addressed at future appointments.

Our approach is just one aspect of suicide prevention. We also need to address the complex web of societal, socioeconomic and other factors that contribute to the type of distress we see in people contemplating suicide.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call 000.

Andrew Page is a research consultant to Perth Clinic where the research was conducted. The research has been supported by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Scheme where Perth Clinic was the industry partner.

Michael Kyron 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. Have we been trying to prevent suicides wrongly all this time? – https://theconversation.com/have-we-been-trying-to-prevent-suicides-wrongly-all-this-time-218022