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

This is the text of the House of Representatives Speaker’s Lecture, delivered at Parliament House on Monday, October 30

We have a distrustful and disillusioned electorate, a professionalised political system that, however, frequently alienates the sort of people we should be attracting into parliament, a public service that has been found wanting, an excessively secretive approach to information and accountability, media that are too often driven by clicks and ratings, and social media that debase political discourse more often than elevate it. All this invites the questions: is our democracy failing us and how can it do better?

Today’s voters don’t think much of the political system as it is operating, or its participants. Trust in politicians and political institutions is low. Some voters are hostile to politics and those in it; a lot are unengaged, except at elections.

Many among the young feel they’ve got the worst of the generational stick, with expensive education bills and home ownership frequently out of reach. Time-poor, cost-and-debt-burdened families are impatient with the gamesmanship that often dominates politics and the way it is reported. Older voters look back with what may be a false memory of the way things were.

The electorate is changing as the baby boomers retire and die. So are political attitudes and values. In the next two federal parliamentary terms, millennials (now aged 27-42) and generation Z (currently 11-26) combined will become the biggest voting group.

What’s happening to people’s standard of living remains central. But debate around components of that is changing, as the proportion of renters increases and pressure mounts for the big cities to become denser rather than more sprawling. Other issues have reconfigured. Mental health has risen in the hierarchy of health concerns. Gender and diversity issues have come to the fore in political debate. Against this background, new pressures are coming on our political system.

In this lecture I’ll canvass political parties, parliament, the public service, accountability, and the media. The media are not strictly OF the political system but they are certainly IN it, very centrally, as messengers and often as participants and advocates.

Trust – hard to get, easy to lose

Let me start with trust, because it is central to the rest of the system – to whether people think it’s worth being involved, their faith in governments and their decisions, in parliament and in the public service, and their confidence in what they see and read in the media.

For an individual leader, as former premier Anna Bligh was fond of quoting, “trust arrives on a tortoise and leaves on a galloping horse”. More generally, in western democracies political trust has been declining over decades, with some cycles within that. Australia reflects the international pattern.

Many factors are at work: the mood of the times, people’s circumstances and their expectations, the behaviour of political participants, and the changing nature and coverage of an all-pervasive media. Political trust is notably lower than, for example, our trust in experts, which is high. In the pandemic we saw an uptick in trust in political institutions and political leaders. In threatening times, people turned to recognised institutions and those in charge. As the pandemic subsided, so did the trust.

The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer found, “Australia is already on a path to polarisation, driven by a series of macro forces that are weakening the country’s social fabric and creating increasing division in society. This year’s report finds that almost half of Australians (45%) say the nation is more divided today than in the past – with the rich and powerful identified as a major dividing force (72%), followed by hostile foreign governments (69%), journalists (51%) and government leaders (49%).”

Mark Evans, co-ordinator of the Democratic Audit of Australia at Charles Sturt University, sums up the trust deficit this way:

In general, Australians are great champions of democratic values but are distrusting of people in government and have limited confidence in the ability of governments of whatever form to address major public policy concerns.

We can, perhaps, place “trust”, “scepticism” and “alienation” along a continuum. For a well-functioning democracy we need people to have a fundamental belief in the system, the integrity of its component parts, and how those who operate it behave.

On the other hand, people should be sceptical enough to question the system, advocate for major or minor reforms, and call out faults or dysfunction in it. It’s a balance. If scepticism moves into total cynicism and to alienation, and that takes wide hold, a democratic polity will lurch into disaster. On the other hand, trust without the vigilance of a healthy degree of scepticism will erode the muscle of democracy.

Decline of the major parties, rise of “community candidates”

Two notable features of the 2022 election – leaving aside its central feature of a change of government – were the extremely low votes of Labor and the Coalition, and the record number of crossbenchers elected to the House of Representatives.

At that election, the Coalition and Labor between them mustered only a little over two-thirds (68.3%) of the primary vote. Sixteen crossbenchers (including four Greens) were elected (the crossbench later rose to 17 with the defection of a Nationals member).

Recent decades have seen a big decline in support for the major parties. As for the crossbenchers, while over the years there have been a few in the House, and at times they’ve been important (as during the Gillard minority government), the current batch is something new, in numbers and nature.

Six (all women) are the so-called “teals”. (Seven if you count Zali Steggall, who was already there.) Not a party, the teals can nevertheless be seen as a loose “network”. They campaigned on common issues (climate, integrity, more equality for women), and received financial backing and advice from the Climate 200 fund, founded by Simon Holmes à Court. The teals, and some of the other independents, are part of a wider phenomenon of “community candidates”.

The major parties, Labor and Liberal, struggle to appeal. Their grip on voters has loosened with the decline of the old class-based, ideological political divide. The voting pattern has realigned, with many wealthier, highly educated voters shifting to the progressive side of politics, and the Liberals pitching to the lower-income, outer suburban voters (“Howard’s battlers”, “Tony’s tradies”).

Over the decades the memberships of the big parties have fallen dramatically. Fewer people are “joiners” these days. Very few indeed, apart from aspirants for office, have time or desire to attend usually-boring party branch meetings, for little reward.

The major parties give their rank and file members little that’s meaningful: even power over preselections is often overridden in practice, and the parties are faction-ridden. Identity politics has brought a new dimension to activism, including within parties, with people joining because of a particular issue or identification, rather than the party’s broader agenda.

Today’s Labor and Liberal backbenchers are much more quiescent than a few decades ago. Labor celebrates its more diverse caucus, but that doesn’t extend to a diversity of views at caucus meetings. One might have expected a debate after the referendum result – it didn’t happen. A caucus meeting with more than two questions can be considered lively. The Coalition party room is usually also placid.

Those ordinary people who are attracted to politics (but don’t aspire to be MPs) want a feeling of agency. Today’s political activists can be mobilised by specific causes, by the prospect of being heard, by the opportunity to feel personally involved and making a difference. The use of the term “voice” by community candidate groups captures the sentiment.

These activists also often want politics to be different, to be better. In some areas, they want to make the system sit up and take notice of their electorate. If a seat is not marginal, both sides might overlook it when it comes to handouts, actual or promised.

This was a factor in the seat of Indi, held by independents since 2013. Some people enjoy getting behind an inspiring local candidate and feeling they are doing something worthwhile, which accounted for the armies of volunteers who backed teal candidates in 2022.

All this can be seen in both positive and negative terms. A big crossbench of vocal people willing to speak out on many issues refreshes the parliamentary system. On the other hand, the hollowing out of the major parties is a seriously retrograde development.

These are the “parties of government”, the routes to power for those who will become ministers and, ultimately, for prime ministers. When they, and the wider political scene, are unattractive to so many potentially good candidates, that will ultimately take a toll on the quality of government we get.

Attracting potential high flyers to their ranks is a major challenge for the big parties. It may sound elitist but these parties do need to get into parliament people who can reach the top ranks of a ministry. Yet the best candidate to win, especially in a marginal seat, increasingly can be the so-called “local champion”, who will be a good representative for their area but may go no further.

As well, given politics has become so toxic and intrusive, many talented, well-qualified people would prefer to fly high in other fields. A view confirmed by what they see of parliament on the nightly news.

Parliament: a mixed picture

It’s too easy to romanticise the past; parliament was always a bear pit. But now, thanks to televising, we see its inglorious detail. Speaker Milton Dick daily must wage a herculean battle in question time, which over the years has resisted efforts to make it more productive and civilised.

Visitors who watch this hour and a bit from the public gallery are often totally disillusioned by the spectacle. I recall a few years ago talking to a group of community leaders visiting Canberra who’d observed question time earlier in the day: they were outraged. “What can we do?” they asked. I could only suggest they contact their local MP.

In 2021 a parliamentary inquiry reported on what changes should be made. In his foreword to the report, Liberal Ross Vasta wrote:

While opinions differed on how question time could be improved, the need for improvement was conveyed clearly from every quarter. In particular, enhanced accountability, better questions and answers and a higher standard of behaviour were sought.

Any improvement has been marginal. This government, like the last, has its backbenchers fire off “Dorothy Dixers”, which can be summarised as inviting ministers to say what a good job the government is doing. While the opposition has the opportunity to ask incisive questions, in practice it is often just looking for TV grabs and, anyway, ministers seldom attempt to genuinely answer questions from the other side.

The larger crossbench has probably produced a few more questions actually seeking information (and the government is very polite to the teals). But mostly, I have to say, question time is pretty useless.

However, there is an important qualification to that damning judgement. When a minister is under pressure, question time can be potent. We saw this in recent months with Transport Minister Catherine King and Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney. These encounters can be painful to watch, and not for the faint-hearted to endure. Ministers sometimes complain the attacks amount to bullying. Another interpretation is that ministers are being held publicly accountable.

There have been various attempts at promoting a so-called “kinder, gentler” parliament, including from the crossbench in the Gillard years – and we remember how that went. After one fracas this year, teal MP Kylea Tink called out the bad behaviour, including saying an opposition MP had aggressively challenged her over how she was voting in a division during a particularly unruly question time. Tink told the house: “I do not feel proud of the way my workplace was represented yesterday. And, quite frankly, I did not feel safe.”

Read more:
Word from The Hill: A wild and badly behaved parliamentary fortnight

There is one obvious obstacle in trying to improve parliamentary behaviour, particularly at question time. That is, an opposition might decide its best strategy is to cause havoc. This can be an effective tactic, but it won’t win the respect of the public.

In relation to more general behaviour in the parliamentary workplace, various inquiries and activity following the allegations from former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins have resulted in reforms and improvements.

Some aspects of the parliament do excel, and we should not overlook that. The committee system, notably in the Senate, has grown in importance. While some committee work amounts to little more than going through the partisan motions, in other cases the efforts can be first-rate.

The Senate estimates committees, which in theory examine appropriations but in practice range much further, provide a degree of check on secretive governments, including the opportunity to question bureaucrats (who fear, even hate, these interrogations).

This year parliamentarians in various committee hearings did remarkable digging on PwC and the other consultancies; they also put strong pressure on Qantas, as well as delving into the government’s performance in rejecting the bid for Qatar Airways to be allowed more flights. Committee work gives the backbenchers involved a chance to shine. Labor’s Senator Deb O’Neill, the Greens’ Barbara Pocock, and the Nationals’ Bridget McKenzie have done notable work recently.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Transport Minister Catherine King struggles to find a landing strip amid Qatar turbulence

But more generally, too often backbenchers – in their parliamentary role – find themselves foot soldiers following orders, or rather, talking points. Hear one on a topic, and you’ve heard them all. Frequently that goes for ministers too, when they are speaking outside their own area.

Top-down control means all ministers receive “talking points” on everything that is or might be in the news. Given the government floods the media with ministers, and every minister is likely to be asked about anything in the day’s news, regardless of most of it being outside their portfolio, “talking points” provide their security blankets. They just have to absorb and repeat them. Hence those embarrassing TV clips of several ministers parroting the same words.

A public service that needs to get back to basic values

The Albanese government came to power promising to revitalise a public service that had lost capability and independence and was demoralised under the Morrison government. Maybe it will, though it’ll be years before we can judge. But it wasn’t just the attitude of the former government that dragged the public service down. It’s a much longer-term, complicated story.

The advisory process has become more competitive over the decades. Since the early 1970s, there’s been the rise and rise of the ministerial office, with its powerful and sometimes pesky staffers, who have special access to ministerial ears. There has also been the rise of a plethora of advocacy groups and the emergence of many specialist well-resourced think tanks.

In recent years the pitches from the consultancy firms have found extensive favour with governments anxious to outsource. Also, in a public service that has lost much of its prestige, rising talent is easily tempted into well-rewarded private sector positions, especially in those high-paying consultancies.

Back in the day, it was the Keating government that put top public servants onto contracts, making them literally and psychologically more vulnerable. Former public service commissioner Andrew Podger wrote recently that:

the contract system for secretaries, which means they are constantly under an implicit threat of losing their jobs, is contributing to excessive willingness to please.

And the modern doctrine of the need for the bureaucracy to be more “responsive” to its political masters has changed the dynamic in the relationship between ministers and their bureaucrats. Many ministers look for excessive compliance in their public service advisers. Anyway, with the news and political cycles becoming ever faster, bureaucrats inevitably get caught up in this cycle, as they service their bosses, who require instant (and often politically tailored) responses.

Many public servants are, to be blunt, meek in the face of their political masters. Those in the top jobs may have been chosen with at least half an eye to their political orientation. As their contracts come up for renewal, some may become more cautious. Others may just want to keep out of trouble, having in mind a possible later private-sector career.

This year the detail of three scandals have cast the public service in a bad light. The Robodebt royal commission’s report documented how senior bureaucrats had acted reprehensibly, variously to please ministers or their bureaucratic bosses, or because they were fearful of speaking out.

The very different revelations about how the public service has become enmeshed with the big consultancies have highlighted the extent to which the bureaucracy has been, in effect, compromised.

Partly the fault lies with government decisions to prefer outsourcing on many fronts, not just for delivery but for advice. But partly, too, the public service became complicit in a mutual back-scratching operation, with bureaucrats jumping easily to lucrative jobs in firms they had dealt with.

The emergence in the media of the texts sent by the secretary of the Home Affairs Department, Mike Pezzullo, to a Liberal insider close to then prime ministers Turnbull and Morrison, raises a very different issue. This was an extraordinary case of a departmental head dramatically inserting himself into the political process in pursuit of his own bureaucratic and policy agenda.

Some bureaucrats always play the politics behind the scenes or go out of their way to please their masters. But the indictment of bureaucrats over Robodebt is a huge wake-up call about a malaise in public service culture. The out-of-control use of consultancies, now being reined in, weakened the service’s ability to do its job. The Pezzullo affair goes to the heart of how top bureaucrats should behave.

Read more:
View from The Hill: ‘Player’ Mike Pezzullo undone by power play

A public service that lapses in terms of its capability, values, behaviour, or all three, has obvious implications for the policy process, as well as for the integrity of government. In the Audit Office’s 2022-23 annual report, the Auditor-General had some sharp words for public servants:

Upholding the ethical values of the public sector requires compliance with all relevant laws and acting in a way that is right and proper as well as technically and legally correct.

It’s a statement of the obvious. Its shock impact is that he had to write it.

Transparency and accountability – an opaque story

Governments (or perhaps it is more accurate to say, alternative governments) preach the virtues of transparency and accountability but practise the habits of information control and secrecy.

The Canberra press gallery has great physical access to the executive government because it is housed in the same building – this Parliament House – and can roam the ministerial corridors. Over the years, however, governments have found extra ways to limit and control access to government information. This ranges across a number of fronts.

When I first came to Canberra in the early 1970s, even a junior reporter could contact senior public servants and, if they came to trust you, they would talk to you on a “background” basis. This was not a matter of “leaks”, though of course there were those on occasion. I am referring here to the intricacies of policy, information that was very helpful for understanding and reporting.

Governments of both sides have closed down this access, and beefed up the PR sections of departments which are, mostly, worse than useless. The overpopulated PR section of the Defence Department is a standing joke with the media.

Freedom-of-information legislation is supposed to further accountability. But the former FOI commissioner, Leo Hardiman, who earlier this year resigned only a year into his five-year term, has recited a litany of issues with how that system operates. He detailed to a Senate committee how he confronted a lack of resources and cultural issues; in the end he decided he could not achieve the reforms necessary to make the system work properly.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: It can be a battle to get information from the Albanese government

Former senator Rex Patrick, who in his post-parliamentary career is pursuing the cause of open government (with some private sponsorship), said in his submission to the Senate inquiry into the FOI law that a “common theme is risk aversion and timidity on the part of many FOI decision makers, especially when responding to applications for documents that may have political sensitivity”.

Patrick argued these officials are “generally not overtly political” in their work, although some do note the direction of the political wind. But, Patrick says:

many see the release of information as potentially risky – not to the national interest, but in terms of political blowback and anger from Ministers and Departmental Senior Executives. In these circumstances delay, excessive and unjustified redactions and reliance on lengthy review processes to duck shove responsibility are commonplace.

On other fronts, routinely governments baulk at giving information that might embarrass them. Examples this year have included continued secrecy, on “security” grounds, of passenger details and destination of VIP flights. The secrecy around the flights was imposed in the latter days of the Coalition government, driven in part by the police, but it flies in the face of what was done for five decades and seems to have little serious justification.

The government repeatedly refuses Senate demands for documents on a range of issues, and takes forever to provide answers (or non-answers) to Senate questions on notice.

To balance the ledger, it should be acknowledged the Auditor-General does a good (though necessarily limited) job. The National Anti-Corruption Commission has been an overdue development, though not without some secrecy issues in its operation.

The media – the clicks revolution

I never thought I would say this, but sometimes you can have too much information. Circulation was always important to newspapers, ratings to TV. But the digital age has brought the “clicks revolution”, so the popularity of individual stories can be readily and immediately measured. And that has implications for political coverage.

It means even serious media outlets will lean to the popular, while the dull and worthy (but often important) subjects struggle for readership. Even these days, a story about Scott Morrison is a no-brainer when it comes to clicks. Voters showed they’d had enough of his prime ministership, but online readers continue to lap up references to him. Reportage about trade policy? Not so much. If clicks become KPIs for judging journalists, that’s very bad.

There are some other developments in the media over recent years that affect coverage, for the worse. The traditional media have become leaner, as their business models have been compromised by the digital age, and the squeeze on journalist numbers has hit, in particular, some of the specialist reporters.

So you have fewer eyes on some crucial policy areas, especially eyes that have been on them for quite a long time. Fewer specialists adds to the trend to look at policy through a very political lens, because the stories are often written by generalist political reporters and, as well, because it’s easier to do them that way and they get more readers.

Recent decades have also seen more extensive “opinion journalism”. This has the advantage for media companies of being relatively cheap and attracting readers, viewers and listeners. The big name opinion journalists build “brands” and often become shouty and extreme in their bid to attract audiences. Other manifestations of the growth of opinion journalism include shows where journalists talk to other journalists, and the intrusion of more opinion into the way the news is reported.

Today’s media are polarised which, together with the growth of social media, contributes to a wider phenomenon of many people living in “silos” in terms of where they get their information and what information they choose to consume. Even some journalists choose to inhabit silos, avoiding certain media. Social media can be the ultimate in “siloing”; for some people, it also removes all inhibitions to behaving badly.

Read more:
Young Australians increasingly get news from social media, but many don’t understand algorithms

The downsides of polarisation and silos are obvious. Some media consumers no longer operate in a limited “common square” of information. Debate becomes more fractured, angry and extreme. Tolerance is in shorter supply.

Perhaps we should add there are small offsets to the negatives in this polarisation. Media stretching across the spectrum from left to right contributes to diversity, with one end picking up on issues the other end prefers to ignore. But I reiterate, there is a cost and I think the negatives outweigh the positives. And while polarisation has added to diversity, the concentrated ownership of Australia’s print media, which is overwhelmingly in Murdoch hands, is a serious distortion of diversity.

Research suggests the consumers don’t feel well served by the media. Trust is low. Journalists are near the bottom when people are asked to rate occupations (although that’s nothing new).

The latest Digital News Report Australia, prepared by the University of Canberra, found what consumers want (or say they want – the two are not always the same) is “positive news, watchdog journalism, and news stories that suggest solutions”.

Women’s interest in news is at a record low. News avoidance is high, driven largely by a sense of being overwhelmed by information overload and the amount of conflict and negativity in the coverage. There are messages in the data about the need to change the way politics is conducted and reported if we are to engage more people in public debate, particularly young women who are turning their backs on mainstream news.

The parliamentary press gallery has a special place in the media when we are assessing how well political participants are held to account, and thus our democracy served. We’re looking at something of a battleground – governments, and the other political players, doing their best to control messages and optics; the media trying to push through the gate. It’s a lecture in itself.

Each PM brings his or her own style and skill set to mustering the media. And their own little tricks. Just one example from Anthony Albanese’s tool box. At his news conferences, he limits journalists to a single question, so an individual can’t pursue a dodgy or evasive answer. Given various other journalists have their own priorities, there is often no follow-up. Well, you say, one question per person sounds fair. Equally, however, it is a method of control, wearing a cloak of fairness.

How well did the system serve us in the Voice referendum?

The Voice referendum this year put our democratic system through its paces, and different judgements will be made about how it performed. For many, the campaign was bruising, because of the nature of the issue. Those for whom it was difficult include some Indigenous journalists, who were subject to special pressures and in some cases, racism.

The referendum showed many people are unfamiliar with some basics of the political system, especially the Constitution. Sharp questions were raised about so-called misinformation and disinformation. The “yes” advocates complained strongly about that. Remember, this was the first referendum campaign in which we’ve had the full play of social media.

I might say that I don’t like this terminology of misinformation and disinformation, which we have taken from abroad. I would prefer to talk about, firstly, wrong or misleading information. That falls into two categories – some of it deliberately misleading, and some inadvertently so. Beyond that, there is contested information – where one side makes a claim the other rejects, but which can’t be definitely established or disproved, or at least not at the time.

In the referendum, we saw a good deal of dispute over whether some points were contested claims or mis/dis-information. The Voice campaign has given more impetus to those pushing for truth in political advertising legislation. Special Minister of State Don Farrell is looking at this, but is aware of the difficulties it presents.

Even more contentious, however, is the legislation the government already has in the public arena to crack down on “misinformation and disinformation” on the internet. The move has attracted many critics, including eminent constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey, one of the advocates for the Voice.

In the internet age, there are good reasons to try to stop the spread of misleading information. But at some point you run up against the right to free speech. And then, as we saw in the Voice debate, there is that fine line between “misleading” information and “contested” information.

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Conclusion: a few modest suggestions

So, we come back to the question: is the political system letting the public down? The answer, I think, is yes, on many fronts, although we should acknowledge the picture is never black or white. We do have a robust democracy, a “clean” voting system, strong institutions, freedom of expression, various checks and balances, vigorous media. Our compulsory voting system, while flawed in theory by denying people the right to opt out, is a gem in practice, in pushing our politics towards a broad centre.

But from what I have canvassed, I think it’s clear the system needs renovations.

Let me suggest a few very modest ones.

1. The main parties should allow and encourage their backbenchers to express their individual voices more, internally and in public. Labor MPs should be able to cross the floor without being automatically expelled. This would on occasion attract media headlines of “split” and “division”, but it would contribute positively to the policy process and to the regard voters had for their MPs.

The parties should also tone down the factionalism.

They should broaden their search for talent.

And, while it’s a hard balance in our adversarial system, the voters would appreciate greater signs of across-the-aisle co-operation, rather than what frequently comes across as an unremitting diet of conflict for the sake of it.

1. Individual politicians should respond to the public’s desire for better, more courteous, behaviour. If they wouldn’t want their kids to shout insults in class, they shouldn’t shout them in the House. Perhaps – and I am only half joking – the Speaker could arrange for an annual register of those he’s had to toss out of the House for bad behaviour, so voters could check on their local MP.

2. Public servants should go back to core values, to being more frank, fearless and robust in dealing with ministers and with each other. The Thodey inquiry notwithstanding, it’s perhaps worth discussing whether there should be a royal commission into the service – half a century after the Coombs royal commission.

3. The freedom-of-information regime and other mechanisms for accountability should be overhauled and strengthened.

4. Governments should trust senior public servants to speak directly to the media, to better inform the reporting of policy.

5. Media organisations should devote more staff and resources to monitoring important policy areas, regardless of whether they attract “clicks”. They should also take note of the public’s desire for less wall-to-wall negativity. Once again, it is a matter of balance.

6. Our schools should ensure students emerge with a basic knowledge of the democratic system, how it does and should operate, and the values on which it rests.

I want to end on a positive note, despite the criticisms and weaknesses I’ve canvassed. We do compare well to like democracies. The problems of the system call for reform, not despair.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: is the political system letting down the Australian public? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-is-the-political-system-letting-down-the-australian-public-215790

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Enzo Palombo, Professor of Microbiology, Swinburne University of Technology

A condition dubbed “fried rice syndrome” has caused some panic online in recent days, after the case of a 20-year-old who died in 2008 was resurfaced on TikTok.

“Fried rice syndrome” refers to food poisoning from a bacterium called Bacillus cereus, which becomes a risk when cooked food is left at room temperature for too long.

The 20-year-old college student died after reportedly eating spaghetti that he cooked, left out of the fridge, and then reheated and ate five days later.

Although death is rare, B. cereus can cause gastrointestinal illness if food isn’t stored properly. Here’s what to know and how to protect yourself.

What is ‘fried rice syndrome’?

Baccilus cereus is a common bacterium found all over the environment. It begins to cause problems if it gets into certain foods that are cooked and not stored properly.

Starchy foods like rice and pasta are often the culprits. But it can also affect other foods, like cooked vegetables and meat dishes.

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Certain bacteria can produce toxins. The longer food that should be refrigerated is stored at room temperature, the more likely it is these toxins will grow.

B. cereus is problematic because has a trick up its sleeve that other bacteria don’t have. It produces a type of cell called a spore, which is very resistant to heating. So while heating leftovers to a high temperature may kill other types of bacteria, it might not have the same effect if the food is contaminated with B. cereus.

These spores are essentially dormant, but if given the right temperature and conditions, they can grow and become active. From here, they begin to produce the toxins that make us unwell.

What are the symptoms?

The symptoms of infection with B. cereus include diarrhoea and vomiting. In fact, there are two types of B. cereus infection: one is normally associated with diarrhoea, and the other with vomiting.

Illness tends to resolve in a few days, but people who are vulnerable, such as children or those with underlying conditions, may be more likely to need medical attention.

Because the symptoms are similar to those of other gastrointestinal illnesses, and because people will often get gastro and not seek medical attention, we don’t have firm numbers for how often B. cereus occurs. But if there’s an outbreak of food poisoning (linked to an event, for example) the cause may be investigated and the data recorded.

We do know B. cereus is not the most common cause of gastro. Other bugs such as E. coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter are probably more common, along with viral causes of gastro, such as norovirus.

That said, it’s still worth doing what you can to protect against B. cereus.

How can people protect themselves?

Leftovers should be hot when they need to be hot, and cold when they need to be cold. It’s all about minimising the time they spend in the danger zone (at which toxins can grow). This danger zone is anything above the temperature of your fridge, and below 60°C, which is the temperature to which you should reheat your food.

After cooking a meal, if you’re going to keep some of it to eat over the following days, refrigerate the leftovers promptly. There’s no need to wait for the food to cool.

Also, if you can, break a large batch up into smaller portions. When you put something in the fridge, it takes time for the cold to penetrate the mass of the food, so smaller portions will help with this. This will also minimise the times you’re taking the food out of the fridge.

Read more:
Health Check: when should you throw away leftovers?

As a general guide, you can follow the two hour/four hour rule. So if something has been out of the fridge for up to two hours, it’s safe to put it back. If it’s been out for longer, consume it then and then throw away the leftovers. If it’s been out for longer than four hours, it starts to become a risk.

The common adage of food safety applies here: if in doubt, throw it out.

It’s also worth keeping in mind the general principles of food hygiene. Before preparing food, wash your hands. Use clean utensils, and don’t cross-contaminate cooked food with raw food.

Enzo Palombo 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 is ‘fried rice syndrome’? A microbiologist explains this type of food poisoning – and how to avoid it – https://theconversation.com/what-is-fried-rice-syndrome-a-microbiologist-explains-this-type-of-food-poisoning-and-how-to-avoid-it-216536

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Johnson, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

A pink glow is shining on the faces of enthusiastic students as they tend to plants in purpose-built grow boxes for space stations.

These students are the first in Australia to experience Growing Beyond Earth – a schools citizen science program from NASA and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in the United States.

In Australia, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria is working with the La Trobe Institute for Agriculture and Food, and Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools. The educational initiative ties into the Australian curriculum and gives students a unique introduction to gardening through science.

In this project, students grow plants in controlled conditions to test if they would be suitable for NASA missions, to help feed a future cadre of astronauts.

Plants evolved on Earth, so they might not grow so well in space. Before we start sending plants “off-world” to the Moon and Mars, we need to test their suitability. That way we can select the best for success.

Read more:
Humans are going back to the Moon, and beyond – but how will we feed them?

Gardening on the Moon and beyond

The NASA Artemis mission aims to establish a long-term presence on the Moon and send astronauts to Mars. If all goes to plan, humans will be living and working on the Moon by 2030.

Currently, astronauts on the International Space Station rely on a pre-packaged diet that is frequently resupplied. But in the long term, space gardens providing fresh, edible plants will be essential to maintain astronaut health and wellbeing.

For Growing Beyond Earth, students build the “growth habitat” inside a box roughly the size of a large microwave fitted with LED lights and sensors.

Then they plant the seeds of a leafy green called misome, which grows reliably and quickly – both on and off-Earth.

The students gain valuable experience in running their own experiments, including planting the seeds in pots and using growth media that match the NASA Vegetable Production System (Veggie).

They monitor growth and water use, making notes about plant size, colour and fitness. Students learn what plants need, how fast they can grow, what can be recycled and how much can be harvested. Also, would anyone want to eat it?

Students can extend their skills in a second experiment to test other plant types. So far, nearly 200 plants have been trialled and several new candidate plants, including pak choi, cress and kale, were found suitable.

Supporting the curriculum and connecting to nature

Growing Beyond Earth ties into the Australian curriculum through “science as a human endeavour”. This relates to the role of science in society, including how scientific knowledge influences people’s lives and can be used to make decisions.

A growing body of evidence shows student-led, activity-based projects lead to better learning outcomes. When students are exposed to real-world content, they remember it better, earn better grades and improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. These students can then apply their knowledge to new situations.

Another important part of the project is the connection with plants and nature. The positive effects of nature on wellbeing came to the fore during COVID lockdowns. Studies show indoor plants helped reduce mental stress during isolation, and people chose to garden to connect with nature, release stress and address issues with food supply.

Nature has a strong influence on student learning too. Greater academic achievement and personal development comes from connection to the environment. For example, students in classrooms that have a view of nature report lower levels of stress and perform better on concentration tests compared to windowless rooms.

Better learning could also simply come from being in a good mood. Students are more interested and self-motivated during nature-based activities. This finding has very real implications for students who are normally disengaged.
Time spent with nature also has a greater influence on how we view the environment than knowledge of conservation alone. Simply knowing climate change is contributing to species loss is less likely to inspire conservation action than frequently observing environmental change during time spent outdoors.

Emotional connection with nature promotes interest in learning about sustainability and in turn, caring for natural resources.

Exploring an exciting new frontier

The influence of the Growing Beyond Earth program on student attitudes to gardens, conservation and food is still being assessed. As the program expands to more countries, it will track student achievement, career paths and leadership.

So far, surveys reveal Growing Beyond Earth students are more knowledgeable and confident about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) topics and related careers.

These students may go on to play crucial roles in building future crop production systems on Mars, designing space plants for food and medicines, and using nature to improve the wellbeing of people experiencing isolation.

Kim Johnson works for La Trobe University, conducting work on growing plants in controlled environments. She is an investigator in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space and collaborates on the NASA Growing Beyond Earth program with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. She receives funding from ARC and Australian Government Department of Industry, Science and Resources.

– ref. Australian school students are experimenting with ‘space veggies’ in a NASA initiative – https://theconversation.com/australian-school-students-are-experimenting-with-space-veggies-in-a-nasa-initiative-205569

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Fraser, Postdoctoral Researcher , The University of Melbourne

Over the past 20 years or so, there has been growing concern that many results published in scientific journals can’t be reproduced.

Depending on the field of research, studies have found efforts to redo published studies lead to different results in between 23% and 89% of cases.

To understand how different researchers might arrive at different results, we asked hundreds of ecologists and evolutionary biologists to answer two questions by analysing given sets of data. They arrived at a huge range of answers.

Our study has been accepted by BMC Biology as a stage 1 registered report and is currently available as a preprint ahead of peer review for stage 2.

Why is reproducibility a problem?

The causes of problems with reproducibility are common across science. They include an over-reliance on simplistic measures of
“statistical significance” rather than nuanced evaluations, the fact journals prefer to publish “exciting” findings, and questionable research practices that make articles more exciting at the expense of transparency and increase the rate of false results in the literature.

Much of the research on reproducibility and ways it can be improved (such as “open science” initiatives) has been slow to spread between different fields of science.

Read more:
Our survey found ‘questionable research practices’ by ecologists and biologists – here’s what that means

Interest in these ideas has been growing among ecologists, but so far there has been little research evaluating replicability in ecology. One reason for this is the difficulty of disentangling environmental differences from the influence of researchers’ choices.

One way to get at the replicability of ecological research, separate from environmental effects, is to focus on what happens after the data is collected.

Birds and siblings, grass and seedlings

We were inspired by work led by Raphael Silberzahn which asked social scientists to analyse a dataset to determine whether soccer players’ skin tone predicted the number of red cards they received. The study found a wide range of results.

We emulated this approach in ecology and evolutionary biology with an open call to help us answer two research questions:

• “To what extent is the growth of nestling blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) influenced by competition with siblings?”

• “How does grass cover influence Eucalyptus spp. seedling recruitment?” (“Eucalyptus spp. seedling recruitment” means how many seedlings of trees from the genus Eucalyptus there are.)

Two hundred and forty-six ecologists and evolutionary biologists answered our call. Some worked alone and some in teams, producing 137 written descriptions of their overall answer to the research questions (alongside numeric results). These answers varied substantially for both datasets.

Looking at the effect of grass cover on the number of Eucalyptus seedlings, we had 63 responses. Eighteen described a negative effect (more grass means fewer seedlings), 31 described no effect, six teams described a positive effect (more grass means more seedlings), and eight described a mixed effect (some analyses found positive effects and some found negative effects).

For the effect of sibling competition on blue tit growth, we had 74 responses. Sixty-four teams described a negative effect (more competition means slower growth, though only 37 of these teams thought this negative effect was conclusive), five described no effect, and five described a mixed effect.

What the results mean

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we and our coauthors had a range of views on how these results should be interpreted.

We have asked three of our coauthors to comment on what struck them most.

Peter Vesk, who was the source of the Eucalyptus data, said:

Looking at the mean of all the analyses, it makes sense. Grass has essentially a negligible effect on [the number of] eucalypt tree seedlings, compared to the distance from the nearest mother tree. But the range of estimated effects is gobsmacking. It fits with my own experience that lots of small differences in the analysis workflow can add to large variation [in results].

Simon Griffith collected the blue tit data more than 20 years ago, and it was not previously analysed due to the complexity of decisions about the right analytical pathway. He said:

This study demonstrates that there isn’t one answer from any set of data. There are a wide range of different outcomes and understanding the underlying biology needs to account for that diversity.

Meta-researcher Fiona Fidler, who studies research itself, said:

The point of these studies isn’t to scare people or to create a crisis. It is to help build our understanding of heterogeneity and what it means for the practice of science. Through metaresearch projects like this we can develop better intuitions about uncertainty and make better calibrated conclusions from our research.

What should we do about it?

In our view, the results suggest three courses of action for researchers, publishers, funders and the broader science community.

First, we should avoid treating published research as fact. A single scientific article is just one piece of evidence, existing in a broader context of limitations and biases.

The push for “novel” science means studying something that has already been investigated is discouraged, and consequently we inflate the value of individual studies. We need to take a step back and consider each article in context, rather than treating them as the final word on the matter.

Read more:
The science ‘reproducibility crisis’ – and what can be done about it

Second, we should conduct more analyses per article and report all of them. If research depends on what analytic choices are made, it makes sense to present multiple analyses to build a fuller picture of the result.

And third, each study should include a description of how the results depend on data analysis decision. Research publications tend to focus on discussing the ecological implications of their findings, but they should also talk about how different analysis choices influenced the results, and what that means for interpreting the findings.

Elliot Gould receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Hannah Fraser and Timothy H. Parker do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Two questions, hundreds of scientists, no easy answers: how small differences in data analysis make huge differences in results – https://theconversation.com/two-questions-hundreds-of-scientists-no-easy-answers-how-small-differences-in-data-analysis-make-huge-differences-in-results-216177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Boschen, Research Associate, Casual Academic, PhD Candidate, Flinders University

The ABC is reporting how terminally ill patients are being left in limbo as the states and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) argue over disability supports. The reports share the experiences of Australians with brain tumours and highlight the distress of getting a diagnosis, as well as the lack of support people can experience.

Those living with what is at once a serious illness, disability and a potentially life-limiting condition can be caught between the NDIS, the health system and palliative care. A review of the NDIS is due to be released soon, following a year of investigations into eligibility, sustainability and how costs and supports should be split between the NDIS and the states.

How can we support people better and make sure they don’t fall between the gaps?

Read more:
The NDIS promises lifelong support – but what about end-of-life support for people with disability?

Brain tumours may not be a death knell

About 1,900 Australians are diagnosed with brain tumours each year.

Around 22% of those diagnosed survive beyond five years. And some 68% of people aged 20 to 39 have at least a five-year relative survival rate after a brain cancer diagnosis.

Brain tumours and their treatments can cause substantial disability. This may include paralysis (often hemiplegia, which is when one side of the body is affected), cognitive and sensory changes, seizures and mental health conditions.

People may therefore need substantial support to communicate, travel outside of the home, socialise and interact with others, or take care of their daily needs.

Read more:
Brain tumors are cognitive parasites – how brain cancer hijacks neural circuits and causes cognitive decline

Brain tumours and the NDIS

The NDIS is meant to support people with disability up to the age of 65 and beyond if they are already participants of the scheme. But some Australians diagnosed with brain tumours say they are being denied access to the scheme. Others report having their NDIS funding cut.

To meet the disability requirements of the NDIS Act a person must have an impairment that is likely permanent and requires lifelong support. The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), which administers the scheme, uses the Applied Principles and Tables of Support to assess eligibility under the scheme or whether another government department should be responsible.

These decisions can cause considerable frustration and distress for patients, families, advocacy groups, palliative care clinicians and NDIS providers. The NDIS Operational Guidelines state:

It doesn’t matter what caused your impairment, for example if you’ve had it from birth, or acquired it from an injury, accident or health condition.

But without clear guidelines to spell out what functional supports are provided by each system, it is difficult to determine how the NDIA makes access and planning decisions.

Brain tumours are often life-limiting, but other life-limiting conditions that impact a person’s function are listed as likely to meet the disability requirements. These conditions include Patau syndrome, Leigh syndrome and Canavan disease, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s disease.

What functional supports can health systems or palliative care provide?

Many people confuse palliative care with end-of-life care. When people are referred to palliative care or their medical practitioners adopt a palliative approach to care, they often feel it means they are at the end of their lives. Although palliative care means there will be no further curative treatment for a condition, patients may live for months or years after referral.

The kinds of support Australians receive from palliative care vary widely across the country, particularly in rural and remote areas. Services can help manage clinical symptoms of illnesses such as pain, breathlessness or fatigue. They can also provide some mental health support.

Functional supports such as personal care, domestic assistance, respite, food services or equipment, are usually only provided by palliative care services and some charities as end-of-life care.

People over 65 might be able to access functional support via the aged-care system. If a person under 65 can’t access the NDIS, they may find little or no functional support available until their final weeks of life.

Read more:
What actually is palliative care? And how is it different to end-of-life care?

A call for clarity and guidance

People with life-limiting illnesses, including those featured in the ABC reports, are calling for increased clarity and guidance. Which public health systems are responsible for helping with functional supports? How can they get the support they need to avoid admission to hospital, hospice or residential aged care?

The high costs associated with prolonged hospital stays mean the economic case for helping people to stay at home for as long as possible is strong. But these costs don’t consider the emotional toll that disjointed and chaotic processes can have on patients and families impacted by brain tumours or other life-limiting conditions.

Kathy Boschen was formerly a senior compliance officer for the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, an advisor for the NDIA Administrative Appeals Tribunal Team, and an NDIA subject matter expert on mental heath access.

Caroline Phelan receives funding from Australian federal and state governments.

– ref. Brain tumours can bring long-term disability – but some diagnosed are being refused NDIS support – https://theconversation.com/brain-tumours-can-bring-long-term-disability-but-some-diagnosed-are-being-refused-ndis-support-216534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor in Criminal Justice and Criminology, Bond University

In recent months, there has been increasing focus on crime committed by young people in Australia. Politicians are coming under more pressure to respond to these well-publicised criminal acts and the public perceptions that Australia is in the grips of a youth crime crisis.

In Queensland for instance, a group called Voice for Victims has been holding protests and recently met with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to push their demands for a stronger law and order response and higher assistance payments to victims.

But is youth crime actually increasing? Are we at crisis point? It depends on how we define a crisis and what the data says.

Youth offending crime data

The minimum age of criminal responsibility is ten years old in all states and territories, except the Northern Territory which recently raised the age to 12. Young people between the ages of ten and 13 can only be held criminally responsible, though, if it can be shown they knew what they were doing was seriously wrong.

In Victoria, crime statistics show that from 2014 to 2023, the rate of incidents involving youth offenders has been trending downward (despite some fluctuations).

However, from 2021-22 to 2022-23, there was a 24% increase in the rate of incidents committed by youth offenders under the age of 17, per 100,000 of population.

Likewise, data from New South Wales from 2011 to 2022 shows the rate of ten to 17 year olds being proceeded against by police has also been trending downward. This means the suspected offenders either faced court or a Youth Justice Conference, or received a caution from police.

However, from 2021 to 2022, the rate of young people being proceeded against by police increased by 7%, per 100,000 of population. The rate of those proceeding to court for more serious offences increased by 11% for the same period.

And the 2021-22 Queensland Crime Report showed a 13.7% increase in the number of children aged ten to 17 being proceeded against by police, compared to the previous year. The total number of youth offenders reached 52,742, the highest number in ten years.

In most of the other states and territories, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the youth offending rates have trended downward over the past decade. From 2020-21 to 2021-22, these rates have either remained steady or decreased in most states and territories. Only the Northern Territory showed a larger increase of 13%.

It should be noted the ABS youth offender rate only counts how many unique offenders came into contact with police – each offender is only counted once, regardless of how many times they may have offended in the period. This means it does not provide an indication of overall recidivism rates by individual young people.

The ABS does, however, provide other data on recidivism. In 2021-22, the proportion of youth offenders proceeded against by police more than once increased in several localities, including Queensland (10%), Tasmania (17%), the NT (5%) and the ACT (8.5%). The other states showed only minor changes from the previous year.

Queensland courts can declare a youth offender a serious repeat offender under the Youth Justice Act. These young people are identified using a special index, which considers a young person’s offending history (including the frequency and seriousness), the time a young person has spent in custody and their age.

In 2021-22 in Queensland, nearly half of all youth offences were committed by serious repeat offenders.

Read more:
‘We can’t go shopping without police coming’: north Queensland’s at-risk youth feel excluded and heavily surveilled

Which offences are showing increases?

In Queensland, the most prevalent offences for young people in 2021-22 included theft, break and enter, and stolen vehicles.

Even though only 18% of all offenders in Queensland were under the age of 18, these youth offenders accounted for more than 50% of all break and enter, robbery and stolen vehicle offenders during the year. For stolen vehicles, the number of youth offenders almost doubled between 2012 and 2022.

In NSW, the most common offences for young people in 2022 were theft, break and enter, and stalking or harassment. Compared to 2021, young people proceeded against by police for thefts had increased by 21% and for break and enters by 55%.

And in Victoria, the most common incidents for youth offenders in 2022-23 were crimes against the person (a 29% increase compared to 2021-2022), property offences (36% increase) and public offences such as public nuisance, and disorderly and offensive conduct (29% increase).

A crisis is a matter of perception

A sense of crisis is created to some degree by not only rising crime rates, but also a sense of helplessness felt by the community and a perceived failing of the government to provide for a safe and secure community.

How the public perceives crime issues is just as important as the reality of crime trends themselves. The Commonwealth Report on Government Services provides a snapshot of perceptions of safety. In 2021-22, 89% of people felt safe at home at night, while just 32.7% felt safe on public transport and 53.8% on the street.

Last week, a survey of Queenslanders showed nearly half of respondents believed youth crime was increasing or at a crisis point. Three-quarters of respondents had taken steps to improve their home security in the last year.

In Queensland, the government is responding to these concerns with tougher measures. It has controversially proposed using police watchhouses to detain youth offenders, overriding its own Human Rights Act with a special provision only meant to be used in exceptional circumstances.

Read more:
Queensland is not only trampling the rights of children, it is setting a concerning legal precedent

The government said this was necessary because the state’s youth detention centres were full and, due to an increase in serious youth offenders, it needed to use police watchhouses to detain them to ensure the community is protected.

Youth justice advocates warn these watchhouses, however, are not suitable places for children, in part, because they could be held with adults and many of the facilities lack exercise yards, natural light and visitor facilities.

Given the recent protests in Queensland, it is reasonable to conclude there is a perception of a crisis in the community over the inability of governments to deal adequately with youth crime, specifically repeat offenders.

While action needs to be taken in the short term to address community safety concerns, all states and territories also need to address the longer-term, multi-factoral causes of youth crime, such as truancy and disengagement from school, drug usage, domestic violence in the home and poor parenting.

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. Is Australia in the grips of a youth crime crisis? This is what the data says – https://theconversation.com/is-australia-in-the-grips-of-a-youth-crime-crisis-this-is-what-the-data-says-213655

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Settle, Academic (McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow), The University of Melbourne

Most Australians think the superannuation system is unfair, with only one in three agreeing the retirement savings scheme is fair for most Australians, according to a survey conducted for the University of Melbourne.

In fact, only about half of those surveyed agreed superannuation works well for them.

These results contradict a conventional view based on earlier studies and held by academics and many in the personal finance sector, that Australians give little thought to superannuation.

A 2013 survey found Australians have poor knowledge of how the superannuation system works, while another study in 2022 highlighted low financial literacy in general.

Australians also showed little interest in superannuation, according to a 2020 Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet survey, with few Australians showing interest in reading their superannuation statements, choosing their fund or making voluntary contributions.

With Australian households seen as uninformed and uninterested, their opinions tend to be left out of the public debate. We hear much about the gender pension gap, for example, but little about what women actually think about superannuation.

Similarly, the distribution of tax advantage in superannuation is hotly debated by economists but survey data tends to refrain from asking households what they think about equity in the superannuation system.

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

The University of Melbourne survey of 1,003 Australians was undertaken by Roy Morgan Research in April.

Its results show women and low-income households are widely seen as disadvantaged in the superannuation system.

In fact, only one in five Australians see the superannuation system as well suited to the needs of women and of low-income households, while 70% believe super favours wealthy households.

This suggests although Australians may show little interest in the management of their super accounts and may report they find the system confusing or even boring, they are surprisingly aware of how superannuation is distributed.

Women, singles and low-income earners miss out

The federal government’s 2020 Retirement Income Review documents these gaps. Renters, women, uncoupled households and those on low-incomes fare poorly in the retirement income system.

With little super to supplement the public pension, these groups are vastly over-represented in elderly poverty statistics, which are among the highest in the OECD.

Mirroring the gaps in the superannuation system reported by the review, the University of Melbourne survey shows that it is outright homeowners and those who are married who believe the superannuation system works well.

Concerns the system works poorly for women and low-income households are strongest among women and low-income households. Only one in three renters believe the superannuation system meets their needs.

This suggests individuals’ concerns about fairness in the superannuation system are driven by their own experiences of disadvantage, regardless of financial literacy.

This is consistent with my own research into household attitudes to superannuation, which showed some resentment among women who were well aware their male partners had substantially higher superannuation balances than them.

This all matters for policymakers.

Why public perceptions are important

In the short term, these results suggest public support for making super fairer is likely to be stronger than previously thought. Recent government changes to tax concessions on large balances, for example, could have gone much further without losing support from the 70% of households that think the system favours the wealthy.

But it matters for the longer term too.

Public perceptions of fairness, effectiveness and efficiency are crucial to policy sustainability. This is well established in the academic literature from B Ebbinghaus, 2021 and H Chung et al., and accepted by the Retirement Income Review.

Read more:
Age pension cost to ease by 2060s but super tax breaks to swell: Intergenerational report

The review assessed the public’s confidence in the system to both “deliver an adequate retirement income for them(selves) and (to) generate adequate outcomes across society”.

As the review makes clear, the system must avoid a loss of public confidence from perceptions of unfairness.

Yet perceptions of unfairness are exactly what the University of Melbourne results suggest. This would have been clearer to policymakers if they asked earlier.

Antonia Settle 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. Women and low-income earners miss out in a superannuation system most Australians think is unfair – https://theconversation.com/women-and-low-income-earners-miss-out-in-a-superannuation-system-most-australians-think-is-unfair-207633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernard Walker, Associate Professor in Organisations and Leadership, University of Canterbury

Whether you are a worker or an employer, the office or factory floor is likely to move under your feet over the next three years.

Every change of government sees a policy turnaround in New Zealand’s workplace relations. This see-saw pattern looks set to continue with the election of a National-led coalition in 2023.

Commentators are already speculating about the axing of fair pay agreements and the return of 90-day trials. Lawyers, businesses and unions will soon be offering law-change updates. Workers and employers will begin amending their day-to-day processes.

But the bigger question is what drives these constant changes – and ultimately whether they benefit the country’s productivity in the long term.

Coalition uncertainties

Ultimately, political ideology shapes employment law and workplace relations. Governments of the left and right both assert a desire to “build productive employment relationships” that benefit workers, employers and the economy. But each has a different perspective on the best way to achieve this.

For the left, the government’s role is to address an unequal balance of power between workers and employers. This includes establishing legislated minimum standards to protect workers’ interests, as well as supporting workers’ ability to act collectively.

The right emphasises the needs of business owners, enabling workers to negotiate individual workplace arrangements, with workers and employers finding outcomes that fit both sides.

Read more:
NZ workplace study shows more than quarter of employees feel depressed much of the time

While these principles are well known, it’s not so easy to gauge the likely outcomes from this current election, particularly since National chose to release very little workplace relations policy during the election campaign.

But it seems National will need the libertarian ACT Party to form a government, and possibly also the centrist but conservative NZ First. Coalition or support agreements will come down to how much priority each party places on workplace policy, and how much power they have in eventual governing arrangements.

Those parties’ policies often conflict. NZ First wants the minimum wage to rise, while ACT wants it frozen. It’s also unlikely the economically nationalist NZ First will welcome ACT’s proposed changes to migration settings to meet worker shortages and solve tertiary sector underfunding by boosting study visas for international students.

If ACT sees the workplace relations portfolio as a priority, what concessions might NZ First negotiate? And how far is National prepared to go in accepting ACT’s more extreme policies?

Political footballs

As we outlined in a recent article for the New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, there are multiple “political footballs” in play, which move backwards and forwards depending on who is in power.

All three potential coalition parties propose reviving 90-day trial periods for all businesses. Other possible areas to be reversed again include rest and meal breaks, the “30-day rule” for new employees’ contract conditions, the requirement to settle collective negotiations, plus a range of union rights.

Read more:
Why three-day weekends are great for wellbeing – and the economy

The outgoing Labour-led government operated tactically by improving entitlements for large numbers of workers. This reduced the likelihood that these entitlements would become political footballs. The minimum wage increased, paid parental leave was extended, Matariki became an additional public holiday, and the sick leave entitlement increased.

For workers, these were significant gains, and attempts to wind them back would potentially provoke real discontent – and that could create a conundrum for National.

National has said it won’t reverse the changes to Matariki or sick leave, conflicting with ACT’s proposal to scrap a public holiday.

Unproductive change

Aside from the policy detail, there is a much larger question about just how helpful this ongoing cycle of action and reaction is. New Zealand urgently needs to improve its productivity and innovation to be internationally competitive.

But the highly politicised approach to workplace relations is framed in terms of ideologies rather than evidence-based assessment. This means New Zealand workplaces are constantly disrupted, instead of progressing towards more strategic long-term goals.

Finding a solution is not easy. But recent governments have used a tripartite (three-party) approach, bringing together worker, business, and government representatives to address larger issues, such as gender pay equity and the Holidays Act.

Read more:
NZ’s always-on culture has stretched the 8-hour workday – should the law contain a right to disconnect?

This means key stakeholders have buy-in to the resulting workplace systems, reducing the likelihood of upheavals with inevitable changes of government.

That approach is an example of the longer-term thinking needed to ready New Zealand for massive disruptions already underway. These disruptions include accelerating impacts of artificial intelligence and other technologies; the growing influence of China, India and other emerging economies; and increasing flows of capital, people and trade across borders.

As the pace of change increases, the consequences for economies that cannot keep up are becoming more serious.

Given the supposedly bipartisan aim of creating a more productive workforce, the upheavals that accompany each change of government raise real questions about how well New Zealand is meeting those challenges.

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. NZ’s workplace rules will change again with each new government – unless we do this – https://theconversation.com/nzs-workplace-rules-will-change-again-with-each-new-government-unless-we-do-this-216072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vicki Lowik, Research Officer, Queensland Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research, CQUniversity Australia

Victim/survivors of sexual assault have always faced an uphill battle in their pursuit of justice.

In being made to retell their assault story over and over, they can be retraumatised and made to wait years for their case to go to trial, delaying their opportunity to heal.

The public watched on as charges against Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins (which he denies) were dropped because of concerns for Higgins’ mental health after a mistrial in 2022.

So is it the case that sexual assault trials simply shouldn’t be conducted in a general criminal court? Does Australia need dedicated facilities instead?

Read more:
‘Male soldiers can’t help themselves’ is among many rape myths that need debunking

The harms of a combative court process

Cross-examination is a vital part of a regular criminal trial. But in sexual assault cases, it can be complicated.

It is the job of defence lawyers to create doubt in the minds of the jury about the victim/survivor and the assault.

This is often done by drawing on popular rape myths, such as: why didn’t you fight back? Was the attacker a stranger? Was a weapon used in the attack? Had you been drinking or taking drugs? What were you wearing?

Jurors can be influenced by this performance – a performance that reflects the attitudes of those in the community who doubt women’s reports of violence.

It can take a severe toll on victim/survivors.

In one Queensland case, it took eight years and two trials to resolve.

The first trial resulted in a hung jury, and the second in acquittal. The victim/survivor underwent cross-examination twice.

Such an extended court process can have a massive impact on a victim/survivor’s life.

Many feel they must delay holiday, career or study plans while they await vital court dates.

It makes it more likely they will withdraw their complaint.

The layout of courthouses can also be an issue.

Victim/survivors can be forced to come face-to-face with their alleged attacker due to a lack of alternative entrances and waiting areas.

Reforms have helped, but not enough

Reforms over the past 50 years have achieved some improvements in the criminal justice process for victim/survivors.

Research shows that, in some Australian jurisdictions, procedural reforms such as giving evidence via CCTV and closed courtrooms are working.

However, these reforms are inconsistent across jurisdictions.

Core re-traumatising features of trials, such as cross-examination without clear boundaries, remain part of the court experience where trauma-informed reforms have not been introduced.

Read more:
Jurors who believe rape myths contribute to dismal conviction rates – but judge-only trials won’t solve the problem

Are dedicated courts the answer?

Some countries, such as South Africa, operate specialist sexual offences courts. Scotland is setting up a pilot specialist court.

The benefit of these courts is that all court personnel are trauma-informed and can deal with complex social issues and laws.

One early evaluation in South Africa shows 94.9% of victim/survivors were satisfied with prosecutors, and 87.5% were satisfied with their preparation for trial.

Almost all felt totally or fairly safe at court.

Only 20% found the defence attorney intimidated them, and less than a third felt their personal dignity was insulted during cross-examination.

South Africa also implements “juryless” trials, heard by a judge and a two-person lay panel, which may be a factor in the favourable findings.

Specialists courts can also reduce delays.

Yet there are risks to such a narrow approach.

It may lead to a gradual loss of more general legal skills and too narrow a focus, which may result in biased decision-making.

In fact, it may not be necessary to create a separate standalone court to get better outcomes.

Research has shown trauma-informed training is necessary for court personnel to understand and help prevent victim/survivor retraumatisation.

This can be achieved within the existing court system.

Regular courts can have a “specialist approach” – a different way of running proceedings for sexual assault cases that better meet the needs of victim/survivors.

This can be on specific days of the week around normal court operations.

Significantly, having a separate specialist approach within the general criminal court system to deal exclusively with sexual assault cases may introduce positive culture change.

Studies indicate a comprehensive specialist approach may be the missing link in reforming the adversarial system.

Read more:
Rape is endemic in South Africa. Why the ANC government keeps missing the mark

More to do to improve court experiences

Our review of international practice identified a range of things Australia could do to significantly improve victim/survivors’ experiences in the criminal justice system.

These include:

• specialist trauma-informed training for all court personnel, including defence counsel

• measures to better inform victim/survivors about their case, and improve communication

• linking victim/survivors to support services and providing safe court facilities

• specialists (called “intermediaries”) who can help victim/survivors understand court processes

• specialist case management, including ground rules hearings to address inappropriate questioning in cross-examination

• pre-recorded evidence.

Standalone sexual assault courts would be one way of implementing these measures, but it’s not the only way.

Specialist approaches with trauma-informed legal staff would also put these actions into place without the need for a dedicated court.

Introducing these measures wouldn’t fix everything, but it’s certainly a starting point to help reduce the harm that’s too often compounded by court proceedings.

Vicki Lowik and Amanda-Jane George received funding from the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration and Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department for the report on which this article is based.

Amanda-Jane George 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. Does Australia need dedicated sexual assault courts? – https://theconversation.com/does-australia-need-dedicated-sexual-assault-courts-215708

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jake Newman-Martin, PhD candidate, Curtin University

Australia is famous for its diverse and unique marsupials, and infamous for its world-leading rate of mammal extinctions.

In our latest research, we have added new names to the list of Australian marsupials – and at the same time, new entries to the grim catalogue of species driven to extinction since European colonisation.

Our new study, published in Alcheringa, has identified three previously unknown species of small carnivores called mulgaras, which live in the dry country of Australia’s west and north.

The species were “hiding” in museums, among specimens collected since the 19th century, and none of them survive today.

A deeper look at mulgaras

Mulgaras (Dasycercus) are small, ferocious carnivorous marsupials that are so well adapted to their arid habitats that they do not need to drink water. They play important roles in maintaining the health of their environments by controlling populations of insects and small rodents, and turning over desert soils through foraging.

Until recently, it was thought there were only two species of mulgara, the brush-tailed mulgara (D. blythi) and the crest-tailed mulgara (D. cristicauda).

Earlier efforts to classify mulgaras focused on external differences, such as the hair on their tail or the number of nipples. Our new work looked deeper, through an analysis of skulls and teeth.

Mammals use their teeth for many things, most obviously as offensive or defensive weapons, for eating, and for manipulating the environment. If the shape of a species’ teeth changes in some way, this could indicate an adaptation to a change in diet or environment. With enough adaptions and changes, a new species emerges.

Read more:
Explainer: what is biological classification?

In our investigation, we examined “subfossils” – skeletal remains that are not old enough to be true fossils – from sites around Australia where mulgaras are no longer found.

We trawled through animal trapping and subfossil collections made since the 19th century in museums across every mainland state and territory in Australia, and even the Natural History Museum of London. Subfossil specimens from the Nullarbor Plain, the Great Victoria Desert, and the northern Swan Coastal Plain were of particular interest as they had not been attributed to a particular species until now.

We also mounted an expedition to the caves of the Nullarbor Plain to collect additional mulgara skulls.

Not one, two or three species, but six

Once we had assembled our collection, we measured the skulls and teeth of the mulgaras to find differences in their overall shape and size. The particular diets and habitats of particular species are expected to leave distinct patterns in their skulls and teeth.

We found differences in the skulls and teeth of mulgaras that completely revised our understanding of their diversity and recent history. Our most remarkable discoveries were found in subfossil deposits that had previously not been classified.

Previously, researchers disagreed about whether there are one, two, or even three species of mulgara. We found a total of six species, living in different habitats across central and western Australia. Two of these were already accepted to exist, another had been proposed in the past but dismissed, and three were entirely new.

We also found that some of the external features previously proposed for identifying species of mulgara were actually shared by multiple species.

For instance, the brush-tailed mulgara (D. blythi) and the crest-tailed mulgara (D. cristicauda) were separated based on the shape of the hairs on the end of their tails. However, it now seems that four of the six mulgara species have crested tails, while the other two have brush tails.

Just as you cannot judge a book by its cover, you cannot judge the importance of a mulgara by its size, or its taxonomy by its tail!

Four modern extinctions

Our research is not all good news. Of the six mulgara species, we determined that four are already extinct, likely as a result of the introduction of foxes and cats to Australia.

The extinction of these mulgara species may represent the first extinction in modern Australia within the broader family of Dasyurid marsupials, which also includes quolls and Tasmanian devils.

These newly identified mulgara disappeared with even less recognition than the now infamous extinction of their marsupial relative the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.

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

These historical extinctions and lack of awareness exemplify the current ecological crisis facing Australian mammals.

Prior to our research, it was known that mulgaras are threatened and their population and distribution across Australia has decreased.

Our research shows these declines are far greater than we thought. It also shows the importance of using subfossil records to understand the relatively recent history of marsupials for conservation. To protect Australia’s ecosystems, we will need to invest in much broader taxonomic understanding.

Read more:
The good, the bad and the ugly: research funding flows to big and beautiful mammals in Australia

Milo Barham receives funding from the Minerals Research Institute of Western Australia.

Alison Blyth, Jake Newman-Martin, Kenny Travouillon, and Natalie Warburton 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. We discovered three new species of marsupial. Unfortunately, they’re already extinct – https://theconversation.com/we-discovered-three-new-species-of-marsupial-unfortunately-theyre-already-extinct-216351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Genauer, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Flinders University

Fears are escalating the conflict between Israel and Hamas could spill over into a broader war involving other countries in the region.

Neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, as well as regional players like Iran and Qatar, are currently navigating domestic and international pressures in their response.

So, how likely is it that another country could be dragged into the conflict – or have a diplomatic role in helping resolve the crisis? Here are four possibilities beyond Iran (which we covered in a separate piece).

Read more:
Despite its inflammatory rhetoric, Iran is unlikely to attack Israel. Here’s why

Egypt: limited desire to get involved

In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s regime came to power in 2013 by ousting the Muslim Brotherhood-led government that was democratically elected following the Arab Spring uprising. The Muslim Brotherhood movement has long been a focal point for political opposition in Egypt and is ideologically aligned with Hamas.

Although El-Sisi’s government has allowed some protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza, these have been tightly controlled. And notably, they have not been permitted at Tahrir Square, the heart of the Arab Spring protests.

El-Sisi’s main concern is the conflict in Gaza does not spark widespread demonstrations in Egypt, which could galvanise dissatisfaction with his regime. As such, El-Sisi will try to prioritise domestic stability rather than direct involvement in the war. He will likely support Hamas rhetorically, while doing little of substance to assist its fight against Israel.

Critically, this means Egypt will also remain reluctant to open its southern border crossing with Gaza to allow Palestinian refugees to leave.

For a decade, Egyptian forces have been battling an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai desert. El-Sisi is concerned an influx of refugees from Gaza may exacerbate these tensions and lead to increased militant activity against the regime.

Lebanon: it depends what Hezbollah decides to do

In Lebanon, war with Israel would be an unwelcome development. In recent years Lebanon’s political landscape has been marked by public dissatisfaction with elites and an ongoing economic crisis.

Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim militant and political group in Lebanon, has already been clashing with Israeli forces across the border. If violence continues to escalate between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah could enter the war from the north. This would commit Lebanon to an unpopular military confrontation with Israel, shattering the fragile peace between the countries that has held since 2006.

Given Hezbollah is embedded in the Lebanese government and commands the strongest and most well-organised militant force in the country, other Lebanese factions are limited in their ability to restrain it. These factions would also be wary of triggering another civil war by trying to prevent Hezbollah from pursuing military action.

Because Hezbollah receives funding, military equipment and training from Iran, it is seen as one of Tehran’s strongest proxies for its ambitions in the region. Any decision by Hezbollah to increase its attacks on Israel would thus be driven by Iran, or at least carried out with Tehran’s approval.

Read more:
Hezbollah alone will decide whether Lebanon − already on the brink of collapse − gets dragged into Israel-Hamas war

Syria: backed into a corner by political debts to Iran

Political protest in Syria in 2011 led to civil war between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and rebel groups. Assad depended on Iranian and Russian military support to maintain his grip on power.

Assad has no incentive to engage Israel militarily and destablise his hard-won political control. However, debts to Iran may need to be repaid with agitation against Israel if Israel launches an expected ground operation into Gaza.

Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israeli communities, Syrian state media says Israel has hit airports in Damascus and Aleppo with missile strikes, causing damage and airport closures. State media also said eight Syrian soldiers were killed in an air strike last week. Israel said it had struck Syrian army infrastructure in response to rocket launches from Syria.

Israel’s likely objective with these strikes was to deter, rather than provoke, a military confrontation. The strikes are a reminder to Assad that Israel has the capability to hit important targets deep in Syrian territory – and is willing to do so.

There is a risk such actions, combined with political pressure from Iran and Hezbollah, may still lead to a military escalation between Syria and Israel.

One actor with the ability to restrain Syria is Russia, which maintains a large military presence in the country. Russia has no interest in seeing Syria enter into a war with Israel, as this would likely fracture the fragile political stability Russia has been heavily invested in maintaining.

Qatar: seizing a diplomatic opportunity?

Qatar is perhaps one of the most interesting countries to watch in the coming weeks. For decades, it has played a somewhat provocative and outsized role in regional politics and diplomacy.

Qatar has long had a close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. It also houses Hamas’ political offices in Doha and has been one of the key financial backers for the group. As a Sunni Muslim state, Qatar is ideologically more closely aligned with Hamas than the group’s more prominent financial baker, Iran.

Qatar has already played a key role in negotiations with Hamas to release four hostages from Gaza.

Qatar lost regional influence in 2017 when four countries in the region cut ties and imposed a blockade on it. It now wants to regain prominence as a key player in the region. It would be in Qatar’s interests to position itself as a central diplomatic broker in the conflict and avoid being viewed in a similar light to Iran, as an enabler and funder of Hamas activity.

So, could Qatar succeed in leveraging its close relationship with Hamas to facilitate negotiations between the group and Israel to release the remaining Israeli hostages or even bring an end to the conflict? Or would Qatar’s lack of diplomatic relations with Israel thwart these ambitions?

Qatar’s influence may depend on Israel’s appetite for negotiations and the extent to which the United States demonstrates a willingness to broker between the parties.

Jessica Genauer 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. Will the Israel-Hamas war become a regional conflict? Here are 4 countries that could be pivotal – https://theconversation.com/will-the-israel-hamas-war-become-a-regional-conflict-here-are-4-countries-that-could-be-pivotal-216448

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute

Each year, more than 2,500 Australians die from diseases linked to eating too much salt.

We shouldn’t be putting up with so much unnecessary illness, mainly from heart disease and strokes, and so many deaths.

As a new Grattan Institute report shows, there are practical steps the federal government can take to save lives, reduce health spending and help the economy.

Read more:
Essays on health: how food companies can sneak bias into scientific research

We eat too much salt, with deadly consequences

Eating too much salt is bad for your health. It raises blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.

About one in three Australians has high blood pressure, and eating too much salt is the biggest individual contributor.

Unfortunately, the average Australian eats far too much salt – almost double the recommended daily maximum of 5 grams, equivalent to a teaspoon.

Read more:
Health Check: how much salt is OK to eat?

Australian governments know excessive salt intake is a big problem. That’s why in 2021 they set a target to reduce salt intake by at least 30% by 2030.

It’s an ambitious and worthy goal. But we’re still eating too much salt and we don’t have the policies to change that.

Most of the salt we eat is added to food during manufacturing

Most of the salt Australians eat doesn’t come from the shaker on the table. About three-quarters of it is added to food during manufacturing.

This salt is hidden in everyday staples such as bread, cheese and processed meats. Common foods such as ready-to-eat pasta meals or a ham sandwich can have up to half our total recommended salt intake.

Salt limits are the best way to cut salt intake

Reducing the amount of salt added to food during manufacturing is the most effective way to reduce intake.

Salt limits can help us do that. They work by setting limits on how much salt can be added to different kinds of food, such as bread or biscuits. To meet these limits, companies need to change the recipes of their products, reducing the amount of salt.

Under salt limits, the United Kingdom reduced salt intake by 20% in about a decade. South Africa is making even faster gains. Salt limits are cheap and easy to implement, and can get results quickly.

Most consumers won’t notice a change at the checkout. Companies will need to update their recipes, but even if all the costs of updating recipes were passed on to shoppers, we calculate that at most it would cost about 10 cents each week for the average household.

Nor will consumers notice much of a change at the dinner table. Most people don’t notice when some salt is removed from common foods. There are many ways companies can make foods taste just as salty without adding as much salt. For example, they can make salt crystals finer, or use potassium-enriched salt, which swaps some of the harmful sodium in salt for potassium. And because the change will be gradual, our tastebuds will adapt to less salty foods over time.

Read more:
What we may think are the healthiest bread and wrap options actually have the most salt

Australia’s salt limits are failing

Australia has had voluntary salt limits since 2009, but they are badly designed, poorly implemented, and have reduced population salt intake by just 0.3%.

Because Australia’s limits are voluntary, many food companies have chosen not to participate in the scheme. Our analysis shows that 73% of eligible food products are not participating, and only 4% have reduced their salt content.

Action could save lives

Modelling from the University of Melbourne shows that fixing our failed salt limits could add 36,000 extra healthy years of life, across the population, over the next 20 years.

This would delay more than 300 deaths each year and reduce health-care spending by A$35 million annually, the equivalent of 6,000 hospital visits.

International experience shows the costs of implementing such salt limits would be very low and far outweighed by the benefits.

How to fix our failed salt limits

To achieve these gains, the federal government should start by enforcing the limits we already have, by making compliance mandatory. Fifteen countries have mandatory salt limits, and 14 are planning to introduce them.

The number of foods covered by salt limits in Australia should more than double, to be as broad as those the UK set in 2014. Broader targets would include common foods for which Australia does not currently set targets, such as baked beans, butter, margarine and canned vegetables.

A loophole in the current scheme that lets companies leave out a fifth of their products should be closed. The federal government should design the policy, rather than doing it jointly with industry representatives.

Read more:
Concerned about your risk of a heart attack? Here are 5 ways to improve your heart health

Over the coming decades, Australia will need many new and improved policies to reduce diet-related disease. Reducing salt intake must be part of this agenda. For too long, Australia has let the food industry set the standard, with almost no progress against a major threat to our health.

Getting serious about salt would save lives, and it would more than pay for itself through reduced health-care costs and increased economic activity.

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

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

– ref. Slashing salt can save lives – and it won’t hurt your hip pocket or tastebuds – https://theconversation.com/slashing-salt-can-save-lives-and-it-wont-hurt-your-hip-pocket-or-tastebuds-213980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rod Sims, Professor in the practice of public policy and antitrust, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.

Australia has three ways it can help reduce world greenhouse emissions, the only reduction that matters in tackling climate change.

First, we can remove emissions from our economy. This will reduce global emissions by just 1.3%, but it must be done so we share the transition burden with other countries.

Second, we can stop approving new coal and gas projects, which will raise the cost of these products and so reduce world demand for them to some extent. This would have an important demonstration effect, although the reduction in world emissions may be less than some advocates think.

Third, we can quickly pursue industries in which Australia has a clear comparative advantage in a net-zero world. Of any country, Australia is probably best placed to produce green iron and other minerals that require energy-intensive processing, as well as green transport fuels, urea for fertiliser, and polysilicon for solar panels.

Read more:
The original and still the best: why it’s time to renew Australia’s renewable energy policy

Australia’s huge green industry opportunity

Of these three ways, by far the least public discussion is on the third: producing energy-intensive green exports. Yet these industries could reduce world emissions by as much as 6–9%, easily Australia’s largest contribution to the global effort. And it would transform our economy, turning Australia into a green energy superpower.

Australia produces almost 40% of the world’s iron ore. Turning iron ore into metallic iron accounts for 7% of global emissions. Our iron ore is largely processed overseas, often using Australian coal, which can be exported cheaply.

Read more:
How to beat ‘rollout rage’: the environment-versus-climate battle dividing regional Australia

In the net-zero world, iron ore can be reduced to iron metal using green hydrogen rather than coal. Considerable renewable energy will be needed, yet renewable energy and hydrogen are very expensive to export.

Therefore, rather than export ore, renewable energy and hydrogen, it makes economic sense to process our iron in Australia, before shipping it overseas. Doing so would reduce global emissions by around 3%.

Likewise, turning Australia’s bauxite into green aluminium using low-cost renewable energy could reduce world emissions by around 1%. Making polysilicon is also energy-intensive, so again Australia is a natural home for its production. And Australian low-cost green hydrogen plus sustainable carbon from biomass are needed for making green urea and transport fuels.

Read more:
Beyond Juukan Gorge: how First Nations people are taking charge of clean energy projects on their land

From gas and coal power to clean power

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of gas and coal taken together. Some analysts focus on the costs of losing this large comparative advantage as the world responds to climate change. They overlook two key points.

First, Australia has the world’s best combination of wind and solar energy resources, and enormous sources of biomass for a zero-emissions chemical industry.

Second, we have abundant and much-needed minerals that require huge amounts of energy to process. The high cost of exporting renewable energy and hydrogen makes it economically logical for these industries to be located near the energy source.

In other words, more of Australia’s minerals and other energy-intensive products should now be processed in Australia.

Read more:
Why Australia urgently needs a climate plan and a Net Zero National Cabinet Committee to implement it

If Australia seizes this opportunity it can repeat the experience of the China resources boom of around ten years ago, but this time the opportunity can be sustained, not boom and bust, with benefits spread over more regions and people.

Some of the actions governments must take to achieve the 6–9% reduction in world emissions will also help to decarbonise our economy. We must develop the skills we need, support well-staffed government bodies to provide efficient approvals for new mines and processes, build infrastructure that will often be far from the east coast electricity grid, and maintain open trade for imports and exports.

What government must do

But we also need policy changes to give private investors assistance to bridge the current cost gap between green and black products (meaning ones made by clean or by fossil fuel energy) in these new industries, and to help early movers.

If we help companies to produce these products at scale, costs will fall as processes are streamlined and technology improves. Capital grants for early movers are an option, but more work is needed to determine the best forms of support.

Let’s make a distinction between energy-intensive green products and mining. While Australia should mine the energy transition minerals the world needs – such as lithium, cobalt and rare earths – mining does not need the financial incentives just cited. Critical minerals are used in black as well as green products and Australia already has significant expertise in mining.

Read more:
The road is long and time is short, but Australia’s pace towards net zero is quickening

Some will argue Australia can wait until other countries have proven the technology and scaled up production so that the green-black price gap disappears; these new green industries will end up in Australia anyway because of our strong comparative advantage. This complacent argument has many flaws.

Australia is making decisions on its climate and economic direction now. If we do not focus on industries in which we have sustainable advantages we will end up damaging our prosperity. For example, we might pursue labour intensive industries that will be low margin and pay low wages, when other countries are better locations for them.

Second, while technology breakthroughs will be shared internationally, innovation is often about streamlining processes to suit local conditions. If we learn these lessons in Australia, we can achieve lowest-cost world production. If not, these industries could permanently locate elsewhere.

The need for speed

Most importantly, Australia needs to move now to put in place the incentives set out above. No other nation that has the capacity to make these energy intensive green products at scale seems focused on the task. If Australia does not do it, the reduction in world emissions could be seriously delayed.

Of all countries, Australia is best placed to show the world what is possible. Companies and countries using conventionally made steel today can say they want to use green iron but none is available. Let’s deny them that excuse.

Once the large investment, productivity and prosperity benefits of this agenda are properly explained, all Australians will applaud it.

What’s more, the level of renewable energy required by the transition will see our power prices fall to some of the lowest in the world.

Read more:
Worried economists call for a carbon price, a tax on coal exports, and ‘green tariffs’ to get Australia on the path to net zero

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

– ref. Australia’s new dawn: becoming a green superpower with a big role in cutting global emissions – https://theconversation.com/australias-new-dawn-becoming-a-green-superpower-with-a-big-role-in-cutting-global-emissions-216373

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Louise Nelson, Associate Professor in Law, The University of Melbourne

Australia’s national environment protection law ignores the big picture. Like a racehorse wearing blinkers, decision-makers focus on a single project in isolation. If they dropped the blinkers and considered the combined effects of multiple projects, they might shy away from allowing so many harmful impacts.

Urgent reform is needed because nature is suffering death by a thousand cuts. We have more than 2,000 threatened species and ecological communities – groups of plants and animals that live together and interact, such as Western Australia’s iconic Banksia woodlands. That number is likely to grow, as hundreds more await assessment for listing.

Today, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, which includes one of the authors of this article, is releasing a report outlining the practical steps needed to fix the law. It draws on both international and Australian experience to recommend pragmatic solutions that also minimise the administrative burden for landholders.

The report finds regional planning can help. But rolling out regional planning won’t happen fast, nor will it alone fix this problem. Addressing cumulative impacts on already threatened biodiversity means every impact must be counted, and countered.

Read more:
We should use Australia’s environment laws to protect our ‘living wonders’ from new coal and gas projects

Our national environmental laws are lagging

“Cumulative impacts” arise when multiple actions or environmental conditions together cause greater overall impact than threats considered in isolation.

When it comes to regulating the cumulative environmental impacts of new developments, our national environmental law is lagging.

Around the world, almost two-thirds of national environmental laws require a decision-maker to consider cumulative impacts. This includes laws in high-income economies in Europe and North America, as well as our Asia-Pacific neighbours such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Indonesia and the Solomon Islands. First Nations peoples often lead the charge for more focus on cumulative impacts.

Recent legal reforms in some Australian states, such as Western Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory, and policy advances in New South Wales, do the same. But they are not set up to protect matters of national environmental significance. That’s a job for national law.

Tasmanian environmentalists sought to fix this major flaw in a legal challenge that ended in the Full Federal Court in 2015. They argued that, in approving a haematite mine that would harm the habitat of vulnerable Tasmanian devils, the federal environment minister had unlawfully failed to consider cumulative impacts.

But the challenge failed. The court decided there was no requirement to consider cumulative impacts. The then environment minister Tony Burke could continue to ignore how serious the mine’s impacts really were for the devils when combined with other major projects such as logging and neighbouring mines.

Both big and small cuts matter

Cumulative impacts are not just about major projects (such as mines) that already reach decision-makers’ desks, but also small projects that are rarely scrutinised.

Notably, very few agricultural developments seek approval. Yet for koalas, which are endangered, the cumulative effects of many land–clearing operations – mostly for grazing – is a major ongoing threat, compounded further by disease and climate change.

The federal environment department’s own advice is “even small areas of habitat loss (as little as 1 hectare) can have a significant impact” on koalas. But more than a million hectares of potential koala habitat have disappeared since the law came into force in 2000 – most with no consideration under environment law. Most land clearing continues unscrutinised.

Without attention to cumulative impacts, policy commitments to “repair nature” or be “nature positive” can’t work. It’s like trying to fill a bucket while gaping holes at the bottom are draining it.

Read more:
Land clearing and fracking in Australia’s Northern Territory threatens the world’s largest intact tropical savanna

In a crisis, change is possible

In some cases, public pressure and ecological catastrophe have forced national action on cumulative impacts.

In response to international concern for the Great Barrier Reef, a cumulative impact policy was introduced – but it only relates to the reef.

Public protests and inquiries drove Commonwealth regulation of the impact of coal seam gas and coal mining projects on water. This is currently the only “matter of national environmental significance” that requires cumulative impact assessment.

And the Commonwealth capped cumulative withdrawals of water in the Murray-Darling Basin during the Millennium Drought. For the first time across the basin, total withdrawals could not exceed an “environmentally sustainable level”. Implementation is not easy, but at least there’s now a crucial legal safeguard in place.

Overall, though, our current law is failing. The 2020 statutory review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act confirmed “cumulative impacts on the environment are not systematically considered” and that this contributes to environmental decline.

Read more:
Get the basics right for National Environmental Standards to ensure truly sustainable development

What’s holding us back?

Assessing cumulative impacts can be complex, so some developers and politicians will resist. But other developers will welcome better environmental performance. They know cumulative impacts can threaten an industry’s social licence to operate.

Globally, diverse industry sectors support considering cumulative impacts, from offshore wind farms in the United Kingdom, to the transport sector in the United States and the mining industry in Australia.

Dealing with cumulative impacts will also mean scrutinising types and sizes of impacts that currently fly under the national radar, but seriously impact nationally important environments.

That means cooperating with states and territories to avoid duplication of assessment and creating innovative approaches – beyond simple regulatory “sticks” – for small but cumulatively significant impacts.

Now is the time

Once-in-a-decade reforms to our national environmental law present an opportunity to protect nationally important species and places from cumulative impacts.

We know the Commonwealth can regulate cumulative impacts when the pressure is on. Now is the time for the Commonwealth to step up and join Australia’s states – and most of the world’s nations – in taking the legal blinkers off decision-makers assessing developments under our national law. Nature depends on it.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of Debbie Medaris, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and expert attendees of a workshop on cumulative impacts held by the Wentworth group, which have informed this article.

Rebecca Louise Nelson receives funding from Watertrust Australia, and has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Native Title Council. She is a member of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Social and Economic Advisory Group, and has been a member of its Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences. She is a director of the Board of Bush Heritage Australia. The views expressed in this Editorial are her own.

Martine Maron is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and co-authored the report mentioned in this article. She has received funding from various sources including the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Department of Environment and Science, and the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, and has advised both state and federal government on conservation policy. She is a director of BirdLife Australia and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, a councillor with the Biodiversity Council, a governor of WWF-Australia, and leads the IUCN’s thematic group on Impact Mitigation and Ecological Compensation under the Commission on Ecosystem Management.

– ref. We must assess ‘cumulative impacts’ to protect nature from death by a thousand cuts – https://theconversation.com/we-must-assess-cumulative-impacts-to-protect-nature-from-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-215988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritodhi Chakraborty, Lecturer of Human Geography, University of Canterbury

When United States aid money was used to build a seawall on Fiji’s Vanua Levu island to shield the community from rising tides, it instead acted as a dam, trapping water and debris on its landward side.

In another example from Bangladesh, the World Bank is pouring US$400 million into expanding old flood barriers along the coastline to counter climate-induced floods and sea-level rise. But this, too, is causing new problems, including waterlogged fields and loss of soil fertility.

Across the globe, a “climate adaptation industry” sometimes imposes solutions that exacerbate the problems they aim to solve. Frequently, this comes at the cost of vulnerable communities.

This story plays out across the world, including in Aotearoa New Zealand, where top-down adaptation projects can increase climate vulnerability of communities. Our work seeks to fill a critical gap by establishing a monitoring and evaluation system to identify the risk of maladaption.

Maladaptation is a growing problem

Concern about unforeseen consequences of climate adaptation has emerged as a key issue in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Authors noted that:

Evidence of maladaptation is increasing in some sectors and systems, highlighting how inappropriate responses to climate change create long-term lock-in of vulnerability, exposure and risks that are difficult and costly to change and exacerbate existing inequalities for Indigenous peoples and vulnerable groups.

Maladaptation is usually understood as referring to the unintended consequences of well-meant measures to reduce climate vulnerability. But it also includes the fallout from decisions that favour technical fixes over more holistic approaches.

Read more:
Getting ready for climate change is about people, not spreadsheets. Let’s use our imaginations

Climate adaptation is not a neutral or apolitical process. It can perpetuate problematic approaches, including colonial land practices and the exclusion of Indigenous voices.

This can create tenuous resource distribution, erode democratic governance and compromise Indigenous sovereignty, exacerbating vulnerabilities. It can also subvert community-driven bottom-up adaptation, instead focusing on national agendas caught up in international politics.

Addressing these maladaptive strategies is pivotal for achieving climate justice.

The situation in Aotearoa New Zealand

In New Zealand, climate change adaptation research is still in its early stages.

Most adaptation projects are being designed and implemented in three key categories: flood protection (stop banks and erosion control), nature-based solutions (tree plantings and wetland restoration) and coastal hazard prevention (managed retreat and sea walls).

These efforts often follow a framework of “dynamic adaptation policy pathways” (DAPP). This means the planning process has to remain flexible to keep adjusting as new information comes to hand.

However, a recent symposium on the ten-year stocktake of this approach raised several critical points, including:

• the need to involve Māori and local communities more throughout the process

• share governance across all levels of government

• address funding barriers for implementation

• and avoid investments that lock in problems for the future.

Take for instance the stalled Clifton to Tangoio coastal hazards strategy in the Hawke’s Bay. This project aimed to identify the areas most at risk of coastal flooding and erosion.

It was hindered by policy ambiguity and funding issues. The region now faces decisions about managed retreat because land was classified as uninhabitable after Cyclone Gabrielle.

Others have noted the lack of synergy between planned and community-driven climate adaptation activities. Council-planned measures often exacerbated climate vulnerability, especially for communities already living in disadvantaged areas.

Addressing maladaptation

We came together as a group of Māori, Pasifika, Pākehā and tauiwi scholars and practitioners to develop a maladaptation assessment tool for New Zealand.

Its aim is genuine sustainability and justice. It evaluates the risk of maladaptation and serves as the foundation for a national monitoring system with both regulatory and educational roles.

Our goals are to illuminate and ideally correct overlooked social and ecological impacts of climate adaptation and to address the limitations of current audit systems. These often neglect local justice and wellbeing concerns in favour of centrally planned projects aimed at reducing risks identified by engineering and insurance industries.

Our preliminary findings from the analysis of 79 adaptation projects show that managed retreat, structural flood protection and climate-resilient development projects are most at risk of maladaptation.

To be just, climate adaptation requires a counter-intuitive approach. It should prioritise community wellbeing and examine the risks posed by both climate change and adaptation.

This perspective doesn’t diminish the reality of climate impacts. It contextualises them within a complex history of Indigenous displacement, forced landscape alteration and ongoing social crises.

Read more:
Colonialism: why leading climate scientists have finally acknowledged its link with climate change

By addressing the threat of maladaptation, we hope to encourage thinking and planning that looks beyond mere technological fixes and begins to repair our broken relationships with the planet and each other.

Ritodhi Chakraborty received a research grant from the Ministry of Primary Industries.

Claire Burgess 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. Climate adaptation projects sometimes exacerbate the problems they try to solve – a new tool hopes to correct that – https://theconversation.com/climate-adaptation-projects-sometimes-exacerbate-the-problems-they-try-to-solve-a-new-tool-hopes-to-correct-that-213969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University

The Universities Accord has been billed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to “reimagine” Australian higher education and plan for the future over a “30-year horizon”.

After an interim report in July, the review panel is due to finalise its work in December. This is expected to cover everything from student fees to international students, research and working conditions.

But what is the current state of Australian higher education? And how did we get here?

My new report, Mapping Australian Higher Education 2023, looks at trends in the university sector. It shows how the past 30 years have been characterised by vast changes, both transformative and tumultuous.

Enrolments, research output and revenue tripled or more in the three decades to 2019. This growth brought benefits but also problems. Cheating and dropping out became more common. Graduate outcomes worsened and student debt increased. Academic staff employment conditions deteriorated significantly.

Thanks to COVID, the early 2020s were also characterised by border and campus closures, a huge drop in international student numbers, reduced fee revenues, and university job losses.

At least temporarily, these disruptions ended three decades of growth for Australian universities.

Read more:
The universities accord could see the most significant changes to Australian unis in a generation

Huge growth in international students

In the mid-1980s the Hawke Labor government opened up Australian university places to fee-paying international students. It was one of the most important higher education policy decisions ever made.

Public universities proved to be surprisingly entrepreneurial, sparking double-digit annual international enrolment growth rates through the 1990s.

In the late 1990s the Howard Liberal government linked international education to skilled migration. Study in Australia earned points towards permanent migration programs. Later reforms added points for qualifications leading to in-demand occupations such as accounting and engineering.

Opportunities for migration made Australia more attractive to international students in the 2000s. But it also led to problems, including migration-driven course choices, weakly linked to real labour market needs. The Rudd-Gillard Labor government reduced the list of eligible occupations in 2010. But by then, international student numbers had more than tripled since 2000, to 335,000.

Migration rules were later loosened again, including making it easier for international students to stay and work in Australia after graduation.

International student numbers grew significantly from the mid-2010s until Australia closed its borders in March 2020. In 2019 more than half a million international students made up nearly a third of all higher education enrolments, earning universities almost $10 billion.

The research boom

Profits from international students fuelled a 21st-century research boom in Australia’s universities. In inflation-adjusted terms, university expenditure on research nearly tripled to $12.7 billion between 2000 and 2020.

In 2020 federal government grants contributed about $4 billion of this total. But policy changes since 2000 drove more far-reaching changes to research than this funding share suggests. These policies aimed to strengthen university-industry links and improve research quality and productivity.

Although politicians still complain that universities and business should work together more, universities have been steering their research towards more commercial and practical topics.

Most university research is now “applied” – aimed at specific objectives. Knowledge for its own sake, known as “basic research”, fell from 30% to 19% of all research expenditure between 2000 and 2020.

Research outputs – mostly publications – also increased dramatically. For the government’s 2018 Excellence in Research for Australia excercise (which evaluated the quality of research in the 2011 to 2016 period), universities submitted more than 500,000 research outputs for evaluation. That exceeded the Excellence in Research total between 2003 and 2008 period by more than 50%.

A significantly expanded specialist academic workforce underpinned this growth. “Research only” academic staff numbers nearly tripled between 2000 and 2019. Research student enrolments increased by almost 80%.

Read more:
Australian universities have dropped in the latest round of global rankings – should we be worried?

Major enrolment growth

University enrolments have also increased significantly since the 1980s.

In 1989, 20% of Australians were university students at age 19. By 2007, 30% were students. It took just another nine years to reach 40% in 2016. The participation rate has remained around that level since.

Total university enrolments hit one million students in 2007 and stood at 1.6 million in 2021. Due to fewer international students, that was slightly less than in 2020, the first overall decrease since 1953.

Domestic student enrolments continued increasing to 2021, last having declined in 2004 (due to government penalties if universities enrolled more than their allocated number of students).

Domestic enrolments probably also fell in 2022, as universities lost students to a strong labour market, but official 2022 enrolment data are not yet available.

Domestic student funding policies

This increase in enrolments happened under a variety of funding systems, but three policy changes since the 1980s are worth noting.

The first and best-known change was a world-first income-contingent student loan scheme, known as HECS, which started in 1989. Students could defer paying their HECS until their income exceeded a threshold amount. HECS helped finance rapid domestic enrolment growth in the early 1990s.

A second important change was the development of new income-contingent loan schemes. By 2024, higher education students will have six schemes supporting different activities. The most important addition to HECS-HELP (the current descendant of the 1989 program) is FEE-HELP. This is mainly for “full-fee” domestic students who do not have government-subsidised fees.

Australia’s 38 public universities are largely not allowed to enrol full-fee domestic undergraduates. But public universities can take domestic postgraduates on a full-fee basis in addition to government-subsidised students. FEE-HELP helped finance significant increases in domestic postgraduates.

For four private universities and more than 100 non-university higher education providers, FEE-HELP meant their domestic students no longer had to pay up-front fees. As of 2021, 7% of domestic students study outside the public university system.

A third major change was “demand-driven funding”. This meant instead of the federal government providing each university with a fixed sum for teaching, it provided funds based on how many students were actually enrolled. Caps on bachelor degree places were eased between 2008 and 2011 and then removed in 2012.

Demand-driven funding encouraged fast growth in enrolments between 2009 and 2016. But it was expensive, and from 2018 domestic student funding caps at each university were re-imposed, limiting potential enrolment growth.

Academic downsides: dropping out and cheating

Big increases in student numbers created opportunities but also caused problems.

As less academically prepared students started degrees, the proportion not returning for a second year increased from 12.3% in 2009 to 15% in 2014. Figures improved again in subsequent years, settling at around 13% for 2019 and 2020 commencing students.

As universities became financially dependent on international students, they were accused of accepting applicants with inadequate English.

Subject pass rates have increased for commencing international and domestic students in recent years, up from 85-86% in 2017 to 89-90% in the COVID years of 2020 and 2021. Lockdowns created more time to study, although increased cheating (made easier by online study) is also probably a factor.

We know now-banned contract cheating websites (where students could pay to have someone else complete assignments for them) received substantial traffic from Australia. Universities also report large numbers of academic misconduct cases.

Meanwhile, universities are now grappling with Artificial Intelligence, such as ChatGPT, which poses a new threat to academic integrity.

Graduates with large debts looking for work

The rise in university student numbers meant there were more new graduates looking for work. Their full-time employment rates trended down in the early 2010s, with 2014 outcomes the worst yet recorded. The subsequent recovery was slow. Graduate employment did not return to 2009 levels until 2022.

There have also been major increases in student debt.

By 2023, three million current and former students owed nearly $72 billion, ten times the total in 2001.

There are many reasons for this, including large increases in enrolments. But there have also been new loans schemes (such as FEE-HELP) allowing students to take on more debt, and three rounds of student contribution increases since HECS began in 1989. On top of this, 2010s HELP repayments were slow due to lower graduate incomes. More recently we have also seen higher indexation of HELP balances due to inflation.

Read more:
Studying can be a costly choice. Universities should address young people’s financial literacy gaps

Migration false hope

The prospects for international graduates are also concerning. They can remain in Australia to work but they earn less than domestic graduates. In part, this is because employers are reluctant to hire them in professional jobs.

About 70% of international higher education students express interest in migrating to Australia. But growing international enrolments mean there is intense competition for a limited number of annual permanent residency places.

A 2022 Grattan Institute report found the proportion of former international students with permanent residence six years after arrival has dropped from 25% in the 2000s to 12% in more recent times. But many former students stay in Australia on temporary visas in the often false hope of eventual permanent residency.

Academic employment conditions deteriorate

Although universities have delivered major increases in research output and student numbers, the organisational strain is showing.

Academics see combined teaching and research positions as normal and desirable. But the public funding system no longer supports this employment model.

Over the past 30 years, government funding moved from mostly being a joint grant for teaching and research to specialised funding for each activity. International and domestic enrolment increases also meant demand for teaching services exceeded demand for research.

Universities followed the logic of these changes.

This has seen universities tend to hire research-only academics on fixed-term contracts, based on whatever funding has been secured for a project. As a result they lack employment security.

Specialised teaching positions also face difficulties.

There is cultural resistance to making teaching-only academic positions permanent jobs. People tend to be attracted to academic work because of research, not teaching. And research is viewed as more prestigious.

Student enrolments can also be volatile – as the loss of international students at the height of COVID showed. Universities want to avoid locking in staff they may not need in the future.

As a result, universities have a highly casualised teaching workforce. On a full-time equivalent basis, before COVID cut employment, 24% of the academic workforce were casual employees, up from 19% in 2000. But on a headcount basis, most university teachers are casuals.

Despite a small dip during the COVID years, student satisfaction with teaching has increased since the 1990s. But academics express high levels of dissatisfaction with their insecure employment conditions. To make matters worse, many universities failed to pay casual staff correctly.

Read more:
Teaching and research are the core functions of universities. But in Australia, we don’t value teaching

Will Australia’s muddle-through success last?

Through a mix of design and muddling through, the period from the 1980s to 2019 successfully delivered much higher enrolments and research outputs.

While 2020-22 were especially difficult years, the system adapted with online study and job cuts. It was hard on students and staff, but no university stopped teaching or went broke. In 2023, international student numbers are recovering strongly.

But should universities be so reliant on them? What happens to the academic workforce if universities keep offering worse employment conditions than other professional work? Is student debt stopping young adults buying homes and starting families?

Foundations of past higher education policy success, such as charging domestic students more and taking additional international students, now look like part of the problem rather than solutions.

So the Universities Accord review panel has an unenviable task. It wants to see a radical new phase of “growth for skills.” But building stable foundations for the status quo will be difficult enough.

Read more:
The Universities Accord draft contains ‘spiky’ ideas, but puts a question mark over the spikiest one of all

Andrew Norton was a ministerial adviser on higher education in the late 1990s when some changes discussed in this article were made or were under consideration.

– ref. Tumult and transformation: the story of Australian universities over the past 30 years – https://theconversation.com/tumult-and-transformation-the-story-of-australian-universities-over-the-past-30-years-215536

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

Australia’s top economists have overwhelmingly backed the reintroduction of the carbon price that helped cut Australia’s emissions between 2012 and 2014.

The government concedes that achieving its legislated emissions reduction target of 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050 will be difficult. With official forecasts showing Australia falling short, the Economic Society of Australia asked 50 leading Australian economists what should be done to speed things up.

Offered a choice that included nuclear energy, accelerated investment in large-scale batteries, and a rapid phase-out of traditionally fuelled vehicles, 30 of the 50 picked a carbon price of the kind introduced by the Gillard Labor government in 2012 and abolished by the Abbott Coalition government in 2014.

Another five said they supported an economy-wide carbon price, but wouldn’t nominate it in the survey because it would face “significant political hurdles” and would not be “politically feasible”.

The Department of Climate Change told the government in December it was on track to fall short of its 2030 target of a 43% cut on 2005 levels, but that with “additional measures” it could get to 40%.

In October this year, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen described the 43% target as “ambitious” and a “difficult task”.

The scheme the economists were asked about was a “cap and trade” scheme, of the type common in much of the world. In these schemes, the government sets a cap on the total number of emission permits produced each year and allows users to trade them with one another to set a price.

A carbon price by another name

The Gillard government’s scheme was initially a fixed charge per tonne of carbon emitted by big polluters. It was set to switch to a cap and trade scheme after three years, but ended up being abolished after two.

In its place, the Abbott government created a “safeguard mechanism” that currently applies only to the 219 biggest polluting facilities in Australia. It requires each to keep emissions below a government-set baseline, and allows them to trade emissions reductions with one another.

The economists were asked about expanding the mechanism to make it mimic an economy-wide carbon price. In response, 42% said they wanted to boost the number of facilities it covered, and 26% wanted to tighten the baselines to push up the price.

All but seven of the 50 economists wanted either an economy-wide carbon price or an expanded safeguard mechanism that would act as one.

Independent economist Hugh Sibly said it might well be that nuclear, hydrogen or other sources of energy were the most efficient ways of decarbonising the economy, but it was impossible to know until Australia starts charging for emitting carbon and allows the market to work out the cheapest way of coping.

Half of those surveyed wanted to expedite the building of new transmission lines to link places where electricity was being produced with places where it would be needed. One-third wanted expedited investment in large battery storage.

Economists including Macquarie University’s Lisa Magnani justified this by saying it was necessary for the government to move in ahead of the private sector to provide the infrastructure the private sector would need in order to decarbonise “within the time left to act seriously”.

No new mines, taxes on exports from existing mines

Many experts surveyed wanted bolder measures than those proposed by the Economic Society of Australia.

Former OECD official Adrian Blundell-Wignall said Australia’s coal exports create almost two and a half times the emissions Australians produce domestically.

“What is the point of moving to net zero on the latter while we do nothing on coal exports?” he asked.

His proposal, aired in the Australian Financial Review, is for Australia to tax exports of the metallurgical coal used to make steel, forcing up the price and reducing global demand. Australia has 55% of the market.

If higher prices brought in more tax and resulted in less burning of metallurgical coal, it would be a win-win for Australia and the world.

Mark Cully, a former chief economist at the Australian industry department, said Australia should follow the lead of France, Denmark and Sweden and ban new fossil fuel projects.

The supply restriction would push up the relative price of fossil fuels and encourage a faster global take-up of renewable energy.

Impose green tariffs on dirty imports

Australia should also join the European Union in implementing a green tariff, the so-called Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that imposed an emissions tax on imported goods whose emissions were not taxed in the country where they were produced.

Cully said too much of Australia’s concern was directed to energy, a sector where emissions are genuinely beginning to fall. In other sectors, emissions have plateaued or are even rising, making it “inconceivable that Australia can meet its 43% reduction target by 2030, let alone net zero by 2050, without other high-volume emissions sectors contributing”.

Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics at the Australian National University, said carbon pricing has to be complemented by targeted measures aimed at industries such as transport, building, agriculture and reforestation.

He said Australia will soon need to back measures that suck carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, acknowledging that many emissions will continue and will therefore need to be offset to get to net zero.

Critical opportunity, but critical challenge

University of Tasmania economist Joaquin Vespignani said state and federal governments should “invest” in the production of the so-called critical minerals that will be needed for decarbonisation via tax deductions.

Australia has more than 20% of the proven global reserves of minerals such as lithium that are essential for clean energy production and storage.

Michael Knox of Morgans Financial noted the International Agency believed the world would need to ramp up its production of critical minerals to three times its present level by 2030.

Energy investment would need to double, and electricity transmission grids would need to roll out an extra two million kilometres of wire per year.

The Agency described the task as Herculean. Knox said it was far from certain to be achieved.

Individual responses. Click to open:

Peter Martin is Economics Editor of The Conversation.

– ref. Worried economists call for a carbon price, a tax on coal exports, and ‘green tariffs’ to get Australia on the path to net zero – https://theconversation.com/worried-economists-call-for-a-carbon-price-a-tax-on-coal-exports-and-green-tariffs-to-get-australia-on-the-path-to-net-zero-216428

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Wallis, Research Assistant, Youth Community Futures, University of Southern Queensland

When people move to the country from the city, they need to change their wardrobes, my research on tree-changers in Australia found. The new context of their lives means the clothes they wore for the city no longer work for their new lives. This is also true in the climate crisis.

Our context has changed. When we decide what clothes to buy, we now need to bring into play a wider range of values than the appearance of a garment, its newness and novelty and whether we like it or not. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states, if we are to have any hope of avoiding a world that is too hot and unpredictable to live in, we need to do everything we possibly can, right now, to cut greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

The fashion industry contributes up to 10% of global emissions – more than international aviation and shipping combined. It also contributes to biodiversity loss, pollution, landfill issues, unsafe work practices and more.

Australia’s carbon footprint from the consumption and use of fashion is the world’s biggest, a dubious distinction in a materialistic world.

So this is an area where the choices we make can have big impacts. While individual action will not solve all of the above problems, it will help as we move towards the structural and systemic change needed to live sustainably.

If we are concerned about these issues, responding thoughtfully means we will live our lives according to our values. And that’s an important factor in living well, flourishing and being happy.

Read more:
New home, new clothes: the old ones no longer fit once you move to the country

Lessons from wartime

It’s not the first time people have adapted their clothing in response to the demands of a crisis.

During the second world war, clothing styles changed in the United Kingdom and Australia. To conserve precious resources, shorter skirts, minimal detailing and a focus on utility became the norm.

People adapted their personal aesthetics and appearance because the situation was grave and they wanted to “do their bit” to help with the war effort. This was a collective necessity in dire times.

This wartime response reflected the priorities and values of society as a whole as well as most people in that society. In other words, buying less (rationing meant this was not just a choice), mending and making do with what was already there was part of a value system that contributed to the Allied victory.

In novels and other writing from the era, it is clear that at times it was not easy and it could be frustrating. There was, however, a public consensus that it was necessary. This shared commitment to the war effort became a value that made personal sacrifices worthwhile and satisfying.

Read more:
Following a t-shirt from cotton field to landfill shows the true cost of fast fashion

So what can we do today?

In our current context, the most helpful thing we can do is to buy fewer new clothes and wear them for longer.

Australians buy a lot of clothes, about 56 items per year on average. That makes Australians the second highest textiles consumers in the world after the USA , and is 60% more than we bought even 15 years ago. The price of clothes has dropped significantly over the past couple of decades, and the number of clothes people have in their closets has grown.

If we begin to shift away from our slavish devotion to newness and novelty – following the dictates of fashion – to a mindset of value-led sufficiency, we can appreciate more fully the feel of lived-in, mended or altered clothes. There is a feeling of comfort in pulling on an old garment that is soft with age and repeated washing. There is joy in extending a garment’s life through creative mending, especially when that aligns with our values.

The Berlin-based Hot or Cool Institute suggests a wardrobe of 74 garments (including shoes but excluding undergarments) is typically sufficient for people who live in a two-season climate (in the tropics) and 85 pieces for those who live in a four-season climate, as most Australians do. If we buy ten to 12 new items a year, we can replace our entire wardrobe in about seven years.

Buying second-hand instead of new is even better because it doesn’t add to current production emissions. If we buy second-hand, it still doesn’t mean we should buy more than we need.

Read more:
Secondhand clothing sales are booming – and may help solve the sustainability crisis in the fashion industry

Choosing clothes to fit our values

To live authentic lives that are fulfilling and satisfying in deep and meaningful ways, we need to be true to our selves. In the case of clothing, we should evaluate our choices in relation to the values we hold. And if we do care about living sustainably, that means changing those choices we feel are no longer suited to the climate crisis.

Clothes need to reflect a person’s situation as well as their identity to “work” well. This may mean that what we wear changes as we make different buying decisions, just as people did in the second world war and as tree-changers do. We may start to look different, but that change signifies our values in action.

Best of all, clothing choices that align with keeping global warming to less than 1.5 degrees will have a long-term impact as significant as winning the war.

Rachael Wallis received funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program for this research.

– ref. What to wear for a climate crisis – https://theconversation.com/what-to-wear-for-a-climate-crisis-214478

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney

This is the final article in The Conversation’s six-part series on insomnia, which charts the rise of insomnia during industrialisation to sleep apps today. Read other articles in the series here.

Insomnia is not just a personal issue that affects an individual’s health and wellbeing. It’s a public health issue, affecting public safety. It’s a socioeconomic issue, as poorer sleep is linked to a lower education and income. And, increasingly, it’s a commercial issue.

The global insomnia market is expected to reach US$6.3 billion by 2030, driven by increased diagnoses and therapy, as well as sleep aids, including sleep apps.

Read more:
A short history of insomnia and how we became obsessed with sleep

There’s an app for that

There are numerous digital devices and apps to help people sleep better. You can buy wearable devices, such as smartwatches and smart rings or wristbands, to digitally monitor your sleep. You can download apps that record how long you sleep and where you can log your tiredness and concentration levels.

Some devices are designed to promote sleep, by generating white or brown noise or other peaceful sounds. You can also buy “smart” pillows, mattresses and a range of smart light-fittings and lightbulbs to help track and improve sleep.

Such technologies operate to “digitise” sleep as part of “the quantified self”. They render sleep practices and bodily responses into data you can review. So these devices are promoted as offering scientific insights into how to control the disruption to people’s lives caused by poor sleep.

You can listen to “sleep stories” – bedtime stories, music or guided meditations meant to help you sleep. Then there are the sleep blogs, podcasts and social media content on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Where there is social media content, there are social media “influencers” sharing their take on sleep and how to get more of it. These “sleep influencers” have accumulated large numbers of followers. Some have profited, including those who live-stream themselves sleeping or invite audiences to try to wake them up – for a price.

Sharing and connecting can help

There may be benefits to joining online communities of people who can’t sleep, whether that’s in an online forum such as Reddit or a specially designed sleep improvement program.

Sharing and connection can ease the loneliness we know can impact sleep. And technology can facilitate this connection when no-one else is around.

We know social media communities provide much-needed support for health problems more generally. They allow people to share personal experiences with others who understand, and to swap tips for the best health practitioners and therapies.

So online sharing, support and feelings of belonging can alleviate the stresses and unhappiness that may prevent people from finding a good night’s sleep.

Read more:
Social media, activism, trucker caps: the fascinating story behind long COVID

What is this fixation costing us?

But there are some problems with digitising sleep. A focus on sleep can create a vicious cycle in which worrying about a lack of sleep can itself worsen sleep.

Using sleep-tracking apps and wearable devices can encourage people to become overly fixated on the metrics these technologies gather.

The data generated by digital devices are not necessarily accurate or useful, particularly for groups such as older people. Some young people say they feel worse after using a sleep app.

There are also data privacy issues. Some digital developers do not adequately protect the very personal information smart sleep devices or apps generate.

Then, there’s the fact using digital devices before bedtime is itself linked to sleep problems.

Read more:
Are sleep trackers accurate? Here’s what researchers currently know

Are we missing the bigger issue?

Other critics argue this intense focus on sleep ignores that sleeping well is impossible for some people, however hard they try or whatever expensive devices they buy.

People living in poor housing or in noisy environments have little choice over the conditions in which they seek good sleep.

Factors such as people’s income and education levels affect their sleep, just as they do for other health issues. And multiple socioeconomic factors (for instance, gender, ethnicity and economic hardship) can combine, making it even more likely to have poor sleep.

Sleep quality is therefore just as much as a socioeconomic as a biological issue. Yet, much of the advice offered to people about how to improve their sleep focuses on individual responsibility to make changes. It assumes everyone can buy the latest technologies or can change their environment or lifestyle to find better “sleep health”.

Until “sleep health inequalities” are improved, it is unlikely digital devices or apps can fix sleep difficulties at the population level. A good night’s sleep should not be the preserve of the privileged.

Read more:
Counting the wrong sheep: why trouble sleeping is about more than just individual lifestyles and habits

Deborah Lupton receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. How apps and influencers are changing the way we sleep, for better or for worse – https://theconversation.com/how-apps-and-influencers-are-changing-the-way-we-sleep-for-better-or-for-worse-211749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

Global security involves managing a complex combination of law, ethics and politics. No situation exemplifies this more than what is happening now in Israel and Gaza.

When United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres coupled an unequivocal condemnation of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks with the observation that they “did not happen in a vacuum”, Israel was quick to react.

The country’s representative to the UN claimed Guterres’ words amounted to “tolerating terrorism” and demanded he resign.

Guterres was alluding to the Palestinian desire for political self-determination after more than 50 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

But the fact such a statement can be so controversial is a sign of just how fraught the situation is now – and how limited New Zealand’s options are when it comes to influencing events.

Western leadership failing

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the horrendous attacks by pledging a total war to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, and to do so “without political considerations”, the United States and European Union expressed unconditional support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has again been hamstrung. Unable to reach a clear position on the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, the council is now struggling to agree on a resolution to end the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Read more:
Why the Israel-Gaza conflict is so hard to talk about

Last week, the US vetoed a draft resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause” to the fighting on the grounds it did not mention Israel’s right to self-defence, and that US diplomacy needed more time.

But as the humanitarian toll of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza became plain, the damage to Western leadership has been substantial. China and Russia, backed by many states in the developing world, were able to take the diplomatic initiative, demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Simultaneously, Iran’s repressive clerical regime and its militant ally, Hezbollah, took the chance to project themselves as defenders of the Palestinians. The risk of conflict in the Middle East widening has only increased.

Risks of escalation

For New Zealand and other liberal democracies that depend on an international rules-based order, the situation is very troubling.

The government has provided NZ$5 million in humanitarian aid to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It has also indicated its support for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza.

Carolyn Schwalger, New Zealand’s permanent representative at the UN called “for the immediate and unconditional release of all [Israeli] hostages”. She pledged support for “Israel’s right to defend itself, in full compliance with international law, including in respect of actions taken in Gaza”, and said “New Zealand remains committed to a two-state solution.”

Read more:
Israel-Gaza crisis: NZ must condemn atrocities but keep pushing for a two-state solution

These are welcome steps. But in the weeks and months ahead, New Zealand will need to be clear that unlimited military force, without a long-term vision for peace, cannot satisfy either Israel’s desire for security or the Palestinian quest for statehood.

We fear that recent positive developments – the release of some Israeli hostages and the trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt – will soon be overwhelmed as the death toll of innocent victims rapidly escalates.

The Netanyahu government’s utter determination to liquidate Hamas, even if it costs the lives of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza, is at odds with Israel’s long-term need for regional peace.

Seeking peace

Fundamentally, the right of self-defence is not limitless. Israel’s iron grip on the provision of food, electricity and water to some 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza goes against the basic tenets of international law.

Collective punishment of civilians for the crimes of Hamas is not acceptable. Nor are indiscriminate, disproportionate or inhumane military actions. If they continue, the war will spread.

It may have no immediate or direct bearing on the current crisis, but New Zealand’s goal must be to work with regional powers, engage with Palestinian leadership that supports a peaceful path to statehood, and work towards stability in the region.

The long cycles of unwanted occupation, blockade, provocation, vendetta, violence and counter-violence, must eventually be broken. For now, though, New Zealand must reassert its support for the laws of war as well as a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and actively work with others towards those ends.

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. As the Israel-Gaza crisis worsens and the UN remains impotent, what are NZ’s diplomatic options? – https://theconversation.com/as-the-israel-gaza-crisis-worsens-and-the-un-remains-impotent-what-are-nzs-diplomatic-options-216519

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Langley, Associate Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University

Excavations on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have uncovered two unique and deadly artefacts dating back some 7,000 years – tiger shark teeth that were used as blades.

These finds, reported in the journal Antiquity, are some of the earliest archaeological evidence globally for the use of shark teeth in composite weapons – weapons made with multiple parts. Until now, the oldest such shark-tooth blades found were less than 5,000 years old.

Our international team used a combination of scientific analysis, experimental reproduction and observations of recent human communities to determine that the two modified shark teeth had once been attached to handles as blades. They were most likely used in ritual or warfare.

7,000-year-old teeth

The two shark teeth were recovered during excavations as part of a joint Indonesian-Australian archaeological research program. Both specimens were found in archaeological contexts attributed to the Toalean culture – an enigmatic foraging society that lived in southwestern Sulawesi from around 8,000 years ago until an unknown period in the recent past.

The shark teeth are of a similar size and came from tiger sharks (Galeocerda cuvier) that were approximately two metres long. Both teeth are perforated.

A complete tooth, found at the cave site of Leang Panninge, has two holes drilled through the root. The other – found at a cave called Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1 – has one hole, though is broken and likely originally also had two holes.

Microscopic examination of the teeth found they had once been tightly fixed to a handle using plant-based threads and a glue-like substance. The adhesive used was a combination of mineral, plant and animal materials.

The same method of attachment is seen on modern shark-tooth blades used by cultures throughout the Pacific.

Examination of the edges of each tooth found they had been used to pierce, cut and scrape flesh and bone. However, far more damage was present than a shark would naturally accrue during feeding.

While these residues superficially suggest Toalean people were using shark-tooth knives as everyday cutting implements, ethnographic (observations of recent communities), archaeological and experimental data suggest otherwise.

Why use shark teeth?

Not surprisingly, our experiments found tiger shark-tooth knives were equally effective in creating long, deep gashes in the skin when used to strike (as in fighting) as when butchering a leg of fresh pork.

Indeed, the only negative aspect is that the teeth blunt relatively quickly – too quickly to make their use as an everyday knife practical.

This fact, as well as the fact shark teeth can inflict deep lacerations, probably explains why shark-tooth blades were restricted to weapons for conflict and ritual activities in the present and recent past.

Read more:
Evolution of a smile: 400 million year old spiny fish overturns shark theory of tooth origins

Shark-tooth blades in recent times

Numerous societies across the globe have integrated shark teeth into their material culture. In particular, peoples living on coastlines (and actively fishing for sharks) are more likely to incorporate greater numbers of teeth into a wider range of tools.

Observations of present-day communities indicate that, when not used to adorn the human body, shark teeth were almost universally used to create blades for conflict or ritual – including ritualised combat.

For example, a fighting knife found throughout north Queensland has a single long blade made from approximately 15 shark teeth placed one after the other down a hardwood shaft shaped like an oval, and is used to strike the flank or buttocks of an adversary.

Weapons, including lances, knives and clubs armed with shark teeth are known from mainland New Guinea and Micronesia, while lances form part of the mourning costume in Tahiti.

Farther east, the peoples of Kiribati are renowned for their shark-tooth daggers, swords, spears and lances, which are recorded as having been used in highly ritualised and often fatal conflicts.

Shark teeth found in Maya and Mexican archaeological contexts are widely thought to have been used for ritualised bloodletting, and shark teeth are known to have been used as tattooing blades in Tonga, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Kiribati.

In Hawai‘i, so-called “shark-tooth cutters” were used as concealed weapons and for “cutting up dead chiefs and cleaning their bones preparatory to the customary burials”.

Other shark tooth archaeological finds

Almost all shark-tooth artefacts recovered globally have been identified as adornments, or interpreted as such.

Indeed, modified shark teeth have been recovered from older contexts. A solitary tiger shark tooth with a single perforation from Buang Merabak (New Ireland, Papua New Guinea) is dated to around 39,500–28,000 years ago. Eleven teeth with single perforations from Kilu (Buka Island, Papua New Guinea) are dated to around 9,000–5,000 years ago. And an unspecified number of teeth from Garivaldino (Brazil) is dated to around 9,400–7,200 years ago.

However, in each of these cases the teeth were likely personal ornaments, not weapons.

Our newly described Indonesian shark tooth artefacts, with their combination of modifications and microscopic traces, instead indicate they were not only attached to knives, but very likely linked to ritual or conflict.

Whether they cut human or animal flesh, these shark teeth from Sulawesi could provide the first evidence that a distinctive class of weaponry in the Asia-Pacific region has been around much longer than we thought.

Michelle Langley is an Associate Professor of Archaeology in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University, Brisbane. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Adhi Oktaviana is a PhD Candidate at Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Gold Coast and Researcher at Research Centre of Archaeometry, The National Research and Innovation Agency, Jakarta

Lecturer in the archeology study program, Hasanuddin University and Chair of the Sulawesi Archaeological Research Collaboration Center.

Basran Burhan is a PhD student at Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University, Brisbane.

– ref. Bringing a shark to a knife fight: 7,000-year-old shark-tooth knives discovered in Indonesia – https://theconversation.com/bringing-a-shark-to-a-knife-fight-7-000-year-old-shark-tooth-knives-discovered-in-indonesia-214070

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clive Thompson, Research Fellow, Labour, Development & Governance Unit, University of Cape Town

In the 46th minute of the 2023 Rugby World Cup (RWC) pool match between contenders France and pretenders Namibia, with the rampaging Europeans ahead by a thumping 54 points to nil, the wilting Welwitschias forfeited a player to a yellow card.

Within eight minutes, the card had bled to red. The mismatch worsened. Close to the final whistle, with France now up 96-0, the Namibian desert turned yellower still. Now 15 cats chased 13 mice for the dying embers of a farce.

What’s the point?

As a legal specialist in conflict resolution and mediation, I argue there has to be a better way. Rugby rules are rightly known as the “laws” of the game, and they are essentially designed to resolve the conflicts inherent in a physical contest over an oval ball. There is substantial crossover with systems for conflict resolution in other areas of life and work.

Wayne Barnes, who will referee the RWC final between New Zealand and South Africa this weekend, is also a barrister by trade. As such, he will know where the onus should lie when critical decisions need to be taken in a trial between two elite teams.

Unfair and unsafe

To be a riveting spectacle, the power sport of rugby must be as safe and fair as possible for each of a match’s 80 minutes. That means 15 playing 15 at all times. The spectacle is lost whenever there is a mismatch in numbers.

In a collision contest, 14 against 15 hurts the game; 13 against 15 is unwatchable – and dangerous.

As one would expect, it is generally the weaker of the two teams, already struggling to put up a defence, that concedes penalties and haemorrhages players. A valiant team can hold out against greater numbers, but only exceptionally.

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Commonly, the game dynamics are blighted and the depleted team has points racked up against them. Game over, fun over.

It is also unsafe. Rugby is an impact sport, with bodies being put on the line. It promotes physical resilience in the face of what are essentially authorised assaults. Players competing at the top level are playing at their limit.

To oblige them to overextend is to invite bodily collapse. That is not a good idea. Heart failure ranks with brain trauma as a risk.

Bad rules mean bad results

Some sendoffs are indisputable, such as for the dangerous tackle on French captain Antoine Dupont during the Namibia game. It put Dupont out of the quarterfinal with South Africa, and may have accounted for France’s knife-edge loss in that game.

But many yellow cards are hotly disputed. Knowledgeable rugby commentators, coaches, players and former referees often assert – with evidence – that a call at the breakdown could just as well have gone the other way.

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Some yellow card offences are risible. If they are specified in the rules, the rules need revisiting. Attempted intercepts of passes are a case in point: if they result in a knock-on, it warrants a scrum, not a sending off. The attacking team must learn to pass better.

Dubious referee calls resulting in sendoffs and mismatches – even when made in good faith – can and do ruin matches. Sometimes there is redemption as the game rolls on. Mostly there is not.

Essentially, good refereeing is about good dispute resolution. Yes, rules are central to the integrity of the game. When calls are marginal and the impacts disproportionate, however, the rules need to change.

Balance in competition needs to be maintained. Justice in sport for the players and fans demands that no one be robbed in the result.

Rugby can learn from other codes

The Australian Football League (AFL) – “Aussie Rules” – does it better: 18 play 18 at all times, across four quarters. Players are cited for fouls. Territory is awarded in real time to those offended against.

Each week of the playing season the AFL tribunal assesses the citations and dishes out penalties where warranted – typically suspensions – based on thorough, defended inspection.

Umpires are spared the curse of making poor calls that could unduly affect game outcomes. Fans are not given more cause to be apoplectic.

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Rugby union would be improved if sendings off were reserved for genuinely bad actors. Yellow and even red cards may may well be warranted – called in real time by the referee, assistant referees and the television match official (TMO).

But to preserve safety and the spectacle, those exiled should immediately be replaced from the reserves bench. Always 15 on 15.

If the yellow card offence occurs in the attacking red zone, a penalty try should be awarded, with the conversion kick to be taken from the touchline. If the offence occurs elsewhere, rugby could borrow from AFL, with a penalty given 50 metres closer to the offending team’s goal line (up to the five-metre line).

Where a red card offence is adjudged, the player should be ejected and have to face a post-match tribunal. A replacement is, of course, needed on the field. No matter where on the field the crime occurred, a penalty try should be awarded between the posts.

Hopes for a fair final

Until there is reform, however, the onus of proof is always on the prosecution – in this case the match officials – just as it is in a courtroom.

This will be especially important at the Stade de France in Paris this weekend when the All Blacks and South Africa both go for a record fourth Rugby World Cup title.

In the event of an “incident” – and there will be several – we must hope the benefit of the doubt applies, and 15 continue to play 15. Only if the case is beyond doubt on the visible evidence should there be an unlevel playing field for ten or more minutes.

Let the show go on, intact. For rugby heaven’s sake.

Clive Thompson ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. A red card could ruin the Rugby World Cup final – the game needs fairer, safer rulings on the field – https://theconversation.com/a-red-card-could-ruin-the-rugby-world-cup-final-the-game-needs-fairer-safer-rulings-on-the-field-216419

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University

Where is the text you’re reading, right now? In one sense, it lives “on the internet” or “in the cloud”, just like your favourite social media platform or the TV show you might stream tonight.

But in a physical sense, it’s stored and transmitted somewhere in a network of thousands of data centres across the globe. Each of these centres is whirring, buzzing and beeping around the clock, to store, process and communicate vast amounts of data and provide services to hungry consumers.

All this infrastructure is expensive to build and run, and has a considerable environmental impact. In search of cost savings, greater sustainability and better service, data centre providers are looking to get their feet wet.

Tech giant Microsoft and other companies want to relocate data centres into the world’s oceans, submerging computers and networking equipment to take advantage of cheap real estate and cool waters. Is this a good thing? What about the environmental impact? Are we simply replacing one damaging practice with another?

Which companies are doing this?

Microsoft’s Project Natick has been pursuing the idea of data centres beneath the waves since 2014. The initial premise was that since many humans live near the coast, so should data centres.

An initial experiment in 2015 saw a small-scale data centre deployed for three months in the Pacific Ocean.

A two-year follow-up experiment began in 2018. A total of 864 servers, in a 12 by 3 metre tubular structure, were sunk 35 metres deep off the Orkney Islands in Scotland.

Microsoft is not the only company experimenting with moving data underwater. Subsea Cloud is another American company doing so. China’s Shenzhen HiCloud Data Center Technology Co Ltd has deployed centres in tropical waters off the coast of Hainan Island.

Why move data centres under the waves?

Underwater data centres promise several advantages over their land-locked cousins.

1) Energy efficiency

The primary benefit is a significant cut in electricity consumption. According to the International Energy Agency, data centres consume around 1–1.5% of global electricity use, of which some 40% is used for cooling.

Data centres in the ocean can dissipate heat in the surrounding water. Microsoft’s centre uses a small amount of electricity for cooling, while Subsea Cloud’s design has an entirely passive cooling system.

2) Reliability

The Microsoft experiment also found the underwater centre had a boost in reliability. When it was brought back to shore in 2020, the rate of server failures was less than 20% that of land-based data centres.

This was attributed to the stable temperature on the sea floor and the fact oxygen and humidity had been removed from the tube, which likely decreased corrosion of the components. The air inside the tube had also been replaced with nitrogen, making fires impossible.

Another reason for the increased reliability may have been the complete absence of humans, which prevents the possibility of human error impacting the equipment.

Read more:
The environmental cost of data centres is substantial, and making them energy-efficient will only solve half the problem

3) Latency

More than one third of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometres of a coast. Locating data centres close to where people live reduces the time taken for data to reach them, known as “latency”.

Offshore data centres can be close to coastal consumers, reducing latency, without having to pay the high real-estate prices often found in densely populated areas.

4) Increased security and data sovereignty

Moving data centres into the ocean makes them physically more difficult for hackers or saboteurs to access. It can also make it easier for companies to address “data sovereignty” concerns, in which certain countries require certain data to be stored within their borders rather than transmitted overseas.

5) Cost

Alongside savings due to reduced power bills, fewer hardware failures, and the low price of offshore real estate, the way underwater data centres are built may also cut costs.

The centres can be made in a modular, mass-produced fashion using standardised components, and shipped ready for deployment. There is also no need to consider the comfort or practicality for human operators to interact with the equipment.

What about the environmental impact?

At present there is no evidence placing data centres in the world’s oceans will have any significant negative impact. Microsoft’s experiments showed some localised warming, but “the water just metres downstream of a Natick vessel would get a few thousandths of a degree warmer at most”.

The Microsoft findings also showed the submerged data centre provided habitat to marine life, much like a shipwreck:

[…] crabs and fish began to gather around the vessel within 24 hours. We were delighted to have created a home for those creatures.

If underwater data centres go ahead, robust planning will be needed to ensure their placement follows best practise considering cultural heritage and environmental values. There are also opportunities to enhance the environmental benefits of underwater data centres by incorporating nature-positive features in the design to enhance marine biodiversity around these structures.

What’s next?

Several companies are actively exploring, or indeed constructing, underwater data centres. While the average end-user will have no real awareness of where their data are stored, organisations may soon have opportunities to select local, underwater cloud platforms and services.

Companies with a desire to shout about their environmental credentials may well seek out providers that offer greener data centres – a change that is likely to only accelerate the move to the ocean.

So far, it looks like this approach is practical and can be scaled up. Add in the environmental and economic savings and this may well be the future of data centres for a significant proportion of the planet.

Read more:
We are ignoring the true cost of water-guzzling data centres

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. Most data lives in the cloud. What if it lived under the sea? – https://theconversation.com/most-data-lives-in-the-cloud-what-if-it-lived-under-the-sea-216067

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shahram Akbarzadeh, Convenor of the Middle East Studies Forum (MESF), and Deputy Director (International) at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Deakin University

Iran has warned Israel of severe consequences from “multiple fronts” if it does not halt its relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

This warning is widely interpreted as a declaration of intent for Iran to enter the conflict via its allies and proxies. The Hezbollah militant group, which is already engaged in low-level skirmishes across the Israeli border with Lebanon, and the Assad regime in Syria are both closely aligned with Iran.

Given Iran’s increasingly hostile rhetoric, Washington and Tel Aviv have been deliberating over what to do if and when Tehran gives the order to engage.

Israel’s position on Iran has been uncompromising. In the past, it has advocated for surgical strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and has been implicated in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Iran’s potential entry into the Gaza war would open a new chapter in hostilities between the enemies – and take the war directly to Iran’s doorstep.

Military and political repercussions

Despite its warnings to Israel, Iran appears reluctant to take the route of directly entering the conflict for fear of risking a harsh Israeli response.

As a result, Iran has been maintaining a difficult balance between its ideological rhetoric and political expediency. But Iran is playing with fire. The balance it seeks to maintain can be easily disrupted in the unpredictable fog of war.

Tehran’s official line is extreme. It denies Israel the right to exist, and refers to it not as a state, but as a Zionist entity. Iranian official declarations are replete with anti-Israel tirades.

In June, Tehran unveiled its latest missile and boasted that it had the range to reach Israel. Banners announcing the missile had the words “400 seconds to Tel Aviv” printed in Persian, Hebrew and Arabic.

This message is integral to the ideology of the ruling regime and a rallying cry for its supporters.

Anti-Israel and anti-US venom is a staple of political discourse for the hardline faction that governs Iran under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi. This faction is bolstered by its control of the judiciary, the parliament and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

In fact, there are now calls from the hardline camp to follow through with the promise of destroying Israel. The editor-in-chief of Kayhan Daily, known as the mouthpiece of Khamenei, has called for an official declaration of war against Israel.

Read more:
The Israel-Hamas war: No matter who loses, Iran wins

However, the authorities do not have a death wish. They are fully aware that open confrontation with Israel – or even a confrontation by one of Iran’s proxies – could be very costly for Iran. Not only could there be an Israeli military retaliation on Iranian facilities, but also political repercussions for a regime increasingly unpopular with its own citizens.

The Iranian public is disillusioned with the regime’s ideological zeal against Israel and sees it as a ploy to hide corruption, economic woes and the inability of the government to provide for its citizens.

The chant often heard at protests over the past decade – “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran” – is a vivid reminder of the gap between the ruling regime and the population.

Widespread protests across Iran following the killing of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini have shown the depth of regime’s unpopularity in the past year. Given this, a military confrontation with Israel could have unpredictable political consequences for the regime.

A hostage of its own rhetoric

The ruling regime in Iran has been mindful of US and Israeli red lines to avoid open hostilities.

After the US assassination of celebrated war hero Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, for example, Iranian authorities were enraged and promised “harsh retaliation”. But the response was relatively meek: a pre-warned strike on two Iraqi airfields that housed US troops.

Iran has also followed the same approach in relation to Israel. The survival of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria with Russian and Iranian backing ensured Iran has the capacity to launch attacks on Israel, but it has deliberately refrained from doing so.

This is despite the fact Israel has repeatedly targeted Iranian assets in Syria. In 2018, for example, Israel carried out air sorties in Syria that hit 70 Iranian targets.

In 2020, a similar operation was carried out by Israel to attack Iranian military targets in Syria. And again this year, before the Gaza War, Israel launched air strikes against Iranian forces in Syria. Iran’s response to these acts has been mute.

Iran is a hostage of its own inflammatory rhetoric. The regime has made its political fortune on rejecting the West and Israel. The Palestinian cause has been trumpeted as central to its worldview.

This posture has attracted a following in the Muslim world. And Iran shamelessly exploits this to gain advantage over its Arab rivals, whom Tehran accuses of betraying Palestinians and their plight.

Yet, the Iranian leadership is fully aware that crossing red lines and engaging in open confrontation with Israel (or the US) could pose an existential threat to the regime. That is why Iran has consistently pulled back from the brink of war and opted for low-intensity skirmishes via its proxies that serve its ideological grandstanding but do not jeopardise its survival.

Whether Iran can continue this game of brinksmanship in such a tense and explosive environment is an open question. Iran may not order Hezbollah to unleash its missiles on Israel, but this doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen by accident, through a chain of errors, or even by design.

Just because Iran has trained and sponsored Hezbollah, we cannot automatically assume Tehran has full control over all of its levers.

Read more:
With Iran purportedly capable of making a nuclear bomb in a matter of months, what will its leaders do next?

Shahram Akbarzadeh has received funding from Australian Research Council and Gerda Henkel Foundation. He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Middle East Council on Global Affairs (Doha).

– ref. Despite its inflammatory rhetoric, Iran is unlikely to attack Israel. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/despite-its-inflammatory-rhetoric-iran-is-unlikely-to-attack-israel-heres-why-216345

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra

This week, two of the original members of Australia’s 1971 “ping-pong diplomacy” team are returning to Beijing to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Half a century ago, few could foresee that a spur-of-the-moment, unscheduled visit by a young Australian sports team would lead to one of Australia’s most important – and sometimes turbulent – bilateral relations.

Only weeks after the team’s headline-making tour, Australia’s then opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, led a delegation to Beijing promising to open diplomatic relations “when elected”.

Whitlam delivered on that promise in 1972. Three weeks after taking office as Australia’s 21st prime minister, his government reached an agreement with the People’s Republic of China on the establishment of diplomatic relations. The following year, Australia’s first embassy in Beijing opened with the appointment of Stephen FitzGerald as the first ambassador.

As FitzGerald recounted on my podcast, The Ticket, this week:

The Chinese have a big love of sport, as do Australians. At one stage they used to talk about the three great balls. One was table tennis, one was basketball and one was volleyball.

‘A crowd of 8,000 people’

The 1971 ping-pong tour wasn’t the first time sport was used as a diplomatic tool, but it was perhaps one of the most successful of the Cold War period, with long-term benefits.

After competing in the Table Tennis World Championships in Japan in late March 1971, Australian and American table tennis players were invited to travel to China by the country’s first premier, Zhou Enlai. A revolutionary who became one of China’s most revered statesmen, he advocated peaceful co-existence with the West and other nations.

The American team embarked on their tour first – setting the stage for then-President Richard Nixon’s famous visit to Beijing in 1972. The Australians made their trip to China a couple weeks later.

Read more:
50 years after Gough Whitlam established diplomatic relations with China, what has changed?

Paul Pinkewich had just turned 20 at the time of the visit, teammate Steve Knapp was only 18. Now in their 70s, they will return to Beijing for a function at the Australian embassy today and share a meal with some of the Chinese players they competed against.

Pinkewich is taking his table tennis paddle with him in case he can get in a few matches with his old rivals.

“We had three great matches in China. You know, we’re used to 20 to 50 people in Australia watching tournaments. Our first match in Canton, now Guangzhou, I think it was a crowd of 8,000 people,” he recalls.

“There’s this one table in the stadium and we went out there, we actually had a win. We won 5-4. It was fantastic.

“I think friendship was more important than competition.”

The Australians suffered a narrow defeat in the second match in Shanghai. The third and final match was played in the Chinese capital. At the May Day celebrations that followed, the team was invited to the Great Hall of the People to meet Zhou.

According to the Sun-Herald report from the journalist travelling with the team, the premier asked Knapp about his long hair and sideburns.

“Do you wear this hair because of your disagreement with society or because it is a style?”

Knapp replied, “It is the fashion.”

Pinkewich says he will never forget the sound of the crowds during the tour.

“Can you believe, one table in the middle of the Capital Stadium [in Beijing] with 18,000 spectators, and that was just an amazing experience. We got trounced 8-1 that night. But they always let the woman win.”

That woman was Anne Middleton, the other player on the 1971 tour, who has since passed away.

Leading the delegation were the then-president of Table Tennis Australia, John Jackson, who is now deceased, and coach Noel Shorter, who at 85 is not making this week’s commemorative trip.

Shorter remembers getting everything packed up from their coaching clinic in Tokyo with only four hours’ notice after being told there had been a change of plans and the team was heading later that day to China.

“At that time the [Australian] government was quite racial, as far as the Chinese were concerned, and they didn’t show any interest at all,” Shorter recalls.

“It’s funny. After the trip we were labelled as communists […] but we were interested in friendship first, competition second.”

Why sport diplomacy matters

Beijing has continued to use sport as a diplomatic tool, including becoming the first city in the world to host both a summer and winter Olympic Games (Beijing in 2008 and 2022).

French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894, believing Olympics were a global event. “All people must be allowed in, without debate,” he said.

That ethos is facing major challenges today as a new global rift emerges between the West and autocratic regimes like Russia, China and others. A new term has also emerged in recent years – almost always applied by researchers in democratic nations – to describe undemocratic nations’ forays into global sport: sportswashing.

Read more:
Can China use the Beijing Olympics to ‘sportwash’ its abuses against the Uyghurs? Only if the world remains silent

Viewed through today’s lens, China’s invitation to the Australian team five decades ago would most likely be reported as an attempt by the Communist Party to use sport to wash its image.

But without that young Australian sports team breaking down barriers by travelling to China, who knows how different Australia’s current economic and cultural landscape would be?

China’s current ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, has described the relationship between the two nations as “half a century of storms and sunshine”.

His comments are included in a book published by the Chinese embassy, titled Fifty People Fifty Stories. It details the experiences of dozens of Australians who have at one time lived and worked in Beijing.

“The relationship between China and Australia has become more mature, stable and resilient,” Xiao writes. “Amity between people holds the key to sound relations between countries.”

At the heart of such amity, sport continues to play a significant role.

Tracey Holmes was one of the fifty Australians interviewed in the ‘Fifty People, Fifty Stories’ book due to her experiences of previously living and working in China.

– ref. Ping-pong diplomacy: Australian table tennis players return to China, five decades after historic tour – https://theconversation.com/ping-pong-diplomacy-australian-table-tennis-players-return-to-china-five-decades-after-historic-tour-215537

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Bushell, Clinical Assistant Professor in Pharmacy, University of Canberra

Stimulants are first-line drugs for children and adults diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But how do they actually work?

First, let’s look at the brain

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, which means it affects how the brain functions.

Medical imaging indicates people with ADHD may have slight differences in their brain’s structure, the way their brain regions work together to perform tasks, and how their brain’s chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, pass on information.

These brain differences are associated with the symptoms of ADHD, including inattention, impulse control and problems with memory.

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

What stimulants are prescribed in Australia?

The three main stimulants prescribed for ADHD in Australia are dexamfetamine, methylphenidate (sold under the brand names Ritalin and Concerta) and lisdexamfetamine (sold as Vyvanse).

Dexamfetamine and methylphenidate have been around since the 1930s and 1940s respectively. Lisdexamfetamine is a newer stimulant that has been around since the late 2000s.

Dexamfetamine and lisdexamfetamine are amphetamines. Lisdexamfetamine is inactive when it’s taken and actually changes into active dexamfetamine in the red blood cells. This is what’s known as a “prodrug”.

So how do they work for ADHD?

Stimulant drugs are thought to alter the activity of key neuotransmitters, dopamine and noradrenaline, in the brain. These neurotransmitters help with attention and focus, among other things.

Stimulants increase the amount of dopamine and noradrenaline in the tiny gaps between neurons, known as synapses. They do this by predominantly blocking a transporter that then prevents their re-uptake back into the neuron that released them.

This means more dopamine and noradrenaline can bind to their respective receptors. This helps connected neurons in the brain talk to one another.

Amphetamines also increase the amount of dopamine the neuron releases into the synapse (the tiny gaps between neurons). And it stops the enzymes that break down dopamine. This results in an increase of dopamine in the synapse.

What effect do they have on ADHD symptoms?

We still don’t fully understand the underlying brain mechanisms that change behaviour in people with ADHD.

But research shows stimulants that modulate noradrenaline and dopamine can improve brain processes such as:

• attention
• memory
• decision-making
• task completion
• hyperactivity.

They can also improve general behaviour, such as self-control, not talking over the top of others, and concentration. These behaviours are important for social interactions.

Stimulants reduce ADHD symptoms in about 70% to 80% of children and adults who take them.

Some people will notice their symptoms improve right away. Other times, these improvements will be more noticeable to parents, carers, teachers, colleagues and partners.

Not everyone gets the same dose

The optimal stimulant dose varies between individuals, with multiple dosage options available.

This enables a “start low, go slow” approach, where the stimulant can be gradually increased to the most effective dose for the individual.

There are also different delivery options.

Dexamfetamine and methylphenidate are available in immediate-release preparations. As these have short half-lives (meaning they act quickly and wear off rapidly), they are often taken multiple times a day – usually in the morning, lunch and afternoon.

Methylphenidate is also available in long-acting tablets (Concerta) and capsules (Ritalin LA). They are released into the body over the day.

Lisdexamfetamine is a long-acting drug and is not available in a short-acting formulation.

The long-acting stimulants are generally taken once in the morning. This avoids the need to take tablets during school or work hours (and the need to store a “controlled drug”, which has the potential for abuse, outside the home).

Read more:
GPs could improve access to ADHD treatment. But we still need specialists to diagnose and start medication

What are the side effects?

The most common side effects are sleep problems and decreased appetite. A recent study showed children and young people taking methylphenidate for ADHD were around 2.6 times more likely to have sleep problems and 15 times more likely to have a decreased appetite than those not taking methylphenidate.

Headache and abdominal pain are also relatively common.

Can someone without ADHD take a stimulant to improve productivity?

Stimulants are tightly controlled because of their potential for abuse. In Australia, only paediatricians, psychiatrists or neurologists (and GPs in special circumstances) can prescribe them. This follows a long assessment process.

As stimulants increase dopamine, they can cause euphoria and a heightened sense of wellbeing. They can also cause weight loss.

A common myth about stimulant medicines is they can improve the concentration and productivity of people without ADHD. A recent study shows the opposite is true.

This study gave a group of 40 people online arithmetic tasks to complete across four sessions. At each of the sessions, participants were given either a placebo or a stimulant before completing the task.

The results showed that while stimulants did not impact getting the correct answer, it increased the number of moves and time to solve the problems compared to a placebo. This indicates a reduction in productivity.

However, the myth that stimulants improve study prevails. It’s likely that users feel different – after all, they are taking a medicine that speeds up messages between the brain and body. It may make them “feel” more alert and productive, even if they’re not.

Read more:
ADHD medications have doubled in the last decade – but other treatments can help too

Mary Bushell 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 do stimulants actually work to reduce ADHD symptoms? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-stimulants-actually-work-to-reduce-adhd-symptoms-215801

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Neale, Researcher, Southern Cross University

Up to 3.7 million Australian households have been hit by food insecurity this year – many for the first time.

Of these households, four in five say the reason is the rising cost of living, as interest rate rises and many other cost increases force them to make unwelcome trade-offs – such as food.

These figures come from a new hunger survey from Foodbank, which found almost half of us (48%) now feel anxious about putting food on the table or struggle to access food consistently. About 70% of those polled said rising food prices were a reason for their food insecurity and 48% reported cutting back on buying fresh food.

Cutting back on food waste helps control costs. But what about growing your own food – is that financially sensible? Yes, to a degree. It’s generally not feasible to grow enough food to support yourself. But done cleverly and cheaply, you can cut your food bills with fresh greens, vegetables, herbs and even by foraging.

Growing food on the cheap

If you don’t already have an established veggie patch or balcony garden, the set-up cost can be enough to put you off.

It’s worth looking first to see if there are community gardens near you. These let you grow your own food without having to shell out for garden beds, compost and gardening tools.

Some gardens have been running for decades. They’re usually run by local like-minded gardeners who can share their knowledge of what grows well where you are.

For those hoping to grow closer to home, you could consider “guerrilla gardening”, where you convert your neighbourhood nature strips to food gardens. Before starting, it’s important to check if your local planning laws allow it. Some councils do, but some do not. To get started, consult the guidelines by Farmers of the Urban Footpath.

If you have the space, you could set up your own veggie patch. Many raised garden beds operate as closed systems, saving water and nutrients for later use by the plants. Good quality growing compost will improve harvest yields and save you money longer term.

What about apartment residents? If you have sunlight, you can grow food cheaply. Old food-safe containers, plastic pots or even repurposed household items can be an easy way to start growing. Make sure to consider potential contaminants if you take this approach, to make sure your soil and the food growing in it is clean.

If you get more serious, you could even dispense with soil entirely and look at retail hydroponic units. These allow you to produce a vast quantity of leafy greens from seed in just two or three weeks. While more expensive up front, hydroponics offer a more controlled growing environment to ensure higher yields and protect your plants against extreme or unpredictable weather as the climate changes.

Does it make financial sense?

If you plant onions, cabbage and broccoli, you’ll find they take up space in the garden, grow reasonably slowly and only yield a harvest once. Similarly, it’s not usually worth planting carrots and potatoes as they’re among the cheapest to buy.

Instead, go for plants that offer you several harvests over many weeks. These include herbs, lettuces, cucumbers, zucchinis, silverbeets, peas, beans and tomatoes. Consult sites such as Gardenate for month-by-month guides on what to grow in your growing zone, as well as tips on companion planting and how long until you can eat your produce.

When you’re starting out, it can be easy to get carried away by the thought of exotic vegetables. Artichokes? Rhubarb? Asparagus? But to cut your food bill, focus on what your household actually eats.

It’s common for beginner vegetable gardeners to plant once and then wait. But this can result in a glut and then nothing. Instead, explore succession planting, where you plant new plants every few weeks to extend your harvest.

When it’s time to harvest, pick only what you need for each meal. Lettuce and herbs are great because they can be picked by the leaf. That means there’s little to no waste and the plant can regrow. Savings add up particularly fast for herbs. Coriander, oregano and so on are often the most expensive produce per kilogram. Worse, they’re sold in bunches too big for one meal and can then quietly rot in your fridge.

Grow and swap

Sharing your excess veggies, lemons and eggs is a great way to share the abundance of your crops with like-minded people. You can also do produce swaps. Sharing harvests is as old as agriculture, but what’s new now is the variety of ways we can share it, whether by app, website or regular meeting.

Read more:
Food sharing with a 21st-century twist – and Melbourne’s a world leader

For advanced cost-cutting, consider foraging

Perhaps the ultimate way to avoid any cost associated with growing your own is not to do it at all. Instead, you could make the most of foraging and edible weeds – going out and actively looking for food.

It’s not new – during the Great Depression, many Australians supplemented food from the markets with rabbits, dandelions and foraged fruit. It’s important to be respectful in where and how you harvest – and be mindful of the safety of the produce. Avoid foraging near busy roads, for instance, as the soil may have lead or other heavy metals in it.

The largest edible weeds and foraging Facebook group in Australia has almost 90,000 people. Communities like this are an excellent source of knowledge, suggestions and recipes, such as swapping mallow for expensive kale when you make kale chips. Of course, it’s vitally important to eat only what is safe. When starting out, use foraging guides to confirm identification.
Whatever you choose, the most important benefit of growing or foraging your own produce are the social connections you can make. After all, times are tough and one of the best things we can do is stay connected to our local communities and feel comforted by knowing we’re not alone – help is at hand.

Read more:
Supermarket shelves stripped bare? History can teach us to ‘make do’ with food

Horticulturist and green infrastructure expert Michael Casey contributed to this article

Kate Neale receives research and project funding from various not-for-profit organisations for her work in therapeutic horticulture. She is a member of Therapeutic Horticulture Australia and has previously been a Foodbank Ambassador. She also runs her own consultancy business Digability.

– ref. Growing your own food and foraging can help tackle your ballooning grocery bill. Here’s how – https://theconversation.com/growing-your-own-food-and-foraging-can-help-tackle-your-ballooning-grocery-bill-heres-how-216264

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

At a White House briefing early this week, Joe Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked whether there’d been any thought of postponing Anthony Albanese’s state visit because of the Middle East conflict.

No, she said, highlighting the importance of alliances and reassuring that the president could handle more than one thing at a time.

From Albanese’s vantage point it’s extraordinary that, in the space of a fortnight, he’s breaking bread with the two most powerful men in the world, Biden and China’s Xi Jinping.

Of course, when an Australian prime minister is invited to Washington, he or she has to go. This trip, partly a consolation prize for Biden having to pull out the Quad meeting earlier this year, has been particularly important as Australia tries to push along the implementation of the AUKUS agreement.

But, domestically, the timing is not great for Albanese. As pictures came in of the glamorous black-tie White House state dinner (later overshadowed by another dreadful shooting in America), many Australian families were facing a fresh bout of anxiety about their mortgage payments.

Wednesday’s September-quarter figures, showing inflation is still uncomfortably high, set off speculation about whether the Reserve Bank will increase interest rates again, either after its meeting on Tuesday week, Melbourne Cup Day, or in December.

The bank is usually Delphic about its intentions, and new governor Michele Bullock is showing herself a master at that game.

In her first major speech as governor, delivered before the inflation figures, Bullock said the bank’s “focus remains on bringing inflation back to target within a reasonable timeframe, while keeping employment growing”.

It was possible this could be done without changing the cash rate, she said. But there were risks and the bank’s board “will not hesitate to raise the cash rate further if there is a material upward revision to the outlook for inflation”. The board would receive more information before its meeting that would be important for this assessment, she said.

She left similar uncertainty when she appeared before a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday, saying the inflation number “was pretty much where we thought it would come out”. As for whether it made a rate rise more or less likely, “I wouldn’t like to say more or less likely – we’re still looking at it.”

Bullock has her standing on the line with this decision. As her predecessor, Philip Lowe, found, misjudgments can bring both reputational damage and public odium for the bank’s governor, who is much more an exposed public figure these days.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers had multiple messages after the inflation number. The annual figure was in line with expectations, he said, but inflation was too high and would be so for too long. These figures didn’t take in the fallout from the Middle East conflict – that’s an unknown still to come. He emphasised (drawing on the Australian Bureau of Statistics data) that the government’s various measures (energy relief, child care and the like) are “taking some of the edge off these pressures that Australians are feeling”.

The point is, however, that whatever the government has done is for the average household only at the margin.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Michele Bullock’s appointment as Reserve Bank Governor

Many people have already moved from fixed low-interest loans to higher rate loans. But many are still facing that cliff. According to Reserve Bank data, about 520,000 loans are estimated to roll over in the second half of 2023 and another 450,000 loans will roll onto higher rates in 2024.

The government hopes Bullock will hold the line on rates in the next two months. A pre-Christmas rise would really put pressure on it. It mightn’t be responsible for the trouble but it rode to power promising to relieve cost-of-living pressures. Since then those pressures have become a great deal worse.

If this issue were to take a serious toll on Labor’s popularity over coming months, that would be likely to restrict the government’s scope to pursue its broader objectives.

Maybe Chalmers had this in mind when he spoke on Wednesday at the Political Book of the Year function (where the winner was Niki Savva for Bulldozed, her account of Scott Morrison’s demise). Chalmers reflected that the mood was rather more sombre than on the previous two occasions.

“Part of that, of course, is the recognition that people are under pressure, in some cases very serious pressure, we saw that again in today’s inflation numbers and addressing this challenge is our highest priority,” he told the audience.

“But also because, on top of this, we’ve had the Voice knocked back. There’s a new and escalating conflict in the Middle East, risking innocent lives and putting pressure on communities here at home. And we just lost one of the finest Australians, a wonderful Queenslander, Bill Hayden.”

Chalmers went on to observe that “political writing is writing about power”, and said: “The best speech delivered off the cuff in this room [at the National Press Club] was about power and purpose.

“When Paul Keating stood up here at the end of 1990, surrounded by journalists, he was mourning the loss of Chris Higgins [treasury secretary who had just died], and he spoke of our generational responsibilities to lead. Marrying-up power and purpose, in the service of something important.”

Chalmers recalled “the first time I met Paul, when interviewing him for my thesis. He gave me some free advice that went something like ‘why don’t you stop thinking about power and start exercising it?’”

Read more:
As treasurer, Bill Hayden set Labor on the path to economic rationalism

Both Hayden and Keating have been role models for Chalmers. As the final treasurer in the Whitlam government, Hayden pursued budgetary rigour (in his case in the most difficult circumstances). Keating was the driver (with PM Bob Hawke) of an impressive agenda of economic reforms.

These days the public appetite for change is not what it was in the 1980s, when Keating was pushing through his measures. If the cost-of-living crisis persists for a long time, the opportunity for reforms will be further constrained. The political cost, however, could extend well beyond that.

So far, the public haven’t turned their wrath onto the government. The cost-of-living dragon has wreaked its havoc on families. If it starts to consume the government’s support, it could eat a lot of political capital very quickly.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Cost-of-living crisis is the dragon the government can’t slay – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-cost-of-living-crisis-is-the-dragon-the-government-cant-slay-216441

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

Bruce Lehrmann has been publicly named as the high profile man accused of raping a woman in Toowoomba two years ago.

Lehrmann, a former federal Liberal staffer, was accused by former colleague Brittany Higgins of raping her in a ministerial office in 2019. The case went to trial but that was aborted after improper behaviour by a juror. Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence.

A change in Queensland law recently came into effect which allows accused sex offenders to be named following being charged, rather than only after being committed for trial, as previously.

Lehrmann, 28, sought to keep his name suppressed in relation to the Toowoomba matter. But magistrate Clare Kelly rejected the argument for continued suppression of his identity. On Thursday the Queensland Supreme Court upheld her decision.

While Lehrmann’s name could not previously be published, it was widely known in political, legal and media circles that he was the man accused. He was commonly referred to, in connected with the Queensland case, as a “high profile” man.

Media companies fought the attempt at continued suppression.

Lehrmann is charged with two counts of rape alleged to have occurred in Toowoomba in October 2021.

In Thursday’s hearing Lehrmann’s barrister Andrew Hoare, arguing Kelly’s decision had been in error, highlighted mental health risks from identification. But Rob Anderson, for media companies, noted Lehrmann had appeared, identified, in media interviews.

Backing the magistrate’s decision, Justice Applegarth said it was “open to a reasonable decision-maker to not be satisfied that the non-publication order was necessary to protect the safety” of Lehrmann.

Applegarth said: “Rather than lower his public profile and retreat from the media spotlight, the applicant chose for whatever reason to appear more than once on national television and revisit events that had triggered his mental illness in early 2021”.

Lehrmann has defamation action on foot against Network 10, journalist Lisa Wikenson and the ABC.

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

– ref. Bruce Lehrmann named as the ‘high profile’ figure in Toowoomba rape allegation – https://theconversation.com/bruce-lehrmann-named-as-the-high-profile-figure-in-toowoomba-rape-allegation-216451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca McKenzie, Senior Specialist in Molecular Biology, Malaghan Institute of Medical Research

The recent award of the 2023 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman highlights the growing importance of RNA technology in the medical world, with many potential applications beyond COVID vaccines.

But until now, one of the major hindrances in making this technology more widely available globally, and in translating research into clinical use, has been the need for proprietary products, often licensed by pharmaceutical companies.

Detailed methodology to deliver RNA vaccines to cells was also not easily available to the research community.

For these reasons we have published a protocol detailing how to make and package RNA with commercially available reagents.

How RNA therapies work

RNA stands for ribonucleic acid. It is a type of genetic material, which can act as a messenger (mRNA), that translates information held in DNA into specific proteins.

The concept behind RNA therapies is elegant and simple, in theory. There are two distinct components: the RNA payload and the fatty envelope, made of lipid nanoparticles, which safely delivers the payload to cells.

Once inside a cell, the lipid envelope releases the RNA, enabling it to act as a messenger that will be read and translated to make specific therapeutic proteins. In COVID vaccines, the manufactured protein mirrors the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, training our immune system to recognise and remember it for a robust future immune defence.

Read more:
Messenger RNA: how it works in nature and in making vaccines

It is hard to believe now, but even in the early 2000s RNA therapies were widely considered to be a pipe dream. There were several hurdles in place that, until relatively recently, were considered insurmountable.

Karikó and Weissman’s discovery revolutionised our understanding of how cells detect and react to different RNA structures.

Their discovery allowed therapeutic RNAs to be synthesised so they could avoid destruction by the body before the RNA had a chance to carry out its task. Their seminal paper was published in 2005 – 15 years before the COVID pandemic.

Read more:
Beyond COVID vaccines: what else could mRNA technology do for our health?

Delivering the message

Throughout this time, a viable delivery system was being developed as well. RNA is a negatively charged, unstable molecule and cannot maintain its structure in the body without some sort of protective casing.

It was only in the 2010s that lipid nanoparticles were developed and identified as a potential mechanism for delivery.

Two critical advancements are essential. First, the lipid nanoparticles are ionised. This allows the encapsulation of the negatively charged RNA with a positively charged envelope. Then, before injection into the body, this assemblage is converted to a neutral pH, reducing potential toxicity in the body.

Second, a method to achieve consistency in the particle size of the lipid nanoparticles was developed. Size consistency matters because it enhances the vaccine’s uptake by cells in the body.

Time in the spotlight

By the time the COVID pandemic arrived, the essential components to make a viable RNA vaccine had emerged. RNA vaccines were especially appealing as they can be rapidly synthesised in the lab using just the genetic code of the virus.

As a result, the research field progressed rapidly. In addition to pharmaceutical development, several research groups around the world started work on RNA technology, applying it to a plethora of different diseases, including cancer, gene therapy and vaccines for different infectious diseases.

Read more:
How do you make a universal flu vaccine? A microbiologist explains the challenges, and how mRNA could offer a promising solution

However, intellectual property constraints surrounding the lipid nanoparticle envelope raised production costs and affected investment prospects. This meant that while research and design could move forward, taking the findings into the clinic was not possible without paying the premiums to license certain reagents.

The result has been that labs around the world are developing their own techniques from scratch, leading to a grossly inefficient system.

The democratisation of RNA technology

Our research expedites the method development process by providing a springboard others can launch off. It is a standardised technique researchers can use as a baseline for RNA therapies without the need for proprietary products.

This will mean more people around the world will be able to bring RNA technology into the clinic, broadening its scope, impact and safety.

Current lipid nanoparticle formulations have also been optimised for a generalised immune defence, rather than specific tissue-targeted immune responses. Unhindered research in this area may unlock findings that allow very specific organs or even cells to be targeted.

It will also enable more universities and even schools to teach and research this technology and improve it for applications beyond those that will be commercially profitable.

We have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the therapeutic potential of RNA technology. By democratising this technology, we can more fully explore and harness its myriad possible therapies.

The protocol was developed in collaboration with Te Kāuru – Ferrier Research Institute at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

This work was supported by funding from New Zealand Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (RTVU1603 and Vac 19008), Research Trust of Victoria University of Wellington (project number 400662) and The Hugh Green Foundation.

– ref. COVID proved the therapeutic potential of RNA technology – making it more available is the next goal – https://theconversation.com/covid-proved-the-therapeutic-potential-of-rna-technology-making-it-more-available-is-the-next-goal-215704

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daisy Gibbs, Evaluation Offier, Burnet Institute

Drug detection dogs are a street-level policing strategy that has now been used in Australia for more than 25 years.

The stated intent of this policy was to target drug supply. However, in 2006, the NSW Ombudsman showed most people detected by the dogs either had no drugs at all or were people who use drugs – not those who supply drugs.

Since that time, increasing evidence has challenged the effectiveness and legality of this policing strategy. In addition, a 2018 study of people who use drugs found Australia had one of the highest reported incidences of drug dog encounters. This occurred most often at festivals, on public transport, and in licensed premises.

In fact, policing and law enforcement, including police drug dogs operations, accounts for nearly two-thirds of Australian government spending on illegal drugs.

Evidence suggests drug dogs do not deter people from using drugs. However, much of the evidence base for these arguments focuses on festival settings. Relatively little is known about experiences in non-festival settings and among different groups of people who use drugs (that is, those who do not typically attend festivals).

Our recent research shows police drug dogs are both an ineffective and inequitable strategy, which may carry health, social, and legal risks.

We have recently published two studies about police drug dog encounters among two samples of people who regularly use drugs. The Ecstasy and Related Drug Reporting System (EDRS) includes interviews with people who regularly use ecstasy and/or other illicit stimulants, and the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) includes interviews with people who regularly inject drugs.

An ineffective strategy

We used data from our surveys with people who regularly use ecstasy to describe drug dog encounters at music festivals. This included how individuals responded to the presence of dogs and how they prepared for anticipated encounters.

We found encounters with drug dogs at festivals were common. In fact, the vast majority (94%) of those who reported such encounters said they had anticipated the presence of drug dogs. However, rather than being deterred from using or carrying drugs into the festival, participants reported taking steps to try to avoid detection by dogs.

Consistent with previous research, those who expected to see police drug dogs at the festival described trying to hide their drugs well, or taking their drugs before entering the festival. Both of these approaches to avoiding detection have been shown to increase the risk of overdose and other adverse events, a cause for considerable concern following the deaths of two men at a New South Wales music festival in October.

Our findings reinforce concerns that the growing normalisation of drug dogs may actually be reducing their efficacy. Based on our research, we believe drug detection dogs should no longer be used in festival settings.

Read more:
It’s time to change our drug dog policies to catch dealers, not low-level users at public events

An inequitable approach

In a second study, we explored encounters with drug detection dogs in non-festival settings among different groups of people who use drugs.

We found both samples of people commonly reported encounters with drug dogs in locations beyond festivals. These occurred most often at public transport hubs and other public places.

Compared with those who regularly inject drugs, those who regularly use ecstasy were more likely to have reported an encounter with drug dogs in non-festival settings over the last 12 months (32% and 21%, respectively). By contrast, we found people who inject drugs were over three times more likely to report being stopped and searched by police, and to experience criminal justice consequences, despite being no more likely to be carrying drugs at the time of encounter.

We cannot provide a definitive reason for this discrepancy. However, it seems plausible that it is reflective of sociodemographic differences between the two samples. That is, our sample of people who inject drugs experience much higher levels of social disadvantage and previous engagement with the criminal justice system.

Existing evidence indicates that prior interactions with police increase the likelihood of a stop and/or search encounter with police drug dogs. It also shows people who inject drugs often experience police harassment, violence, and stigmatising language. Although the latter of these accounts relate to police encounters more broadly, it could be argued that drug detection dogs are being used in Australia as tools to target, harass and criminalise the most marginalised groups of people who use drugs in society.

Read more:
Testing festival goers’ pills isn’t the only way to reduce overdoses. Here’s what else works

Continued use of drug detection dogs may exacerbate health and social harms to an already marginalised group. Such strategies are also in conflict with Australia’s national drug strategy objective of harm minimisation, and with Australia’s commitments under human rights laws to provide access to health care and to protect individuals, families and communities from drug related harm.

Our findings, combined with the existing research, suggest police drug dogs are ineffective and inequitable. They should be removed from all community settings, including music festivals, public transportation hubs, and other public places.

Caitlin Hughes currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, SA Law Foundation, United Nations Development Programme and CentreCare SA. She is President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy.

Rachel Sutherland currently holds an NHMRC Investigator Fellowship (#1197241). She previously received untied educational grants from Seqirus for post-marketing surveillance of opioid medications in Australia. Funding from this organisation has now ceased and was for work unrelated to this project.

Daisy Gibbs 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. Drug detection dogs often get it wrong, and it’s a policing practice that needs to stop – https://theconversation.com/drug-detection-dogs-often-get-it-wrong-and-its-a-policing-practice-that-needs-to-stop-215436

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kimberley Crofts, Doctoral Student in Sustainable Transitions, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

The announcement by Glencore last week that its Mount Isa copper mines will close in 2025 is significant for the town.

The closures affect at least 1,200 jobs in the Queensland outback community of 21,000 people. Those affected include mine workers, contractors, suppliers and businesses.

Questions raised by the closures have wider relevance for how other towns and regions across Australia manage mines as they come and go.

Read more:
Cleaning up Australia’s 80,000 disused mines is a huge job – but the payoffs can outweigh the costs

Plan the end from the beginning

All mines close. However, the impact of future closures on communities is rarely front of mind when mines open. This means the issue of how towns effectively manage a mine’s closure can be treated as an afterthought.

One important way to ensure towns and regions can manage mining and its impacts is for community perspectives to inform public policymaking and planning. The period before a mine opens is the ideal time to openly discuss how its life – and its end of life – will play out for the community. This includes any Indigenous people on whose land mining is to take place.

Swiss multinational Glencore now owns Mount Isa Mines, which has been in international hands almost since inception.

The early owners brought international ideas of industrial relations and town planning to the region. This encompassed a financial guarantee to deliver a railway to the town and strategic planning of infrastructure to attract the right type of miner – a family man who was more likely to establish roots in the town.

Townspeople’s voices were not heard in this early planning. While the original owners wished to create a “business with a soul”, this may have been less benevolent than it seems. It appears this was just an early forebear of the concept of a social licence to operate.

The ability for mining companies to “buy” a social licence to operate can been seen by communities as problematic. As noted in previous research, “measures taken by extractive industries to build support or ‘social licence’ for their developments are in fact experienced by these participants as destructive of community life”.

Read more:
Afterlife of the mine: lessons in how towns remake challenging sites

Invest in the future during operations

Once a mine is established, the focus is very much on ongoing operations. Mines seek to present themselves as part of local communities, but they typically remain very large, multinational businesses. That is, they are in the local community but not part of it.

Government support for mines typically continues through this period, through financial and other measures. But financial benefits rarely accrue to communities, with mining royalties significantly less than they could be.

Queensland recently changed coal royalties so the rate increases as coal prices increase. It’s an important step for the state to secure the funds needed for the transition away from coal.

But this sort of forward thinking isn’t common. Mines typically deliver short-term financial gains to mine owners and wages for mine workers.

Set against these benefits, the costs tend to be social and environmental.

One obvious example is the inevitable environmental destruction that comes with mining.

Another can be the impacts on people’s health. For example, the effect of lead pollution on children is a well-known problem in Mount Isa.

Read more:
Mount Isa contamination ‘within guidelines’ but residents told to clean their homes

While those involved in mining receive financial benefits, the rest of the community can often find itself at an economic disadvantage. “Two-speed economies” can be seen in such mining towns. In Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, for example, housing disadvantage is rising among those who aren’t benefiting from a mining wage.

Read more:
‘We need to restore the land’: as coal mines close, here’s a community blueprint to sustain the Hunter Valley

Involve locals in planning transitions

Looking ahead, the people of Mount Isa undoubtedly face significant challenges, including a far less stable climate. Ensuring community voices are heard in planning mine closure is key to ensuring towns and regions benefit during and after mining.

After the Mount Isa mine closures were announced, the Queensland government pledged up to A$20 million for an “economic structural adjustment package” to support affected workers. Glencore is expected to match that funding.

On a local level, the Mount Isa City Council has actively worked towards securing the city’s future. In 2019 the council released a prospectus aimed at attracting investment “to diversify the city’s economy to reduce the impact of this minerals boom-bust cycle”.

While funding is available and the council is committed to forward planning, what does structural adjustment really mean for the community?

Managing all of the intersecting issues requires the hand of a co-ordinating authority. Yet if all planning is done at arm’s length, it will not be able to draw on the community’s deep insights about place.

A wider problem

As the energy transition continues, Australia can expect to see many more mines close. These include coal mines in the Hunter Valley and Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

And as the transition accelerates, we might expect to see other mines open, as renewable energy industries seek the critical minerals they need. This week, for example, the federal government announced $2 billion in funding to support the critical minerals industry.

While all government support will be welcomed, it’s time to bring planning back down to the local level. Residents know their towns intimately. They should be involved in actively shaping their towns’ futures.

Read more:
We could need 6 times more of the minerals used for renewables and batteries. How can we avoid a huge increase in mining impacts?

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. All mines close. How can mining towns like Mount Isa best manage the ups and downs? – https://theconversation.com/all-mines-close-how-can-mining-towns-like-mount-isa-best-manage-the-ups-and-downs-216346

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kazi Mizanur Rahman, Associate Professor of Healthcare Innovations, Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University

Australia’s bushfire season is officially under way during an El Niño. And after three wet years, and the plant growth that comes with it, there’s fuel to burn.

With the prospect of catastrophic bushfire comes smoke. This not only affects people in bushfire regions, but those in cities and towns far away, as smoke travels.

People with a lung condition are among those especially affected.

Read more:
Our mood usually lifts in spring. But after early heatwaves and bushfires, this year may be different

What’s so dangerous about bushfire smoke?

Bushfire smoke pollutes the air we breathe by increasing the concentration of particulate matter (or PM).

Once inhaled, small particles (especially with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less, known as PM2.5) can get deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream.

Concentration of gases in the air – such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide – also increase, to pollute the air.

All these cause the airway to narrow and spasm, making it hard to breathe.

This can be even worse for people with existing asthma or other respiratory conditions whose airways are already inflamed.

Read more:
Bushfire smoke is everywhere in our cities. Here’s exactly what you are inhaling

Emergency department visits and hospital admissions for asthma-related symptoms rise after exposure to bushfire smoke.

Smoke from the bushfires in summer 2019/20 resulted in an estimated 400 deaths or more from any cause, more than 1,300 emergency department visits for asthma symptoms, and more than 2,000 hospital admissions for respiratory issues.

Even if symptoms are not serious enough to warrant emergency medical attention, exposure to bushfire smoke can lead to cough, nasal congestion, wheezing and asthma flares.

If you have asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchiectasis or another lung condition, or you care for someone who has, here’s what you can do to prepare for the season ahead.

1. Avoid smoke

Monitor your local air quality by downloading one or both of these apps:

• AirSmart from Asthma Australia has live air-quality information to help you plan and act

• AirRater, developed by Australian scientists, can be another useful app to monitor your environment, track your symptoms and help manage your health.

During times of poor air quality and smoke stay indoors and avoid smoke exposure. Close windows and doors, and if you have one, use an air conditioner to recirculate the air.

Avoid unnecessary physical activity which makes us breathe more to deliver more oxygen to the body, but also means we inhale more polluted air. Consider temporarily moving to a safer residence.

Well-fitting N95/P2 masks can reduce your exposure to fine smoke particles if you must travel. However they can make it more difficult to breathe if you are unwell. In that case, you may find a mask with a valve more comfortable.

Read more:
How to protect yourself against bushfire smoke this summer

2. Have an action plan

Taking your regular preventer medication ensures your lung health is optimised before the danger period.

Ensure you have a written action plan. This provides you with clear instructions on how to take early actions to prevent symptoms deteriorating or to reduce the severity of flare-ups. Review this plan with your GP, share it with a family member, pin it to the fridge.

Make sure you have emergency medication available, know when to call for help, and what medication to take while you wait. You may consider storing an emergency “reliever puffer” in your home or with a neighbour.

Read more:
How to manage your essential medicines in a bushfire or other emergency

3. Have the right equipment

High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters can reduce smoke exposure inside the home during a fire event by 30-74%. These filters remove particulate matter from the air.

A spacer, which is a small chamber to contain inhaled medication, can help you take emergency medication if you are breathing quickly. You may want to have one to hand.

Read more:
From face masks to air purifiers: what actually works to protect us from bushfire smoke?

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. 3 ways to prepare for bushfire season if you have asthma or another lung condition – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-to-prepare-for-bushfire-season-if-you-have-asthma-or-another-lung-condition-214065

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Theresa Larkin, Associate professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong

If you have hay fever, you’ve probably been sneezing a lot lately.

Sneezing is universal but also quite unique to each of us. It is a protective reflex action outside our conscious control, to remove irritants from inside our nose.

The pressure in the airways during a sneeze is more than 30 times greater than heavy breathing during exercise. Estimates of how fast a sneeze travels range from 5 metres a second to more than 150 kilometres per hour.

You can sometimes stop a sneeze by holding your nose or pressing underneath it. This is related to the gate control theory of pain and the idea you can change neural responses with external stimulation. But given the velocity of a sneeze, it might not be a good idea to stop it after it has started.

Read more:
How do hay fever treatments actually work? And what’s best for my symptoms?

An involuntary reflex

A sneeze is initiated when sensory nerves in our nose are stimulated by an irritant such as allergens, viruses, bacteria or even fluid.

The sensory nerves then carry this irritant information to the brain.

When a threshold amount of irritant signals reach the brain, the sneeze reflex is triggered. A sneeze first involves a deep intake of breath and a build-up of pressure inside the airways. This is then followed by contraction of the diaphragm and rib muscles, reflex closing of the eyes and a strong exhalation.

These are the “ah” and the “tchoo” phases of a sneeze.

On the exhalation of a sneeze, your tongue is lifted to the roof of your mouth. This closes off the back of the mouth so the air is forced mostly through your nose. The air expelled through the nose flushes out the irritants that caused the sneeze. The “tch” sound of a sneeze is the reflexive touching of the tongue to the roof of your mouth.

The trigeminal nerves

The trigeminal nerves are the largest of our 12 pairs of cranial nerves and the largest sensory nerves in the body.

The left and right trigeminal nerves carry sensory information from the face to the brain. This includes touch, pain and irritation sensory information from the facial skin and from inside the nose and mouth. Within each trigeminal nerve are thousands of individual nerve branches that each carry a specific type of sensory information.

Read more:
Our vagus nerves help us rest, digest and restore. Can you really reset them to feel better?

Sensory nerves communicate in the spinal cord

Sensory nerves travel to the brain via the spinal cord. The sensory nerves that carry pain and irritant signals are narrow, whereas those that carry touch information are wider and faster.

In the spinal cord, these nerves communicate with each other via interneurons before sending their message to the brain. The interneurons are the “gates” of the gate control theory of pain.

A nerve carrying a pain signal tells the interneuron to “open the gate” for the pain signal to reach the brain. But the larger nerves that carry touch information can “close the gate” and block the pain messages getting to the brain.

This is why rubbing an injured area can reduce the sensation of pain.

One study showed stimulating the trigeminal nerves by moving the jaw reduced tooth pain. We can observe this in action when babies instinctively bite on things or pull their ear when they are teething. These actions can stimulate the trigeminal touch nerves and reduce pain signals via the gate control mechanism.

So does putting your finger under your nose stop a sneeze?

There are many suggestions of how to stop a sneeze. These include pulling your ear, putting your tongue to the roof of your mouth or the back of your teeth, touching your nose, or even sticking your finger in your nose.

All of these stimulate the trigeminal touch nerves with the goal of telling the interneurons to “close the gate”. This can block the irritant signals from reaching the brain and triggering a sneeze.

Read more:
Forget nose spray, good sex clears a stuffy nose just as effectively — and is a lot more fun

But should you stop a sneeze?

What if an irritant in your nose has triggered a sneeze response, but you’re somewhere it might be considered inappropriate to sneeze. Should you stop it?

Closing your mouth or nose during a sneeze increases the pressure in the airways five to 20 times more than a normal sneeze. With no escape, this pressure has to be transmitted elsewhere and that can damage your eyes, ears or blood vessels. Though the risk is low, brain aneurysm, ruptured throat and collapsed lung have been reported.

So it’s probably best to try and prevent the sneeze reflex by treating allergies or addressing irritants. Failing that, embrace your personal sneeze style and sneeze into a tissue.

Read more:
Handkerchief or tissue? Which one’s better for our health and the planet?

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. Hello hay fever – why pressing under your nose could stop a sneeze but why you shouldn’t – https://theconversation.com/hello-hay-fever-why-pressing-under-your-nose-could-stop-a-sneeze-but-why-you-shouldnt-215265

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keiran Hardy, Senior Lecturer, Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University

Queensland has now joined several other states in outlawing extremist hate symbols.

Far-right and neo-Nazi groups pose a significant ongoing threat to national security, in Australia and globally. It is crucial to counter their hateful ideology, which has no place in Australian society.

However, banning specific symbols and gestures is a tricky thing to do.

So with each state going its own way, how are these laws working together? And importantly, how will we know if they’re effective?

Read more:
Would a law banning the Nazi salute be effective – or enforceable?

What are the laws across the country?

Over the last 16 months, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania have enacted laws banning the public display of Nazi symbols and salutes. Victoria was the first; it chose initially to ban only the Nazi Swastika .

Last week, it expanded this to include any symbols used by the Nazi party, including paramilitary arms like the SS.

New South Wales and
Tasmania ban “Nazi symbols”, which is likely broader than the Victorian law. The courts will have a bigger say in whether something qualifies as one.

This should be simple enough for the most recognisable, such as the Swastika or Schutzstaffel (SS), but the question will be trickier if the law is enforced more broadly.

For example, neo-Nazi groups often use numbers like 14 (to indicate a 14-word white supremacist slogan) or 88 for “Heil Hitler” (because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet). The Anti-Defamation League maintains a large database of these sorts of hate symbols.

It is unclear which could provide the basis for a charge under NSW and Tasmanian law.

In Tasmania, the same law bans Nazi gestures. That was the first Australian law to criminalise the Sieg Heil salute, followed by Victoria.

Neo-Nazi groups use the salute in public places to intimidate, spread fear, raise their profile and recruit new members.

These laws all target public displays of Nazi ideology. This would include, for example, hanging a Nazi flag from a bridge, or waving Swastika signs at a neo-Nazi rally, but not letterbox drops or possessing Nazi paraphernalia at home.

All the laws include exemptions where symbols are displayed for legitimate religious, artistic, legal, historical, or educational purposes.

The federal government has also put forward its own national ban laws, but those are yet to pass parliament.

How do Queensland’s laws compare?

In two key ways, Queensland’s laws take a broader approach.

First, the laws do not list any prohibited symbols. In fact, they do not mention anything about the Nazi party or its symbols. Instead, a list will be made and updated in regulations.

This will, in theory, allow the Queensland government to adapt to new hate symbols as the need arises. But it’s unusual to give the executive so much power in determining the scope of a crime.

No one knows, at this point, what the laws will actually ban. It is a crucial aspect of the rule of law that laws state clearly when conduct is a crime.

To ban a symbol or gesture, the Attorney-General must first consult with the chair of the Crime and Corruption Commission and the Human Rights and police commissioners.

She can recommend a symbol be listed if she is satisfied that it is “widely known” to represent an ideology of “extreme prejudice”.

Read more:
Does Australia need new laws to combat right-wing extremism?

Given the large numbers of hate symbols used by extremist groups, with varying degrees of public knowledge about them, seeking clear advice on this question could prove difficult.

Second, Queensland’s approach is not limited to public displays. It includes publishing and public distribution. The main question is whether a member of the public might reasonably feel menaced, harassed or offended.

This will give law enforcement tools to address a wider range of behaviours, such as handing out neo-Nazi flyers in public, but it raises some difficult questions.

It is not clear, for example, whether publication would include posting on social media, or whether public distribution would include letterbox drops, as the content cannot be seen from a public place.

Whether members of the community might feel menaced, harassed or offended will be clear where a group uses recognisable Nazi symbols, hate speech and physical intimidation in public spaces. But it will be a trickier question elsewhere.

For example, a lot of far-right content online is more subtle, spreading effectively through memes and humour.

How consistent are the laws?

Victoria, Tasmania and NSW’s laws are broadly consistent, with Queensland as a clear outlier.

However, there are key differences.

For example, it will now be an offence to display a Nazi tattoo in Queensland and NSW, but not in Victoria and Tasmania.

The penalties also vary significantly, ranging from three months imprisonment in Tasmania (or six months for a repeat offence in a short time), to six months in Queensland, to 12 months in NSW and Victoria.

These inconsistencies are not necessarily a bad thing.

One of the benefits of a federal system is that states can create different laws and later fall in line if best practice emerges.

But it does suggest a degree of experimentation, with no consensus on the most effective approach.

Read more:
Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about

How will we know if the laws are effective?

In any state, neo-Nazi groups may simply avoid prosecution under these laws by adapting the symbols, slogans and gestures they use.

For example, they already use the “OK” hand symbol to indicate white power. It would be difficult, even under Queensland’s approach, to ban this otherwise mundane gesture.

However, if the groups are prevented from using their most recognisable and intimidating symbols, it will rob them of key recruitment tools and reduce their ability to spread fear and hatred.

A group of white supremacists using the OK hand symbol and signs saying 14 and 88 is still intimidating, but less so than the same group using the Swastika and Sieg Heil salute.

In addition, the laws will allow police to disrupt and arrest those who pose a threat to our communities. This will need to be done in a way that does not escalate tensions at a public rally or protest.

In any case, the criminal law serves a moral purpose as well as a practical one. These developing laws send a clear signal that Nazi ideology has no place in Australian society.

Keiran Hardy 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. Legal in one state, a crime in another: laws banning hate symbols are a mixed bag – https://theconversation.com/legal-in-one-state-a-crime-in-another-laws-banning-hate-symbols-are-a-mixed-bag-215601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Sweetman, Research Fellow, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

This article is the next in The Conversation’s six-part series on insomnia, which charts the rise of insomnia during industrialisation to sleep apps today. Read other articles in the series here.

Do you have difficulty falling asleep? Do you stay awake for a long time at night? Do these sleep problems make you feel fatigued, strung-out, or exhausted during the day? Has this been happening for months?

If so, you’re not alone. About 12-15% of Australian adults have chronic insomnia.

You might have tried breathing exercises, calming music, white noise, going to bed in a dark and quiet bedroom, eating different foods in the evening, maintaining a regular sleep pattern, or reducing caffeine. But after three to four weeks of what seems like progress, your insomnia returns. What next?

Read more:
A short history of insomnia and how we became obsessed with sleep

What not to do

These probably won’t help:

• spending more time in bed often results in more time spent awake in bed, which can make insomnia patterns worse

• drinking coffee and taking naps might help get you through the day. But caffeine stays in the system for many hours, and can disrupt our sleep if you drink too much of it, especially after about 2pm. If naps last for more than 30 minutes, or occur after about 4pm, this can reduce your “sleep debt”, and can make it more difficult to fall asleep in the evening

• drinking alcohol might help you fall asleep quicker, but can cause more frequent awakenings, change how long you sleep, change the time spent in different “stages” of sleep, and reduce the overall quality of sleep. Therefore, it is not recommended as a sleep aid.

Read more:
Why do I fall asleep on the sofa but am wide awake when I get to bed?

What to do next?

If your symptoms have lasted more than one or two months, it is likely your insomnia requires targeted treatments that focus on sleep patterns and behaviours.

So, the next stage is a type of non-drug therapy known as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (or CBTi for short). This is a four to eight week treatment that’s been shown to be more effective than sleeping pills.

It involves education about sleep, and offers psychological and behavioural treatments that address the underlying causes of long-term insomnia.

You can do this one-on-one, in a small group with health professionals trained in CBTi, or via self-guided online programs.

Some GPs are trained to offer CBTi, but it’s more usual for specialist sleep psychologists to offer it. Your GP can refer you to one. There are some Medicare rebates to subsidise the cost of treatment. But many psychologists will also charge a gap fee above the Medicare subsidy, making access to CBTi a challenge for some.

About 70-80% of people with insomnia sleep better after CBTi, with improvements lasting at least a year.

Read more:
What makes a good psychologist or psychiatrist and how do you find one you like?

What if that doesn’t work?

If CBTi doesn’t work for you, your GP might be able to refer you to a specialist sleep doctor to see if other sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnoea, are contributing to your insomnia.

It can also be important to manage any mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, as well as physical symptoms such as pain that can also disrupt sleep.

Some lifestyle and work factors, such as shift-work, might also require management by a specialist sleep doctor.

Read more:
Counting the wrong sheep: why trouble sleeping is about more than just individual lifestyles and habits

What about sleeping pills?

Sleeping pills are not the recommended first-line way to manage insomnia. However, they do have a role in providing short-term, rapid relief from insomnia symptoms or when CBTi is not accessible or successful.

Traditionally, medications such as benzodiazepines (for example, temazepam) and benzodiazepine receptor agonists (for example, zolpidem) have been used to help people sleep.

However, these can have side-effects including a risk of falls, being impaired the next day, as well as tolerance and dependence.

Melatonin – either prescribed or available from pharmacies for people aged 55 and over – is also often used to manage insomnia. But the evidence suggests it has limited benefits.

Read more:
Some reasons why you should avoid sleeping pills

Are there new treatments? How about medicinal cannabis?

Two newer drugs, known as “orexin receptor antagonists”, are available in Australia (suvorexant and lemborexant).

These block the wake-promoting pathways in the brain. Early data suggests they are effective in improving sleep, and have lower risk of potential side-effects, tolerance and dependence compared with earlier medicines.

However, we don’t know if they work or are safe over the long term.

Medicinal cannabis has only in recent years been studied as a treatment for insomnia.

In an Australian survey, more than half of people using medicinal cannabis said they used it to treat insomnia. There are reports of significant benefit.

But of the four most robust studies so far, only one (led by one of us, Jen Walsh) has demonstrated an improvement in insomnia after two weeks of treatment.

So we need to learn more about which cannabinoids – for example, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol or cannabinol – and which doses may be beneficial. We also need to learn who can benefit most, and whether these are safe and effective over the long term.

Read more:
1 in 10 women with endometriosis report using cannabis to ease their pain

What now?

If you’ve had trouble sleeping for a short time (under about a month) and nothing you try is working, there may be underlying reasons for your insomnia, which when treated, can provide some relief. Your GP can help identify and manage these.

Your GP can also help you access other treatments if your insomnia is more long term. This may involve non-drug therapies and/or referral to other services or doctors.

For more information about insomnia and how it’s treated, see the Sleep Health Foundation’s online resource.

Alexander Sweetman is a Senior Program Manager at the Australasian Sleep Association, the peak sleep health scientific and advocacy body in Australia and New Zealand, and has academic status at Flinders University. Dr Sweetman reports previous research funding and/or consultancy work for; the National Health and Medical Research Council, The Hospital Research Foundation, Flinders University, Flinders Foundation, ResMed, Philips, Cerebra, Re-Time, and Australian Doctor.

Jen Walsh is affiliated with the Centre for Sleep Science at The University of Western Australia and the West Australian Sleep Disorders Research Institute at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. She is a director of the Australian Sleep Association (ASA), and a member of the Australia and New Zealand Sleep Science Association (ANZSSA) and Sleep Health Foundation (SHF).

Jen Walsh was the first author of a medicinal cannabis trial mentioned in this article.

Nicole Grivell is involved in the Australasian Sleep Association as a co-chair of the Primary Care Council and as a member of the Conference Committee.

She currently has PhD funding from Flinders University and an NHMRC-funded Partnership Grant. She has previously received PhD funding from the Flinders Foundation in the form of a Nick Antic Sleep Research PhD Scholarship.

– ref. How can I get some sleep? Which treatments actually work? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-i-get-some-sleep-which-treatments-actually-work-212964

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lily O’Neill, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne

This article is part of a series by The Conversation, Getting to Zero, examining Australia’s energy transition.

Many of the big wind and solar farms planned to help Australia achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will be built on the lands and waters of First Nations peoples. More than half of the projects that will extract critical minerals to drive the global clean energy transition overlap with Indigenous-held lands.

Australia’s Pilbara and Kimberley regions have high rates of Indigenous land tenure, while hosting some of world’s best co-located solar and wind energy resources. Such abundance presents big opportunities for energy exports, green steel and zero carbon products.

Almost 60% of Australia is subject to some level of First Nations’ rights and interests, including exclusive possession rights (akin to freehold) over a quarter of the continent. So the stakes for all players are high.

Read more:
How to beat ‘rollout rage’: the environment-versus-climate battle dividing regional Australia

In 2020, after news Rio Tinto had legally destroyed the sacred Juukan Gorge rock shelter in order to gain access to more than $100 million worth of iron ore, we wrote an article questioning how much legal say First Nations people would have over massive new wind and solar farms planned for their Country. We asked whether the move to a zero-carbon economy “would be a just transition for First Nations?”

The long but hopeful journey back from Juukan Gorge

Much has happened in the past three years, and while more needs to be done, some signs are promising.

First, the furore and subsequent parliamentary inquiry following the Juukan Gorge incident forced the resignation of Rio Tinto boss Jean-Sebastien Jacques. Companies were put on notice that they can no longer run roughshod over First Nations communities. Research in progress indicates the clean energy industry has heard this message.

Read more:
The human factor: why Australia’s net zero transition risks failing unless it is fair

Second, in 2021 the First Nations Clean Energy Network – a group of prominent First Nations community organisers, lawyers, engineers and financial experts – was created and began to undertake significant advocacy work with governments and industry.

The network has released several useful guides on best practice on First Peoples’ Country. Again, research indicates the clean energy industry is paying attention to the work of the network.

Third, there is a question whether the Native Title Act allows large-scale clean energy developments to go ahead without native title holders’ permission. We are increasingly convinced the only way such developments will gain approval through the Native Title Act is through an Indigenous Land Use Agreement.

Read more:
The original and still the best: why it’s time to renew Australia’s renewable energy policy

Moreover, Queensland and Western Australia have both implemented policies and South Australia is developing legislation that make it clear these states will require renewable energy developers to negotiate an agreement with First Nations land holders. Because these agreements are voluntary, native title holders can refuse to allow large wind and solar farms on their Country.

As always, these decisions come with caveats. Governments can compulsorily acquire land, and many of the power imbalances we observed in our earlier article persist. These include the power corporations have – unlike most Indigenous communities – to employ independent legal and technical advice about proposed projects, and to easily access finance when a community would like to develop a project itself.

Promising partnerships on the road to net zero

Are First Nations peoples refusing to have wind and solar projects on their land? No, they are not. Many significant proposed projects announced in the last few years show huge promise in terms of First Nations ownership and control.

In Western Australia the partnership between Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation and renewable energy company ACEN plans to build three gigawatts of solar and wind infrastructure on Yindjibarndi exclusive possession native title. Mirning traditional owners hold equity stakes in one of the largest green energy projects in the world, the massive Western Green Energy Hub located on their lands in the great Australian Bight.

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Why Australia urgently needs a climate plan and a Net Zero National Cabinet Committee to implement it

Further north, Balanggarra traditional owners, the MG Corporation and the Kimberley Land Council have together announced a landmark East Kimberley Clean Energy project aimed at producing green hydrogen and ammonia for export.

Across the border in the Northern Territory, Larrakia Nation and the Jawoyn Association have created Desert Springs Octopus, a majority Indigenous-owned company backed by Octopus Australia.

Still, much more needs to happen to provide Indigenous communities with proper consent and control. In its 2023 amendments to allow for renewable energy projects on pastoral leases, the Western Australian government could have given native title holders more control but it chose not to. And much needed reforms to cultural heritage laws in WA were scrapped following a backlash from farmers.

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In New South Wales, some clean energy developers seem to be avoiding Aboriginal lands, perhaps because they think it will be easier to negotiate with individual landholders. The result is lost opportunities for partnership, much needed know-how and mutual benefit.

In the case of critical mineral deposits on or near lands subject to First Nations’ title, not nearly enough has been done to ensure these communities will benefit from their extraction.

Why free, prior and informed consent is crucial

To ensure the net zero transition is just, First Nations must be guaranteed “free, prior and informed consent” to any renewable energy or critical mineral project proposed for their lands and waters, as the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes clear.

So long as governments can compulsorily acquire native title to expedite a renewable energy project and miners are allowed to mine critical minerals (or any mineral) without native title holders’ consent, the net zero transition will transgress this internationally recognised right.

The Commonwealth government has agreed in principle with the recommendations of the Juukan Gorge inquiry to review native title legislation to address inequalities in the position of First Nations peoples when they are negotiating access to their lands and waters.

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The meaningful participation of First Nations rights holders is critical to de-risking clean energy projects. Communities must decide the forms participation takes – full or part ownership, leasing and so on – after they have properly assessed their options. Rapid electrification through wind and solar developments cannot come at the expense of land clearing and loss of biodiversity.

Ongoing research highlights that when negotiating land access for these projects, First Nations people are putting protection of the environment first when negotiating the footprint of these developments. That’s good news for all Australians.

Ganur Maynard was formerly a member of the steering committee of the First Nations Clean Energy Network.

Brad Riley, Janet Hunt, and Lily O’Neill 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. Beyond Juukan Gorge: how First Nations people are taking charge of clean energy projects on their land – https://theconversation.com/beyond-juukan-gorge-how-first-nations-people-are-taking-charge-of-clean-energy-projects-on-their-land-213864