Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

As I hear reports of the fire tearing through the Hawaiian island of Maui, I feel utterly depressed. As a fire scientist, I know the unfolding horror – which has killed 36 people so far – is just the beginning. It’s a portent of what Australia and other countries will experience in a warmer world.

For Australians, the reports inevitably bring back memories of our awful Black Summer in 2019-20. Like the Maui tragedy, those huge, uncontrollable bushfires were a terrifying glimpse of the intense fires we can expect as climate change worsens.

Global warming – the result of fossil fuel burning – means bushfires will become more frequent and severe. Of course, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is blindingly obvious.

But we must do more than that. Australians must urgently adapt to our fiery future.

Record-breaking heat and fires

The Maui fires have been fuelled by strong winds, dry vegetation and low humidity. People were forced to run into the ocean for safety. Hundreds of structures have been damaged or ruined and many people are injured.

Hawaii is not the only part of the northern hemisphere being ravaged by fire.

In recent weeks, wildfires have ripped through through Canada, Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere. At one point, 1,000 fires were burning in Canada alone.

The fires have in part been fuelled by record-high temperatures. In July, temperatures reached 53.3℃ at California’s Death Valley. In fact, July was Earth’s hottest month on record.

The southern hemisphere is also experiencing highly unusual conditions. Antarctica is struggling to freeze over; it’s reportedly missing a chunk of ice bigger than Greenland.

Australia is experiencing an unseasonably warm winter. The country looks set for a hot, dry, El Nino-fuelled summer, putting fire crews on high alert.

Read more:
Maui’s deadly wildfires burn through Lahaina – it’s a reminder of the growing risk to communities that once seemed safe

Australians must heed the warnings

Australia, too, is fast becoming a continent of more uncontrolled fire.

Let’s compare the two decades to 2001, compared to the two decades afterwards. In Australian forests, the average annual burned area in that period increased by 350%. If we include 2019 – the year the Black Summer fires began – the increase in burned area rises to 800%.

The Black Summer fires were started by lightning and human activity. They were fuelled by extreme heat, record low rainfall and widespread dieback of vegetation. It meant the fires burned at unprecendented intensity.

The Black Summer fires burned more than 24 million hectares nationally. Some 33 people were killed by the fires, more than 429 died from smoke-related effects, and more than 3,000 homes were destroyed.

The drying and warming that drove the Black Summer fires are linked to human-caused climate change. These changes are resulting in longer fire seasons and extended periods of drought.

As I watch the fires blazing in Hawaii, I’m constantly asking myself: when will Australians – who live on one of the most fire-prone continents on Earth – get a grip on this escalating global problem? How many more warning signs do we need?

Read more:
Australia’s Black Summer of fire was not normal – and we can prove it

What must be done

When the bushfire royal commission handed down its report in October 2020, I described it as a “clarion call for change”. Finally, Australia had a map for its journey toward adapting to fires and other natural disasters.

The scope of the commission’s recommendations was vast. For governments alone, it called for changes across land-use planning, infrastructure, emergency management, social policy, agriculture, education, physical and mental health, community development, energy and the environment.

The commission also called for an acknowledgement of the role of Indigenous fire managers in mitigating bushfire risks.

Almost three years on, we haven’t seen the changes needed. We’re behaving as if we’ve got an endless amount of time. Australia is sleepwalking into our fiery future.

The pandemic shows humans are amazingly adaptable. We used an integrated approach to mitigate and adapt to that threat. We need an equivalent response to adapt to fire and climate change – but it’s just not happening.

There is much Australia can do to adapt to fire. We can improve our urban planning regimes and building standards. We can better manage fuel loads in our forests. We can increase our firefighting capacity and get much better at bushfire preparation and early warning systems.

And importantly, we should draw on Indigenous knowledge and the expertise of Aboriginal communities. These approaches could prove vital not only managing extreme fires in Australia, but elsewhere in the world.

Looking ahead

One thing Australians can all agree on is that we don’t want catastrophically uncontrolled fires.

As our Black Summer showed, these fires now only destroy lives, homes and biodiversity. They actually threaten the Earth’s systems. Black Summer pumped huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. It depleted the ozone layer. It created an algal bloom in the Southern Ocean bigger than the Australian continent.

It’s vital that we slash greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible, to stabilise Earth’s climate. But that’s not sufficient. Australians have to adapt to fire, too.

The fires in Hawaii remind Australians that our summer is just around the corner. We don’t have much time.

Read more:
Canada wildfires: an area larger than the Netherlands has been burned so far this year — here’s what is causing them

David Bowman has received funding to study fire ecology and management from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, Bushfire and Natural Hazard CRC, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania.

– ref. ‘Australia is sleepwalking’: a bushfire scientist explains what the Hawaii tragedy means for our flammable continent – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-sleepwalking-a-bushfire-scientist-explains-what-the-hawaii-tragedy-means-for-our-flammable-continent-211364

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

Crazy brave, or just crazy? If, as seems likely, the opposition embraces nuclear power in its 2025 election policy, it will be taking a huge political gamble.

The Coalition might argue this would be the best (or only) way to ensure we achieve net zero by 2050. But “nuclear” is a trigger word in the political debate, and the reactions it triggers are mostly negative.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been open since the election about nuclear energy being on the Coalition’s agenda. It’s a “no surprises” tactic – but one that has allowed the government, especially Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, to regularly attack and ridicule the idea.

This week opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien was spruiking nuclear power, writing in The Australian about the US state of Wyoming’s plans for a coal-to-nuclear transition.

O’Brien visited some months ago. “What struck me was the extent to which residents were embracing their nuclear future,” he wrote. “Four coal communities had gone head-to-head in a competitive bid to host the state’s first nuclear plant.”

O’Brien, a Queensland Liberal, has been a vociferous nuclear advocate; he chaired a parliamentary inquiry under the former government that recommended work to deepen understanding of nuclear technology and a partial lifting of the present moratorium, dating from 1998, on nuclear energy.

Nationals leader David Littleproud has also been central to the push for the Coalition to back nuclear energy.

The Nationals, by their climate scepticism and their deep attachment to coal, held back the Coalition on climate policy for more than a decade. Ahead of the 2022 election they were dragged by Scott Morrison to agree to the 2050 target with a massive financial bribe (some of which they didn’t receive because of the change of government).

Now, in opposition, some of the Nationals’ rump would like the party to ditch the 2050 commitment. The nuclear option would be one means of keeping them in the tent.

The “nuclear” the Coalition is talking about doesn’t involve old-style plants, but “new and emerging technologies” including small modular reactors.

That’s one of the problems for the policy – this is an emerging technology, not a quick fix to Australia’s challenges in transiting from fossil fuels.

That is, however, nothing compared with the challenge of public opinion. Notably, the 2019 parliamentary report was titled Nuclear Energy – Not without your approval.

A 2022 Lowy poll found Australians divided on the issue of nuclear power, although opinion appeared to be softening. Some 52% supported removing the ban, which was a five-point rise from 2021; 45% opposed this – six points down on the year before.

The government would have a ready-made “not in my backyard” campaign to launch against the Coalition’s policy. Whether the Wyoming experience suggests feeling could be different in coal communities – which might see future jobs on offer – is, however, an interesting question.

Another extremely hard issue is that of waste. We only have to think of the massive difficulty in finding a disposal site for the waste from the Lucas Heights facility, which is from nuclear medicine.

The point was highlighted on Thursday when the Albanese government abandoned its plan for a waste dump near Kimba in South Australia. This followed an adverse federal court judgement, which upheld a challenge by local Indigenous people.

The government has decided not to appeal, presumably influenced by the delicate stage of the Voice referendum.

Resources Minister Madeleine King said: “The judgement was clear, and the government is listening”. She had visited Kimba in January and saw “a town divided” on the issue. The search will continue for another site.

The opposition called the failure to appeal “gutless”. Shadow foreign minister Simon Birmingham said a “strong majority” of the Kimba community had expressed a willingness to host the dump.

The failure to deliver this site creates huge uncertainties for nuclear medicines, leaves waste at temporary city sites all over Australia and undermines confidence that Labor is capable of the difficult decisions required to deliver nuclear powered submarines under AUKUS.

The opposition argues the planned nuclear submarine program provides a foot in the door to advance its case for nuclear energy. It will require limited onshore nuclear capability, and eventually Australia will have to deal with the waste from its boats.

But more persuasive, one would think – if people can be persuaded – would be high power prices and the difficulties of the energy transition, which we are already seeing as baseload power goes out of the system.

For that argument to work, however, the economics of nuclear power would have to stack up, and at present they don’t (although O’Brien disputes that).

Tony Wood, Director of the Energy Program at the Grattan Institute, lists some of the arguments against nuclear that the Coalition will have to deal with.

“There are doubts whether a small modular reactor could provide dispatchable power similar to a gas peaking plant,” Wood says.

There is also little real-world evidence these reactors would deliver cheaper prices, he says. “The SMRs are still in the early stages of development and already costing more than the proponents had expected.”

Nuclear in Australia is many years away, given the status of the technology and the fact we would have to train an entirely new workforce from scratch.

Lift the ban by all means. Nothing would change today. But the evidence that a social licence could be gained is minimal.

The Coalition might believe it is ahead of the curve on the potential for small nuclear reactors for Australia. Whether or not that’s so, only technology and history will tell.

But even if it is right, sometimes you can be too far ahead of the political curve. Bill Shorten’s climate policy in 2019 was only a very little ahead, but it turned into one of the obstacles for his campaign when he couldn’t convincingly answer all the questions about it.

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: The Coalition’s likely embrace of nuclear energy is high-risk politics – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-coalitions-likely-embrace-of-nuclear-energy-is-high-risk-politics-211346

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

EG.5 is a family of Omicron variants (descended from XBB.1.9.2) that first appeared back in February 2023.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classified it as a “variant under monitoring” on July 19 after a surge in COVID infections from early July. It has been increasingly reported across the globe, particularly in Asia.

On August 9 2023, it was upgraded to a “variant of interest”. This follows the rise of a particular variant, EG.5.1, known as Eris. But it has not been classified a “variant of concern”.

Eris has seen EG.5 jump from 7.6% of all SARS-CoV-2 genetically sequenced globally in late June, to 17.4% in the week of July 17-23.

Eris has edged out other Omicron variants circulating in the United States, and now makes up the largest proportion of COVID cases there.

But while it has been in Australia since April, cases have remained sporadic.

Read more:
The ‘Kraken’ subvariant XBB.1.5 sounds scary. But behind the headlines are clues to where COVID’s heading

Is Eris different to other variants?

At this stage, there is no evidence EG.5.1 causes more severe disease than other Omicron variants, and it seems to cause similar symptoms.

How this virus enters cells and tissues in our body is also similar to XBB.1.5 (sometimes referred to as Kraken) and other Omicron variants.

While the severity of the illness it causes will need to be documented carefully, there are no indications it’s different from XBB.1.5.

The virus has changed, incrementally, making EG.5.1 more transmissible. While this enables it to compete with other circulating variants, it’s unclear if or when Eris will out-compete other variants in Australia.

What variants is the WHO watching?

The WHO defines a variant of interest as one that has genetic changes that could increase its transmissibility, virulence, its ability to evade vaccines, be treated with drugs or detected via current testing methods – as well as already demonstrating a “growth advantage” over other circulating variants.

The current variant of interest list also includes two other Omicron cousins – XBB 1.5 and XBB 1.16 (the latter sometimes referred to as Arcturus). Both have been circulating in Australia since the start of the year.

Read more:
When is a COVID mutation a new variant, and when is it a subvariant? And what’s a recombinant?

Yet, another XBB variant that has been around since February and dominated over our autumn-winter peak in Australia, XBB 1.9, has remained on the WHO’s lesser “variants under monitoring” list.

This shows a variant’s transmission advantage in a particular region depends on a range of factors, including waning immunity given the time lag since the last wave, vaccine booster timing, and coming into cooler weather.

How closely related the new variant is to the variants already circulating in the population is another key factor. The more different it is, the less likely it is our immune system to will recognise it quickly and be able to fight off infection.

Will vaccines protect against it?

EG.5.1 has two important additional mutations that XBB.1.9.2 does not have: F456L and Q52H, whereas EG.5 only has F456L. The extra small change in EG.5.1, the Q52H mutation in the spike protein, is enough to give EG.5.1 an edge over EG.5 in transmissibility.

The good news is the bivalent vaccine antibody responses to EG.5.1 are similar to those for variants that dominated earlier in the year in Australia.

In research yet to be published (and peer reviewed) from my team at the Kirby Institute, we isolated and characterised EG.5.1 and compared it with other circulating variants in Australia. We found that while the antibody response wanes the longer it has been since the last vaccine dose or infection, this is not at levels significantly different to XBB.1.5.

Importantly, bivalent vaccine doses, such as Moderna’s BA.1 bivalent booster, generate a five-fold increase in antibodies that protect against variants in circulation, including EG.5.1.

Will Eris prompt a rise in COVID cases?

EG.5.1 has been in Australia since April and it’s still only appearing sporadically. By August 7 2023, there had been 158 known cases reported via whole genome sequencing across Australia, representing 2.1% of reported variants.

Encouragingly, Australia’s overall infection rates continue to decline, as do hospitalisations and COVID-related deaths, antiviral scripts, and reports of cases in aged care.

Read more:
Do I need a booster vaccine if I recently had COVID? What if I’m not sure what I had?

While Australia may simply be lagging behind the US, we may see a different pattern entirely.

India first saw this variant back in May, but it has also seen only sporadic cases, and no major rise in overall infections. Like Australia, it is the XBB family of Omicron variant that continue to dominate in India, accounting for 90-92% of infections.

Given the ancestral variant for EG.5.1 is XBB 1.9, which was our dominant variant over winter, it’s also possible we might have better population level immunity than countries like the US. As we start to emerge from our winter, with boosted natural immunity and booster vaccination, we may be less likely to see this EG.5.1 muscle out other variants.

However, as our immunity wanes, with greater distance since our last wave, we will inevitably see infection rates start to push up again – potentially in late spring. EG.5.1 might drive this, or it could be another variant currently circulating.

COVID is becoming less of a threat but still needs watching

It’s reassuring that the intervals between COVID waves in Australia are increasing and the heights of the peaks are diminishing with each successive wave since Omicron arrived.

It’s also heartening that emerging variants aren’t genetically that different, so our immunity, vaccines, testing and treatment are still effective in protecting us from serious illness.

Time is our ally. The more time our immune systems have to mature, the more they can respond to a range variants far better than before. Our antibodies may wane over time, but the pool that are left represent quality rather than quantity in their ability to target many variants.

The virus is changing, with Omicron variants gradually taking over from others. But we need to remain vigilant and keep minimising infection risk where we can, and monitoring the genomic data so we’re alert to any seismic shifts and take note if a variant is classified as a variant of concern.

Read more:
Is my RAT actually working? How to tell if your COVID test can detect Omicron

Catherine Bennett research receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF, DFAT and VicHealth and has received honoraria for contributions to advisory groups and conference presentations (ResApp, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax, Impact Biotech Health, OutbreakSafe).

Stuart Turville receives funding from MRFF.

– ref. The WHO has declared Eris a ‘variant of interest’. How is it different from other Omicron variants? – https://theconversation.com/the-who-has-declared-eris-a-variant-of-interest-how-is-it-different-from-other-omicron-variants-211276

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

Next week the Labor Party will hold its national conference in Brisbane. It’s the first face-to-face conference in five years. These conferences don’t have anything like the bite they once did, but there’s still a chance for the party’s rank and file to have a shout about issues. More than 400 delegates will be there. Most of the delegates are aligned to a faction, and for the first time in decades the left will have the largest slice of the numbers.

AUKUS and the Stage 3 tax cuts are expected to be among the hot topics, but the conference will be carefully managed – there will be no defeats for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Ahead of the conference, we have already seen the government change its stance on Palestine, a sensitive subject among the left and right factions of the party.

In this podcast we talk with Wayne Swan, the Labor Party National President. Swan was treasurer and deputy prime minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments.

National conferences have “enormous power” Swan claims, denying they have lost clout, and casting the conference as more of a “partnership” between the party and the parliamentary caucus:

Of course the parliamentary caucus does operate within the confines of the platform. And on one or two occasions in history there have been fundamental conflicts between the two. But for most of our history, Labor parliamentary caucuses, Labor prime ministers, Labor leaders of the opposition have worked within the confines of the platform and that’s where we are today.

Recently, Labor assistant minister Andrew Leigh strongly criticised the stranglehold the factions have on the party. Swan is in complete disagreement with Leigh:

It’s true to say that people mix and vote differently on different issues from different backgrounds at different times, which doesn’t always coincide with the story that Andrew tells in his recent essay. The factions are nowhere near as monolithic as Andrew presents them, and many more people get involved in the party who don’t come from the sort of backgrounds that you would imagine if it was just two big monolithic groupings. Our party is very much representative of the general community.

Yes, factions are organising groupings in the party, but they are much more diverse and free flowing then the presentations Andrew [presented] to people.

On the conference issues, Swan says:

I certainly think there’ll be a debate over AUKUS and I hope there is. As we’ve been through the history of this party – it’s 132 years [old] – national defence has always loomed large in our party conferences. Indeed the party split during the First World War over these sorts of issues.

People are passionate about the very big issues. That’s why the Labor Party has been around so long and why it’s the oldest social democratic labour party in the world.

Swan as treasurer went through the global financial crisis, when Australia managed to avoid a recession. Swan’s former chief of staff, Jim Chalmers, is now in the economic hot seat. Swan believes Australians now are much more accepting of government intervention, using COVID as an example:

One of the great differences between my period and Jim’s period is that the inadequacies of trickle down economics and the use of fiscal policy not only to promote growth but to promote equity is now much more strongly supported in our community than it was when I was last treasurer, simply because it was demonstrated through COVID in particular.

The intervention by government to massively support the economy and to produce social and to, if you like, produce desired social and economic outcomes was entirely legitimate.

One of the reasons the Liberal Party is floundering so much is that it’s in denial about this one important fact about our nation, that government must always intervene to protect people, to protect their jobs, and to distribute income throughout an economy, particularly when an economy is under threat from something like COVID or an international recession. During the GFC, we did precisely that. We were opposed all the way by the conservatives, they were forced to take similar steps during COVID, and now it is much more established that government has a fundamental role in intervening in the economy to protect people, to deal with insecurity and inequality.

Michelle Grattan 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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Labor president Wayne Swan on the party’s coming national conference – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-labor-president-wayne-swan-on-the-partys-coming-national-conference-211342

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renae Barker, Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia

The Supreme Court of Queensland last week overturned a law banning children from bringing “knives” to school for religious reasons. This will allow Sikh students, parents, and teachers to carry a ceremonial dagger known as a “kirpan” at schools in Queensland.

Initiated Sikhs must carry a kirpan as one of five articles of faith. Those preparing for initiation, including school aged children, may also carry the five markers of faith. Many kirpans are blunt and worn stitched inside a sheath under a person’s cloths.

This isn’t the first time the issue of kirpans in schools has been raised. In 2021 the New South Wales government temporarily banned students from wearing kirpans at school following an incident where a 14-year-old boy used one to stab another student. The ban was eventually lifted after consultation with the Sikh community, leading to new guidelines.

In 2006 the Canadian Supreme Court found a ban on wearing kirpans in school was a breach of freedom of religion under the Canadian Charter of Rights.

What made the Queensland law particularly egregious is that not only did it prohibit the freedom of religion of a small and vulnerable minority, it did so deliberately. The only religious or ethnic group in Australia that habitually wears a religious or cultural symbol that resembles a knife are Sikhs. The law was therefore directly targeted at Sikhs.

The Queensland case highlights the needs for Australia’s secular legal system to recognise the adverse impact of law on religious and cultural minorities.

What did the court say?

All states and territories have laws prohibiting people from carrying and using knives in public places and schools. However, knives can be used for a range of legitimate activities such as cutting food or whittling wood. Children can carry knives as part of a scout’s uniform, for example. As a result, all states and territories have exemptions that allow people, including children, to carry and use knives where it’s “reasonably necessary”.

In New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory there are also specific exemptions that allow Sikhs to wear a kirpan for religious purposes. In Western Australia and the Northern Territory, Sikhs rely on the general exemption when wearing a kirpan in public places or at schools.

Read more:
‘No religion’ is Australia’s second-largest religious group – and it’s having a profound effect on our laws

But Queensland’s laws are a little different. Section 51(1) of Queensland’s Weapons Act 1990 prohibited carrying knives in a public place or school without a reasonable excuse. As in other states and territories, the act also provides a range of reasons, including religion, for carrying a knife in a public place.

However, section 51(5) specifically states that religion is not a reasonable excuse for carrying a knife at a school.

To be clear, children could still bring a knife to school in Queensland for a range of other reasons, such as to cut up food or as part of their studies. However, Sikh children were specifically banned from carrying a knife for religious reasons.

The Supreme Court found the ban on bringing a knife to school specifically for religious reasons was inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act.

As per Australia’s constitution, state laws that are inconsistent with Commonwealth laws are void to the extent of the inconsistency. So, the court found that section 51(5) of the Queensland’s Weapons Act 1990 was void.

A religion or ethnicity?

Sikhism originated in the Punjab region in South Asia in the 15th Century. There are around 25-30 million Sikhs worldwide, with about five million living outside the Punjab region.

At the 2021 census there were 210,400 Sikhs in Australia, roughly 0.8% of the population.

While Sikhism is commonly thought of as a religion, the courts have recognised Sikhs have a common ethnic origin. As one of the judges explained in the case:

Nearly all Sikhs originate from the Punjab region. Nearly all Sikhs continue to have a link with family in Punjab, practice elements of Punjabi culture and speak the Punjabi language.

As a result, Sikhs are considered to be an ethno-religious group for the purposes of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act.

A knife or a religious symbol?

The kirpan is one of the five articles of faith worn by initiated Sikhs and those preparing for initiation. The other four are: a kachera (a special undergarment), kanga (a wooden comb), kara (an iron band) and keshas (unshorn hair). If one of the five items is removed, they’re required to undergo a lengthy absolution (or forgiveness) process.

The Queensland Supreme Court found the kirpan was a knife for the purposes of the Weapons Act 1990. It found that a knife remains a knife no matter how blunt or sharp it is, how it’s worn or how easy it is to access.

To Sikhs, a kirpan is fundamentally a religious symbol. It’s a symbol of dignity and of their obligation to stand up for others. Referring to the kirpan as a knife downplays its important religious significance. But in a secular legal system, defining it in any other way would be unworkable.

What happens now?

The Queensland education department is carefully considering the Supreme Court’s decision.

The court did leave the door open for a complete ban on knives in schools, although this would impact other legitimate uses of knives such as preparing food.

Kirpans are currently worn in schools by students, parents and teachers in other states of Australia, often with strict guidelines. The Queensland education system will likely need to develop similar guidelines.

Renae Barker is provides advise to the Anglican Diocese of Bunbury and Anglican Diocese of Perth

– ref. Why a Queensland court overturned a ban on religious knives in schools – https://theconversation.com/why-a-queensland-court-overturned-a-ban-on-religious-knives-in-schools-211042

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Glikson, Visiting Fellow in Earth and Paleo-climate Science, Australian National University

Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank my colleague Tony Yeates, who originated the view of the Deniliquin multi-ring structure as an impact structure – and who was instrumental to this work.

In recent research published by myself and my colleague Tony Yeates in the journal Tectonophysics, we investigate what we believe – based on many years of experience in asteroid impact research – is the world’s largest known impact structure, buried deep in the earth in southern New South Wales.

The Deniliquin structure, yet to be further tested by drilling, spans up to 520 kilometres in diameter. This exceeds the size of the near-300km-wide Vredefort impact structure in South Africa, which to date has been considered the world’s largest.

Hidden traces of Earth’s early history

The history of Earth’s bombardment by asteroids is largely concealed. There are a few reasons for this. The first is erosion: the process by which gravity, wind and water slowly wear away land materials through time.

When an asteroid strikes, it creates a crater with an uplifted core. This is similar to how a drop of water splashes upward from a transient crater when you drop a pebble in a pool.

This central uplifted dome is a key characteristic of large impact structures. However, it can erode over thousands to millions of years, making the structure difficult to identify.

Structures can also be buried by sediment through time. Or they might disappear as a result of subduction, wherein tectonic plates can collide and slide below one another into Earth’s mantle layer.

Nonetheless, new geophysical discoveries are unearthing signatures of impact structures formed by asteroids that may have reached tens of kilometres across – heralding a paradigm shift in our understanding of how Earth evolved over eons. These include pioneering discoveries of impact “ejecta”, which are the materials thrown out of a crater during an impact.

Researchers think the oldest layers of these ejecta, found in sediments in early terrains around the world, might signify the tail end of the Late Heavy Bombardment of Earth. The latest evidence suggests Earth and the other planets in the Solar System were subject to intense asteroid bombardments until about 3.2 billion years ago, and sporadically since.

Some large impacts are correlated with mass extinction events. For example, the Alvarez hypothesis, named after father and son scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez, explains how non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out as a result of a large asteroid strike some 66 million years ago.

Read more:
We found the world’s oldest asteroid strike in Western Australia. It might have triggered a global thaw

Uncovering the Deniliquin structure

The Australian continent and its predecessor continent, Gondwana, have been the target of numerous asteroid impacts. These have resulted in at least 38 confirmed and 43 potential impact structures, ranging from relatively small craters to large and completely buried structures.

As you’ll recall with the pool and pebble analogy, when a large asteroid hits Earth, the underlying crust responds with a transient elastic rebound that produces a central dome.

Such domes, which can slowly erode and/or become buried through time, may be all that’s preserved from the original impact structure. They represent the deep-seated “root zone” of an impact. Famous examples are found in the Vredefort impact structure and the 170km-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico. The latter represents the impact that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Between 1995 and 2000, Tony Yeates suggested magnetic patterns beneath the Murray Basin in New South Wales likely represented a massive, buried impact structure. An analysis of the region’s updated geophysical data between 2015 and 2020 confirmed the existence of a 520km diameter structure with a seismically defined dome at its centre.

The Deniliquin structure has all the features that would be expected from a large-scale impact structure. For instance, magnetic readings of the area reveal a symmetrical rippling pattern in the crust around the structure’s core. This was likely produced during the impact as extremely high temperatures created intense magnetic forces.

A central low magnetic zone corresponds to 30km-deep deformation above a seismically defined mantle dome. The top of this dome is about 10km shallower than the top of the regional mantle.

Magnetic measurements also show evidence of “radial faults”: fractures that radiate from the centre of a large impact structure. This is further accompanied by small magnetic anomalies which may represent igneous “dikes”, which are sheets of magma injected into fractures in a pre-existing body of rock.

Radial faults, and igneous sheets of rocks that form within them, are typical of large impact structures and can be found in the Vredefort structure and the Sudbury impact structure in Canada.

Currently, the bulk of the evidence for the Deniliquin impact is based on geophysical data obtained from the surface. For proof of impact, we’ll need to collect physical evidence of shock, which can only come from drilling deep into the structure.

Read more:
These 5 spectacular impact craters on Earth highlight our planet’s wild history

When did the Deniliquin impact happen?

The Deniliquin structure was likely located on the eastern part of the Gondwana continent, prior to it splitting off into several continents (including the Australian continent) much later.

The impact that caused it may have occurred during what’s known as the Late Ordovician mass extinction event. Specifically, I think it may have triggered what’s called the Hirnantian glaciation stage, which lasted between 445.2 and 443.8 million years ago, and is also defined as the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event.

This huge glaciation and mass extinction event eliminated about 85% of the planet’s species. It was more than double the scale of the Chicxulub impact that killed off the dinosaurs.

It is also possible the Deniliquin structure is older than the Hirnantian event, and may be of an early Cambrian origin (about 514 million years ago). The next step will be to gather samples to determine the structure’s exact age. This will require drilling a deep hole into its magnetic centre and dating the extracted material.

It’s hoped further studies of the Deniliquin impact structure will shed new light on the nature of early Paleozoic Earth.

Andrew Glikson 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. New evidence suggests the world’s largest known asteroid impact structure is buried deep in southeast Australia – https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-suggests-the-worlds-largest-known-asteroid-impact-structure-is-buried-deep-in-southeast-australia-209593

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Wendy Liu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Environment and Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, University of Auckland

New Zealanders are exposed to hazards from many sources – human-made and natural – in food, water, soil and air.

Although risk assessment and management procedures try to account for hazards in a systematic way, they often overlook risks arising from incremental and seemingly insignificant environmental changes. But over time, or when aggregated, incremental changes can lead to significant impacts on human health and wellbeing.

Incremental changes in our environments can evade regulation if their effects are slow-burning, uncertain, or there is a time lag between cause and effect.

The proposed replacement of the Resource Management Act 1991 improves on past practice by enabling councils to take an adaptive approach for situations where there is likely to be a “significant change” in the environment.

However, given the requirement for significant change, it is hard to see how these provisions could be used proactively to manage incremental changes.

In risk assessment practice, it is typically assumed that risk is static, inputs are constant and the conditions remain the same during the period for which predictions are made. Climate change projections, for example, are rarely included in the risk assessment of current climate-related hazards. But by now we all know that future climates will not reflect current conditions.

Read more:
With seas rising and storms surging, who will pay for New Zealand’s most vulnerable coastal properties?

When the consequences of incremental changes could be severe, we cannot afford to ignore them, even if we are uncertain of their impact. We urgently need a new paradigm for anticipatory, agile and adaptive risk management to include cumulative effects from incremental changes and multiple activities.

Two examples illustrate our point.

Respirable mineral dust

If disturbed by human activity, some rock minerals such as erionite, asbestos and silica become airborne. They can gradually accumulate in the lungs, causing diseases such as pleural changes, silicosis and asbestosis, even cancer.

However, the causes of frequent but low-level exposures to mineral dust have often escaped regulation. The development of occupational exposure limits has been slow for these examples, despite the continual emergence of evidence supporting the need for change.

This ultimately leaves the public, and the most vulnerable (highly exposed) people in particular, at risk of adverse health effects.

Read more:
NZ workers have unacceptably high exposures to carcinogens – they need better protection and long-term health monitoring

Cumulative effects of incremental loss of green space

Loss of permeable green spaces on private residential land is another example of how small changes to the environment can lead to serious adverse aggregate impacts.

Our built environment of impermeable surfaces is slowly encroaching on urban green spaces and gardens. Such land-use changes affect flood risk and land stability in the local area and have knock-on impacts for areas downstream.

Auckland lost about 20% of private green spaces as a proportion of the city’s urban area between 1980 and 2016, most of which was driven by changes on residential land.

Yet, there are currently insufficient requirements for land-use planning to consider how individual activities contribute to cumulative effects that could increase the risk of negative outcomes during extreme whether events.

Instead, consent applications are assessed on their individual impacts and there are few mechanisms to sufficiently assess and manage aggregate and cumulative effects.

Read more:
We’re building harder, hotter cities: it’s vital we protect and grow urban green spaces – new report

What needs to happen

Cumulative changes from anthropogenic activities can layer on top of other changes to increase vulnerability of ecosystems and people to existing hazards. As Cyclone Gabrielle has shown, apparently benign incremental land-use changes can slowly alter our risk profile.

If we continue to only consider the immediate and local effects from individual actions, we are not able to protect people from future cumulative consequences. We therefore need to embed new principles of proactive and adaptive management into our legislation and planning to deal with the complexities of incremental, cumulative and hazard-increasing changes.

Read more:
Landslides and law: Cyclone Gabrielle raises serious questions about where we’ve been allowed to build

We need to redefine risk such that incrementally human-induced or exacerbated hazards with long-term cumulative effects can be incorporated into risk calculations, mapping and management. A regulatory framework grounded in this redefinition would enable preemptive action for hazards, even in situations where evidence is only emerging.

As we proceed into an uncertain and rapidly changing future, we urgently need a new paradigm for risk management. When the consequences are plausibly severe, we cannot afford to ignore the ways in which we as a society continue to put ourselves in harm’s way with an institutionalised focus on individual cases and an outdated calculus of probabilities.

Dr Wendy Liu receives funding from Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment Endeavour Fund.

Jennifer Salmond receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Kristiann Allen receives funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Marc Tadaki receives funding from Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Martin Brook receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi, Toka Tū Ake EQC, and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. He is a chartered geologist (CGeol) with the Geological Society of London, and a member of Engineering New Zealand (MEngNZ).

Anne Bardsley 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. Incremental environmental change can be as hazardous as a sudden shock – managing these ‘slow-burning’ risks is vital – https://theconversation.com/incremental-environmental-change-can-be-as-hazardous-as-a-sudden-shock-managing-these-slow-burning-risks-is-vital-207805

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Power, Associate Professor, Geography and Urban Studies, Western Sydney University

The collision between an ageing population and a housing crisis has left more older people in Australia enduring housing insecurity and homelessness. Our research, released today, explores how the scale of these problems among older people has grown over the past decade.

Our report, Ageing in a Housing Crisis, shows safe, secure and affordable housing is increasingly beyond the reach of older people. This growing housing insecurity is system-wide. It’s affecting hundreds of thousands of people across all tenures, including home owners and renters.

The federal government released Australia’s first national wellbeing framework,
Measuring What Matters last month. It recognises “financial security and access to housing” as essential for a secure, inclusive and fair society. However, urgent policy action is needed to reshape the Australian housing system so all older people have secure, affordable housing.

Read more:
‘We’ve all done the right things’: in Under Cover, older women tell their stories of becoming homeless

Older people are increasingly at risk

We analysed the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census data and homelessness estimates. More older people lived in marginal housing – defined by the ABS as including crowding (less severe), improvised dwellings and caravans – and more were homeless in 2021 than a decade earlier.

Older people experiencing homelessness by gender and category in 2011, 2016 and 2021

The proportion of older people in private rental housing has also increased. This means more older people are exposed to the insecurity of renting and rising rents. Our work shows they are struggling to afford private rental housing.

The lowest-income households are the hardest hit. The private rental market is failing to supply housing they can afford. The shortfall in subsidised social housing is huge.

Read more:
‘It’s soul-destroying’: how people on a housing wait list of 175,000 describe their years of waiting

Older people who receive government benefits and allowances are at most risk because their incomes are not keeping up with housing costs.

In 2019-20 only 19% of older people on very low incomes (the lowest 20% of household incomes) lived in households whose rent was affordable. This means four out of five were spending more than 30% of their income on rent (the affordability benchmark for low-income households). Two in five were paying severely unaffordable rents – more than 50% of their income.

For older people who don’t own their homes, rising housing prices create financial risk rather than windfall. At the same time, more older people have mortgages. This increases their risk of housing insecurity or financial stress in retirement.

Read more:
Fall in ageing Australians’ home-ownership rates looms as seismic shock for housing policy

Ageing magnifies unaffordable housing impacts

Rising housing costs, falling home ownership rates, mortgage debt carried into retirement, insecure private rental tenures and the worsening shortage of social housing are markers of system-wide housing insecurity.

Insecure or marginal housing affects all generations. However, for older people the risks are made worse by limited income-earning ability, increasing frailty, illness and/or caring responsibilities, growing need for at-home support, and age-based discrimination. These factors make it even harder to meet rising housing costs.

Housing insecurity widens the gap between the housing older people have and the housing they need to live safe, secure and dignified lives as they age.

System-wide risks demand system-wide action

Growing housing insecurity among older people is a result of system-wide problems. This means system-wide solutions are needed.

We call for:

• adequate social housing supply that reflects population growth and ensures it’s available for older people across all states and territories, including by increasing aged-specific options and reducing the age at which social housing applicants are given priority to 45-55

• stronger national tenancy regulations that prioritise homes over profit

• dedicated marginal and specialist homelessness services that are well designed with and for older people who have experienced housing insecurity and support systems

• support for people to remain in their own homes, across all tenures.

Read more:
How 5 key tenancy reforms are affecting renters and landlords around Australia

Responses and assistance models must allow for gender diversity, income difference, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people’s cultural needs, as well as those of other culturally and linguistically diverse older people. Disability, caring responsibilities, history of trauma, and individuals’ unique housing pathways and experiences must all be considered.

Older people must have a say in reshaping the housing system. The Albanese government is developing a National Housing and Homelessness Plan. It’s essential that this plan, along with state, territory and local government implementation plans, consider the voices, experiences, concerns and aspirations of older people.

Housing reform is good for everyone

Older people are only one part of the population facing housing insecurity and homelessness. A comprehensive national housing plan must respond to all generational needs. Housing solutions for older people must not come at the expense of – or compete with – the needs of other generations.

Housing insecurity and homelessness in childhood, younger years and early adult life all warrant meaningful and urgent housing solutions. Making sure all people have lifelong access to secure housing will begin to reverse the growing problems identified by our report. Otherwise, Australia faces a future where more and more older people struggle with inadequate and unaffordable housing.

Read more:
Efforts to find safe housing for homeless youth have gone backwards. Here’s what the new national plan must do differently

National reform that includes a focus on generational needs can deliver a housing system that provides affordable homes for everyone. This will ensure everyone is able to maintain community connections, which for older people means being able to age in safe, secure and affordable homes.

Emma Power receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Housing for the Aged Action Group.

Amity James receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Housing for the Aged Action Group.

Francesca Perugia receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Housing for the Aged Action Group.

Margaret Reynolds receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Housing for the Aged Action Group

Piret Veeroja receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, the Housing for the Aged Action Group and Kids Under Cover.

Wendy Stone receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, the Housing for the Aged Action Group and Kids Under Cover.

– ref. Ageing in a housing crisis: growing numbers of older Australians are facing a bleak future – https://theconversation.com/ageing-in-a-housing-crisis-growing-numbers-of-older-australians-are-facing-a-bleak-future-209237

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tyrone Lavery, The University of Melbourne

Islands are renowned for their weird and wonderful wildlife. These isolated ecosystems present unparalleled opportunities to study evolution, and the archipelagos of the southwest Pacific are no exception.

This vast and diverse region encompasses 24 nations and territories. It also includes four “biodiversity hotspots”: the East Melanesian Islands, Polynesia-Micronesia, New Caledonia and New Zealand. Each contains at least 1,500 plant species found nowhere else on Earth. So their total land area may be small, but south-west Pacific islands punch well above their weight in terms of their contributions to global biodiversity.

Our latest book provides glimpses of more than 180 native mammals of the southwest Pacific, on islands that fall under the banners of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia (but excluding the island of New Guinea). Indigenous species of marsupials, bats, rodents and a monotreme are among the animals found here. Not surprisingly, half of these are endemic. Many are found only on a single island or small group of islands.

Let’s meet five charismatic species you’ve probably never have heard of, but simply must get to know.

1. Black dorcopsis or black forest wallaby (Dorcopsis atrata)

Conservation status: critically endangered

Distribution: Goodenough Island (Papua New Guinea)

At the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea is the gravity-defying Goodenough Island. It looms more than 2,500 metres above sea level, but it’s only about 3,900 metres wide – at the widest point.

Goodenough’s higher peaks are covered in rare forests. Here among the clouds is the only place you’ll find black dorcopsis.

Black dorcopsis often have very worn claws, suggesting they spend a great deal of time digging for truffles in the rocky soil. This probably plays an important role in dispersing fungi throughout their habitat.

Curiously, some appear to be wearing white gloves, on one or both front paws. Others do not. No one knows why.

2. Waigeo cuscus (Spilocuscus papuensis)

Conservation status: vulnerable

Distribution: Waigeo (Indonesia)

Waigeo cuscus have a remarkable coat. Irregular black splotches stand out against a background of almost pure white. In young animals these contrasting colours are subdued by the presence of blackish-grey tips to the hairs.

The cuscus have been photographed in the branches of fruiting fig (Ficus spp.) and breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) trees, so they have a taste for fruit.

3. Bougainville melomys (Melomys bougainville)

Conservation status: data deficient

Distribution: Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), Choiseul and Mono (Solomon Islands)

Pacific Island native rodents have proven vulnerable to disturbance, but thankfully Bougainville melomys seems to remain relatively common.

The contrast between orange fur on the head and back, and crisp white fur on the belly is rather attractive.

An active climber, Bougainville melomys can be found tiptoeing along thin woody vines (lianas), in fruiting trees among Bismarck common cuscuses (Phalanger breviceps), or scaling the trunks of wild betel nut palms (Areca spp.). They’ll tolerate disturbance and have been known to visit village edges to nibble on cultivated bananas.

4. Lesser sheath-tailed bat (Mosia nigrescens)

Conservation status: least concern

Distribution: Widespread throughout Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

If you’re quiet and patient while walking through the palm-filled lowland forests of Melanesia, you might be lucky enough to spot one of the region’s smallest and most common echo locating bats.

Lesser sheath-tailed bats are alert little creatures with good eyesight. They rest in small groups huddled together under the cover of a palm leaf where they’re sheltered from the rain. Although watchful, they’ll stay in place if approached with caution, allowing time to view how neatly stacked they are.

Lesser sheath-tailed bats are among the first to emerge of an evening, leaving their palm tree tents while there is still plenty of twilight. They fly in sharp circles in the open spaces above forests and villages. Then as darkness falls, they move away to focus on other areas.

Later in the evening you can find them back in the same roosts, again lined up front to back, taking a breather from their busy schedule of hunting for insects on the wing.

Read more:
Pacific Island bats are utterly fascinating, yet under threat and overlooked. Meet 4 species

5. Palau flying-fox (Pteropus pelewensis)

Conservation status: vulnerable

Distribution: Ulithi, Yap (Federated States of Micronesia), Palau

The south-west Pacific supports an incredible diversity of endemic Pteropus flying-foxes. Over-harvesting and international trade for human consumption pushed most of Micronesia’s flying-foxes to the brink of extinction (and in fact did send two species extinct).

Thankfully the introduction of restrictions under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species stabilised populations of the Palau fying-fox. However, it remains vulnerable and threatened by habitat loss and climate change.

So much to learn

The species showcased here represent just a small fraction of the diversity of south-west Pacific mammals.

So many unique species evolved here, on discrete areas of land separated by ocean.

Unfortunately islands are also vulnerable to human disturbance and extinctions have already occurred here.

There is still much to learn about many of these mammals. We hope this book will inspire more research, including how we can keep these fascinating island inhabitants thriving in a time of such great environmental change.

Read more:
Humans weren’t to blame for the extinction of prehistoric island-dwelling animals

Tyrone Lavery has received funding from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, The Australian Museum, The Field Museum of Natural History, Fondation Segre, The Australia Pacific Science Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

– ref. Meet 5 marvellous mammals of the South Pacific you’ve probably never heard of – https://theconversation.com/meet-5-marvellous-mammals-of-the-south-pacific-youve-probably-never-heard-of-209038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kadir Atalay, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Sydney

A cancer diagnosis is frightening news for anyone. But our fresh analysis shows what happens next can depend on how much money you have and where you live.

Among middle-aged Australians cancer is the leading cause of death, accounting for 45% of all deaths among those aged 45 to 64 years.

In an article just published in Health Economics, we examine the inequality in mortality (or death rates) across Australia. As has been found elsewhere, death rates in Australia are highest among those with the lowest socioeconomic status (SES).

This measure of income, employment and education has long been recognised as related to both a person’s health status and their ability to “buffer” against the negative impacts of a health condition.

What’s new from our study is our finding middle-aged men living in the poorest local areas of Australia in 2016-18 were twice as likely to die from cancer than those living in the richest areas. Women in the same areas were 1.6 times more likely.

This disparity between rich and the poor is growing over time, widening by 34% from 2001 to 2018. And while deaths from cancer have fallen everywhere over time, they have fallen by more in our richest locations compared to our poorest.

Measuring death and status

For our new analysis, we examined all deaths and those from specific causes for men and women across all age groups. We used death registry data provided by the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing and Census data on SES.

We ranked local areas across the country by two measures of SES: the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage and the share of households in a local area living in poverty (sourced from a customised Census report). Our findings remained consistent using either of these measures.

The new findings for middle-aged Australians stand out because inequality in mortality has been relatively stable over time and death rates are falling for most other age groups.

Among young Australians aged 15–24 years we can see death rates falling and the SES gap in mortality shrinking due to greater declines in road deaths in poor areas.

Nevertheless, if we could eliminate death inequality, and all Australians under the age of 75 enjoyed the lower mortality rates of those living in our most socioeconomically advantaged areas, 28% of the all deaths across Australia could have been avoided.

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

Why the gap?

We also looked at what could be driving this rising inequality in mortality for middle-aged Australians. Our research suggests different access to health care may have a role to play. Two findings support this.

First, when we compare city areas to more regional and remote areas, we find the increase in inequality (between low and high SES) is not as strong for women and is not present for men. This suggests the widening gap is because of smaller declines in deaths over time in our poorest regional and remote areas. In other words, improvements have been slower there.

Second, over the period from 2001 to 2018, the number of doctors per person is consistently greater in richer regions than poorer regions of Australia.

Over the past 20 years there have been substantial technological advances in medicine. However, access to new medications and treatments is often only available following consultations with primary physicians (such as GPs) or specialists.

Inequality in access to health care – as we can see exists between wealthier cities and poorer regional and remote areas – is likely to lead to a different level of benefit from medical advancements between the rich and the poor.

For cancer in particular, one of the contributing factors to disparities in cancer deaths by SES is the limited availability of screening and treatment options.

We can’t say for certain poverty and access to doctors are linked with poor health outcomes and higher death rates, but it certainly warrants attention from policymakers.

Read more:
Climb the stairs, lug the shopping, chase the kids. Incidental vigorous activity linked to lower cancer risks

More analysis needed

Accessibility to health care significantly influences disparities in cancer death rates. But we need more comprehensive analysis of how various social determinants of health contribute to these inequalities.

These could include social and environmental characteristics of local areas, health behaviours and cancer awareness, income or income inequality. Future research should examine whether the socioeconomic disparities in cancer death rates are also evident in cancer diagnoses.

It’s also important to explore how population screening programs (such as BreastScreen Australia and the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program for over 50s) and subsidised early detection initiatives (including Medicare-subsidised breast cancer imaging and prostate-specific antigen tests) can mitigate these disparities.

Lastly, policymakers should be alert to the possibility delays in screening and changes in health-care accessibility related to the COVID pandemic may have exacerbated these health inequalities.

Read more:
How your status, where you live and your family background affect your risk of dementia

Research for this article was supported by a grant from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course and a 2020 SOAR fellowship from the University of Sydney. Kadir Atalay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any other company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Research for this article was supported by a grant from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course and a 2020 SOAR fellowship from the University of Sydney.
Rebecca Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any other company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Poor, middle-aged Australians are more likely to die from cancer – and the gap is widening – https://theconversation.com/poor-middle-aged-australians-are-more-likely-to-die-from-cancer-and-the-gap-is-widening-210878

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Giancaspro, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Adelaide

Airbnb has revolutionised the short-stay industry. Launched in 2008, it now eclipses the world’s biggest hotel chains. In Australia alone there are about 100,000 listed properties.

But in dealing with both a digital platform and a private owner (or “host”, in Airbnb-speak), your legal rights as a renter (or “guest”) can be unclear – at least without reading lengthy terms and conditions.

This article answers six very common questions about using Airbnb in Australia. Please note that your legal rights may differ in other countries. Even if Airbnb’s terms and conditions are near identical – and they generally are – there may be differences in consumer laws.

Read more:
Ever wondered how many Airbnbs Australia has and where they all are? We have the answers

What if an Airbnb property doesn’t match its description?

Airbnb’s terms and conditions require the host to provide “complete and accurate information” about their property. Content, including photos, must be “up-to-date and accurate at all times”. Airbnb’s Host Ground Rules state that listings “should accurately describe the home and reflect the features and amenities that will be available”.

If a property does not match its description or photos, report this to Airbnb.

False advertising will also likely breach the Australian Consumer Law, which prohibits (Section 18) commercial conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive. Report to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission here.

There are no specific provisions to claim a refund or a discount for misleading listings. Your only recourse would seem be to initiate the cancellation policy that applies to your booking.

So when can I get a refund?

If you cancel your booking or leave the property early, your refund rights are determined by your cancellation policy (see “show trip details”).

There are various policies (from which a host selects when listing). Most allow full refunds if you cancel one to five days prior to check-in, while others require up to 30 days’ notice or only provide partial refunds.

If the host cancels on you, they may be penalised by Airbnb.

Read more:
The carbon footprint of Airbnb is likely bigger than you think

Can an Airbnb host impose harsh and unreasonable ‘house rules’?

If an owner wants to make rules against visitors without their permission or how many times you can use the washing machine, they generally can.

When you rent a property through Airbnb, you are entering into a private agreement with the owner. Under contract law, they can stipulate whatever terms they like, so long as those rules aren’t illegal.

What Australian Consumer Law does prohibit are unfair terms in standard form “consumer contracts” – which an Airbnb contract likely qualifies as. An unfair term is one that:

• causes a significant imbalance in your rights and obligations
• is not reasonably necessary to protect the host’s interests
• would cause you detriment (financial or otherwise) if it was enforced.

The problem is that you will need to sue the host (that is, initiate civil litigation) to prove this.

Your best option is to carefully review the rules before you confirm your reservation. Once you confirm, you are legally agreeing to all of the host’s terms whether you’ve read and understood them or not.

If you disagree with a rule, ask the host to waive or amend it. If they won’t budge, your choice is to book or not.

What are the boundaries for an Airbnb host/owner?

Hosts are required to ensure every property is secure and safe. Airbnb’s Community Policy states properties must be properly lockable and free of hazards, and hosts must be responsive and willing to answer guest queries within a reasonable time.

According to Airbnb, a host cannot physically intrude or interfere with your stay. They can only re-enter their property (or a guest’s room in a shared stay) if there is an emergency or with express permission.

In a shared stay, the host must not enter the bathrooms or guest bedrooms when the guests are inside. The host is also forbidden from sharing private details, photos, or videos of you without consent.

Where your safety is threatened, you should contact law enforcement and notify Airbnb. If you decide to leave, you may be entitled to a partial refund. Your rights depend on the cancellation policy applying to your booking (discussed further below).

If I am injured in or get sick because of an Airbnb property, can I claim compensation?

Clause 4.2 of Airbnb’s terms and conditions states that, by staying at a listed property, you acknowledge and “freely and willfully” accept the risk of “illness, bodily injury, disability, or death”.

Further, clause 19 contains a broad disclaimer absolving Airbnb of any liability for “personal or bodily injury or emotional distress” incurred in using its services. Clause 20 also contains an indemnity preventing you from making any claim against Airbnb in relation to your stay.

This gives Airbnb legal protection. But you may make a claim against the host.

The first step would be to formally write to the host outlining your claim. Airbnb may also assist with any disputes. If this fails, you can sue the host but whether the cost and effort is worth it will depend on the extent of your injury or illness.

If you do make any claim against the host, they will likely rely on Airbnb’s insurance. Every Airbnb host is insured up to US$1 million (about A$1.5 million) through Airbnb’s Host Liability Insurance Programme. This covers any bodily injuries incurred by guests (or others) and damage to or theft of any property belonging to a guest (or others).

There are some exceptions to what Airbnb’s insurance will cover, such as intentional violence, mould and communicable disease. If you want compensation for something the host is personally liable for, you are more likely to have to take legal action, using a lawyer. Consider the costs carefully.

What’s the maximum cleaning/damages fee an Airbnb host can charge?

Cleaning fees are set by the host. Airbnb provides a pricing tool to help them calculate a reasonable fee – generally based on size and facilities – but there is no maximum, presumably on the rationale that market forces (and reviews) will deter hosts from charging too much.

Nor is there a maximum damages fee. You can formally dispute the amount with Airbnb, which will determine if it is reasonable, relying on information provided by both parties.

Charging exorbitant prices is not illegal though Australian Consumer Law does prohibit “unconscionable conduct”. But, again, you need to initiate legal proceedings and have a court agree you deserve compensation.

Where to go for help and advice

You can contact Airbnb for any account, listing, or reservation-related questions. Online forums can also be useful for advice and support.

You can report consumer complaints to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission but the federal regulator does not resolve individual complaints or provide legal advice on your rights and obligations. For preliminary advice go to the following state and territory consumer advice agencies:

Please note this article does not constitute legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult a lawyer.

Mark Giancaspro 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 are your rights as an Airbnb renter in Australia? A law expert answers 6 common questions – https://theconversation.com/what-are-your-rights-as-an-airbnb-renter-in-australia-a-law-expert-answers-6-common-questions-211026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Cole, Composer & Lecturer in Screen Composition, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney

Christopher Nolan’s biopic on the theoretical scientist Robert Oppenheimer, who became known as the “father of the atomic bomb”, has an epic soundtrack.

We follow Oppenheimer’s early work in Europe, establishing the Los Alamos lab, the creation of the atomic bombs released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his later activism against nuclear development and its repercussions in his later life.

The music and sound design are integral to telling this dark story.

Ludwig Göransson’s score immerses the audience in the inner emotional dilemma of a man on the brink of unleashing the potential destruction of humanity, while the sound design illustrates flashbacks, physical phenomena and atoms clashing with each other.

Read more:
‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’: who was atom bomb pioneer Robert Oppenheimer?

Drawing on music history

Sound in Nolan’s films is characteristically loud and arresting, accompanied by epic music scores. Oppenheimer’s score moves from the gentle and personal to an imposing sound spectacle that heightens the intensity of the plot.

The violin forms the basis of the score. From the film’s opening track, the violin’s ability to shift from a hauntingly beautiful sound quality (or timbre) to a screeching descending melody to an intimate whispery tone draws us into Oppenheimer’s intense inner dilemma.

The violin is fitting to depict such a complex and intense character.

Göransson’s score draws on performance techniques with a rich cinematic and concert hall legacy.

In Psycho, the short, sharp screech of the violins played in repeated clusters punctuates the rising tension. This is echoed in Oppenheimer: to underscore the visuals of atoms spinning, Göransson layers string harmonics in an escalating crescendo of quivering energy.

In Mozart’s requiem (a mass of the dead) Lacrimosa, the haunting simplicity of the opening melody played by the violins feels raw and immediately draws the listener in. Here, when the scientists learn of the bombing of Japan, the violin plays a two-note melody. This simple composition contains the enormity of the situation.

The tension of the violin

The violin is a fretless instrument, allowing traditional performance techniques including harmonics and vibrato.

Harmonics is an overtone you hear when you place your finger softly on the string and play with the violin bow. By not pushing the string down to the fingerboard, the string vibrates on both sides of your finger to create a whistling sound.

Vibrato is the tiny fluctuations in pitch caused by rocking the finger from the wrist or arm to create warmth and expressiveness in performance.

In this score, Göransson also employs non-traditional techniques such as tapping or hitting the body of the violin with the bow.

When these traditional and non-traditional performance techniques combine, the juxtaposition creates tension between the warm and more brittle sound qualities of the violin.

A scene in the classroom exemplifies the lyrical sound quality of violins that build in numbers. When Oppenheimer is alone one violin plays. As three people join him, three violins join in the composition. As the classroom fills – and as his excitement in talking about quantum physics grows – there is a build to the whole orchestra playing.

The violins shift to tension strings performing various rhythmic patterns and performance techniques. These combine with electronic instruments that musically fluctuate between hope, anxiety and despair.

As the scene progresses, the horns come thundering in as a warning of the destruction to come.

The sound of silence

Göransson’s unrelenting score features in roughly 2.5 hours of the three-hour film. The orchestral blend of piano and harps runs alongside the sounds of Oppenheimer’s world. Feet stomping, synthesisers pulsing, clocks ticking and the electrical static of Geiger counters create a sound world of tension, dread and anticipation.

Göransson uses rhythmic techniques such as triplets – when three notes are played in the space of two – to build the intensity and to create escalating cross-rhythms during the Trinity nuclear test.

The layers of strings playing harmonics and rhythmic patterns build in intensity to create an impression of momentum building. These techniques bring a sense of agitation, heightening the drama and building energy.

The music builds in intensity up to the moment of silence when the button is pushed: there is no turning back.

The score falling silent is as important as the music itself.

When Oppenheimer delivers his speech after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, each jingoistic comment is followed by increasing applause and noise. When the sound suddenly drops out, we are left with his empty words.

When the film only includes the “naked” sound of the world on screen, we feel the gravity of the situation.

When we experience dynamic builds in anticipation in a music score, our dopamine levels naturally increase. Sudden silence creates moments of intense focus. The contrast between the fullness of the orchestra and the silence immerses us in the world. We experience an emotional release.

The silence propels us into a feeling of suspended time: an almost deafening reminder of humanity through the use of close and intimate human sounds. It is one of the most potent features used throughout the three-hour film.

Read more:
Music inspires powerful emotions on screen, just like in real life

Alison Cole 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. Oppenheimer has an epic, layered soundtrack – but its real power is in the silence – https://theconversation.com/oppenheimer-has-an-epic-layered-soundtrack-but-its-real-power-is-in-the-silence-210983

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn discuss the announcement from Western Australian Premier Roger Cook that a controversial cultural heritage law would be overturned, with the former legislation reinstated with amendments. The law was put in place after mining giant Rio Tinto blew up the Juukan Gorge, a sacred place for First Australians.

They also canvass the government’s continuing problems in the Voice campaign, and the fallout from the inquiry into the handling of the Bruce Lehrmann case. In a bizarre twist, the former judge who did the investigation is now in trouble with the ACT government, who appointed him.

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. Word from The Hill: Voice proponents and opponents draw succour from heritage backdown; ALP toughens Palestine policy to placate party; more questions follow Lehrmann inquiry – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-voice-proponents-and-opponents-draw-succour-from-heritage-backdown-alp-toughens-palestine-policy-to-placate-party-more-questions-follow-lehrmann-inquiry-211281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Maguire, Associate Professor in Human Rights and International Law, University of Newcastle

Australia’s minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong, has announced Australia will return to use of the term “occupied Palestinian territories”.

The Australian government will use this phrase to describe the territories in the West Bank and Gaza that Israel occupied in 1967.

Australian officials have generally avoided the use of “occupied” and “occupation” in relation to Palestine since 2014.

This move by Australia is an important means of signalling condemnation of Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands. It reorients Australia towards the orthodox position on the occupation under international law.

It has been reported that some at the upcoming Labor national conference will agitate for the government to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans argues the time is right for the government to make such a move. He notes that 138 of the UN’s 193 member states have already done so.

There is no legal bar to Australia recognising Palestine as a state. Rather, it would be a political decision for the government of the day, aimed at promoting the long called-for two-state solution.

Read more:
Gareth Evans: the case for recognising Palestine

The position under international law

Since the United Nations (UN) was established in 1945, the status of Palestine has been a perennial question of modern international law. The UN General Assembly and Security Council have resolved that Israel violates the prohibition on the use of force through its occupation of Palestinian territories. Palestine has held the special status of “non-member observer state” in the UN since 2012.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave an advisory opinion on the implications of Israel’s construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territories. The ICJ concluded the wall served to protect illegal settlements, shore up annexation of Palestinian lands and deny self-determination for the Palestinian people.

The UN’s longstanding condemnation of Israel’s occupation was reasserted in a General Assembly resolution on December 30 2022. The resolution noted Israel’s obligations, as the occupying power, to:

• comply with the Geneva Conventions on the protection of civilians during war

• cease violating the human rights of the Palestinian people

• cease efforts to modify Palestinian territory through illegal settlements, and bring an end to the occupation

• stop construction and dismantle the wall it has been constructing in the occupied territories

• respect the right to self-determination of the people of Palestine and the territorial unity of the occupied territories

• end the blockade of the Gaza strip and other onerous limitations on freedom of movement for people and goods.

Read more:
‘I can live with either one’: Palestine, Israel and the two-state solution

The General Assembly also took the significant step of requesting a new advisory opinion from the ICJ on the legal implications of Israel’s continuing occupation. In January 2023 the UN secretary-general submitted the following questions to the ICJ:

1. What are the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?

2. How do the policies and practices of Israel […] affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all States and the United Nations from this status?

The ICJ is now reviewing submissions by UN member states on these questions. It is likely some submissions will explicitly raise the question of whether Israel’s policies and practices in Palestine amount to the crime of apartheid.

What happens now?

The ICJ’s eventual advisory opinion will not be a binding decision on Israel. However, it will be an authoritative view by the world court. Based on extensive precedent in international law and practice, the ICJ will surely conclude that Israel remains in illegal occupation of Palestine.

The Australian government’s reorientation on the status of Palestine is aligned with international law and state practice. Australia, along with all UN member states, is obliged to promote respect for international law and universal human rights.

Amy Maguire 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 decision to again use the term ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ brings it into line with international law – https://theconversation.com/australias-decision-to-again-use-the-term-occupied-palestinian-territories-brings-it-into-line-with-international-law-211260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Scholar, NCAR; Affiliate Faculty, University of Auckland

The announcement of a partnership between the government and the world’s biggest investment manager BlackRock in a NZ$2 billion climate infrastructure fund suggests the company is expecting renewable energy in New Zealand to increase its own profitability.

The new fund is the first country-specific renewable investment BlackRock has made, following its 2022 acquisition of New Zealand company SolarZero, which produces solar battery storage and other energy services.

The initiative also underpins the government’s aspirational goal of having 100% of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2035. The purpose of this fund is to accelerate investment from Crown companies and agencies to speed up decarbonisation. But will it cut costs to consumers?

Given New Zealand’s isolation and reliance on exports and tourism, the country remains vulnerable to climate change impacts and carbon pricing designed to help cut emissions. Aside from storm and drought damage from climate change that disrupts food production, both imports and exports are likely to increase in price, and carbon-based tariffs may adversely affect New Zealand’s economy.

To address climate change threats in New Zealand will require more than mobilising private investment with a focus on renewable energy. It will need a comprehensive and collaborative approach that acknowledges dependencies on shipping and air travel, which continue to depend on fossil fuels.

Here are ten broad areas that must be considered when tackling the specific and sometimes unique challenges New Zealand faces in the years ahead.

1. Maximising renewable energy

Most of New Zealand’s electricity comes from hydro power as well as wind and solar power. It is already over 80% renewable, but the grid is topped up by coal.

Promoting renewable electricity is essential but likely not enough. Energy for industrial processes (heating, drying, steel production) still relies on fossil fuels, and we need to make more use of abundant solar and wind resources.

Because these resources are intermittent, they must be integrated with hydro power to serve as a “battery” by storing water behind a dam. This requires a national, publicly owned entity whose goal is to maximise renewable energy production (not profits in private companies).

À lire aussi :
NZ’s proposed pumped storage hydropower project will cost billions – here’s how to make it worthwhile

2. Rethinking travel

New Zealand has a growing fleet of electric vehicles, but the transport system still largely runs on fossil fuels. It is one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 17% of gross emissions.

Apart from improving public transport and promoting cycling and walking, simply avoiding unnecessary travel becomes essential. The COVID pandemic has shown the way with teleconferencing and virtual meetings.

3. Reduce shipping emissions

If shipping were a country, it would be sixth in total emissions. Last month, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a UN agency that regulates global shipping, agreed to a new climate strategy to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “close to 2050”.

Already, penalties are being implemented to prevent use of high-sulphur oil. A carbon tax or levy is likely, starting in the European Union in 2024. Biofuels, methanol and perhaps even wind power may help shipping.

À lire aussi :
Global shipping has a new climate strategy – it’s vague, obscure and almost noncommittal, but it may be pointing the industry in the right direction

4. Trains versus planes

For international air travel, development of sustainable aviation fuels is progressing. Further optimising air traffic and flight routes and promoting the use of fuel-efficient aircraft and technologies is essential.

It seems likely carbon offsets may be required, and these could be expensive. For domestic travel, trains may become more viable.

5. Prepare for tourism declines

Ecotourism is likely to grow, and operators will have to abide by sustainability certifications and limits to fragile ecosystems areas. Off-peak and new, dispersed destinations seem likely.

Offsetting carbon may become mandatory and the cost is likely to go up, with adverse effects on New Zealand’s economy.

6. Better carbon offsets

The need for quality offsets for fossil fuel use is likely to increase. The main potential is wood in trees, since plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

However, trees have a finite lifetime and this can only be a temporary fix. Indigenous trees grow more slowly and can lock up carbon for more than a century. But considerable care is needed to avoid forest fires and disease, or the offset value diminishes rapidly.

7. Strategic forestry

Protecting and restoring existing native forests helps conserve biodiversity. It also helps limit runoff and erosion. Large-scale afforestation and reforestation efforts to expand forest cover should continue, as strategic planting of native trees will enhance carbon sequestration and restore ecosystem balance.

Implementation of sustainable forest management practices, emphasising selective logging and reforestation after harvesting, will ensure a continuous carbon sink, preserve biodiversity and protect sensitive ecosystems.

8. Greener cities and towns

Urban forestry can counteract urban heat island effects and enhance air quality. Planting trees in public spaces and along streets in residential areas can reduce energy consumption for cooling and improve people’s wellbeing.

9. Biofuel development

As well as using wood to temporarily sequester carbon, it can be used as a biofuel. Torrefaction is a thermal process that involves heating biomass in the absence of oxygen to produce a more energy-dense and stable material.

This process can be applied to various types of biomass, including wood chips, slash, agricultural residues and other organic materials. The resulting torrefied biomass has several advantages, including improved grindability, increased energy density and reduced moisture content.

It is currently used at the Huntly power station in place of coal but the torrefied wood chips are imported. Instead, this could be an important fuel and an export, given the shortages in Europe arising from the Ukraine war.

10. Incentives for better land use

Regenerative farming, agroforestry and silvopasture techniques integrate trees with agricultural practices. This enhances carbon sequestration, improves soil health and provides additional income streams for farmers.

New Zealand should implement financial incentives and regulations to encourage private landowners to participate in tree planting and sustainable forest management. Tax incentives, carbon offset programmes and grants can drive private investment in climate-friendly practices.

A more self-sufficient future

Addressing climate change threats in New Zealand requires acknowledgement of the dependencies on shipping, air travel and tourism. Planning for the consequences of climate change and building resilience are both essential.

New Zealand needs to become a lot more self-sufficient and reduce volumes of exports by increasing domestic processing and manufacture. These changes may be hastened by international tariffs on trade based on carbon content.

By transitioning to green shipping, transforming air travel and fostering sustainable tourism, New Zealand can mitigate its carbon footprint, protect natural ecosystems and ensure long-term socioeconomic prosperity. Public-private partnerships and robust policy implementation are crucial.

Kevin Trenberth 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. Meeting the long-term climate threat takes more than private investment – 10 ways NZ can be smart and strategic – https://theconversation.com/meeting-the-long-term-climate-threat-takes-more-than-private-investment-10-ways-nz-can-be-smart-and-strategic-211100

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stayci Taylor, Senior lecturer, RMIT University

Improvised comedy TV show Thank God You’re Here returned last Wednesday after a 14 year hiatus, with its premiere drawing an impressive 684,000 viewers.

Hosted by Celia Pacquola, the guest stars include first timers Urzila Carlson, Aaron Chen, Geraldine Hickey, Lloyd Langford, Luke McGregor and Aunty Donna’s Mark Bonanno, as well as returnees from the 2006-2009 run such as Fifi Box and Julia Zemiro.

The premise sees each celebrity guest costumed into a character – who is a complete surprise to them. They then enter through the infamous door into a scenario which they must play along with the core ensemble, who are also improvising but, unlike the guest, to a brief.

Thank God You’re Here, developed by Working Dog’s Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch, Michael Hirsh and Tom Gleisner is a “justification game” by theatre sports categorisation. It employs a similar hook to the theatre sports game Actor’s Nightmare, where one player can only speak from the lines of a scripted play leaving everyone else in the scene, who are unaware of the text’s content, to “justify” their dialogue.

Improv grew from a set of strategies for training actors to a performing art in its own right.

Australia’s place in the history of improvisation suggests our screens are uniquely placed for introducing wider audiences to a form that – if sometimes derided for its “cringe” or lack of diversity – promotes risk, spontaneity and genuine “liveness” at a level scripted theatre and comedy only aim to emulate.

Introduction to improv: from theatre to television

The commercial success of improvised performance, peaking in the late 80s and 90s is often attributed to theatre sports. Theatre sports is credited as the brainchild of Keith Johnstone, whose 1979 book Impro, drawing on his experience as an educator and associate director at the Royal Court Theatre in London, is a mainstay of theatre studies reading lists.

Theatre sports is a comedy format where teams compete for points from a panel of three judges, using improv skills to create quick spontaneous scenes for the amusement of the audience.

Johnstone’s aim (based on his observations of pro-wrestling in Britain) was to have audiences as excited about theatre as they are about sport – for instance, booing a “block” (denying the reality set up by one’s scene partner) as enthusiastically as they would a sporting penalty.

Johnstone’s death at age 90 in March this year was a loss to the improv world. Part of his legacy is the term “the Johnstone school”, the principles and techniques emerging from his Calgary company Loose Moose Theatre.

Rivalling the Johnstone school is the Chicago style, whose teachings are part of the origin story for US troupes Second City, Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade, all with their own famous alumni. Chicago style can be traced to the enormous influence of American actor, educator and director Viola Spolin, who devised a series of techniques she called Theatre Games, which she wrote about in Improvisation for the Theatre (1963).

Read more:
Comedy in the classroom? How improv can promote literacy

Cringe and diversity

Historically, the performing art of improvisation, especially improv comedy, has been dominated by white (cisgender, usually straight) men. This is well documented – and parodied.

Amy E. Seham, now a professor of theatre and dance, was a trailblazer in the critiques of improv’s homogeneity with her book Whose Improv is it Anyway? (2001).

She interrogates “the gap between improv-comedy’s utopian philosophies and the highs and lows of [her] own experience” as a seasoned improviser navigating the sexist landscape. In the book she quotes then Australian Theatre Sports director Lyn Pierse, whose female players were “railroaded by the men onstage”.

It’s not only sexism and misogyny that has plagued the improv scene, particularly in North America.

Since Seham’s book was published, former members of once lauded improv companies have spoken out about racist, sexist and ableist casting in Canada and the United States.

As Second City and Saturday Night Live alumnus Tina Fey wrote in her memoir Bossypants, “only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity”. But the early announcement Pacquola would host inspired optimism for at least the gender skew of the series.

Improv down under

In 2016, there was an attempted Australian version of hit US comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? – which didn’t fare as well as its UK and US counterparts.

According to this review in the Guardian, all’s fair since the US “viciously murdered” their own version of Thank God You’re Here – which was cancelled after only seven episodes.

As improvisation researcher Braínne Edge wrote in 2014 article, the US iteration suffered from “an awkward tension” between the core cast and the celebrities.

The lack of improv training of the celebrities saw them “effectively blocking and denying the action” – one of the key transgressions of improv.

The success of the original Thank God You’re Here in Australia – and hopefully the new season too – may owe something to earlier improv training grounds in Australia.

In its heyday, theatre sports was embraced in both Australia and New Zealand, with high school training programs, regional and national tournaments, corporate sponsorship and TV broadcasts.

The ABC aired the series Theatre Sports in 1987, and Television New Zealand broadcast each national Theatre Sports final in prime time from 1988 to 1991.

According to Edge, the original Thank God You’re Here’s “key to success” is “that the Australians allow their scenes to be more fluid, less restrictive, more natural”. The premiere of the new series suggests this quality hasn’t changed.

When guest Aaron Chen uttered the famous line “thank god you’re here” upon entering his scene (instead of hearing it, as the premise demands), the cameras continued to roll. Later host Pacquola called back to his error, drawing comedy out of coaching him out of the habit ahead of his next entrance.

As Fey points out in Bossypants, “there are no mistakes, only opportunities”. For Australian comedy and the profile of improv, it might just be a case of thank god you’re back.

Stayci Taylor is affiliated with the Vancouver TheatreSports League as an alumnus, and as Artistic Director of Dunedin Improv Inc (1991) benefitted from the United Bank sponsorship of Theatre Sports in New Zealand.

– ref. Thank God You’re Here is back. Its success proves Australian TV is the perfect home for improv comedy – https://theconversation.com/thank-god-youre-here-is-back-its-success-proves-australian-tv-is-the-perfect-home-for-improv-comedy-206668

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David MacKenzie, Associate Professor, University of South Australia

What needs to change to greatly reduce youth homelessness in Australia? Now is the time to find answers to this question, and not just because it’s National Homelessness Week.

The federal government is developing a National Housing and Homelessness Plan and says public consultations will begin soon. In recent years, there have been two parliamentary inquiries into homelessness in Victoria and across Australia. Then came a Productivity Commission review of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, which expired on June 30 this year.

More than a decade ago, the Rudd government made homelessness a national priority. A 2008 white paper, The Road Home, advanced three key strategies:

1. “turning off the tap” – early intervention and prevention
2. “improving and expanding services” – the existing service system
3. “breaking the cycle” – supported housing to prevent homelessness reoccurring.

Yet today more people need help because of homelessness than 15 years ago. The ambitious agenda of 2008 has not been fulfilled.

The forthcoming plan might just be a second chance for Australia to get it right.

Read more:
Yes, we see you. Why a national plan for homelessness must make thousands of children on their own a priority

Homelessness is more than ‘sleeping rough’

Homelessness conjures images of someone sleeping in a doorway, alley or city park. “Rough sleeping” is, after all, the visible homelessness that people see. But there are other forms of homelessness that are more hidden.

Some vocal advocates seek to model the Australian homelessness response on that of the United States. In the US, nearly 600,000 people are sleeping rough or in shelters. The rate of homelessness is at least ten times the rate in Australia.

A problem in the US is that homelessness is very narrowly defined. Fortunately, in Australia, homelessness has been understood and defined more broadly as not having a secure and safe home. So the good news is the new homelessness plan is unlikely to make the mistake of adopting the narrow US focus on rough sleeping.

Homelessness funding has largely gone into crisis management – that is, after people become homeless. An expanded role for “prevention” work coupled with supported housing options in each community would be a valuable strategic reform.

The Productivity Commission review recommended “prevention and early intervention programs should be a higher priority under the next agreement”, backed by “a separate pool of funding”. The commission even suggested:

The nearly $3 billion [annually] given to first home buyers works against improving affordability. This money would be better spent preventing homelessness.

Too many young Australians who become homeless and disengage from education then experience long-term disadvantage. The cost to Australia of their lost opportunities amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Read more:
6 steps towards remaking the homelessness system so it works for young people

We have examples of intervention that works

There are promising early intervention models for at-risk young people that are ready to be scaled up. Examples include the COSS Model, Kids Under Cover, Ruby’s Reunification and Home Stretch programs. If implemented adequately, programs like these would greatly reduce the flow of young people into homelessness.

Housing affordability in Australia has worsened over a long time. For people whose homelessness cannot be averted, the immediate need is access to a crisis service, rapid rehousing and then supported housing options.

The Albanese government’s A$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund could begin to turn the housing crisis around, but it would be only a beginning. All sides of politics need to get behind greater investment in high-quality social housing, shared equity home purchase programs (the government or another investor covers some of the purchase price in return for a share of equity in the home) and increased Commonwealth Rental Assistance. Government subsidies for the private housing sector, such as negative gearing, also need to be reviewed.

Read more:
To deliver enough affordable housing and end homelessness, what must a national strategy do?

Homeless young people have little chance of getting into mainstream social housing when they most need supported housing to get their lives back on track. The social housing business model is not set up to provide supported housing for adolescents and young adults.

One notable innovation is the world’s first model of social housing for youth developed by My Foundations Youth Housing. It provides up to five years’ supported residency with rents scaling up annually. Most residents move on to other accommodation when ready to do so.

Read more:
Homeless numbers set to rise again, but inquiry can be a turning point if we get smarter about housing people

Get the plan right and it can be a game-changer

Expanding the social housing options for young people would have a significant impact. Should the Senate finally pass the Housing Australia Future Fund legislation, young people (15-24 years) could be guaranteed a specific share of that funding, as has been done for women escaping domestic violence and older women at risk of homelessness. This funding would go into expanding social housing for young people.

A key structural reform would be to reorganise support services for at-risk and homeless young Australians on a community-by-community basis. What’s needed is a rigorous approach to needs-based funding for both early intervention and post-homelessness support and supported housing.

Will the National Housing and Homelessness Plan be a game-changer for vulnerable young Australians? Well, that remains to be seen. We hope Australia can avoid a rerun of what happened after the 2008 white paper.

David Mackenzie has been involved homelessness research and policy advocacy around early intervention for some 30 years. He is co-designer of the COSS Model and CEO of Upstream Australia, a systemic backbone support NGO platform formed to support funded COSS Model community sites and COSS community initiative groups. Upstream Australia receives funding for COSS Model sites in Geelong, Albury and Mt Druitt. David is a member of the Board of My Foundations Social Housing Co. and together with Upstream Australia is affiliated with the Gonski Institute of Education at UNSW.

Tammy Hand is the deputy CEO of Upstream Australia, a systemic backbone support NGO platform formed to support funded COSS Model community sites and COSS community initiative groups, and a co-designer of the COSS Model. Upstream Australia receives funding for COSS Model sites in Geelong, Albury and Mt Druitt. Together with Upstream Australia, Tammy is affiliated with the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of NSW. Tammy has previously received research money from the AHURI.

– ref. Efforts to find safe housing for homeless youth have gone backwards. Here’s what the new national plan must do differently – https://theconversation.com/efforts-to-find-safe-housing-for-homeless-youth-have-gone-backwards-heres-what-the-new-national-plan-must-do-differently-210704

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sutton, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, University of Technology Sydney

The funding of Australia’s aged care is fast reaching a critical point. As our recent report shows, the costs of providing high-quality services will likely escalate to A$40 billion by 2026 as the first baby boomers reach their eighties.

One proposal to fund this increased expenditure is a Medicare-style levy for aged care.

However, this seemingly neat solution isn’t the answer to our aged-care funding problems.

Read more:
The aged-care budget delivers for workers but meeting our future needs will require bold funding reforms

Why consider an aged-care levy?

In the aged-care commission’s final report in 2021, both commissioners recommended the creation of an aged-care levy – in slightly different forms – to fund Australia’s future needs.

For taxpayers who would like to see more of their taxes go towards supporting older citizens, a special levy may sound appealing, especially if it is “hypothecated” or earmarked specifically to fund aged care.

Politically, it may be easier to gain public acceptance for increasing taxes if they are explicitly designated for aged care and perceived as more secure from changes in political priorities over time.

Also, like most types of tax and social insurance, a levy has the advantage of risk-pooling. This means funds can be raised across the broader population to cover the potentially very high care costs required for some individuals that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

Finally, like the Medicare levy, an aged-care levy could be set to be progressive, so people with higher incomes pay more than those with lower incomes.

However, an aged-care levy has several fundamental drawbacks that outweigh the potential benefits.

It increases taxpayers’ share of aged-care funding

The main problem with an aged-care levy is it places even more pressure on Australian taxpayers to fund aged care. Although many individuals contribute something towards the cost of their own care and support, on the whole, taxpayers already pay the lion’s share of all aged-care funding.

This imbalance is even more extreme for home-care packages, where consumer contributions comprise only 2.2% of total funding. This means the average home-care client who receives about $25,000 worth of services each year only pays $550 a year or about $1.50 per day.

Read more:
Aged-care funding reforms must ensure users pay their fair share

Most people prefer to remain in their own homes, so the demand for home-care services will continue to grow in the coming years. However, these low personal contribution rates are unsustainable.

Many across the sector, including consumer peak bodies, support re-balancing the contributions so that those with the financial capacity to pay make fair contributions to the cost of the services they use.

It undermines intergenerational equity

An aged-care levy undermines intergenerational equity by asking current taxpayers, typically younger generations, to pay more for services for their parents and grandparents, who are now living much longer than their parents before them.

This tension arises, in part, because of Australia’s changing demographics. Right now, about 17% of the Australian population is aged 65 and above. By 2060, it will rise to about 20%. During the same time, the proportion of working-age people (aged 15–64) will fall.

An aged-care levy would mean that as the demand for aged-care services grows, the portion of the population paying for those services will shrink.

Another compounding factor is the existing wealth disparities between different generations. On average, older Australians are typically wealthier than their younger counterparts. Largely because of differences in home ownership, older households typically have 1.5 times the wealth of younger households.

A taxpayer-funded levy may also perpetuate longer-term wealth disparities. If the wealthiest Australians can have their own care needs funded by the broader base of Australian taxpayers, they can pass on larger inheritances to their children.

A false sense of security

Another challenge with hypothecated levies that ring-fence funds for a specific purpose is getting the settings right so it is neither under- nor over-funded. With Australia’s demographic forecasts, there is no guarantee a levy set today would be sufficient to meet all of our future aged-care needs.

In this context, there is a risk that having an aged-care levy may create a false perception that funding problems have been solved, when it will likely still require further top-ups from other sources or further adjustments down the track.

Read more:
Lump sum, daily payments or a combination? What to consider when paying for nursing home accommodation

Finally, although funds raised through hypothecated levies are used for the specific purpose for which the tax is created, this constraint is not immune to the will of parliament. Thus, there is the risk that any arrangements may be dismantled if future generations are less willing to contribute and the political and fiscal priorities of the government of the day change.

So although a levy might appear as a convenient solution to the aged-care funding conundrum, a more sustainable solution will strike a fairer balance between Australian taxpayers and the people who use aged care, both now and into the future.

Nicole Sutton has received funding from a range of research grants including the Department of Health and Aged Care, the Australian Aged Care Collaboration, StewartBrown and integratedliving. She is a member of the executive committee of Palliative Care NSW and lead author of the Australia’s Aged Care Sector Report.

– ref. Money’s tight for young people. Adding a Medicare-style levy to everyone’s tax bill is the wrong way to increase aged-care funding – https://theconversation.com/moneys-tight-for-young-people-adding-a-medicare-style-levy-to-everyones-tax-bill-is-the-wrong-way-to-increase-aged-care-funding-210963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Emslie, Senior Research Scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science

The Great Barrier Reef is not dead. Nor is it in good health. The truth is complex. To understand what’s going on takes more than a headline.

For the last 37 years, our organisation has monitored the health of the world’s largest reef. Each year, we add our findings to our dataset, the Reef’s longest running and largest coverage. This lets us produce annual updates for the northern, central and southern regions of the Reef. That makes us perhaps the team best qualified to answer the question many people have – how is the Reef going?

Released today, this year’s update paints a complex picture. It wasn’t long ago the Great Barrier Reef was reeling from successive disturbances, ranging from marine heatwaves and coral bleaching to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and cyclone damage, with widespread death of many corals especially during the heatwaves of 2016 and 2017.

Since then, the Reef has rebounded. Generally cooler La Niña conditions mean hard corals have recovered significant ground, regrowing from very low levels after a decade of cumulative disturbances to record high levels in 2022 across two-thirds of the reef.

The Reef has shown an impressive ability to recover from widespread disturbances, when it gets a chance – it’s not all just bleaching and death. But it’s also true we’re heading towards a future where hotter water temperatures will likely cause bleaching every year, along with ongoing threats of cyclones and coral-eating starfish. Recovery requires reprieve – and those opportunities will diminish as climate change progresses.

Last year, for instance, parts of the Reef experienced bleaching in the middle of La Niña – the first time that’s happened on record.

What’s happening on the Reef?

To take the pulse of the Great Barrier Reef, one indicator we use is hard coral cover. It’s a widely used, robust indicator of reef health, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. We also collect detailed data on coral and fish populations, diversity, structural complexity, and abundance of juvenile corals. And we take digital photographs and convert them into 3D photogrammetry models so we can analyse what’s happening in more depth than ever before.

Here’s what our analysis shows.

Over the last few years, the Reef was mostly in La Niña conditions. That gave the hard-hit northern and central parts of the reef a chance to begin recovery. Many reefs had a high proportion of Acropora corals, of which the best known are the staghorn and plate corals. These species have been a vital part of the reef over 37 years of monitoring – and probably for millennia.

These corals are the most common on many reefs, and grow fast. Because of that, they tend to dominate trends in hard coral cover.

Does this mean the Great Barrier Reef’s recovery in 2022 relied on “weedy” corals which are taking over? Yes and no. The natural ecological niche of Acropora corals has always been to rapidly fill empty space, which means it tends to dominate trends in coral recovery.

Read more:
Record coral cover doesn’t necessarily mean the Great Barrier Reef is in good health (despite what you may have heard)

Again, the story is more complicated than the headlines. Some reefs have recovered strongly, some very little. Some reefs are recovering with less Acropora than before, some with more. Each reef is charting its own course on the journey from impact to recovery and back again.

Overall, the record high hard coral cover seen last year was welcome news, representing recovery across much of the Reef in the absence of common coral killers.

But what about recent heating?

This year, the rapid coral rebound paused. Some reefs continued to recover, but these were offset by others which lost coral. Coral loss came from effects of the 2022 bleaching event in northern and central regions, crown-of-thorns starfish predation in the northern and southern regions, damage from Tropical Cyclone Tiffany in the north and coral disease in some areas of the south.

The picture is complex. Recovery here, fresh losses there.

While the recovery we reported last year was welcome news, there are challenges ahead. The spectre of global annual coral bleaching will soon become a reality.

Right now, marine heatwaves are sweeping through ocean basins in the northern hemisphere. Sea surface temperatures are far above long term averages.

At least eight countries are reporting coral bleaching, including the United States and Belize. This summer, it looks likely we’ll see our first El Niño on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016, bringing higher sea surface temperatures. That last El Niño – coupled with global heating – was the direct cause of the 2016–17 mass bleaching and mass death of corals.

The prognosis is, in short, extremely concerning. Yes, the Reef has rebounded beyond our expectations. But now the heat is back on. If we get mass bleaching like 2016 – or even worse – it could undo all the recent recovery.

Read more:
Out of danger because the UN said so? Hardly – the Barrier Reef is still in hot water

Mike Emslie works for the Australian Institute of Marine Science which receives funding from the Australian Government to conduct the Long-Term Monitoring Program.

Daniela Ceccarelli works for the Australian Institute of Marine Science which receives funding from the Australian Government to conduct the Long-Term Monitoring Program.

David Wachenfeld works for the Australian Institute of Marine Science which receives funding from the Australian Government to conduct the Long-Term Monitoring Program.

– ref. Is the Great Barrier Reef reviving – or dying? Here’s what’s happening beyond the headlines – https://theconversation.com/is-the-great-barrier-reef-reviving-or-dying-heres-whats-happening-beyond-the-headlines-210558

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate, UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

Danger lurks in the surf beaches of Australia in the form of rip currents or rips. These narrow, fast-flowing, seaward channels of water are responsible for an average 26 drownings a year and 80-90% of the thousands of surf rescues. Yet, unlike other well understood and feared natural hazards such as bushfires and floods, the ever-present menace of rip currents is often overlooked.

Until now, the firsthand effects of rips on the people caught in them had also been overlooked. Not enough was known about the human element of rip currents – who is getting caught, what their experience is actually like, what they know about rips, and what information about rips people are likely to understand and remember.

Research concentrated more on physical characteristics of the hazard, such as flow dynamics and types of rips. This is important, and such findings have been used to develop the best strategies to escape a rip. But understanding the human element is essential too.

With this in mind, we interviewed 56 rip current survivors for our newly published research. Their recollections painted a vivid picture of their experience. They offered invaluable insights into how people respond to being caught in a rip.

Many survivors were naive about the risks

Many interviewees had been naive and unprepared for encountering a rip. They knew little about rip currents and didn’t understand the dangers. They confessed to overestimating their swimming abilities and underestimating the conditions.

Some described approaching the ocean as though it was a swimming pool.

We just basically ran into the water, as you do when you arrive at the beach, you throw down the towel, and we just raced into the water.

What is being caught in a rip like?

Once caught in the rip’s grip, panic was a very common response, leading to a mental “fog” that hampered decision-making.

Even if you know what to do it’s hard to put that into action when you’re actually in the rip […] because your first emotion is panic.

This visceral fear led to dangerous mistakes. Many survivors had tried to swim directly against the powerful current – a potentially fatal strategy.

I actually did think I was gonna die, I thought, ‘Oh my God that’s it, I’m gonna drown, that’s ridiculous […] how can I drown? That’s ridiculous,’ but I really did think that was it. […] I couldn’t think clearly enough to work out what to do.

The aftermath of these experiences painted a distinct picture. All the interviewees emphasised nothing could match the actual experience of a rip current for understanding its force and handling its threats. They felt current safety information, though plentiful, wasn’t as effective as it could be.

The first part of this quote is a bit confusing and hard to read. How about jumping straight in with “It’s about giving…

Perhaps if people can get a sense of when they’re in a rip what are some of the sensations […] it’s about giving people some pointers of what it feels like to be in a rip […] I think for a lot of people it doesn’t really mean anything, particularly visitors, if they haven’t had a lot of experience.

These interviews underscore the complex human aspects of the problem. Our strategies can’t just focus on stopping people from entering rips. This is practically impossible, as people will always want to swim at unpatrolled locations.

Survivors shared a conviction that personal experience was the greatest teacher.

Once you understand rips, I think the fear of them disappears because you can use a rip to your advantage.

What are the lessons for surviving rips?

While throwing everyone into a rip current for “experience” is hardly feasible, innovations such as virtual reality could provide a safe, controlled approximation of the experience. The importance of personal experience also underscores the need for Surf Life Saving programs such as Nippers – immersive education for children and young people in a controlled environment. As one survivor told us:

Most of us learn from our experience, and I think you have to experience things before you appreciate the reality of them. I certainly all these years have never really truly appreciated the enormity of a rip until I got caught into one.

Our study identified the potential for psychological prompts to jolt swimmers out of their “rip fog”. These prompts could guide them to make the best escape decisions and resist panic that could cloud their judgement. Signs could be placed on the beach, providing simple, clear messages such as “REMAIN CALM” if caught in a rip.

One interviewee recalled having to “slap” a person during a rescue to get him to focus on escaping the rip.

Just as I got to him he had just given up […] I could see it in his face as I was swimming to him, and the only thing above the water was this much of his arm and that’s what I grabbed, and I pulled him up out of the water, and I slapped him across the face because […] I saw the look in his eye as he went under and it was sort of, well I don’t know, resignation? And so I smacked him and yelled at him that, you know, he had to help me, that I couldn’t do this by myself.

Our research underscores the need for innovative, behavioural solutions, such as Surf Life Saving’s Think Line campaign. This “line in the sand” aims to get people to stop to think about the risks before entering the water, look for rips and other dangers, and plan how to stay safe.

By integrating these insights into rip current safety strategies, we can promote a safer, more informed relationship between beachgoers and the sea. And that could reverse the tragic trend of increased drownings at our beaches.

For more about rip current safety and to find your nearest patrolled beach visit Beachsafe.

Samuel Cornell was employed as a Research Assistant by the UNSW Beach Safety Research Group to conduct this work. The UNSW BSRG received funding from Surf Life Saving Australia.

Amy Peden receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She maintains an honorary affiliation with Royal Life Saving – Australia as a Senior Research Fellow. The UNSW Beach Safety Research Group receives funding from Surf Life Saving Australia.

Rob Brander receives funding from Surf Life Saving Australia and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. ‘Your first emotion is panic’: rips cause many beach drownings, but we can learn from the survivors – https://theconversation.com/your-first-emotion-is-panic-rips-cause-many-beach-drownings-but-we-can-learn-from-the-survivors-210982

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Coate, Senior Lecturer in Economics, RMIT University

Concerns about power imbalances and toxic working environments in the film and TV industries long pre-date the emergence of #metoo as a global rallying cry against sexual assault and harassment on set.

Well-intentioned policymakers have made many attempts to intervene over the past 50 years or so, focusing primarily on addressing gender imbalances using a “just add women and stir” approach.

In Australia this is exemplified by the Gender Matters policy suite from Screen Australia, which aims to improve the number of women working behind the scenes, and the number of productions telling women’s stories.

Yet while gender inequality is important, it certainly is not all that matters if the ultimate goal is a safe, equitable and inclusive workplace. Instead, we need to take a detailed view of who works in the Australian film industry, and understand the specific challenges they face.

Read more:
Screen Australia celebrates its work in gender equality but things are far from equal

Building a camera department

Our recently published research finds inequitable power dynamics behind the camera on Australian film sets are pernicious and persistent.

Purely in terms of gender discrimination, this industry is a shocker.

Camera departments are highly skewed to male employment. The camera department is headed by a director of photography (DOP or cinematographer), and is made up of a variety of positions including camera operators, camera assistants, gaffers and grips.

An industry snapshot in 2021 reported a mere 4% of Australian films employed a woman as the DOP. The percentage of women working as cinematographers in the top 250 Hollywood movies only increased from 4% in 1998 to 6% in 2021.

Of cinematographers working in Europe between 2017 and 2021, 10% were women.

Our study draws on the survey data collected from 582 people included in the Wider Lens Report commissioned by the Australian Cinematographers Society.

Under 2% of respondents who had worked exclusively as the director of photography in the 12 months prior to COVID were women. This percentage lifts slightly to the 4% observed in other industry data when we account for women who worked across multiple camera department roles including director of photography. This discrepancy reveals how women DOPs are more likely than men to work across other (less prestigious) camera department roles.

Beyond focusing on the headline gender statistics, we also wanted to interrogate an intersectional view of discrimination inside camera crews, considering how factors such as racism, sexism, ageism, ableism and homophobia can also impact employment opportunity and experience.

Read more:
Explainer: what does ‘intersectionality’ mean?

What does a cinematographer look like?

Looking at the survey data, we identified four main cohorts in Australian camera departments.

Not surprisingly, the dominant and most successful in-group was Anglo-Celtic heterosexual men (37% of the total sample).

Another cohort, sharing some of the same features, is made up of heterosexual men from non-Anglo-Celtic ethnicities (34.5%).

There are also two clear, much smaller “out-groups” comprising of heterosexual women (11.5%) and a significant cohort of sexuality and gender minorities (13.5%) including lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, queer men and women, and gender non-binary people.

(A small percentage of people were not able to be assigned to any of these groupings because of missing information.)

Workplace power

Cis-heterosexual men are paid more and occupy higher status roles than women and other groups. Experiences of discrimination and harassment tend to be found in the two “out-groups” and, to a lesser extent, among men from underrepresented ethnicities.

We found 88% of heterosexual women reported experiencing sexism, and 39% of respondents from the sexuality and gender minorities group reported experiencing homophobia.

Interestingly, nearly 20% of heterosexual men also claimed to have experienced sexism. From looking at qualitative responses, we found these experiences were linked to respondents’ perceptions that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives generated disadvantage for straight men.

Experiences of ageism tended to be less concentrated in any one group, although there was one interesting distinction.

In the sexuality and gender minorities group, ageism was more likely to manifest around perceptions of being “too young” and “inexperienced”. For the other groups, ageism was more likely to be linked to the perception of being “too old”.

Experiences of ableism were highest for the sexuality and gender minorities group, with most reported discrimination related specifically to perceptions of mental illness.

Camera departments operate so that “who you know” and being able to “fit in” matter. Those who are not men, not White and not heteronormative often felt they were discriminated against.

Read more:
‘The number one barrier has probably been stigma’: the challenges facing disabled workers in the Australian screen industry

Rethinking the industry

It doesn’t have to be this way. In-group dominance does not require hostility and discrimination against out-group members.

Current piecemeal policy responses won’t be enough to overhaul the entrenched systems and cultures that perpetuate toxic workplaces and social inequalities in the screen industries.

Typical policies focus on the idea that individuals from under-represented groups can succeed if they get more training or personal skills development.

Instead, we argue, strategies for change need to be targeted at multiple levels, and need to include wholesale reform.

This means rethinking how the agencies and guilds that endorse the industry define its values, how the business and operational layers of the film industry work to reinforce discrimination, and how such inequitable production teams are brought together.

A toxic system is supported by many individual ethical decisions. Some are acts of cowardice or fear. Some are actually bad actions that hurt people.

Some, in defiance of their context, are acts of grace and courage.

On the set and in the boardrooms where decisions are made, screen industry workplaces need to be regulated to ensure zero tolerance for toxic behaviours and structural discrimination. Where there are no real consequences for bad actions, bad actors prosper.

Anything less would be tinkering at the edges of a foundational problem.

Read more:
Tony Burke’s double ministry of arts and industrial relations could be just what the arts sector needs

Ben Eltham has previously received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts. He is a member of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance, a union that represents workers in the screen industries.

Bronwyn Coate and Deb Verhoeven 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. Film camera departments operate on a system of who you know, so what happens when you’re not a member of the in-group? – https://theconversation.com/film-camera-departments-operate-on-a-system-of-who-you-know-so-what-happens-when-youre-not-a-member-of-the-in-group-209786

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

A national Essential poll, conducted August 2–6 from a sample of 1,150, gave “no” to the Indigenous Voice to parliament a 47–43 lead, reversing a 47–43 lead for “yes” in this poll in early July. While Newspoll and Resolve polls had given “no” a lead in June, this is the first time “no” has led in Essential.

Here is an updated graph that I first published in July of Voice polls from Essential, Newspoll, Resolve and Morgan (which hasn’t conducted a Voice poll since May). It’s bleak for the Voice that Essential, clearly the most favourable pollster for “yes”, now has “no” ahead.

In more bad news for the Voice, a Redbridge national Voice poll, conducted July 21–27 from a sample of 1,022, had “no” leading by 56–44 in a forced choice question. The Essential poll had hard “no” leading hard “yes” by 38–31.

Labor’s voting intention lead increases in Essential

In Essential’s two party measure that includes undecided, Labor led by 52–42, an increased margin from a 50–45 lead last fortnight. Primary votes were 33% Labor (up two), 30% Coalition (down two), 12% Greens (down two), 8% One Nation (up one), 2% UAP (up one), 8% for all Others (down one) and 6% undecided (steady).

Respondent allocated preferences appear to have increased Labor’s lead, with Labor’s gain on primary votes compensated by a fall for the Greens, while the Coalition’s losses were gains for One Nation and UAP.

This term Essential polls have been better for the Greens than other polls. This is the Greens’ equal lowest primary vote in Essential, tying 12% in March.

Respondents were asked to rate the government’s performance on various issues on a five-point scale going from excellent to poor. The government received its worst ratings for cost of living (44% poor) and housing affordability (38% poor). By 67–26, respondents thought the government could make a meaningful difference to the cost of living.

On sports betting, 43% (steady since May) wanted sports betting advertising banned outright, 25% (down one) said it should be allowed, but not during sports events and 16% (steady) said it should always be allowed.

By 50–26, respondents agreed that marijuana should be taxed and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, but they disagreed on other currently illegal drugs, in most cases with over 50% disagreeing.

Morgan poll and seat entitlements

In this week’s Morgan weekly federal poll, conducted July 31 to August 6 from a sample of 1,391, Labor led by 53.5–46.5, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since the previous week. After four successive moves to the Coalition had reduced Labor’s lead from 57–43 to 52–48, Labor has made two successive gains. Primary votes were 35% Coalition, 33.5% Labor, 13% Greens and 18.5% for all Others.

On July 27, the Australian Electoral Commission announced that the House of Representatives would drop from 151 to 150 seats at the next election, with Western Australia gaining a seat and Victoria and New South Wales each losing one. I covered this in June when the latest population statistics were released.

Read more:
Woeful Victorian poll for state Coalition; Victoria and NSW to lose federal seats as WA gains

Labor holds WA Rockingham byelection easily despite huge swing to Libs

At the July 29 byelection for former WA Labor premier Mark McGowan’s seat of Rockingham, Labor defeated the Liberals by 65.2–34.8, a huge 22.5% swing to the Liberals since the 2021 WA election. Primary votes were 49.4% Labor (down 33.5%), 17.7% Liberals (up 7.8%), 15.9% for independent Hayley Edwards (new), 6.8% Legalise Cannabis (new) and 4.9% Greens (up 1.8%).

On the distribution of preferences, Edwards overtook the Liberals as minor candidates were excluded, and the seat finished as a contest between Labor and Edwards, with Labor winning by 61.4–38.6.

While this was a huge swing, there are extenuating circumstances for Labor. The 2021 WA election was a record landslide for a state or federal Australian election, with Labor winning the statewide two party vote by 69.7–30.3 on a primary vote of 59.9%. It’s reasonable to expect a big swing against Labor from these levels.

When an MP retires, the party loses that MP’s personal vote. McGowan was very popular, and his seat was the strongest for Labor at the 2021 election partly owing to his popularity. The loss of such a popular MP enhanced the swing against Labor.

Analyst Kevin Bonham said Labor’s two party percentage in Rockingham at this byelection exceeded Rockingham results at three general elections that Labor won with an incumbent MP. The byelection suggests that Labor is still well ahead statewide against the Liberals, in contrast to a recent WA poll that gave the Liberals a 54–46 lead.

Read more:
Voice support slips again in national Resolve poll; massive swing in WA puts Libs ahead

In other WA electoral news, The Poll Bludger covered a draft redistribution of WA’s 59 lower house seats on July 21. This redistribution eliminates one rural seat and replaces it with a metro seat. The abolished seat was won by the Nationals in 2021, while the new seat should be fairly safe for Labor at a normal election.

Adrian Beaumont 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. ‘No’ to the Voice takes lead in Essential poll; huge swing to Libs at WA state byelection – https://theconversation.com/no-to-the-voice-takes-lead-in-essential-poll-huge-swing-to-libs-at-wa-state-byelection-210685

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice, and Deputy Director, Allens Hub for Technology, Law & Innovation, UNSW Sydney

Millions of people worldwide are lining up to stare into a silver sphere about the size of a bowling ball so their irises can be scanned in exchange for online identity verification and “free” cryptocurrency.

The silver spheres, known as “Orbs”, are part of the Worldcoin platform, which officially launched in July 2023 after an 18-month testing phase. Led by Sam Altman (chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT) and entrepreneur Alex Blania, Worldcoin offers users a “digital passport” known as World ID and small allocations of a cryptocurrency token also called Worldcoin (WLD), “simply for being human”.

Worldcoin aims to provide a “proof of personhood” to distinguish humans from artificial intelligence (AI) systems online.

However, critics say the company is essentially bribing people to hand over highly sensitive biometric data. Governments are taking note: the Worldcoin platform has already been suspended in Kenya, and is under investigation in several other countries.

Gaze into the Orb

Users can download the WorldApp on their mobile phone, then find their “nearest Orb”. The Orb uses iris scans to uniquely identify a person.

Once the person has their iris scanned, they receive a World ID which will function as an online ID much like a Google or Facebook login. World ID is meant to be different because it can prove the user is human – and more private, because it does not link to other personal information about the user.

Despite the “digital passport” label, World ID is not intended to reveal or verify a user’s identity in the conventional sense. It merely establishes the user as “a unique and real person”, rather than a bot.

In most countries, the user is also entitled to units of WLD cryptocurrency once their iris scan is complete.

The Worldcoin website currently lists 60 Orb locations worldwide, particularly in Europe, Asia, North America and South America, and notes there will also be Orb “pop-ups”.

At the time of writing, there appear to be no Orb locations in Australia, so people in Australia cannot earn WLD tokens “for being human”. But they can purchase the WLD cryptocurrency via certain cryptocurrency exchanges and download the World App, which also functions as a cryptocurrency wallet.

Cash for eyeballs jeopardises human rights

Altman is a key player in the AI boom that supposedly makes Worldcoin necessary, so critics have suggested he is “simply profiting from both AI’s problem and solution”.

When the Worldcoin platform officially launched, after signing up some 2 million users in a testing phase, Altman said the Orbs were scanning a new user every eight seconds.

In Kenya, the launch saw “tens of thousands of individuals waiting in lines over a three-day period to secure a World ID”, which Worldcoin attributed to “overwhelming” demand for identity verification.

Independent reporting suggests the promise of “free” cryptocurrency was a more common motive. In most locations, Worldcoin offers a “genesis grant” of 25 units of its WLD cryptocurrency when users scan their irises. (The value of WLD fluctuates, but the grant has been worth around US$50, or $A75, over the past month.)

People queuing for the Orb in Kenya told the BBC “I want to register because I’m jobless and I’m broke,” and

I really like Worldcoin because of the money. I’m not worried about the data. As long as the money comes.

Orb operators are also paid for each user they sign up.

Critics have labelled this strategy of paying people to scan their irises as dystopian and equivalent to bribery.

Offering money for sensitive data arguably makes privacy – a human right – a luxury only the wealthy can afford. People experiencing poverty may risk future harms to meet their immediate survival needs.

‘Cataloguing eyeballs’: the risks of using biometric data

Worldcoin uses irises for verification because every iris is unique and therefore difficult to fake. But the risks of handing over such data are very high. Unlike a driver’s licence or a passport, you cannot replace your iris if the data is compromised.

Surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has criticised Worldcoin for “cataloguing eyeballs”, and tweeted about the unacceptable risks:

Don’t use biometrics for anything. […] The human body is not a ticket-punch.

Worldcoin claims the iris scans are deleted after being converted into a unique iris code, which becomes the user’s World ID. The World ID is then stored on a decentralised blockchain, with the aim of preventing fakes or duplicates.

However, the iris scan is only deleted if the user opts for the “Without Data Storage” option (which may mean they need to return to an Orb to re-verify in the future). If the user selects the “With Data Storage” option, Worldcoin states the iris scan is sent via encrypted communication channels to its distributed data stores where it is encrypted at rest.

In either case, the user must simply trust the company to delete the biometric data, or appropriately secure it against misuse.

There have been many instances in which Silicon Valley companies have promised to secure data and to strictly limit its use, only to break those promises by disclosing the data to other companies or government agencies or failing to secure it against attack.

Journalist Eileen Guo also points out that Worldcoin has not yet clarified whether it still uses stored biometric data to train AI models and whether it has deleted biometric data collected during its test phase.

And despite the supposed security of biometric scanning, there have already been reports of fraudulent uses of the Worldcoin system. For example, black market speculators are alleged to have persuaded people in Cambodia and Kenya to sign up for Worldcoin and then sell their World IDs and WLD tokens for cash.

Regulatory action

Regulators in several countries are taking action. The Kenyan government has now suspended Worldcoin’s activities, stating regulatory concerns surrounding the project “require urgent action”.

The Communications Authority of Kenya and Office of the Data Protection Commissioner say they are concerned about the offer of money in exchange for consent to data collection; how securely the data are stored; and “massive citizen data in the hands of private actors without an appropriate framework”.

The German privacy watchdog is investigating Worldcoin’s business practices with support from the French privacy regulator, which called Worldcoin’s data practices “questionable”. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has announced it will investigate Worldcoin, referring to the high risk of processing special category biometric data.

While there are no Orbs in Australia yet, the federal privacy regulator has previously found some companies in breach of the privacy law for failing to obtain valid consent for the use of biometric data and collecting it when it was not reasonably necessary.

Katharine Kemp receives funding from the UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation. She is a Member of the Expert Panel of the Consumer Policy Research Centre, and the Australian Privacy Foundation.

– ref. Worldcoin is scanning eyeballs to build a global ID and finance system. Governments are not impressed – https://theconversation.com/worldcoin-is-scanning-eyeballs-to-build-a-global-id-and-finance-system-governments-are-not-impressed-210980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Dawes, Research Fellow in Medico-Legal History, Australian National University

Losing weight conveniently, cheaply, safely. That’s been the holy grail of weight-loss ever since 19th century English undertaker and weight-loss celebrity William Banting’s 1863 Letter on Corpulence spruiked his “miraculous” method of slimming down.

Since then, humans have tried many things – diet, exercise, psychotherapy, surgery – to lose weight. But time and again we return to the promise of a weight-loss drug, whether it’s a pill, injection, or tonic. A “diet drug”.

The history of diet drugs is not a glowing one, however.

There have been so many popular drug treatments for excess weight over the years. All, however, have eventually lost their shine and some have even been banned.

Read more:
Some Ozempic users say it silences ‘food noise’. But there are drug-free ways to stop thinking about food so much

Ozempic is a recent arrival

Ozempic and its sister drug Wegovy, both manufactured by Novo Nordisk, are the latest offerings in a long history of drug treatments for people who are overweight. They contain the same active ingredient – semaglutide, which mimics a hormone, GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) that acts on the hypothalamus (the brain’s “hunger centre”) to regulate appetite.

As an obesity treatment, semaglutide appears to work in part by reducing appetite.

These are injections. And there can be side effects, most commonly nausea and diarrhoea.

Although marketed as treatments for chronic obesity and diabetes, they have exploded in popularity as diet drugs, largely thanks to social media.

This has helped drive a shortage of Ozempic for diabetes treatment.

From ‘gland treatment’ to amphetamines

But Ozempic is not the first weight-loss drug. For example, organotherapy (gland treatment) was hugely popular in the 1920s to 1940s.

It rode on a wave of enthusiasm for endocrinology and specifically the discovery that “ductless glands” – such as the thyroid, pituitary and renal glands – secreted chemical messengers (or “hormones”, as they came to be known).

These hormones coordinate the activities and growth of different parts of the body.

Doctors prescribed overweight people extracts of animal glands – either eaten raw or dried in pill form or injected – to treat their supposedly “sluggish glands”.

For slaughterhouse companies, this was a lucrative new market for offal.

But organotherapy soon fell from favour. There was no evidence excess weight was usually caused by underperforming glands or that gland extracts (thyroid in particular) were doing anything other than poisoning you.

Amphetamines were first used as a nasal decongestant in the 1930s, but quickly found a market for weight-loss.

Why they worked was complex. The drug operated on the hypothalamus but also had an effect on mental state. Amphetamine is, of course, an “upper”.

The theory was it helped people feel up to dieting and gave pleasure not found on a plate. Amphetamines too, fell from treatment use in the 1970s with Nixon’s “war on drugs” and recognition they were addictive.

Another decade, another drug

Each decade seems to produce its own briefly popular weight-loss drug.

For example, the popular diet drug of the 1980s and 90s was fen-phen, which contained appetite suppressants fenfluramine and phentermine.

During the height of its craze, vast numbers of users testified to dramatic weight loss. But after users experienced heart valve and lung disease, fen-phen was withdrawn from the market in 1997. Its producer allocated a reported US$21 billion to settle the associated lawsuits.

The hormone leptin aroused excitement in the mid-1990s. Leptin seemed, for a brief moment, to hold the key to how the hypothalamus regulated fat storage.

Pharmaceutical company Amgen wagered millions buying the rights to the research in the hope this discovery could be turned into a treatment, only to discover it didn’t translate from mice into people. Far from not having enough leptin, people with obesity tend to be leptin-resistant. So taking more leptin doesn’t help with weight-loss. Amgen sold the rights it had paid so much for.

Ephedra was popular as a weight-loss treatment and as a stimulant in the 1990s and 2000s, finding buyers among athletes, body builders and in the military.

But the US Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of dietary supplements containing ephedra in 2004 after it was linked to health problems ranging from heart attacks and seizures to strokes and even death, and in Australia ephedra is prescription-only.

Now we have Ozempic. Just because the history of diet drugs has been so dire, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about new ones – Ozempic is not a drug of the 1920s or 1960s or 1990s.

And as history recognises, multiple complexities can combine to push a drug into popularity or damn it to history’s rubbish bin.

These include patients’, physicians’ and industry interests; social attitudes about drug treatment; evidence about safety and efficacy; beliefs and knowledge about the cause of excess weight.

One noticeable contrast with past diet drug experiences is that now, many people are happy to talk about using Ozempic. It seems to be increasingly socially acceptable to use a drug to achieve weight-loss for primarily aesthetic reasons.

(Due to Ozempic shortages in Australia, though, doctors have been asked to direct current supplies to people with type 2 diabetes who satisfy certain criteria. In other words, it’s not really meant to be used just to treat obesity).

Our enduring search for weight-loss drugs

Ozempic is predicted to earn Novo Nordisk US$12.5 billion this year alone, but it’s not just industry interests stoking this enduring desire for weight-loss drugs.

Patients on an endless cycle of dieting and exercise want something more convenient, with a more certain outcome. And doctors, too, want to offer patients effective treatment, and a drug prescription is a workable option given the constraints of appointment times.

The body positivity movement has not yet ousted anti-fat bias or stigma. And despite decades of recognition of the major role our physical and social environment plays in human health, there’s little political, public or industry appetite for change.

Individuals are left to personally defend against an obesogenic environment, where economic, cultural, social, health and urban design policies can conspire to make it easy to gain weight but hard to lose it. It is no wonder demand for weight-loss drugs continues to soar.

Read more:
Folbigg pardon: science is changing rapidly, and the law needs to change with it

Laura Dawes 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. Ozempic is in the spotlight but it’s just the latest in a long and strange history of weight-loss drugs – https://theconversation.com/ozempic-is-in-the-spotlight-but-its-just-the-latest-in-a-long-and-strange-history-of-weight-loss-drugs-209324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Neale, Senior Research Fellow, Deakin University

Protesters rallied at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday, railing against Darwin’s controversial Middle Arm venture which critics say would benefit the gas industry.

The project has been thrust into the headlines of late. Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles drew the ire of critics last week in a speech to the National Press Club where she insisted her government was “not for turning” on the project.

Fyles describes Middle Arm as a “sustainable development precinct”. But that claim is highly questionable. The site is already home to two gas facilities, and more are planned. Meanwhile, the NT is pursuing a goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and has committed to “no net increase” in emissions from fracking. So what’s going on?

It comes down to a new buzz-term in policymaking: “circular economy”. We’ve heard it applied to realms such as plastics and food waste. It’s increasingly being applied to carbon emissions, to describe an imagined scenario where carbon released from one source is used or stored by others to create a “closed loop” system.

But as our new research finds, this path is a massive gamble. Such offsetting relies on projects and technologies that do not yet exist, or are not yet feasible at scale. In effect, the Middle Arm project, and others like it, are grand experiments with our climate.

The ‘circular’ economy

Over the past two decades, international climate policy has increasingly shifted towards a circular model of managing carbon emissions. We’ve seen this happening not just in Australia, but places such as Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Saudi Arabia.

The strategy doesn’t seek to reach net-zero simply by pumping less carbon into the atmosphere – for example, by deploying renewable energy. It also involves activities that remove, capture, store or use carbon, therefore “offsetting” or cancelling out emissions from other sources.

Proponents of the strategy characterise it as a simple matter of inputs (emissions) and outputs (offsets) cancelling each other out. But implementing the model is actually very messy, as our new paper shows.

We analysed how the federal and NT governments have sought to implement circular carbon policies, including through the Middle Arm development.

Due to its existing gas infrastructure and proximity to Darwin, this peninsula has long been the target of grand development plans. In July 2020, the NT government announced it would create an industrial petrochemical precinct there to use gas from the Beetaloo and offshore fields.

The following year, the hub was rebranded as a “sustainable development precinct”. References to “petrochemicals” were abandoned. The NT government now frequently talks up the site’s potential for hydrogen and carbon-capture facilities, and says the precinct will be:

largely powered by renewables, master-planned to achieve a circular economy approach of sustainable and responsible production and will use technology to achieve low-to-zero emissions.

The federal government has committed more than A$1.5 billion to the development.

‘Sustainable’ claims called into question

There are serious doubts over Middle Arm’s environmental credentials.

For example, internal government documents make clear the precinct is “seen as a key enabler” of the gas industry.

One confirmed future tenant will be Tamboran Resources, which plans to frack and drill for gas in the Beetaloo Basin. Tamboran intends to build a gas plant in the precinct. Federal crossbenchers, including Warringah MP Zali Steggall, have questioned why public money is being spent on infrastructure “for a private gas company to make record profits from exports”.

What’s more, low-emissions projects planned for the precinct rely on highly speculative technologies.

A carbon-capture and storage facility has been mooted at the site. Announcing the project in 2021, the NT government called it a “a game-changer”. But it neglected to mention that the project relies on unproven technology and has no timeline or guarantee of delivery.

For examples of this, we need only look to Chevron’s Gorgon gas project in Western Australia. The project was supposed to capture at least 80% of CO₂ from the gas it produces. After a three-year delay, carbon capture and storage began in 2019 but has consistently failed to reach its targets.

Claims that Middle Arm would substantially be powered by renewable energy are also in doubt. The Sun Cable solar project – once billed as the largest solar energy development in the southern hemisphere – was planning a battery at the site. But in 2023 the company went into administration and its future is unclear.

Questions also surround Middle Arm’s two proposed green hydrogen projects. Neither company involved has ever built a green hydrogen facility. One of the companies, Total Eren, intends to use solar energy from a facility that has not yet been assessed let alone approved for construction.

Read more:
Opening 10 new oil and gas sites is a win for fossil fuel companies – but a staggering loss for the rest of Australia

Offsets won’t save us, either

As part of its “decarbonisation” plan, the NT is set to grow its carbon offset industries.

And in 2021, the then Coalition government released a climate plan in which more than half the carbon savings would be achieved via carbon offsets, as well as unspecified “technology breakthroughs”.

Carbon offsets are used by polluters to compensate for their emissions. It involves buying “carbon credits” from organisations that have undertaken activities to reduce emissions.

Carbon offsets are contentious because they allow companies to keep pumping out carbon. And ensuring carbon credits represent genuine emissions reduction can be difficult.

We’ve seen this in Australia, where the integrity of certain carbon methods has been questioned. An independent review of the overall scheme concluded it was essentially sound, but critics say key questions remain. Further, there are signs we do not have enough credits to meet market demand.

Looking ahead

The goal of Australian governments to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 increasingly relies on gambits such as the Middle Arm precinct and speculative methods for offsetting and burying emissions.

Meanwhile, the world has just experienced its hottest month on record. And in temperate Australia, a hot, dry El Nino summer is approaching.

At a time like this, we must focus on achieving genuine emissions reductions, rather than playing risky games with our climate.

Read more:
‘Limitless’ energy: how floating solar panels near the equator could power future population hotspots

Timothy Neale receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Natural Hazards Research Australia, and the Country Fire Authority.

Kari Dahlgren receives research funding from CitiPower, Powercor, and United Energy.

Matthew Kearnes receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the NSW Geographical Society.

– ref. Darwin’s ‘sustainable’ Middle Arm project reveals Australia’s huge climate policy gamble – https://theconversation.com/darwins-sustainable-middle-arm-project-reveals-australias-huge-climate-policy-gamble-206000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Moodie, Adjunct Professor, Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, OISE, University of Toronto

One of the headline ideas floated by the Universities Accord interim report is a second national university. This would be on top of the existing Australian National University in Canberra.

The report says it wants to explore the idea of a “National Regional University” to support “high-quality regional education [and] deliver excellence in regional research”.

The basic idea is regional universities could opt in to become part of the new national university.

This is not a new idea

Australia’s last major review of higher education proposed a national regional university in 2008. The Bradley review recommended “a study to examine the feasibility of a new national university for regional areas”. But as the interim report notes, this never happened.

The Bradley review suggested a new national university to redress a lack of participation of regional students. This is an issue that rightly still concerns the accord panel today.

But this time, the accord panel’s main rationale for a new national regional university is to

facilitate and encourage change and evolution in the type, diversity, size and number of tertiary education institutions.

Not (yet) supported by regional unis

So far, the new national university has not attracted much support.

The Regional Universities Network includes seven (though not all) of Australia’s regional universities. The network was “encouraged” by several key ideas in the accord panel’s interim report.

But any mention of the national regional university idea was conspicuously missing from its media statement in response to the report.

Other university models

The accord report says there are comparable international models for a national regional university, and points to the University of California system. This includes ten campuses in the US state, each with its own local identity and leadership.

But this example is not helpful. The University of California has a significantly different political, educational and social environment. It also has much more funding than Australian institutions.

A closer example of a national multi-state university is the Australian Catholic University. This has campuses in Ballarat, Blacktown, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, North Sydney and Strathfield.

But it is doubtful whether this would be a good model for a national regional university.

When the Australian Catholic University was formed in 1991, its constituent colleges would not have qualified separately for research status and funding. In contrast, all the obvious candidates for membership of a national regional university are already fully fledged self-contained universities.

Even if a regional university were to consider amalgamation, it would be more likely with a near neighbour, not another more distant regional university.

Meanwhile, the name “national regional university” invokes the name of the existing Australian National University. It was not an easy process to set up the ANU. It took decades** to achieve a coherent internal structure.

Read more:
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Worrying ‘synergies’

The accord panel envisages a national regional university would provide opportunities to “find academic synergies and operational efficiencies across existing institutions”.

This is likely to worry university staff and students as “synergies” and “efficiencies” can often lead to cost cutting and job losses.

There is also substantial evidence the strongest synergies in teaching, research and service happen when people and organisations are within commuting distance of each other.

There is a risk that a new national regional university will lead to remote, unsuitable, inflexible and unresponsive systems.

As James Cook University has noted place-based differences define the roles of regional universities. For example, James Cook positions itself as a “university of the tropics”.

And a “regional” university in north Queensland is substantially different from a “regional” university in western NSW.

Read more:
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TAFEs provide more opportunities

If we want to improve opportunities for regional students, the accord should consider a bigger role for TAFEs in a national regional university and more generally.

They are widely dispersed in regional and outer metropolitan areas.

The federal government has already announced more regional and outer suburban study hubs. These could be boosted if they are turned into joint TAFE-university ventures.

Several regional universities have told the accord review vocational and higher education should be more strongly aligned and connected.
For example, the University of the Sunshine Coast argues, along with changes to regulation and funding, there should be

more opportunities for physical co-location of education and training facilities.

Indeed, Australia already has six highly distinctive “dual sector” universities, which provide both university and vocational qualifications.

These include RMIT, Charles Darwin University and CQ University but have been largely overlooked by people advocating for more diversity for Australian universities.

What now?

The interim reports contains more than 70 “areas for further consideration” by the accord panel.

Many of these – including the idea for a national regional university – will not necessarily make it into the final report in December.

If Australia is to have a new university there needs to be more careful thought about where it should be and what its ultimate structure and purpose should be.

Gavin Moodie has worked at two Australian dual sector universities and has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research to investigate relations between vocational and higher education.

– ref. A national university for regional Australia isn’t necessarily a smart idea. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/a-national-university-for-regional-australia-isnt-necessarily-a-smart-idea-heres-why-210909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edith Jennifer Hill, Associate Lecturer, Flinders University

The one constant the internet offers us is a continual rotation of trends. Months ago, the trend was people exhibiting “main character energy”. People were imagining themselves as main characters in their own life show: they were the ones who knew everyone’s name in the coffee shop, they were having the whirlwind romance, they were only accepting the best.

Now, the trends have moved on, and people are NPCs.

Non-playable characters, or NPCs, are taking TikTok by storm. NPCs originate in video games. They are the background characters, the ones with repetitive movements and sayings, and no storylines. The main, playable, character can interact with them but only in limited ways. They are tools in someone else’s story.

People pretending to be NPCs on TikTok are not new. Creator @loczniki, Nicki Loczek, has been acting like a video game character on her TikTok page for two years. Her videos regularly get millions of views.

NPC content rapidly gained popularity in recent months when creators like @pinkydollreal have been live streaming as NPCs. NPC creators perform scripted lines and reactions to purchased “gifts” from their fans that then appear on screen as emojis.

Giving diamonds, coins and other gifts to creators has a very low cost to fans. However, when creators accumulate large audiences, the profits can add up significantly, especially when the streams can go for hours. Creator @glam_with_dee tried out the trend and shared that she made $99 in a two-and-a-half-hour stream.

Some people are calling the NPC trend a fetish – more often that not it is beautiful women performing actions and sounds on command for an audience. Others, however, disavow this sentiment, stating that people always claim women making money from the absurd is a fetish, when it is often far from the truth.

People watch NPCs on TikTok for a variety of reasons. Nicki Loczek’s popularity came from her funny videos pretending to be a video game character in public. Many streamers also dress up in elaborate cosplay costumes, feeding into the gaming and fantasy aesthetic.

Others, myself included, watch for the absurdity. It is uncanny watching people be NPCs.

Read more:
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Commodifying the self

People online have been commodifying themselves since social media platforms introduced creator fund programs and brands recognised the income potential of content creators. For years, creators have been participating in brand deals for anything from health products to home decor, with some going as far as deals for free cosmetic surgery.

One of the key principles of being successful online is a consistent personal brand. Traditionally, when we think about people becoming successful online, we attribute this to authenticity.

Audiences want consistent posts, a clear authorial voice, and a person and brand where they know what they’re getting. While NPCs cannot technically be “authentic” as they are characters rather than people, they still fulfil these attributes on TikTok. They do what we think they will do. Their reactions are expected, if not delivered at the specific times we ask for them.

NPC live streamers have planned reactions to the “gifts” they receive while they stream. Bigger gifts usually have bigger reactions. Christine Tran, a PhD candidate from the University of Toronto, states: “NPC streamers are just the latest genre of creators who divide their bodies into marketplaces of intimacy.”

The NPC trend fits in with other forms of online commodification. Pretending to be an NPC on TikTok live is not too far removed from popular YouTubers maintaining an “online persona” for the purposes of creating a marketable, brand-friendly channel.

Monetisation online

TikTok is one of many social media platforms where users create and sell a personal brand for money. Tobias Raun, an assistant professor in communications, states: “YouTube as a platform plays a crucial role by persistently encouraging users to compete for attention and status and rewarding them economically for promoting themselves.”

TikTok pays its users far less than YouTube does. While the real numbers differ depending on video length and the creator themselves, TikTok is known to pay $0.03 per 1,000 views, compared to multiple dollars on YouTube. The most money to be made on TikTok, outside of brand deals, is through live streams.

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The creator fund on TikTok is limited to creators with over 10,000 followers who have amassed a minimum of 100,000 views in the last month. It is also available in limited countries. Australia is not included.

Alternatively, any creator with over 1,000 followers can live stream and can cash out in-app “gifts” for real money. This system is available to far more people.

The NPC trend has shown us how the self-branding online we are more familiar with, people being so authentically themselves, can be surpassed by people playing a character. The rise in live videos on TikTok is linked to the platform’s monetisation policies. If content creators want to make money from their content, they either need an incredibly large following or must find brand deals or do live streams.

I couldn’t call myself an autoethnographic researcher without trying to go live myself. I did.

TikTok is a strange, strange place. I went live for 15 minutes while writing some of this article, and 320 people watched me. I talked to some of them. Someone said I typed too hard. Someone else asked me to sing Black Sabbath.

I closed my TikTok app with a new-found appreciation (and a little bit of fear) of how hard it must be to maintain a character for hours during a live stream.

Someone did say they liked the sound of my typing. If I found a way to do my marking on an ASMR live stream, you would find me on TikTok tomorrow.

Edith Jennifer Hill 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. People are pretending to be ‘NPCs’ on TikTok and it’s not just weird, it’s also lucrative – https://theconversation.com/people-are-pretending-to-be-npcs-on-tiktok-and-its-not-just-weird-its-also-lucrative-210795

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracy Clelland, Lecturer in Health Education, University of Canterbury

Relationship and sexuality education has, yet again, become a political talking point ahead of this year’s election.

National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis recently told a public meeting that sex education was a job for her and her husband, “based on our values and our views of the world […] I want my education system focused on teaching my children how to read, how to write and how to do maths”.

While Willis may have had a receptive audience, interviews with parents of children between the ages of 11 and 14 show she may be in the minority. As contentious as the topic can be, many parents want to work with schools to educate their children about relationships and sexuality.

My research offers a glimpse into just how complicated, yet important, the topic of sexuality education can be – and why it it so vital we ensure all young people have access to quality relationships and sexuality education.

From sex to sexuality education

For much of the 20th century, sex education in New Zealand centred on population control and Christian moral norms.

It wasn’t until 1985 that sex education became part of the school curriculum. But parents were able to pull their children out of the classes, pointing to a general acceptance that sex education was a controversial topic. With the scare of HIV/AIDS, classes focused on physical aspects of sex and how to practice safe sex.

Read more:
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In 1999, sex education became sexuality education. The shift was meant to introduce a more holistic view of the topic, which includes physical, social, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects. This was much broader than sex education, which related only to the physical aspects of sexual and reproductive knowledge.

A 2015 guide from the Ministry of Education said sexuality education should take a “positive view of sexual development as a natural part of growing up”. This frames sexuality first and foremost as a source of human potential and pleasure.

Since then, the curriculum has evolved and broadened further – with sexuality education becoming relationships and sexuality education (RSE).

Introduced in 2020, RSE starts from year one and includes learning to be a good friend, sense of identity, how we care for other people, and consent. Older students develop knowledge and skills to negotiate positive intimate relationships and to critique media messages harmful to wellbeing.

The contested ground of sexuality education

My research examined the complicated and evolving role of the parent as sexuality educator – particularly in the digital age. But I also looked at how parents felt about the role of schools in teaching children about sexuality.

International research has found that teachers overestimate parental opposition to
sexuality education.

In New Zealand, conservative and religious lobby groups, as well as some media, frame parents and schools in opposition to each other over who is the “best” provider of sexuality education.

Read more:
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But the parents who participated in my small group interviews were, in fact, supportive of relationship and sexuality education in schools. As one parent said:

There is a role for schools to play in the sexual education of children, but there’s also a role that parents play. And it’s defining where and how the two work together.

Another parent commented:

I’ve always seen teachers as an extension of parenting, personally. So if my child can come and ask me something I’d like to believe that they could go and ask a teacher the same.

A third parent highlighted the importance of the classroom setting:

I actually think it’s really good for kids to be sitting in a room with kids their own age […] all hearing the same thing and talking about it to each other and just demystifying it.

These parents also understood how important it was to ensure young people have multiple sources of sexuality education – both at home and in the classroom.

One parent discussed just how lacking her own sex education had been harmful:

Talking about the good stuff would have really helped me with those bad decisions. It would have been like, “Yeah, actually this isn’t supposed to hurt. This is supposed to be nice.” Because I didn’t talk about it with anyone, so I didn’t have anyone telling me, actually it’s not supposed to be like that.

While supportive of sexuality education in schools, parents wanted schools to consult more so parents could understand what was being taught.

A 2018 Education Review Office report found only 25% of schools were rated “good” at connecting with their communities on the relationships and sexuality curriculum. The majority of schools tended to use surveys with low response rates from parents.

What young people want

During separate research I did for the the new app Te Puāwaitanga: Beyond the Birds and the Bees, young people told us they wanted a safe, reliable platform to access information and open up conversations about sexual health, relationships, gender and sexuality.

In the absence of open discussions at home on relationships and sexuality, friends or pornography become the default sex educator. Research from the Classification Office found one in four New Zealanders first see porn
by age 12, and most are not seeking it out when they first see it. A majority of
young people (75%) have seen porn by age 17.

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Many of the young people we spoke with said they have limited opportunities to talk to their parents about sexuality and so school becomes a safe space. School is also a place for them to hear a range of views about relationships, sex and diverse sexualities.

As one student said:

I trust my parents to tell me what they think, but school allows us to hear what other people think.

In a complex world, relationships and sexuality education aims to give young people the critical skills to navigate the uncertainty around them. It needs to be a combination deal with parents and schools working together.

But this can only happen after listening to the voices of young people. After all, isn’t education about relationships and sexuality meant for them in the first place?

Tracy Clelland received a Lotteries Grant to undertake research for Te Puāwaitanaga: Beyond the Birds and Bees.

– ref. Ignore the politics – many parents want to work with schools on sexuality education – https://theconversation.com/ignore-the-politics-many-parents-want-to-work-with-schools-on-sexuality-education-210968

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Quilty, Purple House Medical Advisor. Honorary ANU., Australian National University

When it’s hot outside, it’s safer to head for air-conditioned shelter – right?

Not always.

In northern Australia’s intensely hot climate, air conditioners were once luxury items. Houses were built to catch the breeze, and everything slowed down when the hot weather arrived. But over the last few decades, most people in hot cities like Darwin started spending much more time in air-conditioned comfort.

But our new research has found Territorians have become more likely to die from heat over the last 40 years, even as cooling has become more widely available. Why? If people spend all day in air conditioning set at 21℃, not only are they living more socially isolated and less active lives, but their bodies may not acclimatise to the heat – and that can make them more vulnerable when they do emerge into a steamy wet season afternoon.

An even more interesting finding is that the Northern Territory’s First Nations people are no more vulnerable to heat despite higher burdens of chronic disease, extreme poverty and very poor housing conditions for most. In many communities, air conditioning is expensive or unavailable.

How can that be? In part it is because First Nations people are protected by their culture, as co-author and Warumungu elder Norman Frank Jupurrurla knows firsthand. “When we look at the road crews working in 45℃ heat, we think – why are you killing yourself for your job?,” he says. “Why not stay in the shade, have a nap, and come out later?”

In countries such as Spain, the traditional siesta – a similar cultural method of coping with heat – has been all but extinguished because of the impact on the economy. But as the world grapples with ever-hotter temperatures, we may well need to relearn the art of the afternoon nap.

What’s the risk of living in constant cooling?

The Northern Territory is one of the hottest places on Earth, compounded by intense coastal humidity during the October-to-April wet season.

Heat can kill quickly, especially if you have pre-existing health conditions. Many heat-related deaths come from heart attacks, as the heart has to work harder in intense heat. Others come from dehydration, renal disease and frailty. The impact of intense heat builds, as well – if you don’t get a chance to cool down, you’re more at risk.

This is one reason people in hot countries often take a nap or siesta. As the world heats up, even siesta sceptics such as Germany are rethinking their opposition. Siestas aren’t about avoiding heat entirely – they’re about getting out of direct sun and resting.

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But what happens if you swap cultural practices of gentle heat exposure like the siesta for air-conditioned offices, cars and homes? You miss out on the physiological adaptations your body is capable of. It takes us around 15 days to acclimatise to a new heat regime.

The way we sweat, how our kidneys filter, even the way our hearts pump will change with acclimatisation. Our bodies are capable of adapting to hotter weather, to a point. That’s why Australia’s athletes went to Darwin before the Tokyo Olympic – to get ready for the to the humidity of the Japanese summer.

How can you tolerate life without cooling?

Co-author Norman Frank Jupurrurla lives in Tennant Creek, between Katherine and Alice Springs. In the wet season, it’s stifling.

As he says:

During the day, it gets up to 45℃. You can’t do anything when it’s that hot. You’d never start walking or working outside. You want to do that, do it early in the morning or late in the afternoon or night. Otherwise you’ll just kill yourself.

In the heat, you have a nap – that’s the only thing you can do, in the shade. Roadworkers, fencers, workers – when we see them working, it’s like a machine that can’t stop even if its destroying itself. Is it their job? The money? If you have to do it, do it before the sun. Or wait for a cooler season.

Climate change is making it hotter still:

It’s getting warmer and warmer. We live here, we notice it. The weather is changing. My nanna, my grandfather, told us it was never this hot. We never felt the sun coming down like this.

Mr Jupurrurla grew up on the town’s outskirts, living in tin sheds. Only recently, at the age of 44, was he able to get decent housing. His upbringing would not have been possible now, as intensifying heat means informal housing is no longer safe. Even some formal housing isn’t safe.

Houses weren’t built for the climate. They just burn [with heat]. We have to make them safer.

On especially hot days, traditional methods of coping reach their limits. There’s nothing to do but to find a house with an air-conditioned room and stay in it. The problem is, it’s very expensive.

Norman Frank Jupurrurla’s experience is common. Houses in the Northern Territory have Australia’s lowest energy efficiency despite being exposed to climate extremes.

What should we take from this?

Reducing physical exertion during the hottest part of the day is a powerful mechanism to protect your health. On days that don’t involve extreme heat, siestas are free, carbon neutral and healthy. Policymakers need to engage with cultural adaptations like the siesta as tools to prepare for a hotter future, just as they are in Germany.

Just as important is making sure houses are built for their climate, as we are trying to do in Tennant Creek. Well insulated and well ventilated houses need much less air conditioning to remain comfortable and safe – perfect for a nap.

Leer más:
How climate change is turning remote Indigenous houses into dangerous hot boxes

Simon Quilty is affiliated with a community project, Wilya Janta, that is progressing better housing design with greater Indigenous agency in Tennant Creek.

Aparna Lal receives funding from the Australian Research Council on a Fellowship.
She is a member of the ACT government’s Climate Change Counicl.

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

– ref. Could an afternoon nap help us cope with hotter temperatures? It’s worked for Australia’s First Nations people – https://theconversation.com/could-an-afternoon-nap-help-us-cope-with-hotter-temperatures-its-worked-for-australias-first-nations-people-211186

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Conley Tyler, Honorary Fellow, Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne

Why does Australia provide development assistance to other countries? Is it charity or geostrategic self-interest?

Today the government released a new international development policy to answer these questions.

The case the new policy makes is a simple but powerful one: if Australians want our region to be peaceful, stable and prosperous, we have to lift people out of poverty through sustainable development. It’s a bold document that puts development at the heart of Australia’s response to a challenging world.

Politically, the new international development policy is a brave statement. It outlines a strong and unapologetic argument for development aid, even at a time when many Australians are feeling cost of living pressures. Crucially, it makes the case in terms everyone can understand.

We live in a time of interconnected and compounding challenges, including escalating disasters, rising costs and insecurity some have dubbed the “polycrisis”.

If Australians want to live peaceful lives in a globalised world, they need to care about the stability of our 26 neighbours, 22 of which are developing countries. The success of the region is also our success. In difficult times, Australia needs to contribute to global cooperation.

Listening to the region

Released at Parliament House today, the new international development policy is the result of extensive consultation with more than 300 people across the region and in Australia, informed by an expert advisory group. Given it’s been a decade since the last development policy was released, it was keenly anticipated, with more than 200 submissions received.

The focus of the policy is on the Indo-Pacific. A key message of the policy is the importance of listening to Australia’s neighbours and concentrating resources on the issues that matter most to them. It frames the development relationship as one where Australia is not domineering but is a partner of choice. This is achieved by “genuine partnerships based on respect, listening, and learning from each other” – not by a transactional approach.

Read more:
Australia should not overstate the threat of China in the Pacific, and mend relationships in the region

Given the desire to be responsive to the region’s priorities, there’s no surprise it focuses on climate as a major driver of instability. This is presented as responding to the calls of our region and evidence of the accelerating climate crisis by increasing our climate investments and better addressing climate risks.

The policy also prioritises local leadership, and commits to support local solutions and accountability, including by channelling funding to local actors.

At the same time, it aims for “a development program that reflects who we are”. Australians’ desire for fairness is reflected in a focus on gender equality and equity for people with disabilities, while the commitment to embed the perspectives of First Nations Australians into development efforts showcases one of Australia’s strengths.

Key focus areas for a whole-of-nation approach

The policy sets out four focus areas for development support:

• helping partners to build effective, accountable states

• enhancing their resilience to external shocks

• supporting regional structures such as the Pacific Islands Forum and Association of Southeast Asian Nations

• generating collective action on global challenges such as humanitarian crises and economic resilience.

The overarching message is of the importance of development as a tool of statecraft. This is in line with previous government messaging, including the Defence Strategic Review’s focus on a “whole-of-government statecraft effort”.

In the new policy, the importance of a whole-of-government approach is also stressed. This highlights the need for coherence and for coordination across the different departments and agencies that contribute to international engagement.

Beyond this, the new policy moves into a whole-of-nation approach to development that encompasses “all Australian entities engaging with the region”. This includes civil society organisations, diaspora communities, businesses, education, religious and cultural institutions, trade unions, philanthropic organisations, youth organisations, the arts and the media. It’s new for government to focus on working with the wider society in international affairs.

The policy explicitly seeks to articulate a galvanising vision for these non-government actors, stating it

will serve as a signpost to our institutions and entities operating in the region to guide engagement that supports positive development impact.

And the policy offers additional finance to support partnerships with local civil society organisations through a new Civil Society Partnerships Fund to support local civil society organisations.

The challenge now will be in implementation and in sufficient funding to make its commitments a reality. This is why making the case for development aid is so crucial.

Aid is not charity

Contributing to our neighbours’ development is not a form of charity Australians should put up with by virtue of being a developed country. Rather, it’s an investment in our own future and something we should actively value.

In the new policy, both Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong and Minister for International Development Pat Conroy express their desire that Australians be “proud” of the development program.

Read more:
After years of decline, the budget gives more money for diplomacy and development capability. What does this mean in practice?

To help achieve this, there’s a focus on transparency -– including annual performance reports and a new online portal -– so Australians can be confident the development program is producing real results.

There is also a focus on implementation. In line with the central idea of partnerships, this focuses on country and region strategies, and will establish senior responsible officers in each of Australia’s embassies to be guided by Pacific and Southeast Asian priorities.

When he became international development minister, Conroy laid out four arguments for development aid: security, economics, international relations and morality.

Which should we find compelling? All of them.

Credit is due to the government for providing a clear and galvanising vision of why development aid is crucial if Australia wants to influence the world around it for the better. The new international development policy deserves to be widely read.

Melissa Conley Tyler is Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D), a platform for collaboration between the development, diplomacy and defence communities. It receives funding from the Australian Civil-Military Centre and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and is hosted by the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID).

– ref. Australia’s new development aid policy provides clear vision and strategic sense – https://theconversation.com/australias-new-development-aid-policy-provides-clear-vision-and-strategic-sense-210976