NewzIntel.com

Category: Evening Report

  • MIL-Evening Report: Let’s tax carbon: Ross Garnaut on why the time is right for a second shot at carbon pricing

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Garnaut, Professorial Research Fellow in Economics, The University of Melbourne

    Damitha Jayawardena/Shutterstock

    Australia now has a government and parliament wanting timely transition to net zero. We have a government and parliament wanting to build Australia as the renewable energy superpower of the zero-carbon world economy. For the time being, we have favourable international settings for using our opportunity.

    The government of Australia has embraced this superpower narrative, taken some big steps towards supporting its emergence, and articulated sound principles for guiding further policy development.

    But Australians in business and the community wanting to make large efforts to turn opportunity into reality find themselves in a tangle of policy uncertainty and contradiction.

    The source of the problem is the abolition of carbon pricing in 2014. Since then, the Commonwealth government has worked within constraints that rule out success.

    We can make a start towards net zero and becoming a renewable energy superpower without moving the constraints, but we can’t get far. This is a problem for any government of Australia, and not only for the current Labor government. We will not rise sustainably out of the post-pandemic dog days until we get energy policy right.

    Striking the right balance

    Striking the right balance between state intervention and market exchange is always essential for successful economic development, in all places.

    The market generally delivers goods and services more cost-effectively than the state where there is genuine competition among suppliers and purchasers of goods and services.

    The difference is especially large and important at a time of structural change and uncertainty. State decisions inevitably tend towards continuation on established paths and slow response to new opportunities.

    Australia will not make use of more than a small fraction of the superpower opportunities available to it without immense contributions from an innovative, competitive private business sector.

    So we have to design energy and related markets that provide the widest possible scope for competition among enterprises within clear rules understood in advance of investment decisions by all market participants.

    The state has to do well the things that only the state can do. Because government capacity is a finite resource, it is much more likely that it will do the essential things well if it doesn’t try to do the things that markets do well.

    The state must define the boundaries between the services that it delivers and those to be delivered by the market.

    In the electricity sector, government must take responsibility for design of the market rules and compliance with them. It must provide the natural monopoly services of electricity transmission and hydrogen transportation and storage. It must take ultimate responsibility for system security and reliability.

    For any market to work, individual market participants must be blocked by regulation from damaging others through their business decisions, or subject to a tax equal to the costs they impose on others. And they must be rewarded for large benefits that they confer on others.

    This is essential economics. Its understatement in Productivity Commission and financial media commentary on energy and climate policy discussion over the past decade reveals the debasement of Australian political culture that gave us the dog days.

    It has been politically incorrect to tell the truth out loud.

    It’s time for carbon pricing

    A crucial element of post-2030 market design is introduction of a green premium for zero-carbon energy.

    It is obviously necessary for low-cost decarbonisation and expansion of the electricity sector and building Australia as a renewable energy superpower. The green premium is crucial for securing international market access for the zero-carbon export industries.

    One of the dog days constraints on policy is that there should be no mandatory demands on private investors. Those constraints must be broken for the green premium to reflect the social cost of carbon, as it must if we are to achieve net zero by 2050 and build Australia as the renewable energy superpower.

    The economically efficient way of achieving the premium is carbon pricing. It would be most efficient within an economy-wide system, although it could be introduced initially for the electricity sector and extended to other industries later.

    Investors now need to know soon that there will be a premium reasonably related to the social cost of carbon after the Renewable Energy Target ends in 2030.

    What matters for the superpower industries is the green premiums for which they are eligible in other countries. Pending the emergence of appropriate premiums, the Commonwealth is proposing payments from the budget.

    That is appropriate. It can get the early movers started. It would be expensive if it continued for long. The superpower industries will grow rapidly if they have access to premiums corresponding to the social cost of carbon. Over time, payments from the Australian budget will be replaced by market premiums in destination countries.

    There are several possible forms of carbon pricing. The system operating in Australia from 2012 to 2014 was economically and environmentally efficient.

    It would have been linked to the EU Emissions Trading System from July 1 2014 if it had not been abolished the day before. The Australian carbon price would be equal to the European price. We would be introducing a European-type Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to ensure that Australian producers were not disadvantaged by competition in the domestic market from suppliers who were not subject to similar carbon constraints. The ETS (emissions trading scheme) would be contributing around 2% of GDP to public revenues – going a substantial part of the way to answering the daunting budget challenge to restoration of Australian prosperity.

    Part of that increased revenue could support payments to power users to ensure there was no increase in power prices to users until expansion of renewable generation and storage had brought costs down – along the lines of the A$300 per household introduced in the 2024 budget, but larger.

    The arrangements would provide automatic access for zero-carbon Australian goods to the high-priced European market. There would be no need to provide for a green premium for sales to Europe from the Australian market. The green premiums in other markets would at first need to be covered, as they are now, from the Australian public revenue.

    A carbon solutions levy

    Rod Sims (former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and I have suggested a carbon solutions levy. It is administratively simpler than the ETS. It would initially raise much more revenue.

    We propose exemption for coal and gas exports to countries in which Australian zero-carbon exports attract a premium comparable to the EU carbon price, even if it is not generated through an ETS.

    We would hope that if the carbon solutions levy were to be introduced from 2030, our major trading partners would by that time have introduced green premiums that justify exemption from the levy for coal and gas exports to those countries.

    The European Union would be exempt from the beginning. The Northeast Asian economies are moving towards eventual justification of exemption. China now has a country-wide emissions trading system.

    The carbon price in July 2024 is about A$21 per tonne, having increased by 50% since early in the year. The price is expected to continue rising until it is playing a major role in transformation of Chinese industry.

    Incidentally, China undertook to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that its emissions would peak by 2030, but its rapid expansion of renewable energy generation, electric vehicles and zero-carbon industrial technologies suggest that the peak may have come in 2023.

    Japan is working on direct budgetary support for importers of zero-carbon products which could pass through into a premium for zero-carbon exports from Australia.

    During a visit in April 2024, I was advised that the Japanese government is working towards issue of “green bonds” to pay for the premium. A carbon tax from 2035 would meet the cost of servicing and retiring the bonds.

    Korea and Taiwan are introducing their own mechanisms for supporting premiums for zero-carbon imports.

    One initial criticism of the carbon solutions levy is that it would cause leakage of Australian exports to competing suppliers of gas and coal. There would be some leakage, alongside substantial transfers from rents to the public revenues, and for metallurgical coal in particular, some increase in export prices.

    The price increase would introduce an element of green premium for Australian green iron exports. The Superpower Institute (a non-profit research organisation founded by Sims and I) has commissioned the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University to quantify the extent of leakage, transfers from rent and higher export prices. The results will be available for public discussion early in 2025. The study will also calculate the effect of the levy on Australian public finances, real incomes and real consumption.

    Regional considerations

    Australia’s main competitor in regional coal markets is Indonesia. Its main competitors in gas markets are Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Indonesia, Brunei and the Middle East petroleum producers.

    No informed person would suggest that there could be an economic problem with leakage to the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf states extract revenue from petroleum exports at much higher rates per dollar than Australia would after imposition of the levy.

    There is a case in the Australian national interest for not seeing expansion of export sales from Papua New Guinea and East Timor as being entirely a waste.

    But in their national interest and ours, I suggest that we seek to negotiate a four-way agreement on climate and energy with Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea.

    We would all impose carbon solutions levy-type levies at similar rates. This would be a major source of revenue for all of us.

    Participation of Indonesia removes leakage of coal exports. Indonesia already has an emissions trading scheme, although it generates a carbon price of only a few dollars per tonne.

    It may choose to remove other imposts on fossil carbon exports at the time of introduction of new carbon-related measures – such as the requirement to make 35% of coal exports available at prices well below international prices for domestic power generation.

    Participation of the four countries removes the leakage issue for gas. The four neighbours would cooperate in major development programs based on expansion of zero-carbon energy supply and goods production.

    There is active discussion in Indonesia of archipelago-wide electricity transmission infrastructure to allow the superior renewable energy resources of the outer islands – Papua, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Sumatra – to contribute to decarbonisation and growth of zero-carbon industry everywhere, including in the Java heartland.

    The Indonesian grid would run close to neighbouring Australia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, East and West Malaysia and the Philippines. It would be the geopolitically practical means of linking Australia and Singapore, as envisaged in the SunCable project in the Northern Territory.

    The Indonesian national grid could link to the Australian Sungrid discussed in my book The Superpower Transformation in Darwin and the Pilbara.

    The alternatives to carbon pricing are weak

    The alternatives to economy-wide carbon pricing are likely to turn out to be short-lived expedients that lead sooner rather than later to the return of today’s incoherence and underperformance in energy and climate policy and performance.

    The state must provide reliability of power supply to the general population.

    The Commonwealth government can do this without distorting competitive electricity markets by establishing an energy reserve I have proposed in my book The Superpower Transformation.

    The superpower industries depend on electricity and hydrogen markets operating efficiently and embodying carbon prices. Otherwise the market design issues relevant to their development are similar to those for electricity.

    Negative carbon externalities need to be corrected by taxation or alternative carbon pricing mechanisms. Positive externalities from innovation should be rewarded.

    Positive innovation externalities are important in the introduction of new industries, technologies and business models for the zero-carbon economy.

    Economy-wide carbon pricing at the social cost of carbon is essential to getting the balance right between state intervention and market exchange.

    Once it is in place with fiscal rewards for innovation, the government can let businesses decide which new industries and technologies warrant investment.

    Once carbon pricing is known to be coming into place reasonably soon, there is no further need for government underwriting of investment in power generation.

    There is no need to include a climate trigger in assessment of a project of any kind: if it emits carbon, it will pay for the climate damage it does.

    There is no need for government to take a view on climate grounds about the merits of nuclear power generation. It is zero-emissions generation and, like renewable energy, not subject to the carbon price. If it can compete with other forms of generation, it will find a place in private investment decisions on the energy mix.

    There is no need for government investment in nuclear power generation. Private investors will have the same incentives to invest in nuclear as in other zero-carbon generation technologies.

    There will be no need for the government to take a view on incentives for carbon capture and storage. If it is effective and emissions are actually reduced, carbon payments will be correspondingly reduced.

    The carbon price will allow private investors to get on with the job of expanding renewable energy supply at a rapid pace and decarbonising the economy more generally.

    This is an edited extract from Ross Garnaut’s new book, Let’s Tax Carbon: And Other Ideas for a Better Australia.

    Ross Garnaut is a Director and shareholder of Zen Energy. Together with Rod Sims, Ross is a co-founder and Director of The Superpower Institute, a not for profit think tank.

    – ref. Let’s tax carbon: Ross Garnaut on why the time is right for a second shot at carbon pricing – https://theconversation.com/lets-tax-carbon-ross-garnaut-on-why-the-time-is-right-for-a-second-shot-at-carbon-pricing-241806

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Huge volumes of whey go to waste. We could do much more with this nutrient rich liquid

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Hetherington, Phd Candidate in circular business models, University of Adelaide

    Cheesemaking leaves large volumes of whey Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock

    Every year, 7.6 million tonnes of food is lost or wasted in Australia. When we think about this, we might picture mouldy fruit, stale bread and overly full fridges. But in fact, almost half of this waste happens before food ever gets to us. Waste is common in food production, processing and transportation.

    For example, the process of making cheese from milk results in a comparatively small amount of cheese and a lot of whey – up to 90% the mass of the raw milk.

    Whey is useful, as it still has about half the nutrients of milk. But whey remains one of the largest sources of food loss and waste in Australia’s large dairy sector. Every year, about 350 million litres goes down the drain, costing businesses over A$580 million to dispose of it and wasting some of the resources it takes to make milk.

    In our new research, we interviewed cheesemakers from 42 companies – representing almost a third of Australia’s cheese industry.

    We found cheesemakers knew what waste whey could be used for but were put off by practical challenges.

    Whey is produced in large volumes – and much of it goes to waste.
    Jasen Wright/Shutterstock

    What can you do with whey?

    You can already buy whey products such as fermented drinks and protein powders. Infant formula may contain the highly valuable lactoferrin, which would be usually left in whey. A popular Swiss soft drink, Rivella, is also made from whey.

    In Australia, some producers have begun making alcoholic spirits by fermenting the lactose in whey. Researchers have found whey-based alcohol can emit less greenhouse gases than traditional grains.

    Our research found over half of our cheesemakers were using multiple methods to reduce whey going to waste, from making animal feed to making ricotta to irrigating paddocks. Even so, there is still room to make much more use of whey.

    What did we find?

    Every year, 43% of all milk produced in Australia is used to make cheese – about eight billion litres a year. When we did this research, there were 132 cheesemakers, using cow, goat, sheep, and camel milk to make cheese. The industry is characterised by a few large manufacturers (about 2% of companies) and many small manufacturers (about 90% of the total). Cheesemakers are largely concentrated in Australia’s southeast.

    To understand the challenge of avoiding whey waste, we spoke to cheesemakers, big and small, right across Australia between November 2022 and June 2023.

    All of our cheesemaker respondents knew of at least one whey-based product.

    But there were barriers to using whey themselves by a range of things, from the set-up cost of a new facility to the challenge of scale, competing priorities and the distance to potential partners. As one respondent said:

    Every single part of the business would have to be changed, upgraded, or increased to accommodate using the whey in any way

    Another said:

    We’re all doing 60 to 70-hour weeks and you [need] someone to actually drive it

    How can we overcome the barriers?

    Based on our interviews, we found four possible ways to encourage cheesemakers to put their whey to use:

    1. turning whey into value-added products in-house. This could be quite effective – one of our respondents reported making more money from whey-based products than cheese. But setting it up requires time and money.

    2. engaging other companies to take the waste. Partnering with outside companies can help overcome time and money issues – but everyone needs to agree on a price for a product previously considered waste.

    3. starting joint ventures, such as teaming up with other cheesemakers. This method suits cheesemakers wanting to keep the value of the whey. Successful ventures require clear leadership and transparent business plans.

    4. scaling up. Some cheesemakers are already using their own whey. If they move to accept whey from other makers, they can scale up – as long as the new whey sources can meet their specifications.

    We found giving Australian cheesemakers the full range of options greatly increased how willing they were to find ways to use whey.

    When they only had in-house options, 33% of respondents said they would find ways to use way. This rose to 79% when all four options were available.

    Even once the cheese has been made, the whey left behind contains proteins and other nutrients.
    guys_who_shoot/Shutterstock

    Which whey forward?

    Our research shows there’s no silver bullet to solve whey waste. We’ll have to come at it from different angles and focus on collaboration between cheesemakers, governments, industry bodies and consumers.

    One crucial thing is to make sure there there is demand for these changes. In separate research, we found there is currently little expectation from consumers and retailers about what happens to whey waste. Increasing demand for whey-based products and setting expectations for cheesemaking practices could drive this change. But food safety regulations and taxes on alcohol can make it more challenging still for makers.

    In regions with a cluster of cheesemakers, it might make more sense for one or two makers to take all the whey waste and turn it into value-added products to benefit from the scale. While many cheesemakers told us they felt isolated from potential partners, we found a potential partner was right around the corner – just one or two kilometres in most cases.

    This is where decision support tools may be able to help in future. These software tools help you lay out your options so you can compare them and pick the best one. They can take into account financial outlay, risks and environmental impacts.

    The good news is, there is an abundant, nutrient rich byproduct able to be converted into other products. The challenge now is to find ways of boosting collaboration between cheesemakers and other companies – and ensuring whey-based products have a market.

    Jack Hetherington’s PhD project receives funding from the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre, CSIRO and the University of Adelaide. Jack is currently the Treasurer for the Landcare Association of South Australia and a member of the SA Crawford Fund committee.

    Adam James Loch has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the South Australian Department for Environment and Water, and the European Commission.

    Pablo Juliano 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. Huge volumes of whey go to waste. We could do much more with this nutrient rich liquid – https://theconversation.com/huge-volumes-of-whey-go-to-waste-we-could-do-much-more-with-this-nutrient-rich-liquid-241588

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 4,300 tonnes of space junk and rising: another satellite breakup adds to orbital debris woes

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Webb, Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology

    Intelsat

    A large communications satellite has broken up in orbit, affecting users in Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and adding to the growing swarm of space junk clouding our planet’s neighbourhood.

    The Intelsat 33e satellite provided broadband communication from a point some 35,000km above the Indian Ocean, in a geostationary orbit around the equator.

    Initial reports on October 20 said Intelsat 33e had experienced a sudden power loss. Hours later, US Space Forces-Space confirmed the satellite appears to have broken up into at least 20 pieces.

    So what happened? And is this a sign of things to come as more and more satellites head into orbit?

    A space whodunnit

    There are no confirmed reports about what caused the breakup of Intelsat 33e. However, it is not the first event of its kind.

    In the past we’ve seen deliberate satellite destructions, accidental collisions, and loss of satellites due to increased solar activity.

    What we do know is that Intelsat 33e has a history of issues while in orbit. Designed and manufactured by Boeing, the satellite was launched in August 2016.

    In 2017, the satellite reached its desired orbit three months later than anticipated, due to a reported issue with its primary thruster, which controls its altitude and acceleration.

    More propulsion troubles emerged when the satellite performed something called a station keeping activity, which keeps it at the right altitude. It was burning more fuel than expected, which meant its mission would end around 3.5 years early, in 2027. Intelsat lodged a US$78 million insurance claim as a result of these problems.

    However, at the time of its breakup, the satellite was reportedly not insured.

    Intelsat is investigating what went wrong, but we may never know exactly what caused the satellite to fragment. We do know another Intelsat satellite of the same model, a Boeing-built EpicNG 702 MP, failed in 2019.

    More importantly, we can learn from the aftermath of the breakup: space junk.

    30 blue whales of space junk

    The amount of debris in orbit around Earth is increasing rapidly. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates there are more than 40,000 pieces larger than 10cm in orbit, and more than 130,000,000 smaller than 1cm.

    The total mass of human-made space objects in Earth orbit is some 13,000 tonnes. That’s about the same mass as 90 adult male blue whales. About one third of this mass is debris (4,300 tonnes), mostly in the form of leftover rocket bodies.

    Tracking and identifying space debris is a challenging task. At higher altitudes, such as Intelsat 33e’s orbit around 35,000km up, we can only see objects above a certain size.

    Visualisation of debris around the Earth.

    One of the most concerning things about the loss of Intelsat 33e is that the breakup likely produced debris that is too small for us to see from ground level with current facilities.

    The past few months have seen a string of uncontrolled breakups of decommissioned and abandoned objects in orbit.

    In June, the RESURS-P1 satellite fractured in low Earth orbit (an altitude of around 470km), creating more than 100 trackable pieces of debris. This event also likely created many more pieces of debris too small to be tracked.

    In July, another decommissioned satellite – the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) 5D-2 F8 spacecraft – broke up. In August, the upper stage of a Long March 6A (CZ-6A) rocket fragmented, creating at least 283 pieces of trackable debris, and potentially hundreds of thousands of untrackable fragments.

    It is not yet known whether this most recent event will affect other objects in orbit. This is where continuous monitoring of the sky becomes vital, to understand these complex space debris environments.

    Who is responsible?

    When space debris is created, who is responsible for cleaning it up or monitoring it?

    In principle, the country that launched the object into space has the burden of responsibility where fault can be proved. This was explored in the 1972 Convention of International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects.

    In practice, there is often little accountability. The first fine over space debris was issued in 2023 by the US Federal Communications Commission.

    It’s not clear whether a similar fine will be issued in the case of Intelsat 33e.

    Looking ahead

    As the human use of space accelerates, Earth orbit is growing increasingly crowded. To manage the hazards of orbital debris, we will need continuous monitoring and improved tracking technology alongside deliberate efforts to minimise the amount of debris.

    Most satellites are much closer to Earth than Intelsat 33e. Often these low Earth orbit satellites can be safely brought down from orbit (or “de-orbited”) at the end of their missions without creating space debris, especially with a bit of forward planning.

    In September, ESA’s Cluster 2 “Salsa” satellite was de-orbited with a targeted re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, burning up safely.

    Of course, the bigger the space object, the more debris it can produce. NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office calculated the International Space Station would produce more than 220 million debris fragments if it broke up in orbit, for example.

    Accordingly, planning for de-orbiting of the station (ISS) at the end of its operational life in 2030 is now well underway, with the contract awarded to SpaceX.

    Christopher Fluke works for Swinburne University of Technology. He has previously received funding from the SmartSat CRC, including funding to support a research collaboration with CGI Australia (Space, Defence and Intelligence). He is a member of the International Astronomical Union.

    Sara Webb and Tallulah Waterson 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. 4,300 tonnes of space junk and rising: another satellite breakup adds to orbital debris woes – https://theconversation.com/4-300-tonnes-of-space-junk-and-rising-another-satellite-breakup-adds-to-orbital-debris-woes-241790

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How we treat catchment water to make it safe to drink

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

    Andriana Syvanych/Shutterstock

    Most of us are fortunate that, when we turn on the tap, clean, safe and high-quality water comes out.

    But a senate inquiry into the presence of PFAS or “forever chemicals” is putting the safety of our drinking water back in the spotlight.

    Lidia Thorpe, the independent senator leading the inquiry, says Elders in the Aboriginal community of Wreck Bay in New South Wales are “buying bottled water out of their aged care packages” due to concerns about the health impacts of PFAS in their drinking water.

    So, how is water deemed safe to drink in Australia? And why does water quality differ in some areas?

    Here’s what happens between a water catchment and your tap.

    Human intervention in the water cycle

    There is no “new” water on Earth. The water we drink can be up to 4.5 billion years old and is continuously recycled through the hydrological cycle. This transfers water from the ground to the atmosphere through evaporation and back again (for example, through rain).

    Humans interfere with this natural cycle by trapping and redirecting water from various sources to use. A lot happens before it reaches your home.

    The quality of the water when you turn on the tap depends on a range of factors, including the local geology, what kind of activities happen in catchment areas, and the different treatments used to process it.

    Maroondah dam in Healesville, Victoria.
    doublelee/Shutterstock

    How do we decide what’s safe?

    The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines define what is considered safe, good-quality drinking water.

    The guidelines set acceptable water quality values for more than 250 physical, chemical and bacterial contaminants. They take into account any potential health impact of drinking the contaminant over a lifetime as well as aesthetics – the taste and colour of the water.

    The guidelines are not mandatory but provide the basis for determining if the quality of water to be supplied to consumers in all parts of Australia is safe to drink. The guidelines undergo rolling revision to ensure they represent the latest scientific evidence.

    From water catchment to tap

    Australians’ drinking water mainly comes from natural catchments. Sources include surface water, groundwater and seawater (via desalination).

    Public access to these areas is typically limited to preserve optimal water quality.

    Filtration and purification of water occurs naturally in catchments as it passes through soil, sediments, rocks and vegetation.

    But catchment water is subject to further treatment via standard processes that typically focus on:

    • removing particulates (for example, soil and sediment)

    • filtration (to remove particles and their contaminants)

    • disinfection (for example, using chlorine and chloramine to kill bacteria and viruses)

    • adding fluoride to prevent tooth decay

    • adjusting pH to balance the chemistry of the water and to aid filtration.

    This water is delivered to our taps via a reticulated system – a network of underground reservoirs, pipes, pumps and fittings.

    In areas where there is no reticulated system, drinking water can also be sourced from rainwater tanks. This means the quality of drinking water can vary.

    Sources of contamination can come from roof catchments feeding rainwater tanks as well from the tap due to lead in plumbing fittings and materials.

    So, does all water meet these standards?

    Some rural and remote areas, especially First Nations communities, rely on poor-quality surface water and groundwater
    for their drinking water.

    Rural and regional water can exceed recommended guidelines for salt, microbial contaminants and trace elements, such as lead, manganese and arsenic.

    The federal government and other agencies are trying to address this.

    There are many impacts of poor regional water quality. These include its implication in elevated rates of tooth decay in First Nations people. This occurs when access to chilled, sugary drinks is cheaper and easier than access to good quality water.

    What about PFAS?

    There is also renewed concern about the presence of PFAS or “forever” chemicals in drinking water.

    Recent research examining the toxicity of PFAS chemicals along with their presence in some drinking water catchments in Australia and overseas has prompted a recent assessment of water source contamination.

    A review by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) proposed lowering the limits for four PFAS chemicals in drinking water: PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFBS.

    The review used publicly available data and found most drinking water supplies are currently below the proposed new guideline values for PFAS.

    However, “hotspots” of PFAS remain where drinking water catchments or other sources (for example, groundwater) have been impacted by activities where PFAS has been used in industrial applications. And some communities have voiced concerns about an association between elevated PFAS levels in their communities and cancer clusters.

    While some PFAS has been identified as carcinogenic, it’s not certain that PFAS causes cancer. The link is still being debated.

    Importantly, assessment of exposure levels from all sources in the population shows PFAS levels are falling meaning any exposure risk has also reduced over time.

    How about removing PFAS from water?

    Most sources of drinking water are not associated with industrial contaminants like PFAS. So water sources are generally not subject to expensive treatment processes, like reverse osmosis, that can remove most waterborne pollutants, including PFAS. These treatments are energy-intensive and expensive and based on recent water quality assessments by the NHMRC will not be needed.

    While contaminants are everywhere, it is the dose that makes the poison. Ultra-low concentrations of chemicals including PFAS, while not desirable, may not be harmful and total removal is not warranted.

    Mark Patrick Taylor is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist. He is also an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University. EPA Victoria has previously received funding from the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and Victorian water authorities to understand the presence of contaminants waste water. He has previously received funding from the Australian Government, ARC and other government agencies for environmental pollution research.

    Antti Mikkonen is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, in the role of Principal Health Risk Advisor for chemicals. Antti has previously received funding from the Australian Government Department of Education for research to understand PFAS bioaccumulation in livestock and models for risk management.

    Minna Saaristo is a full-time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the role of Principal Scientist – Ecological Risk and Emerging contaminants. She is affiliate of the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University. EPA Victoria has previously received funding from the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and Victorian water authorities to understand the presence of emerging contaminants in recycled water. She has previously received funding from the Australian Government, ARC and other government agencies for environmental pollution research.

    – ref. How we treat catchment water to make it safe to drink – https://theconversation.com/how-we-treat-catchment-water-to-make-it-safe-to-drink-242206

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Labor retains office at ACT election; US presidential election remains on a knife’s edge

    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

    The Labor Party has won a seventh consecutive ACT election.

    The ACT uses the Hare Clark proportional representation method with five five-member electorates, for a total of 25 seats. A quota is one-sixth of the vote or 16.7%.

    For Saturday’s election, the ABC is calling
    ten Labor seats, eight Liberals, two Greens, one Independent for Canberra (IfC) and one other independent, with three still undecided.

    Labor has won a seventh consecutive term, having governed in the ACT since 2001, often in coalition with the Greens. At the 2022 federal election, the ACT gave Labor a 67–33 two-party win, easily the most pro-Labor jurisdiction. This strong left lean makes it difficult for the Liberals to win ACT elections.

    Vote shares were 34.5% Labor (down 3.3% since the 2020 election), 33.0% Liberals (down 0.9%), 12.5% Greens (down 1.0%), 8.5% Independents for Canberra (new) and 11.5% for all Others (down 3.3%). Postal votes have not yet been counted, and these should help the Liberals.

    Nearly all pre-poll votes and some election day votes were cast electronically. Provisional preference distributions for these votes were published on election night, with paper ballots to be added to these electronic votes in the coming days.

    Analysis of each of the five electorates follows. The final seat result will probably be ten Labor (steady since 2020), ten Liberals (up one), three Greens (down three), one IfC (new) and one other independent (up one). If this occurs, Labor and the Greens will retain their combined majority with 13 of the 25 seats.

    In Brindabella, the Liberals won 2.57 quotas, Labor 2.05, the Greens 0.55 and IfC 0.45. Analyst Kevin Bonham says the Liberals are likely to win the last seat after postals are counted.

    In Ginninderra, Labor has 2.26 quotas, the Liberals 1.52, the Greens 0.89 and IfC 0.45. Bonham says the Greens and Liberals easily win the final two seats on the provisional distribution.

    In Kurrajong, Labor has 2.20 quotas, the Liberals 1.41, the Greens 1.07 and IfC 0.83. IfC easily wins the last seat on the provisional distribution.

    In Murrumbidgee, the Liberals have 2.06 quotas, Labor 2.02, independent Fiona Carrick 0.78 and the Greens 0.57. Carrick easily wins the last seat.

    In Yerrabi, the Liberals have 2.19 quotas, Labor 1.86, the Greens 0.71 and IfC 0.58. The Greens easily defeat IfC on the provisional distribution.

    Harris dips in polls, but US presidential contest remains tight

    The United States presidential election will be held on November 5. In analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls, Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump by 49.1–46.8, a gain for Trump since last Monday, when Harris led by 49.3–46.5. Harris’ national lead peaked on October 2, when she led by 49.4–45.9.

    Joe Biden’s final position before his withdrawal as Democratic candidate on July 21 was a national poll deficit against Trump of 45.2–41.2.

    The US president isn’t elected by the national popular vote, but by the Electoral College, in which each state receives electoral votes equal to its federal House seats (population based) and senators (always two). Almost all states award their electoral votes as winner-takes-all, and it takes 270 electoral votes to win (out of 538 total).

    Relative to the national popular vote, the Electoral College is biased to Trump, with Harris needing at least a two-point popular vote win to be the narrow Electoral College favourite in Silver’s model.

    In Silver’s state poll aggregates, Harris leads by just 0.4 points in Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (ten). She leads by about one point in Michigan (15 electoral votes) and Nevada (six). Trump leads by 0.8 points in North Carolina (16 electoral votes), 1.4 points in Georgia (16) and 1.8 points in Arizona (11).

    If Harris holds her current leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada, she likely wins the Electoral College by at least 276–262. But Harris’ margins in these states are now very narrow.

    While Silver’s model is still effectively a 50–50 toss-up, Trump is now the slight favourite with a 51% chance to win the Electoral College, up from 48% last Monday. Harris’ Electoral College win probability had peaked at 58% on September 27. There’s a 26% chance that Harris wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College.

    While Trump was the favourite in Silver’s model between late August and mid-September, this is his first lead in FiveThirtyEight since early August.

    Silver said on Friday that current economic conditions imply Harris should win the national popular vote by about one point, so the contest is trending towards this outcome. But Trump would be likely to win the Electoral College with just a one-point Harris advantage in the popular vote.

    Liberals lose Pittwater to teal at NSW state byelections

    Byelections occurred Saturday in the New South Wales state Liberal-held seats of Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater. Labor did not contest any of these byelections. In Pittwater, The Poll Bludger’s projections give teal independent Jacqui Scruby a 54.1–45.9 lead over the Liberals, a 4.8% swing to Scruby since the 2023 state election.

    Current primary votes are 53.7% Scruby (up 17.3%), 42.4% Liberals (down 2.6%) and 3.9% for a Libertarian. The Greens had won 6.8% in 2023, but did not contest, presumably to stop left-wing votes exhausting under NSW’s optional preferential system.

    The other two byelections were easy Liberal holds, with the Liberals beating the Greens by 61.6–38.4 in Hornsby (58.0–42.0 against Labor in 2023). The Liberals won Epping by 65.8–34.2 against the Greens (54.8–45.2 against Labor in 2023).

    Federal Morgan poll and NT redistribution

    A national Morgan poll, conducted October 7–13 from a sample of 1,697, had a 50–50 tie, unchanged from the September 30 to October 6 Morgan poll.

    Primary votes were 37.5% Coalition (steady), 30% Labor (down 1.5), 14% Greens (up 1.5), 6% One Nation (up 0.5), 9% independents (steady) and 3.5% others (down 0.5).

    The headline figure uses respondent preferences. By 2022 election preference flows, Labor led by 51–49, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

    The Northern Territory has two federal electorates: Lingiari and Solomon. It had been seven years since the last NT redistribution, so a new redistribution was required, and this was released Friday.

    ABC election analyst Antony Green said Labor’s margin in Lingiari was increased from 0.9% to 1.7%, but decreased in Solomon from 9.4% to 8.4%. This is a draft redistribution, but there are not expected to be any changes before finalisation.

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

    – ref. Labor retains office at ACT election; US presidential election remains on a knife’s edge – https://theconversation.com/labor-retains-office-at-act-election-us-presidential-election-remains-on-a-knifes-edge-241678

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, finds democracy ‘very tiring’. Are darker days ahead for the country?

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

    Former General Prabowo Subianto will be sworn in as Indonesia’s eighth president today. Twenty-five years ago he was a pariah, and for good reason.

    He faced accusations of human rights abuses in Papua and East Timor, and in 1998, special forces troops under his command had abducted democracy activists in Jakarta, 13 of whom have never been seen again. Those who did return had been tortured.

    The students had been calling for the resignation of President Soeharto, Prabowo’s father-in-law, who finally stepped down in May 1998 after widespread rioting that many believe Prabowo helped engineer. Then, backed by troops under his command, Prabowo tried to storm the presidential palace, gun in hand, to threaten the new president, BJ Habibie.

    Prabowo never went on trial for the disappearances of the activists, though he was banned from travelling to the United States for two decades.

    And his cherished military career quickly ended – he was dismissed from the army for “misinterpreting orders”. Disgraced, and seen as embodying the violence and repression of Soeharto’s regime, Prabowo went into voluntary exile in Jordan. It seemed he had no future in the democratic Reformasi (reformation) system that began to emerge from the ruins of the repressive New Order.

    But Prabowo was far from finished. His rehabilitation and extraordinary climb to the presidency may now signal the end of Indonesia’s fragile, aspirational liberal democracy and a return to the New Order model.

    The end of Reformasi?

    It is clear enough that Prabowo has no enthusiasm for democracy. He has said, for example, that it “very, very tiring” and “very, very messy and costly”.

    Gerindra, the political party he founded and leads, even has, as its number one mission statement, a return to the Constitution “as stipulated on 18 August 1945”. This is the authoritarian original version of the Constitution that Soeharto relied on to rule. It did not guarantee human rights or a separation of powers, and it gave huge power to the president, who was not elected and had no term limit.

    This Constitution was amended after Soeharto fell to bring in a liberal, democratic model. So, a return to the original 1945 Constitution would in itself likely end Indonesia’s hard-won, if troubled, democracy.

    But Prabowo may not need to go this far to enjoy the sweeping power his former father-in-law exercised. Many of the elements of the New Order are already in place. Much of the work of dismantling Indonesia’s liberal democracy has already been done by the outgoing president, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), whose son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, is now Prabowo’s vice president.

    For example, a key pillar of the New Order was “dual function”, a doctrine that allowed serving military members to take civilian posts, allowing them to dominate the government. This was abolished after Soeharto fell.

    But amendments to the civil service law passed last October again allow active members of the army and police to occupy civilian positions. Proposed amendments to the Indonesian National Army (TNI) Law now being debated could expand this. When questioned about the army’s return to civilian life, the armed forces commander welcomed the changes, saying the army would not be exercising a “dual function” but a “multi-function”.

    Likewise, under Soeharto, repressive laws tightly restricted press freedom. Now, a controversial new criminal code that comes into force in 2026 will reinstate prohibitions on criticising the government that the Constitutional Court had previously struck out. A proposed new Broadcasting Law would also ban “broadcasting investigative journalism content”.

    Under the New Order, civil society activism was also harshly restricted. In the last ten years under Jokowi, there has been a steady escalation of defamation actions and threats against government critics. And a law passed in 2017 allows the government to dissolve non-governmental organisations without any judicial process. Already, three NGOs have been banned.

    Many activists now speak openly of their fear of being targeted and intimidated by government trolls or even the intelligence agencies. Others fear Prabowo will use his links to Muslim civil society organisations to pressure or delegitimise other groups he sees as critics.



    Read more:
    Journalists in Indonesia are being killed, threatened and jailed. A new draft law could make things even worse

    Keeping the elites happy

    Prabowo is also following in the footsteps of Soeharto and Jokowi by building a massive coalition in the national legislature, the DPR. More than 80% of members are already on board, with only one party holding out.

    Prabowo will also expand his cabinet, allowing him to award places to supporters and co-opt others, including members of civil society. This will further weaken the opposition.

    This kind of government of elite “unity” makes politics opaque. Political fights take place behind the scenes, resolved by power plays and deals before measures go to a vote. It would make the national legislature not much more than a rubber stamp, as it was under Soeharto.

    This assumes Prabowo can manage Indonesia’s powerful political bosses – especially the feuding former presidents Megawati Soekarnoputri and Jokowi. Together, they now control the two biggest parties in the legislature (PDI-P and Golkar, respectively).

    The still hugely popular Jokowi backed his former bitter enemy Prabowo in the February elections because he saw this as a way to maintain influence after he left office. But Prabowo will be reluctant to share real power with anyone for long. His relationship with Jokowi is likely to be one the biggest challenges to his rule.

    Dealing with an obstructive court

    One of the few remaining obstacles to Prabowo acquiring the sort of dictatorial powers Soeharto exercised is the Constitutional Court, which has the power to strike out laws. Prabowo will not want a non-compliant and obstructive (that is, independent) Constitutional Court. Already politicians are openly discussing the need to “assess its performance”.

    If the legislature passes laws to weaken the court, the court could just strike them out, as it has done in the past.

    But the court was established by the amendments to the original 1945 Constitution. This means that if government cannot pass laws to weaken the court, stack the court or intimidate independent judges, a return to the 1945 Constitution could be used to eliminate it.

    Prabowo would need to feel his rule is secure and that he has the rock-solid support of the elites before doing this, but it is certainly possible. Returning to the original Constitution would simply require a two-thirds vote in the MPR, Indonesia’s highest representative assembly.

    Bold promises on the economy

    Soeharto’s system was based on a Faustian bargain that allowed him to rule corruptly and oppressively in return for high economic growth and development that lifted millions out of poverty.

    Prabowo is likely to adopt the same approach. He campaigned on an annual GDP growth target of 8%, a rate reached under Soeharto, but never by subsequent governments. Jokowi also placed great emphasis on development (infrastructure in particular), but never got much above 5% growth per year.

    Many are optimistic about the economy under the new president. Prabowo’s father was a prominent economist and a finance minister. Prabowo has also asked Jokowi’s highly-regarded finance minister, Sri Mulyani, to stay in her role.

    However, Prabowo comes to office with some enormously expensive commitments that would make Sri Mulyani’s job extremely difficult. These include his free school lunches program (upwards of US$30 billion, or A$45 billion), which Sri Mulyani has publicly questioned, and Jokowi’s signature new capital city, Nusantara, currently under construction. (The initial phase alone will cost at least US$35 billion, or A$52 billion).

    Moreover, Prabowo’s main priority will be to keep the elites happy and maintain his enormous coalition. His supporters and allies – including his brother, tycoon Hashim Djojohadikusumo who has funded his political career – will all demand access to concessions and lucrative appointments for their cronies to make good the vast amounts spent on the February elections. Rational economic policy-making will therefore be highly constrained.

    Foreign investment has always been the key to high growth in Indonesia, but despite the constant rhetoric about Indonesia being open for business, it will undoubtedly remain protectionist in practice under Prabowo. That will likely make the 8% GDP annual growth target impossible.

    More active foreign relations

    Prabowo, who was educated overseas and speaks English fluently, feels comfortable on the global stage. He will want a more prominent place in world affairs for his country, reflecting its vast size and new status as a middle-income country.

    As Jokowi’s defence minister, he was active internationally, even attempting to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. And, to his obvious delight, countries like the US that had previously denied him entry have congratulated him on his victory.

    Prabowo’s main foreign affairs challenge will be the same as his predecessor’s: managing the difficult relationship with China.

    Indonesians are deeply suspicious of China, an attitude driven by a potent mixture of deeply rooted racist attitudes, fear of communism and anxiety about China’s hegemonic ambitions. However, Indonesia is a major recipient of Belt and Road investments and the elite rely heavily on Chinese trade and investment.

    Like Jokowi, Prabowo will have to manage this difficult balance.

    Back to the future

    Indonesian civil society leaders are already talking about the new administration as “New Order Volume II” or “neo-New Order”, and it is easy to see why. All the signs point to a continuation under Prabowo of the process begun under Jokowi: a slide towards something that looks much more like Soeharto’s system than the liberal democracy reformers tried to construct 25 years ago.

    There is nothing in Prabowo’s past or his campaign promises to suggest otherwise. Perhaps the only question is how quickly it happens and how far he will go.

    Tim Lindsey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    – ref. Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, finds democracy ‘very tiring’. Are darker days ahead for the country? – https://theconversation.com/indonesias-new-president-prabowo-subianto-finds-democracy-very-tiring-are-darker-days-ahead-for-the-country-241256

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What makes Chinese students so successful by international standards?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Yongqi Gu, Associate Professor, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Getty Images

    There is a belief widely held across the Western world: Chinese students are schooled through rote, passive learning – and an educational system like this can only produce docile workers who lack innovation or creativity.

    We argue this is far from true. In fact, the Chinese education system is producing highly successful students and an extremely skilled and creative workforce. We think the world can learn something from this.

    In a viral video earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the unique concentration of skilled labour that attracted his manufacturing operations to China:

    In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.

    To which Tesla CEO Elon Musk quickly responded on X: “True”.

    When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Shenzhen headquarters of electric vehicle manufacturer BYD earlier this year, he was surprised to learn the company was planning to double its 100,000-strong engineering taskforce within the coming decade.

    He might not have been so surprised had he known Chinese universities are producing more than ten million graduates every year – the foundation for a super-economy.

    The ‘paradox of the Chinese learner’

    Chinese learners achieve remarkable success levels compared to their Western – or non-Confucian-heritage – counterparts.

    Since Shanghai first participated in the PISA educational evaluation in 2009, 15‑year-olds in China have topped the league table three out of four times in reading, mathematics and science.

    How can a supposedly passive and rote Chinese system outperform its Western counterparts? A number of Australian scholars have been studying this “paradox of the Chinese learner” since the 1990s.

    Their research shows those common perceptions of Chinese and other Asian learners are wrong. For example, repetition and meaningful learning are not mutually exclusive. As one Chinese saying goes:

    书读百遍其意自现 – meaning reveals itself when you read something many times.

    What can Western education learn?

    An emphasis on education is a defining feature of Chinese culture. Since Confucianism became the state-sanctioned doctrine in the Han Dynasty (202BCE–220CE), education has entered every fabric of Chinese society.

    This became especially true after the institutionalisation of the Keju system of civil service examinations during the Sui Dynasty (581CE–618CE).

    Today, the Gaokao university entrance examination is the modern Keju equivalent. Millions of school leavers take the exam each year. For three days every July, Chinese society largely comes to a standstill for the Gaokao.

    While the cultural drive for educational excellence is a major motivation for everyone involved in the system, it is not something that is easily learned and replicated in Western societies.

    However, there are two principles we believe are central to Chinese educational success, at both the learner and system levels. We use two Chinese idioms to illustrate these.

    The first we call “orderly and gradual progress” – 循序渐进. This principle stresses patient, step-by-step and sequenced learning, sustained by grit and delayed gratification.

    The second we call “thick accumulation before thin production” – 厚积薄发. This principle stresses the importance of two things:

    • a comprehensive foundation through accumulation of basic knowledge and skills
    • assimilation, integration and productive creativity only come after this firm foundation.
    Technique to art: weekly calligraphy lessons have been mandatory in Chinese primary and middle schools since 2013.
    Getty Images

    Knowledge, skill and creativity

    The epitome of orderly and gradual progress is the way calligraphy is learned. It goes from easy to difficult, simple to complex, imitating to free writing, technique to art. Since 2013, it has been a mandatory weekly lesson in all primary and middle schools in China.

    The art of Chinese writing embodies patience, diligence, breathing, concentration and an appreciation of the natural beauty of rhythm. It teaches Chinese values of harmony and the aesthetic spirit.

    “Thick accumulation” can be illustrated in the way students study extremely hard for the national Gaokao examination, and also during tertiary education. This way they accumulate the basic knowledge and skills required in a modern society.

    “Thin production” refers to the ability to narrow or focus this accumulated knowledge and skill to find and implement creative solutions in the workplace or elsewhere.

    Ways of learning

    On the face of it, the emphasis on gradual and steady progress, and on accumulation of basic knowledge and skills, may look like a slow, monotonous and uninspiring process – the origin of those common myths about Chinese learning.

    In reality, it boils down to a simple argument: without a critical mass of basic knowledge and skills, there is little to assimilate and integrate for productive creativity.

    Of course, there are problems with Chinese learning and education, not least the fierce competitiveness and overemphasis on examinations. But our focus here is simply to show how two basic educational principles underpin Chinese advances in science and technology in a modern knowledge economy.

    We believe these principles are transferable and potentially beneficial for policymakers, scholars and learners elsewhere.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. What makes Chinese students so successful by international standards? – https://theconversation.com/what-makes-chinese-students-so-successful-by-international-standards-238325

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Expanding coal mines – and reaching net zero? Tanya Plibersek seems to believe both are possible

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

    Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s recent decision to approve expansion plans for three New South Wales coal mines disappointed many people concerned with stabilising the global climate.

    Two of these mines, Narrabri and Mount Pleasant in New South Wales, featured in the high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful Living Wonders court case, intended to force the federal government to take account of climate damage done by coal mine approvals. A lawyer involved in the case said Plibersek’s decision showed a refusal to “recognise their climate harms”.

    Why did Plibersek sign off on this? She has argued the mines will abide by domestic industrial emissions rules. As her spokesperson told the ABC:

    The emissions from these projects will be considered by the minister for climate change and energy under the government’s strong climate laws.

    But these laws apply only to emissions produced in Australia, which in this case will be from extracting and transporting coal and the relatively small amount of coal burned here. Most of the coal will be exported and burned overseas. Australian laws do not count those much larger emissions.

    The government is effectively washing its hands of the far larger emissions created when the coal is burned overseas. Since taking office, the Albanese government has approved seven applications to open or expand coal mines. Just this week, NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said his state would keep exporting coal into the 2040s.

    This reasoning doesn’t stack up. If we stopped expanding coal mines, coal would get more expensive – and we would accelerate the global shift to clean energy.

    How can more coal be compatible with net zero?

    Under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate action, nations must publicly commit to domestic emissions reductions goals and are expected to steadily ramp up ambition.

    But these emissions cuts are domestic only – we don’t measure the emissions we enable by exporting coal and gas.

    The Albanese government has increased domestic ambition by committing to a 43% reduction on 2005 figures by 2030. This seems to be a substantial advance on the 26-28% commitment made by the previous government. In reality, internal tensions in the Morrison Coalition government handed Labor an unintentional gift.

    In 2021, estimates suggested Australia was already on track for a 35% reduction. But internal opposition among Coalition backbenchers stopped Morrison announcing this as a target. As a result, Labor’s change looks about twice as impressive as it should.

    Still, progress is happening. Domestically, Australia is now burning less and less coal.

    But in terms of exports, the government’s position – clear in Plibersek’s decision as well as the government’s plan to keep gas flowing for decades – is as long as there is a demand for coal and gas from other countries, Australia will be ready and willing to meet it.

    Most of the coal unlocked by Plibersek’s decision will go overseas, given NSW exports 85% of its coal to partners such as Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

    How does the government defend this?

    Expanding coal mines while maintaining a public commitment to net zero is a consistent theme between this government and its predecessor, which also committed to net zero. It meets a minimal interpretation of our legal obligations under the Paris Agreement, but maintains the planet’s path towards dangerous warming.

    In her statement of reasons given in 2023 as to why the Mount Pleasant mine expansion should be permitted, Plibersek and the Labor government offer several defences.

    The first is she is simply acting in accordance with Australian law, as the project would comply with “applicable Commonwealth emissions reduction legislation”. This is a weak reed, to put it mildly. The Albanese government, with the support of Greens and independents, can change the law whenever it chooses.

    In reality, the government has steadfastly resisted pressure to include a “climate trigger” in Australia’s environmental approval processes. Their resistance is relatively new – as recently as 2016, Labor policy included a climate trigger for land clearing.

    Labor’s second defence has often been dubbed the “drug dealer’s defence”. That is, if Australia didn’t export coal, other producers would take our place. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has put it:

    policies that would just result in a replacement of Australian resources with resources that are less clean from other countries would lead to an increase in global emissions, not a decrease.

    As I’ve argued previously, this defence doesn’t work. Coal is subject to a rising cost curve – if we stopped exporting it, new or expanded production from other sources would cost more to extract and hence be priced higher. More expensive coal would, in turn, accelerate the global energy transition. We do have agency – we could choose not to unlock more coal.

    Finally, Plibersek claims emissions from burning Mount Pleasant coal – estimated at over 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the mine’s extended lifetime – would not be “substantial” relative to total global emissions. For context, Australia’s total emissions are now less than 500 million tonnes a year.

    This “litterbug’s defence” suggest Australia’s emissions – whether produced domestically or exported – are not big enough to make a difference. This is not true – we are now the second largest exporter of emissions globally, after Russia. That is due largely to coal.

    Are fossil fuel exports untouchable?

    There’s a huge gap between global pledges to cut emissions and the reductions needed to actually achieve the Paris targets. Most countries we export coal and gas to are not yet on a path to achieve the reductions in emissions necessary to stabilise the global climate – though China’s emissions may, remarkably, be about to decline.

    That’s why we need to press for decarbonisation at every stage of the energy system, from extraction of coal, oil and gas to the financing of new carbon-based projects as well as at the point where the fuel is burned and emissions produced generated.

    The problem for Australia is we sell a lot of coal and gas – more than ever before. So even as solar and wind energy begins to displace coal and gas in domestic power generation, our coal and gas exports seem all but untouchable.

    We should be saddened but not surprised at this pattern. The Albanese government seems guided by the principle of doing nothing to generate substantial opposition – and to count on the fact a Dutton Coalition government would do even less.

    John Quiggin is a former member of the Climate Change Authority

    – ref. Expanding coal mines – and reaching net zero? Tanya Plibersek seems to believe both are possible – https://theconversation.com/expanding-coal-mines-and-reaching-net-zero-tanya-plibersek-seems-to-believe-both-are-possible-241007

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Human error is the weakest link in the cyber security chain. Here are 3 ways to fix it

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jongkil Jay Jeong, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Computing and Information System, The University of Melbourne

    Piotr Zajda/Shutterstock

    Despite huge advances in cyber security, one weakness continues to overshadow all others: human error.

    Research has consistently shown human error is responsible for an overwhelming majority of successful cyber attacks. A recent report puts the figure at 68%.

    No matter how advanced our technological defences become, the human element is likely to remain the weakest link in the cyber security chain. This weakness affects everyone using digital devices, yet traditional cyber education and awareness programs – and even new, forward-looking laws – fail to adequately address it.

    So, how can we deal with human-centric cyber security related challenges?

    Understanding human error

    There are two types of human error in the context of cyber security.

    The first is skills-based errors. These occur when people are doing routine things – especially when their attention is diverted.

    For example, you might forget to back up desktop data from your computer. You know you should do it and know how to do it (because you have done it before). But because you need to get home early, forgot when you did it last or had lots of emails to respond to, you don’t. This may make you more exposed to a hacker’s demands in the event of a cyber attack, as there are no alternatives to retrieve the original data.

    The second type is knowledge-based errors. These occur when someone with less experience makes cyber security mistakes because they lack important knowledge or don’t follow specific rules.

    For example, you might click on a link in an email from an unknown contact, even if you don’t know what will happen. This could lead to you being hacked and losing your money and data, as the link might contain dangerous malware.

    Many cyber attacks are successful because people click on unknown links in emails and text messages.
    ParinPix/Shutterstock

    Traditional approaches fall short

    Organisations and governments have invested heavily in cyber security education programs to address human error. However, these programs have had mixed results at best.

    This is partly because many programs take a technology-centric, one-size-fits-all approach. They often focus on specific technical aspects, such as improving password hygiene or implementing multi-factor authentication. Yet, they don’t address the underlying psychological and behavioural issues that influence people’s actions.

    The reality is that changing human behaviour is far more complex than simply providing information or mandating certain practices. This is especially true in the context of cyber security.

    Public health campaigns such as the “Slip, Slop, Slap” sun safety initiative in Australia and New Zealand illustrate what works.

    Since this campaign started four decades ago, melanoma cases in both countries have fallen significantly. Behavioural change requires ongoing investment into promoting awareness.

    The same principle applies to cyber security education. Just because people know best practices doesn’t mean they will consistently apply them – especially when faced with competing priorities or time pressures.

    New laws fall short

    The Australian government’s proposed cyber security law focuses on several key areas, including:

    • combating ransomware attacks
    • enhancing information sharing between businesses and government agencies
    • strengthening data protection in critical infrastructure sectors, such as energy, transport and communications
    • expanding investigative powers for cyber incidents
    • introducing minimum security standards for smart devices.

    These measures are crucial. However, like traditional cyber security education programs, they primarily address technical and procedural aspects of cyber security.

    The United States is taking a different approach. Its Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan includes “human-centred cybersecurity” as its first and most important priority.

    The plan says

    A greater emphasis is needed on human-centered approaches to cybersecurity where people’s needs, motivations, behaviours, and abilities are at the forefront of determining the design, operation, and security of information technology systems.

    3 rules for human-centric cyber security

    So, how can we adequately address the issue of human error in cyber security? Here are three key strategies based on the latest research.

    1. Minimise cognitive load. Cyber security practices should be designed to be as intuitive and effortless as possible. Training programs should focus on simplifying complex concepts and integrating security practices seamlessly into daily workflows.

    2. Foster a positive cyber security attitude. Instead of relying on fear tactics, education should emphasise the positive outcomes of good cyber security practices. This approach can help motivate people to improve their cyber security behaviours.

    3. Adopt a long-term perspective. Changing attitudes and behaviours is not a single event but a continuous process. Cyber security education should be ongoing, with regular updates to address evolving threats.

    Ultimately, creating a truly secure digital environment requires a holistic approach. It needs to combine robust technology, sound policies, and, most importantly, ensuring people are well-educated and security conscious.

    If we can better understand what’s behind human error, we can design more effective training programs and security practices that work with, rather than against, human nature.

    Jongkil Jay Jeong 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. Human error is the weakest link in the cyber security chain. Here are 3 ways to fix it – https://theconversation.com/human-error-is-the-weakest-link-in-the-cyber-security-chain-here-are-3-ways-to-fix-it-241459

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A year on from the Senate inquiry into concussion, what’s changed and what comes next?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annette Greenhow, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Bond University

    In September 2023, an Australian Senate committee released a landmark report on concussions and repeated head trauma in contact sports.

    The committee made 13 recommendations to improve outcomes for past, present and future players.

    The report emphasised shared responsibility and transparency in developing a national approach, with the government to lead nine of the recommendations.

    As of October 2024, no official government update has been provided.

    We’ve assessed the status of the recommendations – of the publicly available sources, we found evidence of action in some areas but no national strategy in directly addressing the focus of several key recommendations.

    As part of this review, we searched the websites of the Australian government’s Department of Health and Aged Care and the Australian Sports Commission/Australian Institute of Sport (ASC/AIS).

    We approached the Senate committee secretary and the Department of Health and Aged Care for more information but neither was able to comment.

    We acknowledge there is likely more work going on behind the scenes, and these processes take time.

    Here’s what we found.

    Progress being made

    In the past year, there has been progress made with several recommendations including those addressing community awareness, education and guidelines for amateur and youth sports.

    The AIS continues to engage in health-led efforts with a suite of resources aimed at increasing community awareness and education.

    In June this year, the institute published a new set of return-to-play guidelines specifically targeting community and youth athletes.

    This represents a tangible response from a federally funded sporting body.

    However, these guidelines must be easily implemented by clubs. To date, there is no indication the government plans to increase funding or resources to clubs to help do so.

    The committee also called for national sporting organisations to “further explore rule modifications to prevent and reduce the impact of concussions and repeated head trauma, prioritising modifications for children and adolescents”.

    Several major sporting codes have modified their rules and we expect them to remain focused on rule modifications to ensure the longevity of their sports.

    General practitioners (GPs) are often the first port of call after a concussion, and the committee recommended the development of standardised guidelines for GPs and first aid responders.

    This addresses concerns that GPs may require additional training in treating sport-related brain trauma.

    In response, the AIS developed a free, online short course for registered GPs.

    Work in progress, or lack of progress?

    There appears to be work in progress or a lack of progress elsewhere, including key recommendations for a National Sports Injury Database (NSID) and professional sport data sharing.

    The inquiry highlighted how patchy data collection had contributed to evidence gaps in understanding sports injury management and surveillance. The committee’s most urgent recommendation therefore was for the government to establish the NSID.

    This would work closely with another recommendation that called for professional sport codes to collect and share de-identified concussion and sub-concussive event data with the NSID.

    As of October 2024, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports the NSID is still under development and is not yet ready to receive data.

    Other recommendations related to research – establishing an independent research pathway, ongoing funding commitments and a co-ordinated and consolidated funding framework.

    These recommendations called for the government’s existing agencies, or a newly created body, to coordinate research on the effects of concussion and repeated head trauma.

    No new dedicated sports-related concussion research pathways have emerged since the inquiry.

    In terms of funding commitments, in April this year – after former rugby league star Wally Lewis’s National Press Club appearance – Dementia Australia reported the government had pledged $A18 million for concussion and CTE support services and education.



    Read more:
    Why a portrait of a former NRL great could spark greater concussion awareness in Australia

    The May 2024 federal budget allocated $132.7 million to boost sports participation from grassroots to high performance. But this did not address concussion and repeated head trauma, and we haven’t been able to find evidence of a co-ordinated and consolidated funding framework.

    Our view is concussion funding pools should be primarily focused on supporting independent research projects. However, sporting bodies clearly need to be involved – they provide access to athlete populations and most people in these organisations have a genuine care for athlete welfare.

    Another recommendation called for a national concussion strategy. This should focus on binding return-to-play protocols and rules to protect participants from head injuries.

    The recommendation included a role for government and whether any existing government bodies would be best placed to monitor, oversee and/or enforce concussion-related rules and protocols.

    In our view, this recommendation involves much more than producing guidelines. It requires a more comprehensive national strategy, with consideration to monitoring compliance and enforcement.

    We could not find any evidence indicating the current status of this recommendation.

    Increased funding and support for affected athletes were also focus areas.

    These recommendations called for a review to address barriers to workers’ compensation and ensure adequate insurance arrangements remain in place.

    We could not find any evidence of whether state and territory governments are involved in the reviews of workers compensation to apply to professional athletes.

    The committee recommenced the government consider measures to increase donations to brain banks for scientific research.

    We couldn’t find any evidence of steps taken to implement this recommendation.

    Moving forward

    There has been progress in education and guidelines but a lack of the coordinated, transparent approach the committee envisioned.

    A formal government response, as demonstrated in Canada and the United Kingdom, is essential to establish trust and chart a clear path forward.

    The Australian government, as guardian of the Australian public’s health, has an opportunity to do the same.

    Annette Greenhow receives funding from SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. Annette is a Board Member of the Australian and New Zealand Sports Law Association. The views expressed in this article are her own.

    Stephen Townsend 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. A year on from the Senate inquiry into concussion, what’s changed and what comes next? – https://theconversation.com/a-year-on-from-the-senate-inquiry-into-concussion-whats-changed-and-what-comes-next-239929

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Humanising AI could lead us to dehumanise ourselves

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raffaele F Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

    Shutterstock

    Irish writer John Connolly once said:

    The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away.

    For most of our history, we believed empathy was a uniquely human trait – a special ability that set us apart from machines and other animals. But this belief is now being challenged.

    As AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, entering even our most intimate spheres, we’re faced with a philosophical conundrum: could attributing human qualities to AI diminish our own human essence? Our research suggests it can.

    Digitising companionship

    In recent years, AI “companion” apps such as Replika have attracted millions of users. Replika allows users to create custom digital partners to engage in intimate conversations. Members who pay for Replika Pro can even turn their AI into a “romantic partner”.

    Physical AI companions aren’t far behind. Companies such as JoyLoveDolls are selling interactive sex robots with customisable features including breast size, ethnicity, movement and AI responses such as moaning and flirting.

    While this is currently a niche market, history suggests today’s digital trends will become tomorrow’s global norms. With about one in four adults experiencing loneliness, the demand for AI companions will grow.

    The dangers of humanising AI

    Humans have long attributed human traits to non-human entities – a tendency known as anthropomorphism. It’s no surprise we’re doing this with AI tools such as ChatGPT, which appear to “think” and “feel”. But why is humanising AI a problem?

    For one thing, it allows AI companies to exploit our tendency to form attachments with human-like entities. Replika is marketed as “the AI companion who cares”. However, to avoid legal issues, the company elsewhere points out Replika isn’t sentient and merely learns through millions of user interactions.

    Some AI companies overtly claim their AI assistants have empathy and can even anticipate human needs. Such claims are misleading and can take advantage of people seeking companionship. Users may become deeply emotionally invested if they believe their AI companion truly understands them.

    This raises serious ethical concerns. A user will hesitate to delete (that is, to “abandon” or “kill”) their AI companion once they’ve ascribed some kind of sentience to it.

    But what happens when said companion unexpectedly disappears, such as if the user can no longer afford it, or if the company that runs it shuts down? While the companion may not be real, the feelings attached to it are.

    Empathy – more than a programmable output

    By reducing empathy to a programmable output, do we risk diminishing its true essence? To answer this, let’s first think about what empathy really is.

    Empathy involves responding to other people with understanding and concern. It’s when you share your friend’s sorrow as they tell you about their heartache, or when you feel joy radiating from someone you care about. It’s a profound experience – rich and beyond simple forms of measurement.

    A fundamental difference between humans and AI is that humans genuinely feel emotions, while AI can only simulate them. This touches on the hard problem of consciousness, which questions how subjective human experiences arise from physical processes in the brain.

    Science has yet to solve the hard problem of consciousness.
    Shutterstock

    While AI can simulate understanding, any “empathy” it purports to have is a result of programming that mimics empathetic language patterns. Unfortunately, AI providers have a financial incentive to trick users into growing attached to their seemingly empathetic products.

    The dehumanAIsation hypothesis

    Our “dehumanAIsation hypothesis” highlights the ethical concerns that come with trying to reduce humans to some basic functions that can be replicated by a machine. The more we humanise AI, the more we risk dehumanising ourselves.

    For instance, depending on AI for emotional labour could make us less tolerant of the imperfections of real relationships. This could weaken our social bonds and even lead to emotional deskilling. Future generations may become less empathetic – losing their grasp on essential human qualities as emotional skills continue to be commodified and automated.

    Also, as AI companions become more common, people may use them to replace real human relationships. This would likely increase loneliness and alienation – the very issues these systems claim to help with.

    AI companies’ collection and analysis of emotional data also poses significant risks, as these data could be used to manipulate users and maximise profit. This would further erode our privacy and autonomy, taking surveillance capitalism to the next level.

    Holding providers accountable

    Regulators need to do more to hold AI providers accountable. AI companies should be honest about what their AI can and can’t do, especially when they risk exploiting users’ emotional vulnerabilities.

    Exaggerated claims of “genuine empathy” should be made illegal. Companies making such claims should be fined – and repeat offenders shut down.

    Data privacy policies should also be clear, fair and without hidden terms that allow companies to exploit user-generated content.

    We must preserve the unique qualities that define the human experience. While AI can enhance certain aspects of life, it can’t – and shouldn’t – replace genuine human connection.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Humanising AI could lead us to dehumanise ourselves – https://theconversation.com/humanising-ai-could-lead-us-to-dehumanise-ourselves-240803

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australia’s fertility rate has reached a record low. What might that mean for the economy?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Boymal, Associate Professor of Economics, RMIT University

    BaLL LunLa/Shutterstock

    Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to a new record low of 1.5 babies per woman. That’s well below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 needed to sustain a country’s population.

    On face value, it might not seem like a big deal. But we can’t afford to ignore this issue. The health of an economy is deeply intertwined with the size and structure of its population.

    Australians simply aren’t having as many babies as they used to, raising some serious questions about how we can maintain our country’s workforce, sustain economic growth and fund important services.

    So what’s going on with fertility rates here and around the world, and what might it mean for the future of our economy? What can we do about it?

    Are lower birth rates always a problem?

    Falling fertility rates can actually have some short-term benefits. Having fewer dependent young people in an economy can increase workforce participation, as well as boost savings and wealth.

    Smaller populations can also benefit from increased investment per person in education and health.

    But the picture gets more complex in the long term, and less rosy. An ageing population can strain pensions, health care and social services. This can hinder economic growth, unless it’s offset by increased productivity.

    Other scholars have warned that a falling population could stifle innovation, with fewer young people meaning fewer breakthrough ideas.

    Students sitting at a school assembly
    In the short term, lower birth rates can mean more is able to be spent per-person on services like education.
    Jandrie Lombard/Shutterstock

    A global phenomenon

    The trend towards women having fewer children is not unique to Australia. The global fertility rate has dropped over the past couple of decades, from 2.7 babies per woman in 2000 to 2.4 in 2023.

    However, the distribution is not evenly spread. In 2021, 29% of the world’s babies were born in sub-Saharan Africa. This is projected to rise to 54% by 2100.

    There’s also a regional-urban divide. Childbearing is often delayed in urban areas and late fertility is more common in cities.

    In Australia, we see higher fertility rates in inner and outer regional areas than in metro areas. This could be because of more affordable housing and a better work-life balance.

    But it raises questions about whether people are moving out of cities to start families, or if something intrinsic about living in the regions promotes higher birth rates.

    Fewer workers, more pressure on services

    Changes to the makeup of a population can be just as important as changes to its size. With fewer babies being born and increased life expectancy, the proportion of older Australians who have left the workforce will keep rising.

    One way of tracking this is with a metric called the old-age dependency ratio – the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 working-age individuals.

    In Australia, this ratio is currently about 27%. But according to the latest Intergenerational Report, it’s expected to rise to 38% by 2063.

    An ageing population means greater demand for medical services and aged care. As the working-age population shrinks, the tax base that funds these services will also decline.

    Aged care worker holding the hand of an aged care resident.
    An ageing population can mean more pressure on tax-payer funded services like healthcare.
    Chinnapong/Shutterstock

    Unless this is offset by technological advances or policy innovations, it can mean higher taxes, longer working lives, or the government providing fewer public services in general.

    What about housing?

    It’s tempting to think a falling birth rate might be good news for Australia’s stubborn housing crisis.

    The issues are linked – rising real estate prices have made it difficult for many young people to afford homes, with a significant number of people in their 20s still living with their parents.

    This can mean delaying starting a family and reducing the number of children they have.

    At the same time, if fertility rates stay low, demand for large family homes may decrease, impacting one of Australia’s most significant economic sectors and sources of household wealth.



    Read more:
    No savings? No plans? No Great Australian Dream. How housing is reshaping young people’s lives

    Can governments turn the tide?

    Governments worldwide, including Australia, have long experimented with policies that encourage families to have more children. Examples include paid parental leave, childcare subsidies and financial incentives, such as Australia’s “baby bonus”.

    Many of these efforts have had only limited success. One reason is the rising average age at which women have their first child. In many developed countries, including Australia, the average age for first-time mothers has surpassed 30.

    As women delay childbirth, they become less likely to have multiple children, further contributing to declining birth rates. Encouraging women to start a family earlier could be one policy lever, but it must be balanced with women’s growing workforce participation and career goals.

    Research has previously highlighted the factors influencing fertility decisions, including levels of paternal involvement and workplace flexibility. Countries that offer part-time work or maternity leave without career penalties have seen a stabilisation or slight increases in fertility rates.

    Mother with small baby working from homeoffice, typing on laptop
    Any solutions to falling fertility rates must balance other important factors such as women’s increased workforce participation.
    Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    The way forward

    Historically, one of the ways Australia has countered its low birth rate is through immigration. Bringing in a lot of people – especially skilled people of working age – can help offset the effects of a low fertility rate.

    However, relying on immigration alone is not a long-term solution. The global fertility slump means that the pool of young, educated workers from other countries is shrinking, too. This makes it harder for Australia to attract the talent it needs to sustain economic growth.

    Australia’s record-low fertility rate presents both challenges and opportunities. On one hand, the shrinking number of young people will place a strain on public services, innovation and the labour market.

    On the other hand, advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence and robotics, may help ease the challenges of an ageing population.

    That’s the optimistic scenario. AI and other tech-driven productivity gains could reduce the need for large workforces. And robotics could assist in aged care, lessening the impact of this demographic shift.

    The Conversation

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Australia’s fertility rate has reached a record low. What might that mean for the economy? – https://theconversation.com/australias-fertility-rate-has-reached-a-record-low-what-might-that-mean-for-the-economy-241577

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: With reports of students abusing peers in primary schools, how can parents help keep their kids safe?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Higgins, Professor & Director, Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University

    An ABC report on Monday revealed a concerning rise in peer-on-peer sexual abuse within Australian primary schools.

    Data on Victorian schools shows hundreds of such incidents were reported in 2022 and 2023, with many involving children under the age of ten.

    The Australian Child Maltreatment Study also showed rates of sexual abuse inflicted by peers has been increasing. Overall, 18.2% of participants aged 16 to 24 reported being sexually abused by a peer during their childhood, compared to 12.1% of those aged 45 years and over.

    Parents may be wondering how they can protect their children at school.

    One of the most effective tools parents have is open, regular and age-appropriate conversations with their kids.



    Read more:
    There are reports some students are making sexual moaning noises at school. Here’s how parents and teachers can respond

    Talk about boundaries and consent early

    What should you be talking about?

    It is crucial for parents to talk with their children about boundaries and consent from an early age. For younger children, this can be as simple as teaching them their body belongs to them and no one else has the right to touch them without permission. Asking if its OK for a hug, and respecting when children say “no” is a great start.

    When discussing consent, it is important to highlight consent is not just about saying “no”, but also recognising and respecting others’ boundaries.

    Peer relationships and trusted adults play a crucial role in a child’s life. Helping children identify adults they can trust if they need to talk about something is also very important. Peers are often the first to hear of concerns or are often the recipients of disclosures, so fostering healthy friendships and teaching children to report to trusted adults is crucial.

    Addressing peer pressure and secrecy

    Children may feel pressured by peers or may be told to keep certain behaviours secret.

    It is essential for parents to emphasise no matter who asks them to keep a secret, they should always share concerns or things they are unsure about with a trusted adult.

    Parents can reinforce the message that if someone tells them not to tell, it is a “red flag”.

    Children can often feel unsure or scared of whether what has happened is wrong. This is why encouraging openness and creating a nonjudgmental space for children to share is important.

    Discussing online safety

    Research shows exposure to harmful material, like pornography, is a contributing factor to inappropriate sexual behaviour among peers.

    Being aware of your child’s internet use and educating them on how to keep themselves safe online is crucial.

    What else can parents do?

    While conversations with your children are vital, parents can also take practical steps to ensure their child’s safety at school. These include:

    • familiarising yourself with school policies: understand the school’s procedures for reporting bullying, harassment and sexual abuse. Parents should ask about how teachers manage supervision during breaks or other occasions where children may be less well unsupervised

    • advocating for comprehensive sex education at your school: when parents are involved in sex education it leads to better outcomes for children. Check what your school covers in the curriculum. Ask about what supports are available to parents, and how you can be involved

    • getting involved in your child’s social world: knowing who your child’s friends are and staying connected with teachers can offer insight into troubling dynamics. Create opportunities for your child to talk about their friendships and school experiences regularly. And as they start navigating the digital world, it’s even more important to know who they are engaging with

    • teach assertiveness and confidence: find ways to empower your child to speak up for themselves when they are unsure, or something feels wrong. Don’t leave this up to a class teacher to deal with in respectful relationship education. At home, you can encourage assertiveness in expressing their preferences and boundaries. You can also model how to stand up to peer pressure. Children can learn and be encouraged to say simple phrases such as, “stop, I don’t like it” or “no, I don’t want to”.

    If there is a problem

    If you do come across an issue or problem, try and work with your school. Despite your distress, try not to be adversarial – rather pitch your conversation to the teacher or principal as “How can I help us work through this together?”

    Parental involvement in education, can reduce the risk of child sexual abuse. If parents and schools can work together, they are more likely to be effective in keeping children safe.

    Prevention requires vigilance, communication and support from both parents and schools. Parents play a crucial role in shaping their child’s understanding of what’s OK, what’s harmful, as well as boundaries, safety and consent.

    By having ongoing conversations, staying informed, and working with schools, parents are the first step to creating safety for children – and supporting them if something goes wrong.

    Daryl Higgins receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and a range of government departments, agencies, and service providers, including Bravehearts. He was a Chief Investigator on the Australian Child Maltreatment Study.

    Gabrielle works with the Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) team as part of her PhD Candidature. She has also previously worked for Bravehearts in various roles, including for the Turning Corners program, which provides support to young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviours.

    – ref. With reports of students abusing peers in primary schools, how can parents help keep their kids safe? – https://theconversation.com/with-reports-of-students-abusing-peers-in-primary-schools-how-can-parents-help-keep-their-kids-safe-241786

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Draft guidelines for ‘forever chemicals’ have been released. Here’s what it means for drinking water safety in Australia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide

    Alexander_Safonov/Shutterstock

    The Australian National Health and Medical research Council (NHMRC) has today released draft guidelines for acceptable levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in drinking water.

    PFAS chemicals are also known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t break down easily and can persist in the environment, including drinking water supplies.

    The new guidelines – which are not mandatory but will inform state and territory policy – are expected to be finalised in April 2025. They propose a reduction in the maximum levels previously considered safe for four key PFAS chemicals: PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS and PFBS.

    Continually scrutinising and updating our PFAS regulations is important to ensure Australians’ safety. However, these updated guidelines are unlikely to have a significant impact on Australia’s drinking water. The majority of potable water supplies in Australia either have no detectable PFAS, or have levels already below the new limits.

    What are PFAS chemicals?

    PFAS are highly fat-soluble compounds that are very slow to break down. They are basically long chains of carbon atoms studded with fluorine molecules.

    PFAS chemicals are inert, water-repellent and heat-resistant. These properties make them ideal for industrial usage and they have been used in firefighting foams and fire-retardant material. They have also been used in common household items such as nonstick pans and stain-resistant fabrics.

    PFAS chemicals are very slow to break down.
    Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

    Unfortunately, their useful industrial stability means they persist in the environment and can accumulate in the human body. It can take five years for half an ingested dose of PFAS to be removed.

    Given PFAS chemicals have the potential to mimic the body’s own fats, there has been concern they could harm our health if sufficient amounts accumulated in the body.

    What sorts of health effects are they linked to?

    The buildup of a chemical that’s hard to remove from our bodies is always of concern. Despite this, the potential health risks appear to be low. In 2018 the Australian Expert Health Panel for PFAS looked in detail at the evidence.

    One of the largest concerns was PFAS chemicals’ ability to increase levels of cholesterol in the blood, potentially increasing heart disease risk. However, studies of people who have been chronically exposed to significant levels of PFOA have not shown statistically significant increases in heart disease.

    In 2018, the report from Australia’s expert health panel stated:

    Evidence to date does not establish whether PFAS at exposure levels seen in Australia might increase risks of cardiovascular disease… Established risk factors … are likely to be of a much greater magnitude than those potentially caused by PFAS.

    Cancer has also been a concern. However the expert panel found no consistent evidence that PFAS chemicals are associated with cancer. One study even found exposure to PFOA decreased the incidence of bowel cancer.

    However, the impact of PFAS on human health is continuously reviewed as new evidence comes to light.

    Why has Australia revised its drinking water guidelines?

    Australia began to phase out PFAS chemicals in the early 2000s. Since then, the levels of PFAS detected in the Australian population have steadily dropped.

    Now that industrial use is being phased out, the main way we are exposed to PFAS is through things like persistent environmental contamination. While drinking water is not a major source of PFAS, water can be contaminated from environmental sources, for example, if contaminated dust or ground water makes its way into reservoirs.

    Most drinking water levels in Australia either have no detectable PFAS or are already below the new levels.
    Juergen_Wallstabe/Shutterstock

    The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines provide limits for how much PFAS is allowed to be in our drinking water.

    The NHMRC periodically reviews the health evidence around PFAS used to develop these guidelines, which were last updated in 2018. The latest review looks at additional evidence available since then.

    A few developments were of particular interest in this review: studies about the influence of PFAS on thyroid function. Altering thyroid function can be problematic because thyroid hormones regulate our metabolism, growth and development.

    The International Agency for Cancer Research’s (IARC) recent ruling on PFAS and cancer also needed to be investigated. The IARC has classified PFOS – one of the four key chemicals Australia is regulating – as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. However the IARC noted there was “inadequate” evidence PFOS directly causes any type of cancer in people.

    This agency can rule on the probability that a chemical can cause cancer under any possible exposure, no matter how extreme. But it doesn’t evaluate the risk of cancer from ordinary exposure.

    This means the NHMRC needed to reevaluate the evidence that the levels present in drinking water would constitute a risk.

    What are the new PFAS limits?

    The NHRMC considered evidence about PFAS exposure in animal studies, and by looking at human epidemiology.

    In studies involving animals, the NHMRC review paid particular attention to what concentration of PFAS exposure had no effect on their health. This threshold is used to determine limits for humans, by adding a safety buffer usually a hundred times lower than the level that was safe for animals.

    The limits are set are carefully considering the evidence about impact on human health, as well as evaluating how much PFAS exposure is likely from sources beyond drinking water, such as food and inhaled dust.

    The proposed limits are:

    Note: PFOS and PFHxS are now regulated separately.
    NHMRC

    These guidelines are unlikely to have a significant impact on health. As the NHMRC report shows, majority of potable water supplies in Australia have no detectable PFAS, or levels are already below these new limits.

    For example, drinking water sampling for WaterNSW found PFOS levels were between 1.2ng/L and undectable. Similar results were found for PFHxS (between 1.4 and 0.1ng/L) and PFOA (basically undetectable).

    While the concentration of PFAS in bores near contamination sites are higher, these are typically not used as sources of drinking water.

    The Australian guidelines differ from some international guidelines. The draft guidelines note that different jurisdictions place different weighting on animal and human evidence, and this will affect these regulatory levels.

    The draft guidelines are now open to public consultation, with submissions closing on November 22 2024. Final guidelines are expected to be released in April 2025.

    Ian Musgrave has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study adverse reactions to herbal medicines and has previously been funded by the Australian Research Council to study potential natural product treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. He has collaborated with SA Water on studies of cyanobacterial toxins and their implication for drinking water quality.

    – ref. Draft guidelines for ‘forever chemicals’ have been released. Here’s what it means for drinking water safety in Australia – https://theconversation.com/draft-guidelines-for-forever-chemicals-have-been-released-heres-what-it-means-for-drinking-water-safety-in-australia-241773

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The best government money can buy? How New Zealanders feel about political party funding

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mona Krewel, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Getty Images

    Companies and shareholders associated with the government’s fast-track projects gave more than $500,000 in donations to National, ACT and New Zealand First, according to a recent analysis by RNZ.

    While it is impossible to say whether these companies were listed for consideration because of their donations, allegations of possible “undue influence” are inevitably made.

    New Zealand’s reputation as a country with little to no corruption owes nothing to our lack of rigour in the regulation of party donations. As Philippa Yasbek, the author of a report by the Helen Clark Foundation calling for tougher rules to combat the risk of political corruption, said:

    Our political integrity and honesty have largely evolved from social norms over many decades. Politicians by and large knew the conduct that was expected of them by New Zealand society. Sadly, today, we’re naive to think that’s enough.

    Some political parties seem to take little heed of the existing rules. The Electoral Commission has issued warnings to several parties about large donations being declared too late.

    The Independent Electoral Review released early this year recommended parties give up access to corporate donations in exchange for greater public funding. Other recommendations included a cap on political donations set at NZ$30,000, and a much lower threshold for disclosing donors’ names.

    As one might expect, the political parties disagree about how funding should be regulated, as their main income sources vary. Labour approves of the proposals, although analysis indicates its revenue streams would suffer most if such policies were in place.

    ACT is strongly opposed to the principle of public funding, although there are already significant public funds supporting parliament and party advertising during election campaigns.

    What New Zealanders think

    But what about public opinion? Do people believe large donors have “undue influence”?

    The latest New Zealand Election Study, conducted after the 2023 election, included a module of questions that give insights into New Zealanders’ attitudes to potential party funding reforms. The study is a representative sample of nearly 2,000 eligible voters.

    What stands out? Many people answered “don’t know” to the questions – which is quite reasonable. The laws that regulate political party activity in New Zealand are complex and of little relevance to most.

    Nonetheless, some clear messages emerge. In general, a near majority of people were concerned about the influence of “big interests”. When asked if they agreed with the statement “The New Zealand government is largely run by a few big interests”, 45% agreed and 27% disagreed.

    Drilling deeper into the data, about 35% of business owners agreed, compared to just under half of people who don’t own a business.

    Asked whether they believed donors exert “undue influence” on politicians, 43% agreed. Only 18% disagreed. Almost 40% had no opinion on this topic and either didn’t know or took a neutral position.

    While Labour, Green and NZ First voters leaned heavily to “undue influence”, National and ACT voters were evenly divided between “undue” and “not undue”.

    National voters also strongly opted for “don’t know”. About a third of business owners perceived undue influence, compared with about 45% of non-owners.

    The 2023 Election Study also included a question on the recommendation made by the Electoral Review that corporate groups and trade unions should be prohibited from making direct donations to political parties: 53% supported this change, while only 17% opposed it.

    The Independent Electoral Review also recommended a limit of $30,000 for any individual donation: 57% agreed, compared to 14% who disagreed. While support was strongest on the left and among New Zealand First voters, significant numbers of National and ACT voters also agreed (47% and 44%).

    Finally, we asked for people’s views on anonymity of “promoter donations”. Promoters are people or groups registered to advertise during an election campaign for an issue, or for or against a political party. They can collect anonymous donations that are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as parties.

    Only 14% of respondents believed in continued promoter donation anonymity on the basis of privacy, and 47% preferred greater transparency. Breaking this down by party vote, some National and ACT voters prefer transparency over privacy, although more were either neutral or answered “don’t know”.

    Support for reform

    These results show public perceptions of undue influence by donors are widespread. While these perceptions are strongest on the left, they also penetrate deeply into groups who vote for the parties on the right, and into the business community.

    And while the political parties have conflicts of interest, there is significant support for the recommendations of the Independent Electoral review across party lines among the New Zealand public, and inside the business community.

    Assuming political parties in a democracy should be responsive to voters’ concerns and demands, this should give them food for thought when it comes to potential party funding reform.

    This article is based on our submission to the Justice Select Committee inquiry into the 2023 general election.

    The New Zealand Election Study (NZES) has been funded by Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, the New Zealand Electoral Commission, the Gama Foundation, and the University of Auckland.

    – ref. The best government money can buy? How New Zealanders feel about political party funding – https://theconversation.com/the-best-government-money-can-buy-how-new-zealanders-feel-about-political-party-funding-241881

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people’. Brazil’s traditional people take on BHP in one of the world’s biggest class actions

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ebony Birchall, Lecturer, Law School, Macquarie University

    Australian mining giant BHP is at the centre of one of the world’s largest class actions, the trial for which started this week in London.

    The Fundão Dam in Mariana, Brazil, co-owned by BHP, collapsed in 2015 spilling a gigantic wave of toxic mud across 700 kilometres of land. Nineteen people were killed, villages and livestock wiped out, vast areas of land rendered uninhabitable and rivers and water supplies contaminated.

    Corporate accountability

    The class action has renewed questions about the responsibilities multibillion-dollar corporations have to local communities.

    Leaders of the traditional people groups impacted by the disaster visited Australia with their lawyer Tom Goodhead from international legal firm Pogust Goodhead to raise awareness of the case two weeks ago.

    Goodhead told a public forum at Macquarie University this was a case of corporate negligence and putting profit before safety. He said the operators were warned of the risk of dam collapse and continued to push operations beyond what was safe.

    The class action is brought on behalf of more than 600,000 claimants. The trial is expected to run for 12 weeks and will be heard in the UK, because this is where BHP was headquartered at the time of the disaster.

    The UK courts will apply the Brazilian laws, which say environmental polluters must pay for the damage they cause.

    Can BHP fix this?

    The claimants’ lawyers say the case is valued at more than A$68.8 billion. The figure is based on an estimation of the impact of the disaster on land, culture and sacred places, as well as some form of recompense for the lost lives.

    Maycon Krenak, one of the Krenak chiefs, explained:

    [the] river has always been there for us to guarantee our livelihoods. It is a sacred space for us. The river is where we carry out our sacred practices. That’s where we sing, where we dance, where we gather. The new leaders, [our] children, have to learn how to swim in a water tank of a thousand litres.

    BHP is reported as saying its Renova Foundation, established in 2016, has spent more than A$11.5 billion to compensate victims and remediate the environment.

    But Thatiele Monic, president of the Vila Santa Efigênia and Adjacências Quilombola Association said the victims don’t trust the foundation.

    In the same way that the mining company invades our land, the Renova Foundation also is invading our space and our territories. They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people, and they are creating more and more conflict. So that people are essentially giving up pursuing this.

    Poor human rights record

    Australian corporations operating overseas have a poor record on human rights.

    Two weeks ago, a preliminary report of the Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment uncovered human rights violations, including risks to life, at Rio Tinto’s abandoned Panguna mine in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

    The gold and copper mine triggered a brutal civil war between 1988 and 1998. Despite decades passing since the mine was decommissioned, the recent report confirms the mine continues to pose risks to life and safety due to the collapsing mine and ongoing contamination down rivers and into new areas.

    Australian mining corporations have also been linked to death and destruction in their operations in Africa.

    Corporate activities within Australia have impacted our own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. For example, Rio Tinto’s explosion at Juukan Gorge destroyed sites of cultural significance dating more than 46,000 years.

    Where Australia stands

    The Australian government has endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises both of which outline corporations’ human rights obligations.

    The UNGPs say states should set out clearly the expectation that corporations in their jurisdiction respect human rights in all their operations – even those occurring overseas.

    The Human Rights Law Centre found in a 2018 report on this topic that the Australian government was not doing enough to hold corporations to account.

    It found Australian corporations operating overseas did so with impunity. Efforts to seek justice locally is often thwarted by corruption, lack of resources or ineffective legal process. At the same time, attempts by overseas communities to take legal action in Australian courts face enormous hurdles and rarely succeed.

    This is why cases like the class action for claimants in Mariana are crucial for corporate accountability.

    In my 2023 report with colleagues Surya Deva and Justine Nolan, we found this kind of litigation can raise awareness, facilitate broader industry developments and shape laws and policy.

    Our report also found litigation needs to be supported by strong regulatory responses from governments, and complementary advocacy like shareholder or consumer engagement.

    Cost of litigation

    Litigation comes with significant risks to victims and their allies.

    In a controversial development for corporate accountability in Australia, oil and gas giant Santos is using legal processes to challenge environmental groups who supported traditional owners opposing their Barossa gas project. Santos’ tactics, if allowed to continue, could limit public interest litigation in the future.

    Thatiele Monic ended her speech at the Macquarie University event with a question worth repeating

    This has happened in Brazil, but it has happened in many other places, and if we don’t do anything about it, and we don’t talk about it, it will continue to happen in many more other places. This is not the future I want for myself and for my people. I’d like to know. What future do you want for yourselves?

    Ebony Birchall is affiliated with Macquarie University’s B&HR Access to Justice Lab.

    – ref. ‘They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people’. Brazil’s traditional people take on BHP in one of the world’s biggest class actions – https://theconversation.com/they-do-not-respect-our-land-they-do-not-respect-our-people-brazils-traditional-people-take-on-bhp-in-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-class-actions-241777

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What’s the difference between fusion and fission? A nuclear physicist explains

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Hole, Professor, Mathematical Sciences Institute and School of Computing, Australian National University

    Quality Stock Arts/Shutterstock

    Globally, nuclear power accounts for roughly 10% of electricity generation. In some countries, such as France, this figure is nearly 70%.

    Big tech companies such as Google are also turning to nuclear power to meet the huge power demands of their data centres.

    The source of all nuclear power is the binding energy of an atom. The energy stored in an atom can be released in two main ways: fission or fusion. Fission involves splitting big heavy atoms into smaller, lighter ones. Fusion involves combining little atoms together into bigger ones.

    Both processes release a lot of energy. For example, one nuclear fission decay of U235, an isotope of uranium typically used as the fuel in most power plants, produces more than 6 million times the energy per single chemical reaction of the purest coal. This means they are great processes for generating power.

    What is fission?

    Fission is the process behind every nuclear power plant in operation today. It occurs when a tiny subatomic particle called a neutron is slammed into an uranium atom, splitting it. This releases more neutrons, which continue colliding with other atoms, setting off a nuclear chain reaction. This in turn releases a tremendous amount of energy.

    To convert this energy to electricity a heat exchanger is installed, which turns water to steam, driving a turbine to produce power.

    The fission reaction can be controlled by suppressing the supply of neutrons. This is achieved by inserting “control rods” which soak up neutrons. Historically, nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl have occurred when the control rods fail to engage and quench the neutron supply, and/or coolant circulation fails.

    So called “third generation” designs improve on early designs by incorporating passive or inherent safety features which require no active controls or human intervention to avoid accidents in the event of malfunction. These features may rely on pressure differentials, gravity, natural convection, or the natural response of materials to high temperatures.

    The first third generation reactors were the Kashiwazaki 6 and 7 advanced boiling water reactors in Japan.

    The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station in Japan.
    Tokyo Electric Power Co, CC BY-SA

    An unresolved challenge for fission is that the byproducts of the reaction are radioactive for a long time, in the order of thousands of years. If reprocessed, the fuel source and waste can also be used to make a nuclear weapon.

    Fission power is a demonstrated technology. It is also scalable from large scale (the largest is the 7.97 gigawatt Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan) through to small-to-medium reactors that produce around 150 megawatts of electricity, as used on a ship or nuclear submarine. These are the reactors that will power Australia’s eight nuclear submarines promised as part of a trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States.

    What is fusion?

    Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and stars. It is the opposite process to fission. It occurs when atoms are fused together.

    The easiest reaction to initiate in the laboratory is the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Per unit mass, the reaction produces 4 times more energy than the fission of U235.

    The fuel ion deuterium is incredibly abundant on Earth and in the universe. Tritium is radioactive with a half-life of 12 years, so is very rare on Earth. The universe is 13.8 billion years old; the only isotopes of light nuclei (hydrogen, helium and lithium) found in nature are those that are stable on those time scales.

    In a fusion power plant, tritium would be manufactured using a “lithium blanket”. This is a solid lithium wall in which fusion neutrons slow and ultimately react to form tritium.

    However, at present it’s very difficult for scientists to create a fusion reaction outside of the laboratory. That’s because it requires incredibly hot conditions to fuse: the optimal conditions are 150 million degrees Celsius.

    Fusion is the process that powers the Sun.
    SOHO (ESA & NASA)

    At these temperatures the fuel ions exist in the plasma state, where electrons and (nuclear) ions are dissociated. The byproduct of this process isn’t radioactive; rather, it’s helium, an inert gas.

    The leading technology path to demonstrate sustained fusion is called “toroidal magnetic confinement”. This is when the plasma is confined at extreme temperatures in a very large doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle.

    Unlike fission, this technology path requires continuous external heating to reach fusion conditions and a strong confining field. Terminate either and the reaction stops. The challenge is not uncontrolled meltdown, but getting the reaction to occur at all.

    A major unresolved challenge for toroidal magnetic confinement fusion, which attracts the majority of research interest, is the demonstration of a burning self-heated plasma. This is when the heating power produced by the reaction itself is primary. This is the objective of the publicly funded multi-national ITER project, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and the privately funded SPARC experiment at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    However, the consensus of much of the scientific community is that fusion will not be commercially viable until at least 2050.

    A climate solution?

    I am often asked if nuclear power could save Earth from climate change. I have many colleagues in climate science, and indeed my late wife was a high-profile climate scientist.

    The science is clear: it is too late to stop climate change. The world needs to do everything it can to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and minimise catastrophic damage, and it needs to have done it decades ago.

    For the planet, fission is part of that global solution, together with widespread rollout and adoption of renewable sources of power such as wind and solar.

    On a longer time scale, one hopes that fusion might replace fission. The fuel supply is much larger and ubiquitously distributed, the waste problem is orders of magnitude smaller in volume and timescale, and the technology cannot be weaponised.

    Matthew Hole receives funding from the Australian government through the Australian Research Council and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), and the Simons Foundation. He is also affiliated with ANSTO, the ITER Organisation as an ITER Science Fellow, and is Chair of the Australian ITER Forum.

    – ref. What’s the difference between fusion and fission? A nuclear physicist explains – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-fusion-and-fission-a-nuclear-physicist-explains-240438

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Labor looks set for a resounding defeat in Queensland. But the state’s elections have long thrown up surprises

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pandanus Petter, Research Fellow School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University

    On Saturday October 26, Queensland Premier Steven Miles’ Labor is vying for a fourth consecutive term in government, up against David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party (LNP).

    Although Labor won the previous election in 2020 comfortably, opinion polls in the lead up to this election have consistently pointed to an LNP win.

    Recent Queensland history shows voters can produce dramatic election results, such as the 2012 wipeout of Labor, and its equally dramatic return to government in 2015. With no upper house to provide a check on government power, whoever wins will likely have a relatively free hand to enact their policy agenda.

    A continuing trend of increased early voting means many Queenslanders have already made their judgement. But what have been the big issues dominating the campaign, and what priorities will the next government be working toward?

    The usual suspects

    The big issues of concern to voters in Queensland are likely familiar to people in other states:

    • cost of living

    • housing

    • crime

    • health

    • to a lesser extent, economic management.

    However, the two main parties have different emphases and approaches.

    A campaign on crime and crises

    The LNP is focused on attacking Labor’s record. Crisafulli has largely tried to keep the party firmly on-message, highlighting what they describe as “crises” in housing, youth crime, cost of living, health and government integrity for at least the last year.

    The extent of youth crime, what causes it and what solves it are a matter of debate.

    But the LNP has been keen to present themselves as proposing tougher solutions than their opponents. They’ve made promises to change youth sentencing laws to deter offenders under the slogan “adult crime, adult time”.

    They’ve also promised to provide “tough love” to at-risk youth with mandatory re-training camps.

    On other issues, they’ve been promising more efficient health services, incentives to home ownership and greater government transparency.

    However, they’ve been careful to try to avoid more controversial issues and present a “small target” on economic management. Interestingly, the LNP has largely confirmed they’ll adopt many of Labor’s budgetary priorities on cost of living relief.

    Despite this, a last minute emphasis on the possible reversal of legislation decriminalising abortion and voluntary assisted dying has threatened to derail their careful messaging.

    Reverting to old ways, the LNP is backing an “indefinite” commitment to coal fired power plants and dumping a controversial proposed hydroelectric dam.

    Crisafulli has walked back earlier support for Treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

    If they win government, the LNP would also likely shut down the freshly minted Truth Telling and Healing Inquiry, claiming they will focus on “practical” help for Indigenous communities instead.

    They’re also promising electoral reform with a longstanding commitment to remove “corrupt” compulsory preferential voting and the reversal of laws that banned property developer donations.

    Progressive balancing act

    Steven Miles took over from Annastacia Palaszczuk as Labor leader and premier less than a year ago.

    Labor has also been focused on using incumbency to address key issues, while trying to stake out a position as a force for progressive change.

    They have warned of the potential “hidden” dangers of the LNP, pointing to unpopular cuts to the civil service last time the LNP governed.

    On cost of living, they’ve given direct relief to households, with 50 cent fares for public transport, $1000 household energy rebates and promised free lunches for public school students.

    They have been keen to say this is a dividend from increased royalties charged to coal mining companies.

    On housing, they have continued their focus on addressing the undersupply of social and affordable housing alongside modest reforms to renters’ rights (although ruling out any caps on prices).

    They’re promising a new era of state intervention to improve competition in petrol and energy retail.

    On crime, Labor has followed the LNP’s lead in some matters, such as investing in extra police resources. They’ve also controversially ignored the Human Rights Act to keep youth imprisoned while emphasising diversion over punishment.

    Of more comfort to progressive voters, they have positioned themselves as firmly committed to keeping their abortion and voluntary assisted dying legislation intact. Labor will also continue the transition to renewable energy.

    Disenchantment with the major parties

    Despite their efforts, or perhaps because of Crisafulli’s disciplined messaging, it doesn’t look as if voters have been swayed to keep the government. There’s a clear mood for change.

    However, it should be noted this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Crisafulli or the LNP’s whole agenda, as opinion polls show neither is particularly popular.

    After trailing for most of the campaign, Miles is still behind, but has made up a lot of ground in the past week.

    Whoever wins, they will have to govern in an era when more people are disenchanted with the mainstream parties.

    Among those vying to hold or increase their crossbench seats in regional Queensland are the socially conservative Katter’s Australian Party, as well as some popular local mayors running as independents.

    Meanwhile, the Greens are pushing to claim more Brisbane seats.

    The minor parties are campaigning hard on persistent problems in housing, cost of living, health and crime. These are all hard to solve quickly and not necessarily helped by rushed responses.

    The next parliament will have to find a way to represent a state divided in public opinion between those in the city and those in regional areas across all of the key issues.

    Pandanus Petter receives funding from the Australian Research Council to study public opinion polling, democratic responsiveness and the idea of ‘the Fair Go’ in public policy.

    – ref. Labor looks set for a resounding defeat in Queensland. But the state’s elections have long thrown up surprises – https://theconversation.com/labor-looks-set-for-a-resounding-defeat-in-queensland-but-the-states-elections-have-long-thrown-up-surprises-241774

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Are cats good for our health?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

    Yerlin Matu/Unsplash

    Cats have lived with humans for thousands of years. And long before cat memes and viral TikToks took over the internet, they’ve been comforting us with their purrs and making us laugh with their weird antics.

    But what does the research say – are cats good for us?

    Living with a cat can have a profound – and sometimes surprising – effect on our physical and mental health. Still, living with cats is not without risks.

    Part of the family

    You may have heard cats don’t have owners, they have “staff”. In fact, multiple studies show the humans who live with them feel more like beloved relatives.

    In a study of 1,800 Dutch cat owners, half said their cat was family. One in three viewed their cat as a child or best friend and found them loyal, supportive and empathetic.

    Another US study developed a “family bondedness” scale and found cats were just as important a part of families as dogs.



    Read more:
    Is owning a dog good for your health?

    Many cats would choose human interaction over food or toys. And they can distinguish when we are talking to them (rather than another human).

    In fact we’ve adapted to each other. Cats are more likely to approach human strangers who first give a “kitty kiss” – narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly. And research suggests cats have developed specific meows that tune into our nurturing instincts.

    What does this close relationship mean for health outcomes?

    Cats slow blink when they’re feeling relaxed.
    beton studio/Shutterstock

    A sense of purpose

    Owning a pet is associated with less social isolation. And some cat owners say “providing for the cat” increases their feelings of enjoyment and sense of purpose.

    But the benefits of the relationship may depend on how you relate to your cat.

    One study looked at different relationship styles between humans and cats, including “remote”, “casual” and “co-dependent”. It found people whose relationship with their cat was co-dependent or like a friend had a higher emotional connection to their pet.

    Links to heart health

    People who own – or have owned – a cat have a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases such as stroke or heart disease. This result has been repeated in several studies.

    However a problem interpreting population studies is they only tell us about an association. This means while people with cats have lower risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases, we can’t say for sure cats are the cause.

    People who own a cat – or have in the past – are at lower risk of stroke and heart disease.
    Ruth McHugh-Dillon, CC BY-NC

    Cat ownership has also been associated with some positive changes in the gut microbiota, especially in women, such as improved blood glucose control and reduced inflammation.

    Helping mental health

    Having cat or dog is also associated with higher psychological well-being. For people with depression, patting or playing with their cat has been shown to reduce symptoms (although this was over a short, two-hour period and can’t be extrapolated longer-term).

    Another way to find out about the health impact of cats is qualitative research: asking people what their cats mean to them, beyond the numbers.

    When colleagues and I surveyed veterans, we found people more attached to their pets actually had poorer mental health scores. But their survey responses told a different story. One respondent said, “my cats are the reason I get up in the morning”.

    Another wrote:

    I consider my pet to be a service animal. My cat helps me to relax when I’m dealing with my anxiety, depression or when I wake during the night from the frequent nightmares I have. My cat isn’t just a pet to me, my cat is a part of me, my cat is part of my family.

    It may be that veterans were more attached to their cats because they had worse mental health – and relied on their cats more for comfort – rather than the other way around.

    Mental health downsides

    It is possible being attached to your cat has downsides. If your cat becomes sick, the burden of caring for them may have a negative impact on your mental health.

    In our study of owners whose cats had epilepsy, around one third experienced a clinical level of burden as caregivers that was likely to interfere with their day-to-day functioning.

    People with depression report reduced symptoms after playing with their cat.
    Artacke Pictures/Shutterstock

    Toxoplasmosis

    Cats can also carry zoonotic diseases, which are infections which spread from animals to humans.

    They are the main host for toxoplasmosis, a parasite excreted in cat faeces which can affect other mammals, including humans. The parasite is more likely to be carried by feral cats that hunt for their food than domestic cats.

    Most people have mild symptoms that may be similar to flu. But infection during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth, or cause problems for the baby including blindness and seizures.

    Pregnant women and people with lowered immunity are most at risk. It is recommended these groups don’t empty cat litter trays, or use gloves if they have to. Changing the litter tray daily prevents the parasite reaching a stage that could infect people.

    Allergies

    Up to one in five people have an allergy to cats and this is increasing.

    When cats lick their fur, their saliva deposits an allergen. When their fur and dander (flakes of skin) come loose, it can set off an allergic reaction.

    People without severe allergies can still live with cats if they regularly wash their hands, clean surfaces and vacuum to eliminate dander. They can also exclude cats from areas they want to be allergen-free, such as bedrooms.

    People with allergies can live with cats if their symptoms aren’t severe.
    Ruth McHugh-Dillon, CC BY-NC

    While cats can provoke allergic reactions, there is also evidence contact with cats can have a protective role in preventing asthma and allergic reactions developing. This is because exposure may modify the immune system, making it less likely allergic reactions will occur.

    Susan Hazel is affiliated with the Dog & Cat Management Board of South Australia, Animal Therapies Ltd and the RSPCA South Australia.

    – ref. Are cats good for our health? – https://theconversation.com/are-cats-good-for-our-health-238993

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: No home left behind: a postcode approach to electrification

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gill Armstrong, Researcher in architecture and urban planning, Climateworks Centre

    EndeavourEnergy

    In Australia and overseas, it’s clear that homes without gas – running on clean energy – are healthier, have cheaper power bills, and produce lower greenhouse emissions.

    The emissions part is crucial. Collectively, homes are responsible for 10% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions. But how do we get Australia’s 11 million homes to ditch gas and switch to electricity for cooking, hot water and home heating?

    The current approach is slow and piecemeal. State and local governments offer incentives to individual households, but few adopt them. For those that do, little coordinated support and guidance is available. The households must deal with suppliers and tradies on their own, which can be a frustrating and lonely process.

    A pilot project to electrify 500 homes in a single postcode south of Sydney could show a better way. After a two-year campaign by residents, “Electrify 2515” has won A$5.4 million in federal funding, along with industry support. Challenges remain, but this pilot promises to demonstrate how household electrification can be accelerated and coordinated at scale.

    As independent climate transitions specialists within Monash University, Climateworks Centre has no direct involvement in this project. But our ongoing Renovation Pathways Program focuses on ways to decarbonise Australia’s existing houses and bring about a national renovation wave. So we are watching with keen interest.

    Testing extra incentives

    The 2515 postcode sits between Wollongong and Sydney in New South Wales. It covers the suburbs of Austinmer, Clifton, Coledale, Scarborough, Thirroul and Wombarra.

    The pilot encourages households to retire three types of gas appliance: water heaters, space heaters and cookers. Financial subsidies of up to $1,000 off electric hot water systems, reverse-cycle air conditioners and induction cooktops, and up to $1,500 off home batteries, are available. Higher subsidies are available to low-income households.

    Successful applicants receive the subsidies as a discount on the purchase price of these new electrical appliances, rather than a rebate. Money for this is coming from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

    Such incentives prompt households within a single community to make the switch together, retiring their electric appliances before their gas appliances fail or break, speeding up the transition.

    A fully subsidised smart energy device, valued at around $1,500, is also installed in every home to track and optimise energy use. Subsidies are also available for upgrades to switchboards where required to meet modern safety standards.

    Rooftop solar and electric vehicle chargers can also be purchased through the pilot, but will not be subsidised.

    How it works.
    Electrify 2515

    The 2515 difference

    2515 is not the first community to rally behind clean energy. Grassroots initiatives are scattered around the country, such as in Yackandandah in northeast Victoria, Parkes in central west NSW, and Broken Hill in far west NSW.

    Home energy pilot projects are also already underway through the Cooperative Research Centre Race2030, which partners with industry and research institutions. But these initiatives, along with those at a state and local government level, tend to recruit individual households across a wider geographic area.

    In contrast, Electrify 2515 offers holistic support for households within a community. It is not driven by a single government program, or by a gas supply problem – which was the case for the people of Esperance in Western Australia.

    By electrifying 500 homes in a single community, Electrify 2515 will provide a tangible measure of what’s required to drive rapid household electrification. The main challenge isn’t technological – it’s social. The technology is here. Getting the social drivers and settings right, at scale, is the key.

    The holistic approach will demonstrate what consumers need to make the shift from gas to electricity. This includes what conversations are needed and which incentives enable all households to act in a coordinated way.

    Local 2515 residents explain why everyone should join them in applying for the Electrify 2515 Community Pilot.

    The bright side of a community approach

    The whole-of-community focus brings technical and financial advantages.

    After completing an application form and receiving an offer, households receive guidance and support from the installation partner Brighte, a commercial company that provides consumer loans for clean energy appliances such as solar panels and batteries. The service streamlines the decision-making process, which is often the biggest barrier stopping households from progressing with electrification.

    Being able to work with a larger number of homes at once is likely to streamline and scale up installation with dedicated teams of installers and tradespeople.

    It also helps build households’ trust in literature about payback times and financial benefits through friendly neighbourhood conversations and, importantly, through access to local real-world evidence, not just theory.

    Thermal efficiency is also key

    The electrification pilot is a solid starting point, especially for a community in a relatively mild coastal climate such as postcode 2515.

    For homes in more extreme climates, or for inefficient older homes – which a lot of Australia’s homes sadly are – the fundamental thermal efficiency of the building must be improved alongside electrification of appliances.

    The thermal efficiency of homes can be improved by insulating ceilings, walls and floors, double-glazing windows and sealing gaps. These measures make a home more comfortable for occupants. They can also reduce peak demand on the energy network and save on household energy bills.

    Electrify 2515 currently focuses on appliance upgrades but adding thermal efficiency upgrades could take it to the next level. Without these upgrades, there is a risk of households in harsher climates using more electricity in a heatwave if homes are draughty and inefficient.

    There are various ways to upgrade a home’s capacity to stay cool in summer and warm in winter.
    Climateworks Centre, 2023, Climate-ready homes: Building the case for a renovation wave in Australia.

    When paired with electrification, thermal upgrades could save Australian households around $2,200 annually on their energy bills (based on 2023 gas and electricity prices), according to Climateworks Centre analysis.

    Projects like Electrify 2515 should include both home thermal efficiency improvements and electrification efforts, particularly for communities in harsher climates in order to maximise benefits to households.

    Electrification challenges

    Electrify 2515 caters for low-income households, by offering higher subsidies to households in the lowest 25% income percentile to ensure these groups comprise 25% of community buy-in.

    Renters are encouraged to put their hand up too. But it may still be challenging to encourage their landlords to invest in upgrades.

    Further challenges include decarbonising homes that cannot generate electricity from rooftop solar panels due to being shaded by taller buildings or trees. This can sometimes be an issue for homes in colder winter climates with higher annual energy demands, such as Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT.

    Building momentum for widescale rollout

    The technology for all-electric homes exists. Now we must identify the key social drivers and settings required to spur Australia’s electrification wave.

    Electrify 2515 is a promising approach. It’s a way to build momentum, showcase technology at scale, and prompt meaningful discussions around the benefits and challenges of getting off gas.

    This program, and others like it, can provide a tangible real-world foundation to bring about bills savings, emissions reductions and healthier homes across Australia. And it will help ensure no one is left behind.

    Climateworks Centre is a part of Monash University. It receives funding from a range of external sources including philanthropy, governments and businesses.

    – ref. No home left behind: a postcode approach to electrification – https://theconversation.com/no-home-left-behind-a-postcode-approach-to-electrification-241471

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Rebuilding homes after a disaster is an opportunity to build back better – why isn’t the insurance industry on board?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Settle, Lecturer, Monash University

    For many Australians, 2022 was a dark and devastating year. Major floods wreaked havoc on hundreds of communities in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. But for some, the floods themselves were only half the disaster.

    As a recent report by Financial Counselling Victoria showed, many affected households had their insurance claims rejected or diminished, whether due to complicated exclusion clauses or because their “sum insured” had been whittled away by unexpected costs.

    A long parliamentary inquiry sought to examine the insurance industry’s response to this disaster. Its final report – released to little fanfare last Friday – revealed a sector in crisis.

    The report put forward 86 recommendations, which taken together could deliver real progress in pushing the insurance sector to deliver on its promises.

    Some standout areas of focus included abolishing a principle called “like-for-like reinstatement” and increasing accountability and oversight. Making sure households can rely on their own coverage is a vital step.

    But the report also highlighted just how vulnerable Australia’s housing stock is to climate change, which is no easy problem to solve.



    Read more:
    How extreme weather and costs of housing and insurance trap some households in a vicious cycle

    Forced to repeat the same mistakes

    To address the challenge of rising climate risk, we need to increase the resilience of Australian homes. Insurance will only be affordable if risk exposure can be brought down.

    Recommendation 26 of the inquiry’s final report deals with the principle of “like-for-like reinstatement”. Written into many policies, this protects insurers from having to pay for home improvements in an insurance claim – known as “betterment” in insurance jargon.

    ‘Like-for-like’ rules can prevent households from improving their disaster resilience when rebuilding.
    Anna Mente/Shutterstock

    The underlying idea is to stop households sneaking an extra en-suite bathroom into their insurer-funded rebuild. The same dimensions and building materials have to be used.

    But this can mean a home that has been flooded ends up being rebuilt with exactly the same flood risk.

    This was the experience of Madeleine Serle, whose home was flooded in Melbourne in 2022. She told me she had asked her insurer to rebuild using polished concrete floors in the downstairs rooms of her home, instead of the plasterboard and wood that had soaked up the floodwaters. Serle reasoned that if it flooded again, it wouldn’t cause so much damage.

    Her insurer refused. Even when Serle offered to pay any extra costs herself that might arise from concrete flooring, her insurer insisted on a “like-for-like reinstatement”. This meant using the same low-resilience materials that will likely be destroyed if inundated again by floodwater.

    Bringing ‘betterment’ to the fore

    Serle was actively trying to reduce her future flood risk, but this was precluded by the terms of her insurance contract.

    By seeking an end to like-for-like reinstatement, recommendation 26 is pushing for “betterment” to be brought to the forefront of how we think about insurer rebuilds.

    It proposes allowing households to swap out size for quality in an insurer rebuild. That could allow them to use the money saved from reducing the footprint of their home on resilience measures, which are often much more expensive.

    This wouldn’t just reduce their exposure to climate risks – fire, flooding and so on. It could also improve the energy efficiency of our houses, which is another key part of the climate challenge in Australia.

    Standardised products

    Many of the report’s other recommendations centred on the better handling of claims and better outcomes for households.

    This includes by strengthening accountability through stronger regulatory oversight (recommendations 2, 4, 9, 41, 47, 49), tightening up some key loopholes (recommendations 3, 10, 13), and penalising insurers for delays in the resolution of claims (recommendations 19 and 57).

    It also laid out ways to improve communications between insurers and households (recommendations 6, 10, 24, 25, 28, 33), so people can better understand what they should expect from their insurer – and when their insurer might be falling short.

    These proposed reforms aim to create more standardised insurance products across the industry. But they could have gone further. The report didn’t go as far as recommending a fully standardised insurance product that all insurers would have to offer.

    Making insurance products more standardised could make them easier to compare.
    DC Studio/Shutterstock

    As the Financial Rights Legal Centre has argued, standardisation is vital to untangling the “confusopoly” that leaves households unable to make informed decisions about the merits of different policies on the market without reading reams of product disclosure statements.

    Reform alone isn’t enough

    The inquiry’s final report recommends the government buy back some of the riskiest homes (recommendation 81), alongside much stronger government support for households looking to mitigate their own risks.

    But insurance reform alone isn’t enough to solve the problem that Australian households face in securing their housing amid worsening climate risk.

    The bigger overarching problem faced by Australia is one of climate change mitigation and adaption. While our country is exposed to relatively high levels of climate risk, much of this risk is borne by individuals through home ownership.

    With nearly half of all renter retirees living in poverty, Australians know owning their own home is a powerful way to secure their economic future. That’s why home ownership is referred to as part of the “third pillar” of the retirement income system (voluntary private savings), along with superannuation and the public pension.

    Reforming our insurance system can make important strides in providing households with better tools to manage climate risk.

    Only with stronger safety nets, and by grappling with risks at the societal level, can we counteract the extreme individualisation of climate risk that we experience here in Australia.



    Read more:
    Some New Zealand homes are becoming uninsurable because of natural disasters – but all may not be lost

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

    – ref. Rebuilding homes after a disaster is an opportunity to build back better – why isn’t the insurance industry on board? – https://theconversation.com/rebuilding-homes-after-a-disaster-is-an-opportunity-to-build-back-better-why-isnt-the-insurance-industry-on-board-241576

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: It would cost billions, but pay for itself over time. The economic case for air conditioning every Australian school

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney

    Later this week the government will receive the report of the year-long independent inquiry into its handling of the COVID pandemic.

    Among the issues it will have to contend with is air quality, in particular the air quality in high occupancy public buildings such as schools, aged-care facilities, shops, pubs and clubs.

    Many already have high quality air. High-fitration air conditioning (so-called mechanical ventilation) is standard in offices, hospitals and shopping centres.

    But not in schools. Almost all of our schools (98% in NSW) use windows.

    In Australia’s national construction code, this is called “natural ventilation” and it is allowed so long as the window, opening or door has a ventilating area of not less than 5% of the floor area, a requirement research suggests is insufficient.

    Windows, but no requirement to keep them open

    There’s no requirement to actually open the windows. School windows are often shut to keep in the heat in (or to keep out the heat in summer).

    The result can be very, very stuffy classrooms, far stuffier than we would tolerate in shopping centres. This matters for learning. Study after study has found that when air circulation gets low, people can’t concentrate well or learn well.

    And they get sick. Diseases such as flu, COVID and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) spread when viruses get recirculated instead of diluted with fresh air.

    The costs of the resulting sickness are borne by students, parents, teachers and education systems that need to find replacement staff to cover for teachers who are sick and parents who need to look after sick children at home.

    A pilot study prepared for the Australian Research Council Centre for Advanced Building Systems Against Airborne Infection (known as “Thrive”), suggests the entire cost of installing high-filtration air conditioning in every Australian school would be offset by the savings in reduced sickness.

    What classroom air is like

    The study carried out by the education architecture firm ARINA compared the ventilation of 60 so-called naturally ventilated schools in southern NSW and the Australian Capital Territory to that of a school in Sydney that happened to have been fitted with a Standards Australia-compliant air conditioning system to control aircraft noise.

    It used carbon dioxide levels to measure ventilation. Carbon dioxide is a good proxy for ventilation because its levels are determined by both the number of people breathing out concentrated carbon dioxide and the clean air available to dilute it.

    Under a normal load, defined as 26 students, one teacher and one assistant, measured levels of carbon dioxide in the air-conditioned school stayed below 750 parts per million (ppm) and were typically between 500 and 600 ppm.

    A reading of 700 ppm is particularly good. It means the people in the room breathe in less than 0.5% of air breathed out by others.

    But in “naturally ventilated” classrooms the reading often climbed to 2,500 ppm and sometimes more, within an hour of a class commencing.

    At 2,500 parts per million, people in the room are breathing in 5.5% of the air breathed out by others. This is also high enough to affect cognition, learning and behaviour, something that begins when carbon dioxide climbs above 1,200 ppm.

    Research suggests using ventilation to cut carbon dioxide to 700 ppm can cut the risk of airborne transmission of disease by a factor of two and up to five.

    The economic case for healthy air

    In 2023, Australia had 9,629 schools with 4,086,998 students.

    ARINA has previously estimated the cost of ensuring all of these schools are mechanically ventilated at A$2 billion per year over five years.

    Offsetting that cost would be less sickness. Documents released under freedom of information laws show Victoria spent $360.8 million on casual relief teachers between May 2023 and May 2024, 54% more than before COVID in 2019.

    The figures for other states are harder to get, but if Victoria (with 26% of Australia’s population) is spending $234 million more per year on casual relief teachers than before COVID, it is likely that Australia is spending $900 million per year more.

    Add in the teachers in non-government schools (37% of Australia’s total) and the potential saving from air conditioning schools exceeds $1 billion per year.

    Add in the other non-COVID viruses that would no longer be concentrated and circulated in classrooms and the potential savings grow higher still.

    Worth more than $1 billion per year

    And, in any event, the cost of replacement teachers is a woefully incomplete measure of the cost of illness in schools. Many ill teachers can’t be replaced because replacements aren’t available, making schools cancel lessons and combine classes, costing days, weeks and sometimes months of lost education.

    Also, the bacteria and viruses spread by recirculated air infect students as well as teachers, keeping students (and often their parents) at home as well.

    This suggests the costs per year of not air conditioning schools exceed $1 billion and may well approach or exceed $2 billion, which is the estimated cost per year over five years of air conditioning every Australian school.

    Natural ventilation was never a good idea for classrooms: it was cheap at the time, but not cheap at all when the costs are considered. Those costs happen to extend beyond disease to thermal comfort, energy use and the ability of students to concentrate.

    It’s time we gave students and teachers the kind of protections we demand for ourselves in our offices, our shopping centres and often our homes. It would soon pay for itself.

    Geoff Hanmer is a member of the executive of the Industry Training and Transformation Centre for Advanced Building Systems against Airborne Infection Transmission (known as Thrive) which receives funding from the Australian Research Council, QUT, the University of Melbourne and industry partners in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He is a director of the health expert body OzSAGE and the managing director of ARINA, an architectural consultancy.

    – ref. It would cost billions, but pay for itself over time. The economic case for air conditioning every Australian school – https://theconversation.com/it-would-cost-billions-but-pay-for-itself-over-time-the-economic-case-for-air-conditioning-every-australian-school-241465

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A technical fix to keep kids safe online? Here’s what happened last time Australia tried to make a ‘clean’ internet

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Houlihan, PhD Candidate in History, Monash University

    Prostock Studio / Shutterstock

    For anyone who has been online in Australia longer than a decade or so, the discussion around current proposals to set a minimum age for social media use might trigger a touch of déjà vu.

    Between 2007 and 2012, the Rudd–Gillard government’s efforts to implement a “Clean Feed” internet filter sparked very similar debates.

    Beset by technical problems and facing fierce opposition, the Clean Feed was eventually abandoned in favour of laws that already existed. Will the proposed social media ban face a similar fate?

    How to regulate cyberspace

    The question of how to regulate a cyberspace occupied by both adults and children has puzzled governments for a long time. Traditional controls on physical media are difficult to apply to online spaces, particularly when so much online media comes from overseas.

    As early as 1998, an Australian Broadcasting Authority report noted a key difficulty in online regulation. Namely, balancing adults’ access to legal online spaces and content with restrictions on childrens’ access to age-inappropriate material and bans on illegal content.

    The Clean Feed proposal attempted to address parental concerns about age-inappropriate websites. First raised in 2006 by Labor in opposition, it became a campaign promise at the 2007 election.

    The proposal aimed to solve the issue of overseas content. Australian authorities could already require website owners in Australia to take down illegal content, but they had no power over international sites.

    To address this, the Clean Feed would require internet service providers to run a government-created filter blocking all material given a “Refused” classification by the Australian Classification Board, which meant it was illegal. Labor argued the filter would protect children from “harmful and inappropriate” content, including child pornography and X-rated media. The Australian Communications and Media Authority created a “blacklist” of websites that the filter would block.

    Technical trouble

    The Clean Feed was plagued by technical issues. Trials in 2008 revealed it might slow internet speeds by up to 87%, block access to legal websites, and wouldn’t block all illegal content.

    While the effect on speeds was improved, the 2008 trials and others in 2009 revealed another problem: determined users could bypass the filter.

    There were also fears the blacklist would be used to block legal websites. While the government maintained the filter would only target illegal content, some questioned whether this was true.

    Internet service providers were already required to prevent access to content that had been given a Refused classification. This, along with unclear government statements about removing age-inappropriate material, led many to believe the blacklist could be more far-reaching.

    The government also planned to keep the list secret, on the grounds that a published list could become a guide for finding illegal material.

    The blacklist

    In 2009, the whistleblowing website Wikileaks published a list of sites blacklisted in Denmark. The government banned those pages of Wikileaks, and in response Wikileaks published what it said was the Australian government blacklist. (The government denied it was the actual blacklist.)

    Newspapers noted that around half the websites on the published list were not related to child pornography.

    Wikileaks published what it claimed was the government’s planned ‘blacklist’ of websites, along with a rationale for publishing the list.
    Wikileaks

    The alleged blacklist also contained legal content, including Wikipedia pages, YouTube links, and even the website of a Queensland dentist. This lent weight to fears the filter would block more than just illegal websites.

    More debates emerged surrounding how the Refused classification category was applied offline as well as on the internet.

    In January 2010, the Australian Sex Party reported claims from pornography studios that customs officials had confiscated material featuring female ejaculation (as an “abhorrent depiction” or form of urination) and small-breasted adult women (who might appear to be minors). Many questioned whether these should be banned, and if such depictions would be added to the blacklist – including members of hacker-activist group Anonymous.

    Operation Titstorm and the end of the Clean Feed

    While Anonymous members had already protested the Clean Feed, this new information sparked a new protest action dubbed Operation Titstorm.

    On February 10 2010, activists targeted several government websites. The Australian Parliament site was down for three days. Protesters also mass-emailed politicians and their staff the kinds of pornography set to be blocked by the filter.

    While Operation Titstorm gained media attention, other digital activists (such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and other members of Anonymous) criticised its illegal tactics. Many dismissed the protest as juvenile.

    In February 2010, hacker-activists from Anonymous launched denial-of-service attacks and email campaigns in protest of proposed internet filters.
    WIkipedia

    However, one participant argued that many protesters were children, who had used these methods because “kids and teenagers don’t really get the chance to voice their opinions”. The protesters may have been the very people the Clean Feed was supposed to protect.

    The government abandoned the Clean Feed in 2012 and used existing legislation to require internet service providers to block INTERPOL’s “worst of” child abuse list. It remains to be seen whether the social media minimum age will similarly crumble under the weight of controversy and be rendered redundant by existing legislation.

    The same, but different

    The Clean Feed tried to balance the rights of adults to access legal material with protecting children from age-inappropriate content and making cyberspace safer for them. In a sense, it did this by regulating adults.

    The filter limited the material adults could access. Given it was government-created and mandatory, it also decided for parents what content was age-appropriate for their children.

    The current proposal to set a minimum age for social media flips this solution by determining what online spaces children can occupy. Similar to the filter, it also makes this decision on parents’ behalf.

    The Clean Feed saga reveals some of the difficulties of policing the internet. It also reminds us that anxiety about what Australian youth can interact with online is nothing new – and is unlikely to go away.

    Rebecca Houlihan 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. A technical fix to keep kids safe online? Here’s what happened last time Australia tried to make a ‘clean’ internet – https://theconversation.com/a-technical-fix-to-keep-kids-safe-online-heres-what-happened-last-time-australia-tried-to-make-a-clean-internet-241371

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Genome sequencing developed to trace COVID is now protecting babies in intensive care from infectious diseases

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rhys Thomas White, Scientist, Genomics and Bioinformatics, ESR

    Getty Images

    Anyone who has spent time inside a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) knows it’s intense.

    For the tiny babies cared for in these wards, any infection could prove fatal. Great care is taken to prevent the spread of pathogens, but outbreaks still occur.

    Traditionally, detecting outbreaks within a NICU has been reactive – only after multiple babies fall ill at the same time.

    Our research is advancing the use of whole-genome sequencing technologies to detect outbreaks early and stamp out bacteria before they threaten more babies.

    From reactive to proactive

    NICU outbreak surveillance usually involves monitoring rates of illness and identifying spikes and long-term trends that may point to a pathogen circulating on the ward.

    When a potential outbreak is identified, bacteria may be cultured and retrospectively sequenced to determine if they can be linked to a shared source or transmission on the ward.

    Wellington Regional Hospital has changed its approach to infection surveillance in the NICU. Rather than waiting for infants to fall ill, they are using the same sequencing technology we developed at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) for genomic contact tracking during the COVID pandemic.

    Infants in the unit have diagnostic swab samples taken as part of routine practice. If any key bacteria are cultured from these samples, they are sequenced promptly to identify possible transmission events in near real time. This allows us to monitor the situation closely and respond quickly to emerging outbreaks.

    Genome sequencing allows NICU teams to monitor infectious bacteria before babies fall ill.
    Getty Images

    Because not all infants carrying a particular bacterial strain will experience a severe infection, this proactive approach can detect an outbreak before any babies fall ill.

    And because whole-genome sequencing decodes the entire genetic makeup of bacteria, it also provides the NICU team with information on how pathogens are related to each other. This allows them to differentiate one-off cases imported to the unit from any circulating within it.

    This level of detail allows for precise infection monitoring and fast, informed decisions on outbreak control.

    A case study

    This shift was recently tested when proactive genomic surveillance showed two infants in the NICU had eye infections caused by the same organism, an uncommon strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

    MRSA is notorious for its resistance to common antibiotics, making it particularly dangerous in hospitals.

    The onsite sequencing showed the two cases were likely linked. The priorities were to establish whether other infants were affected and limit the pathogen’s spread as quickly as possible. Screening of infants in the NICU found six more carrying the same strain of MRSA (though none with serious illness).

    This meant these infants could be isolated rapidly and the outbreak contained before any others developed a significant infection. ESR’s experience as genomic contact tracers helped establish how these infections spread in the unit.

    An outbreak response takes up resources and involves multiple steps, from the initial confirmation of the infection and its transmission route to communication with parents.

    This proactive approach to infection surveillance provides an early-warning system. It means the NICU team can be confident an outbreak is underway and act quickly to contain it.

    MRSA in New Zealand

    The power of genome sequencing extends beyond immediate outbreak control.

    By comparing the genomic data generated in the lab to that collected in national surveillance projects, our team was able to show the strain that caused the eye infections may have emerged in the early 1990s.

    This strain has slowly accumulated the genes required to evade first-choice antibiotics, underpinning the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in Aotearoa New Zealand.

    We also highlighted the power of genomics to reveal connections when we found the MRSA strain causing illness in the NICU was related to bacteria collected from cattle. This discovery underscores the concept of “One Health” – the idea that human health, animal health and environmental health are inextricably linked.

    The data suggest bacteria from a cow milk tank and from babies in a hospital may have shared a common ancestor at some point.

    Future focus

    As we continue to unravel the complex world of microbes, tools like whole-genome sequencing offer hope in the ongoing battle against infectious diseases. The work at Wellington Regional Hospital’s NICU is just the beginning.

    From protecting our most vulnerable newborns to uncovering unlikely connections between farm animals and hospital patients, genomic technology is changing how we combat infectious diseases.

    As this technology continues to evolve, it promises to play an increasingly crucial role in safeguarding public health, one DNA sequence at a time.

    In the face of growing antibiotic resistance and emerging pathogens, this proactive, genomics-based approach to infection control may well be our best defence.

    We would like to acknowledge the contributions by Max Bloomfield and the teams at Awanui Labs, and Emma Voss and team at Livestock Improvement Corporation.

    Rhys White received a travel bursary from Oxford Nanopore Technologies and a travel grant from the UK Microbiology Society.

    David Winter and Suzanne Manning 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. Genome sequencing developed to trace COVID is now protecting babies in intensive care from infectious diseases – https://theconversation.com/genome-sequencing-developed-to-trace-covid-is-now-protecting-babies-in-intensive-care-from-infectious-diseases-240299

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What are executive function delays? Research shows they’re similar in ADHD and autism

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney

    ABO Photography/Shutterstock

    Neurodevelopmental conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism affect about one in ten children. These conditions impact learning, behaviour and development.

    Executive function delays are core to challenges people with neurodevelopmental conditions experience. This includes skills such as paying attention, switching attention, controlling impulses, planning, organising and problem-solving.

    These skills are important for learning and long-term development. They have been linked with future occupational, social, academic and mental health outcomes. Children with improved executive function skills and supports for these skills do better long term.

    Decades of studies have described how difficulties in attention and impulse control underpin ADHD. Meanwhile, difficulties with switching attention and flexibility of thinking have been proposed to underpin autism.

    As a result, different supports and interventions developed for different neurodevelopmental conditions target these skills. It sets up a system where a diagnosis is made first, then a set of supports is provided based on that diagnosis.

    But our recent study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, shows executive function problems are similar across all neurodevelopmental conditions. Understanding these common needs could lead to better access to supports before waiting for a specific diagnosis.

    Our study found more similarities than differences

    We looked at 180 studies, over 45 years, that compared executive function skills across two or more neurodevelopmental conditions.

    We brought the research together for all neurodevelopmental conditions that have been defined by diagnostic manuals, including ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, communication disorders and intellectual disabilities.

    Surprisingly, we found most neurodevelopmental conditions showed very similar delays in their executive skills.

    Children with ADHD showed difficulties with attention and impulse control, for example, but so did children with autism, communication and specific learning conditions.

    There were very few differences between each neurodevelopmental condition and the type of executive function delay.

    This suggests executive function delay is best considered as a common difficulty for all children with neurodevelopmental conditions. All of these children could benefit from similar supports to improve executive skills.

    But supports have become siloed

    For decades, research has failed to integrate findings across conditions. This has led to siloed research and practices across the education, health and disability sectors.

    Our data showed a gradual shift in the type of conditions that have been studied since 1980. In the earlier days, as a percentage, there were a far greater proportion of studies conducted on tic disorders, such as Tourette’s syndrome. In the past ten years, autism has been of greater focus.

    This means research and practice is also siloed, based on the focus on funding and interest in the community. Some groups miss out from good science and practice when they become less visible in the political landscape.

    This has led to a skewed support system where only children with a specific diagnosis can be offered certain interventions. It also reduces access to supports if families can’t access diagnostic services, which can be particularly difficult in regional and rural communities.

    Due to these diagnosis-driven research practices, there are now assessment services, guidelines and treatments that are recommended for autism. These are usually independent from and not offered to children with ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, communication disorders or intellectual disabilities despite a significant overlap in children’s needs.

    How does this affect access to support

    Families often find it hard to get the help they need. They often describe the assessment and support process as confusing, with long wait times and lots of barriers.

    We have previously shown caregivers often attend assessment and support services with a broad range of needs, but leave with many needs unaddressed.

    Recent national child mental health, autism and ADHD guidelines call for more integrated supports for children. But most services are not well set up to do this. It will take time to drive such system change if this is to be achieved.

    Why we need integrated research

    More integrated research will lead to more cohesive support systems across education, health and disability for all children in need.

    Studies show, for example, that many risk factors (genetic and environmental) are common to all neurodevelopmental conditions. These include a broad overlap of risk genes that are the same between conditions, and common environmental factors that influence development in the womb, such as the use of certain drugs, stress and a significant immune response.

    Other studies show how most children diagnosed with one neurodevelopmental condition will also be diagnosed with others.

    But gaps remain. While we know certain stimulant medications can work well for ADHD, for example, we have less information about how they might help children with other neurodevelopmental conditions who have attention difficulties.

    Unlike our knowledge about social supports for children with autism, we don’t have much research on how we can help children with ADHD with their social needs.

    We should take a wider view of children’s needs

    It’s important for families to be aware that if their child meets criteria for one neurodevelopmental condition, it is very likely that they will meet criteria for other neurodvelopmental conditions. They will likely have many needs relevant to other conditions.

    It is worth asking clinical services about broader needs beyond a diagnosis. This should include developmental, mental and physical health needs.

    It is also important to consider that many common interventions may have potential to support all children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

    This is an important issue for government. Reviews are under way for supporting the needs of people with autism, intellectual disability and ADHD.

    It’s time to establish more integrated systems, supports and strategies for all people with neurodevelopmental conditions for their home, school, play and work.

    Adam Guastella receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council for research into neurodevelopmental conditions. He is director of the Clinic for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Research and scientific chair of Neurodevelopment Australia, a scientific group seeking to improve the knowledge and supports for all people with neurodevelopmental conditions.

    Kelsie Boulton 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 executive function delays? Research shows they’re similar in ADHD and autism – https://theconversation.com/what-are-executive-function-delays-research-shows-theyre-similar-in-adhd-and-autism-238760

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How light helped shape our skin colour, eyes and curly hair

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University

    Pictrider/Shutterstock

    Welcome to our ‘Light and health’ series. Over six articles, we look at how light affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways.

    For most of our evolutionary history, human activity has been linked to daylight. Technology has liberated us from these ancient sleep-wake cycles, but there is evidence sunlight has left and continues to leave its mark.

    Not only do we still tend to be awake in the daytime and sleep at night, we can thank light for many other aspects of our biology.

    Light may have driven our ancestors to walk upright on two legs. Light helps explain the evolution of our skin colour, why some of us have curly hair, and even the size of our eyes.

    As we’ll explore in future articles in this series, light helps shape our mood, our immune system, how our gut works, and much more. Light can make us sick, tell us why we’re sick, then treat us.

    Million of years of evolutionary history means humans are still very much creatures of the light.

    We stood up, then walked out of Africa

    The first modern humans evolved in warm African climates. And reducing exposure to the harsh sunlight is one explanation for why humans began to walk upright on two legs. When we stand up and the Sun is directly overhead, far less sunshine hits our body.

    Curly hair may have also protected us from the hot Sun. The idea is that it provides a thicker layer of insulation than straight hair to shield the scalp.

    Early Homo sapiens had extra Sun protection in the form of strongly pigmented skin. Sunlight breaks down folate (vitamin B9), accelerates ageing and damages DNA. In our bright ancestral climates, dark skin protected against this. But this dark skin still admitted enough UV light to stimulate vital production of vitamin D.

    However, when people colonised temperate zones, with weaker light, they repeatedly evolved lighter skin, via different genes in different populations. This happened rapidly, probably within the past 40,000 years.

    With reduced UV radiation nearer the poles, less pigmentation was needed to protect sunlight from breaking down our folate. A lighter complexion also let in more of the scarce light so the body could make vitamin D. But there was one big drawback: less pigmentation meant less protection against Sun damage.

    How our skin pigmentation adapted with migration patterns and changing light.

    This evolutionary background contributes to Australia having among the highest rates of skin cancer in the world.

    Our colonial history means more than 50% of Australians are of Anglo-Celtic descent, with light skin, transplanted into a high-UV environment. Little wonder we’re described as “a sunburnt country”.

    Sunlight has also contributed to variation in human eyes. Humans from high latitudes have less protective pigment in their irises. They also have larger eye sockets (and presumably eyeballs), maybe to admit more precious light.

    Again, these features make Australians of European descent especially vulnerable to our harsh light. So it’s no surprise Australia has unusually high rates of eye cancers.

    We cannot shake our body clock

    Our circadian rhythm – the wake-sleep cycle driven by our brains and hormones – is another piece of heavy evolutionary baggage triggered by light.

    Humans are adapted to daylight. In bright light, humans can see well and have refined colour vision. But we see poorly in dim light, and we lack senses such as sharp hearing or acute smell, to make up for it.

    Our nearest relatives (chimps, gorillas and orangutans) are also active during daylight and sleep at night, reinforcing the view that the earliest humans had similar diurnal behaviours.

    This lifestyle likely stretches further back into our evolutionary history, before the great apes, to the very dawn of primates.

    The earliest mammals were generally nocturnal, using their small size and the cover of darkness to hide from dinosaurs. However, the meteorite impact that wiped out these fearsome reptiles allowed some mammalian survivors, notably primates, to evolve largely diurnal lifestyles.

    If we inherited our daylight activity pattern directly from these early primates, then this rhythm would have been part of our lineage’s evolutionary history for nearly 66 million years.

    This explains why our 24-hour clock is very difficult to shake; it’s so deeply ingrained in our evolutionary history.

    Successive improvements in lighting technology have increasingly liberated us from dependence on daylight: fire, candles, oil and gas lamps, and finally electric lighting. So we can theoretically work and play at any time.

    However, our cognitive and physical performance deteriorates when our intrinsic daily cycles are disturbed, for instance through sleep deprivation, shift work or jet lag.

    Futurists have already considered the circadian rhythms required for life on Mars. Luckily, a day on Mars is around 24.7 hours, so similar to our own. This slight difference should be the least of the worries for the first intrepid martian colonists.

    How would humans cope on Mars? At least they wouldn’t have to worry too much about their body clocks.
    NikoNomad/NASA/Shutterstock

    Light is still changing us

    In the past 200 years or so, artificial lighting has helped to (partly) decouple us from our ancestral circadian rhythms. But in recent decades, this has come at a cost to our eyesight.

    Many genes associated with short-sightedness (myopia) have become more common in just 25 years, a striking example of rapid evolutionary change in the human gene pool.

    And if you have some genetic predisposition to myopia, reduced exposure to natural light (and spending more time in artificial light) makes it more likely. These noticeable changes have occurred within many people’s lifetimes.

    Light will no doubt continue to shape our biology over the coming millennia, but those longer-term effects might be difficult to predict.

    Mike Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation

    – ref. How light helped shape our skin colour, eyes and curly hair – https://theconversation.com/how-light-helped-shape-our-skin-colour-eyes-and-curly-hair-237240

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Do electric cars greatly increase the average mass of cars on the road? Not in Australia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Smit, Adjunct Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney

    Karolis Kavolelis/Shutterstock

    Statements have been circulating online, including leading news platforms, that battery electric cars will greatly increase the average mass of the on-road fleet. This claim is used as an argument against these cars.

    Even the Australian motoring organisation NRMA has posed the question: “EVs are heavy. Are they safe on our roads and carparks?” (It does say the answer is yes.)

    The stated reason for such concerns is generally that electric car batteries are heavy and increase overall vehicle mass. A heavier vehicle needs more energy to drive it and so will typically increase emissions. A greater mass also reduces traffic safety and could have damaging impacts on parking spaces and roads.

    A critical review released yesterday took a closer look at these claims to see if they hold true in Australia. It finds these claims don’t stack up in a country where sales of fossil-fuelled (petrol, diesel, LPG) vehicles skew towards large and heavy utes and SUVs.

    When adjusted for actual top 10 vehicles sold and using realistic mass values, the average mass of battery electric and fossil-fuelled cars differs by just 68 kilograms. That difference is not significant, especially because electric cars are much more energy-efficient.

    Oversimplifying a complex topic

    The claims being made often oversimplify a complex reality. They tell only part of the story, which can be misleading.

    For instance, internal combustion engine cars have consistently increased in mass over time. Known as car obesity, this fact is often unfairly ignored in comparisons.

    Similarly, these statements pretend to know how complex consumer behaviour will respond to future availability of battery electric cars and their fast-changing and improving features. Often, the results of overseas studies cannot be directly applied to different Australian conditions.

    4 points of contention

    Our report identifies and unpacks four main points of contention.

    First, there are different ways to define and compare the mass of battery electric and combustion engine cars. In practice, the choice is rather arbitrary. Depending on the method, the comparison may be neither adequate nor accurate.

    Often the comparison is made between similar or similarly sized battery electric and combustion engine cars. Or electric cars can be compared only to an equivalent non-electric version of models such as the VW Golf. Another variation is to simply compare the average mass of a large range of cars currently on sale, without considering the impact of sales volumes.

    Second, a common argument is that batteries are heavy, so electric cars are heavier than fossil-fuelled cars. But this is simplistic – it’s not only the battery that matters.

    Offsetting the extra battery mass, other parts of the electric car such as their motors are smaller and lighter. They can cut its mass by up to 50%.

    And actual extra battery mass itself depends on a range of factors. Battery chemistry, battery size and energy storage capacity (which determines how often a car needs recharging) all affect the mass. Indeed, battery mass varies between 100 and 900 kilograms for cars.

    Third, car obesity has greatly and consistently increased fossil-fuelled car mass. Unless we include this rise in car obesity, the comparison with battery electric cars tells only half the story.

    Finally, it is challenging to accurately predict the mass impacts of electric cars. A common assumption is that future vehicle buyers’ behaviour does not change when switching to battery electric cars. This assumption seems unlikely and again oversimplifies the comparison.

    For instance, market availability, marketing focus, purchase price and performance characteristics will largely guide buyers’ decisions. These considerations are all highly dynamic. They are changing significantly and fast.

    So how do they compare in Australia?

    A proper comparison needs, at least, to include realistic vehicle mass and sales data. Our study compares the differences in vehicle mass between the top ten best-selling cars for both battery electric and fossil-fuelled vehicles in Australia in 2022, as shown below.

    Masses of the top 10 most popular new battery electric (top) and fossil-fuelled (bottom) passenger cars sold in Australia in 2022. Circle sizes represent sales volumes. The top-selling internal combustion engine car is the Toyota Hilux (64,391 sold). For pure battery electric cars it’s the Tesla Model 3 (10,877 sold). Vehicle mass is defined as ‘mass in running order’, adjusted for average vehicle occupancy.
    Author provided, Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER)

    Currently sold top 10 models of battery electric cars cluster more at the heavy end, but the most popular cars are relatively light. The top 10 models of fossil-fuelled cars have a larger spread in mass. Yet, when it comes to sales, most are relatively heavy SUVs or utes.

    When ranked by popularity and compared, battery electric cars are not always heavier. They can be almost 300kg (12%) lighter to almost 800kg (55%) heavier than the corresponding fossil-fuelled car. Importantly, the overall difference in the average mass of the two categories when adjusted for sales is just 68kg (about 3% of total vehicle mass).

    This small difference is insignificant in terms of energy and emission impacts. A more important factor here is the superior energy efficiency of battery electric vehicles.

    How will they compare in future?

    Clearly, future sales profiles may differ from current sales profiles. The current profile may be largely defined by a certain type of customer (such as a high-income early adopter). They might not be typical of mainstream consumers in coming years.

    Buyers’ future behaviour is uncertain and hard to predict. It would depend on the effectiveness of (new) policy measures such as Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, the actual vehicles offered for sale, marketing efforts by car suppliers and possibly also cultural changes.

    Any shifts in buyer behaviour could greatly influence the car fleet’s average mass. They could continue the current trend towards larger and heavier vehicles, or shift to smaller and lighter vehicles.

    But this is the point: the impacts of electrification of passenger vehicles on average mass are highly uncertain. Statements on the matter are often speculative and can be unfairly biased by the methods used.

    In markets where heavy petrol and diesel vehicles dominate car sales, such as Australia and New Zealand, current evidence suggests increased electric car sales are unlikely to greatly increase average vehicle mass. In fact, average mass could actually go down as cheaper and lighter electric cars go on sale here.

    Vehicle mass remains important

    Importantly, the report is not downplaying the importance of vehicle mass for transport emission abatement.

    In previous research it was estimated that only a passenger vehicle fleet dominated by small and light battery electric vehicles may get Australia close to achieving the net-zero emissions target in 2050.

    To meet the target, it is thus important to reverse the trend of increasing car obesity, for all cars. But vehicle mass should not be used as an argument against electrification.

    Robin Smit is the founding Research Director at the Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER) consultancy.

    – ref. Do electric cars greatly increase the average mass of cars on the road? Not in Australia – https://theconversation.com/do-electric-cars-greatly-increase-the-average-mass-of-cars-on-the-road-not-in-australia-240555

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why do some schools still force girls to wear skirts or dresses?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kayla Mildren, PhD Candidate in the politics of school uniform policies, Griffith University

    A Queensland tribunal has ruled it is not discriminatory for a school to require girls to wear a skirt at formal events.

    The private high school said girls needed to wear skirts for occasions including excursions, ceremonies and class photographs.

    A female student had complained to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal about different treatment for boys and girls.

    While the tribunal acknowledged there was “different treatment between the sexes”, it found there was not enough evidence to show this was “unfavourable”.

    Why are female students still made to wear skirts and dresses? And why is this a problem?

    Who decides?

    In Australia, uniform rules are largely determined by individual schools.

    Schools have some obligations to their communities, governing bodies (such as state education departments and independent school peak bodies) and anti-discrimination legislation.

    For example, Victoria’s Education Department requires policies to include an exemption process and “support inclusion”.

    But ultimately, it’s up to the school to decide how their uniform looks, who can access different items, where and when items may be worn, and what non-uniform items are regulated.

    School uniforms are ultimately decided by the school.
    Monkey Business Images/ Shutterstock



    Read more:
    No mullets, no mohawks, no ‘awkwardly contrasting colours’: what are school policies on hair and why do they matter so much?

    The pants question

    Pants occupy an odd space here. For public schools, most state education departments require girls to have the option of pants (which can include shorts or trousers), for both sport and regular uniforms.

    This is a relatively new standard. For example, Queensland introduced this in 2019 and New South Wales allowed it from mid-2018.

    Often, these changes were prompted by sustained campaigning by families and lobby groups.

    But private schools do not have the same obligations. Some are starting to update their policies and allow girls to wear shorts or pants if they choose.

    Others, however, have been met with conservative backlash when they do.

    So, when can girls wear pants?

    Girls’ access to pants is not as straightforward as a school including them within the uniform policy.

    As researchers note, simply allowing girls to wear pants may not be enough. If school cultures are not welcoming, or if the design is uncomfortable, girls may still avoid them.

    Or, as can be the case with private schools, a school may offer pants on a limited basis, such as only during winter. Alternatively, there may be a special order process for pants, making them difficult to obtain.

    Or schools may permit their use, except on special occasions such as photo days or excursions, like the Queensland case.

    Why does it matter?

    The skirt itself isn’t the issue. The element of choice is.

    As researchers note, skirts and dresses are linked to outdated expectations of modesty and femininity. They can be targets of fetish and harassment, and entrench binary ideals of gender.

    Flexible policies support gender-diverse youth and enable all students to select uniform items based on their body rather than their gender. Research shows offering students pants or shorts can also promote physical activity.

    These school uniform debates are also taking place amid concerns about misogyny and harassment of female students and teachers in schools and concern for queer young people’s wellbeing.

    The longer gender-normativity is baked into school policies, the longer students are denied their right to equitable education. And the longer that schools promote the idea of “girl” and “boy” as opposite and concrete categories, the harder it will be to combat schoolyard misogyny and queerphobia.

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

    – ref. Why do some schools still force girls to wear skirts or dresses? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-schools-still-force-girls-to-wear-skirts-or-dresses-241484

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: View from The Hill: We have bigger issues around freedom of speech than Lidia Thorpe’s noisy protest

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

    King Charles – as the old-fashioned saying goes – didn’t come down in the last shower. He’s unlikely to have been fazed by the outburst from independent senator Lidia Thorpe, who disrupted Monday’s Parliament House reception for the royals.

    And neither, frankly, should anyone else.

    Thorpe, clad in a possum-skin cloak, shouted: “You are not our king.”

    “You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty in this country. You are a genocidalist.”

    “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.”

    The conduct of Thorpe, who used to be with the Greens and is an outspoken advocate of ‘Blak sovereignty’, was rude, albeit absolutely in character. She acts up in the parliament regularly.

    As a senator, Thorpe, who was escorted out of the Great Hall, still yelling, had the right to be at the reception. And it is not the only time a parliamentarian has created a fuss when a dignitary was visiting. In 2003, Greens senator Bob Brown shouted out during the address to the joint houses by US President George W. Bush.

    While not at all condoning Thorpe’s exhibitionism, she wasn’t inciting violence. Was she bringing our parliament into disrepute? Sadly, many parliamentarians do that all the time in less dramatic ways, as visitors to question time will tell you.

    Those muttering that perhaps there should be some parliamentary censure of Thorpe are misguided. As Senate Opposition leader Simon Birmingham pointed out on Tuesday, Thorpe “would probably revel in being censured by the Senate”. The one thing she wants is publicity.

    Thorpe pushes her right to air her views to the limit, but her antics are not at the sharp end of the current “free speech” debate in this country. There are two, very different and much more important, fronts in that debate.

    One relates to the pro-Palestine demonstrations. The other is the government’s attempt to crack down on misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms.

    Those on the political right tend to play down worries about limiting free expression when it comes to the pro-Palestinian demonstrations. On the other hand, they are worried about putting more restrictions on the internet. Those on the left tend to support the battle against misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms, and are less worried about its free speech impact.

    Increasing antisemitism has fuelled calls for the ubiquitous pro-Palestinian protests to be curbed in some way.

    Critics highlight the hate preached on occasion; they say the demonstrations make Jewish Australians feel unsafe, disrupt citizens’ weekends, and are a drag on police resources.

    What are the relevant rights here, and their comparative weights? The right to free expression and protest. The right to feel safe. The right for people to go about their business without undue inconvenience. The tradeoffs are much more complicated than any questions thrown up by Thorpe’s behaviour.

    The number and regularity of the pro-Palestine demonstrations have driven some critics to argue enough is enough. That is not convincing, and nor is the argument that these protests soak up police resources. Unfortunately, these are the costs of preserving the right to protest.

    Much more troubling is that these protests can foster hate and make people feel threatened in their own country. Here balances must be carefully struck, and that’s hard.

    Incitement laws must be enforced. Beyond that, demonstrations have to be managed, so that the protesters’ right to have their say and the safety of others, especially a vulnerable section of the population, are both preserved.

    So for example, it’s important university campuses can have protests (as they always have). But “encampments” on campuses have been properly condemned and should not be allowed.

    Even more complex in the free speech debate is how to deal with disinformation (the deliberate spread of false information) and misinformation (where the misleading is not deliberate).

    The government presently has a bill in parliament seeking to combat misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms. It is a reworked version of a much-attacked earlier draft.

    In her second reading speech on the bill last month, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said:

    To protect freedom of speech, the bill [which does not apply to “professional news content”] sets a high threshold for the type of misinformation and disinformation that digital platforms must combat on their services – that is, it must be reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive and reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.

    The harm must have significant and far-reaching consequences for Australian society, or severe consequences for an individual in Australia.

    Among the “serious harms” in the bill is “harm to the operation or integrity of an electoral or referendum process in Australia”.

    The struggle against misinformation and disinformation on digital platforms will always be a losing one. The reach is just too vast.

    But more particularly, there is also the problem that what is “misinformation” and “disinformation” can be less clear than one might think. On occasion, what seems wrong at the time turns out to be correct later.

    Beyond those obvious points, some material so-labelled is not one or the other but disputed information.

    For example, proponents of the Voice have blamed its loss at least partly on misinformation and disinformation. However, much of this involved highly contested claims, especially about an unpredictable future.

    What this legislation does is push as much responsibility as it can, backed by a regulatory framework, onto the platforms to do the censoring of misinformation and disinformation, thus trying to avoid constitutional issues of implied freedom of political communication.

    Human rights lawyer Frank Brennan has written, “The real challenge for Minister Rowland is that debating such a detailed bill without the backstop of a constitutional or statutory bill of rights recognising the right to freedom of expression, there are no clear guard rails for getting the balance right for ‘the freedom of expression that is so fundamental to our democracy’.”

    All things considered, It is hard to see the bill clearing its obstacle course before the election.

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

    – ref. View from The Hill: We have bigger issues around freedom of speech than Lidia Thorpe’s noisy protest – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-we-have-bigger-issues-around-freedom-of-speech-than-lidia-thorpes-noisy-protest-241906

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Tech can help kids connect with nature and go outdoors – here are tips to make it work

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kellie Vella, Postdoctoral researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, Queensland University of Technology

    RasaBasa/Shutterstock

    Young children’s lives are increasingly spent indoors. They have less access to green spaces, their parents are concerned about safety, and there’s also the draw of digital entertainment. This shift away from the natural world has been evocatively named “the extinction of experience”.

    By being in green spaces, children benefit in many ways, including greater physical activity and improved concentration and self-control. The outdoors is also good for children’s learning. Benefits such as these have fuelled the rise of forest schools and the integration of nature play in early childhood education.

    The things that play the biggest role in limiting children’s time in nature are urbanisation and parental attitudes. Despite this, digital devices are often blamed for keeping kids indoors.

    Digital entertainment is widely perceived as addictive and detrimental. While the concept of screen time is contested, most Australian children are exceeding the current recommended guidelines.

    Our research took a different approach, asking: could digital technologies be designed to foster nature connection? After looking at studies of digital technologies used by children aged eight years and under, we found a wide range of ways technology can help children find their way back into the great outdoors.

    Being in nature

    The ways children connect to nature go through several phases: “being in nature, being with nature, and being for nature”. Key experiences that boost this connection include free time in nature, seeing others like oneself in natural settings, recording nature experiences, and gaining confidence and a sense of agency outdoors.

    We found technologies that help children to

    • have social and playful experiences outdoors
    • discover nature
    • show their care for and learn about other species and the environment, and
    • focus their creative and artistic abilities on the world around them.

    The most commonly used technology were digital cameras in various forms: handheld, GoPros, or built into smartphones or prototype devices.

    Case studies from all around the world show how digital imagery opens doors into the natural world. In São Paulo, Brazil, photography helped children notice urban nature they had overlooked. In the United States, it allowed them to collect images of species to learn about.

    In Australia, children took photos in parks for creative manipulation later, while in Finland, an augmented reality “forest elf” encouraged imaginative nature exploration that children could photograph. In Italy, the ABBOT prototype used a screenless camera device linked to a tablet application, enabling nature exploration without the distraction of screens.

    Julle, the augmented reality ‘forest elf’ used in the Finnish study.
    Kumpulainen et al. (2020), CC BY

    Young citizen scientists

    Nature photography is also a gateway to citizen science. Apps like QuestaGame, though not a subject of our research, bridge the appeal of photography and the game design of Pokémon Go. The goal of the game is to collect images of species for science.

    Our study found one citizen science project with seven- and eight-year-old children text logging seashore species they found. While the youngest children needed parental support to do this, they were reportedly the most enthusiastic.

    Sound technologies can also help connect kids with nature. The Ambient Birdhouse plays nature videos in the home so that children are sensitised to bird sounds when outside. Another tool, the Eko nature sound collector, pairs with an app to let children manipulate sounds they’ve collected outdoors.

    Like photography, sound technologies are an entry point to noticing the natural world. And children can use these even if they can’t yet read.

    How can we use tech to connect children with nature?

    There are many ways to appropriate existing technologies and make new ones to help children connect with nature. Parents and educators can use accessible technologies like cameras, and applications such as QuestaGame, including their schools-oriented challenge.

    To add mystery and excitement by having to look at the images later – much like with film cameras – parents can cover up the screen of a smartphone or digital camera. (A few inches of painter’s masking tape can do the trick.)

    Going out to check an automatic nature camera can also be exciting. It can even turn into a daily ritual. These cameras are available both commercially and DIY. To find the best places to put them, children can engage in backyard experimentation, adding another dimension to this activity.

    To further encourage their children’s creative and scientific learning, parents can help children make digital stories out of nature photos, or learn about species together.

    Finally, tech developers can use all this evidence to design dedicated tech tools for children to use in nature. These designs should be easy for young children to use, engage more senses than sight, and encourage outdoor play, wonder and care for nature.

    If such technologies are designed in collaboration with children, families and educators, they have the chance to be widely embraced, both at home and in the classroom.

    Our work shows there are ways to use technology to build kids’ interest in the outdoors. By listening to parents’ concerns about addiction to smart devices and children’s safety, we can ensure a world where children play outdoors freely, without veering towards surveillance.

    Kellie Vella is a Research Fellow with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

    Madeleine Dobson is an Associate Investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

    – ref. Tech can help kids connect with nature and go outdoors – here are tips to make it work – https://theconversation.com/tech-can-help-kids-connect-with-nature-and-go-outdoors-here-are-tips-to-make-it-work-240442

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –