Umpires’ decisions often upset sports fans, especially during a close contest.
At most games, spectators boo loudly, coaches throw their hands up in frustration and players can yell or even physically intimidate officials.
It seems abusing umpires is acceptable. But why? It’s certainly not something generally tolerated in other workplaces.
Without umpires, games simply couldn’t go ahead.
That’s why we sought to shed light on the situation by researching what it’s really like to be an Australian rules umpire.
Not for the faint-hearted
Umpires (also called referees or match officials) apply the rules of their respective sports to ensure fair and safe competitions for all players.
They participate in training and accreditation programs to learn rules and apply them based on the demands of the game.
They need to be physically fit and position themselves appropriately around the playing field.
But many sport organisations are struggling to provide enough qualified officials at grassroots levels. Between 1993 and 2010, there was a 28% decline in active sport officials in Australia.
Football Australia, soccer’s governing body here, boasts 11,000 officials but estimates around 4,200 leave their roles every year.
In many sports, teenagers are increasingly stepping in to umpire junior and senior games to back-fill shortages.
However, Australian rules football appears to be defying this trend – the number of community umpires surpassed 20,000 for the first time in 2024. This is an 18% increase in umpire registrations compared to 2023, largely driven by a 31% rise in registrations by women and girls.
Despite these record numbers, the Australian Football League (AFL), and many sports organisations including Rugby Australia and the A-League, are worried about retaining officials.
Our research focused particularly on what was happening in Australian rules football.
Abuse and even death threats
We surveyed 356 umpires across all levels of Australian rules football competition to examine their experiences of abuse.
Almost half reported receiving regular verbal abuse (name-calling, insults, swearing and threats). Worryingly, 21% said they had experienced physical abuse (pushing, hitting, or assault).
As one state-level umpire remarked:
Over time, you end up developing a thick skin.
Encouragingly, most umpires knew the process to officially report any abuse received, with more than half indicating they had formally reported at least one incident of abuse.
While many felt supported through the reporting process, only 62% were satisfied with the outcome.
As one state-league umpire recalled:
I was assaulted two years ago by a spectator. Lucky I was bigger than him. I was disappointed he only got a one-year suspension from attending games.
Further, a senior community football umpire commented:
I was threatened with my life this year and the league did nothing about it.
What can be done?
Many respondents commented on the need to support young umpires to have positive experiences.
One potential strategy is to make it clearer when officials are underage.
As one example, Netball Victoria provides a green band or scrunchie to any umpire under the age of 18 to promote respect from players, coaches and spectators.
Other codes could look to implement similar strategies.
Most of our responding umpires called for the introduction of tougher penalties in games and through tribunal systems.
Some called for clubs to be fined or spectators banned for repeated incidents of abuse.
Additionally, umpires felt clubs needed to take greater responsibility for the actions of players, coaches and spectators.
One umpire told us:
Cultural change needs to come from within clubs because top-down campaigns encouraging respect don’t change hearts and minds.
This could be in the form of creating a positive club culture and zero-tolerance abuse policies.
In our research, umpires said it was crucial that governing bodies communicated both the level of evidence required to report abuse, and how tribunals worked.
As younger officials may not know the process, having this information embedded in umpire training may help umpires feel more supported in reporting abuse.
Equally, appropriate penalties must be handed down to ensure umpires have faith in the reporting system.
While the number of Australian rules football umpires has increased in recent years, these numbers can also decrease quickly.
If we want to retain umpires for the medium and long-term, we need governing bodies such as the AFL to address the frequency and severity with which umpire abuse occurs.
As one umpire commented:
Cases of abuse need to have consequences, not just a slap on the wrist. Why would anyone want to go out and be abused for two hours?
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.
Each year, the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) reviews its pricing rules to ensure services funded under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) remain sustainable.
This year’s annual pricing review outlines changes that will take effect from July 1 2025.
Among the updates are changes to therapy pricing, travel reimbursement, and rural loadings. The NDIA says this will bring NDIS pricing in line with other government schemes and private health insurance.
But what do these changes mean for people outside the big cities?
adjusted therapy support rates, including a $10 per hour reduction for physiotherapists to $183.99 per hour.
travel reimbursement for therapists will be halved (from 100% to 50% of the hourly rate during any time spent travelling)
price loadings for some rural and remote areas will be removed.
The NDIA justifies these decisions with a dataset that includes the average of hourly rates from Medicare, private health claims, and 13 other government programs.
Why pricing comparisons don’t always translate to rural services
While these comparisons might make sense for metropolitan clinics, they do not capture the realities of service delivery in rural and remote areas.
For example, allied health professionals such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists in cities can see multiple clients in a row at one location (although this isn’t always realistic or best practice in cities either).
In contrast, rural and remote providers may drive hundreds of kilometres between appointments. Much of their time, including travel, planning, and follow-up, is essential but often unbilled.
So while $193.99 (soon $183.99) per hour for physiotherapy might look generous, it does not reflect what is left after factoring in travel and unpaid care coordination.
Disabilities are complex and often lifelong, so clinical support is time-consuming. However, that is something clinicians are passionate about – therapists so often squirm at the thought of billing our clients for anything other than direct clinical services.
The NDIA’s own data confirm most therapy providers are small operators. In fact, 90% are unregistered, and many serve fewer than five participants.
The result is a fragile “market”, particularly in towns with limited infrastructure. If pricing makes it unviable for local clinicians to offer services, the only remaining options may involve families travelling long distances or forgoing support entirely. This has knock-on effects for local economies and contributes to professional burnout and workforce shortages.
What this means for rural families
For families living in towns with limited services, travel is not optional. It is a lifeline. If providers cannot afford to travel, many people with disability simply go without.
Telepractice can be used in some clinical situations, but not all. The most effective kind of telepractice also includes support from local clinicians and coworkers, and ideally a mix of in-person and online consultations.
One family I worked with during my PhD research lived four hours from the nearest regional centre. After an 18-month wait, their child’s therapy appointment was cancelled twice due to workforce shortages. They eventually paid privately for a service in another state.
This story is not unusual. Many families said they did not necessarily want more funding; they just wanted support delivered in ways that worked for them. Being able to access help locally allowed their children to remain part of the school community and reduced pressure on carers already juggling other responsibilities. Clinicians, communities, and families are continuing to tell very similar stories.
It is essential clinicians are able to travel to meet with NDIS clients in regional areas. Shutterstock
Is there a better way?
My research found rural families preferred flexible models that blended telepractice with local capacity-building. These hybrid approaches worked well when supported by policy that allowed for coordination, community involvement, and some in-person time. They were not luxury add-ons. They were what made services possible.
There is also a long-term benefit in supporting local service ecosystems. When therapists can build relationships within a community, they are more likely to stay, collaborate with other professionals, and mentor early-career clinicians.
This helps reduce churn and provides continuity of care. However, with travel reimbursement and rural loadings cut, sustaining these models becomes more difficult.
What happens next?
The NDIA’s strategy includes a shift toward “differentiated pricing”, which could eventually support more tailored approaches. The Department of Social Services has also promised to offer “foundational supports” outside the NDIS, but it is currently unclear what the nature of these supports will be. Right now, though, rural communities are being asked to absorb the reduced funding and limited flexibility. Without further adjustment, these changes risk widening the gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan service access.
A single national price does not guarantee equal access. Equity comes from recognising and responding to different contexts. For rural and remote Australians living with disability, that recognition is long overdue.
Until then, it will be up to 7 million rural Australians to make it work for themselves in places where resources are already stretched thin.
I am a co-founder of Umbo Pty Ltd (an NDIS therapy provider which provides telepractice services)
Children’s play is essential for their cognitive, physical and social development. But in cities, spaces to play are usually separated, often literally fenced off, from the rest of urban life.
In our new study, we compare children’s use of such spaces in Auckland, New Zealand, and Venice, Italy. Our findings present a paradox: playgrounds built for safety can stifle creativity and mobility, while self-organising open spaces offer rich opportunities to explore and belong.
In Auckland, places such as Taumata Reserve are a testimony to contemporary playground design – grassy, shaded, equipped with slides and swings, and buffered from traffic. Such places are an oasis cherished by caregivers for the sense of perceived safety they provide.
Yet during our observations, we noted how these spaces function not necessarily as an oasis or a point for social encounter, but rather as isolated refuge islands, disconnected from the city’s everyday life. Children’s independent mobility and opportunities for diverse play activities remained limited and predefined.
Children in urban spaces in Venice are free to find their own spontaneous activities. Antonio Lara-Hernandez, CC BY-SA
Contrast this with Venice’s Santa Croce neighbourhood. Car-free streets and piazzas, such as Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio above, pulsate with life. We saw children play ball, draw on pavements, chase each other and even water plants. These spaces are shared inter-generational stages.
To compare children’s experience, we measured the diversity of activities (a proxy for creativity). Auckland’s Taumata Reserve scored just 1.46. In contrast, Venice scored 2.33, with more than 2,600 spontaneous acts in the streets, reflecting a child-led play culture.
Why this matters
Play is not a luxury. It is a fundamental necessity of life to understand, navigate and adapt to the complexities of the world.
From a deterministic perspective, contemporary Western cultures (such as in Europe and New Zealand) prescribe diverse benefits of play. This includes learning and developing resilience, spatial awareness and social skills.
In Auckland, safety is the focus. While inclusion for children with special needs is understandable, it may inadvertently limit the collective capacity for vital and formative developmental experiences at the neighbourhood scale.
Global research shows declining children’s mobility, linked to car dependency and adult-controlled routines. This reduces children’s activity radius, constrains confidence and diminishes connection to place. For one of us, a father of two, watching his daughters navigate parks underscores this: children need to be able to learn risk competency.
Venice is a cultural model we can draw lessons from. Its pedestrian streets let children roam, climb statues and play hide-and-seek on bridges. This exposure to risks builds judgement, adaptability and agency. It also makes children co-creators of urban life.
Children in Venice’s car-free piazza San Giacomo dell’Orio play ball, draw on pavements and chase each other. Authors provided, CC BY-SA
Our study uses what we call “temporary appropriation” – when children use spaces in unplanned, creative ways – and a design framework called SPIRAL, which draws from individual experiences and cultural narratives to build public spaces.
Auckland’s rules and fences curb this; Venice’s human-scale design invites it.
Venice’s conditions foster risk competency in children and caregivers, strengthening community bonds through a culture of care. Auckland’s spaces for play are spatially fragmented, limiting social encounters and the risk-taking skills vital for development.
Auckland’s playgrounds tend to be separated and limit the development of risk-taking skills. Shutterstock/Mary Star
From a New Zealand perspective, it is also essential to recognise the significance of place-based belonging from a Māori worldview. Concepts such as whakapapa (genealogy), whenua (land) and whanaungatanga (relational ties) emphasise deep, inter-generational connections to place.
In this view, play is not merely recreation but a cultural expression; a way for children to experience turangawaewae (a place to stand).
What other cities can learn
From our research, we can draw lessons for how urban spaces might be reimagined to better support children’s wellbeing and autonomy. This includes:
Designing public spaces with natural elements, “risky art”, loose parts and creative equipment for open-ended play that balances safety without compromising opportunities for discovery and risk-taking
reclaiming streets so that all people and animals can have positive adventures
prioritising policies for car-free or traffic-calmed areas across neighbourhoods and in proximity to social places (schools, libraries, shops, parks) to contribute to a culture where safety is a collective responsibility and a commitment towards a stronger social cohesion
proactively involving children in urban design through place-making and temporary appropriation; it is their right to be heard and listened to through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
and collaboratively modifying the environment over time.
We envision cities where children roam freely, invent and experience deeper and authentic belonging. Venice proves that shared public spaces help children enrich and shape cities, as much as the rest of the population does.
Safe playgrounds are only a starting point. For healthy, regenerative and vibrant cities to work, we need to realise that children should have agency to shape the complex assemblage that cities really are. Let’s build urban futures where children don’t just play, but can have positive adventures.
The choices we make today matter. We can either feed the fear or meet the cultural challenge together by embracing the positive adventures of life, with a sense of collective wellbeing, care and stewardship.
Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez received funding for the Horizon 2020 CRUNCH project and was a member of the curatorial team of the Italian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2021. He is a senior member of City Space Architecture and the International Society of City and Regional Planners.
Gregor Mews has previously served as a founding director of the Australian Institute of Play and currently serves as a council board member of City Space Architecture as well as a member of the International Society of City and Regional Planners.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Fellow, Naval Studies at UNSW Canberra, and Expert Associate, National Security College, Australian National University
After lobbying by US President Donald Trump, NATO leaders have promised to boost annual defence spending to 5% of their countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035.
United in the face of profound security threats and challenges, in particular the long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security and the persistent threat of terrorism, allies commit to invest 5% of GDP annually on core defence requirements as well as defence-and security-related spending by 2035.
This development comes at a tricky time for the Albanese government. It has so far batted away suggestions Australia should increase its defence spending from current levels of around 2% of gross domestic product (GDP), or almost A$59 billion per year (and projected to reach 2.33% of GDP by 2033–34). Trump has called on Australia to increase this to about 3.5%.
With this NATO agreement, global security deteriorating and defence capability gaps obvious, pressure is mounting on the Australian government to increase defence spending further.
Pressure from Trump
A long‑time critic of NATO, Trump and his key officials have castigated NATO’s readiness and spending.
Meanwhile, Russia’s war on Ukraine, now in its fourth year, and a spate of suspected Russian sabotage across Europe have sharpened concerns about allied preparedness.
Against this backdrop, the NATO summit saw Trump publicly reaffirms US commitment to the alliance, and European members pledged to lift defence spending.
What exactly did NATO promise and why?
The headlines say NATO members agreed to increase annual defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.
In fact, the actual agreement is more nuanced.
The summit communique, notably shorter than in previous years, broke the pledge down into two parts.
The first is 3.5% of GDP on what is considered traditional defence spending: ships, tanks, bullets, people and so on.
The second part – the remaining 1.5% of GDP – is to
Exactly what strategic resilience initiatives this money will be spent on is up to the individual member nation.
It might be tempting to paint NATO’s commitment to increased defence spending as evidence of European NATO partners bowing to US political pressure.
But it’s more than that. It is a direct response to the increased threat posed by Russia to Europe, and perhaps an insurance policy against any doubts European NATO partners may have about the US reliability and enduring commitment to the 76-year-old alliance between the US and Europe.
However, not all countries are keen on the defence spending commitment, with notable reservations from Spain and Belgium.
These two countries are yet to meet NATO’s 2014 commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence.
What’s all this mean for Australia?
The commitment to hike NATO defence spending will have an indirect impact on Australia’s own beleaguered defence spending debate.
As mentioned, Australia’s main strategic ally – the US – has pressured Australia to hike defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, up from around 2.02% of GDP this financial year (which the government projects will reach 2.33% by 2033–34).
Australia is not the only Indo-Pacific partner being pushed to spend more on defence. Japan is too.
This is consistent with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Shangri-La speech in May, when he urged Asian allies to step up on defence spending, pointing to Europe as the model.
The NATO announcement will likely embolden the US to apply greater pressure on the Australia to increase defence spending.
Trump’s strategy towards NATO has clearly been to sow ambiguity in the minds of European countries as to the US’ commitment to NATO, to get them to come to the table on defence spending.
This may well be a future Australia faces, too. It could mean a bumpy road ahead for Australia and its most crucial alliance partner.
Where to from here?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said Australia will determine its own level of defence spending, and that arbitrary GDP limits are unhelpful. Defence spending, he argues, should be based on capability needs, not demands from allies.
And he is right, to a point.
That said, allies have a right to have an expectation all parties in the alliance are holding up their end of the bargain.
Australian defence spending should be based on the capabilities it needs to resource its stated defence strategy and defend its core interests. Currently, in my view, Australia’s defence capability does not match its current strategy.
There are clear gaps in Australia’s defence capabilities, including:
its aged naval capability
a lack of mine warfare, replenishment and survey capabilities
a limited ability to protect critical infrastructure against missile attack
space capabilities.
These are key risks, at the moment of possibly most significant strategic circumstances since the second world war.
In the event of a major crisis or conflict in the region, Australia would not presently be able to defend itself for a prolonged period. To address this requires structural reform and defence investment.
In response to this week’s NATO announcement, Defence Minister Richard Marles said:
We have gone about the business of not chasing a number, but thinking about what is our capability need, and then resourcing it.
During the election campaign both the prime minister and defence minister left the door open to increasing defence spending.
The real unknown is how long it will take to make it happen, and how much damage it may do in the meantime to Australia’s relationship with the US and overall defence-preparedness.
Jennifer Parker is affiliated with UNSW Canberra and ANU’s National Security College.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Bloomberg, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Te Kura Ngahere-New Zealand School of Forestry, University of Canterbury
The biggest environmental problems for commercial plantation forestry in New Zealand’s steep hill country are discharges of slash (woody debris left behind after logging) and sediment from clear-fell harvests.
During the past 15 years, there have been 15 convictions of forestry companies for slash and sediment discharges into rivers, on land and along the coastline.
Such discharges are meant to be controlled by the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry, which set environmental rules for forestry activities such as logging roads and clear-fell harvesting. The standards are part of the Resource Management Act (RMA), which the government is reforming.
We believe the proposed changes fail to address the core reasons for slash and sediment discharges.
We recently analysed five convictions of forestry companies under the RMA for illegal discharges. Based on this analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the New Zealand Journal of Forestry, we argue that the standards should set limits to the size and location of clear-felling areas on erosion-susceptible land.
Why the courts convicted 5 forestry companies
In the aftermath of destructive storms in the Gisborne district during June 2018, five forestry companies were convicted for breaches of the RMA for discharges of slash and sediment from their clear-fell harvesting operations. These discharges resulted from landslides and collapsed earthworks (including roads).
There has been a lot of criticism of forestry’s performance during these storms and subsequent events such as Cyclone Gabrielle. However, little attention has been given to why the courts decided to convict the forestry companies for breaches of the RMA.
The courts’ decisions clearly explain why the sediment and slash discharges happened, why the forestry companies were at fault, and what can be done to prevent these discharges in future on erosion-prone land.
New Zealand’s plantation forest land is ranked for its susceptibility to erosion using a four-colour scale, from green (low) to red (very high). Because of the high erosion susceptibility, additional RMA permissions (consents) for earthworks and harvesting are required on red-ranked areas.
This map shows areas with the highest and lowest susceptibility to erosion. David Palmer/Te Uru Rākau, CC BY-SA
New Zealand-wide, only 7% of plantation forests are on red land. A further 17% are on orange (high susceptibility) land. But in the Gisborne district, 55% of commercial forests are on red land. This is why trying to manage erosion is such a problem in Gisborne’s forests.
Key findings from the forestry cases
In all five cases, the convicted companies had consents from the Gisborne District Council to build logging roads and clear-fell large areas covering hundreds or even thousands of hectares.
A significant part of the sediment and slash discharges originated from landslides that were primed to occur after the large-scale clear-fell harvests. But since the harvests were lawful, these landslides were not relevant to the decision to convict.
Instead, all convictions were for compliance failures where logging roads and log storage areas collapsed or slash was not properly disposed of, even though these only partly contributed to the collective sediment and slash discharges downstream.
The court concluded that:
Clear-fell harvesting on land highly susceptible to erosion required absolute compliance with resource consent conditions. Failures to correctly build roads or manage slash contributed to slash and sediment discharges downstream.
Even with absolute compliance, clear-felling on such land was still risky. This was because a significant portion of the discharges were due to the lawful activity of cutting down trees and removing them, leaving the land vulnerable to landslides and other erosion.
The second conclusion is critical. It means that even if forestry companies are fully compliant with the standards and consents, slash and sediment discharges can still happen after clear-felling. And if this happens, councils can require companies to clean up these discharges and prevent them from happening again.
This is not a hypothetical scenario. Recently, the Gisborne District Council successfully applied to the Environment Court for enforcement orders requiring clean-up of slash deposits and remediation of harvesting sites. If the forestry companies fail to comply, they can be held in contempt of court.
A typical scale of clear-felling affected by the June 2018 storms. Murry Cave/Gisborne District Council, CC BY-SA
Regulations are not just red tape
This illustrates a major problem with the standards that applies to erosion-susceptible forest land everywhere in New Zealand, not just in the Gisborne district. Regulations are not just “red tape”. They provide certainty to businesses that as long as they are compliant, their activities should be free from legal prosecution and enforcement.
The courts’ decisions and council enforcement actions show that forestry companies can face considerable legal risk, even if compliant with regulatory requirements for earthworks and harvesting.
Clear-felled forests on erosion-prone land are one bad rainstorm away from disaster. But with well planned, careful harvesting of small forest areas, this risk can be kept at a tolerable level.
However, the standards and the proposed amendments do not require small clear-fell areas on erosion-prone land. If this shortcoming is not fixed, communities and ecosystems will continue to bear the brunt of the discharges from large-scale clear-fell harvests.
To solve this problem, the standards must proactively limit the size and location of clear-felling areas on erosion-prone land. This will address the main cause of catastrophic slash and sediment discharges from forests, protecting communities and ecosystems. And it will enable forestry companies to plan their harvests with greater confidence that they will not be subject to legal action.
Mark Bloomberg receives funding from the government’s Envirolink fund and from local authorities and forestry companies. He is a member of the NZ Institute of Forestry and the NZ Society of Soil Science.
Steve Urlich 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew B. Watkins, Associate research scientist, School of Earth, Atmopshere & Environment, Monash University
Andrew Watkins
How often do you mow your lawn in winter? That may seem like an odd way to start a conversation about drought. But the answer helps explain why our current drought has not broken, despite recent rain – and why spring lamb may be more expensive this year.
Southern Australia has been short of rain for 16 months. Western Victoria, the agricultural regions of South Australia (including Adelaide) and even parts of western Tasmania are suffering record dry conditions. Those rainfall measurements began in 1900 (126 years ago).
Large parts of southeastern Australia have experienced the lowest rainfall on record over the past 16 months. Serious deficiency means among the driest 10% of such periods on record, Severe deficiency means among the driest 5%. Bureau of Meteorology
Fewer and less intense rain-bearing weather systems have been crossing the southern coastline since February 2024, compared to normal. Put simply, the land has not received enough big dumps of rain.
But June has finally brought rain to some drought-affected regions. There’s even an emerald green tinge to the fields in certain agricultural areas. But it’s now too cold for plants to really grow fast, meaning farmers will be carting hay and buying extra feed for livestock until the weather warms in spring.
Lambs in the Adelaide Hills have little to eat without extra feed. Saskia Jones
Too little, too late
This month, some areas received good rainfall – including places near Melbourne and, to a lesser degree, Adelaide. City people may be forgiven for thinking the drought has broken and farmers are rejoicing. But drought is not that simple.
Unfortunately, the rainfall was inconsistent, especially further inland. The coastal deluge in parts of southern Australia in early June didn’t extend far north. Traditionally, the start of the winter crop-growing season is marked by 25mm of rain over three days – a so-called “autumn break”. But many areas didn’t receive the break this year.
The lack of rain (meteorological drought) compounded the lack of water in the soil for crops and pasture (agricultural drought). Parts of Western Australia, SA, Victoria, Tasmania and southern New South Wales had little moisture left in their soils. So some rain is quickly soaked up as it drains into deeper soils.
In late May and early June, and again this week, there have been winter dust storms in SA. Such dust storms are a bad sign of how dry the ground has become.
Some regions no longer have enough water to fill rivers and dams (hydrological drought). Water restrictions have been introduced in parts of southwest Victoria and Tasmania. The bureau’s streamflow forecast does not look promising.
The landscape near Mortlake in western Victoria was still dry in late May. Typically the autumn break (first post-summer rain event of more than 25 mm) occurs here by early May. Andrew Watkins
A green drought
Remember that lawn mowing analogy? The winter chill has already set in across the south. This means it’s simply too cold for any vigorous new grass growth, and why you are not mowing your lawn very often at the moment.
Cool temperatures, rather than just low rainfall, also limit pasture growth. While from a distance the rain has added an emerald sheen to some of the landscape, it’s often just a green tinge. Up close, it’s clear there is very limited new growth.
Rather than abundant and vigorous new shoots, there’s just a little bit of green returning to surviving grasses. This means there’s very limited feed for livestock. To make matters worse, sometimes the green comes from better-adapted winter weeds.
There will be a lot of hay carting, regardless of rainfall, until spring when the soils start to warm up once again and new growth returns. This all adds up to fewer stock kept in paddocks or a big extra cost in time and money for farmers – and ultimately, a more expensive spring lamb barbecue.
Is this climate change?
Southern Australia (southern WA, SA, Tasmania, Victoria and southern NSW) used to experience almost weekly rain events in autumn and early winter. Cold fronts and deep low-pressure systems rolling in from the west brought the bulk of the rainfall.
Now there is a far more sporadic pattern in these regions. Rainfall in the April to October crop and pasture growing season has declined by around 10–20% since the middle of last century. The strongest drying trend is evident during the crucial months between April and July.
Further reductions in southern growing season rainfall are expected by the end of this century, especially in southwestern Australia. Southeastern regions, including southern Victoria, parts of SA and northern Tasmania, also show a consistent drying trend, with a greater time spent in drought every decade.
Drought is complex. Just because it’s raining doesn’t always mean it has rained enough, or at the right time, or in the right place. To make matters worse, a green drought can even deceive us into thinking everything is fine.
Breaking the meteorological drought will require consistent rainfall over several months. Breaking the agricultural drought will also require more warmth in the soils. Outlooks suggest we may have to wait for spring.
This article includes scientific contributions from David Jones and Pandora Hope from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Ailie Gallant receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Environmental Science Program Climate Systems Hub.
Pallavi Goswami works at Monash University. She receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program, Climate Systems Hub.
Andrew B. Watkins 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Olver, Adjunct Professsor, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide
From July, eligible Australians will be screened for lung cancer as part of the nation’s first new cancer screening program for almost 20 years.
The program aims to detect lung cancer early, before symptoms emerge and cancer spreads. This early detection and treatment is predicted to save lives.
Why lung cancer?
Lung cancer is Australia’s fifth most diagnosed cancer but causes the greatest number of cancer deaths.
It’s more common in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, rural and remote Australians, and lower income groups than in the general population.
Overall, less than one in five patients with lung cancer will survive five years. But for those diagnosed when the cancer is small and has not spread, two-thirds of people survive five years.
Who is eligible?
The lung cancer screening program only targets people at higher risk of lung cancer, based on their smoking history and their age. This is different to a population-wide screening program, such as screening for bowel cancer, which is based on age alone.
The lung cancer program screens people 50-70 years old with no signs or symptoms of lung cancer such as breathlessness, a persisting cough, coughing up blood, chest pain, becoming very tired or losing weight.
To be eligible, current smokers must also have a history of at least 30 “pack years”. To calculate this you multiply the number of packets (of 20 cigarettes) you smoke a day by the number of years you’ve been smoking them.
For instance, if you smoke one packet (20 cigarettes) a day for a year that is one pack year. Smoking two packets a day for six months (half a year) is also a pack year.
People who have quit smoking in the past ten years but have accumulated 30 or more pack years before quitting are also eligible.
Ask your GP or health worker if you are eligible. If you are, you will be referred for a low-dose computed tomography (CT) scan. This uses much lower doses of x-rays than a regular CT but is enough to find nodules in the lung. These are small lumps which could be clumps of cancer cells, inflammatory cells or scarring from old infections.
Imaging involves lying on a table for 10-15 minutes while the scanner takes images of your chest. So people must also be able to lie flat in a scanner to be part of the program.
After the scan, the results are sent to you, your GP and the National Cancer Screening Register. You’ll be contacted if the scan is normal and will then be reminded in two years’ time to screen again.
If your scan has findings that need to be followed, you will be sent back to your GP who may arrange a further scan in three to 12 months.
If lung cancer is suspected, you will be referred to a lung specialist for further tests.
What are the benefits and risks?
Internationaltrials show screening people at high risk of lung cancer reduces their chance of dying prematurely from it, and the benefits outweigh any harm.
The risks of radiation exposure are minimised by using low-dose CT screening.
The other greatest risk is a false positive. This is where the imaging suggests cancer, but further tests rule it out. This varies across studies from almost one in ten to one in two of those having their first scan. If imaging suggests cancer, this usually requires a repeat scan. But about one in 100 of those whose imaging suggests cancer but were later found not to have it have invasive biopsies. This involves taking a sample of the nodule to see if it contains cancerous cells.
Some people will be diagnosed with a cancer that will never cause a problem in their lifetime, for instance because it is slow growing or they are likely to die of other illnesses first. This so-called overdiagnosis varies from none to two-thirds of lung cancers diagnosed, depending on the study.
The Australian government has earmarked A$264 million over four years to screen for lung cancer, and $101 million a year after that.
The initial GP consultation will be free if your GP bulk bills, or if not you may be charged an out-of-pocket fee for the consultation. This may be a barrier to the uptake of screening. Subsequent investigations and consultations will be billed as usual.
There will be no cost for the low-dose CT scans.
What should I do?
If you are 50-70 and a heavy smoker see your GP about screening for lung cancer. But the greater gain in terms of reducing your risk of lung cancer is to also give up smoking.
If you’ve already given up smoking, you’ve already reduced your risk of lung cancer. However, since lung cancer can take several years to develop or show on a CT scan, see your GP if you were once a heavy smoker but have quit in the past ten years to see if you are eligible for screening.
This is the first article in our ‘Finding lung cancer’ series, which explores Australia’s first new cancer screening program in almost 20 years.
More information about the program is available. If you need support to quit smoking, call Quitline on 13 78 48.
Ian Olver receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Associate Professor, New Testament, & Director of The Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy, University of Divinity
Wars are often waged in the name of religion. So what do key texts from Christianity, Islam and Judaism say about the justification for war?
We asked three experts for their views.
The Bible
Robyn J. Whitaker, University of Divinity
The Bible presents war as an inevitable reality of human life. This is captured in the cry of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes:
for everything there is a season […] a time for war and a time for peace.
In this sense, the Bible reflects the experiences of the authors and communities who shaped the texts over more than a thousand years as they experienced both victory and defeat as a small nation among the large empires of the ancient near east.
When it comes to God’s role in war, we cannot shirk from the problematic violence associated with the divine. At times, God orders the Hebrew people to go to war and enact horrendous violence. Deuteronomy 20 is a good example of this: God’s people are sent to war with the blessing of the priest but told to first offer terms of peace. If peace terms are accepted, the town is enslaved. Certain enemies, however, are decreed worthy of total annihilation, and the Hebrew army is commanded to destroy anyone and anything that doesn’t produce food.
On other occasions, war is interpreted as a tool, a punishment where God uses foreign nations against the Hebrew people because they have gone astray (Judges 2:14). You can also find an underlying ethic to treat the captives of war justly. Moses commands that women captured in war are to be treated as wives, not slaves (Deuteronomy 21), and in 2 Chronicles, captives are allowed to return home.
In contrast to war as divinely authorised, many of the Hebrew prophets express hope in a time where God will bring peace and people will “neither learn war any more” (Micah 3:4) but rather turn their weapons into tools for agriculture (Isaiah 2:4).
War is viewed as a result of human sinfulness, something that God will ultimately transform into peace. And that peace (Hebrew: shalom) is more than an absence of war. It is about human flourishing and unity between peoples and God.
Most of the New Testament was written during the first century CE, when Jews and emerging Christians were a minority within the Roman Empire. The military power of Rome is harshly critiqued as evil in resistance texts such as the Book of Revelation. Many early Christians refused to fight in the Roman army.
In this context, Jesus says nothing specific about war but generally rejects violence. When Jesus’s disciple Peter seeks to defend him with a sword, Jesus tells him to put away his sword because a sword only leads to more violence (Matthew 26:52). This is consistent with Jesus’s other teachings such as “blessed are the peacemakers” or his commands to “turn the other cheek” when struck or to “love your enemies”.
The reality is that we find various war ideologies in the Bible’s pages. If you want to find a justification for war in the Bible, you can. If you want to find a justification for peace or pacifism, that is there too. Later Christians would develop ideas of “just war” and pacifism based on biblical ideas, but these are developments rather than explicit within the Bible.
For Christians, Jesus’s teaching provides an ethical framework for interpreting earlier war texts through the lens of love for enemies. This counterpoint to divine violence and war points readers back to the prophets, whose hopeful visions imagine a world where violence and suffering are no more and peace is possible.
The Quran
Mehmet Ozalp, Charles Sturt University
Islam and Muslims emerged onto the world stage in the hostile environment of the seventh century. In response to major challenges, including warfare, Islam introduced pioneering legal and ethical reforms. The Quran and the Prophet Muhammad’s example laid out clear legal and ethical guidelines for the conduct of war, well before similar frameworks appeared in other societies.
Islam did this by defining a new term, “jihad” rather than the usual Arabic word for war, “harb”. While harb refers broadly to warfare, jihad was defined within Islamic teachings as a legal, morally justified struggle, which includes but is not limited to armed conflict. In the context of warfare, jihad refers specifically to fighting in a just cause under clear legal and ethical guidelines, rather than belligerent or aggressive warfare.
Between 610-622, Prophet Muhammad practised active non-violence in the face of the constant suffering, persecution and economic embargo he and his followers endured in Mecca, despite insistent approaches by his followers to take up arms. This showed that armed struggle cannot be taken up within the members of the same society, as this would lead to anarchy.
After leaving his home town to escape persecution, he established a pluralistic and multi-faith society in Medina. He took active steps to sign treaties with neighbouring tribes. Despite following a deliberate strategy of peace and diplomacy, the hostile Meccans and allied tribes attacked the Muslims in Medina. Engaging these attackers in an armed struggle was unavoidable.
The permission to fight was given to Muslims by the Quran verses 22:39-40:
The believers against whom war is waged are given permission to fight in response, for they have been wronged. Surely, God has full power to help them to victory. Those who have been driven from their homeland against all right, for no other reason than that they say, “Our Lord is God” […]
This passage not only permits armed struggle but also offers a moral justification for just war. It means war is clearly just when defensive — while aggression is unjust and condemned. Elsewhere, the Quran emphasises this point:
If they withdraw from you and do not fight against you, and offer you peace, then God allows you no way (to war) against them.
Verse 22:39 outlines two ethical justifications for warfare. The first is when people are driven from their homes (and land) – in other words, through occupation by a foreign power. The second is when people are attacked because of their beliefs to the point of violent persecution and attack.
Importantly, verse 22:40 includes churches, monasteries and synagogues. If believers in God do not defend themselves, all places of worship would be destroyed, so this is to be prevented by force if necessary.
The Quran does not allow for aggression, since “God loves not the aggressors” (2:190). It also provides detailed regulations on who is to fight and who is exempted (9:91); when hostilities must cease (2:193); and prisoners should be treated humanely and with fairness (47:4).
Verses such as 2:294 emphasise that warfare and any response to violence and aggression must be proportional and within limits:
Whoever attacks you, attack them in like manner as they attacked you. Nevertheless, fear God and remain within the bounds.
In the event of unavoidable war, every opportunity to end it must be pursued:
But if the enemy inclines towards peace, then you must also incline towards peace and trust in God.
The aim of military action is to end hostilities and remove the reason for warfare, not to humiliate or annihilate the enemy.
Military jihad cannot be pursued for personal ambition or to further nationalistic or ethnic disputes. Muslims cannot wage war on nations that have no hostility towards them (60:8). But if there is open hostility and attack, Muslims have a right to defend themselves.
The Prophet and the early caliphs specifically warned military leaders and all combatants that they must not act treacherously or engage in indiscriminate killing and pillage. He said:
Do not kill women, children, the elderly, or the sick. Do not destroy palm trees or burn houses.
Because of these teachings, Muslims have had legal and ethical guidelines throughout much of history to help limit human suffering caused by war.
The Torah
Suzanne D. Rutland, University of Sydney
Judaism is not a pacifist religion, but in its traditions it values peace above all else, and prayers for peace are central to Jewish liturgy. At the same time, there is a recognition of the need to fight defensive wars, but only within certain boundaries.
In the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, the recognition of the need for war is clear. Throughout their journeying in the desert, the Israelites (Children of Israel) fight various battles. At the same time, in Deuteronomy, the Israelites are instructed (chapter 12, verse 10):
When you go forth against your enemies and are in camp, then you should keep yourself from every evil thing.
The story of Amalek is the symbol of ultimate evil in Jewish tradition. Scholars argue this is because his army attacked the Israelites from the rear – killing defenceless women and children.
The Torah also stresses that army service is compulsory. Yet, Deuteronomy elaborates four categories of people who are exempt:
someone who has built a home but has not yet dedicated it
someone who has planted a vineyard but has not yet eaten of its fruit
someone who is engaged or in his first year of marriage
someone who is afraid, in case he influences other soldiers with his fear.
Judaism is not a pacifist religion, but in its traditions it values peace above all else. Shutterstock
It is important to point out that the disdain of war is so strong that King David was not permitted to build the temple in Jerusalem because of his military career. His son, Solomon, was allocated this task, but no iron was to be used in the building because this represented war and violence, while the temple was to represent peace, the ideal virtue.
The vision of peace for all humanity is further developed in the prophetic writings and the concept of the Messiah. This is seen particularly in the writings of the prophet Isiah, who envisaged an age when, as he describes in his idyllic vision:
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
The Mishnah, the first part of the Talmud, raises the concept of an “obligatory war” (milhemet mizvah). This encompasses the biblical wars against the seven nations said to inhabit the Promised Land, the war against Amalek, and the Jewish nation’s defensive wars. It is, accordingly, a clearly defined and recognisable class.
Not so the second category, “permitted war” (milhemet reshut), which is more open-ended and, as scholar Avi Ravitsky writes, “could relate to a preemptive war”.
After the Talmudic period, which ended in the 7th century, this debate became theoretical, since Jews living in Palestine and the diaspora no longer had an army. This was largely the case from the time of the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion against the Romans (132–135 CE), apart from a few small Jewish kingdoms in Arabia.
However, with the return of the early Zionist pioneers to the Land of Israel in the late 19th and 20th century, the rabbinic debates of what constitutes an obligatory, defensive war and what is a permitted war, as well as the characteristics of a forbidden war has reignited. This is a subject of deep concern and controversy for both academics and rabbis today.
Robyn J. Whitaker is affiliated with The Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy.
Mehmet Ozalp is affiliated with Islamic Sciences and Research Academy
Suzanne Rutland has received an Australian Research Council grant for her research on the Australian Jewry and funding from the Pratt Foundation, as well as an Australian Prime Ministers Centre (APMC) fellowship for her research on Soviet Jewry and Australia. She is also involved with numerous NGOs, including the Australian Jewish Historical Society (patron), the Australian Association for Jewish Studies (past president and committee member), and the Australian government’s expert delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In addition, she is a board member of the Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry at ANU; she is on an academic advisory committee at the Sydney Jewish Museum; she is the director of the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism; and she is an Australian board member for Boys Town Jerusalem and a board member of Better Balance Futures for faith communities These roles are all undertaken in an honorary capacity. She is also writing the history of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in an honorary capacity.
The Albanese government devoted time and energy in its first term to developing a wellbeing agenda for the economy and society.
It was a passion project of Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who wanted better ways to measure national welfare beyond traditional economic indicators such as growth, jobs and inflation.
Chalmers developed the Measuring What Matters framework to try to better align economic, social and environmental goals as
part of a deliberate effort to put people and progress, fairness and opportunity at the very core of our thinking about our economy and our society.
As Labor settles into its second term, what has happened to its wellbeing agenda? And how much was a poor consultation process to blame for it apparently falling by the wayside?
Measuring What Matters
Measuring What Matters was badged as a wellbeing framework to improve the lives of Australians and help better inform policy-making across all levels of government.
There was also a standalone indicator on life satisfaction.
The data is updated annually by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with the Treasury due to report on outcomes every three years.
The first Measuring What Matters statement in 2023 showed improvements across some indicators, such as life expectancy, job opportunities and accepting diversity. But it also revealed higher rates of chronic illness and problems with housing affordability.
The fanfare surrounding the release has since fizzled, and wellbeing is now seldom mentioned.
Furthermore, there is little evidence insights have been taken up by the government. The Australian National Audit Office recently noted the challenge of embedding Measuring What Matters in policy, as well as the absence of any evaluation work to gauge its effectiveness.
The wellbeing agenda appears to have been sidelined for two reasons: an insufficient consultation process to properly develop the framework, and the cost-of-living crisis.
Poor consultation
Wellbeing frameworks have high potential to impact policy. But they need to be developed and implemented in the right way.
One crucial factor is adequate community engagement, which would have helped ensure accurate representation of what people truly value in terms of wellbeing. Done properly, it could also have secured buy-in from the community, depoliticised the initiative, and even strengthened democracy.
But adequate time was not taken to get the consultation process right, with the government in a rush to release Measuring What Matters. Announced in the October 2022 Budget, two consultation phases were undertaken.
The first, mainly with technical experts, took three months. The second, which sought feedback from individuals and community groups, was even shorter. It was over in just one month.
Measuring What Matters was released shortly after, in July 2023.
Our research, recently published in the Australian Journal of Social Issues, analysed the public consultation phase. We found it was inadequate across four areas.
Comprehensiveness: the timeframe for phase two was too short to allow organisations and communities to meaningfully engage.
Reach: there was limited engagement with the general public.
Transparency: the community was not informed how feedback would be incorporated in the framework and no consultation report was published.
Genuineness: while some feedback was incorporated in the framework, key topics raised in the consultation were not acted on, including greater involvement of First Nations people.
Greater community engagement would have ensured the framework, and any policy it produced, better reflected what Australians value for their wellbeing. It would have also promoted people’s ownership of the framework, helping to foster greater understanding and support for the initiative.
Although Measuring What Matters is now established, it is not too late to realise proper community engagement.
Taboo subject
The other factor to run interference was the cost-of-living crisis, which dominated the government’s first term.
We can draw some inspiration from an alliance of countries, including New Zealand, Scotland, Finland, Iceland and Wales, which have at various times put people’s wellbeing at the forefront of policy development and evaluation.
Perhaps if the Albanese government had leaned in to its own wellbeing framework to help navigate the cost-of-living crisis, people may have fared better.
The agenda’s future?
The Albanese government’s large majority gives it space to revitalise its wellbeing framework.
Undertaking a national conversation, similar to the one rolled out in Wales, would help build grassroots support and ensure it truly “measures what matters” to people.
A stronger Measuring What Matters would not only provide the electorate with a clear indication the government is listening, but would also help ensure policy improves people’s lives in a meaningful way.
Kate Sollis is a consultant to the Wellbeing Government initiative at the Centre for Policy Development and President of the Bega Valley Data Collective. She was previously employed at the Australian Bureau of Statistics
Paul Campbell is a research fellow, whose work is supported by the ANU-Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government Wellbeing Framework research partnership. He was previously employed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Nicholas Drake 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.
In less than a decade, Korean TV dramas (K-dramas) have transmuted from a regional industry to a global phenomenon – partly a consequence of the rise of streaming giants.
But foreign audiences may not realise the K-dramas they’ve seen on Netflix don’t accurately represent the broader Korean TV landscape, which is much wider and richer than these select offerings.
At the same time, there are many challenges in bringing this wide array of content to the rest of the world.
The rise of hallyu
Korean media was transformed during the 1990s. The end of military dictatorship led to the gradual relaxation of censorship.
Satellite media also allowed the export of K-dramas and films to the rest of East Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. Some of the first K-dramas to become popular overseas included What Is Love (1991–92) and Star in My Heart (1997). They initiated what would later become known as the Korean wave, or hallyu.
The hallyu expansion continued with Winter Sonata (2003), which attracted viewers in Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Dae Jang Geum/Jewel in the Palace (2005) resonated strongly in Chinese-speaking regions, and was ultimately exported to more than 80 countries.
A breakthrough occurred in 2016. Netflix entered South Korea and began investing in Korean productions, beginning with Kingdom (2019–21) and Love Alarm (2019–21).
In 2021, the global hit Squid Game was released simultaneously in 190 countries.
But Netflix only scratches the surface
Last year, only 20% of new K-drama releases were available on Western streaming platforms. This means global discussions about K-dramas are based on a limited subgroup of content promoted to viewers outside South Korea.
Moreover, foreign viewers will generally evaluate this content based on Western conceptions of culture and narrative. They may, for instance, have Western preferences for genre and themes, or may disregard locally-specific contexts.
This is partly why Korean and foreign audiences can end up with very different ideas of what “Korean” television is.
Genres
When a K-drama is classified as a sageuk (historical drama) but also incorporates elements of fantasy, mythology, romance, melodrama, crime fiction and/or comedy, foreign audiences may dismiss it as “genre-confused”. Or, they may praise it for its “genre-blending”.
But the drama may not have been created with much attention to genre at all. The highly inventive world-building of pre-Netflix dramas such as Arang and the Magistrate (2012) and Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (2016) prominently feature all the aforementioned genres.
While foreign viewers may think visual media begins with readily identifiable genres, many K-dramas aren’t produced on this premise.
Themes
Western viewers (and other viewers watching through a Western lens) might assume “liberal” themes such as systemic injustice, women’s rights and collusion in politics entered K-dramas as a result of Western influence. But this is a misconception.
The emergence of such themes can be attributed to various changes in Korean society, including the easing of censorship, rapid modernisation, and the imposition ofneoliberal economics by the International Monetary Fund in 1997.
Although gender disparities still exist in South Korea, economic uncertainty and modernisation have prompted a deconstruction of patriarchal value systems. Female-centred K-dramas have been around since at least the mid-2000s, with women’s independence as a recurring theme in more recent dramas.
Local contexts
A major barrier to exporting K-dramas is the cultural specificity of certain elements, such as Confucian values, hierarchical family dynamics, gender codes, and Korean speech codes.
The global success of a K-drama comes down to how well its culturally-specific elements can be adapted for different contexts and audiences.
In some cases, these elements may be minimised, or entirely missed, by foreign viewers.
For example, in Squid Game, the words spoken by the killer doll in the first game are subtitled as “green light, red light”. What the doll actually says is “mugunghwa-kkochi pieot-seumnida”, which is also what the game is called in Korean.
This translates to “the mugunghwa (Rose of Saron) has bloomed”, with mugunghwa being South Korea’s national flower.
These words, in this context, are meant to ironically redefine South Korea as a site of hopelessness and death. But the subtitles erase this double meaning.
It’s also difficult for subtitles to reflect nuanced Korean honorific systems of address. As such, foreign viewers remain largely oblivious to the subtle power dynamics at play between characters.
All of this leads to a kind of cultural “flattening”, shifting foreign viewers’ focus to so-called universal themes.
A case study for global success
Nevertheless, foreign viewers can still engage with many culturally-specific elements in K-dramas, which can also serve as cultural literacy.
The hugely successful series Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) explores the personal and professional challenges faced by an autistic lawyer.
Director Yoo In-sik described the series as distinctly Korean in both its humour and the legal system it portrays, and said he didn’t anticipate its widespread popularity.
Following success in South Korea, the series was acquired by Netflix and quickly entered the top 10 most popular non-English language shows.
The global appeal can be attributed to its sensitive portrayal of the protagonist, the problem-solving theme across episodes, and what Yoo describes as a kind and considerate tone. Viewers who resonate with these qualities may not even need to engage with the Korean elements.
Many K-dramas that achieve global success also feature elements typically considered “Western”, such as zombies.
While the overall number of zombie-themed productions is low, series and films such as Kingdom (2019–21), All of Us Are Dead (2022), Alive (2020) and Train to Busan (2016) have helped put Korean content on the map.
One potential effect of the zombie popularity may be the displacement of Korean mythological characters, such as fox spirits, or gumiho, which have traditionally held significant narrative space.
Shin Min-ah and Lee Seung-gi star in the acclaimed romantic comedy series My Girlfriend is a Gumiho (2010). IMDB
Local production under threat
The influence of streaming giants such as Netflix is impacting South Korea’s local production systems.
The early vision of low-cost, high-return projects such as Squid Game is rapidly diminishing.
Meanwhile, Netflix is exploring other locations, such as Japan, where dramas can be produced for about half the price of those in Korea. If this continues, the rise of Korean content may slow down.
Sung-Ae Lee 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Harrison, Director, Master of Business Administration Program (MBA); Co-Director, Better Consumption Lab, Deakin University
It’s quite unsettling to discover something so central to our cultural rituals – the “slop” in the Aussie mantra of “Slip! Slop! Slap!” – can no longer be trusted.
We’ve never really had to scrutinise sunscreen. We slop it on because Sid the Seagull (in his role as spokesbird for the Cancer Council) told us to. We’ve learned about sun protection factors (SPF) and made choices to protect ourselves. We do it because it works.
Or so we thought.
Consumer group Choice recently tested 20 sunscreen brands and found only four met their labelled SPF claims. The findings have shaken consumers’ trust in the brands that make these products, and perhaps, in the institutions responsible for regulating them.
Trust is the silent architecture of our lives that makes everything from catching a bus to undergoing surgery feel possible. Indeed, we are born into trust. From infancy, we are wired to trust, first in our caregivers, then later in life in the cues and symbols such as endorsements, SPF ratings, brands or rankings that help us navigate a complex world.
The original Sid the Seagull video from the Cancer Council.
The role of power in trust relationships
Trust, and its erosion in public life, has become such a critical issue that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has made it a focus of Friday’s Consumer Congress, titled “Who can we trust? Regulating in an environment of declining consumer trust”.
Something that is often missed in discussions around trust is that it is also a social arrangement, shaped by power and vulnerability. Trust is nearly always asymmetric; those with the least power are usually required to place their trust first and most fully.
The powerful rarely have to reciprocate that vulnerability. They hold the information, set the rules and shape the narrative. When things go wrong, the powerful often walk away relatively unscathed, while the vulnerable are left to navigate complex complaints or refund systems.
Increasingly, we are told to be savvy, to read the fine print and to “do the research”.
But putting the responsibility on the individual reframes structural failures as personal shortcomings. It places the burden of vigilance and scrutiny on people who lack the time or expertise to meaningfully assess risk.
A breach of faith
The issue is compounded by a wider trend across many businesses that have misread their relationship with consumers. Much of our trust in brands is automatic.
We are more inclined to trust claims from familiar or warm-sounding sources, with research showing warmth comes first. People tend to judge others and institutions by their perceived warmth before considering their competence. So a brand that feels benevolent often earns our trust before we assess its actual performance.
Qantas, a brand that built its entire identity around the idea that it was “us”, trashed our trust when it began acting like a transactional retail business, rather than one built on relationships.
Management and the board failed to grasp they had been given something rare: a kind of cultural endearment underpinned by trust and perceived reciprocity that made Australians feel personally invested in its success.
While Qantas does retain market share, the erosion of this emotional bond means many customers are more willing to try its competitors. It will struggle to rebuild that trust simply with price deals or heartstring-tugging ad campaigns.
One of Qantas’ ad campaigns with an emotional appeal to customers.
The response matters
For organisations such as the Cancer Council, whose trustworthiness is built on moral authority, the response to failure matters deeply. Its decision to acknowledge the findings and commit to retesting was more than public relations. It was an act of relational repair.
In contrast, some of the other corporate brands in the survey responded by disputing Choice’s methodology. That reveals an outdated corporate reflex – one that attacks the messenger rather than engaging with the message. This defensive posture reflects a mindset shaped more by legal risk and brand control than by public accountability or ethical responsibility.
Still, individual responses are not enough. We need systems designed with human limits in mind. Trust cannot be sustained if it is constantly tested by complexity, misinformation and opaque accountability.
Consumer bodies such as Choice provide a public service by filling the gap between what people assume and what they can verify. But more broadly, businesses and regulators must treat trust as a relationship, not a marketing goal.
The system needs to prevent harm, not deal with the fallout
Rebuilding trust means putting people at the centre of consumer regulation. A human-centred system does not treat people as problems to be managed. It treats them as participants in a shared moral project. It requires systems grounded in evidence, designed around real human behaviour and focused on preventing harm rather than managing fallout.
One way to do this is through collaborative regulation. This approach brings together consumer representatives, regulators, behavioural experts and industry to design rules and standards that reflect how people actually behave (as opposed to how we hope they behave). This reduces asymmetries of power, and ensures trust is earned and maintained over time.
This collaborative approach has been successfully adopted in local government and health. But it only works when collaboration is approached in good faith by all parties, not just a “tick-the-box” exercise.
Of course, this approach runs counter to a legal system that tends to prioritise the system over the people it serves, and process over outcomes. But the goal shouldn’t be to force better ideas into outdated frameworks. Instead, we should design systems that lead to better outcomes for everyone.
Paul Harrison has received research funding from ASIC, the Consumer Action Law Centre, ACCAN, Victorian Health Association, and the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Next week will be the 40th anniversary of the Hawke government’s tax summit. Dominated by then treasurer Paul Keating’s unsuccessful bid to win support for a consumption tax, it was the public centrepiece of an extraordinary political and policy story.
That story was about the possibilities for, but constraints on, bold reform; how a determined treasurer can muster a formidable department to push for change, and the way the ambitions of a minister can clash with the pragmatism of a prime minister.
Ken Henry, later secretary of the treasury, was then part of what they dubbed the “treasury tax reform bunker”. He kept a timesheet, averaging 100 hours work a week for a three-month period. Officials brought sleeping bags and their small children (Henry’s were aged three and five) into the office.
Before the summit, the government produced a comprehensive draft white paper. Keating battled to keep the conflicting interests “in the cart” for his blueprint. But the four-day summit, attended by business, unions, premiers and community groups, was inevitably divided by stakeholders’ self-interests. In particular, the unions couldn’t wear Keating’s consumption tax, and Bob Hawke kyboshed it unceremoniously. Keating, who had to settle for a more limited but still very significant set of reforms, was furious with Hawke, and it left a fracture in their relationship.
Jim Chalmers was aged seven in 1985. But he’s a student of Keating (he did his PhD on his prime ministership) and you can be sure he’s boned up on what went right and wrong in that tax reform exercise. Now he is preparing for the government’s August 19-21 “roundtable” and his own bid at major tax reform.
The roundtable, as first announced, focused on “productivity”, and that will be central. But Chalmers has taken to calling it an “economic reform” roundtable – its brief also includes budget sustainability and resilience – and he is effectively putting tax reform close to its heart, or at least letting others do so. After all, a fit-for-purpose tax system is one key to improving productivity.
The roundtable (for which invitations to business and the union movement are now going out, with more to follow) is nothing like on the scale, in size (the 1985 summit had about 160 attendees, the roundtable will have about 25) or preparation, of the elaborate 1985 conference.
And crucially, while that summit was the culmination of a process, Chalmers is using the roundtable to kick off a process.
Chalmers is lowering expectations in regard to specific outcomes from the summit on tax. While those might be obtainable on some productivity issues, on tax he is likely to look for broad support for a direction of reform. For instance, is there a general appetite for reshaping the tax system towards lower personal and company tax, offset by higher taxes on certain investments and savings? `
Most tax experts argue Australia’s system is too skewed towards taxing income rather than spending. This leads to calls to increase or broaden the GST, financing cuts to personal income tax.
Chalmers has been a long-term opponent of changing the GST, but he says he is not ruling the GST out for discussion at the roundtable. (That’s a contrast to when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, commissioning Henry to lead a major tax review, excluded the GST from its terms of reference.)
Almost certainly, however, it would not be possible to get “consensus” from business and unions for GST changes. Not least of the constraints is that compensating the losers in such a change is very expensive and there is not the money to do so these days.
That immediately limits the extent of reform.
Henry tells The Conversation’s podcast that if he were designing a tax reform package “I’d be looking at opportunities to broaden the GST and maybe to increase the rate as well”.
But “I do think it is possible to achieve major tax reform […] without necessarily increasing the [GST] rate or extending the base”.
Henry’s (non-GST) wish list includes getting rid of the remaining state transaction taxes, such as stamp duty on property conveyancing.
Notably, he argues for extracting more revenue from taxing natural resources and land, and also from taxing pollution from various sources. “We’re going to need to tax those things more heavily if we’re going to relieve the tax burden on young workers through lower personal income tax and introducing tax indexation.”
Henry is particularly focused on the unfair burden at present put on these younger taxpayers. He has come around to the idea of income tax indexation as one means of assisting them.
A system more geared to younger workers raises immediate questions about the present generous treatment of superannuants. Chalmers is already caught in that hornets’ nest with his proposed changes for those with balances more than $3 million.
To what extent will the roundtable tax debate revive the issues of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount? The government hosed down before the election the prospect of any changes to negative gearing this term. Chalmers, however, had work done on this last term and he would likely favour reining it in. But would this be a bridge too far for the prime minister?
Indeed, where will Anthony Albanese’s limits be when it comes to reform? Would he only support changes that had strong consensus? And how far would he feel constrained in going beyond what he considers he has a mandate for?
If Chalmers stays serious about the tax push, it is going to take many months of intense work. It can’t be rushed, but nor can it be delayed. If it ran for much over a year it would likely find the government’s political capital had been eroded. The size of its capital store can appear deceptive because so much of it is thanks to Peter Dutton and Donald Trump.
In 2022, the Liberals boycotted Labor’s jobs and skills summit (although Nationals leader David Littlepround attended). This time, shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien has accepted Chalmers’ invitation and will participate in the roundtable.
It will be a tricky gig for O’Brien, new to this shadow portfolio. He has to avoid being too negative, but nor can he endorse things the opposition might later reject. The Coalition will not have a tax policy against which to judge what’s said.
The occasion will be a chance for O’Brien to make contacts and get more insight into stakeholders’ views on the key economic debates, much wider than just tax.
Importantly, however, O’Brien will need to remember judgements will be being made about him by other participants in the room. Business in particular will be seeking to get a fix on whether opposition leader Sussan Ley’s declarations about wanting to be constructive where possible are fair dinkum.
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.
Next week will be the 40th anniversary of the Hawke government’s tax summit. Dominated by then treasurer Paul Keating’s unsuccessful bid to win support for a consumption tax, it was the public centrepiece of an extraordinary political and policy story.
That story was about the possibilities for, but constraints on, bold reform; how a determined treasurer can muster a formidable department to push for change, and the way the ambitions of a minister can clash with the pragmatism of a prime minister.
Ken Henry, later secretary of the treasury, was then part of what they dubbed the “treasury tax reform bunker”. He kept a timesheet, averaging 100 hours work a week for a three-month period. Officials brought sleeping bags and their small children (Henry’s were aged three and five) into the office.
Before the summit, the government produced a comprehensive draft white paper. Keating battled to keep the conflicting interests “in the cart” for his blueprint. But the four-day summit, attended by business, unions, premiers and community groups, was inevitably divided by stakeholders’ self-interests. In particular, the unions couldn’t wear Keating’s consumption tax, and Bob Hawke kyboshed it unceremoniously. Keating, who had to settle for a more limited but still very significant set of reforms, was furious with Hawke, and it left a fracture in their relationship.
Jim Chalmers was aged seven in 1985. But he’s a student of Keating (he did his PhD on his prime ministership) and you can be sure he’s boned up on what went right and wrong in that tax reform exercise. Now he is preparing for the government’s August 19-21 “roundtable” and his own bid at major tax reform.
The roundtable, as first announced, focused on “productivity”, and that will be central. But Chalmers has taken to calling it an “economic reform” roundtable – its brief also includes budget sustainability and resilience – and he is effectively putting tax reform close to its heart, or at least letting others do so. After all, a fit-for-purpose tax system is one key to improving productivity.
The roundtable (for which invitations to business and the union movement are now going out, with more to follow) is nothing like on the scale, in size (the 1985 summit had about 160 attendees, the roundtable will have about 25) or preparation, of the elaborate 1985 conference.
And crucially, while that summit was the culmination of a process, Chalmers is using the roundtable to kick off a process.
Chalmers is lowering expectations in regard to specific outcomes from the summit on tax. While those might be obtainable on some productivity issues, on tax he is likely to look for broad support for a direction of reform. For instance, is there a general appetite for reshaping the tax system towards lower personal and company tax, offset by higher taxes on certain investments and savings? `
Most tax experts argue Australia’s system is too skewed towards taxing income rather than spending. This leads to calls to increase or broaden the GST, financing cuts to personal income tax.
Chalmers has been a long-term opponent of changing the GST, but he says he is not ruling the GST out for discussion at the roundtable. (That’s a contrast to when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, commissioning Henry to lead a major tax review, excluded the GST from its terms of reference.)
Almost certainly, however, it would not be possible to get “consensus” from business and unions for GST changes. Not least of the constraints is that compensating the losers in such a change is very expensive and there is not the money to do so these days.
That immediately limits the extent of reform.
Henry tells The Conversation’s podcast that if he were designing a tax reform package “I’d be looking at opportunities to broaden the GST and maybe to increase the rate as well”.
But “I do think it is possible to achieve major tax reform […] without necessarily increasing the [GST] rate or extending the base”.
Henry’s (non-GST) wish list includes getting rid of the remaining state transaction taxes, such as stamp duty on property conveyancing.
Notably, he argues for extracting more revenue from taxing natural resources and land, and also from taxing pollution from various sources. “We’re going to need to tax those things more heavily if we’re going to relieve the tax burden on young workers through lower personal income tax and introducing tax indexation.”
Henry is particularly focused on the unfair burden at present put on these younger taxpayers. He has come around to the idea of income tax indexation as one means of assisting them.
A system more geared to younger workers raises immediate questions about the present generous treatment of superannuants. Chalmers is already caught in that hornets’ nest with his proposed changes for those with balances more than $3 million.
To what extent will the roundtable tax debate revive the issues of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount? The government hosed down before the election the prospect of any changes to negative gearing this term. Chalmers, however, had work done on this last term and he would likely favour reining it in. But would this be a bridge too far for the prime minister?
Indeed, where will Anthony Albanese’s limits be when it comes to reform? Would he only support changes that had strong consensus? And how far would he feel constrained in going beyond what he considers he has a mandate for?
If Chalmers stays serious about the tax push, it is going to take many months of intense work. It can’t be rushed, but nor can it be delayed. If it ran for much over a year it would likely find the government’s political capital had been eroded. The size of its capital store can appear deceptive because so much of it is thanks to Peter Dutton and Donald Trump.
In 2022, the Liberals boycotted Labor’s jobs and skills summit (although Nationals leader David Littlepround attended). This time, shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien has accepted Chalmers’ invitation and will participate in the roundtable.
It will be a tricky gig for O’Brien, new to this shadow portfolio. He has to avoid being too negative, but nor can he endorse things the opposition might later reject. The Coalition will not have a tax policy against which to judge what’s said.
The occasion will be a chance for O’Brien to make contacts and get more insight into stakeholders’ views on the key economic debates, much wider than just tax.
Importantly, however, O’Brien will need to remember judgements will be being made about him by other participants in the room. Business in particular will be seeking to get a fix on whether opposition leader Sussan Ley’s declarations about wanting to be constructive where possible are fair dinkum.
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.
A sample of refined gold recovered from mining and e-waste recycling trials.Justin Chalker
In 2022, humans produced an estimated 62 million tonnes of electronic waste – enough to fill more than 1.5 million garbage trucks. This was up 82% from 2010 and is expected to rise to 82 million tonnes in 2030.
This e-waste includes old laptops and phones, which contain precious materials such as gold. Less than one quarter of it is properly collected and recycled. But a new technique colleagues and I have developed to safely and sustainably extract gold from e-waste could help change that.
Our new gold-extraction technique, which we describe in a new paper published today in Nature Sustainability, could also make small-scale gold mining less poisonous for people – and the planet.
Soaring global demand
Gold has long played a crucial role in human life. It has been a form of currency and a medium for art and fashion for centuries. Gold is also essential in modern industries including the electronics, chemical manufacture and aerospace sectors.
Deforestation and use of toxic chemicals are two such problems. In formal, large-scale mining, highly toxic cyanide is widely used to extract gold from ore. While cyanide can be degraded, its use can cause harm to wildlife, and tailings dams which store the toxic byproducts of mining operations pose a risk to the wider environment.
In small-scale and artisanal mining, mercury is used extensively to extract gold. In this practice, the gold reacts with mercury to form a dense amalgam that can be easily isolated. The gold is then recovered by heating the amalgam to vaporise the mercury.
Small-scale and artisanal mining is the largest source of mercury pollution on Earth, and the mercury emissions are dangerous to the miners and pollute the environment. New methods are required to reduce the impacts of gold mining.
Our interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers has developed a new technique to extract gold from ore and e-waste. The aim was to provide a safer alternative to mercury and cyanide and reduce the health and environmental impacts of gold mining.
Many techniques have previously been reported for extracting gold from ore or e-waste, including mercury- and cyanide-free methods. However, many of these methods are limited in rate, yield, scale and cost. Often these methods also consider only one step in the entire gold recovery process, and recycling and waste management is often neglected.
In contrast, our approach considered sustainability throughout the whole process of gold extraction, recovery and refining. Our new leaching technology uses a chemical commonly used in water sanitation and pool chlorination: trichloroisocyanuric acid.
When this widely available and low-cost chemical is activated with salt water, it can react with gold and convert it into a water-soluble form.
To recover the gold from the solution, we invented a sulphur-rich polymer sorbent. Polymer sorbents isolate a certain substance from a liquid or gas, and ours is made by joining a key building block (a monomer) together through a chain reaction.
Our polymer sorbent is interesting because it is derived from elemental sulphur: a low-cost and highly abundant feedstock. The petroleum sector generates more sulphur than it can use or sell, so our polymer synthesis is a new use for this underused resource.
Our polymer could selectively bind and remove gold from the solution, even when many other types of metals were present in the mixture.
The simple leaching and recovery methods were demonstrated on ore, circuit boards from obsolete computers and scientific waste. Importantly, we also developed methods to regenerate and recycle both the leaching chemical and the polymer sorbent. We also established methods to purify and recycle the water used in the process.
In developing the recyclable polymer sorbent, we invented some exciting new chemistry to make the polymer using light, and then “un-make” the sorbent after it bound gold. This recycling method converted the polymer back to its original monomer building block and separated it from the gold.
The recovered monomer could then be re-made into the gold-binding polymer: an important demonstration of how the process is aligned with a circular economy.
A long and complex road ahead
In future work, we plan to collaborate with industry, government and not-for-profit groups to test our method in small-scale mining operations. Our long-term aim is to provide a robust and safe method for extracting gold, eliminating the need for highly toxic chemicals such as cyanide and mercury.
There will be many challenges to overcome including scaling up the production of the polymer sorbent and the chemical recycling processes. For uptake, we also need to ensure that the rate, yield and cost are competitive with more traditional methods of gold mining. Our preliminary results are encouraging. But there is still a long and complex road ahead before our new techniques replace cyanide and mercury.
They typically operate in remote and rural regions with few other economic opportunities. Our goal is to support these miners economically while offering safer alternatives to mercury. Likewise, the rise of “urban mining” and e-waste recycling would benefit from safer and operationally simple methods for precious metal recovery.
Success in recovering gold from e-waste will also reduce the need for primary mining and therefore lessen its environmental impact.
Justin M. Chalker is an inventor on patents associated with the gold leaching and recovery technology. Both patents are wholly owned by Flinders University. This research was supported financially by the Australian Research Council and Flinders University. He has an ongoing collaboration with Mercury Free Mining and Adelaide Control Engineering: organisations that supported the developments and trials reported in this study.
In August, the Albanese government will hold an economic “roundtable” that will discuss productivity, budget sustainability and resilience. Australia’s tax system will be one of the central issues, and stakeholders are gearing up with their varying arguments for changes.
Ken Henry, a former secretary of the Treasury, has been part of the tax debates of the past 40 years. He was a treasury official working on tax at the time of the Hawke government’s 1985 tax summit and led the major review of the tax system commissioned by the Rudd government.
Henry is a passionate advocate of bold tax reform, especially reform that tackled intergenerational inequity, and he joins the podcast to discuss the issues.
Looking forward to the roundtable, Henry outlines some of the many changes that he thinks should be considered,
Firstly we’ve got to get rid of the remaining transactions taxes like stamp duty on property conveyancing and so on […] that alone means there has to be a commonwealth-state exercise.
Secondly, we’ve got to extract more revenue from the taxation of natural resources and also land.
Thirdly, we’ve got to get more revenue from the taxation of environmental externalities. In the tax review published in 2010, we were developing that at the same time as the Treasury and other departments were developing the Rudd government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme. We thought that there was going to be quite a significant carbon price in Australia. We don’t have it today – we should.
Henry wants a tax system that does not disadvantage younger people who are in the workforce; he says the present “lazy” reliance on bracket creep to “bring the budget back to anything approaching balance is doing enormous damage to younger people in particular”.
On reform generally, Henry says he’s “disappointed” that more hasn’t been done on the recommendations from his review.
I’m very disappointed, but I guess one would expect me to be very disappointed. And he laments Australia’s “abysmal” productivity performance over the last quarter century.
When I then reflect on what’s happened to Australia’s productivity performance, I mean we were saying in 2002 that we really should aim to get the productivity growth rate up from 1.75% to 2.25% a year and in fact if you look back now over the first 25 years of this century right what we actually achieved was only three quarters of one percent a year. That productivity performance is just abysmal.
To put it in terms that everybody will understand, had we achieved the two and a quarter percent a year rather than three quarters of a percent a year, the average wage and salary earner in Australia, their income would be 45% higher today than it is. This is not small stuff, this is huge stuff.
Despite backing significant reform, Chalmers has been a long-term opponent of GST reform, although not ruling it out completely. Henry says all options should be left on the table,
It would be better not to constrain the reform process by ruling the GST out and that was a shame for those of us who worked on the Rudd government’s tax review […] that the terms of reference that we were given said that you’re not to make any recommendations concerning the GST.
Those who are having a good hard look at how to restructure the Australian taxation system should not have one hand tied behind their backs. Having said that, I do think it’s possible to achieve major reform of the Australian taxation system without necessarily increasing the rate or extending the base of the GST.
On Chalmers’ plan to tax unrealised capital gains on big superannuation balances, while not directly opposed, Henry says there are other ways to make the system fairer,
I’m not opposed to it. It’s just that I think there are other ways of increasing the taxation that applies to high superannuation balances and improving the intergenerational equity of the superannuation system. In the tax review that the Rudd government Commissioned, which I led, which was published in 2010, we spent quite a lot of time detailing how we thought the taxation arrangements applying to superannuation could be improved.
The thing that stands out is this big difference between the taxation of superannuation fund earnings in the so-called accumulation phase and the treatment that they get in the so-called pension phase, So […] these poor young workers, struggling, see the earnings on their accumulating superannuation balance as being taxed at 15%, whilst those who have big superannuation balances and are in the retirement, the earnings in their superannuation funds are completely tax-exempt, And that just seems rather weird.
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.
Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s least performed plays; perhaps because the hero is so pugnacious and classist, impressive in his strident vehemence, but lacking the vulnerability of a Macbeth or Othello.
Set in the turbulent early Roman Republic (490s BC) – about 450 years before Caesar’s death – the play follows the glorious rise of Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, a terrifying war machine on the battlefield who could carve his way through enemy regiments.
According to one site, the play has not been professionally staged outside the United Kingdom since 2000. This is only the second time Bell Shakespeare has performed Coriolanus, with their other production staged 29 years ago, in 1996.
Directed by Peter Evans and starring Hazem Shammas, this Coriolanus delivers Shakespeare’s most consciously political play with an explosive energy that charts the hero’s psychological downfall.
Published as a tragedy in the 1623 First Folio, Coriolanus can loosely be described as a history play. But it is more commonly recognised as one of Shakespeare’s Roman plays, alongside Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus.
War and exile
Renamed “Coriolanus” after the town he most recently conquered (Corioli), occupied by the arch enemies of Rome (the Volsci), Coriolanus is a devoted son to his fiercely ambitious “tiger mum” Volumnia (Brigid Zengeni).
Shakespeare was never shy about the feats of his warrior protagonists, describing Coriolanus’ ability as a war machine most memorably as:
His sword, Death’s stamp,
Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered
The mortal gate o’ th’ city, which he painted
With shunless destiny; aidless came off
And with a sudden reinforcement struck
Corioles like a planet.
But Coriolanus, who was brought up to win every contest, is also an upper-class patrician, dismissively scornful of the common people’s plebeian rights in the burgeoning Roman Republic.
Hazem Shammas as Coriolanus is a force to be reckoned with. Brett Boardman/Bell Shakespeare
Coriolanus’s absolute refusal to flatter the plebeians – and so refusing their political influence – ignites a brutal conflict between populism and elitism that results in the people’s sway.
Coriolanus is exiled from Rome, the very homeland he fought so valiantly to protect.
Incensed, Coriolanus joins forces with Rome’s greatest enemy, the Volscian Aufidius (Anthony Taufa) and marches against Rome. This forces Coriolanus to confront his own loyalties to his formidable mother and to doting wife Virgilia (Suzannah McDonald), with tragic consequences.
Wonderful performances
Evans has loosely set this production in Europe in the mid-1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, though this creates a vibe more than a direct correlation to events.
Evans also designed the set, making dynamic use of a traverse stage that forces audiences to see each other across the divide. This enhances the sense of a sprawling populous while prompting reflections on our own political milieu. Audiences are told as they enter whether they will sit on the “plebeian” or “patrician” side: a fun ploy, but perhaps unnecessary.
Stealing the show is a wonderful performance by Peter Carroll as Menenius, a sagely Roman senator who uses his charm and political tact to mediate between the patricians and the plebeians. Carroll brings great irony to the role, using eye-rolls and tutting even as he attends dutifully to the new political expectations of the tribunes.
Peter Carroll as Menenius steals the show in a wonderful performance. Brett Boardman/Bell Shakespeare
The tribunes Sicinius (Matilda Ridgway) and Brutus (Marco Chiappi) are performed as shabbier left-wing agitators pitched against the conservative patricians in formal dark suits (costumes by Ella Butler). This makes familiar the political and class tensions, and the layers and dramatic dimensions explored by Shakespeare.
Zengeni brings tremendous heart to Coriolanus’s mother, Volumnia. She is especially good at applying a tiger mother’s pressure of unrelenting standards. There is no doubt that the shining elitism of her son was roughly forged by her sharp expectations.
Shammas as Coriolanus is a force to be reckoned with. His rigid athleticism perfectly suits the superman heroics of this Roman warrior. His unabashed gesticulations are a welcome contribution to the sense of the lines he delivers.
The shabby dress of the tribunes pitches them against the conservative patricians in formal dark suits. Brett Boardman/Bell Shakespeare
Following a scene that ends with one of Coriolanus’s unleashed tirades against the plebeians, Shammas’ performance is so dynamic, and his invective so rigorously conveyed, it seems to remain on stage after he exits.
A timeless tale
There is some reluctance to physically depict the pitched battle of Corioli, which falls a bit flat and misses an opportunity to heighten the dramatic stakes. But this production does very well to animate the complex political and familial drivers that compel Coriolanus toward his inevitable end.
As President Trump drops f-bombs because his real bombs did not make people do his bidding, this rare Shakespeare play becomes timeless.
There has always been need to explore the tragic consequences of leaders who subjectively refuse the offers of diplomacy. Bell Shakespeare’s choice of scheduling war plays this season offers countless ways to reflect on our own world, and the populations of real people connected to the decisions of those in power.
Coriolanus is at the The Neilson Nutshell, Sydney, until July 19, then touring to Melbourne.
Kirk Dodd 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.
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), the organisation responsible for collating and publishing Australia’s music charts, has just announced the biggest overhaul of its methods in more than a decade.
From September, the ARIA charts will be divided according to the release date of entries. Anything older than two years will be moved into a new “ARIA on replay” chart, with the exception of some music re-entering the charts after more than a decade.
The stated aim of the reforms is to better connect Australian audiences with new, and particularly Australian, music. They are part of a series of interventions from different groups aimed at solving the nation’s ongoing music “crisis”.
Why is this happening?
ARIA is responding to two related trends through implementing this new chart system.
The first is that the charts are increasingly dominated by old “catalogue” music. Creative Australia reports the ARIA’s Top 100 charts went from having almost 100% new singles (less than two years old) in 2018, to 70% new singles in 2024.
This is related to a fundamental change in what is being counted.
In 2014, ARIA expanded its sources from point-of-sale data (such as CD sales and iTunes downloads) to include plays on streaming services (such as Spotify and YouTube), which are now the most popular means of music consumption.
People will typically buy a physical/iTunes single or album once. But they might listen to a song on Spotify hundreds of times, and each of these listens count as far as the ARIA charts are concerned.
This explains the resurgence of old releases that find new audiences through media (such as Stranger Things boosting Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill), as well as perennial favourites that never seem to be dislodged (Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album has been in the ARIA Top 50 albums chart for more than 400 weeks).
The second trend is the decline of Australian music in the charts. Research shows the ARIA’s singles and albums charts have become more homogeneous in recent decades, rather than more diversified.
Artists from North America and the United Kingdom are dominating Australian charts more than ever. Many of them sit in the charts for extended periods, at the expense of homegrown talent.
How streaming platforms changed the game
A major challenge for artists on streaming platforms is discoverability, or visibility.
Decisions made by platform-employed playlist curators and AI algorithms aren’t well understood, and are hard to influence. Yet they make a huge difference to how many people will encounter a piece of music.
The inclusion of streaming data in the ARIA charts back in 2014 was presented as a way to more accurately assess what people were listening to.
It can be seen as a response to the overarching narrative of a “crisis” plaguing the Australian music industry – one which extends to existential challenges for live music, and the careers of musicians and other industry workers.
The ARIA’s decision to put their finger on the scales of chart success shows how pressing this crisis narrative has become.
What difference will it make?
Even if Australian artists are better represented in future ARIA charts, material challenges will remain.
Actual sales and streams may remain relatively low. Even with millions of streams, the value returned to artists is often too small to maintain a living.
For most artists, a sustainable music career requires that visibility be translated into other revenue sources, such as live performances, merchandise sales, and media licensing deals.
That said, ARIA’s aim of increasing discoverability for local acts seems likely to have some pay-off. Acts with their names in the new charts will enjoy extra visibility and prestige. If even a small number of opportunities arise from this, it could make a big difference to them, the local industries surrounding them, and the local audiences that will discover them.
ARIA’s intervention is part of a patchwork of responses from industry, government, and communities to Australia’s music woes. Another recent response came from a New South Wales government scheme which will reward overseas headliners (through reduced venue fees) for including an Australian opening act in their show.
State and federal governments are also investing in local music development and export. The surprising exception to this is previous trailblazer Victoria, which recently cut almost all contemporary music funding.
ARIA’s new approach is emphasising the message that Australian music should be valued. Tracking how this approach plays out – as well as which Australian artists benefit – will help ensure a healthy music ecosystem in the future.
Catherine Strong has received funding from the Victorian Music Development Office.
Ben Green receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australasian Performing Right Association.
For many New Zealanders, the Australian magpie is a familiar, if sometimes vexing, sight. Introduced from Australia in the 1860s, magpies are known for their territorial dive-bombing during nesting season, which has cemented their reputation as an unwelcome import.
But our new research reveals a fascinating twist in this narrative.
For more than two decades, we have been unearthing fossils from sites near St Bathans in Central Otago. These sites, once at the bottom of a large prehistoric lake, offer the only significant insight into Aotearoa New Zealand’s land vertebrates from about 16 to 19 million years ago.
This unique window into the past has recently revealed fossils belonging to an ancient relative of the Australian magpie. This discovery suggests magpies have a much deeper connection to Aotearoa than previously thought, challenging common perceptions about their “Aussie immigrant” status.
Together with fossils of other songbirds from St Bathans, these discoveries reshape our understanding of what it means for a species to be “native”. They paint a picture of a dynamic, ever-changing land, rather than a static pre-human ecosystem.
An ancient relative
We named the species we describe in our research the St Bathans currawong (Miostrepera canora). It lived in New Zealand about 19 to 16 million years ago during the Early Miocene.
This bird, roughly the same size as today’s Australian magpie, was a cracticine – a group of songbirds that includes modern currawongs, magpies and butcherbirds. Its discovery challenges the very notion of what is “native” or “introduced” on a geological timescale.
We often regard magpies as an undesirable Australian species that lacks a place in the New Zealand ecosystem. However, its close relatives did live here in the past, and likely did so until a cooling climate limited their habitat near the end of the Miocene, about five million years ago.
The pied currawong is native to eastern Australia and Lord Howe Island. It is one of three currawong species in the genus Strepera and closely related to butcherbirds and Australian magpies. D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA
The presence of this ancient magpie ancestor strongly suggests an over-water dispersal event from Australia to Zealandia early in the evolution of the magpie-currawong group.
We propose this colonisation was likely helped by a diverse subtropical or warm-temperate flora then present in New Zealand. This vegetation created a hospitable environment for species arriving from across the Tasman.
Currawongs eat a wide variety of fruits, insects and small animals. New Zealand’s Miocene flora included many fruit-bearing trees, of which puriri and taraire are two survivors, and offered abundant food.
New Zealand’s ever-shifting ecosystems
Our research at the St Bathans fossil sites reveals a past far from a static, unchanging paradise prior to human arrival.
We know from numerous pollen studies that New Zealand’s forests were changing continuously for millions of years. This continual reworking of the composition and distribution of forests challenges the common conservation aim to return New Zealand to a pre-human ecological state.
Indeed, during the Miocene, New Zealand’s forests would have been unrecognisable to modern eyes. They boasted numerous eucalypts, laurels and casuarinas – plants more typical of Australian forests in Queensland today. This rich floral diversity supported a broader range of fauna, including the newly described currawong, illustrating how different ancient Aotearoa was.
Authors Vanesa De Pietri and Trevor Worthy excavating fossils at the St Bathans site in Central Otago. Paul Scofield, CC BY-SA
A symphony of ancient songbirds
Further research by our team on other fossil songbirds (of the bird order passeriformes) from St Bathans paints an even richer picture of ancient avian life.
Our analysis of the diversity of tiny leg bones indicates the Early Miocene New Zealand bush had significantly more kinds of songbirds than it did just before human arrival.
Our studies demonstrate the presence of potentially up to 17 different songbirds in the Early Miocene fauna. This ancient choir included species varying in size from a large honeyeater (of the bird family Meliphagidae), which was bigger than today’s tūī, to a tiny New Zealand wren. Several different families are also represented.
These findings suggest Zealandia had a far greater diversity of songbirds during the Early Miocene than in the Holocene (past 11,000 years).
The legacy of Miocene climate cooling
Why did these diverse ancient songbirds, including the St Bathans currawong, disappear?
Research points to a dramatic global climate shift. Starting around 13 million years ago, during the later part of the Middle Miocene, New Zealand experienced a period of rapid cooling. This profound climatic change triggered a drastic loss in floral diversity throughout the Middle and Late Miocene.
Many plants that thrived in warmer climates went extinct. This loss of plant life had devastating cascading effects on birds. The disappearance of numerous fruiting trees meant the decline and eventual local extinction of birds such as currawongs and certain pigeons that relied on these food sources.
Lower habitat complexity and fewer kinds of food led to a significant decrease in the number of songbird species.
The story of the St Bathans currawong and the rich songbird diversity of ancient New Zealand serves as a powerful reminder that ecosystems are not static. They are constantly evolving, shaped by climatic shifts, geological events and dispersal across the ocean.
Understanding this deep history allows us to view concepts such as “native” and “introduced” with more nuance. We then appreciate that the biodiversity we have today is but one snapshot in a long, dynamic and ever-unfolding story.
Change is to be expected and ongoing, as seen in the newest of New Zealand’s native birds – the barn owl and Australian wood duck – which self-introduced in the past decade.
Vanesa De Pietri receives funding from the the Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund.
Paul Scofield receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Trevor H. Worthy received funding from the ARC for this project several years ago.
As the world watches the US–Iran situation with concern, the ripple effect from these events are reaching global oil supply chains – and exposing their fragility.
If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz as it is considering, it would restrict the global oil trade and trigger energy chaos.
Petrol in some Australian cities could hit A$2.50 a litre according to some economists. As global instability worsens, other experts warn price spikes are increasingly likely.
What would happen next? There is a precedent: the oil shocks of the 1970s, when oil prices quadrupled. The shock drove rapid change, from more efficient cars to sudden interest in alternative energy sources. This time, motorists would likely switch to electric vehicles.
If this crisis continues or if another one flares up, it could mark a turning point in Australia’s long dependence on foreign oil.
What would an oil shock mean?
Australia currently imports 80% of its liquid fuels, the highest level on record. If the flow of oil stopped, we would have about 50 days worth in storage before we ran out.
Our cars, buses, trucks and planes run overwhelmingly on petrol and diesel. Almost three-quarters (74%) of these liquid fuels are used in transport, with road transport accounting for more than half (54%) of all liquid fuels. Australia is highly exposed to global supply shocks.
The best available option to reduce dependence on oil imports is to electrify transport.
How does Australia compare on EVs?
EV uptake in Australia continues to lag behind global leaders. In 2024, EVs accounted for 9.65% of new car sales in Australia, up from 8.45% in 2023.
In the first quarter of 2025, EVs were 6.3% of new car sales, a decline from 7.4% in the final quarter of 2024.
Norway remains the global leader, with battery-electric passenger cars making up 88.9% of sales in 2024. The United Kingdom also saw significant growth – EVs hit almost 20% of new car registrations in 2024.
In China, EVs made up 40.9% of new car sales in 2024. The 12.87 million cars sold represent three-quarters of total EV sales worldwide.
One reason for Australia’s sluggishness is a lack of reliable public chargers. While charging infrastructure is expanding, large parts of regional Australia still lack reliable access to EV charging.
Until recently, Australia’s fuel efficiency standards were among the weakest in the OECD. Earlier this year, the government’s new standards came into force. These are expected to boost EV uptake.
Could global tensions trigger faster action?
If history is any guide, oil shocks lead to long-term change.
When global oil prices quadrupled in 1973–74, many nations were forced to reconsider where they got their energy. A few years later, the 1979 Iranian Revolution caused another major supply disruption, sending oil prices soaring and pushing much of the world into recession.
Huge increases in oil prices drove people to look for alternatives during the 1970s oil shocks. Everett Collection/Shutterstock
Much more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed the European Union to face up to its reliance on Russian gas and find alternatives by importing gas from different countries and accelerating the clean energy shift.
Clearly, energy shocks can be catalysts for long-term structural change in how we produce and consume energy.
The new crisis could do the same, but only if policy catches up.
If fuel prices shot up and stayed there, consumer behaviour would begin to shift. People would drive less and seek alternate forms of transport. Over time, more would look for better ways to get around.
Cutting oil dependency through electrification isn’t just good for the climate. It’s also a hedge against future price shocks and supply disruptions.
Transport is now Australia’s third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Now that emissions are falling in the electricity sector, transport will be the highest emitting sector emissions source as soon as 2030.
Building a cleaner transport system also means building a more resilient one. Charging EVs on locally produced renewable power cuts our exposure to global oil markets. So do biofuels, better public transport and smarter urban planning.
Improving domestic energy resilience isn’t just about climate targets. It’s about economic stability and national security. Clean local energy sources reduce vulnerability to events beyond our control.
What can we learn from China?
China offers a compelling case study. The nation of 1.4 billion faces real oil security challenges. In response, Beijing has spent the past decade building a domestic clean energy ecosystem to reduce oil dependency and cut emissions.
This is now bearing fruit. Last year, China’s oil imports had the first sustained fall in nearly two decades. Crude oil imports fell 1.5%, while oil refinery activity also fell due to lower demand.
China’s rapid uptake of EVs has clear energy security benefits. pim pic/Shutterstock
China’s rapid shift to EVs and clean energy shows how long-term planning and targeted investment can pay off on climate and energy security.
What we do next matters
The rolling crises of 2025 present Australian policymakers a rare alignment of interests. What’s good for the climate, for consumers and for national security may now be the same thing.
Real change will require more than sustained high petrol prices. It demands political will, targeted investment and a long-term vision for clean, resilient transport.
Doing nothing has a real cost – not just in what we pay at the service station, but in how vulnerable we remain to events a long way away.
Hussein Dia receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the iMOVE Australia Cooperative Research Centre, Transport for New South Wales, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, Victorian Department of Transport and Planning, and Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.
Pregnancy and having a baby can be a special time. And families want to feel safe and trust their maternity care.
But when we reviewed the evidence, we found many Indigenous families globally face unfair treatment during pregnancy and birth. This can include racism, neglecting cultural aspects of their care, or using health care poorly designed to accommodate their needs.
We found similar themes in research involving more than 1,400 Indigenous women, Elders, fathers, family members and health workers from locations including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Greenland and Sápmi (parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia).
Many Indigenous families felt disrespected. They said hospital staff often didn’t understand their cultures or give them basic rights during their maternity care, such as being listened to, included in decision-making, or giving informed consent.
As a result, some families felt hesitant to seek care in mainstream hospitals. As one Indigenous woman told us during recent Australian research submitted for publication:
I’m dreading birthing in such a system.
But there are alternatives.
What can hospitals do?
There is a clear need to improve birthing services and cultural safety in mainstream hospitals with a focus on respecting the beliefs, practices and traditions of all families, including Indigenous ones.
For example, many Indigenous families view childbirth as a communal event with extended family support. But hospital policies that limit the number of support people often disregard these important cultural practices.
Indigenous families also need to get the type of health care they trust and feel comfortable with. Ideally this might involve staff with sound cultural knowledge and who can support families clinically in a culturally safe way.
Aboriginal patient liaison officers are sometimes available in hospitals or health services. But there are not often enough, they have to service entire facilities, and they provide cultural support not clinical patient care.
Indigenous families may also want to access a specific type of care. One example is “continuity of care”, where the same midwife or a small team of midwives, supports the family through the whole pregnancy. Ideally, these midwives should be Indigenous or, if not, be trained in supporting Indigenous families with respect and understanding.
What is ‘birthing on Country’?
For Indigenous women living in rural and remote areas, being sent away from home to give birth in a city hospital can be really hard.
Sometimes women and families are evacuated from their home communities and have to stay for weeks or months in temporary accommodation in the city, both before and after birth, or if their baby is born pre-term and needs extra care. This temporary accommodation can be far from the hospital.
All this takes place in unknown cities and towns, without family support, and sometimes away from their other children cared for by the community back home.
This makes it harder for mums who need extra support, and can get in the way of starting breastfeeding and bonding with their baby.
Again, there is an alternative. For many Indigenous families, giving birth is not just about having a baby. It’s also a spiritual and cultural event that strengthens their identity and connection to Country. A “birthing on Country” model of care, which respects Indigenous traditions and knowledge, reinforces that.
This is midwife-led care designed for and with Indigenous communities. It doesn’t mean you have to birth in rural and remote spaces, but it is a model of care that focuses on culture, and can also be implemented in the city.
Ideally, families would see the same midwife or team of midwives and use the “birthing on Country” model.
What else can we do?
Maternity services can be led by Indigenous people, which many women prefer. But Indigenous staff make up about 3.1% of the Australian health workforce.
So it is crucial to engage non-Indigenous staff in building relationships and to support Indigenous families in their right to receive culturally safe care.
This can start with better training for staff, not only to understand and respond to an Indigenous person’s individual needs, but to know when and how to speak up, call out or report racist or disrespectful behaviour.
This is everyone’s problem
A health system you can trust should be safe for everyone. If some people feel unsafe or face discrimination when getting care, this not only affects them, it affects everyone.
For instance, when Indigenous women avoid or delay going to the hospital because of past bad experiences or discrimination, it can lead to health problems that could have been prevented.
This not only harms the women, it puts more pressure on the public health system, which affects us all.
By talking about these issues, we hope all Australians begin to care about the safety of all women during pregnancy and birth.
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.
When you buy a new electronic appliance, shoes, medicines or even some food items, you often find a small paper sachet with the warning: “silica gel, do not eat”.
What exactly is it, is it toxic, and can you use it for anything?
The importance of desiccants
That little sachet is a desiccant – a type of material that removes excess moisture from the air.
It’s important during the transport and storage of a wide range of products because we can’t always control the environment. Humid conditions can cause damage through corrosion, decay, the growth of mould and microorganisms.
This is why manufacturers include sachets with desiccants to make sure you receive the goods in pristine condition.
The most common desiccant is silica gel. The small, hard and translucent beads are made of silicon dioxide (like most sands or quartz) – a hydrophilic or water-loving material. Importantly, the beads are porous on the nano-scale, with pore sizes only 15 times larger than the radius of their atoms.
These pores have a capillary effect, meaning they condense and draw moisture into the bead similar to how trees transport water through the channelled structures in wood.
In addition, sponge-like porosity makes their surface area very large. A single gram of silica gel can have an area of up to 700 square metres – almost four tennis courts – making them exceptionally efficient at capturing and storing water.
Is silica gel toxic?
The “do not eat” warning is easily the most prominent text on silica gel sachets.
According to health professionals, most silica beads found in these sachets are non-toxic and don’t present the same risk as silica dust, for example. They mainly pose a choking hazard, which is good enough reason to keep them away from children and pets.
However, if silica gel is accidentally ingested, it’s still recommended to contact health professionals to determine the best course of action.
Some variants of silica gel contain a moisture-sensitive dye. One particular variant, based on cobalt chloride, is blue when the desiccant is dry and turns pink when saturated with moisture. While the dye is toxic, in desiccant pellets it is present only in a small amount – approximately 1% of the total weight.
Indicating silica gel with cobalt chloride – ‘fresh’ on the left, ‘used’ on the right. Reza Rio/Shutterstock
Desiccants come in other forms, too
Apart from silica gel, a number of other materials are used as moisture absorbers and desiccants. These are zeolites, activated alumina and activated carbon – materials engineered to be highly porous.
Another desiccant type you’ll often see in moisture absorbers for larger areas like pantries or wardrobes is calcium chloride. It typically comes in a box filled with powder or crystals found in most hardware stores, and is a type of salt.
Kitchen salt – sodium chloride – attracts water and easily becomes lumpy. Calcium chloride works in the same way, but has an even stronger hygroscopic effect and “traps” the water through a hydration reaction. Once the salt is saturated, you’ll see liquid separating in the container.
Closet and pantry dehumidifiers like this one typically contain calcium chloride which binds water. Healthy Happy/Shutterstock
I found something that doesn’t seem to be silica gel – what is it?
Some food items such as tortilla wraps, noodles, beef jerky, and some medicines and vitamins contain slightly different sachets, labelled “oxygen absorbers”.
These small packets don’t contain desiccants. Instead, they have chemical compounds that “scavenge” or bond oxygen.
Their purpose is similar to desiccants – they extend the shelf life of food products and sensitive chemicals such as medicines. But they do so by directly preventing oxidation. When some foods are exposed to oxygen, their chemical composition changes and can lead to decay (apples turning brown when cut is an example of oxidation).
There is a whole range of compounds used as oxygen absorbers. These chemicals have a stronger affinity to oxygen than the protected substance. They range from simple compounds such as iron which “rusts” by using up oxygen, to more complex such as plastic films that work when exposed to light.
Some of the sachets in your products are oxygen absorbers, not desiccants – but they may look similar. Sergio Yoneda/Shutterstock
Can I reuse a desiccant?
Although desiccants and dehumidifiers are considered disposable, you can relatively easily reuse them.
To “recharge” or dehydrate silica gel, you can place it in an oven at approximately 115–125°C for 2–3 hours, although you shouldn’t do this if it’s in a plastic sachet that could melt in the heat.
After dehydration, silica gel sachets may be useful for drying small electronic items (like your phone after you accidentally dropped it into water), keeping your camera dry, or preventing your family photos and old films from sticking to each other.
Kamil Zuber 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.
When tennis legend Serena Williams retired in 2022, she stated:
If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labour of expanding our family.
Many elite athletes end their sporting careers prematurely to have children, with the physical burden of pregnancy one of many barriers.
Despite these barriers, a growing number of elite athletes are proving motherhood and elite sport are compatible and even complementary – but they need better support.
Responding to this need, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) today announced new recommendations in this space, which are the most comprehensive of their kind globally.
Just seven years out from Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Paralympics, this clearer new policy could give confidence to countless Australian athletes who are determined to become parents as well as striving for the podium.
The push for more support
Women can train safely during and after pregnancy but it is often practical challenges – like a lack of contract security, ranking and categorisation protection and limited access to parenting facilities – that prevent them from continuing in their sport.
In Australia, Olympic sprint kayaker Alyce Wood, marathon runner Genevieve Gregson and water polo player Keesja Gofers have gone on to reach personal bests and career-highs after having children. These athletes have highlighted the challenges and gaps they faced along the way, despite organisational support for athlete mums improving in recent years.
Alongside others athlete mums, they are now advocating for better support systems.
This call to action has become increasingly urgent as women’s sport experiences unprecedented growth through increased visibility, investment and professionalisation.
Research driving change
Our CQUniversity research team partnered with the AIS and the Queensland Academy of Sport to develop national evidence-based recommendations to guide sporting organisations in how to support pregnant and parenting athletes.
Underpinning these recommendations was a comprehensive series of studies spanning four years.
Our research found elite athletes encounter more than 30 unique barriers during these critical windows, including:
challenges planning pregnancy around sporting competitions
the physical impacts of pregnancy and childbirth
training considerations
the logistics and cost of caring for an infant while travelling.
Central to these findings was sporting organisations’ lack of pregnancy and parenting policies.
A subsequent review found only 22 out of 104 (21%) national sporting organisations had at least one policy detailing support for pregnant and parenting athletes.
Listening to athletes and staff
To better understand the gaps, our research team met with more than 60 elite women athletes, support staff (like coaches and health professionals) and organisational staff across 25 sports.
We investigated the experiences and needs of elite athlete mothers and those planning children.
We discovered the vast majority were unhappy with the level of pregnancy and parenting support provided by sporting organisations.
They cited a lack of clear frameworks and women’s health education, prevailing stigma, discrimination and limited access to parenting facilities as key barriers.
As one athlete shared:
No one ever talks about it [starting a family] in my environment. It feels like a taboo topic because it’s kind of expected that it’s something you think about after sport. Like, your priority should be training and performing.
Another athlete described:
I’ve got a lot of friends who have also tried [returning after children] and have just not wanted to return because of the environment and lack of [organisational] support […] you have to go back to club level and then work your way back up to state and national level without any help or support.
This input helped shape the AIS recommendations, which are the most comprehensive of their kind globally.
They comprise of 19 policy recommendations and 89 practice recommendations (practical, actionable steps for sporting organisations to follow).
The guide is also the first to include a suite of resources including pregnancy and return-to-sport plan templates, checklists, frameworks and helpful resources to support implementation.
With the adoption of these recommendations, athletes will be able to:
disclose pregnancy on their own terms (excluding required medical clearances and safety precautions)
develop and regularly review a comprehensive, individualised plan guiding them through preconception, pregnancy, postpartum and parenting, in collaboration with relevant staff
take time away from their sport during preconception, pregnancy and postpartum without facing financial or ranking/categorisation implications
have continued access to facilities, services and relevant professionals during preconception, pregnancy and postpartum
maintain their preferred level of engagement with the sporting organisation while taking parenting leave.
Sporting organisations adopting the recommendations should:
implement accessible pregnancy policies
educate athletes and staff on reproductive health
provide essential parenting facilities like designated breastfeeding and childcare spaces.
The recommendations mark a significant step forward for women’s sport, directly addressing longstanding barriers. They will ensure women athletes receive the same basic rights and privileges standard for parents in most Australian workplaces.
Jasmine Titova received funding from the Australian Institute of Sport and the Australian Government’s Research Training Program.
Melanie Hayman 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.
New Zealand’s unaffordable housing market means low-income families face big constraints on their accommodation options. This involves often accepting housing that is insecure, cold, damp or in unsuitable neighbourhoods.
But little is known about the impact of housing type early in life on children’s wellbeing over time.
Using data from nearly 6,000 children in the Growing Up in New Zealand study, our new research compared outcomes for children provided with public housing support during the crucial earliest years (pregnancy through to nine months) with those in other types of housing.
What we found supports ongoing investment in secure, quality housing as a way to reduce inequalities in New Zealand – particularly for those with very young children.
Importantly, by the age of 12, children who started life in public housing had higher levels of wellbeing than some of their peers.
Tracking wellbeing
For our project, we used data on the type of housing at nine months of age, as well as mothers’ assessments of children’s social and emotional development across the period when the children were two to nine years old.
The final data we used were the children’s own responses regarding their quality of life at 12 years old.
Housing was categorised into four types: private ownership (52.3% of children), public rental (9.1%), private rental (35.8%) or other (2.9%).
The New Zealand government provides housing subsidies to approximately 7% of the population. Public housing comprises around 4% of the country’s housing stock.
Throughout our research, we found children who began life in public housing were the group facing the most disadvantage. They exhibited higher levels of behavioural difficulties in early childhood than those in other housing types.
These behavioural difficulties include conduct, hyperactivity and emotional or peer relationship problems. However, their difficulty scores declined more steeply over time, getting closer to their peers by age nine.
In contrast, children’s trajectories of prosocial behaviour, such as being kind and helpful, were the same for each group.
By 12, self-reported wellbeing for children who started life in public housing was at or above that of their peers in private rentals, despite being in the most disadvantaged group in their early years.
These results are different to the outcomes seen in similar research from Australia which found children in public housing had widening gaps in wellbeing compared with their peers in privately owned houses.
In New Zealand, factors such as strong relationships with important adults such as parents and teachers, and reduced exposure to bullying, were found to be more strongly associated with quality of life at this age than housing type or frequency of moving house.
The importance of a stable home
Our work focuses on the early years of a child’s life where security, financial stability and a warm, dry home are important for children’s healthy development. Public housing filled this need for many low-income families.
Despite the positive results seen at 12, gaps in behavioural development between children from the public housing group and their peers were apparent when children started school.
These differences in school readiness mean these children are likely to need wider support to ensure they can make the most of long-term educational opportunities.
But overall, having access to public housing in infancy appears to have cumulative benefits for vulnerable children in New Zealand, providing a stable base for families as children start their lives.
Jaimie Monk received funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Endeavour Programme for this research and has previously received funding from the Ministry of Social Development.
Filmgoers have long been captivated by stories about robots. We are fascinated by their utopian promise, their superhuman intelligence and, in the case of the cyborg, their often uncanny resemblance to humans.
But it is the evil robot – the machine that malfunctions, rebels or was built to harm – that has most powerfully gripped the collective imagination of audiences.
From the silent menace of Maschinenmensch in 1927’s Metropolis, to the relentless pursuit of the Terminator, to the campy violence of M3GAN, evil robots continue to resonate.
These films not only thrill, scare and entertain audiences. They also reflect deep-seated cultural anxieties about the unpredictable consequences of the current and future human-robot relationship.
The killer robot is far from a simple villain. It is a mirror held up to some of the most pressing cultural questions we have about human autonomy and responsibility in the digital age.
The precarity of human control
The enduring appeal of the evil robot narrative lies in the way horror often channels our deepest cultural anxieties about the speed of technological advancement and the precarity of human control in an increasingly digital (and robotic) world.
In The Spark of Fear, scholar Brian Duchaney posits that improvements in technology necessitate new types of horror stories, and that horror as a genre acts out our distrust of the social advances that new technology brings.
In the late 1960s, there was unease about the growing sophistication of computers and the impacts of the Space Race. HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) represented this threat through a disembodied AI that icily turned against its human creators.
The android Ash in Alien (1979) added another layer of menace, disguised as a human embedded in the spacecraft crew and programmed to prioritise corporate interests over human life. In this case, Ash became a proxy for concerns over corporate adoption of automation, and the increasing role of technology in military and industrial contexts.
During the Cold War era, fears of nuclear annihilation and concerns over reaching a point where we could no longer switch off the machines led to the unforgettable T-800 and shape-shifting T-1000 in the first two Terminator films (1984 and 1991).
In the 21st century, as artificial intelligence and robotics became more prevalent in everyday life, the cinematic robot has entered our homes, culminating in M3GAN’s companion-gone-rogue.
In M3GAN (2022), Gemma (Allison Williams) is a robotics designer who creates an AI-powered companion doll to help her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw) cope with her grief. But the doll becomes dangerously overprotective.
In M3GAN 2.0 (2025), the consciousness of the titular robot appears to have survived the 2022 film and, in a move that borrows from The Terminator 2, M3GAN shifts from villain to protector.
The new film explores the consequences of the underlying tech for M3GAN being stolen and misused by a powerful defence contractor to create a military-grade robot, known as Amelia. The only option to counteract Amelia is for Gemma to resurrect M3GAN – complete with upgrades to make her faster, stronger and more deadly.
Our technological anxieties
Why is M3GAN such an effective avatar for our contemporary anxieties?
Horror theorist Noël Carroll argues that monsters are often frightening because they don’t fit neatly into normal categories. They may be “in-between” things (such as part human, part machine) or contradictory (for example a zombie: both alive and dead at the same time).
M3GAN is a great example of both. She looks and acts like a young girl, with expressive facial features and a snarky sense of humour. But she’s really just artificial intelligence inside a robot body.
She’s also contradictory: she is designed to care for and protect her owner, yet she does so in exceedingly violent and deadly ways. These paradoxes make her both frightening and fascinating for audiences.
M3GAN and M3GAN 2.0 bring to the surface our technological anxieties, and defuse them through their camp qualities.
One sequence in the earlier film sees M3GAN break into a fluid yet unsettling dance, mimicking the performance of many a TikTok teen, only for the dance to end abruptly when she snatches a paper cutter blade and returns to stalking her victim.
This meme-ified moment – combined with some deadpan one-liners and often comically ironic facial expressions – have led to M3GAN becoming a gay icon in the wake of the original film.
M3GAN’s campiness doesn’t completely neutralise the horror. It reformulates it, offering a cathartic release that makes the subject matter more digestible. While we feel fear, we do so without real-world consequences. The fear is disarmed through humour.
This multifaceted horror experience more fully reflects the complexities of our evolving relationship with new technology. These relationships often move through a spectrum of concern, anxiety and fear before we find ways to manage and normalise those feelings.
Humour and catharsis are two of these coping mechanisms. Movies provide us with a way of neatly and temporarily resolving what often remain unresolved questions.
Films like M3GAN 2.0 illustrate how horror narratives can also transform alongside the technologies they critique, offering not only tension and jump scares, but also philosophical consideration, comedy and cathartic release.
Adam Daniel 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.
Filmgoers have long been captivated by stories about robots. We are fascinated by their utopian promise, their superhuman intelligence and, in the case of the cyborg, their often uncanny resemblance to humans.
But it is the evil robot – the machine that malfunctions, rebels or was built to harm – that has most powerfully gripped the collective imagination of audiences.
From the silent menace of Maschinenmensch in 1927’s Metropolis, to the relentless pursuit of the Terminator, to the campy violence of M3GAN, evil robots continue to resonate.
These films not only thrill, scare and entertain audiences. They also reflect deep-seated cultural anxieties about the unpredictable consequences of the current and future human-robot relationship.
The killer robot is far from a simple villain. It is a mirror held up to some of the most pressing cultural questions we have about human autonomy and responsibility in the digital age.
The precarity of human control
The enduring appeal of the evil robot narrative lies in the way horror often channels our deepest cultural anxieties about the speed of technological advancement and the precarity of human control in an increasingly digital (and robotic) world.
In The Spark of Fear, scholar Brian Duchaney posits that improvements in technology necessitate new types of horror stories, and that horror as a genre acts out our distrust of the social advances that new technology brings.
In the late 1960s, there was unease about the growing sophistication of computers and the impacts of the Space Race. HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) represented this threat through a disembodied AI that icily turned against its human creators.
The android Ash in Alien (1979) added another layer of menace, disguised as a human embedded in the spacecraft crew and programmed to prioritise corporate interests over human life. In this case, Ash became a proxy for concerns over corporate adoption of automation, and the increasing role of technology in military and industrial contexts.
During the Cold War era, fears of nuclear annihilation and concerns over reaching a point where we could no longer switch off the machines led to the unforgettable T-800 and shape-shifting T-1000 in the first two Terminator films (1984 and 1991).
In the 21st century, as artificial intelligence and robotics became more prevalent in everyday life, the cinematic robot has entered our homes, culminating in M3GAN’s companion-gone-rogue.
In M3GAN (2022), Gemma (Allison Williams) is a robotics designer who creates an AI-powered companion doll to help her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw) cope with her grief. But the doll becomes dangerously overprotective.
In M3GAN 2.0 (2025), the consciousness of the titular robot appears to have survived the 2022 film and, in a move that borrows from The Terminator 2, M3GAN shifts from villain to protector.
The new film explores the consequences of the underlying tech for M3GAN being stolen and misused by a powerful defence contractor to create a military-grade robot, known as Amelia. The only option to counteract Amelia is for Gemma to resurrect M3GAN – complete with upgrades to make her faster, stronger and more deadly.
Our technological anxieties
Why is M3GAN such an effective avatar for our contemporary anxieties?
Horror theorist Noël Carroll argues that monsters are often frightening because they don’t fit neatly into normal categories. They may be “in-between” things (such as part human, part machine) or contradictory (for example a zombie: both alive and dead at the same time).
M3GAN is a great example of both. She looks and acts like a young girl, with expressive facial features and a snarky sense of humour. But she’s really just artificial intelligence inside a robot body.
She’s also contradictory: she is designed to care for and protect her owner, yet she does so in exceedingly violent and deadly ways. These paradoxes make her both frightening and fascinating for audiences.
M3GAN and M3GAN 2.0 bring to the surface our technological anxieties, and defuse them through their camp qualities.
One sequence in the earlier film sees M3GAN break into a fluid yet unsettling dance, mimicking the performance of many a TikTok teen, only for the dance to end abruptly when she snatches a paper cutter blade and returns to stalking her victim.
This meme-ified moment – combined with some deadpan one-liners and often comically ironic facial expressions – have led to M3GAN becoming a gay icon in the wake of the original film.
M3GAN’s campiness doesn’t completely neutralise the horror. It reformulates it, offering a cathartic release that makes the subject matter more digestible. While we feel fear, we do so without real-world consequences. The fear is disarmed through humour.
This multifaceted horror experience more fully reflects the complexities of our evolving relationship with new technology. These relationships often move through a spectrum of concern, anxiety and fear before we find ways to manage and normalise those feelings.
Humour and catharsis are two of these coping mechanisms. Movies provide us with a way of neatly and temporarily resolving what often remain unresolved questions.
Films like M3GAN 2.0 illustrate how horror narratives can also transform alongside the technologies they critique, offering not only tension and jump scares, but also philosophical consideration, comedy and cathartic release.
Adam Daniel 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.
On the question of gas, Victoria’s government faces pressure from many directions.
The Bass Strait wells supplying Australia’s most gas-dependent state are running dry. Gas prices shot up in 2020 and have stayed high. Natural gas is mainly methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
But weaning more than two million gas-using households off the fossil fuel is hard. The gas lobby pushed back against proposed changes, as did the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, while resistance from some stakeholders led to a backdown on plans to phase out gas cooktops.
That’s why the government’s decision to introduce most of the proposed changes is good news. Early plans to require dead gas heaters to be replaced with electric are gone for private housing. But from 2027, new homes have to be all-electric, while landlords will have to replace defunct gas appliances with electric and have ceiling insulation. The move will cut energy bills and accelerate the shift away from gas.
How did we get here?
This week’s announcement comes after lengthy consultation on changes first proposed in 2021.
Some early responses have been supportive, though the gas industry isn’t happy, claiming the reforms will restrict customer choice and cost households more.
Premier Jacinta Allan pitched the announcement as a way to reserve dwindling and more expensive gas supplies for industry, stating:
by 2029, these reforms will unlock just under 12 petajoules of gas every year […] by 2035, they’ll deliver 44 PJ annually – enough to meet 85% of Victoria’s forecast industrial demand.
What are the main changes?
From January 2027, all newly built homes have to be all-electric. This closes a loophole in existing rules where the all-electric rule only applied to new houses requiring a planning permit.
When a gas hot water system reaches end of life in an existing house, it will have to be replaced with an efficient electric alternative from March 2027.
From March 2027, new energy efficiency rules will apply to rentals and public housing, including:
gas hot water systems and heaters must be replaced with efficient heat pumps at end of life
at the start of a new lease, the rental must have draught proofing, ceiling insulation installed with a minimum R5.0 rating when there is no insulation already, and an efficient electric cooling system in the main living area.
To help households transition, all upgrades are covered under the Victorian Energy Upgrades program which will help reduce capital costs.
These plans are welcome. They will cut household energy bills and help meet wider sustainability goals.
As any Victorian who has sweltered over summer or frozen through winter knows, many of the state’s houses are not great on thermal performance. Most existing homes were built before the introduction of minimum standards in the early 2000s.
Older homes are also more likely to present health risks such as mould and damp.
Old gas hot water units in Victoria can be repaired, but replacements will have to be electric from 2027. Rusty Todaro/Shutterstock
Trade-offs proved necessary
During the consultation period, the Victorian government floated even more ambitious plans, such as requiring all households to replace dead gas heaters with efficient electric options.
The government originally explored making electric induction cooktops mandatory in new builds. These plans didn’t get through, potentially because of the attachment some householders feel to their gas heaters and cooktops, as we found in our research.
The state government looks to have decided not to let perfect be the enemy of the good. Better to make significant improvements even with some trade-offs.
When the market isn’t enough
Policymakers usually prefer the market to find solutions rather than requiring change through regulations.
This isn’t always possible. Here, Victoria’s gas supply challenges, subpar housing stock and the pressing need to act on climate change means regulatory nudges are needed.
Could the government’s changes trigger a backlash? It’s possible, especially if the changes are framed as an added cost to landlords and their tenants. All-electric households are cheaper to run, but it costs money upfront to replace appliances. Waiting until an appliance’s end of life and providing upgrade subsidies will help reduce the cost impact. High gas-users save more – a Melbourne household quitting gas would save almost A$14,000 over ten years.
18 months until launch
The first of these changes will be in place in just 18 months.
Schemes such as this have to be structured carefully. To ensure they work as well as possible for renters in particular, we suggest measures to avoid unintended consequences, such as means-testing any subsidy schemes to avoid leaving out lower-income households.
We found many householders cannot access reliable information on retrofits and don’t always trust the skills and information given by tradespeople. This is why it’s vital to have accessible, independent, accurate and trustworthy support in understanding how best to replace gas appliances with electric – and how to assess tradie qualifications.
The government’s decision to exempt rentals with existing ceiling insulation means rentals with old or compacted insulation will miss out.
Victoria should instead look to the Australian Capital Territory, which mandates installation of new R5.0 insulation if existing insulation isn’t at least R2.
The government must also ensure renters don’t carry the upfront cost of the upgrades in higher rent. In Sweden, rent increases linked to energy efficiency upgrades were banned.
For the public to take to these changes, the government must ensure communication is clear and early and that any financial support is adequate and targeted to those most in need.
Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian government and various industry partners. He is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network.
Nicola Willand has received funding for research from various organisations, including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian state government, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the Future Fuels Collaborative Research Centre, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Energy Consumers Australia and the British Academy. She is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network charity and affiliated with the Australian Institute of Architects.
Sarah Robertson has received funding from various organisations, including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian state government, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, and VicHealth. She is a Steering Committee member for Future Earth Australia.
A new financial year starts on July 1. For Australia’s large companies, that means new rules on climate-related disclosures come into force.
These requirements are the culmination of years of planning to ensure companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities for their business. The Albanese government passed the legislation in September 2024.
To be clear, the time to prepare is gone. From July 1, large public companies and financial institutions must gather significant amounts of information and data to include in a new year-end sustainability report. Collecting all this information is one challenge; another is finding the specialists across many fields to compile the reports.
This is a huge change for corporate Australia. It is a whole new reporting regime, supported by volumes of technical detail. Directors will need to sign off on the report. Investors must also upskill to make sense of the disclosures. Neither of these outcomes is assured.
And it is not clear the increased disclosures will do anything to reduce actual emissions.
Climate impacts in focus
Though it’s called a sustainability report, in reality it is very much focused on climate-related disclosures. If you go looking for wider sustainability matters such as social impact, environmental performance and ethical choices, you will be disappointed.
Markets and ultimately the millions of Australians who hold shares will be watching to find out if:
Corporate Australia is prepared for the transition to this new regulatory regime
End users of the new reports are equipped to decipher and understand the huge amount of additional data.
The government has wisely adopted a three-year transition for the new reporting regime, with only the big end of town facing the music this year. Think the big four banks, big supermarkets and large miners.
Some large corporations have been publishing sustainability reports for years. National Australia Bank, for example, published its first one in 2017.
Over the next two years, medium and then smaller companies will join the fold. By 2027–28, companies will be required to report if they meet two of three thresholds: consolidated revenue of A$50 million, or consolidated gross assets of $25 million, or more than 100 employees.
The reasoning behind the transition is they have the benefit of watching how the larger companies adapt to the new laws.
What has to be disclosed?
Reporting entities must include:
– climate statements for the year plus any notes, and
The Australian standards are mandatory and based on the international rules. In broad terms, companies will be required to gather and disclose information on many micro-level issues, which are grouped into four categories. These are: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
Some issues will straddle all four categories.
For example, the physical risk of climate change (floods, uninsurable properties, supply chain disruption) can be considered at the board level and in dedicated climate committees (goverance); in planning for alternative supply chains in a climate transition plan (strategy); in risk assessment (risk management) and in data prediction of the costs involved (metrics and targets).
The big challenge for corporate Australia is that the people, expertise and time required to deliver a sustainability report are in short supply.
More than a quarter of ASX 200 companies do not use the international standards. This means they are not positioned to adapt to the new reporting regime. Even for those that have been early adopters, there has been selective use of the four categories.
For the smaller companies that will follow the first reporting year, the stakes are high.
More information is not always better
The amount of new information (much of it technical) to be disclosed will be overwhelming for the producers of the sustainability reports – and for the readers, whether they are institutional or mum-and-dad investors.
The cost of collecting and making sense of the data required to meet detailed reporting requirements will lead to many companies being swamped in data. More data collected does not equal better data.
Deciding what data to collect and then making sense of it so it supports disclosures will be a major headache for most companies.
The new climate disclosure rules will have a profound impact on corporate Australia. There is a significant gap in capacity and capability to meet the requirements of the new reporting regime. And there is a corresponding need to educate the readers of these new reports to make effective use of the disclosed information.
Rachel Baird 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.
On Wednesday, Education Minister Jason Clare hailed an increase in the numbers of Australians starting a university degree. In 2024, there was a 3.7% increase in Australian students starting a degree, compared to the year before.
This follows Clare’s ambition to see more Australians with a tertiary qualification. The federal government wants 80% of workers to have a TAFE or university qualification by by 2050, up from the current 60%.
How can we do this? New data from the OECD and a new report from The Smith Family give us further insight into the issues and shows what is working for a group of disadvantaged young Australians.
Young people and career uncertainty
Last month, the OECD launched a tool to track teenagers’ career readiness across internationally comparable indicators.
This shows us how disadvantaged Australian students are less likely than advantaged students to have certainty about the kind of job they would like at age 30 (69% compared to 77%).
In this context, we are talking about socioeconomic disadvantage, including parents’ education and occupation and resources at home. This can have a “powerful influence” on students’ learning outcomes.
Career uncertainty is an issue because studies suggest teenagers who have clear plans typically have better employment outcomes.
What about ambition?
Even for those with some certainty about the kind of occupation they would like to be working in at age 30, there is a significant gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students’ ambitions.
The OECD tool shows 55% of disadvantaged students aspire to work as a senior manager or professional, compared to 80% of advantaged students. Similarly, 56% of disadvantaged students aspire to undertake tertiary education (either via a short course or university) compared to 85% of advantaged students.
Disadvantaged students are also more likely to aspire to an occupation that requires tertiary education while not planning to complete a qualification at that level. One in four (26%) disadvantaged students are misaligned in such ambitions compared to 9% of advantaged students.
Disadvantaged students are less likely to say they feel well-prepared for their future after school (57% compared to 70%) and less likely to have searched the internet for information about careers (80% compared to 91%).
These trends suggest a need to enhance career education in school that supports disadvantaged students to better plan and prepare for their post-school pathways.
What can help?
A new report provides insight into how we can better support disadvantaged young people in their careers.
From 2021 to 2023, The Smith Family did surveys and interviews with the same group of financially disadvantaged young people. There were almost 800 young people in the group, who were in Year 12 in 2020. They came from all Australian states and territories.
Echoing the OECD data, participants were often uncertain about where to go for help or how to develop and pursue a career pathway they valued. The study showed several things can help young people find a path to work, training or study after school. They include:
a focus on direct career development skills both at school and post-school. This should include personalised career advice and support, which helps young people articulate their post-school plans and the steps required to achieve this plan
support that starts earlier than Year 12
support for family members’ to access up-to-date labour market, education and training information and support strategies
providing more opportunities to meet employers and build career-related adult networks.
One young person, Byron, talked about how his careers adviser at school had organised for him to meet a paramedic and find out what the role involved.
[My teacher] helped me get information for how I could achieve that goal […].
Braden – whose parents had not finished school – also talked about emotional support provided by his high school teachers:
There were a lot of teachers who were very supportive and really wanted to see me make it through.
Does it work?
With these supports, most young people in the study were trying to build their careers, through work, study or a combination of both.
By their third year after leaving school, 87% were working and/or studying and 60% were on track to complete a post-school qualification. This is up from 77% in the first year of the study. As Evanna, who is working towards her goal of joining the police, said “I’m not going to give up”.
Lucas Walsh receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He has worked with The Smith Family and sits in a voluntary capacity on the Growing Careers Project External Reference Group. He was not involved in the creation of the report discussed in this article
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Rosenberg, Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra, and Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney
Half a million Australians are living with moderate to severe mental illness, but they don’t qualify for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and cannot access the support they need.
In a damning report released on Tuesday, the Productivity Commission says addressing this gap must be an urgent priority for all governments.
The commission is currently reviewing the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreements, signed by the federal government and each state and territory. They aim to improve the community’s mental health and reduce suicide.
The commission has found little progress, calling the agreements “not fit for purpose”.
So, how did we get here? And what should happen next?
More than a lack of funding
In 1992, the year of Australia’s first national mental health policy, 7.25% of the total health budget was allocated to mental health. In 2022-23, it was still only 7.31%.
However, the commission’s main criticism isn’t about funding – it’s about the fragmented way mental health is tackled and the failure of federal and state governments to work together.
While the agreements may have set out “what to do”, the report says they have failed to describe how change should happen.
This lack of specific objectives, goals and targets has prevented national mental health reform at the scale required.
Psychosocial supports
The report says addressing the lack of psychosocial supports outside the NDIS – a gap that affects 500,000 Australians – must be an urgent priority for states, territories and the federal government.
Psychosocial supports are non-clinical services for people experiencing mental illness that enable them to live independently and safely in the community.
For decades, community and charitable organisations have provided these support services in Australia. They can connect people with mental illness to health, housing, employment, education or other community services. This helps people socialise and maintain relationships and daily living skills.
There is already very strong Australian evidence that psychosocial support services can help people recover from even severe mental illness, improve their quality of life, provide earlier intervention and reduce the burden on hospital-based mental health care.
Yet, Australia has never adequately funded psychosocial care.
In 1992, these services received just under 2% of total spending on mental health by the states and territories. In 2022-23, it was 6%.
The ‘missing middle’
The lack of psychosocial services, and of community-based mental health care more broadly, is one of the key gaps in Australia’s existing mental health system, giving rise to the term “the missing middle”. This describes people with needs too complex for primary care (such as general practice), but not urgent enough to warrant hospital admission.
The introduction of the NDIS failed to arrest this gap – and may have made it worse. The scheme was only ever designed to provide support to 64,000 Australians with the most severe, enduring, psychosocial disability.
In providing funds to set up the NDIS, the federal government, in fact, closed some psychosocial programs it had only recently begun, such as Partners in Recovery and Personal Helpers and Mentors. State and territory funding for psychosocial services was already extremely limited, but they, too, withdrew some community-based supports.
The neglect of psychosocial services fits into a broader pattern that affects all community mental health services because responsibility for mental health is split.
The federal government manages primary mental health services, mostly provided by GPs and psychologists under Medicare. Meanwhile, state and territory governments focus on hospital-based, emergency, acute inpatient and outpatient services.
Currently, nobody is responsible for community mental health care. No wonder these “secondary” services, both clinical and psychosocial, have failed to flourish.
What’s next?
The Productivity Commission’s interim report rightly recommends Australia urgently address this gap in psychosocial care.
Governments are now considering a “foundational supports” funding stream, which would provide psychosocial services for people outside the NDIS.
However, in 2020, the Productivity Commission found our mental health system to be fragmented and disorganised. Just adding one more funding stream or program to this environment probably won’t help.
Before considering who funds what, real mental health reform should be based on a clear map that lays out how our mental health system should be organised and the respective role of medical, clinical and psychosocial care in that system.
Where does the evidence indicate people should go for care? What services should they receive? And what should happen next if their mental health improves or declines?
This kind of system-wide map can guide investments and prioritise reform, region by region. This would properly put the person, not the funders, at the centre of care.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Sebastian Rosenberg 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hsiao-chun Hung, Senior Research Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University
Ritidian beach, Guam.Hsiao-chun Hung
In a new study published today in Science Advances, my colleagues and I have uncovered the earliest evidence of rice in the Pacific Islands – at an ancient cave site on Guam in the Mariana Islands of western Micronesia.
The domesticated rice was transported by the first islanders, who sailed 2,300 kilometres of open ocean from the Philippines about 3,500 years ago.
The discovery settles long-standing academic debates and satisfies decades of curiosity about the origins and lifestyles of early Pacific peoples.
The case of the Marianas, located more than 2,000km east of the Philippines and northeast of Indonesia, is especially intriguing. These islands were the first places in Remote Oceania reached by anyone, in this case inhabited for the first time by Malayo-Polynesian-speaking populations from islands in Southeast Asia.
For nearly two decades, scholars debated the timing and the overseas source of these first islanders, the ancestors of today’s Chamorro people. How did they come to Guam and the Marianas?
Archaeological research has confirmed settlement in the Mariana Islands 3,500 years ago at several sites in Guam, Tinian and Saipan.
In 2020, the first ancient DNA analysis from Guam confirmed what archaeology and linguistics had suggested: the early settlers came from central or northern Philippines. Further ancestral links trace them back to Taiwan, the homeland of both their language and their genetics.
A well-planned journey with rice onboard
Was this epic voyage intentional or accidental? What food source allowed these early seafarers to survive?
Today, Pacific islanders rely mostly on breadfruit, banana, coconut, taro and yams. Rice, though a staple food in ancient and modern Asian societies, is challenging to grow in the Pacific due to environmental constraints, including soil type, rainfall and terrain.
Rice was originally domesticated in central China about 9,000 years ago and was spread by Neolithic farming communities as they migrated to new regions. One of the most remarkable of these expansions began in coastal southern China, moved to Taiwan, and spread through the islands of Southeast Asia into the Pacific.
The migration laid the foundations of the Austronesian world, which today comprises nearly 400 million individuals dispersed across an expansive area stretching from Taiwan to New Zealand, and from Madagascar to Easter Island.
For more than a decade, we searched for evidence of early rice in open archaeological sites across the Mariana Islands, but found nothing conclusive.
This study marks the first clear evidence of ancient rice in the Pacific Islands. It also confirms renowned American linguist Robert Blust’s hypothesis that the earliest Chamorros brought cultivated plants with them, including rice.
We found evidence of rice in the Ritidian Beach Cave, which would have been used for ceremonial purposes. Hsiao-chun Hung
How we identified the rice
Our research took us to Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam. To confirm what we found in the cave were rice remains, we used phytolith analysis. Phytoliths are microscopic silica structures formed in plant cells that persist long after the plant has decayed.
Once our initial results confirmed the presence of rice, a more detailed analysis revealed we had found the traces of rice husks preserved on the surfaces of ancient earthenware pottery.
Next, we used detailed microscopic analysis to figure out whether these husks had been mixed into the clay to keep it from cracking when it dried (a tempering technique commonly used by ancient potters) or had arrived by other means. We also analysed the sediment to rule out that the husks were deposited at the site later than the pottery.
Our findings showed the rice husks were not used for manufacturing the pottery. Rather, they came from a separate, deliberate activity using the finished pottery bowls.
Rice phytoliths from excavations at Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam. Hsiao-chun Hung
Ritual use in sacred caves?
The setting of the discovery – a beach cave – gives us another interpretive perspective.
In Chamorro traditions, caves are sacred places for important spiritual practices.
According to records of 1521 through 1602, the Chamorro people in the Marianas grew rice in limited amounts and consumed it only sparingly, reserved for special occasions and critical life events, such as the impending death of a loved one. Rice became more common after the intensive Spanish colonial period, after 1668.
In this context, the ancient islanders more likely used rice during ceremonial practices in or around caves, rather than as a staple food for daily cooking or agriculture.
One of the greatest journeys in human history
This study provides strong evidence that the first long-distance ocean crossings into the Pacific were not accidental. People carefully planned the voyages. Early seafarers brought with them not only the tools of survival but also their symbolic and culturally meaningful plants, such as rice.
They were equipped, prepared and resolute, completing one of the most extraordinary voyages in the history of humanity.
Hsiao-chun Hung receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
