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Category: Features

  • MIL-Evening Report: Israel has banned the UN secretary-general. Is this legal – or right?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Berhanu Woldemariam, Lecturer in law, University of Newcastle

    In early October, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, announced on X he had declared the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, persona non grata. In other words, he had banned Guterres from setting foot in Israel.

    Katz said Guterres’ failure to “unequivocally condemn” Iran’s recent attack on Israel was the reason he was no longer welcome. The strongly worded statement further accused the UN chief of failing to “denounce” Hamas’ massacre in southern Israel on October 7 2023. He added:

    A secretary-general who gives backing to terrorists, rapists and murderers from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and now Iran — the mothership of global terror — will be remembered as a stain on the history of the UN.

    Security Council members expressed their support for Guterres after Katz’s declaration. And Guterres’ spokesperson called it “a political statement” and “just one more attack […] on UN staff” by the Israeli government.

    What is the significance of Israel’s declaration? And what kind of impact could it have?

    What does persona non grata mean?

    The Latin phrase persona non grata means “an unwelcome person”. In international law, it refers to the right of states to exclude a diplomat or consular officer from their territory. This can take the form of expelling a diplomat or denying them entry.

    Under international conventions, nations are not required to provide a reason for such a declaration.

    Diplomats and consular staff enjoy a wide range of immunities and privileges under international law. Among other things, they cannot be subjected to any form of arrest or detention, nor can they face legal action in a criminal or civil court.

    The diplomat’s home nation must waive immunity for this kind of action to be taken.

    The concept of persona non grata was therefore devised as a way to balance against these immunities and privileges. A nation that is aggrieved by the actions of a diplomat or consular officer can simply bar them from their territory, without even providing a reason.

    Can UN officials be declared persona non grata?

    There is a longstanding debate between the UN and its member states about the legality of such declarations.

    The UN maintains its officials cannot be barred from member nations because they are not diplomats accredited to those countries. Rather, they are international civil servants who are accountable to a global organisation.

    The UN also notes that declaring its officials persona non grata seriously interferes with the organisation’s functions, as well as the powers of the UN secretary-general under the UN Charter.

    Many countries, however, do not agree with the UN’s position. In recent years, Ethiopia, Mali, Sudan and Armenia have all declared UN officials to be persona non grata, just to name a few.

    Israel’s declaration is only the second time a nation has specifically banned the UN secretary-general. The first time was in the 1950s when both the Soviet Union and the Republic of China declared the first secretary-general, Trygve Lie, persona non grata.

    In 1961, the Soviet Union also said it would not recognise Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold as an “official of the United Nations”.

    Power must be handled with restraint

    I am researching this issue, which has not yet been widely explored. My study is looking at two main questions: whether states have the right to bar UN officials and the implications of doing this.

    On the first question, I believe there are strong legal reasons to support the rights of states to kick out – or keep out – UN officials.

    For one, nations have a wide scope of sovereign rights to decide who enters and leaves their territory. This is a cardinal principle of sovereignty.

    If UN officials are suspected of engaging in conduct harmful to a country’s national interests and security, it also has a right to defend and protect itself. One way of doing so is to expel the suspected UN official.

    Lastly, there is no direct rule under international law that prohibits this kind of action.

    Beyond these legal rights, however, is the important issue of what such an action means for the longer-term credibility and efficacy of the UN.

    Because countries are not required to provide a reason for banning a foreign diplomat, this makes it a powerful political weapon if used against a UN official.

    And banning UN officials specifically could also seriously jeopardise the organisation’s work and put innocent lives at risk. This is especially true in the context of armed conflicts where the UN is called upon to provide humanitarian assistance.

    For example, in 2021, Ethiopia expelled five UN humanitarian officials who were providing food, medicine, water and other life-saving items to more than 5 million people in a region that was engaged in armed conflict with the federal government. Given the expelled officials were high-ranking staff, the action disrupted the co‑ordination and provision of assistance.

    And banning the secretary-general, in particular, is perhaps the strongest indicator of the breakdown of the relationship between a state and the UN.

    The secretary-general is the chief international civil servant and the embodiment of the organisation. Their leadership is also critical for providing emergency relief, brokering ceasefires and promoting peace.

    Declaring the secretary-general persona non grata, therefore, seriously damages his or her standing, especially in the context of an armed conflict. It’s also a strong political statement against the UN more broadly, which could significantly complicate its humanitarian work.

    Therefore, while countries do have the sovereign power to declare UN officials persona non grata, they need to exercise restraint in how they use this power. What such restraint should look like is an open question, but one that must be urgently addressed.

    The author’s ongoing research work on the topic has received internal funding support from the College of Humanities and Social Futures at The University of Newcastle, NSW.

    – ref. Israel has banned the UN secretary-general. Is this legal – or right? – https://theconversation.com/israel-has-banned-the-un-secretary-general-is-this-legal-or-right-240674

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Huge waves in the atmosphere dump extreme rain on northern Australia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fadhlil Rizki Muhammad, Graduate Researcher, The University of Melbourne

    Bureau of Meteorology via AAP

    In 2023, almost a year’s worth of rain fell over ten days in parts of northwestern Australia, leading to catastrophic flooding in the town of Fitzroy Crossing and surrounds. The rainfall was linked to a tropical cyclone, but there were also lesser-known forces at work: huge, planet-scale oscillations called atmospheric waves which bring heavy rain to northern Australia.

    While climate drivers such as El Niño and La Niña are becoming more familiar to many Australians, fewer understand the significant role played by atmospheric waves, which are like vast musical notes resonating around the globe. These waves can greatly influence rainfall and extreme weather events in Australia – and we don’t know yet whether they could grow more intense as the world warms.

    In our latest research, we discovered how these waves affect Australia’s rainfall, and how they can help us make better weather forecasts. The research is published in the Journal of Climate.

    What are atmospheric waves?

    You can think of atmospheric waves as huge musical notes that travel through the atmosphere around the equator. Just like a musical note, an atmospheric wave has a frequency (a pitch, or how often it oscillates) and an amplitude (a volume or intensity).

    Atmospheric waves can interact with each other to create complex melodies and harmonies in the atmosphere. They affect many aspects of the atmosphere, such as wind, humidity and pressure.

    In the same way musical harmony can evoke emotions, certain combinations of atmospheric waves can lead to complex clusters of clouds that evoke extreme rain events.

    Equatorial atmospheric waves were first discovered mathematically in 1966 by Japanese researcher Taroh Matsuno. By solving equations that describe the behaviour of the atmosphere near the equator, he found waves that could be categorised by frequency, structure, speed and direction of movement.

    Later research found these waves exist in the real world – and they have been studied ever since.

    Some of the most important waves are called Kelvin waves and equatorial Rossby waves. Kelvin waves are centred around the equator, propagate to the east, and take between 2.5 and 17 days to complete one oscillation.

    On the other hand, equatorial Rossby waves are structured as a pair of swirls, one north of the equator and one to the south, which propagate to the west. They are also slower than Kelvin waves, taking between 9 and 72 days to complete an oscillation.

    There are also two other kinds of equatorial fluctuations, discovered after Matsuno’s original work. These are the Madden–Julian Oscillation, which propagates eastward, and tropical depression-type waves, which propagate to the west. Both of these have their own frequencies and influences on the Australian atmosphere.

    Impacts on Australian weather

    We studied the relationship between these waves and rainfall in northern Australia from 1981 to 2018. We found the waves had a significant impact on rainfall during the southern summer (December–February) and autumn (March–May).

    Equatorial Rossby waves that cross Australia may make heavy rainfall around 1.5 times as likely as normal, while tropical depression-type waves make it 1.3 times more likely.

    When waves combine in certain ways, heavy rain events become even more likely.

    Atmospheric waves travelling around the equator can increase the chances of heavy rain – and combinations of waves can have an even greater impact.
    Fadhlil Rizki Muhammad

    For example, a combination of an equatorial Rossby wave and the Madden–Julian Oscillation can make heavy rain in northern Australia two to three times more likely. Similarly, if a tropical depression-type wave and an equatorial Rossby wave cross Australia at the same time, heavy rainfall could be twice as likely as usual.

    Due to Australia’s vast landmass and local geography, the impacts of these waves are quite different across the continent. Regions such as the Kimberley, Cape York and the Top End experience the largest impact from these waves, increasing the chance of heavy rain by up to 3.3 times.

    Meanwhile, the impacts of these waves on the eastern coast of Queensland and inland Queensland are not as great as in the other regions. However, the change in likelihood is still quite high: the waves can make heavy rain 1.4–2.2 times more likely than it would otherwise be.

    What does the future look like?

    We have shown that the activity of these “atmospheric melodies” is important and potentially provides room for improvement in weather models.

    Currently, a good representation of these waves in weather models can improve forecasts up to two weeks ahead.

    A better representation of these waves may improve future weather prediction in the tropics.

    In addition, the impact of these waves in a warmer world is still a mystery. Recent research suggests some atmospheric waves, such as Kelvin and the Madden-Julian Oscillation, could become more intense, potentially with more organised cloud clusters and significant impacts on heavy rain events.

    Fadhlil Rizki Muhammad receives funding from The University of Melbourne and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

    Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather and the National Environmental Science Program.

    Claire Vincent receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century

    Sandro W. Lubis receives funding from U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research as part of Global and Regional Model Analysis program area. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RLO1830.

    – ref. Huge waves in the atmosphere dump extreme rain on northern Australia – https://theconversation.com/huge-waves-in-the-atmosphere-dump-extreme-rain-on-northern-australia-240788

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: These 5 ‘post-truth’ claims are fuelling the water wars in Australia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Quentin Grafton, Australian Laureate Professor of Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

    Mr Privacy/Shutterstock

    The contest between truth and post-truth matters when trying to solve big public policy questions. One of these questions is how to sustainably manage water in Australia for the benefit of all.

    Truths can be confirmed or, at the very least, can be proved false. Post-truths, however, are opinions that masquerade as facts and are not supported by verifiable evidence.

    Post-truths muddy political and policy debates. They leave everyday people simply not knowing what to believe anymore. This prevents good policy being enacted.

    As I outline in a speech to the National Press Club today, several post-truths, espoused by a wide range of people and organisations, are getting in the way of Australian water reforms. These reforms are essential to secure a better water future for the driest inhabitable continent.

    Water policy in Australia is now at a crucial juncture. This year is the 20th anniversary of the National Water Initiative that was meant to lay the foundations for sustainable water management. The completion date of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, accompanied by billions of dollars in funding, is just two years away.

    Yet the so-called “water wars” are raging again. Here are five post-truth claims to watch out for.

    Australia’s water wars are raging again.
    Shutterstock

    1. Water buybacks to sustain rivers harm communities

    The Australian government buys water rights from willing sellers to return water to the environment. These buybacks have been controversial and blamed, with little evidence, for causing many farmers to become distressed and bankrupt, and to leave farming.

    It’s true some irrigators are opposed to buybacks and prefer subsidies to build more efficient irrigation infrastructure on their properties.

    But converting state water licences to a system of tradeable water rights gifted irrigators rights now worth tens of billions of dollars. In return, the government was supposed to buy back enough water from willing sellers to return rivers to health.

    But insufficient water has been bought back from irrigators, for a couple of reasons.

    First, the federal budget for buybacks was much less than needed to reduce irrigators’ water use to sustainable levels.

    Second, the Abbott government capped buybacks in 2015. Its justification was the post-truth claim, based on “low quality” consultant reports, that buybacks were “destroying” irrigation communities.

    The truth is, buybacks from willing sellers are much more cost-effective than taxpayer-subsidised irrigation infrastructure. Research shows infrastructure subsidies give irrigators an incentive to use even more water.

    And there is robust evidence that, overall, the net social and economic impacts of water buybacks are positive. They give sellers the flexibility to adjust their farming practices in ways that are best for them.

    2. Efficient irrigation ‘saves’ water and increases stream flows

    Australia’s irrigation industry, in general, uses water efficiently. It’s a result of many practices, ranging from drip irrigation to covered water channels to digital monitoring technology, among other things.

    However, spending on irrigation efficiencies has not saved much water.

    Landholders have been paid billions of dollars for efficiency improvements. These same taxpayer dollars, paradoxically, may have reduced stream flows in some of our largest rivers. That’s because more efficient irrigation can decrease the amount of water flowing from farmers’ fields to rivers and aquifers.

    3. Australia has world-best water management

    Australia has one of the world’s largest formal water markets. But that doesn’t mean everyone benefits.

    For a start, the water markets are unjust. First Peoples, who were dispossessed of their land and water from 1788 onwards, still have only a tiny share of Australia’s water rights.

    In key areas, Australian water management is also far from best practice. For example, building weirs and dams has partly or completely disconnected groundwater from surface water and prevented or restricted the water flows to floodplains and wetlands that keep them healthy.

    Fish, bird and invertebrate habitats have been destroyed as a result. This must change if we are to avoid further degradation of river ecosystems.

    There is no more obvious sign of the ongoing destruction of Australia’s waterways than the fish kills along the Baaka (Lower Darling River) at Menindee. This happened in 2018–19, during a drought, and again in early 2023, when there was no drought.

    The New South Wales Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineer investigated the 2023 fish kill. Its report found:

    Mass fish deaths are symptomatic of degradation of the broader river ecosystem over many years […] failure in policy implementation is the root cause of the decline in the river ecosystem and the consequent fish deaths.

    4. All Australians have reliable access to good-quality water

    It’s true that residents of Australia’s biggest cities and towns enjoy reliable, good-quality water supplies 24/7. But it’s also true that hundreds of thousands of Australians in rural and remote areas regularly face multiple drinking water threats.

    These threats result in temporary public advice notices to boil water to remove microbiological pollution and health warnings about contaminants that boiling cannot remove, such as nitrates. A few dozen communities have elevated levels of the “forever chemicals”, PFAS, in their tap water.

    5. Dams can ‘drought-proof’ Australia

    It’s true that dams have helped Australia cope with variable rainfall from year to year. It’s also true, however, that despite building very large water storages in the 20th century, too much water is being diverted in multiple places. They include the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia’s “food bowl”.

    Australia is over-extracting the available water in its dams. It’s happening in the northern Murray-Darling Basin, where there is little control over how much overflow from rivers onto floodplains can be taken.

    Over-extraction is a big problem, especially during long droughts when there may be very little water to spare. It means the livelihoods of downstream irrigators with perennial plantings, such as grapes or fruit trees, are at stake. If their trees die, so do their businesses.

    A sustainable future must be built on facts

    Responding to Australia’s water crises is a huge challenge. It’s made even more difficult if we accept the post-truth claims, rather than verifiable facts about how we manage our waters.

    Real reform is needed to secure a sustainable Australian water future. To achieve this, we must tell the truth, acknowledge what’s wrong and be clear about what works and what doesn’t.

    Quentin Grafton receives funding from the Australian Research Council in relation to his water research. He is a former Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2010-2011).

    John Williams is affiliated as founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, a former Chief CSIRO Land and Water and former NSW Comissioner of Natural Resources.

    – ref. These 5 ‘post-truth’ claims are fuelling the water wars in Australia – https://theconversation.com/these-5-post-truth-claims-are-fuelling-the-water-wars-in-australia-239941

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris – a driving force in Ozploitation filmmaking

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark David Ryan, Professor, Film, Screen, Animation, Queensland University of Technology

    IMDB

    It has been 50 years since the cinema release of Peter Weir’s iconic, offbeat, cult classic The Cars That Ate Paris. The film seared the image of a silver Volkswagen Beetle weaponised with deadly spikes into the national imagination. It also helped shape the tropes of Ozploitation filmmaking within the history of Australian cinema.

    Main character Arthur Waldo (Terry Camilleri) and his older brother drive through idyllic countryside, filmed like a tourism commercial. But when a sign diverts them off the highway towards the fictitious town of Paris, it soon becomes clear the place survives on a “crash economy”.

    Older men in the community orchestrate car crashes on the road into Paris and survivors are taken to a hospital where a psychopathic doctor experiments on them. The townsfolk trade luggage from the cars for food and clothing and wrecks are salvaged by youths who terrorise the community.

    The mayor of Paris (John Meillon) pities Arthur and adopts him into his family. Arthur is eventually forced to work as the town’s sole parking inspector, gripped by a phobia of driving, having caused more than one death from behind the wheel.

    A uniquely Australian genre

    Cars was Australia’s first “car crash” film. These were Ozploitation films, which privileged “low” culture and sensationalist sex, violence, nudity or gore to shock viewers after the R rating was introduced in 1971.

    The Mad Max franchise later popularised the car-crash trope to create what has been regarded as a uniquely Australian film genre in the 1970s and 1980s. Movies in this canon included Chain Reaction (1980), Dead End Drive-In (1986) and Road Games (1981).

    Both The Cars That Ate Paris and Weir’s next feature – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), which would catapult him onto the global stage – marked a critical turning point for Australian cinema. They generated increased interest from distributors and film buyers in international markets and established the Australian Gothic style.

    Cars is one of our most iconic Australian horror movies, but it is paradoxically a movie most Australians have never seen.

    ‘No one leaves Paris … no one.’

    The slow burn of success

    Cars was Weir’s second feature film and a far more polished effort than his first experimental horror. Homesdale (1971) is about the owners of a guesthouse performing hideous social experiments on characters already suffering trauma.

    Cars was the first Australian movie to screen at France’s prestigious Cannes Film Festival. It marked a significant achievement for a local movie during the rebirth of the local movie industry, after the production of fiction movies had collapsed during the 1950s.

    To market the film, Car’s producers drove the spiked Volkswagen around Cannes’ streets in an ingenious attempt to hype its screening during a packed festival schedule. The film was well received, but as critic David Stratton observed, it proved just too different from anything Australian filmmakers had made before, and indeed to anything being made anywhere.

    The film failed to secure a distributor or reach large audiences at home or abroad – though it was released several years later in North America as The Cars That Eat People.

    A cult following

    A key reason for the movie’s slow reception was also why it became a cult classic: it defies filmic categories. It was originally promoted as a horror movie before being marketed as an art film. This was partly because the movie’s tone shifts jarringly from parody and black comedy to social commentary, before settling on all-out horror.

    The film was later released with a different title.
    IMDB

    The story is mostly a dark comment on authority, normality and car culture, which descends into schlock violence in the final act. After the older patriarchy punishes youths for terrorising the streets, a gang of monstrous cars – including the iconic porcupine VW beetle – idle on a darkened hill to the sound of animal noises. The killer cars attack the town, leading to murder, mayhem and a violent battle.

    Authur, drawn into the fight, kills one of the youths by repeatedly reversing over him. But rather than express shock or regret, he delights at being cured of his phobia. Arthur drives out of town joyously as survivors of the carnage flee the burning town.

    Some things don’t change

    The movie’s longevity comes from how it tackles social issues at the heart of the national character. Onscreen we see a dark critique of our obsession with cars and the “hoon culture” that results in tragic speeding or drink-driving-related deaths every year.

    The movie also examines tensions between generations. The older, conservative generation arranges car crashes before hypocritically attending church services and preaching justice. The younger hoons bristle at being controlled in a town where they see no future.

    One of the movie’s lasting thematic contributions to Ozploitation film is Weir’s depiction of the economic fragility and inopportunity of rural economies that lead to absurdly immoral activities.

    More recently, the 2010 film The Clinic adapted this premise by portraying the small town of Montgomery as reliant on an illegal international adoption ring. Townsfolk steal babies and force their mothers to fight to the death in an abandoned abattoir while affluent foreign couples watch on monitors to determine which baby they will adopt.

    The Clinic is a bleak, absurd example. But it shows how The Cars That Ate Paris continues to influence Australian cinema in profound and surprising ways.

    Mark David Ryan has received funding from the Australian Film Institute Research Collection (AFIRC) fellowship and is a co-founding member of the Streaming Industries and Genres Network (SIGN).

    – ref. Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris – a driving force in Ozploitation filmmaking – https://theconversation.com/peter-weirs-the-cars-that-ate-paris-a-driving-force-in-ozploitation-filmmaking-237233

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: International student caps are set to pass parliament, ushering in a new era of bureaucratic control

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

    The federal government’s controversial plan to limit international student numbers is now almost certain to win parliamentary approval. But it looks like there will be some changes to the original bill introduced in May.

    A Senate committee, which has a Labor majority, has recommended the bill be passed with amendments. The government is expected to accept the committee’s suggestions.

    What did the committee find and what does this mean for caps on international student numbers?

    Clashing views in parliament

    In the inquiry report, Coalition senators criticised the government’s handling of international education. But they continued to support the idea of putting a limit on international students.

    The Greens’ dissenting report completely rejected the idea of caps. The Greens don’t have the Senate numbers to block them, but they may find common ground with the Coalition on some amendments to influence the final outcome.

    Changes to caps on courses

    The government’s original legislation would let the minister set international student caps by education provider, location and course.

    Caps by provider and location are meant to reduce pressure on accommodation and other services, especially in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. This is a key goal of the bill and other recent changes to international student policy.

    But course-level enrolment caps are not necessary to achieve this.

    As the inquiry report notes, most international students do not stay in Australia permanently. So they should be allowed to choose courses based on their own interests and job opportunities in their home countries.

    The report also notes significant administrative issues involved with setting and monitoring caps for the more than 25,000 courses on offer to international students.

    But the report does not take these points to the logical conclusion of recommending no caps on courses. Instead, it proposes no course caps for universities or TAFEs. Non-university higher education providers and non-TAFE vocational education providers could still be subject to course-level caps.

    After the report was released, Education Minister Jason Clare cited advice about some vocational providers offering courses that “don’t give [students] a real qualification”.

    Coalition senators may seek the full removal of course caps from the bill – in the Senate report, they criticise what they call the “appalling treatment of many private higher education and [vocational education and training] providers”. With support from the Greens, course caps could be stopped.

    A new power to exempt some categories of students

    The government has flagged it wants to exempt students from the Pacific or Timor-Leste and some students on government scholarships from the new cap regime.

    That would require amendments to the original bill, which the Senate inquiry also recommends. This change is unlikely to face any Senate obstacles.

    An earlier date for announcing caps

    The bill requires caps to be announced by September 1 in the year before the caps apply, except for this year when the deadline is December 31.

    This date was criticised because international students receive offers before September. Education providers need to know their caps before they start making offers.

    The Senate report recommends a July 1 announcement instead.

    Huge powers for the minister

    As drafted, the bill gives the minister extraordinary personal power to set international student caps. It sets no limit on the reasons for setting caps. It requires no consultation prior to setting caps, other than the minister for education consulting the minister for skills.

    The Senate report suggests improvements to this process. The education minister would also need to consult the immigration minister and the regulators for vocational education and higher education.

    The report also says education providers should be consulted on the initial setting of enrolment limits each year. With around 1,500 providers registered to offer courses to international students, this consultation may need to be with their representative groups.

    More scrutiny for the caps?

    The bill has a dual system for setting caps. One of these is via a “legislative instrument”, which the minister makes. This can be disallowed by either house of parliament and is the only limit on the minister’s power.

    But the bill also allows the minister to bypass the parliament with a “notice” to education providers. This has the same practical effect as the legislative instrument.

    The bill’s explanatory memorandum (the document to help readers understand legislation), offers a benign explanation for this. It says the minister will only exercise the power of using a notice in limited circumstances. Its examples include when the education provider has supplied additional student accommodation, or needs to expand to take students from other providers that have gone out of business.

    Nothing in the bill, however, limits the use of capping by notice.

    In a submission to the inquiry, I recommended requiring parliamentary scrutiny of the way caps are set. The legislative instrument would set out rules and formulas for calculating the cap. The notice to education providers would have to apply these rules and formulas to their specific circumstances.

    The Senate committee majority, however, recommended a much weaker form of scrutiny. It suggested replacing the notice with a “notifiable instrument”. This would ensure the provider’s cap was publicly available. The notices, by contrast, only go to to the affected education provider, the Department of Education, and the relevant regulator.

    A notifiable instrument would allow more public scrutiny of the minister’s decisions, for people who keep an eye on the government’s legislation website. But it falls well short of a system in which parliament is always directly notified of caps and given the power to intervene.

    A turning point

    The Senate inquiry partly answers some criticisms or weaknesses of the bill. It’s likely the bill will next be debated when parliament sits in November.

    But whatever views people hold on capping international students – and with the student visa holder population nearing 700,000 there is a case for moderation – we are witnessing a major turning point in higher education.

    This bill, in combination with planned controls on domestic student enrolments, signals the demise of student choice and university autonomy. A new era of bureaucratic control from Canberra is arriving.

    Andrew Norton is employed by the Australian National University, which has announced major job cuts that it partly blames on the capping of international student enrolments.

    – ref. International student caps are set to pass parliament, ushering in a new era of bureaucratic control – https://theconversation.com/international-student-caps-are-set-to-pass-parliament-ushering-in-a-new-era-of-bureaucratic-control-240988

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Space isn’t all about the ‘race’ – rival superpowers must work together for a better future

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Art Cotterell, Research Associate, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

    Artist’s concept of the docked Apollo and Soyuz in 1975. David Meltzer/NASA

    In recent years, a new “space race” has intensified between the United States and China. At a campaign rally last weekend, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump invoked this rivalry when declaring the US will “lead the world in space”, echoing Democratic counterpart Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Meanwhile, the president of China, Xi Jinping, has said becoming “a space power is our eternal dream”.

    But what is this latest “race” about, and are there pathways to common ground? History suggests these do exist. As a space governance specialist, I argue our future depends on it.

    The ‘race’ to the Moon

    Lunar missions have become synonymous with a “space race”. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union’s competition to achieve that first “one small step” on the Moon was a symbolic and strategic quest for political, technological, military and ideological dominance on Earth.

    Geopolitical tensions are again moving off-Earth. The US and China are leading separate missions which aim to return humans to the Moon. One goal is to further scientific research. But space mining and economic expansionism are also driving these efforts.

    This new “race” may give rise to new conflicts, especially over prime landing sites and valuable and scarce resources speculated to be located on the lunar south pole.

    Mining water ice could produce oxygen, drinking water and rocket fuel – all vital for sustaining lunar exploration and beyond. The Moon may also contain rare earth metals used in everyday electronics, and a rare non-radioactive isotope, helium-3, for nuclear power.

    Space mining could lead to a concerning “lunar gold rush” or trade war with nations and private actors in space. Resources mined off-Earth are predicted to be worth trillions of dollars.

    The US has a longer history of demonstrated space-faring capabilities, investments and partnerships. Yet China is catching up. While the US made its first uncrewed landing on the lunar south pole this year, China has made several landings. In June this year, China’s Chang’e 6 mission returned with the first rock and soil samples from this sought-after region of the Moon.

    International Space Station’s Expedition 72 crew pose for a portrait on September 29 2024. For the past two decades, the ISS has been a great example of space collaboration.
    NASA Johnson

    How are nations working together on space?

    Both superpowers have invited other nations to join them in realising their lunar visions. This week the Dominican Republic became the 44th signatory to the US-led NASA Artemis Accords.

    Thirteen other nations are participating in the China-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in collaboration with Russia. Senegal joined last month.

    With no membership overlap between the two initiatives, new “space blocs” are emerging, reflective of global power dynamics.

    The Artemis Accords and ILRS are currently not legally binding, but they will be influential in shaping space governance in the 21st century. This is because treaty-making in the United Nations’ Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS, established in 1959) hasn’t kept pace with the latest developments and actors in space.

    Nor has space governance adequately engaged with growing ethical questions, including on space colonisation and light pollution caused by satellites.

    We’re at a critical juncture. It’s important the emergence of these new “space blocs” doesn’t escalate into a contest over whose space governance approach prevails. Not only could this increase the risk of conflict on the lunar surface itself, but it could even fuel geopolitical instability and military competition on Earth.

    History shows we can work together

    Space has fostered cooperation even between superpower rivals during tense geopolitical times. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union cooperated on space governance, laws, science and technologies. This built mutual trust and eased tensions.

    Within COPUOS, nations worked together to agree on what became the first of multiple foundational space law treaties, the Outer Space Treaty in 1967. It prohibits placing nuclear weapons in space and national appropriation claims over celestial bodies like the Moon.

    A joint Moon landing never eventuated. But in 1975, the Apollo and Soyuz spacecrafts docked while in orbit. This marked the first international human spaceflight partnership, a historic feat made possible thanks to technical cooperation and diplomacy. COPUOS heralded this as inspiring ongoing cooperation.

    More recently, NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) has been an orbiting testament to coexistence. Astronauts from the US, Russia and other partners have conducted over 3,000 experiments in microgravity.

    At the recent UN Summit of the Future, video messages from the ISS and China’s Tiangong space station astronauts reaffirmed the importance of international cooperation and the peaceful uses of space.

    From rhetoric to practice

    Humanity has much to lose if global superpowers don’t cooperate on space governance. There is a real and growing risk of exporting and exacerbating our earthly conflicts in space. This will invariably increase tensions on Earth.

    The US and China need to explore opportunities to open dialogue between the Artemis Accords and ILRS. There are some similarities in their separate planned activities, governing principles and guidelines already.

    To make this happen, the US will need to revisit the 2011 Wolf Amendment, a law that restricts NASA from using its funding to cooperate with China, without congressional approval. But China has no equivalent and recently expressed its willingness to cooperate, including sharing its rock and soil samples.

    Sharing scientific information may help find initial common ground before further discussions on space governance. This could even move towards agreeing on landing sites or a lunar time zone. If a rescue mission is ever necessary on the Moon, having some compatible technology through interoperability would make it much easier.

    The US and China do actively engage in COPUOS, including in the working group on space resources. Yet treaty-making is often slow moving. This means greater opportunities for communication, consistency and certainty on space governance are imperative. This could even support multilateral efforts.

    Perhaps a joint lunar research mission between the US and China – in the spirit of the Apollo-Soyuz docking – can still happen in the future.

    In the meantime, the world needs to see space not only in terms of a “race”. It’s also an opportunity to improve international relations, benefiting our future humanity on Earth and, one day, beyond.

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

    – ref. Space isn’t all about the ‘race’ – rival superpowers must work together for a better future – https://theconversation.com/space-isnt-all-about-the-race-rival-superpowers-must-work-together-for-a-better-future-240543

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Is TikTok right? Can adding a teaspoon of cinnamon to your coffee help you burn fat?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

    Evannovostro/Shutterstock

    Cinnamon has been long used around the world in both sweet and savoury dishes and drinks.

    But a new TikTok trend claims adding a teaspoon of cinnamon to your daily coffee (and some cocoa to make it more palatable) for one week can help you burn fat. Is there any truth to this?

    Not all cinnamon is the same

    There are two types of cinnamon, both of which come from grinding the bark of the cinnamomum tree and may include several naturally occurring active ingredients.

    Cassia cinnamon is the most common type available in grocery stores. It has a bitter taste and contains higher levels of one of the active ingredient cinnamaldehyde, a compound that gives cinnamon its flavour and odour. About 95% of cassia cinnamon is cinnamaldehyde.

    The other is Ceylon cinnamon, which tastes sweeter. It contains about 50-60% cinnamaldehyde.

    Does cinnamon burn fat? What does the research say?

    A review of 35 studies examined whether consuming cinnamon could affect waist circumference, which is linked to increased body fat levels. It found cinnamon doses below 1.5 grams per day (around half a teaspoon) decreased waist circumference by 1.68cm. However, consuming more than 1.5g/day did not have a significant effect.

    A meta-analysis of 21 clinical trials with 1,480 total participants found cinnamon also reduced body mass index (BMI) by 0.40kg/m² and body weight by 0.92kg. But it did not change the participants’ composition of fat or lean mass.

    Another umbrella review, which included all the meta-analyses, found a small effect of cinnamon on weight loss. Participants lost an average of 0.67kg and reduced their BMI by 0.45kg/m².

    The effect appears small.
    Radu Sebastian/Shutterstock

    So overall, the weight loss we see from these high-quality studies is very small, ranging anywhere from two to six months and mostly with no change in body composition.

    The studies included people with different diseases, and most were from the Middle East and/or the Indian subcontinent. So we can’t be certain we would see this effect in people with other health profiles and in other countries. They were also conducted over different lengths of time from two to six months.

    The supplements were different, depending on the study. Some had the active ingredient extracted from cinnamon, others used cinnamon powder. Doses varied from 0.36g to 10g per day.

    They also used the two different types of cinnamon – but none of the studies used cinnamon from the grocery store.

    How could cinnamon result in small amounts of weight loss?

    There are several possible mechanisms.

    It appears to allow blood glucose (sugar) to enter the body’s cells more quickly. This lowers blood glucose levels and can make insulin work more effectively.

    It also seems to improve the way we break down fat when we need it for energy.

    Finally, it may make us feel fuller for longer by slowing down how quickly the food is released from our stomach into the small intestine.

    What are the risks?

    Cinnamon is generally regarded as safe when used as a spice in cooking and food.

    However, in recent months the United States and Australia have issued health alerts about the level of lead and other heavy metals in some cinnamon preparations.

    Lead enters as a contaminant during growth (from the environment) and in harvesting. In some cases, it has been suggested there may have been intentional contamination.

    Some people can have side effects from cinnamon, including gastrointestinal pain and allergic reactions.

    One of the active ingredients, coumarin, can be toxic for some people’s livers. This has prompted the European Food Authority to set a limit of 0.1mg/kg of body weight.

    Cassia cinnamon contains up to 1% of coumarin, and the Ceylon variety contains much less, 0.004%. So for people weighing above 60kg, 2 teaspoons (6g) of cassia cinnamon would bring them over the safe limit.

    What about the coffee and cocoa?

    Many people may think coffee can also help us lose weight. However there isn’t good evidence to support this yet.

    An observational study found drinking one cup of regular coffee was linked to a reduction in weight that is gained over four years, but by a very small amount: an average of 0.12kg.

    Good-quality cocoa and dark chocolate have also been shown to reduce weight. But again, the weight loss was small (between 0.2 and 0.4kg) and only after consuming it for four to eight weeks.

    So what does this all mean?

    Using cinnamon may have a very small effect on weight, but it’s unlikely to deliver meaningful weight loss without other lifestyle adjustments.

    We also need to remember these trials used products that differ from the cinnamon we buy in the shops. How we store and how long we keep cinnamon might also impact or degrade the active ingredients.

    And consuming more isn’t going to provide additional benefit. In fact, it could increase your risk of side effects.

    So if you enjoy the taste of cinnamon in your coffee, continue to add it, but given its strong taste, you’re likely to only want to add a little.

    And no matter how much we’d like this to be true, we certainly won’t gain any fat-loss benefits by consuming cinnamon on doughnuts or in buns, due to their high kilojoule count.

    If you want to lose weight, there are evidence-backed approaches that won’t spoil your morning coffee.

    Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

    – ref. Is TikTok right? Can adding a teaspoon of cinnamon to your coffee help you burn fat? – https://theconversation.com/is-tiktok-right-can-adding-a-teaspoon-of-cinnamon-to-your-coffee-help-you-burn-fat-240683

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australia’s child support system can put single mothers at risk of poverty and financial abuse

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kay Cook, Professor and Research Director, School of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Swinburne University of Technology

    KieferPix/Shutterstock

    Australia’s child support system can not only increase women’s poverty, but can actually facilitate financial abuse, according to our recent research.

    Child support is an important system that aims to share the financial burden of raising children between separated parents.

    But there are some serious problems with the way it operates, putting already vulnerable women further at risk.

    Drawing on the experiences of 675 single mothers, we sought to examine women’s experience with the child support system from start to finish.

    Our research suggests four key changes could improve both women’s safety and financial wellbeing.

    How does child support work?

    Where deemed necessary, child support arrangements typically require one separated parent to make payments to the other, on a regular basis.

    How much is paid and how it is collected can vary in different circumstances.

    The amount agreed to be paid in child support can take in a range of factors, such as the cost of childcare.
    AKIRA_PHOTO/Shutterstock

    In some families, a child support recipient’s income will be too high to receive the family tax benefit – a key payment that assists with the costs of raising children.

    In this instance, a family can decide for itself how much will be paid, to whom, and how.

    This is called self management, but it is very difficult to navigate when abuse is present in a relationship.

    For families that do collect the family tax benefit, separated parents can use Services Australia to calculate the amount that will be paid.

    Services Australia will consider factors including what it costs to care for and educate a child, as well as the difference in income between the two parents.

    Once the amount has been calculated, separated parents can transfer payments privately between themselves, an approach called “private collect”.

    Alternatively, this group can also use a service called “agency collect” to manage the transfer. Here, Services Australia collects the funds from the paying parent, then gives it to the agreed recipient.

    For parents using agency collect, payments can also be “garnisheed” – deducted from a paying parent’s salary.

    The system is failing the most vulnerable

    Government reports reveal that across the agency collect system, a staggering $1.7 billion is owed to a third of single-parent households, representing 475,000 children.

    The vast majority of this money is owed to women, two-thirds of whom have children in their care 86% or more of the time.

    The vast majority of single parents are single mothers.
    FotoDuets/Shutterstock

    Losing out on payments

    Across the child support system, 28% of paying parents fail to submit tax returns on time, reducing the accuracy of assessments.

    Centrelink’s Family Tax Benefit A (the first part of a two-part payment) is linked to child support, with every dollar of child support above a certain threshold reducing this payment by 50 cents.

    Concerningly, while reports indicate that 60% of single mothers receiving income support have experienced violence prior to separation, less than 15% receive exemptions from having to seek child support on the basis of this violence.

    By not applying for either child support or an exemption, single mothers could lose a significant portion of their Family Tax Benefit A payments.

    These sobering statistics are only part of the picture. Others remain invisible.

    There are another 500,000 or so children in the private collect system. Many of their situations are a mystery. Services Australia doesn’t know how much those women and children are owed, as they don’t trace this amount and assume that payments are fully compliant.

    What we uncovered

    Our mixed methods survey of 675 single mothers asked women about their experiences in the child support system from start to finish.

    We asked women how they made various decisions about child support, such as when to apply for it and when to change how it is collected and calculated.

    Many women avoid chasing what’s owed to them for fear of retaliation from an ex-partner.
    rigsbyphoto/Shutterstock

    78% of women reported experiencing some form of violence at the time of separation.

    But the research also showed how the nature of this abuse can change post-separation, when financial abuse becomes the primary mechanism.

    Just over half the women reported currently experiencing either emotional or psychological abuse, and 60% financial abuse.

    Women shared they were often fearful of retaliation from their ex-partner if they applied or changed child support payment arrangements.

    I was advised not to apply at the time because of the family violence and he had made threats to kill me so [it] was recommended I didn’t give him any reason to act on this so I went without child support for some period of time.

    Others had to ask for an exemption to apply.

    A Centrelink social worker changed my son’s father to unknown so I wouldn’t be murdered.

    The results show how the current system’s logic can force women to risk their financial welfare to ensure their own safety.

    I withdrew my application to avoid further conflict by telling CSA [Child Support Agency] there was a private agreement but there isn’t and he doesn’t pay anything.

    Often, women are paying back debts to Centrelink due to retrospective changes in their ex-partner’s income or level of care, at the same time they themselves are owed thousands of dollars in child support arrears.

    I’ve at times been living on as little at $72 a week of FTB [Family Tax Benefit] as my sole income to feed, house, clothe and educate myself and two children. I don’t understand how that is possible.

    How could we fix it?

    Based on our findings, our report makes four recommendations that could bring about meaningful improvements, give women choices to suit their family, and create a system that is safe.

    1. De-link family payments from child support.

    2. Co-design family violence processes in the child support system.

    3. Move all payment collections back to being handled by the tax office.

    4. Make all payment debts owed to and enforced by the Commonwealth.

    Any meaningful solution to this problem will need to include the voices of victim survivors, advocates, researchers and social support organisations to co-design an effective system.

    The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Terese Edwards, chief executive of Single Mother Families Australia (SMFA), in the preparation of the report.

    Terese and SMFA provided in-kind support in the form of survey design feedback and recruitment assistance. Terese also contributed to writing the report.

    Kay Cook receives funding from the Australian Research Council in the form of a Discovery Project grant. She is Secretary of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and a Member of the federal Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. She is the PhD supervisor of Terese Edwards, CEO of Single Mother Families Australia.

    Adrienne Byrt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on a Discovery Project funded by the Australian Research Council.

    Ashlea Coen’s research assistant position for this research was funded by Swinburne University of Technology.

    Marg Rogers received funding from the Commonwealth-funded Manna Institute for her Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2022-24.

    – ref. Australia’s child support system can put single mothers at risk of poverty and financial abuse – https://theconversation.com/australias-child-support-system-can-put-single-mothers-at-risk-of-poverty-and-financial-abuse-240917

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: China removes block on Australian lobster, in last big bilateral trade breakthrough

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

    China has removed the last significant trade barrier it imposed on Australia, with a timetable to resume full lobster imports by the end of the year.

    Anthony Albanese announced the breakthrough after a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Vientiane, where the prime minister is attending the ASEAN-Australia summit.

    Albanese said the end of the barrier would be in time for the Chinese New Year. This would be welcomed by those in the lobster trade in places including Geraldton, Western Australia, and in South Australia and Tasmania, he said.

    The lobster decision means the Chinese over the last two years have removed trade barriers of nearly $20 billion slapped on Australia during the time of the former government when relations between the two countries went into a deep freeze. This followed various Australian decisions, including the call for an inquiry into the origins of COVID.

    Remaining impediments are now worth less than $500 million, with two red meat establishments still affected.

    The lobster trade was worth more than $700 million in 2019.

    More than 3000 people are employed in the lobster industry, 2000 of them in WA.

    “The reinstatement in normalised trade for all commodities is front and centre of the Government’s engagement strategy with China,” Albanese said.

    “It is in the interests of both our countries to continue this path of stabilising our relationship. A resumption in trade for all Australian commodities is an important part of this process.”

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

    – ref. China removes block on Australian lobster, in last big bilateral trade breakthrough – https://theconversation.com/china-removes-block-on-australian-lobster-in-last-big-bilateral-trade-breakthrough-241012

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Grattan on Friday: Oil prices could be where the Middle East crisis collides with Australia’s cost-of-living crisis

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

    Angry, accusatory partisan exchanges over the Middle East war have dominated federal politics this week. But for most ordinary voters the issue remains “over there”.

    Apart from the minorities for whom it has an immediate impact – Jewish people frightened by antisemitism, the Muslim community, those with families in Lebanon and elsewhere – it’s a tragedy without tangible relevance to their day-to-day lives.

    On Thursday however, Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned the foreign crisis could feed directly into the domestic cost-of-living crisis, via the price of oil.

    Midway through this week, oil was trading 11% lower than it was a year ago, but 7% higher than a week-and-a-half ago, Chalmers told a news conference.

    Treasury estimates that if prices were 10% higher for an entire year, this would reduce Australia’s GDP by 0.1% and increase the consumer price index by 0.4 percentage points.

    Nothing is certain about the coming months but the potential implications are obvious. Consumers would feel the effects at the petrol pump of the higher oil prices.

    The Reserve Bank will also be watching the possible trajectory of oil prices, together with all the other indicators relevant to its decisions on interest rates. This is against the background of the government’s desperation for a rate cut (or two) before the election.

    Although an increase in fuel prices (hitting businesses as well as families) would not be the government’s fault, it would be blamed.

    According to Labor, at present there’s a disconnect between, on the one hand, the partisan political heat the Middle East war is generating and, on the other, the public’s lack of engagement with the issue.

    Voters not concentraing on the Middle East

    Labor sources say focus group research this week, done with swinging voters, found most people aren’t closely following Middle East events.

    Beyond that, they are generally satisfied with the government’s stand and don’t think the crisis is distracting it from the cost of living (which is separate from how they think the government is handling the cost of living).

    This accords with this week’s Essential poll, in which 56% said they were satisfied with the government’s response on the Israel-Gaza war. Another 30% thought the government had been too supportive of Israel; 14% thought it had been too harsh on Israel.

    Except among some of those directly invested, the Middle East crisis is not likely to be a vote changer.

    In the domestic political battle, Dutton is trying to use the conflict to paint Albanese as weak. That’s a long bow on the issue itself, although more generally the prime minister and his government have come to be seen as having lost their way.

    While Dutton is trying to define Albanese negatively, Albanese is attempting to make Dutton a bigger target.

    NBN sale a distraction

    Thus on Wednesday the prime minister, shortly before he jumped on his plane to attend the ASEAN-Australia summit in Laos, personally introduced legislation that would ensure the NBN remained in public hands.

    If the Coalition didn’t vote for the bill, that would show it would sell the NBN, Labor claimed. It was a crude attempt at scare politics, easily seen through. The Coalition is not suggesting it would sell the NBN and if it did, would most people care? Anyway, originally Labor planned for the NBN to be privatised. Dutton ridiculed the tactic.

    As we look to election year, the 2025 parliamentary sitting calendar came out this week. It has a fortnight sitting in February and pencils in a budget for March 25, which would set up a May poll. Of course this doesn’t rule out an earlier (March) election although Albanese has said more than once he plans a pre-election budget.

    Regardless, we are already in the election campaign. At caucus on Tuesday Albanese was, for the second time recently, talking about the second term agenda.

    Announcements like confetti

    Announcements are raining down like confetti especially related to cost-of-living issues. Supermarkets are being heavily targeted. Launching his merger reform legislation on Thursday, Chalmers said every supermarket merger would be screened, regardless of whether it fell under the new arrangements.

    Present polls are showing the most likely election result, to be delivered by sour voters, is a hung parliament with a minority Labor government.

    Albanese told caucus he was focused on winning majority government. Dutton knows that if the Coalition can’t win, the more crossbenchers it can force Labor to need to rely on, the more unstable a second-term Labor government would be.

    Both sides have a great deal of bedding-down to do before the actual campaign.

    Key items on Labor’s legislative agenda aren’t just not introduced, they are unseen – for instance, on gambling advertising, social media restrictions for young people, electoral funding.

    Major bills are stuck in the parliament – notably on housing, where the Greens may eventually do a deal but are stringing out the pain.

    On the other side, the Coalition has released minimal policy. On its controversial nuclear power plan, it has put out minimal details, in particular refusing to produce costings. It can’t hold back everything until the last moment.

    Will the campaign even matter?

    When the formal campaign comes, how much will it matter?

    There is the old saying “you can’t fatten the pig on market day”. In other words, the election result may be decided well before the actual campaign.

    What do the last three elections (2016, 2019, 2022) tell us about the importance of the formal campaign? In each case, the result was narrow, a matter of a handful of seats.

    In 2022, there was probably nothing Morrison could have done in the last weeks to salvage the situation – to use another farm metaphor, his goose was cooked. In the event, he ran a bad campaign.

    In 2016 prime minister Malcolm Turnbull just scraped home; Turnbull’s flawed campaigning maximised the number of seats he lost.

    In 2019, when it seemed Bill Shorten was almost certain to take Labor to victory, its defeat may have been sealed in the campaign itself, although its heavy policy load always put it in a precarious situation.

    In 2022 Albanese was judged a poor campaigner. Aware of this, Labor strategists will be doing everything to make sure he is fully prepared for “gotcha” questions (on which he faltered last time) and the other hazards that can arise spontaneously.

    Dutton’s forte is negativity, his natural style is the attack. But in those final weeks, more will be needed.

    One challenge in leaving policy releases late is that holes can slip through, inviting slip ups.

    Dutton has far from established himself as a rounded alternative prime minister. Indeed his current approach on the Middle East, completely lacking nuance, raises questions about how he would handle the complexities of foreign policy generally. It has not been reassuring.

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

    – ref. Grattan on Friday: Oil prices could be where the Middle East crisis collides with Australia’s cost-of-living crisis – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-oil-prices-could-be-where-the-middle-east-crisis-collides-with-australias-cost-of-living-crisis-241002

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: There’s a new school funding bill in parliament. Will this end the funding wars?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew P. Sinclair, Lecturer and Researcher of Education Policy, School of Education, Curtin University

    On Thursday, federal Education Minister Jason Clare introduced a school funding bill to parliament.

    The bill aims to set a new “floor” for how much the federal government contributes towards public school funding in Australia.

    It would mean the Commonwealth has to contribute at least 20% of the schooling resource standard (how much funding a school needs to meet students’ educational needs) for public schools each year in all states and territories from 2025.

    Clare argues it will provide “certainty” to schools, but it also comes in the middle of a standoff between the federal government and some states over school funding policy.

    What’s in the bill?

    The bill proposes to change the current arrangement, under which the Commonwealth contributes 20% to the schooling resource standard of public schools. As the government explains:

    This means the 20 per cent will become the minimum, not the maximum, the Commonwealth contributes to public schools.

    The Albanese government says the bill will increase “transparency and accountability” and ensure funding cannot go backwards.

    But it cannot be certain of parliamentary support – Greens and independent senators are among those pushing for the government to provide more funding for public schools than is currently on the table.

    The bill will remove a 20% cap on federal funding for public schools.
    Bianca De Marchi/AAP, CC BY

    The bigger picture

    The bill also comes as the federal government is still trying to sign off new deals with some of the states and territories about their public school funding for next year.

    The current agreements will run out at the end of the year. While the new proposed arrangements would increase the federal contribution, it’s not by as much as some states want.

    So far, Clare has made agreements with Western Australia and Tasmania to increase the federal contribution from 20% to 22.5%. For the Northern Territory it will increase funding to a 40% contribution by 2029.

    So far, it has not signed deals with New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia, which are pushing for a federal contribution of 25%.

    The Australian Capital Territory is also yet to sign, despite its public schools receiving at least 100% of the schooling resource standard (via both federal and its own funds) for several years now.

    Clare set a deadline of September 30 for the holdout states to sign on for the 2.5% funding boost, or risk losing an extra A$16 billion in funding. But that has passed without any compromise from either side.

    Progress and politics

    At the very least, the introduction of the bill to federal parliament is symbolically significant, particularly in light of the Commonwealth’s willingness to increase its contribution to the school resource standard of public schools.

    But politics is never far away in school funding policy. Critics could argue the bill is more of a box-ticking exercise, rather than substantive reform. Indeed, the change in wording to a 20% minimum was inevitable given the specifics of the funding agreements already signed with Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

    Critics might also point out national school funding policy is currently a bit of a mess, with four of the five most populous Australian states ignoring the government’s new funding deal. And they could remind us this agreement has already been delayed by a year. The previous one expired at the end of 2023 and was extended for 12 months by the Albanese government.

    What happens to schools next year?

    The bill does nothing to bring the holdout states any closer to signing on to the new funding agreement.

    But this does not mean the federal government will withdraw its funding when school starts next year. Instead, the current funding arrangements will continue for another 12 months. This is why Clare says $16 billion in “additional investment” is on the table for public schools.

    With a federal election due next year, it is even possible there will be no resolution before Australians go to the polls. This continues the fight over the schooling resource standard funding for public schools, which has has been ongoing since the so-called Gonski Review was made public in 2012.

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

    – ref. There’s a new school funding bill in parliament. Will this end the funding wars? – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-new-school-funding-bill-in-parliament-will-this-end-the-funding-wars-240994

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: New Zealand’s BMI threshold for publicly funded fertility treatment is outdated and unethical. Here’s why it should go

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carina Truyts, Associate Research Fellow (Deakin) and Research Officer, Monash University

    Getty Images

    Women seeking publicly funded fertility treatment in New Zealand must have a body mass index (BMI) under 32, according to clinical priority assessment criteria for access to assisted reproductive technology.

    But as our in-depth interviews and a growing body of evidence show, this approach is outdated and unethical.

    One of our study participants described the system as “completely rigged if you’re a fat person”. Nina, a 37-year-old dance teacher, was denied public funding support to help her conceive because her BMI was above 32 – even though the cause of infertility was her husband’s sperm count.

    Nina is not alone. Paratta, who moved to Aotearoa from Sri Lanka in 2009, was also denied because of her BMI. She raced to lose the required weight in spite of a medical condition, but was then denied again because she had reached 40, the age limit for access to public funding.

    Both women’s experiences highlight New Zealand’s obsolete and discriminating BMI limit. The United Kingdom does not include BMI as a criterion for public funding, and international cutoffs are generally between 35 and 45.

    We argue New Zealand’s BMI threshold must be scrapped to reflect impactful research and respond ethically to New Zealand’s diverse population.

    BMI and fertility

    One in six people worldwide are affected by infertility, according to the World Health Organization’s most recent estimate. They suffer severe social and psychological consequences.

    There are numerous factors that can affect fertility, and obesity is certainly one of them, impacting 6% of women who have never been pregnant.

    But the BMI is an outdated method of assessing this risk. It doesn’t measure body fat percentage, distribution or differences across populations.

    Our study participants have raised concerns about the BMI limit. International and local studies concur with them. Research shows Polynesians are much leaner than Europeans at significantly higher BMIs, meaning Māori and Pacific women are disadvantaged before they even step into the clinic.

    Quick weight loss unlikely to help

    In New Zealand, people seeking public support are told that “making lifestyle changes like quitting smoking or losing weight” could help them become eligible. They are given a stand-down period wherein they must lose the requisite weight before referrals.

    As in Paratta’s case, this can lead to a race to lose weight before the inflexible age limit of 40 is reached. Evidence-based research advises that fertility care should balance the risk of age-related fertility decline with weight-loss advice.

    Nina rejected the advice to lose weight. She was concerned that quick weight loss would require unhealthy practices that could affect her success rate during the embryo transfer.

    Lifestyle changes made within a short time before conception don’t improve outcomes.
    Getty Images

    At the Australia and New Zealand Fertility Association’s annual conference last month, US obstetrician Kurt Barnhart confirmed that lifestyle interventions made weeks or months before conception are unlikely to improve outcomes. They may even cause harm.

    He discussed the FIT—PLESE randomised control study, which compared two groups of infertile women. One underwent a targeted weight-loss program and another exercised but did not lose weight. The results showed no statistically significant difference between the groups’ fertility and live-birth rates. These findings suggest the stand-down period should be revised.

    Barnhart also highlighted that weight loss through lifestyle changes can be practically impossible given obesity is often linked to endocrine issues that have nothing to do with choice. He observed signals that the medical community is changing its views on obesity as a “lifestyle” choice – a welcome shift.

    BMI, lifestyle and ethics

    Social science research has long challenged a colonial and biomedical habit of imposing standards on women whose bodies do not conform to Western ideas of a healthy or ideal body.

    Historically, the emphasis on weight as a criterion for reproductive health echoes harmful eugenicist beliefs. As US science historian Arleen Tuchman writes, the discovery of insulin prompted some groups to recommended banning marriages for people with diabetes to prevent the “unfit” from reproducing. New Zealand’s BMI criteria similarly suggest only those who fit specific physical standards deserve access to fertility care.

    The idea that lifestyle and health are straightforward individual choices is also challenged by research in epigenetics and philosophy. Obesity is often linked with poverty, which in turn is linked to broader social and living environments, including access and income.

    The high economic burden of obesity has led biomedical experts to recommended obese people should be considered for particular support, given the prohibitive cost of assisted reproductive technologies.

    Nina exercises more than eight hours a week and Paratta leads an active lifestyle. For both women, behavioural advice – and the stigma and assumptions it underscores – is offensive.

    Weight-loss advice can be particularly culturally offensive for Māori and Pacific peoples, who may be stigmatised in clinic settings for being too “fat” but considered “skinny” in their communities if they lose the required weight.

    New Zealand’s assessment criteria for publicly funded fertility treatment have not been updated in 27 years. While infertility and health risks associated with obesity during pregnancy and at birth should not be ignored, research shows these risks can be managed effectively and with empathy through a transdisciplinary approach.

    The Australian state of Victoria now offers two free cycles of fertility treatment to any Medicare-holding woman, regardless of BMI, up to the age of 42. The program deliberately reaches out to specific groups whose ethnicity, sexuality and environment limit their access. It has been highly successful and should inspire New Zealand to approach fertility funding with fresh perspectives.

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

    – ref. New Zealand’s BMI threshold for publicly funded fertility treatment is outdated and unethical. Here’s why it should go – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-bmi-threshold-for-publicly-funded-fertility-treatment-is-outdated-and-unethical-heres-why-it-should-go-240295

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The dangers of voice cloning and how to combat it

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leo S.F. Lin, Senior Lecturer in Policing Studies, Charles Sturt University

    David Herraez Calzada/Shutterstock

    The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought both benefits and risk.

    One concerning trend is the misuse of voice cloning. In seconds, scammers can clone a voice and trick people into thinking a friend or a family member urgently needs money.

    News outlets, including CNN, warn these types of scams have the potential to impact millions of people.

    As technology makes it easier for criminals to invade our personal spaces, staying cautious about its use is more important than ever.

    What is voice cloning?

    The rise of AI has created possibilities for image, text, voice generation and machine learning.

    While AI offers many benefits, it also provides fraudsters new methods to exploit individuals for money.

    You may have heard of “deepfakes,” where AI is used to create fake images, videos and even audio, often involving celebrities or politicians.

    Voice cloning, a type of deepfake technology, creates a digital replica of a person’s voice by capturing their speech patterns, accent and breathing from brief audio samples.

    Once the speech pattern is captured, an AI voice generator can convert text input into highly realistic speech resembling the targeted person’s voice.

    With advancing technology, voice cloning can be accomplished with just a three-second audio sample.

    While a simple phrase like “hello, is anyone there?” can lead to a voice cloning scam, a longer conversation helps scammers capture more vocal details. It is therefore best to keep calls brief until you are sure of the caller’s identity.

    Voice cloning has valuable applications in entertainment and health care – enabling remote voice work for artists (even posthumously) and assisting people with speech disabilities.

    However, it raises serious privacy and security concerns, underscoring the need for safeguards.

    How it’s being exploited by criminals

    Cybercriminals exploit voice cloning technology to impersonate celebrities, authorities or ordinary people for fraud.

    They create urgency, gain the victim’s trust and request money via gift cards, wire transfers or cryptocurrency.

    The process begins by collecting audio samples from sources like YouTube and TikTok.

    Next, the technology analyses the audio to generate new recordings.

    Once the voice is cloned, it can be used in deceptive communications, often accompanied by spoofing Caller ID to appear trustworthy.

    Many voice cloning scam cases have made headlines.

    For example, criminals cloned the voice of a company director in the United Arab Emirates to orchestrate a $A51 million heist.

    A businessman in Mumbai fell victim to a voice cloning scam involving a fake call from the Indian Embassy in Dubai.

    In Australia recently, scammers employed a voice clone of Queensland Premier Steven Miles to attempt to trick people to invest in Bitcoin.

    Teenagers and children are also targeted. In a kidnapping scam in the United States, a teenager’s voice was cloned and her parents manipulated into complying with demands.

    It only takes a few seconds of audio for AI to clone someone’s voice.

    How widespread is it?

    Recent research shows 28% of adults in the United Kingdom faced voice cloning scams last year, with 46% unaware of the existence of this type of scam.

    It highlights a significant knowledge gap, leaving millions at risk of fraud.

    In 2022, almost 240,000 Australians reported being victims of voice cloning scams, leading to a financial loss of $A568 million.

    How people and organisations can safeguard against it

    The risks posed by voice cloning require a multidisciplinary response.

    People and organisations can implement several measures to safeguard against the misuse of voice cloning technology.

    First, public awareness campaigns and education can help protect people and organisations and mitigate these types of fraud.

    Public-private collaboration can provide clear information and consent options for voice cloning.

    Second, people and organisations should look to use biometric security with liveness detection, which is new technology that can recognise and verify a live voice as opposed to a fake. And organisations using voice recognition should consider adopting multi-factor authentication.

    Third, enhancing investigative capability against voice cloning is another crucial measure for law enforcement.

    Finally, accurate and updated regulations for countries are needed for managing associated risks.

    Australian law enforcement recognises the potential benefits of AI.

    Yet, concerns about the “dark side” of this technology have prompted calls for research into the criminal use of “artificial intelligence for victim targeting.”

    There are also calls for possible intervention strategies that law enforcement could use to combat this problem.

    Such efforts should connect with the overall National Plan to Combat Cybercrime, which focuses on proactive, reactive and restorative strategies.

    That national plan stipulates a duty of care for service providers, reflected in the Australian government’s new legislation to safeguard the public and small businesses.

    The legislation aims for new obligations to prevent, detect, report and disrupt scams.

    This will apply to regulated organisations such as telcos, banks and digital platform providers. The goal is to protect customers by preventing, detecting, reporting, and disrupting cyber scams involving deception.

    Reducing the risk

    As cybercrime costs the Australian economy an estimated A$42 billion, public awareness and strong safeguards are essential.

    Countries like Australia are recognising the growing risk. The effectiveness of measures against voice cloning and other frauds depends on their adaptability, cost, feasibility and regulatory compliance.

    All stakeholders — government, citizens, and law enforcement — must stay vigilant and raise public awareness to reduce the risk of victimisation.

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

    – ref. The dangers of voice cloning and how to combat it – https://theconversation.com/the-dangers-of-voice-cloning-and-how-to-combat-it-239926

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Rebates for buying e-bikes and e-scooters are good but unlikely to greatly boost sustainable transport on their own

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abraham Leung, Senior Research Fellow, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

    BikePortland/Flickr, CC BY

    Queensland has joined Tasmania as the second Australian state or territory to offer a A$500 rebate for buyers of new e‑bikes. The pre-election announcement includes a smaller $200 rebate for e‑scooters.

    The Queensland e‑mobility rebate scheme is first come, first served, until its $2 million budget ($1 million was added last week) is used up. The Tasmanian scheme has closed for this reason.

    These schemes follow a trend of government incentives to buy e‑bikes in North America and Europe. The Australian schemes differ from most schemes overseas by including e‑scooters too.

    It’s a welcome move to promote sustainable transport. These personal transport devices have smaller environmental footprints to produce and operate than electric cars. Owning e‑bikes or e‑scooters can enable people to drive less – reducing congestion and emissions – and avoid high fuel costs.

    However, my research and other studies suggest ownership doesn’t guarantee much greater use. Additional measures will be needed to boost use of these sustainable transport modes.

    Why own e-bikes or e-scooters when you can share?

    The rebate is likely to boost retailers’ sales. More than 860 rebate applications were received within three days of the scheme starting on September 23.

    And existing owners now have an incentive to upgrade or replace models. They might then sell their pre-loved e‑bikes or e‑scooters on the second-hand market. This means others could get them more cheaply.

    Queensland was the first Australian state to legalise the use of e‑scooters in 2018, when Brisbane introduced shared e‑scooter operations. Regional cities such as Townsville and Cairns launched similar schemes. Dockless e‑bikes later replaced Brisbane’s initial CityCycle bike-sharing scheme.

    I recently conducted research to understand why South-East Queensland residents want to own e‑scooters. The study methods were comparable to an earlier e‑bike user survey.

    Both sets of owners cite replacing car use as their top reason for ownership. However, their motivations differ.

    E‑scooter owners are mainly driven by the lower price and the fun factor of riding. E‑bike owners focus more on fitness and the health benefits of getting some exercise when riding. Australian regulations require e‑bikes to be pedal-assisted.

    But does this mean people will ride more?

    Since 2022, the Queensland government has offered a rebate of up to $6,000 for buying full-sized electric vehicles (that scheme closed last month). It now appears to have responded to calls to do the same for e‑bikes and e‑scooters.

    Buyers certainly won’t mind freebies and rebates, but rebate-induced ownership might not increase overall use by much.

    An Australia-wide survey in 2023 found 57% of respondents had access to at least one working bicycle at home and this proportion has been increasing. However, only 15% reported riding in the previous week. Only 36.7% had ridden in the past year.

    Overall cycling participation has declined over the past decade, except during the COVID pandemic when work and travel patterns were more local. For all periods, men are significantly more likely to cycle than women.

    The same 2023 survey revealed only about 2.1% own e‑bikes. The rebate will likely increase this rate in Queensland.

    Some preliminary evidence suggests e‑bike users ride more often and further than those riding non-electric bikes. It also helps older people get into cycling. And it has the potential to replace car use even in rural areas.

    Despite e‑bikes offering advantages over traditional bikes, riders of both face obstacles to greater use, such as road safety and poor cycling infrastructure.

    What kinds of incentives do other countries offer?

    Australian policymakers should consider offering incentives to ensure the new purchases are well used, not sitting idle most of the time.

    The United Kingdom has a long-standing cycle-to-work scheme that offers commuters a tax exemption for buying bicycles or e‑bikes.

    In the Netherlands, incentive schemes have used smartphone technology to track their mileage. For example, in the B-Riders scheme, riders earn €0.08–0.15 (A$0.13–0.21) per kilometre. There was a 68% increase in e‑bike use by former car commuters after one month and 73% increase after six months of participation.

    Schemes in North America tend to be aimed at lower-income households. They are more likely to be involuntarily carless, so e‑bikes can improve their access to jobs, goods and services.

    There are alternatives to rebates. North Vancouver, for example, is trialling e‑cargo bike lending to replace car shopping trips, as these bulky bikes are not practical for every household to own.

    In France, residents can claim a bike or e‑bike subsidy of up to €2,000 (A$3,210). Second-hand devices sold by approved repairers are covered too, which is likely to help reduce e‑waste. Australian schemes so far only cover new purchases.

    What more can be done?

    For e‑bike and e‑scooter owners, the main barrier to riding more is the lack of safe and well-connected infrastructure. Numerous studies have connected rates of riding to the quality and quantity of infrastructure. Extensive, high-quality and safe cycling networks can deliver lasting shifts towards sustainable transport.

    When the Spanish city of Seville built such networks, cycling rates surged 11-fold in a few years.

    In the Netherlands, this infrastructure is so well-funded and extensive that it’s no surprise cycling is popular there.

    Riders don’t just need bikeways. They also need end-of-trip facilities with secure parking (and maybe free charging too).

    In Australia, cycling gets only around 2% of transport funding.

    In Brisbane, despite not being anywhere close to the European level of cycling infrastructure, new “green bridges” and bikeways will be expanded to more areas of the city (and other Queensland venues). It’s part of preparations to host “climate-positive” Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032. This year’s games host, Paris, successfully upgraded infrastructure and boosted cycling rates.

    Another benefit of more riders on the streets is that it creates “safety in numbers”. Greater numbers would also help attract more funding for infrastructure that makes cycling and scooting safer and more attractive.

    Both e‑bikes and e‑scooters are already worthwhile investments. Using them often would free yourself from car dependence – and that’s good for the planet and your wallet.

    Abraham Leung received funding from the Transport Academic Partnership (Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) and the Motor Accident Insurance Commission) and the Transport Innovation and Research Hub (Brisbane City Council, BCC). The data from the Privately Owned Electric Mobility User Survey (POEMUS) used in this article is funded and commissioned by BCC.

    His current Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship is funded and/or partnered with TMR, BCC, Townsville City Council, and micromobility operators Neuron and Beam. He is also an active member of PedBikeTrans.

    – ref. Rebates for buying e-bikes and e-scooters are good but unlikely to greatly boost sustainable transport on their own – https://theconversation.com/rebates-for-buying-e-bikes-and-e-scooters-are-good-but-unlikely-to-greatly-boost-sustainable-transport-on-their-own-239939

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Our new study shows life expectancy is stagnating for Australians under 50

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sergey Timonin, Research Fellow in Demography, School of Demography, Australian National University

    Global life expectancy has increased dramatically over the past century, with Australia among the best performing countries.

    But during the last two decades, some high-income countries have reported stagnation or even declining life expectancy, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom.

    Could this indicate a broader decline in health advancements in English-speaking countries? Our new study compared life expectancy between English-speaking countries and against other high-income countries.

    We found Australians born between 1930 and 1969 continue to do exceptionally well for life expectancy. But the picture for those under 50 is not so rosy – life expectancy is stagnating for that younger group.

    Why measure life expectancy?

    Life expectancy is a valuable and widely used measure to examine health trends and patterns over time and compare different places or population groups.

    It estimates the average number of years a person would be expected to live. This is calculated using the mortality – or death rates – across different age groups within a specific period. When death rates fall, life expectancy rises, and vice versa.

    Life expectancy can tell a story about a population’s overall health.
    Christian Wiediger/Shutterstock

    Not only does life expectancy tell us about mortality in a population, it is indirectly a measure of overall population health. Most leading causes of death in high-income countries are chronic diseases. These typically affect the health of a person for multiple years before their death.

    Stagnations or reversals in life expectancy can be warning signs of both longstanding and emerging health problems.

    Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has also pointed to mortality as a key indicator of economic success and failure. This makes it a powerful tool for researchers and policymakers.

    Thanks to a long and largely standardised tradition of collecting mortality statistics across high-income countries, researchers are able to carry out in-depth, comparative studies. This can help uncover how specific causes of death have contributed to the changes in life expectancy.

    What we did

    In our study, we analysed mortality trends and patterns in a broader group of English-speaking countries and compared them with other high-income countries. English-speaking countries have shown similarities in recent mortality trends and their causes, such as patterns of drug overdose and obesity prevalence.

    Our analysis focuses on six high-income English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and US. We compared them with the average in 14 other high-income, low-mortality countries from Western Europe (such as France and Norway), plus Japan. This was the “comparison group”.

    We used data from 1970 onwards from well-established, comprehensive sources of high-quality mortality data: the Human Mortality Database and World Health Organization Mortality Database.

    For each English-speaking country and the comparison group, we estimated:

    • life expectancy at birth
    • partial life expectancy between ages 0 and 50 years
    • remaining life expectancy at age 50
    • average length of life.

    Looking at average length of life helps to compare the mortality of the birth cohorts (people born in the same calendar year) as they age. This measure is the closest way to estimate how long people in different populations actually live, and can be used to assess the differences in survival between populations.

    First we looked at how age and causes of death were contributing to a gap between English-speaking countries and the comparison group. Then we compared the average length of life of different birth cohorts.

    What we found

    In the pre-COVID period, both men and women in Australia had a higher life expectancy at birth, compared to the non-English speaking comparison group (the average between those 14 countries). This was also true for men in Ireland, New Zealand and Canada. In the UK and US, however, life expectancy at birth was lower for both men and women, compared to the non-English speaking group.

    But the most striking finding was the difference in mortality for those under 50 in English-speaking versus non-English speaking countries.

    Relatively high death rates for those under 50 dragged the overall life expectancy at birth down for each English-speaking country, including Australia. Suicides and drug or alcohol-related deaths were the main reason for these trends.

    But over age 50, Australia performs exceptionally well in life expectancy for both men and women. Australians born in the 1930s-60s are likely to live longer than those in the non-English speaking comparison group and all other English-speaking countries. But Australians born in the 1970s onwards had lower life expectancy than the comparison group.

    This means overall, life expectancy at birth in Australia is higher than the average for the non-English group. But when you break it down by age, the results show a clear distinction in life expectancy according to when you were born.

    For example, in 2017-19 , male life expectancy between ages 0 and 50 years was 0.3 years lower in Australia compared to the average for the non-English group, while remaining life expectancy at age 50 was 1.45 years higher.

    What this means

    Our study shows a worrying trend for people born from the 1970s onwards. This is true in all English-speaking countries, even before accounting for the negative impacts of the COVID pandemic in places like the UK and US.

    In Australia, the results point to significant generational differences in life expectancy compared to other high-income countries. If the relatively high mortality rates of Australians born from the 1970s onwards continue into the future, then the gains in Australian life expectancy will likely slow. Our status as having one of the highest life expectancies of any country will diminish.

    Our research aimed to examine trends and potential causes of stagnating life expectancy, rather than make policy recommendations.

    But the results suggest real improvement could come through measures that reduce inequality and structural disadvantages that lead to poor health outcomes, such as improving access to education and security of employment and housing, supporting mental health and drug-related safety, and addressing diseases like obesity and diabetes.

    Sergey Timonin receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP210100401).

    Tim Adair receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    – ref. Our new study shows life expectancy is stagnating for Australians under 50 – https://theconversation.com/our-new-study-shows-life-expectancy-is-stagnating-for-australians-under-50-240790

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How can you help your child learn to self-regulate?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natalie Day, Postdoctoral research fellow, Early Start, University of Wollongong

    Allan Mas/ Pexels , CC BY

    Throughout our lives, we need to be able to manage our thoughts and behaviour. We need to do this to reach various goals and to get along with others – even if other distractions and impulses get in the way.

    This is our ability to self-regulate, and it starts to develop between the ages of three and five.

    My colleagues and I have been researching what parents can do to help children learn to self-regulate. What are the dos and don’ts?

    Why is self-regulation important?

    A child’s ability to self-regulate has a huge impact on shorter-term outcomes such as making and keeping friends, engaging in school and making academic progress.

    Self-regulation allows children to keep going with a task or situation when things are tough, and to keep their emotions and behaviour focused on reaching the goal.

    For example, when playing a game with friends, a child who can self-regulate can wait their turn, stay within the rules, and keep playing even when they are losing. A child with low levels of self-regulation may become easily upset and show frustration, and in some cases be dysregulated. This can include meltdowns.

    But there can also be impacts later in life. Low levels of self-regulation at preschool age have been associated with a range of problems in adulthood, such as gambling, substance abuse, poor health, poor sleep and weight issues.

    The capacity to self-regulate emerges from around three years of age, when the brain undergoes rapid physical growth. The period of peak growth is typically between three to five.

    The capacity to self-regulate is not only influenced by genetics, but also by children’s environment and their experiences. This is where parents come in.

    Self-regulation is important for children’s short and long-term development.
    Artem Podrez/ Pexels, CC BY

    Jumping in to ‘help’

    Naturally, parents want to protect their children from difficulty. But sometimes this desire to protect and “help” kids can hamper their development.

    Children experience challenges all the time – this may be opening a water bottle, trying to find a certain toy in their bedroom, or tying their shoelaces. As parents, we can often rush to fix the problem straight away.

    But it is important for children’s brain development to experience and cope with challenges. When parents let children face a tricky task, they can learn to think flexibly, create solutions and persist toward the goal. It also teaches them they can handle things themselves.

    Persistence when playing a game can translate to persistence when tying their shoelaces, and in time, fewer meltdowns.

    What should parents do instead?

    This is not to say you should ignore your child if they are very distressed and stuck up a tree, or have fallen and seriously hurt themselves.

    But there are many other occasions when you can wait, or help in less obvious ways.

    For example, if a child is struggling to find the right puzzle piece, parents should wait for the child to either ask for help or show visible signs of frustration.

    If possible, start just by using guiding words to help, rather than taking a hands-on approach. You could try encouragement, questions, hints and suggestions to lead your child to a solution. For example, “have you tried all the pieces yet?”

    Or if they are playing with Lego, parents may remind the child of their last success or ask them “what does the diagram show?”, they might give a hint such as “I sometimes need to go back some steps to find where I went wrong”, or maybe more directly, “how about we look through the steps together?”.

    This type of guidance means the child is still the one solving the problem.

    Parents start by just using verbal prompts or tips to their child.
    eggegg/Shutterstock

    Step up your approach

    If the child is still stuck, parents can use their hands to offer more guidance.

    When completing a section of a puzzle, a parent may move some pieces closer to the child to draw their attention to them.

    If needed, a more direct approach would be to identify the piece the child is looking for, and hand it to the child so that they can put it in and remain active in completing the task.

    The child may not have the piece the right way round, so the parent should revert to using verbal guidance for encouragement or suggest turning the piece to see if it fits.

    Kids are still in charge

    The key thing to remember is the child should be guiding your approach to helping them.

    Don’t intervene without them asking you, and don’t offer full support straight away.

    You can use encouragement, hints and suggestions, and then hands-on help. Keep offering your child the chance to work elements out for themselves. And know their way of solving the problem might be different from yours.

    Natalie Day’s research was funded by a Faculty Postgraduate Research Scholarship and International Postgraduate Tuition Award from the University of Wollongong, with a contribution from the NSW Institute of Educational Research—Distinguished Student Award.

    – ref. How can you help your child learn to self-regulate? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-you-help-your-child-learn-to-self-regulate-240454

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Canadian urban mobility is woefully lacking, but building a better future is still possible

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Betsy Donald, Professor, Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University, Ontario

    Canadian cities are falling behind globally when it comes to efficiently moving people. Long commute times, high congestion rates and infrastructure that is vulnerable to climate change are symptoms of a mobility crisis.

    Mobility is an essential public good, and modern policies aim to move people in a safe, efficient, accessible and non-polluting way. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and worsened existing vulnerabilities in Canada’s urban mobility systems, undermining progress toward these goals.

    Our new book, Urban Mobility: How the iPhone, COVID, and Climate Changed Everything, explores how technology, the pandemic and climate change have shaped, and continue to shape, urban mobility, particularly for those with inadequate transportation networks.

    Population growth outpacing transit

    One of the primary challenges Canadian cities face is that they have grown faster than their sustainable transportation options. While urban populations have expanded, investment in public transportation has not kept pace, resulting in a gap between capacity and potential.

    The COVID-19 pandemic also impacted city life in profound ways, and urban life and economies in Canada are still being affected to this day. Remote work became the norm for many, reducing the number of people commuting and causing a significant drop in public transit ridership.

    Additionally, the shift to hybrid work has permanently altered how Canadians engage with their cities. People are shopping online more, using public transit less, and central business districts and physical retail spaces are seeing less foot traffic.

    Urban economies, which have been designed to rely heavily on the movement and presence of large numbers of people through public transit and local businesses, are still grappling with this new reality. Activity levels, for instance, are down by about 20 per cent from pre-pandemic levels in many downtown spaces still.

    Tech platforms and mobility

    Digital platform firms like Zoom, Uber, Amazon and Instacart adapted quickly during the pandemic, offering safe work-from-home options, private transportation and online shopping services to people. These platforms disrupted the traditional urban economic model, which relies on transit, physical stores and foot traffic.

    Ride-hailing services drew passengers and their fares away from local economies into foreign-owned ride-hailing companies. Transit systems not only depend on the massive built public infrastructure, but also passenger fares and other government funding to maintain the public system over time.

    In addition, these tech platform companies come with equity and accessibility concerns. Research on the use of ride-hailing and public transit during the pandemic found that its usage in Toronto was clearly organized along class, neighbourhood and social lines. People identifying as one or more of the following were more likely to continue riding transit during the pandemic: low-income, immigrant, racialized, essential workers and car-less, in large part because other options were not available to them.

    Similarly, in Calgary, private technology experiments in electric scooters privileged wealthier neighbourhoods. Electric scooters were used more in wealthier neighbourhoods, and as poverty levels increased at the neighbourhood level, the use of them dropped. The researchers concluded that greater attention needs to be paid to ensuring all communities, regardless of economic status, have access to micro-mobility options.

    Canada has a history of importing technological solutions, rather than creating its own. Montréal, however, offers a successful example with its Bixi bike program, the third largest bike share system in North America after New York and Chicago, with 11,000 bikes and almost 900 stations. A non-profit runs the program, Rio Tinto Alcan provides aluminum for the bikes and Cycles Devinci manufactures them in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean.

    Canadian cities need to build innovation opportunities that promote economic development and improve mobility at the same time. Canada’s technology sector is woefully undersupported at present.

    Bixi bikes stand on Sainte-Catherine Street in Montréal in August 2019. The City of Montréal bought the bike sharing system in 2014 and created a non-profit entity to run the bike sharing operations.
    (Shutterstock)

    Climate crisis intensifying challenges

    The third, and perhaps most pressing challenge facing Canadian cities is the growing climate crisis. Cities are both instigators and victims of climate change. They contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, but are also heavily impacted by severe weather events, heat waves and other side effects.

    These impacts are becoming increasingly concerning with the intensification of wildfires, urban flooding and other extreme weather events.

    By the end of the 20th century, most large Canadian cities were heavily investing in strategies to encourage people to use alternatives to cars, such as transit, light rail, biking and walking.

    However, shifting priorities, ideologies and budgetary adjustments led to government cutbacks to transit funding and a lack of new transportation innovation. In Ontario, for example, the government continues to push unrealistic road-building ideas at the expense of more active transit options.

    This failure to effectively move people around has left an opening for new mobility experiments led by private companies, but some of these programs don’t really integrate well into the Canadian urban mobility ecosystem. Many of these mobility options — such as ride-hailing — are also costly and exclusive. Others, like electronic scooters, can lead to e-waste.

    Building a better future

    The disruptions caused by technology, the pandemic and climate change are reshaping how people and goods move in cities. To build a better future, Canadian cities must address the interconnected challenges of three transitions: digital, health and environmental.

    While all sectors need to invest, strong leadership and policy action from governments at all levels is needed to create a more climate-friendly, economically vibrant and equitable urban mobility future. Governments will need to embrace bold, innovative solutions that address all three of these challenges.

    This means policy frameworks that reduce carbon emissions through climate action plans, leveraging political will and funding in efforts to shift away from private automobiles and toward transit, bike lanes and pedestrian pathways, and experimenting with digital mobility services while still prioritizing sustainability.

    Betsy Donald receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    Shauna Brail receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. Canadian urban mobility is woefully lacking, but building a better future is still possible – https://theconversation.com/canadian-urban-mobility-is-woefully-lacking-but-building-a-better-future-is-still-possible-239679

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Everybody wants this – what makes a great TV kiss?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Phoebe Hart, Associate Professor, Film Screen & Animation, Queensland University of Technology

    Netflix/IMDB

    There is a lot of talk about the hot onscreen chemistry between actors Kristin Bell and Adam Brody in the hit new Netflix series, Nobody Wants This. Based loosely on series creator Erin Foster’s own romance with husband Simon Tikhman, the irreverent romcom follows a sex podcasters’ whirlwind love affair with a rabbi.

    Notably, the sensual first kiss between the couple on a Los Angeles sidewalk one evening two episodes in has tongues wagging. But this is not the first case of opposites attract on TV nor, arguably, the steamiest small-screen smooch.

    The onscreen kiss has a long and storied history. Many viewers form strong connections with characters they enjoy and consider them friends – called parasocial relationships – more so when story lines lean towards love.

    Seeing caresses on screen can trigger the same neurons that fire when we lock lips in real life, making certain scenes very memorable and oh-so-marketable. Here are some of the best and the ingredients that make them great.

    From friends to lovers

    What fan of Friends could forget the classic first kiss when Rachel watches an old prom video and finally realises the depth of Ross’ feelings for her? Or when Jim on The Office (US) confesses his unrequited love for Pam, leading to an impassioned embrace? Both are preceded by a long, slow burn that heightens anticipation.

    More than colleagues then.

    Other kisses are more technically or narratively ambitious. Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow and Ygritte (real-life married couple Kit Harington and Rose Leslie) share a sizzling embrace in the geothermal springs of Grjótagjá, an Icelandic lava cave –although the actual location is only used in the establishing shots.

    ‘You know nothing Jon Snow.’

    On New Girl, Jess and Nick share an unpredicted pash at the end of an episode called Cooler. Jess (Zooey Deschanel) has been left out of her male housemates’ night of carousing because Nick believes she ruins his chances of scoring. It turns out he has a willing kissing partner closer to home.

    A sudden New Girl make-out sesh.

    Challenging the script

    Unexpected televisual trysts confront cultural scripts about romance. They can challenge viewer expectations about sex and relationships more generally. As such, some kisses have longstanding impact.

    Take for example Star Trek’s interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura in 1968, for which actor Nichelle Nichols recalled receiving an overwhelmingly positive reaction.

    ‘I’m not afraid. I am not … afraid.’

    Dawson’s Creek characters Jake and Ethan were celebrated for being the first men to kiss on prime-time American television in 2000 (two women had already kissed on L.A. Law in 1991).

    Australian television set the standard for gay men and women kissing in the 1970s and, more recently, Franky and Bridget found a lusty forbidden bond in the prison drama Wentworth.

    ‘You’ve got tickets on yourself.’

    Future connections

    How we might connect in the future have also been a part of televisual treatments of intimacy.

    In Black Mirror’s San Junipero the creators explore the possibility of elderly bodies inhabiting their younger sexual selves via simulated reality. And then there’s the time The Doctor saved Rose’s life by absorbing a power vortex in her body via his lips in The Parting of the Ways episode of Doctor Who.

    ‘I think you need a doctor.’

    Extreme close up

    From the lighting and framing to the perfect music, there is a lot that goes into a kissing scene. All this can add up to a moment that prompts audiences to think about highlights from their own kissing histories – or their desired futures.

    Typically screen kisses last longer than in real life, and research suggests some audience expectations of their own sex lives are unrealistically influenced by what they see on TV. In other words, if you’re expecting the same intensity or duration as Joanne and Noah on Nobody Wants This on your next first date, you should probably modify your expectations.

    Today, filming kisses can be challenging and consent is an important part of the production process both onscreen and off. The role of an intimacy coordinator behind the scenes is still relatively new (and we don’t know if this Netflix production had one). But it’s clear when watching the hyped Nobody Wants This scene that both characters are willing kissers.

    There apparently wasn’t much detailed planning involved, other than an objective to capture the “best kiss ever”. Their job well done adds to a pantheon of pashes that will be remembered (and replayed) fondly.

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

    – ref. Everybody wants this – what makes a great TV kiss? – https://theconversation.com/everybody-wants-this-what-makes-a-great-tv-kiss-240792

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: We shouldn’t lock up young offenders with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Here are the alternatives

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Jane Elliott, Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Sydney

    Sabphoto/Shutterstock

    Barely a month goes by without news of children and adolescents who are imprisoned and being mistreated in youth detention.

    A new parliamentary inquiry is shining a light on this mistreatment. It’s investigating if youth detention facilities are complying with children’s human rights conventions, and the need for minimum standards of care.

    This inquiry is an opportunity to consider alternatives to youth detention that support and rehabilitate children and adolescents who break the law. This is especially needed for those with disabilities relating to brain function (neurodisability), such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

    FASD is a neurodevelopmental disability. It is caused by exposure to alcohol before birth, which injures the brain. We don’t have prevalence data in the general Australian population but we know it affects children from all demographics.

    Here’s what we know about the incarceration of children and adolescents with FASD – and what we could do instead.

    Imprisoning children from age 10

    Children as young as ten years may be incarcerated in Australia.

    But prison is not a solution to youth crime. Imprisonment without care can cause harm and entrench disadvantage.

    Young people’s brains experience a period of rapid development between ten and 14 and aren’t able to make complex moral decisions.

    Children and adolescents with FASD may have cognitive impairment affecting their ability to think, learn, make decisions and remember, or intellectual disability. Their mental age may therefore be significantly lower than their chronological age.

    FASD makes it harder to understand

    FASD affects children and adolescents’ motivation before committing a crime and their capacity to comprehend the consequences.

    Due to their brain injury, children and adolescents with FASD are often impulsive, easily misled and can’t distinguish right from wrong. They may not learn from past experiences.

    When they’re in the justice system, they may be suggestible. Poor memory may make it difficult for them to provide reliable witness statements. Due to poor language and communication skills, they may misunderstand court orders, leading to non-compliance.

    Rates of FASD are high among young people in the youth justice system. An estimated one in three detainees in Australia has FASD. But many adolescents in contact with the justice system have un-diagnosed FASD and complex needs.

    Internationally, young people with FASD are 19 times more likely to be jailed than people without FASD.

    Diverting adolescents from prisons

    The Productivity Commission’s 2024 report on government services found diversion programs reduced youth re-offending.

    It also found diversion programs were significantly cheaper than incarceration. In 2022–2023, the average cost for each adolescent under community-based supervision was A$305 per day, compared to $2,827 per day for adolescents in custody.

    In a 2024 report, National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds recommended expanding evidence-based youth justice diversion programs:

    Tragically, by not addressing their human rights early on, and instead taking a punitive approach to their offending, we are essentially criminalising some of the most vulnerable children in Australia.

    So what do these programs look like?

    Many countries have moved from a justice system to a welfare system, which is especially appropriate for adolescents with disabilities like FASD.

    Ireland ended the imprisonment of children aged under 18 years in 2017. Children under 18 can now be sent to children detention campuses, which have games rooms and bedrooms instead of cells.

    Scotland closed its youth prisons in 2024.

    Spain has long used an in-patient approach. Adolescents live in a therapeutic environment with compassionate contact with professionally trained staff.

    Other countries are replacing child prisons with theraptutic environments and compassionate staff.
    Shutterstock/SeventyFour

    Successful Australian initiatives offer a foundation for a new model of youth justice.

    The Yiriman Project, for example, is run by Elders near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia, where rates of FASD are high. The project takes Aboriginal young people at risk of offending onto remote country to engage in culturally based activities, such as assisting Indigenous rangers to care for country. A three-year review of the Yiriman project found positive outcomes for Aboriginal youth with FASD.

    Research shows it’s crucial that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are involved in the design of any programs that affect their communities.

    Early detection to prevent re-offending

    Early identification of FASD allows children to receive appropriate intervention and support to enhance their social and emotional wellbeing. This may prevent them from re-offending and improve their life trajectory.

    FASD assessments are available nationally. Support services for young people with FASD aim to improve their health and wellbeing, address secondary disability, and reduce exposure to risks such as substance use.

    For young people who have offended, intensive community-based support programs improve young people’s access to education, life skills and heath-care access. Therapeutic and diversionary activities can also strengthen family relationships, which are crucial to successful community reintegration.

    What needs to happen next?

    Governments need to invest in evidence-based diversion programs for children and adolescents who commit serious crimes.

    These programs provide rehabilitation and support and are effective, compassionate and cost-efficient.

    Governments also need to urgently up-skill justice professionals to improve their recognition and assessment of adolescents with FASD and other neurodevelopmental problems.

    Early identification and understanding of young people with challenges such as FASD and cognitive impairment will enhance the young person’s health and mental health outcomes, prevent youth crime and benefit society.

    Elizabeth Jane Elliott receives funding from the Australian Department of Health and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, including a Leadership Fellowship. She is a Board Director of NOFASD Australia and Royal Far West and is an Advisor in Child Health to UNICEF Australia.

    Fiona Robards is affiliated with the Public Health Association of Australia, the Australian Child Rights Taskforce and Australian Association for Adolescent Health.

    – ref. We shouldn’t lock up young offenders with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Here are the alternatives – https://theconversation.com/we-shouldnt-lock-up-young-offenders-with-fetal-alcohol-spectrum-disorder-here-are-the-alternatives-239318

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Building companies feel they must sacrifice quality for profits, but it doesn’t have to be this way

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerry London, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Torrens University Australia

    The Australian construction industry has long been facing a crisis of serious defects in apartment buildings. In the past, alarming incidents such as the Sydney Opal Tower evacuation and the Melbourne Lacrosse fire signalled systemic problems in construction.

    The same problem persists today. One recent report shows serious defects in apartment buildings in New South Wales have more than doubled between 2021 and 2023.

    As the Albanese government fast-tracks its five-year plan to build 1.2 million dwellings, this number will likely worsen.

    We’ve researched the pressures the construction industry feels and how that can result in unsafe apartments, and what can be done to make housing like this better for everyone.

    Why are we in this situation?

    Serious defects endanger lives, cost building and insurance firms millions of dollars, and put pressure on regulators. Typical responses involve increased regulation, but the lack of change in apartment quality shows increased regulation is not enough. Behavioural and cultural changes are needed.

    We found the poor quality of apartment buildings is often the result of deeply entrenched patterns of unprofessional behaviour across the industry. These often arise as professionals face pressures to cut costs in an industry notorious for its low profit margin.

    We also found this pressure is exacerbated by aggressive competition, work overload, exploitation and a toxic culture.

    As pressures mount, professionals’ decision-making becomes increasingly fraught. For example, many professionals we interviewed largely believe they must choose between profit and quality.

    There are no simple answers to this age-old conundrum. However, our study shows a way forward.

    What did we find?

    Our three-year study funded by the Australian Research Council is the first in Australia to extensively investigate 12 building professions struggling to navigate and resolve this perceived dilemma.

    Teams from four Australian universities conducted desktop reviews, analysed professional codes of conduct, interviewed 53 professionals and conducted six focus group discussions. After two years of analysis and model development, we published our industry technical report and presented our findings to practitioners in NSW and Queensland.

    We have empirical evidence that shows profitability and quality do not have to be mutually exclusive. We have uncovered powerful, innovative but ad hoc strategies showing businesses can reconcile both.

    One builder we profiled, a multinational company and a market leader in apartment construction, took a pioneering approach to this dilemma.

    For many years, the company’s strategy was to build as quickly and cheaply as possible to save money. However, these savings were ultimately lost because they found they had “[…] made some money at the time, but we basically spent it all fixing things that we didn’t build that well”.

    The company re-examined its business model and developed a new strategy that reconciled profitability, quality and professional behaviours.

    The company analysed where the majority of their defects arose from and there were five key areas including:

    • balcony waterproofing

    • shower construction and waterproofing

    • fire wall installations

    • penetrations through fire walls

    • brick masonry construction.

    They then built prototypes of high quality construction for each of these typical building elements. They found their prototypes addressed defects while also integrating different technical standards.

    The company then informed their clients, subcontractors and suppliers that “this is how we will build from now on”. Over time, it became apparent their strategy supported skills training while also improving long-term financial sustainability.

    These prototypes are now showcased at a centre in NSW. Subcontractors, architects, engineers, designers, professional associations and other supply-chain actors regularly visit.

    The company now conducts training for quality based on these prototypes and reports that since the establishment of this strategy, defects have been reduced by 85%.

    Our empirical evidence shows these strategies drive quality and long-term financial sustainability.

    Safer homes nationwide

    This strategy does not have to be limited to a few large companies.

    In our report, we provide a plan to ensure safer, more financially sustainable building practices can be rolled out across the industry. It relies on collaboration across sectors.

    Best-practice companies in each state, like the one in NSW, would come under a national umbrella. Commonwealth and state governments would initiate the effort by identifying the best examples in different states. Together, they could focus on design, construction quality and on innovative materials, standards and ways to build safely and cost-effectively.

    Having best-practice example companies would help weed out apartment defects.
    Shutterstock

    With positive role models to follow, other companies can improve. This would instil a mindset and culture of leadership, accountability and responsibility across the sector. More coherent standards would be embedded across the industry would ensure workers at all levels are no longer siloed.

    Education and training organisations would progressively incorporate these new standards. Over time, the workforce would rebuild knowledge and skills that are perceived to have largely disappeared.

    It’s important to ensure clients help drive this too. By mandating or incentivising companies with safer supply chains, there’s a commercial imperative to do better.

    Professional associations also have a role to play. They can support these efforts further by creating resources and advocating for best practice.

    Making apartments safer requires a shift in the thinking of the entire construction industry. There are inventive ways to align quality with profitability. We must challenge the assumption that they are always irreconcilable.

    Kerry London received funding from Australian Research Council. ARC Linkage Project “Constructing Building Integrity: Raising Standards for Professionalism” (LP 190101218).

    Barbara Bok received funding from Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project “Construction Building Integrity: Raising Standards through professionalism” (LP190101218)

    Zelinna Pablo received funding from the Australian Research Council under the ARC Linkage Project “Constructing Building Integrity: Raising Standards for Professionalism” (LP 190101218).

    – ref. Building companies feel they must sacrifice quality for profits, but it doesn’t have to be this way – https://theconversation.com/building-companies-feel-they-must-sacrifice-quality-for-profits-but-it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way-239821

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The renewable energy hidden in our wastewater ponds – here’s how it could work

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Faith Jeremiah, Lecturer in Business Management (Entrepreneurship and Innovation), Lincoln University, New Zealand

    Getty Images

    New Zealand is confronting a perfect storm.

    Its energy grid faces three pressing challenges at once: an unreliable electricity supply, strict emissions reduction targets and ongoing environmental issues related to wastewater ponds.

    As the country prepares to meet growing energy demands, the variability of wind, solar and hydroelectric power has made year-round electricity generation hard to ensure.

    Compounding the issue are New Zealand’s emissions targets and avoidable emissions from wastewater treatment plants.

    We need immediate, practical solutions. One lies hidden within our wastewater systems.

    Three challenges, one solution

    In the search for viable renewable energy sources, one option is to install floating solar panels on wastewater ponds. However, the initial costs and environmental concerns related to manufacturing and disposal may pose temporary challenges.

    A more immediate and cost-effective solution is already available: biogas membrane covers.

    These covers generate continuous energy at half the cost of solar while addressing environmental concerns such as methane emissions and algal growth.

    Even greater efficiency and environmental benefits are possible through combining biogas covers with heat systems and floating solar panels. Together, these three technologies suggest a multi-pronged solution that could help stabilise the grid, meet emissions targets and improve wastewater management.

    Biogas from wasterwater

    Methane emissions from wastewater ponds are a major environmental concern, contributing significantly to New Zealand’s overall greenhouse gas footprint. By installing biogas membrane covers, this methane can be captured before it escapes into the atmosphere, and instead be used to generate electricity.

    This creates a year-round, consistent energy supply – something traditional renewables such as wind, solar and hydro cannot always guarantee.

    From a cost perspective, biogas systems are about 50% cheaper to install than solar power per kilowatt of energy produced. Also, because these systems produce energy continuously, they are ten times more cost-effective than solar panels, which suffer from intermittency issues.

    But beyond energy production, these covers offer other environmental benefits. They limit harmful emissions and curb ongoing complaints about unpleasant odours in neighbourhoods near wastewater treatment plants.

    Excessive algal growth is a recurring problem for wastewater treatment plants.
    Getty Images

    Repurposing excess heat

    While biogas systems have enormous potential, they do have one significant drawback. The heat generated during methane combustion can cause wastewater ponds to overheat, leading to operational challenges such as excessive algal growth.

    This is where cogeneration or combined heat and power systems come into play.

    These systems capture the excess heat from biogas combustion and convert it into additional electricity. This not only improves energy efficiency but also regulates the temperature of the wastewater ponds, helping to reduce algal growth and evaporation.

    The third part of an integrated solution involves solar panels which can be installed on top of the biogas covers. While these are more expensive to install initially, they collectively contribute valuable gains. When installed on the surface of wastewater ponds, the panels generate additional renewable energy without taking up valuable land space.

    Floating solar panels can also help manage the ponds themselves. By reducing sunlight penetration, they help limit the growth of algae.

    Wastewater ponds as energy hubs

    The beauty of an integrated approach is that it addresses several problems simultaneously.

    By rethinking wastewater ponds as renewable energy hubs, New Zealand can turn an existing problem into a key part of the solution.

    Biogas membrane covers provide immediate energy and emissions benefits. Combined heat and power systems boost efficiency by converting waste heat into electricity. And floating solar panels maximise renewable output while improving wastewater management.

    Independently, these systems have been successful overseas. In Melbourne, methane from wastewater ponds is captured and converted into renewable energy, powering thousands of homes. Meanwhile, in parts of the United States, floating solar panels are increasingly being used to boost energy production while managing water systems.

    The success of these projects provides a blueprint for New Zealand. By combining these technologies into cohesive systems, New Zealand could demonstrate how environmental challenges can be transformed into opportunities.

    The future of renewable energy will require continued exploration and integration of emerging technologies, such as tandem solar cells capable of producing 60% more energy. These could be integrated into biogas membrane covers.

    For now, though, an integration of biogas, heat and floating solar panels represents a significant step forward for New Zealand. It could generate enough power to supply about 27% of households with renewable energy from wastewater ponds, offering immediate relief from the electricity crisis while supporting emissions reduction targets.

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

    – ref. The renewable energy hidden in our wastewater ponds – here’s how it could work – https://theconversation.com/the-renewable-energy-hidden-in-our-wastewater-ponds-heres-how-it-could-work-240300

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Republicans once championed immigration in the US. Why has the party’s rhetoric – and public opinion – changed so dramatically?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Prudence Flowers, Senior Lecturer in US History, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Flinders University

    It might seem surprising today in the era of Donald Trump, but Republicans in the United States once championed immigration and supported pathways to citizenship for undocumented Americans.

    In January 1989, Ronald Reagan’s final speech as president was an impassioned ode to the immigrants who made America “a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas”.

    Contrast this with Trump, who has normalised dehumanising rhetoric and policies against immigrants. In this year’s presidential campaign, for instance, he has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

    Both Trump and his vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, also repeated a false story about Haitian “illegal aliens” eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

    Perhaps most troubling, Trump has pledged to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”, if he’s elected.

    Immigration policies throughout history

    Nativism, or anti-immigrant sentiment, has a long history in American politics.

    In 1924, a highly restrictive immigration quota system based on racial and national origins was introduced. This law envisaged America as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation.

    However, there was no restriction on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. The agricultural and railroad sectors relied heavily on workers from Mexico.

    In 1965, the quota system was replaced by visa preference categories for family and employment-based migrants, along with refugee and asylum slots.

    Then, as violence and economic instability spread across Central America in the 1970s, there was a surge in undocumented immigration to the US.

    Scholar Leo Chavez argues that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an alarmist “Latino threat narrative” became the dominant motif in media discussions of immigration.

    This narrative was frequently driven by Republican politicians in states on the US-Mexico border, who derived electoral advantage from amplifying voter anxieties.

    The growing popularity of this negative discourse coincided with a significant increase in income inequality – a byproduct of neo-liberal policies championed by Reagan and other Republicans.



    Read more:
    Before Trump, there was a long history of race-baiting, fear-mongering and building walls on the US-Mexico border

    A dramatic shift in Republican rhetoric

    In the early-to-mid 20th century, Democrats were often the party that supported restrictive immigration and border policies.

    However, most Republicans at the national level – strongly supported by business – tended to endorse policies that encouraged the easy flow of workers across the border and increased levels of legal immigration.

    Prominent conservative Republicans also rejected vilifying rhetoric towards undocumented Americans. They presented all immigrants as pursuing opportunities for their families, a framing that emphasised a shared vision of the American dream. In this telling, their labour contributed to the economy and America’s growth and prosperity.

    George H. W. Bush And Ronald Reagan debate immigration in a Republican primary debate in 1980.

    Reagan, the most influential conservative of the late 20th century, opposed erecting a border wall and supported amnesty over deportation.

    Reagan also strongly supported bipartisan immigration reform. In 1986, Congress passed an immigration act that increased border security funding, but also ensured 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, primarily of Latino background, were able to gain legal status.

    Twenty years later, President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain lobbied for a bipartisan bill that would have tightened border enforcement while simultaneously “legalising” an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. It was narrowly defeated.

    This vocal support for immigrants by leading Republicans was striking because for much of the period between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, a majority of Americans actually wanted immigration levels reduced.

    Then, around 2009, a dramatic shift in political rhetoric took place. The Tea Party movement brought border security and “racial resentment” towards immigrants centre stage, challenging conservative Republicans from the populist right.

    As a result, more and more Republicans began to voice restrictionist and xenophobic rhetoric and support legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

    What’s surprising, though, is the number of undocumented immigrants in the US was actually declining at this time, from 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016.

    Donald Trump and the new nativism

    In this worsening anti-immigrant climate, Trump descended a golden escalator in mid-2015 to launch his presidential campaign.

    In his speech that day, immigration was front and centre. Trump vowed to “build a great wall” and accused Mexico of sending “rapists” and “criminals” to America.

    His speeches during the presidential campaign were marked by frequent anti-Mexican assertions and calls for Islamophobic visa policies. This hostile stance on immigration was central to his victory in both the Republican primaries and the general election against Hillary Clinton.

    Once in office, Trump then adopted a “zero tolerance” stance towards undocumented immigration. His administration pursued a heartrending family separation policy that split children and their undocumented parents at the border. This approach was celebrated on conservative media outlets such as Fox News.

    During his presidency, he also reduced legal immigration by almost half, drastically cut America’s refugee intake, and introduced bans on people from Muslim-majority countries.

    Policy expert David Bier concluded the goal of Republican lawmakers had shifted:

    It really looks like the entire debate about illegality is not the main issue anymore for Republicans in both chambers of Congress. The main goal seems to be to reduce the number of foreigners in the United States to the greatest extent possible.

    Indeed, Trump’s vision of the nation had overtly racial overtones.

    In one 2018 meeting, he asked why America should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador or the African continent. His preference was for Norwegian migrants.

    Immigration as a major election theme

    From 2021–2023, undocumented US-Mexico border crossings surged due to natural disasters, economic downturns and violence in many Latin American and Caribbean nations. Many of the recent arrivals are asylum seekers.

    Though the numbers have fallen sharply in 2024, immigration and the border are still one of the top issues for voters across the political spectrum. The issue is particularly important in the key swing state of Arizona.

    In 2024, Trump’s central immigration promise was encapsulated by the beaming delegates waving signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now” at the Republican National Convention.

    The Trump-Vance ticket has blamed undocumented immigrants for almost every economic and social problem imaginable. The two candidates present them as a dangerous and subversive “other” that cannot be assimilated into mainstream American culture.

    Yet Trump, as both president and candidate, has worked to prevent the passage of border security legislation. Turmoil on the border benefits him.

    And his nativism now encompasses all forms of immigration – he has pledged to curb legal channels for people to enter the country, as well.

    All of this rhetoric has had a dramatic impact on public opinion. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of people supporting the deportation of undocumented immigrants jumped from 32% to 47%.

    In July 2024, 55% of Americans also said they wanted to see immigration levels decrease, a 14-point increase in one year.

    Many Americans do not perceive immigration as a source of vitality and renewal as they had in the past. Instead, reflecting Trump’s language, they are viewing immigrants as an existential threat to the country’s future.

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

    – ref. Republicans once championed immigration in the US. Why has the party’s rhetoric – and public opinion – changed so dramatically? – https://theconversation.com/republicans-once-championed-immigration-in-the-us-why-has-the-partys-rhetoric-and-public-opinion-changed-so-dramatically-239836

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What is special consideration for exams? How does it work?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jill Colton, Program Director: Secondary Programs and Senior Lecturer: English and Literacy Education, University of South Australia

    Arrowsmith2/Shutterstock

    Many Year 12 students are preparing for final exams throughout October and November.

    What happens if something unexpected happens that makes final preparations or performance on the day more difficult?

    This is where special consideration or special provisions can help.

    How might you be eligible?

    Students who experience something unexpected during the exam period may be eligible for special consideration. This can minimise the impact on a student’s overall marks.

    To be eligible, incidents must be beyond the student’s control. For example, a serious illness, an accident, a family crisis or an interruption during the exam. It does not include family holidays, a teacher being away or mixing up exam dates.

    A student suffering a flare up of pain and fatigue because of glandular fever is likely to be eligible as long as they have a medical diagnosis and recent documentation such as a letter from their GP. Other unexpected illnesses might include gastro, flu or COVID.

    Unexpected mishaps or misadventure such as your home being flooded or a sporting accident that puts you into hospital can prevent you from participating in your exam. In cases like these you will need to provide evidence.

    A death of a close relative can also mean a student is considered eligible for special arrangements. Other family crises may also be included depending on the circumstances and how they affect you. It’s best to consult with your school to find out if you might be eligible.

    Students with disabilities and chronic illnesses can also apply for special consideration. This is something that must be organised earlier in the year through your school and helps teachers make adjustments that enable students to participate equitably.

    There are also a range of entry processes for university and other post-school training and education pathways. Check with the institution you are interested in for more information.

    If you get the flu or COVID during your exams, make sure you get documentation from your GP.
    JJ-stockstudio/Shutterstock

    What do you need to do to apply?

    The process of applying for special consideration for exams differs slightly depending which state or territory you live in. However, the same principles apply:

    • you will need documentary evidence – such as letters from your doctor, police reports, statutory declarations or a death certificate

    • it must be clear how the unexpected situation impacts your performance, such as being too sick to study or too unwell to attend the exam.

    Your school will then manage the process on your behalf and where relevant, submit the application to the local exam board.

    Make sure you let your school know as soon as possible if you think something has happened that will have an impact on your exams.

    What happens next?

    Special consideration aims to ensure a student’s final result is an accurate reflection of their expected achievement. Depending on what has happened, and when it happened, a student may be able to have:

    • additional reading or writing time

    • do their exam in another room

    • extensions to due dates

    • rest breaks, or

    • time to attend to medical needs without loss of test or exam time.

    If a student can’t do their exam or their participation was significantly impaired, a moderated school result or predicted mark will be used. This is a result based on performance during the year.

    This might happen in situations where a whole class is affected. For example, a fire alarm went off half way through an exam.

    Unexpected things happen to all of us at some stage in our lives. If something goes wrong in your life around exam time, talk to your school and gather your documentation. And be informed about how you can be supported to be graded fairly.

    For more state-specific information, you can go to your state’s exam board:

    • South Australia and Northern Territory (SACE)

    • Queensland (QCAA)

    • New South Wales (HSC)

    • Tasmania (TASC)

    • Western Australia (WACE)

    • Victoria (VCE)

    • Australian Capital Territory (BSSS).

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

    – ref. What is special consideration for exams? How does it work? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-special-consideration-for-exams-how-does-it-work-240441

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How we partnered with local communities to halve skin sores among Aboriginal children in remote WA

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asha Bowen, Team Lead, Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention, Telethon Kids Institute

    Aboriginal children living in remote communities have the highest rate of skin sores, or impetigo, in the world. Almost one in two have skin sores at any one time.

    Skin sores are a highly contagious bacterial skin infection that may be itchy and painful, but often go unnoticed by children. Parents are more likely to be concerned about the pus and thick crust that develops.

    Scabies, another skin infection, also disproportionately affects children in remote Indigenous communities in Australia (as many as one in three).

    In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, Aboriginal children are 34 times more likely than non-Aboriginal children to be admitted to hospital with skin infections in their first year of life. Untreated, these skin infections can lead to other health issues including sepsis, rheumatic fever and kidney disease.

    With this in mind, we’ve been working for the past five years with nine communities in the Kimberley region on a comprehensive skin health program. Each of the communities has a remote health-care clinic staffed by a mix of nurses, Aboriginal health workers and doctors.

    Today, we’ve published two new studies outlining the progress we’ve made to reduce skin infections in children in these communities. Since we started the program, rates of skin sores have halved from around four in ten children to around two in ten.

    The SToP program

    We partnered with Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations and schools in the Kimberley region and co-designed a program called SToP. It stands for “See, Treat and Prevent”.

    Our initial focus was going to be on diagnosing and treating skin sores and scabies. However, community members highlighted the need to incorporate a strong focus on prevention and health promotion too.

    The SToP model included training health-care workers in the remote health clinics, community members and school staff to recognise skin infections. The health-care workers were also trained to provide the latest evidence-based treatment for patients with skin sores and scabies.

    The prevention activities included recording a hip-hop video with children, developing eight unique healthy skin books in local languages, and yarning with community members. They consistently highlighted the importance of investing in environmental health, including housing maintenance to support healthy living.

    Local children recorded a hip-hop video to promote healthy skin.

    As part of the SToP program, and to track its results, more than 770 children aged zero to 15 years received regular skin checks over four years from 2019 to 2022. We visited each of the nine communities up to three times each year and completed more than 3,000 skin checks.

    One limitation of our research is that the trial was completed during COVID. Regional travel bans forced it to pause for several months in 2020.

    The primary aim was to reduce the burden of skin sores by half in school-aged children. We also tracked impetigo and scabies burden in younger children up to age four, and overall clinic presentations for skin infections.

    Our results, published in the Lancet Child and Adolescent Health today, confirm skin sores decreased in school-aged children in the first year and improvements were sustained throughout the trial.

    Across all communities, skin sores reduced from four in ten children at the start of the study to two in ten children by the end. Most of this reduction occurred in 2019 when skin checks started.

    Scabies also declined, but was found in less than one in ten children throughout the study.

    The skin checks were the most important and likely most effective part of the study. Community members want these to continue for all age groups, to extend beyond just the children involved in the study.

    Presentations to the remote health clinics for skin infections in each community increased during the trial and stayed high. This suggests the community involvement and focus on healthy skin was reaching all age groups.

    Despite training and resource development, uptake of the recommended treatments at the clinic was low.

    We predicted at the start of the study that using treatment as prevention, supported by training on the latest evidence-based treatments available, would be the most effective strategy. This turned out to not occur at all. High turnover of clinic staff and longstanding treatment preferences may be the reason.

    A holistic approach

    While our research has been published today, the results were first presented to community members in 2023. More than 85 community members were able to share their interpretation of the SToP results with us. They strengthened the story we’ve been able to tell in our published papers.

    The second paper, in eClinical Medicine, provides a comprehensive, multi-methods evaluation of the trial. Through this process, community members and service providers helped our research team understand the trial results and the critical factors for success.

    Future studies should continue to partner with local Aboriginal communities and enable community voices to inform all aspects of the research.

    The SToP trial brought together Western medical approaches with community voices to better inform skin disease control where the burden of skin sores and scabies was high. The results have been positive.

    We hope there will be future opportunities to implement activities like this in more Indigenous communities across Australia. As a starting point, a variety of SToP resources are available to access. The healthy skin books have been shared with other communities to translate into local contexts and languages.

    The skin is the largest organ of the body and always visible. Improvements in skin health can prevent other, more serious health consequences, while also contributing to overall wellbeing.

    Asha Bowen receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and Healthy.

    Hannah M.M. Thomas, Lorraine Anderson, and Rachel Burgess do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. How we partnered with local communities to halve skin sores among Aboriginal children in remote WA – https://theconversation.com/how-we-partnered-with-local-communities-to-halve-skin-sores-among-aboriginal-children-in-remote-wa-240663

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Sydney Dance Company’s momenta – a breathtaking study in perpetual motion

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yvette Grant, PhD (Dance) Candidate and Dance History Tutor, The University of Melbourne

    SDC/Pedro Greig

    Artistic director Rafael Bonachela’s latest work for the Sydney Dance Company, momenta, had its Melbourne premiere on October 8 at the Playhouse Theatre in the Arts Centre.

    Bonachela says that he wanted the full-length work to represent both momenta – the plural form of momentum from the Latin movimentum – and moments.

    And it does exactly that.

    The work is a maelstrom of macro and microcosmic momentums, capturing mundane and monumental moments.

    The 17 dancers move through unmarked yet distinct worlds of perpetual motion.

    Sometimes they are suggestive of atoms under a microscope that collide and react, constantly forming new molecules and compounds. They randomly meet each other in physical entanglements, only to move on in a moment to another cluster of moving bodies.

    Other times they evoke the relentless rolling of the sea with waves of unison movement. These repetitively sweep in one line after another through the bodies as they traverse across the stage.

    Still other times they stand in distinct separation in a grid pattern with minimal but identical movements that beat like a collection of pumping hearts.

    The movement never stops. It gains momentum.

    Bodies connected in momenta.
    SDC/Pedro Greig

    The dancers become human and through a series of duets we encounter the momentum of relationships.

    A solo from within the crowd shows us the secret internal flows of emotion that are a relentless apsect of the human experience.

    Using lighting, one intimate scene seems to capture the flickering motion of old grainy film. It briefly transports the audience back in time to a voyeuristic peep show.

    Damien Cooper’s lighting design acts as the narrator throughout, directing our attention to small sections of the action or opening the whole stage. The lights are rigged on a large horizontal circle over one side of the stage. It starts near the stage’s surface and moves incrementally, upward scene by scene, sometimes tilting at angles. It is suspended and moves silently until it is no longer visible, at which point it begins its decent.

    The colour palette of the lighting – whites, yellows, browns, greens and blues – changes the mood from hot to cool, soft to hard, today to yesterday.

    Choreographer Rafael Bonachela based on the work on concepts of momentum, force, time and space.

    Elizabeth Gadsby and Emma White’s costumes are mostly neutral tones with some black accent pieces. They provide almost nude surfaces on which the lighting plays. As the work progresses some of the costumes of the male dancers are removed as they appear bare-chested, even more naked, implying an increasing emotional exposure.

    The dancers show extraordinary vulnerability, athleticism and stamina.

    There is a consistency and persistence to the movement quality in momenta: sweeping, sliding, extending and contracting in cyclical patterns which contain traces of elements of the patterns that came before them.

    It is breathtaking.

    At times warm lighting washes over the dancers.
    SDC/Pedro Greig

    Nick Wales’ score has the same cyclical nature with repeated music motifs. The score is varied in an imitation of life and includes musical solos on viola and piano, contrasted with orchestral pieces and percussive and electronic elements.

    In momenta’s penultimate scene dancers spread out evenly across the stage and dance in unison. The scene is very light but with a black background when suddenly silver sparkles begin to fall from above. There is a powerful sense of both the universe and the universal.

    This cuts to a final intimate and human solo exquisitely danced by Piran Scott. In and out of the light, he slides and turns and rolls sometimes with propulsion, other times with suspense.

    He brings us back to ourselves. Perpetually in motion.

    The Sydney Dance Company’s momenta is on until October 12 at the Arts Centre, Melbourne.

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

    – ref. Sydney Dance Company’s momenta – a breathtaking study in perpetual motion – https://theconversation.com/sydney-dance-companys-momenta-a-breathtaking-study-in-perpetual-motion-240320

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How do you stop elephant herds from trashing crops and trees? Target sensitive nostrils with a ‘scent fence’

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Finnerty, Postdoctoral research fellow in conservation, University of Sydney

    Elephant numbers are surging in southern Africa, with fewer natural predators, reduced hunting pressure and feeding by farmers and tourist operators.

    While this is good for elephants, it’s making life harder for humans who live near them. These huge herbivores can raid crops and destroy large trees in national parks with impunity, causing problems for farmers and land managers alike.

    Traditional solutions aren’t ideal. Culling is controversial, and building fences strong enough to deter elephants is very expensive.

    But there’s another option: a fence made of scent. We have explored how specific plant scents can stop wallabies from eating native seedlings. The technique works on Australian herbivores. Would it work for southern Africa’s much larger elephants?

    Our new research put this idea to the test. We mimicked the scent of a shrub known as common guarri (Euclea undulata), which elephants avoid eating, and built a Y-shaped maze for elephants. We placed the scent on one side of the Y and left the other side scent-free.

    The results were clear – our elephants voted with their trunks and avoided the stinky side. This suggests scent could play a useful role in fending off hungry pachyderms.

    How can elephants be a problem?

    The world has three species of elephant. The small Asian elephant is endangered while the even smaller African forest elephant, which lives in rainforests in West Africa and the Congo Basin, is critically endangered.

    But the largest species, the African savannah elephant, is bouncing back in southern Africa from decades of poaching and habitat loss.

    This is great on a conservation front. But it brings fresh problems. As elephant herds expand, they increasingly come into conflict with people – especially farmers. Losing a year’s crop to hungry elephants is devastating. When farmers try to stop them, the elephants can attack and even kill.

    In large numbers, elephants can damage the natural environment like other herbivores – but even more so. In South Africa’s Kruger National Park and other wild places, their enormous appetites have reshaped whole plant communities. The plants elephants like disappear, while those they don’t spread. Elephants also destroy large trees and prevent the growth of new ones.

    Oranges unable to be sold by Zimbabwean farmers are dumped, which attracts elephants and fuels population growth.

    As elephant numbers grow, desperate farmers and land managers have scrambled for solutions. Killing problem elephants has been a common fix. But the practice now faces strong public opposition. Fencing is costly and usually impractical for lower-income farming areas. Other deterrents, such as using flashing lights and annoying sounds to scare off the pachyderms have had mixed success.

    Curiously, elephants are scared stiff of bees. This knowledge has been used effectively by Kenyan farmers, who install beehives around their fields. Studies have shown the technique deters up to 80% of elephants. This method has limits, though, as there are only so many bees an area can sustain and maintaining hives takes work.

    The scent defence

    To deter an elephant, it helps to think like an elephant. We’ve long known carnivores rely heavily on scent to find prey. But scent is very important to herbivores too, as our team has explored. Herbivores rely on smell to tell them which plants to eat and which to avoid.

    In Australia, we have used this knowledge to artificially replicate the scent of boronia pinnata, a flowering shrub which swamp wallabies avoid. These wallabies are the local native equivalent of deer in their eating habits – they eat many different plants, including tree seedlings land managers would rather they did not.
    When we put vials of boronia scent next to vulnerable native seedlings in Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, we found these seedlings were 20 times less likely to be found and eaten by pesky wallabies.

    Researchers have found similar scent “misinformation” tactics substantially reduced how many eggs from threatened birds were eaten by invasive predators such as ferrets, cats and hedgehogs in New Zealand, while others have found it can reduce losses of wheat grain to house mice in Australia.

    But would this approach work on elephants? We were hopeful. We know elephants can smell water from afar. Better still, elephants have the strongest sense of smell of any land animal.

    We went to South Africa to test it out.

    Our entire research team, including humans and elephants.
    Patrick Finnerty, CC BY-NC-ND

    A proof of concept

    We set up our experiment at the Adventures with Elephants tourism and research centre north of Johannesburg, which is home to six semi-tame elephants.

    Here, we built a large maze shaped like a Y to let us test our idea in a controlled and safe environment. This is essential when working with temperamental animals weighing up to six tonnes.

    From almost ten meters away, elephants had to choose which path through the Y to follow using only their sense of smell. Plants and odour vials were hidden down each arm of the maze, ensuring the animals were not using vision to choose. Both exits to the maze contained lots of leaves and stems of the jacket plum (pappea capensis), a tree elephants love to eat. On one side of the Y, we placed a single glass vial containing just 1 millilitre of a mixture mimicking the smell of common guarri.

    It took just 1 ml of this scent to nudge elephants to go elsewhere.
    Patrick Finnerty

    The results were exciting. Time and time again, the elephants avoided the side where the artificial odour was present.

    An elephant stands at the top of the Y maze, scents the unpleasant plant on the right arm, and chooses to walk down the left arm.

    Scaling up

    Our results suggest using scent could provide a practical way we could avoid human-elephant conflicts and help people protect crops and national parks at a larger scale.

    Combining artificial odours with existing control measures such as fencing or beehives could offer more accessible and cost-effective methods to live alongside elephants.

    What’s next? We aim to scale up this research in the hope of creating a practical, versatile and cheap tool which people in elephant territory can use to protect crops, trees, and houses from these giant herbivores.

    We acknowledge our research co-authors, Clare McArthur and Peter Banks (University of Sydney) Adrian Shrader (University of Pretoria) and Melissa Schmitt (University of North Dakota), and Paul Finnerty for help designing and constructing the maze. We also thank Sean Hensman and the staff at Adventures With Elephants, South Africa, for allowing us to conduct our study on their premises.

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

    – ref. How do you stop elephant herds from trashing crops and trees? Target sensitive nostrils with a ‘scent fence’ – https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-stop-elephant-herds-from-trashing-crops-and-trees-target-sensitive-nostrils-with-a-scent-fence-239593

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fatima Payman’s new Australia’s Voice party to appeal to the ‘unheard’

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

    Senator Fatima Payman, launching her new political party Australia’s Voice, is pitching strongly at the large number of voters who are disillusioned with the big parties.

    “Australians are fed up with the major parties having a duopoly, a stranglehold over our democracy. If we need to drag the two major parties kicking and screaming to do what needs to be done, we will.”

    Payman, who stresses she is not forming a Muslim party, quoted both Gough Whitlam and Robert Menzies in introducing the new group.

    She said the party was “for the disenfranchised, the unheard, and those yearning for real change”. But she was short on any detail, saying policies and candidates would come later.

    Payman quit the Labor party to join the crossbench after disciplinary action that followed her crossing the floor over Gaza. A senator from Western Australia, she doesn’t face the voters until the election after next.

    It has previously been flagged the party intends to field Senate candidates as well as run in some lower house seats. Its strategist is so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery, who works for Payman. Druery had success in promoting micro-party candidates running for upper houses in the past, but tightened federal electoral rules mean it will be an uphill battle to get a senator elected for the new party.
    Payman told a news conference on Wednesday: “This is more a movement than a party. It’s a movement for a fairer, more inclusive, Australia. Together we will hold our leaders accountable and ensure that your voice – Australia’s Voice – is never silenced.”

    Payman invoked “the great Gough Whitlam” when he said, “There are some people who are so frightened to put a foot wrong that they won’t put a foot forward”.

    “This comment made in 1985 applies so much to the current Labor Party who has lost its way,” Payman said.

    Looking also to the other side of politics she said: “Australia’s Voice believes in a system where people come first, where your concerns are not just heard but acted upon. We reject the status quo that serves the powerful and ignores the rest, the forgotten people as Robert Menzies put it.”

    She said after spending countless hours listening to Australians, the message she’d heard had been “a growing frustration”.

    “A feeling of being left behind, of shouting into a void, only for their concerns to fall on deaf ears.

    “So many of you have told me, with emotion in your hearts. ‘We need something different We need a voice’.

    “It is this cry for change that has brought us here today. Because we can no longer sit by while our voices are drowned out by the same old politics. It’s time to stand up, to rise together, and to take control of our future.”

    Underlining the party would be inclusive, Payman said, “This is a party for all Australians. We’re going to ensure that everyone is represented, whether it’s the mums and dads who are trying to make ends meet, or the young students out there, or whether it’s the grandparents who want to have dignity and respect as they age.”

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

    – ref. Fatima Payman’s new Australia’s Voice party to appeal to the ‘unheard’ – https://theconversation.com/fatima-paymans-new-australias-voice-party-to-appeal-to-the-unheard-240897

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Australian government has introduced new cyber security laws. Here’s what you need to know

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

    gerardaskes/Shutterstock

    The Albanese government today introduced long-awaited legislation to parliament which is set to revolutionise Australia’s cyber security preparedness.

    The legislation, if passed, will be Australia’s first standalone cyber security act. It’s aimed at protecting businesses and consumers from the rising tide of cyber crime.

    So what are the key provisions, and will it be enough?

    What’s in the new laws?

    The new laws have a strong focus on victims of “ransomware” – malicious software cyber criminals use to block access to crucial files or data until a ransom has been paid.

    People who pay a ransom do not always regain lost data. The payments also sustain the hacker’s business model.

    Under the new law, victims of ransomware attacks who make payments must report the payment to authorities. This will help the government track cyber criminal activities and understand how much money is being lost to ransomware.

    The laws also involve new obligations for the National Cyber Security Coordinator and Australian Signals Directorate. These obligations restrict how these two bodies can use information provided to them by businesses and industry about cyber security incidents. The government hopes this will encourage organisations to more openly share information knowing it will be safeguarded.

    Separately, organisations in critical infrastructure – such as energy, transport, communications, health and finance – will be required to strengthen programs used to secure individuals’ private data.

    The new legislation will also upgrade the investigative powers of the Cyber Incident Review Board. The board will conduct “no-fault” investigations after significant cyber attacks. The board will then share insights to promote improvements in cyber security practices more generally. These insights will be anonymised to ensure the identities of victims of cyber attacks aren’t publicly revealed.

    The legislation will also introduce new minimum cyber security standards for all smart devices, such as watches, televisions, speakers and doorbells.

    These standards will establish a baseline level of security for consumers. They will include secure default settings, unique device passwords, regular security updates and encryption of sensitive data.

    This is a welcome step that will ensure everyday devices meet minimum security criteria before they can be sold in Australia.

    A long-overdue step

    Cyber security incidents have surged by 23% in the past financial year, to more than 94,000 reported cases. This is equivalent to one attack every six minutes.

    This dramatic increase underscores the growing sophistication and frequency of cyber attacks targeting Australian businesses and individuals. It also highlights the urgent need for a comprehensive national response.

    High-profile cyber attacks have further emphasised the need to strengthen Australia’s cyber security framework. The 2022 Optus data breach is perhaps the most prominent example. The breach compromised the personal information of more than 11 million Australians, alarming both the government and the public, not to mention Optus.

    Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke says the Cyber Security Act is a “long-overdue step” that reflects the government’s concern about these threats.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also acknowledged recent high-profile attacks as a “wake-up call” for businesses, emphasising the need for a unified approach to cyber security.

    The Australian government wants to establish Australia as a world leader in cyber security by 2030. This goal reflects the government’s acknowledgement that cyber security is fundamental to national security, economic prosperity and social well being.

    Broader implications

    The proposed laws will enhance national security. But they could also present challenges.

    For example, even though the laws place limitations on how the National Cyber Security Coordinator and Australian Signals Directorate can use information, some businesses might still be unwilling to share confidential data because they are worried about damage to their reputation.

    Businesses, especially smaller ones, will also face a substantial compliance burden as they adapt to new reporting requirements. They will also potentially need to invest more heavily in cyber security measures. This could lead to increased costs, which might ultimately be passed on to consumers.

    The proposed legislation will require careful implementation to balance the needs of national security, business operations and individual privacy rights.

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

    – ref. The Australian government has introduced new cyber security laws. Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/the-australian-government-has-introduced-new-cyber-security-laws-heres-what-you-need-to-know-240889

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why did Japan’s new leader trigger snap elections only a week after taking office? And what happens next?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Mark, Adjunct Lecturer, Faculty of Economics, Hosei University

    Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has been in the job for just over a week. But today, as had been widely expected, he dissolved Japan’s parliament, the Diet, triggering a snap election for later this month. It’s the fastest dissolution by a postwar leader in Japan.

    The typically short campaign will officially start on October 15, with election day on October 27.

    So, why is this election happening so soon after Ishiba took office? And what could happen next?

    Why hold elections now?

    Ishiba became prime minister on September 27 after finally winning the contest to be leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on his fifth attempt. He narrowly beat the ultra-nationalist Sanae Takaichi, denying her bid to become Japan’s first female prime minister.

    By holding a snap election for the House of Representatives, a year before it is required under the Constitution, Ishiba is hoping to catch the opposition parties off guard and secure a more solid mandate to pursue his policy agenda. He’s banking on the public rallying behind a new face and image for his party, following the unpopularity of former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

    The LDP should win next month’s election handily, despite the turbulence caused by recent scandals and leadership changes in the party. The LDP is still far ahead of the opposition in recent polling. A large number of people, however, remain uncommitted to any political party.

    The first approval rating poll for Ishiba’s new cabinet was also just over 50%. That’s lower than the polling for Kishida’s first cabinet three years ago. This indicates the public is not as enthusiastic for the new prime minister as the LDP might have hoped.

    The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) has also just elected a new leader, former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. It is hoping to boost its consistently low opinion poll ratings by attempting to project an image of reliability and stability.

    What is Ishiba promising?

    In his first policy statement to the Diet last week, Ishiba pledged to revitalise the economy, particularly through doubling subsidies and stimulus spending for regional areas. He also promised to address wage growth, which remains weak due to cost of living pressures. It has been made worse by the relatively weak yen.

    Ishiba also wants to boost investment in next-generation technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing. And he indicated he may support an increase in the corporate tax rate. This could tap the massive cash reserves of major corporations to fund regional revitalisation programs. It could also provide more support to families of young children to boost Japan’s sagging birth rate.

    Tax hikes would also be necessary to maintain the higher defence spending that began under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and continued under Kishida.

    To appease the conservative wing of his party, which had backed Takaichi in the LDP leadership contest, Ishiba has backtracked on several policy positions he had previously supported. This includes reducing Japan’s reliance on nuclear power, allowing women to keep their family names after marriage, legalising same-sex marriage, and encouraging the Bank of Japan to gradually increase interest rates.

    Ishiba also conceded his proposal to pursue an “Asian-style NATO” will have to remain a longer-term ambition, after officials from India and the US expressed doubts over the proposal.

    Ishiba has confirmed, after some initial uncertainty, that his party will not endorse ten Diet members in the election who were implicated in a slush fund scandal that had damaged Kishida’s government. These Diet members are mainly from the large conservative wing of the party, removing some internal opposition to the new prime minister.

    However, public doubts over Ishiba’s commitment to genuine party reform, as well as infighting from the resentful remaining members of the conservative wing, could also result in a drop in support for the LDP.

    Is there any hope for the opposition?

    If it fares poorly in the election, the LDP could be even more dependent on support from its coalition partner, the Komeito Party, to retain control of the lower house and remain in government.

    The Komeito Party is backed by the Buddhist Soka Gakkai religious movement. It currently has 32 members in the Diet, compared to 258 for the LDP.

    To even have a chance of forming a minority government, the main opposition CDP (which has 99 seats currently) will need to present an appealing alternative policy program, which it has so far been unable to do. Japan has not had a minority government since 1993.

    Should the LDP-Komeito coalition nevertheless drop below the 233 Diet members required to maintain a majority, the second-largest opposition party, the populist, right-wing Japan Innovation Party, could find itself holding the balance of power.

    Ishiba’s challenge in this early election is not only to win enough votes to retain government, but to be electorally successful enough to hold off his rivals from the conservative wing of the LDP. They will be seeking to exploit any future failures by Ishiba to pressure him to step down early.

    If that were to happen, Takaichi would likely be a leadership contender again.

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

    – ref. Why did Japan’s new leader trigger snap elections only a week after taking office? And what happens next? – https://theconversation.com/why-did-japans-new-leader-trigger-snap-elections-only-a-week-after-taking-office-and-what-happens-next-240888

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Will the Earth warm by 2°C or 5.5°C? Either way it’s bad, and trying to narrow it down may be a distraction

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonny Williams, Climate Scientist, University of Reading

    Getty Images

    Climate change is usually discussed in terms of rising temperatures.

    But scientists often use a different measure, known as “equilibrium climate sensitivity”. This is defined as the global mean warming caused by a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels in the atmosphere.

    We use this measure to describe the range of potential temperature increases on longer timescales, and to compare how well climate models reproduce observed warming.

    But the predicted range of rising temperature has remained stubbornly wide, somewhere between 2°C and 5.5°C of warming, as assessed in several generations of reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is despite concerted efforts to narrow it down.

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has assessed Earth’s climate sensitivity in each of its reports.
    IPCC, CC BY-SA

    Measuring long-term climate sensitivity is central to future predictions, but we are already seeing the effects of warming across the world with extremes in weather, even at the low end of the range. We argue efforts to boil down Earth’s response to climate change to one number may be unhelpful.

    The continued uncertainty could be seen as a failure of climate models to converge on the correct value. Using equilibrium climate sensitivity as a metric for “precisely” predicting the amount of warming expected from a given amount of greenhouse gases is, at best, ambiguous.

    History of climate sensitivity

    About a century before the first computational estimates of Earth’s climate sensitivity were published in 1967, the Swedish physicist and 1903 Nobel laureate Svante August Arrhenius was the first to estimate values at 4-6°C.

    Since the early efforts to model Earth systems, computer simulations have steadily increased in complexity. The first models only simulated the atmosphere, but they have evolved to include vegetation, processes in the ocean and sea ice.

    While undoubtedly beneficial to the understanding of fundamental science, each of these added processes has introduced uncertainties in the models’ warming response.

    Indeed, given the level of complexity (which differs between models) and resolution of some current models, it is not surprising the estimates of climate sensitivity differ so much.

    Self-enforcing feedbacks

    Climate feedbacks are central to our argument that equilibrium climate sensitivity is poorly defined. An example of this is the relationship between ice volume and reflectivity.

    As highly reflective ice melts on land or sea, the underlying surface is exposed and less sunlight reflected back into space. This increases the amount of warming for a given amount of greenhouse gases. It’s what scientists refer to as a positive feedback loop.

    Another such self-enforcing feedback concerns potentially large climate impacts from the release of methane from tropical wetlands and permafrost melt.

    Atmosphere models can’t account for this alone, and when they are coupled with an ice-sheet or sea-ice model, the estimate of climate sensitivity changes.

    Melting permafrost, such as seen here on Svalbard, represents a climate feedback loop, increasing the amount of warming for a given amount of greenhouse gases.
    Getty Images

    Overheated arguments

    It quickly became apparent when studying some recent climate model results that some simulations are producing equilibrium climate sensitivity ranges noticeably higher than before.

    In some models, this has been linked to larger self-enhancing cloud feedbacks and how aerosols are represented.

    There has been some hesitancy to trust the results produced by these models. They are considered “too hot”.

    But we feel these high equilibrium simulations still have value. While we are not arguing they are correct, they force us to consider the what-if situation of very high climate sensitivity, where a doubling of CO₂ would result in warming of 5°C or higher. We know the impact on our environment would be devastating.

    Some view high equilibrium climate sensitivity as more consistent with warmer climates in the past, but others have questioned this.

    There are several reasons why past climate sensitivity may differ from modern conditions. We may be in a different phase of Earth’s orbital cycles or the balance between volcanism and weathering.

    Of course, we should treat all scientific results with caution, but the potential insights gained for uncertain futures are of particular importance when climate change is already being felt across the globe.

    Where to from here?

    We are continually improving our understanding of the climate – how it has changed in the past and how we think it may change in the future. Equilibrium climate sensitivity has consequently become the single solution we are seeking from climate models, even though the precise value will arguably never be known.

    Equilibrium climate sensitivity is undoubtedly a convenient way of distilling future projections. However, it is important not to over-rely on an idealised quantity, because its utility as a useful comparative measure of climate models can give the false impression of a lack of progress in understanding.

    There is similarity with the common misconception of a 50% probability of rainfall in a weather forecast, which is often misinterpreted as forecasters not knowing whether it will rain or not.

    Communicating uncertainty in projections of future climate conditions is a “wicked” problem. But we risk losing perspective of Earth’s system response by focusing on the effort to make climate models agree on one measure. This is not the answer future generations need.

    Jonny Williams receives funding from the Deep South National Science Challenge.

    Georgia Rose Grant receives funding from MBIE Strategic Science Investment Fund.

    – ref. Will the Earth warm by 2°C or 5.5°C? Either way it’s bad, and trying to narrow it down may be a distraction – https://theconversation.com/will-the-earth-warm-by-2-c-or-5-5-c-either-way-its-bad-and-trying-to-narrow-it-down-may-be-a-distraction-229497

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –