Mahima Kalla, The University of Melbourne; Feby Savira, Deakin University; Kara Burns, The University of Melbourne, and Sathana Dushyanthen, The University of Melbourne

If you or someone you’re caring for has a medical emergency, visit your nearest emergency department or call 000.

But what if it’s not an emergency, or you’re not sure? Sometimes you can’t wait wait until 9am or Monday morning to see a doctor or access health care.

You might have a fever that’s not subsiding, a sprain that could be a break, a painful urinary tract infection, or a distressing situation that demands immediate mental health support.

Here are your options for accessing timely health care, in-person and virtually – including some that are free.

Medicare Urgent Care Clinics

Medicare Urgent Care Clinics provide bulk-billed care by a general practitioner (GP) for non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries.

Patients can walk in without an appointment or referral, and can access other services such as blood tests and X-rays. There are no out-of-pocket costs.

You can find your local clinic here.

Search engines to find a GP appointment – in person or online

Health service search engines such as Healthengine and HotDoc can help you find GPs and book appointments.

You can filter search results by types of services and telehealth availability, including the “GP telehealth on-demand option within 15 minutes” on Hotdoc.

Many will come with out-of-pocket costs.

Home visits

In-person home doctor visits for urgent, episodic illness or injury can also be arranged through options such as 13SICK National Home Doctor Service, DoctorDoctor, Hello Home Doctor Service, Sydmed, 13 CURE and OnCallDrs.

These are often bulk billed.

A call with a nurse or doctor

The new 1800MEDICARE helpline is a free 24/7 service where you can speak to a registered nurse about any health concern.

They will listen to your concerns, assess your symptoms and provide advice on next steps. This might mean looking after yourself at home, getting help from a GP, or attending an Urgent Care Clinic, pharmacy or emergency department.

If the 1800MEDICARE nurse advises you to see a GP within 24 hours, you may be offered a telephone or video call back from a 1800MEDICARE GP. These GPs can provide prescriptions via SMS.

Virtual emergency departments for non-life-threatening emergencies

Virtual emergency departments are free, online emergency departments that treat non-life-threatening emergencies such as pain, sprains, infections, respiratory illnesses, gastroenteritis, high blood pressure, pain, infections, minor burns and rashes.

Examples include:

• the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department
• the South Australia Child and Adolescent Virtual Urgent Care Service
• Queensland Virtual Emergency Care Service.

Another similar option is My Emergency Doctor, which offers patients access to specialist emergency doctors via video call or telephone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, this service costs $150.

Medicines and pharmacists

Some pharmacies operate on extended business hours, including 24 hours. You can find a pharmacy near you at this link, with the option to filter by “extended hours”.

In some circumstances, pharmacies can issue a small amount of a medicine if you’ve run out.

In some states and territories, pharmacists can provide medicines such as antibiotics for simple urinary tract infections without a prescription.

For people living in remote Australia, the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) runs a Medical Chests program. Medical chests contain a range of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical items, including prescription-only medicines, which RFDS doctors may prescribe after a phone consultation.

Pregnancy, birth and children

Pregnancy, Birth and Baby is a free national service that provides support to expecting parents, and parents of children from birth to five years of age.

You can speak to maternal and child health nurses via phone, by calling 1800 882 436, or video call about you or your baby, between 7am and midnight, seven days a week.

CubCare is another virtual urgent care option which provides access to paediatric emergency doctors, for a fee.

Dental care

The Australian Dental Foundation runs a free 24/7 Emergency Dental Hotline which can help you work out the urgency of your issue and your next steps.

National Emergency Dentist is a private health service which connects patients to emergency dentists offering same-day and after-hours appointments, for a fee.

Mental health phone support

Mental health support will depend on your individual needs and background. You can access mental health support after hours through these call services (some also have online chats):

• Lifeline: 24/7 crisis support

• Beyond Blue: counselling via phone online chat

• Kids Helpline: 24/7 online and phone counselling for young people aged five to 25 years

• Suicide Call Back Service: 24/7 service providing phone and online counselling to anyone affected by suicide

• 1800 RESPECT: 24/7 support for people affected by domestic, family, or sexual violence

• Gambling Help Online: phone and online support for anyone affected by gambling

• National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline: 24/7 service for all states and territories, except South Australia which operates 8.30am–10pm

• the Butterfly Foundation for free and confidential support about eating disorders and body image.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services

• 13 YARN: 24/7 crisis support phone line operated by and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

• Yarning Safe'N'Strong: 24/7 support available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who need to have a yarn with someone about their wellbeing

• Brother to Brother: 24/7 crisis line providing phone support for Aboriginal men, staffed by Aboriginal men, including Elders.

LGBTQIA+ services

• QLife: phone and webchat that operates during afternoons and evenings seven days a week to support LGBTQIA+ people.

Communication assistance

The National Translating and Interpreting Service offers support to non-English speaking people for their consultations. This service is typically free, covers 150 languages and can be accessed after-hours. Register here.

The National Relay Service provides assistance to people with hearing or speech difficulties during their medical consultations.

Mahima Kalla, Digital Health Transformation Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne; Feby Savira, Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University; Kara Burns, Digital Health Program Manager at the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, The University of Melbourne, and Sathana Dushyanthen, Academic Specialist & Senior Lecturer in Cancer Sciences & Digital Health| Superstar of STEM| Science Communicator, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sam Bennett, Grattan Institute and Owain Emslie, Grattan Institute

Most of the savings in this year’s budget came from cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

The government wants to save A$37.8 billion over four years, predominantly by cutting NDIS eligibility for more than 300,000 people with higher functional capacity.

This includes more than 160,000 current NDIS participants, as well as those who would have entered the scheme.

But the success of a slimmed-down scheme will depend on the availability of high-quality alternative services for those who no longer qualify for the NDIS.

With eligibility changes starting in January 2028, the clock is ticking to establish these alternative “foundational supports”.

Remind me, what’s been announced and why?

The federal government has committed $5 billion – a 50% share of a $10 billion funding agreement with states and territories – for foundational supports.

But aside from $2 billion provided to fund Thriving Kids, there is little detail in the budget about what else is planned.

The remaining $3 billion is currently being held in a contingency fund, and has not been earmarked for any specific programs.

Foundational supports are “commissioned services”. This means providers are contracted to deliver a set of programs or supports.

Currently, people on the NDIS source these supports from the market, paying for them using their NDIS plan.

Commissioned services can be effective. They can provide services to more people, at a lower cost per person, and ensure services are available where few others exist.

Direct commissioning can also help governments oversee the quality of services and ensure people are directed to supports with a strong evidence base. Spending is then less likely to be wasted on ineffective services, such as junk therapies.

Direct commissioning is better suited to services that need funding certainty, rather than competition, to thrive, such as information and advocacy, supported decision-making and peer support.

Conversely, it’s likely that commissioned services will offer less choice and individual tailoring than the NDIS.

Foundational supports will work best when they address lower levels of need and where the priority is timely access to an evidence-based service, rather individual autonomy and choice.

Priorities for government

The government should target foundational supports that focus on specific groups of people who will not in the future receive support from the NDIS.

It should also focus on services where a direct commissioning approach would be a more effective and efficient way of ensuring access to evidence-based supports.

Here are three ways to put this into practice.

1. Expand Thriving Kids

Supports for children with developmental delays and disability should be a priority. These should be aimed at building the independence and capacity of children and families.

The government’s Thriving Kids initiative is a good start. But it is inadequately funded to meet the likely demand, and only covers children aged eight and under. The program should be scaled up and extended to all school-aged children.

Scale is important. Too few services can mean either there aren’t enough spots for each service and long wait-lists, or the services are spread too thin: there’s a little bit of help for everyone but not nearly enough.

Foundational supports must be a good substitute for individualised funding and commissioned in line with best practice.

This might mean, for example, allied health professionals such as occupational therapists or speech pathologists providing group-based support in various settings, including childcare centres, schools and community spaces such as libraries.

The aim would be to provide enough practical, low-barrier support early, rather than requiring families to navigate fragmented clinical systems on their own.

2. Develop supports for people with psychosocial disability

Psychosocial disability is where a severe and enduring mental health condition impairs a person’s ability to function. And currently there is significant unmet need for psychosocial supports outside the NDIS.

The government should develop a new national psychosocial disability program to provide evidence-based supports for adults with significant psychosocial disability.

The program should deliver consistent services nationwide, tailored to the needs of different regions, with specific services to meet the needs of First Nations people.

Examples of targeted foundational supports for people with psychosocial disability could include:

• community participation programs, such as clubhouses and social or activity-based groups
• recovery colleges (mental health education services co-developed and delivered by people with lived experience and mental health professionals)
• family education
• peer-led supports.

3. Increase other supports for people with disability

The government should also ensure more generalised disability supports are available for all people with disability. These are important to help people with disability develop skills, increase independence, and participate in the community.

These supports are particularly important for people with intellectual disabilities and cognitive impairments – whether they qualify for the NDIS or not. And they will become more important if the government proceeds with cuts to NDIS participants’ budgets to social and community participation funding.

The government has set aside an additional $200 million for this purpose, but that’s not nearly enough.

People with disability should have access to:

• information about disabilities, either through mainstream services or through specialist sites such as the Disability Gateway and disabled peoples’ organisations, and referral to other forms of support

• skills development, including self-advocacy and supported decision-making, and the skills required to get and keep a job, as well as navigating housing options

• peer support programs

• programs to build their social and community participation

• programs aimed at parents and carers

A lot has to go right for the $37.8 billion in savings to be delivered without leaving disabled people to fall through the cracks.

The government needs to act now to develop and invest in the foundational supports that will not only make its budget add up, but ensure that Australians living with disability get the help they need.

Sam Bennett, Disability Program Director, Grattan Institute and Owain Emslie, Senior Associate, Disability Program, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Archana Koirala, University of Sydney and Bianca Middleton, Menzies School of Health Research

Health authorities are urging people to get vaccinated, as a potentially deadly infection spreads across four Australian states.

Diphtheria is a serious infection caused by the toxin-producing bacteria, Corynebacterium diphtheriae. It spreads through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids – such as droplets produced from coughing or sneezing – or skin sores.

Since January, Australia has recorded more than 220 diphtheria cases, in the worst outbreak the country’s seen in decades. As of Thursday, there were 139 cases in the Northern Territory, 82 in Western Australia, seven in South Australia and three in Queensland.

The federal government has announced a A$7.2 million emergency support package, which aims to boost vaccination rates and strengthen the health workforce in states affected by the current diphtheria outbreak.

So is it still spreading? And should you be concerned?

Remind me, what is diphtheria?

There are two main types of this rare but serious bacterial infection.

Respiratory diphtheria affects the throat and airways, and can be life-threatening if the toxin produced by the bacteria damages the airways, nerves or heart. Even with treatment, up to 10% of people with respiratory diphtheria die.

Cutaneous diphtheria affects the skin, mainly causing skin ulcers on the legs or arms. This form of diphtheria is usually less severe, but contact with wounds is still a common way the infection spreads between people.

It is possible to contract respiratory diphtheria by being exposed to someone with cutaneous diphtheria, and vice versa. For instance, bacteria in one person’s skin sore may cause respiratory diphtheria in another person, if transferred through close contact.

Who’s affected by this latest outbreak?

According to the Australian Centre for Disease Control’s latest report, roughly 94% of cases identified since January 2026 have been Aboriginal and/or Torrest Strait Islander people.

The majority have been cases of cutaneous diphtheria, but around 30% have been cases of respiratory diphtheria.

Authorities are still investigating what factors may be contributing to this outbreak. However, this likely includes waning immunity, lower routine immunisation rates and a higher prevalence of skin infections in affected communities. Other factors such as overcrowding and limited access to health care may also play a role.

The need for vaccines

Vaccination is the best way to prevent severe diphtheria infections, and the further spread of the disease.

Before vaccines were widely introduced in the 1950s, about one in ten people with respiratory diphtheria died from their symptoms. And the risk was higher among young children and the elderly.

In the decades since, very few Australians have died from diphtheria, with authorities recording four diphtheria-related deaths between 1999 and 2025.

That’s largely thanks to the diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine, also known as DTP. This combined vaccine protects against the diphtheria toxin.

In Australia, children routinely receive this vaccine at two months, four months, six months and 18 months of age. They also get it when they are four years old, and again in early adolescence.

But it’s also vital adults receive boosters of the DTP vaccine. This is because immunity declines over time even though the vaccine itself is very effective.

Research suggests more than 99% of babies who get the relevant vaccinations develop enough antibodies to fight against the diphtheria toxin. But by middle age, only half of adults maintain these antibody levels if they don’t have a booster dose of DTP.

However, national immunisation data shows vaccine rates have significantly declined, particularly since the COVID pandemic. And just last year, Australia’s childhood immunisation rate dropped to a five-year low.

How often you need a vaccination depends on your age and occupation. But the current health advice is adults should get a DTP booster every ten years, from your early 20s. If you’re unsure when you received your last dose, speak to your GP, community health clinic or Aboriginal Medical Service.

Who needs a vaccine? And how about boosters?

During a diphtheria outbreak, it’s crucial to ensure all children, adolescents and adults aged 50 and above are up to date with routine immunisations.

Importantly, the new advice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and health-care workers in affected communities, is to get a booster vaccine every five years.

Pregnant women should also receive a booster dose 20 to 32 weeks into their pregnancy. This is mainly to reduce their infant’s risk of having whooping cough, but will also protect against diphtheria until they receive their first vaccination.

And additional doses are available to people who have a mild case of diphtheria or are in close contact – living in the same household, for example – with people who already have the infection.

In the current outbreak, an estimated 90% of cases have occurred in people that have already been vaccinated. The vaccine has ensured most of these people only develop mild forms of diphtheria.

But tragically, one person with the disease has since died.

So, should I be worried?

Local, state and territory public health departments are working hard to curb this historic outbreak. This week, both NT Health and WA Health released an outbreak immunisation schedule for people living and working in affected communities.

But if you are in an outbreak area and have a sore throat or any skin sores, visit your local clinic. This will help authorities detect any potential diphtheria cases early. And if you have other symptoms such as fever, breathing or swallowing difficulties or a greyish membrane in your throat, visit an emergency department immediately.

Archana Koirala, Paediatrician and Infectious Diseases Specialist; Clinical Researcher, University of Sydney and Bianca Middleton, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Tropical Health Division, Menzies School of Health Research

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yuki Keith, Garvan Institute and Tri Phan, Garvan Institute

For the past 15 years or so, a class of drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors have been used to treat melanoma – the most dangerous kind of skin cancer.

For many patients, they produce remarkable results. For others, they do nothing.

We still don’t really know why. But in new research published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, we observed immune cells called macrophages attacking melanoma cells in real time – which may offer clues about how we can make those therapies work for all patients, not just some.

Tumours, hot and cold

One of us (Yuki) treated patients with melanoma in Japan as a dermatologist. The other (Tri Phan) runs a lab at the Garvan Institute in Sydney, where his team specialises in observing the cells of the immune system in real time.

When Yuki wanted to understand why immune checkpoint inhibitors were failing for many patients, she joined Tri Phan’s lab to continue her research.

The treatment fails in what oncologists call “cold” tumours, where the cancer’s environment actively prevents a kind of immune cell called a T cell attacking it. One of our lab’s aims is trying to work out how to make the tumours “hot”, allowing T cells to penetrate and destroy the cancer cells.

Our new findings suggest a different kind of immune cell, called macrophages, may hold the key.

The housekeepers we’ve been ignoring

In 1908, Russian zoologist Ilya Mechnikov was awarded a Nobel Prize for the discovery of phagocytosis (“cell eating”) in the immune system, which is carried out by cells he called macrophages (from the Greek for “big eaters”).

These cells engulf and clear away the debris caused by tissue damage and cell death. They are often regarded as the body’s silent, no-fuss housekeepers.

However, their role in cancer has often been overlooked. Unlike other immune cells that move through the blood and patrol the whole body, macrophages are “tissue-resident” and stay in one place.

Earlier studies of the role of macrophages in cancer assumed these housekeepers were all the same. But when we looked closely in the skin, it became clear that there were many different kinds of macrophages living in different layers.

One particular kind of macrophages (recognised by a protein called CD169) lives in a deeper part of the skin, called the hypodermis.

We found that these macrophages arranged themselves around the edges of a melanoma tumour, as if they were trying to wall it off. When we depleted the macrophages, the melanomas grew bigger, suggesting they were constraining the growth of the tumours.

Watching cancer cells being eaten alive

To understand what these CD169-positive macrophages were actually doing, we used an advanced imaging technique called intravital two-photon microscopy. This allows us to watch biological processes unfold in living tissue in real time.

What we saw was surprising: the macrophages were “nibbling” and actively engulfing live melanoma cells. While we had seen macrophages eat dead cells in our lab before, we had never seen them eat a live melanoma cell in a model organism.

What was even more surprising was that this immune attack was happening without the need for T cells, or antibodies made by another kind of immune cell called B cells – the immune players most commonly credited with fighting cancer.

We also confirmed this is not something that just happens in the lab. Our colleagues at the Melanoma Institute Australia analysed samples from human melanoma patients and found similar populations of CD169-expressing macrophages on the edges of the tumour, suggesting they may play a similar protective role there.

Calling in the cavalry – implications for therapies

Macrophages don’t just clear away debris. They can also alert the immune system to danger. After they have digested the debris, they can display it like a biological “red flag” to direct T cells to find and kill the cancer cells.

What makes a macrophage decide whether to silently dispose of debris without alerting the immune system, or wave the red flags to activate the immune system, is still unclear. Because the CD169-expressing macrophages are strategically positioned around the tumours, we suspect they may hold the key.

Macrophages are widespread in most solid tumours – including glioblastoma, breast cancer and many others. This is an army already in place waiting to be mobilised.

Our next step is to understand precisely how these macrophages eat live cancer cells and how they can communicate the danger to T cells, so we can harness this population with new treatments.

Yuki Keith, Postdoctoral Researcher, Immunology, Garvan Institute and Tri Phan, Program Director – Precision Immunology / Laboratory Head, Garvan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Barbara Padalino, Southern Cross University

When a semi-trailer burst into flames on a highway in northern New South Wales earlier this month, it wasn’t only the driver who had to flee for his life.

In the back were about 60 cows. With the help of passing motorists, the driver stopped traffic and tried to save the animals. With no loading ramp available, terrified cattle were forced to jump directly from the burning truck onto the road. Some fell and were injured, while others ran onto the highway in panic. Several died.

This tragic incident highlights some of the hidden risks faced by thousands of farm animals in Australia. Cattle and sheep are routinely moved long distances from farms to saleyards, between properties, or to slaughterhouses. For the animals, transport is highly stressful. Some are injured or die during the journey. Others arrive so sick, weak or injured that they must be euthanised at the saleyard.

Despite this, there has been very little scientific research in Australia on what happens to livestock once they arrive at saleyards. My recent study published in the journal Animal Welfare addresses that gap. It is the first to document mortality rates of cattle and sheep at saleyards across New South Wales.

This isn’t just a major animal welfare issue – it’s an economic one as well. And there are steps we can take to resolve it.

Diving into the data

The study was made possible through collaboration with veterinarians from the NSW Department of Primary Industries, who monitor animal welfare at saleyards. They provided access to data recorded in the National Livestock Identification System, where saleyard managers must report animals that die during or shortly after sale days.

We analysed mortality data from cattle and sheep sold at a sample of saleyards across New South Wales between January 2021 and December 2024. We also examined factors that may increase the risk of death, including weather conditions, saleyard size and location.

The “sale mortality rates” include all animals found dead on arrival in trucks, animals that are too sick or injured during the journey so they have to be euthanised, and those that die while being held at the saleyard.

The average mortality rate each sale day was 0.016% for cattle and 0.096% for sheep. This equates to roughly one death per 6,000 cattle and roughly one death per 1,000 sheep.

Scaled up – multiplying sale day mortality by 365 days, to calculate annual equivalent mortality – sheep and cattle had annual equivalent mortality rates of 34.9% and 5.8%, respectively.

So far this year, more than half a million cattle have been sold through saleyards in New South Wales.

In cattle, we found mortality was linked to high daily temperatures as well as the size and location of the saleyard. For sheep, colder minimum temperatures and saleyard location were associated with higher mortality.

The need for better standards

There are standards and guidelines for ensuring the welfare of livestock at Australian saleyards.

The Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines set out the minimum legal requirements and recommended practices for the care and transport of livestock.

However, because animal welfare laws are managed by individual states and territories, the rules can be applied and enforced differently across Australia.

In the European Union, by contrast, all member countries follow the same regulations for animal transport. European rules generally allow shorter journey times and require animals on long trips to be fed and watered during transport.

Reforms along these lines should be implemented in Australia. The standards and guidelines should be enforced regularly and in the same ways across all Australian states.

All stakeholders involved in the cattle and sheep production chain should also be trained on low stress handling, being able to recognise stress and fear in animals, and educated on the minimal welfare standards.

More than just an ethical issue

Apart from the obvious animal welfare issue, the death of cattle and sheep in transport or at saleyards is also an economic problem for the livestock industry. For example, a single cow can sell for roughly A$1,800 to A$2,000.

On top of that, stress during transport and handling can also reduce meat quality. So reducing it also makes sense for consumers.

High-profile incidents, such as the truck fire in northern New South Wales, can also damage public trust in the livestock industry and weaken its “social licence” to operate.

More research that identifies safer transport practices and better saleyard management can help reduce losses, improve product quality and strengthen confidence in the industry.

Barbara Padalino, Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour, Husbandry and Welfare, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland

At about 6:30pm last night, a meteor exploded with a bright flash that was widely seen across eastern Australia.

Stunned onlookers from Sydney to Canberra, and beyond, reported seeing the explosion light up the night sky in colourful streaks ranging from blue to green to orange.

In technical terms, the fireball was a “bolide”. Bolides are meteors that are not only brighter than the planet Venus, but which can also be seen to explode or break up as they enter the atmosphere. They are rare to see.

So where might this fireball have come from?

First, what it wasn’t

The first point to make is that this fireball was not a piece of space junk. It was moving very fast, likely in excess of 30 kilometres per second.

Space junk, in contrast, enters Earth’s atmosphere at slower speeds of roughly 8km per second. In addition, such junk enters Earth’s atmosphere at a very shallow angle, meaning it can streak from horizon to horizon over the course of a minute or more.

The second point to make is that this fireball was definitely not from the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which is visible between mid-April and late May. Meteor showers consist of debris moving through space, crashing into Earth, and coming from a specific direction. Meteors in a shower appear to radiate from a single point in the sky, known as the radiant, which gives the shower its name.

Crucially, if a meteor shower’s radiant is below the horizon, you cannot see meteors from that shower. Earth is in the way, and the debris is hitting the other side of our planet! The radiant for the Eta Aquariids rises during the early hours of the morning across Australia. So a fireball seen in the evening sky cannot be related to the shower.

A fragile fragment

It’s more likely this fireball was an icy fragment of a comet, or a rocky fragment of an asteroid, from the outer reaches of the Solar System.

The speed of the fireball is one indicator of this – the faster an object is moving when it hits Earth’s atmosphere, the more different its orbit around the Sun must be to that of Earth. The high speed of this fireball’s entry suggests it was likely moving on quite an eccentric orbit around the Sun.

Another hint comes from the bright explosion of the fireball. That means it was to some degree a fragile object – icy or rocky. By comparison, a solid lump of iron from the core of a shattered larger asteroid would be strong enough to plough through Earth’s atmosphere without fragmenting, making such a terminal explosion much less likely.

Another important point is that the colours observed as the fireball flew through the atmosphere and exploded are not necessarily strong indicators of exactly what it was made of.

That’s because the vast majority of the observed colour from a fireball is associated with the gases in Earth’s atmosphere. As the fireball passes through the atmosphere, it causes a massive shockwave. This causes the air in front of it to rapidly heat up.

It is this superheated air that provides the vast majority of light from a meteor or fireball, and therefore what creates the striking colours. Many bright fireballs are seen to have a greenish hue, which is often stated as evidence for an iron/nickel composition. In fact, that greenish glow is so commonly observed because it is the result of superheated atmospheric oxygen.

The only way to know for certain what the fireball was made of is to find any pieces of it that reached ground level, and analyse their chemistry in the lab. But given the bright terminal explosion, it’s unlikely any solid material survived the blazing atmospheric entry.

Also, the direction of the observed fireball suggests it entered Earth’s atmosphere above the ocean. So if there are surviving pieces, they are probably buried at sea.

But that does not mean we will never learn the truth of the fireball’s origin. Scientists will gather as much footage of the fireball as they can. This will allow them to triangulate and precisely retrace the fireball’s path, and to accurately determine how fast it was moving and at what altitude it exploded. It will even reveal details on the object’s orbit around the Sun, prior to encountering Earth.

These are all crucial clues in this astronomical detective story.

Unravelling the Solar System’s history

But why might scientists want to know this?

For one thing, it’s interesting to get an idea of the fireball’s provenance. Was it originally from the asteroid belt? A fragment of a comet? Can we link it to a known object?

More importantly, however, this is all part of disentangling the heritage and history of the Solar System’s formation. Every object that enters our atmosphere in this way is a pristine piece of material that can add to our story of the Solar System’s history, and from which we can learn about its current state.

In an ideal world, scientists would be able to get their hands on pieces of this new interloper – fragments of material dating back to the Solar System’s birth. But even by simply gathering information on the object’s orbit prior to encountering Earth, we can learn a great deal.

Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Silvia Montaña-Niño, The University of Melbourne and T.J. Thomson, RMIT University

Global society makes billions of images and uploads hundreds of thousands of hours of video on the internet every day.

The problem is, some of this content is misleading or downright wrong. And when it’s in visual form, it can be particularly convincing.

Take the Met Gala that happened earlier this month in New York. While photographers snapped photos of Rhianna, Beyoncé and Nicole Kidman as they strutted their stuff, others saw “photos” of celebrities, such as Rosalía, Lady Gaga and Jacob Elordi, who were actually elsewhere (the images in the below Instagram carousel are AI generated).

While this type of AI slop might seem harmless and can be easily verified, other “media fakery” is becoming far more problematic and demands more robust techniques to verify.

Traditional verification techniques are falling short as AI becomes increasingly convincing and the line between authentic and synthetic blurs. This is true across all content, from still images to moving ones and audio deepfakes.

The volume of content and the speed at which it travels doesn’t help. It also doesn’t help that fact-checking can take hours or days while fakes can be created in seconds.

First, equip yourself

Guides on detecting AI-generated content suggest multiple strategies and acknowledge there are no perfect solutions. But there are helpful things you can do.

Familiarise yourself with examples of fakes and study how they were fact-checked. This helps you understand what is possible and learn how fact-checkers sort real from fake.

Look deeply. Zoom in. Pause the content or watch it frame-by-frame. Inspect the small details. Look out for inconsistencies, textures that are flat when they shouldn’t be, or patterns that are too perfect or are inexplicably off. Does the location shown match with where the scene is purported to be? Do shadows fall naturally and do lines follow the rules of perspective?

Look widely. Are you familiar with the source? What else does it publish and how long has it been around? What do other trusted sources say? How does this depiction compare to others that are available? Or if there aren’t others available, should that give you pause?

Then, apply your learnings

Let’s take an example and work through it together.

This Facebook reel, posted by an account called “Real Talk Hub”, purports to show migrants being stopped and returned by Australian police at an airport.

Before getting too granular, let’s take stock of the opening image.

The video uses scale to show what appears to be a long stream of passengers. Some are moving toward and some are moving away from a plane. It is difficult to identify specifics in the video. The superimposed text blocks almost all of the horizon line. Shallow depth of field makes aspects in the distance blurry and hard to discern.

Many of the passengers have darker skin and are visually coded as “other”. They interact with a light-skinned police officer who takes notes on a clipboard.

The vertical video is framed carefully to not reveal identifiers like the name of the airline that seems to start with the letter “P”. This makes it difficult to search the airline’s name and whether credible sources corroborate the story that’s told.

Even though the people and scenes look realistic at first glance, the video’s integrity unravels when we slow down and look closer. People in the passenger line morph and transform.

The officer is able to single-handedly remove the paper from the clipboard and it appears to inexplicably leave white strips behind. The police vests look different to images you can find in verified media photos of the Australian Federal Police.

Taken together, all these clues suggest the video is AI-generated.

Think like a fact-checker

Many AI-generated videos can trick you and create a very compelling narrative. So, fact-checkers have developed triangulated methodologies that examine elements beyond just what you see in the video.

One way to do this is to systematically check contextual factors – the other things surrounding the content. Our team’s research has found professional fact-checkers usually pay attention to the type of social media accounts or websites distributing suspicious media.

For this AAP verification on a video about banning dogs on the beach, it was crucial to inspect the user’s activity and posting patterns.

In addition to visual anomalies, the fact-checkers also found an invisible watermark that helped them determine the content was AI-generated.

Other things to check are how long a social media account has been operating, how often the social media account posts, and whether the account is transparent about its use of AI.

These aren’t fool-proof indicators of authenticity, though. The migrant example above comes from an account that is about five years old. It also comes from a “verified” account, which might make it feel more credible. But both Facebook and X now let users pay for this verification.

Overall, when it comes to suspect images or video, don’t just look deeply. Also look widely.

AI-generated content can increasingly fool our eyes, so you also have to look beyond what’s in the video. Taking a mixed-methods approach that considers visual and contextual clues can help. By training your ability to think like a fact-checker, you can stay safer online.

Silvia Montaña-Niño, Lecturer, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne and T.J. Thomson, Associate Professor of Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The flirtation by some “teals” with the idea of forming a new party is part of the major shakeup underway in our political system, mostly on its conservative side.

They say they want to find more effective ways to serve the community, and tackle the big issues the major parties are not addressing. They’re concerned by the One Nation surge.

On a more practical matter – money – they criticise the new funding laws for the 2028 election as disadvantaging independents compared to parties.

Perhaps a community independents’ party could make a push for Senate seats. ACT Senator David Pocock is a “teal equivalent”.

But any move by some current independents to form a party would be fraught.

To start with, even the teals are divided about the idea. Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Allegra Spender (Wentworth) at a joint news conference indicated they’re open to such a move.

“I’ve always been very keen to look at how do I grow the impact that Warringah can have on policy, and how do we in fact achieve better impact on policies,” Steggall said.

“Ultimately, this is about putting forward policies and solutions that challenge where the major parties are taking us.”

Spender said: “I think we need to build a stronger movement and a bigger movement, whatever shape that takes to deal with that better”.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar) is also interested in something new, but quickly sent her supporters a letter saying she hadn’t made any decision, and was “disappointed” the matter had become public before she’d had time to speak to them.

On the substance, she wrote: “There is a conversation to be had about the future of the Community Independent Movement and how to keep it flourishing in a way that is different from a party, and which maintains the ability to genuinely represent individual communities yet have a strong and united voice on core issues to have a greater impact and influence”.

But teals Monique Ryan and Kate Chaney indicated they weren’t interested in forming a party.

Ryan said she would continue to represent her Kooyong electors “in the capacity in which I was elected, as a community independent”.

Chaney (Curtin) is “interested in working more collaboratively with other crossbenchers on policy – many of our communities have similar values – but right now I do not think that requires me to be a member of a political party”.

Nicolette Boele, who took Bradfield from the Liberals last year, said she would contest the next election as a community independent. But she’d involve her community in the discussion about whether there should be a formal alliance of community independents.

A new party involving existing teals would have to be a broad church. Steggall and Spender, for example, are politically different: Spender leans more to the right than Steggall.

And it’s intriguing to wonder who would be leader of such a party. Perhaps, in the name of doing politics differently, they would try to do without one?

Talk of their forming a party already plays into the criticisms the Coalition makes of the teals. “The teals are already a party,” Nationals leader Matt Canavan said on Monday.

In fact, while not a party they can be characterised as a movement, or a loose network. They’ve received substantial funding from Climate 200, as well as organisational backing (which can be quite tight) for campaigns. The crossbenchers, teals and others, liaise a lot in parliament.

While the independents might believe that, as a party, they could have more influence (for example if there were a hung parliament), they might in some circumstances have greater influence by being unencumbered.

Spender, for example, was included by the government in the 2025 economic round table because of her work on tax issues. If she’d had the complication of a party tie, it might have been a different story.

Regional independents are not interested in a party push.

Helen Haines (Indi) said: “At three elections, Indi has elected me as their independent MP, and independent is how I’ll remain”.

Rebekha Sharkie, who holds Mayo in the Adelaide Hills, is blunt. “I’m a regional independent. I don’t have a huge amount in common with teals who are in wealthy inner-metropolitan seats”.

Centrist minor parties obviously have appeal, but they tend to end in tears, even when they last a long time. The fracturing and disappearance of the Australian Democrats, who looked so permanent in their heyday, is a cautionary tale.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Alexandra Wake, RMIT University

Australia seems intent on missing a vital opportunity to win the hearts and minds of our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, through its continued refusal to guarantee ongoing funding for transnational news services in the region.

Since the second world war, Australia has provided news services across this geopolitically significant region. Its first incarnation was as a propaganda service promoting the interests of Australia and the British Empire. Later it became a trusted public news service via the national broadcaster, the ABC, and its international arms, Radio Australia and Australia Television.

But over the years, successive governments, and sometimes ABC management, have cut international news services. At times the region has been left with few services.

And yet, each time our Indo-Pacific neighbours seek assistance elsewhere, we act outraged, while continuing to hold inquiries into the importance of engaging with Asia.

The situation has become particularly dire since US President Donald Trump slashed aid, including media aid, across the region. The cuts have left many of our most vulnerable neighbours without access to trusted news sources.

Radio Free Asia was among those hardest hit by Trump’s cuts, although it has since restarted a limited number of services. The other major public media voice, the BBC World Service, is also in a precarious funding position.

At the same time, other countries, including China and Russia, have filled the void: the former with its own brand of news, and the latter with online disinformation designed to destabilise the region.

China has been very active in the media space. It takes journalists on “training” trips to China, offers incentives to newsrooms, and shows off what it calls the world’s largest newsroom through its broadcasting services.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong should be applauded for renewing the ABC’s Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy, in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) budget papers. That funding has allowed a range of initiatives, including

• establishing a Pacific Local Journalism Network
• expanding regional reporting across TV, radio and digital platforms
• growing ABC Asia and ABC Pacific digital and social content
• increasing Pacific-focused radio programming
• launching Asia News Week, a weekly pan-Asian current affairs program
• providing Australian content through local media partners in Timor-Leste and Indonesia.

But the DFAT funding continues to come through her department, not communications. In other words, support for journalism across the region remains limited to a select number of countries at the whim of the foreign minister of the day.

The funding has been renewed for just two years instead of five. This creates uncertainty for program participants and adds to the costs of administration. Moreover, without indexation, the $7 million a year looks like a real budget cut. That means some of the ABC’s most skilled Pacific journalists do not have the job certainty that others in the corporation can claim.

Significantly, the decision to limit funding, and to fail to shore up its ongoing viability, comes just as ABC Pacific Local Journalism Network reporters Lice Movono (Fiji), Marian Kupu (Tonga) and Chrisnrita Aumanu-Leong (Solomon Islands), working alongside Foreign Correspondent’s Steph March, have shown the importance of this work to Australia in the two-part series, Cartel Paradise: A special investigation into the Pacific’s drug superhighway.

There could be so much more of this kind of reporting if this funding were made core to the ABC, and the mandate extended beyond the Pacific to the broader Indo-Pacific.

International services from the ABC are not an added extra. They are core to the ABC’s charter and, I would argue, to Australia’s national security. It seems absurd this work is not fully funded into the future.

Sensible – and the right thing to do

There are military and strategic reasons to provide quality news and information, in partnership with our neighbours across the region.

But there are also purely altruistic reasons for working with our neighbours, who need critical public information sources in the face of authoritarianism, climate change and severe weather events.

In this new world order, Australia needs to be careful not to continue treating our neighbours as lesser. Understanding we need to be genuine partners, rather than a paternalistic presence, is key to the long-term success of providing news and information across the region.

Australia’s continued support for the ABC’s international efforts seems like a no-brainer. Its 2023 ABC survey across six Pacific nations — Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu — found trust levels approaching 80%, comparable to those in Australia.

Compared with major international broadcasters, including the BBC, CNN and national networks from France, Japan, New Zealand and China, the ABC was the most valued source of news via websites, apps or social media in every market except Fiji, where Al Jazeera was preferred.

That said, the ABC does not always get it right. The region could do with a few more supported voices rather than just the ABC, such as the excellent Benar News Service, which was shut down in the Trump cuts.

Supporting media diversity, including local news outlets, is an easy way to show the region we have shed our colonial past and are genuinely seeking to be partners.

Alexandra Wake, Professor, Journalism, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

James Skinner, University of Newcastle and Danny F Hill, Providence College

Cricket and soccer are two of, if not the biggest national sporting codes in Australia.

Yet the governing bodies of both have recently been in the news for their financial difficulties.

How can it be these two dominant codes are struggling?

Major sports, major problems

Football Australia (FA) recently announced it will cut around 20% of its workforce, following a loss of more than $15 million. This has raised concerns about organisational performance.

But the financial detail suggests something more structural.

In 2025, FA generated record revenue of approximately $139 million, yet reported a net loss of $15.3 million – about 11% of total income.

This follows a deficit of $8.5 million the previous year.

Revenue has been rising but financial stability remains elusive, a pattern also evident in Cricket Australia (CA).

CA reported around $455 million in revenue and an operating surplus of $109.6 million in 2024–25. However, after distributing roughly $120 million to state associations, it recorded a net deficit of about $11 million.

This highlights how large revenues in sport do not necessarily deliver financial strength.

In many governing body models, revenue functions less as retained capital and more as a redistribution mechanism to support leagues, grassroots systems, pathways and national teams.

Revenue growth without financial stability

At first glance, both organisations appear financially strong.

FA has expanded commercial partnerships and participation while CA has benefited from increased attendance and broadcast income associated with major international series.

However, much of this revenue is cyclical, particularly in cricket where income fluctuates with international scheduling, while soccer revenues remain exposed to changes in participation patterns and media markets.

This suggests FA’s high fixed costs relative to variable costs are limiting profitability.

Much of FA’s cost base is now structurally embedded: national team investment, women’s soccer expansion, technical infrastructure and participation systems. These create recurring expenditure that is difficult to reduce quickly without damaging sporting or political objectives.

On the expenditure side, both organisations face relatively inflexible cost structures. FA’s employee and team-related expenses increased to more than $63 million in 2025, up from about $50 million the previous year.

Wages alone rose by roughly $11 million over the same period.

CA faces comparable pressures. Total expenses rose to nearly $346 million, with player payments exceeding $133 million – representing the largest category of expenditure.

While CA generated a substantial operating surplus, much of that cash flow is redistributed via state funding arrangements, player payments and system-wide commitments.

In practice, CA functions more like a financing institution for the broader national cricket economy.

What the financial data actually show

FA’s revenue increased from $124 million in 2024 to $139 million in 2025, yet its losses expanded from $8.5 million to $15.3 million during the same period.

This divergence reinforces earlier evidence that expenditure growth, particularly in labour-intensive areas, is outpacing revenue, reflecting cost pressures within the system.

These costs appear structurally embedded, which means they can’t be easily reduced in the short term.

FA has also been affected by the A-League’s own turbulent finances.

While FA is the governing body for soccer in Australia, the A-League is independent. FA does not directly cover the league’s losses but does support the A-League by allowing it to retain money it might otherwise have owed.

This is because a financially stable A-League is critical to the health of the entire soccer system, including player development, national team performance and the sport’s commercial viability in Australia.

CA’s position reflects a different structural constraint. While the organisation generated an operating surplus of $109.6 million, distributions of around $120 million to state associations effectively absorbed that surplus, resulting in a net deficit.

This financial uncertainty led CA to recently investigate raising money by selling some or all of its Big Bash League teams to private equity. However, the move was quashed by the states.

Governance constraints and contested reform

Australian sports’ governing bodies are increasingly caught between globalised cost structures and comparatively limited domestic market scale. Many remain dependent on cyclical broadcast markets and concentrated domestic audiences.

These structural pressures are made worse because FA still has financial obligations tied to the A-League. But anticipated A-League revenues have not been fully realised, transferring financial strain onto the FA.

CA provides a comparable example, where proposals to restructure commercial arrangements, such as the proposed Big Bash equity sales, have been constrained by stakeholder resistance.

Together, these cases illustrate how federated governance structures constrain financial adaptability, creating structurally embedded pressures in which cyclical revenues and rising cost bases generate financial strain even during periods of growth.

James Skinner, Dean Newcastle Business School/Professor of Sport Business, University of Newcastle and Danny F Hill, Assistant Professor Finance, Providence College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Colin Caprani, Monash University and Scott Menegon, Swinburne University of Technology

The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt has survived more than 4,500 years. Earthquakes have repeatedly shaken the region, including the magnitude 5.8 Cairo earthquake in 1992, which dislodged some of the pyramid’s outer casing stones. Yet the main body remained essentially intact.

How has it survived so well? A new study of the pyramid’s vibrations by Egyptian geophysicist Asem Salama and colleagues provides insight into its performance during earthquakes, and identifies some interesting features.

But we should be cautious to conclude that its impressive longevity is proof of its builders’ knowledge of earthquake engineering.

What the research found

The researchers measured the pyramid’s vibrations in ambient conditions. They found that its natural frequencies – the frequencies at which it “prefers” to vibrate – are mostly between about 2.0 and 2.6 hertz (cycles per second). The surrounding soil has a much lower dominant frequency, around 0.6Hz.

Every structure has a natural rhythm. Push a child on a swing at the right moment and the motion grows; push at the wrong moment and little happens.

Buildings and monuments behave similarly. If earthquake shaking matches a structure’s natural frequency, the motion can be amplified. This is called resonance, and it can be catastrophic.

The study also reports reduced vibrations near the so-called relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber. These chambers are understood to redirect the enormous weight of stone above, and may also affect how vibration energy moves through the pyramid.

These findings suggest some behaviour that may be helpful during an earthquake, including a frequency mismatch between the pyramid and the soil. But they do not, by themselves, prove people intentionally built the pyramid to be resilient to earthquakes.

How the researchers measured it

The study used a method called horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio analysis, or HVSR. This records tiny background motions from wind, traffic, human activity and natural ground vibration.

By comparing the horizontal and vertical components of these motions, researchers can estimate dominant frequencies in the soil and structure. In this case, instruments were placed at 37 locations in and around the pyramid, including internal passages, exterior stones and nearby soil.

This suits a heritage structure. Engineers cannot drill into the Great Pyramid, load it experimentally, or put instruments on it like a modern bridge.

The method provides useful information without damage. However, it only measures the response to small background vibrations, not the severe shaking of an earthquake.

The importance of frequency mismatch

When shaking from an earthquake happens at a frequency that matches a structure’s natural frequency, it can cause resonance. Resonance can be catastrophic.

So the measured difference matters. If the ground and the structure vibrate at different rates, the ground is less likely to feed energy efficiently into the structure.

But this addresses only one possible mechanism of earthquake damage. There are plenty of examples of structures performing poorly in earthquakes, even though there was a frequency mismatch to the soil below.

Earthquake resilience is more complicated

Modern earthquake design does not assess resilience from one frequency comparison.

Instead, we look at a whole list of questions. How severe is the expected shaking? What ground is the structure on? How heavy and flexible is the structure? Can the structure deform and dissipate energy without sudden collapse? How serious would failure be?

The structure’s natural period or rhythm (which is related to its natural frequency) is part of that assessment. But it sits alongside many other factors.

In practice, earthquake damage depends not only on the earthquake but on the structures that receive it. Australia’s 1989 Newcastle earthquake, for example, was not huge by global standards, but many buildings fared poorly and 13 people died.

For the Great Pyramid, the behaviour of the stonework is especially important. Ambient vibration testing measures behaviour under very small motions. During strong earthquake shaking, masonry can crack, open joints, rock, slide and lose stiffness. Each of these changes the structure’s natural period, complicating the behaviour.

Beware survivorship bias

In evaluating the pyramid’s longevity, we should also consider survivorship bias.

Famously, in the second world war, statistician Abraham Wald was asked where armour should be added to aircraft. The obvious answer was to reinforce the places where returning aircraft had the most bullet holes.

Wald argued the opposite: those aircraft had survived. The aircraft that did not return were missing from the data.

Ancient structures pose a similar problem. We admire ancient aqueducts, temples and pyramids because they are still here. The failed structures, poor foundations, weak details and abandoned experiments are mostly gone.

That does not diminish the Great Pyramid. It simply means looking at structures that survive today does not tell us everything about the design intentions behind them.

What the pyramid does teach us

The pyramid may not have been intentionally designed for resilience in an earthquake. But its survival is not an accident, either.

From an engineering point of view, it has many favourable features: a broad base, low centre of mass, tapering form, symmetrical plan, competent limestone foundation and massive masonry load path. It is squat, stiff and well-founded rather than tall, slender and flexible.

The safest conclusion is that the builders made excellent empirical engineering choices. Those choices may have been driven by construction experience, observation, structural necessity, or cultural intent. Their seismic benefits may be real without being the original purpose.

The Great Pyramid’s survival is not magic, and it is not proof of ancient seismic design. As evidence, this study is important and impressive, but incomplete.

Colin Caprani, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Monash University and Scott Menegon, Senior Lecturer, Civil and Construction Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ashwin Nagappa, Queensland University of Technology and Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology

Globally, users of digital media are increasingly locked into a handful of operating systems, app stores, and communication platforms. Most of us must choose between Apple, Windows, or Android. All of these are owned by American tech giants.

Much of private and government IT infrastructure – websites, mobile banking, nearly anything online you can think of – uses cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare or Microsoft Azure. They might have locations worldwide, but these are also US companies.

Mobile phones, laptops, smartwatches and more are mostly made by American or Chinese companies. And it’s getting worse as tech companies embed artificial intelligence (AI) assistants directly into everyday devices, such as Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Copilot. They’re doing this in ways designed to further entrench users within particular ecosystems.

When a single cyber security update brought down Windows computers the world over in 2024, it was a stark reminder nobody should put all their IT eggs in one basket.

But what might that actually look like? The “digital sovereignty” movement in the European Union (EU) can show us the way. European countries are gradually breaking up with American tech giants and pushing for local AI development, all in the name of achieving digital autonomy.

What exactly is ‘digital sovereignty’?

A state’s sovereignty means to be able to govern itself. Extend that to the digital era, and we arrive at a concept that’s difficult to pin down, but broadly means being in charge of your own digital infrastructure.

Let’s take the European digital sovereignty strategy. It provides a roadmap for creating, owning and governing computer hardware, AI, software, and social media within the EU. Any tech providers would have to comply with core EU values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.

The ultimate goal here is digital autonomy. It means reducing reliance on systems vulnerable to growing geopolitical and economic risks. If you make your own devices and host your data locally, you’re not at the mercy of multinational corporations whose interests may not align with your own.

Several prominent EU institutions have already ditched the Microsoft Office suite for official communication. Instead, they use European software such as Office EU or free open-source alternatives.

The EU is also making progress on Gaia-X, a local alternative to global cloud providers.

But these efforts come with major challenges. Large tech companies such as Alphabet (Google), Microsoft and Amazon are not watching idly. By promising local governments and organisations greater control, they’re tapping into the digital sovereignty discussion.

Researchers call this “sovereignty-as-a-service”. Through it, big tech is shaping digital sovereignty on terms that are favourable to them.

Alternatives already exist

Europe’s digital sovereignty strategy is a long-term, multi-country initiative that involves major financial, industrial and policy changes. Outside of the EU, countries including India, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa are also pursuing digital sovereignty plans.

But for everyday users, much of it comes down to turning to viable alternatives to dominant tech platforms. Many already exist.

Decentralised social media ecosystems allow independently operated communities to communicate across shared protocols without being controlled by a single corporation. One such example is the Fediverse, which includes platforms like micro-blogging site Mastodon and video sharing site PeerTube.

Similarly, the AT protocol, which powers micro-blogging sites Bluesky and Eurosky, aims to separate social networking from platform ownership. It enables users to move identities, content and communities between services more freely.

Open-source office suites such as LibreOffice have provided alternatives to Microsoft Office for more than two decades.

It’s also increasingly possible to run AI systems locally on personal devices or private networks. This reduces reliance on cloud-based AI services controlled by big tech.

In other words, many of the technical foundations for greater digital autonomy already exist. The challenge lies with adoption and coordination. When Twitter was bought by Elon Musk, many users fragmented to other sites – from Mastodon and Threads to Bluesky and others. If your friends are all on different social media sites, which do you choose?

What can Australia learn from this?

Australia is in a similar position to the EU. We’re heavily reliant on foreign-owned digital infrastructure. We’re also increasingly exposed to the geopolitical tensions surrounding it.

Australia could take a leaf out of the EU’s book and develop its own roadmap for digital sovereignty. This would have to operate at both the policy and public levels.

Australia’s digital policy shouldn’t be dictated by large platforms or external geopolitical actors. There’s also a pressing need to promote local innovation for the future, such as investing in quantum computing.

Publicly funded organisations have already demonstrated Australia can invent globally significant technology. After all, Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, patented the technology that led to wifi. Universities and publicly funded institutions should be at the core of future tech innovation as well.

Most importantly, Australia is home to First Nations communities. Their governance systems have long operated through decentralised, relational, and autonomous forms of organisation.

Groups such as Maiam nayri Wingara and the HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons have already developed internationally significant frameworks for Indigenous data sovereignty. These cover data governance, stewardship, collective benefit, and the rights of communities to control data about their peoples, lands and cultures.

We can learn from these. Respecting Indigenous sovereignty may also open a pathway for all Australians to rethink what our shared digital futures can look like.

Ashwin Nagappa, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, Queensland University of Technology and Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.