New mortgage loans dropped by a record 15% in the September quarter as the housing market downturn deepened, led by a 30.6% dive in lending to investors, official figures on Wednesday showed.

The Reserve Bank’s five interest rate hikes and stagnant real wages have hit housing demand from investors, first-home buyers and established home owners. Reforms to tax rules for investors have also contributed to sinking investor demand for existing homes.

Over the year, the number of new loans taken out has dropped by 21.4% overall, with a spectacular 38.5% drop for investors.

However, reduced competition from investors may also create opportunities for first-home buyers. In the September quarter, lending to first-home buyers fell by a more moderate 8.6%.

Putting the drop in new home loans in perspective

The current drop in mortgage lending highlights the volatility of Australia’s housing market. While house prices have soared since 2000, we have also seen several marked downturns in both property values and loan issuance.

Before the current downturn, average real prices declined for at least two quarters on four occasions since 2011. The most recent downturns – those starting in March 2018 and March 2022 – lasted for at least a year.

An opportunity for home and first-home buyers?

Higher interest rates affect all homebuyers needing a mortgage. As a result, demand across investors, established homeowners and first-home buyers has declined.

However, the drop in housing investment has been steepest for investors. They constitute a large segment of housing demand and are more sensitive to expected house price and interest rate changes.

Over the year to September 2026, both the number and value of new investor mortgages declined spectacularly by 38.5%. This was mainly driven by a near 46.2% drop in the purchase of existing properties.

However, not all buyers are equally put off by the decline in house prices and rise in mortgage costs. Over the year, new loans to non-first home buyers dropped by a more moderate 8.7% and for first-home buyers 12.3%.

The pattern was similar for the value of new loans.

That shift over the past year means the share of total lending to home buyers has increased by nearly 9%. And for first-home buyers, the average loan size has increased by almost 10%.

For some home and first-home buyers, falling prices and less competition from investors may also come with improvements in access to home ownership.

A greater role for non-bank lenders

The significance of this shift towards owner-occupier lending should not be overstated. The value of new loans to investors is still 1.5 times larger than new loans to first-home buyers.

But the shift to owner-occupier lending echoes the pattern seen when tighter credit rules for investors were imposed in 2014 and 2016 to limit investor lending growth. The rules reduced the share of lending to investors, while the price of investor-acquired homes also declined relative to other housing market segments.

The tighter rules for investors were replaced by a serviceability buffer for all borrowers. This means borrowers need to be able to withstand a further 3% rate increase above the current level – or 12 standard rate rises.

But since those lending buffers only apply to lending by approved deposit-taking institutions, such as the major banks, more borrowers are turning to non-bank lenders. These are financial institutions such as La Trobe Financial or Athena Home Loans, which provide loans but offer fewer other financial services.

Over the year, major bank lending fell 7.1%, while non-bank lending jumped 67.7%, albeit from a low base.

How the house price drop has helped buyers

As house prices have fallen, more first-home buyers may be able to get into the market or to afford a better quality property.

The table below compares the monthly mortgage repayments for a home before and after a theoretical 10% price fall and six rate rises (that’s one more than the RBA’s five hikes). It shows mortgage repayments would have increased by 17.2%.

However, for a buyer who waited before entering the market, or could not purchase before the price fall, the monthly mortgage cost – compared to purchasing this property before the house price drop and six rate rises – has only gone up from $3,407 to $3,593, or 5.5%.

The economic fallout

Higher interest rates and declining house prices do not only trigger declines in mortgage demand. New housing construction in Australia responds to profitable opportunities, driven by cost of borrowing and changes in house prices.

When house prices fall, new construction typically also declines, with a lag. Slowdowns in construction activity reduce demand for materials, tradespeople and real estate professionals, thus impacting jobs and broader economic activity.

For Australian households, spending more on paying for mortgages also means less cash for other types of spending like dining out, travel and furniture and appliances.

A slide in consumer confidence figures this week confirmed the Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock’s comment that the current economy may feel “like a recession”.

Christian A. Nygaard, Professor of Housing Economics, UNSW

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) safety regulator, which will enforce penalties for frontier AI companies that breach their obligations.

The government is also considering criminal law changes to deal with serious misconduct by any of these companies.

The measures are targeted at frontier AI companies – those building the largest, most advanced models.

At a news conference shortly before leaving for the COP climate conference in Turkey, the prime minister outlined AI safety and security protections that will be in the government’s proposed AI framework legislation.

The six mandated requirements for companies are:

• maintain security controls across all stages of AI development and deployment
• identify and manage serious risks associated with models
• quickly provide mandatory notification of incidents to the Australian government
• allow independent evaluation of models
• maintain and publish safety and security frameworks to ensure good governance, risk management and transparency
• respond to updated standards and rules as technologies change.
  

Albanese said these protections were in line with recommendations from the parliamentary joint select committee on AI.

The government also released the recommendations from the rapid review into the OpenAI breach of an Australian government site by a rogue agent earlier this year.

In this breach, for which OpenAI apologised, statistical health data was accessed, but no personal data. The government complained strongly to the company.

“It can’t be allowed to happen again,” Albanese said on Tuesday. He said the government had accepted and commenced work on the review’s 18 recommendations.

The recommendations include:

• mandatory AI company reporting of misaligned behaviour or cyber incidents
• consideration of reforming criminal law to deal with cases of serious misconduct
• greater engagement with international counterparts and frontier AI developers to promote shared expectations about AI safety and accountability
• strengthening resilience and response to AI incidents, including better information sharing and more focus on cyber security.

Albanese, appearing with Defence Minister Richard Marles and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, told his news conference the government wanted to see Australia benefiting from the advantages of AI while mitigating the risks.

In relation to new criminal penalties the review report said the Attorney-General’s Department, in consultation with the Australian Federal Police, the Home Affair Department, and other agencies, should explore:

the application of criminal penalties for egregious regulatory non-compliance; and/or a standalone “failure to prevent” offence which would criminalise instances where the company is responsible for developing an AI model that engages in harmful conduct, and the company fails to take reasonable steps to prevent that harm.

Albanese said the government would release the report of the review, with due regard to national security considerations, but there is no clarity about when this will be done.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

One in five Australians lives with chronic pain, meaning pain that persists longer than three months. Among people with disabilities, the rate is far higher.

Yet this overlap between disability and chronic pain is still misunderstood.

Even if someone is on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for a disability, they may not get adequate support for how pain also affects their functioning and interacts with their other impairment/s. Many people with chronic pain are not eligible for the NDIS, despite it having a severe, ongoing impact.

Here’s why this approach doesn’t make sense – and how upcoming changes to NDIS funding could make it even more complicated for people to get the support they need.

The impact of ongoing pain

Chronic pain is far more than an unpleasant sensation.

Along with eroding physical health, living with pain can also disrupt relationships, work, financial security, mental health and wellbeing. People who live with chronic pain face a higher risk of unemployment and depression than those without it.

How severely pain affects someone depends on their personal and social circumstances, such as their age, sex, relationships, social connection and culture.

Disability and chronic pain are interrelated

Getting NDIS support depends on someone proving their impairment or impairments reduce their ability to do everyday tasks (their functional capacity). This includes self care, mobility, communication and taking part in community and social activities.

Chronic pain is generally not enough to qualify for NDIS support, unless you can prove it significantly impacts your functioning in this way.

But it can be tricky to disentangle the impact of chronic pain from other impairments. Pain can both arise from and contribute to long-term health conditions and disability. For example, living with pain can amplify other aspects of someone’s disability, such as mobility.

There also aren’t many effective medications to treat chronic pain; the way it’s managed often overlaps with disability support. This might include allied health (such as physiotherapy), home modifications and assistive technologies (including handrails, adapted utensils or transcription software), and direct support for tasks that exacerbate pain (such as gardening or cleaning).

So for some people who live with chronic pain and have permanent impairments, it doesn’t make sense to separate their pain and its impact from their disabilities.

NDIS changes may hit people with chronic pain

Chronic pain is also often misunderstood as only a medical issue that needs to be “fixed” rather than a long-term condition.

From January 2028, to be eligible for NDIS services and supports, people will need to have “undertaken all appropriate treatment” for their condition and it must be assessed as likely to be permanent.

However, we don’t know what treatments could be considered “appropriate” for chronic pain related to impairment/s – or whether all such treatments would need to be tried before someone can access the NDIS.

New rules also say NDIS participants can only access supports that address needs arising “directly” from an NDIS-recognised diagnosis or impairment. However, this may not reflect the interconnected ways disability and chronic pain affect people’s lives.

NDIS participants may be able to get support for pain if it arises from the diagnosis or condition that made them eligible for the NDIS. But if pain occurs for a reason deemed unrelated to those accepted diagnoses, they may miss out.

Imagine an NDIS participant with multiple sclerosis (MS) who falls and sprains their ankle. Maybe they tripped and fell because of weakness or balance problems their MS caused. But it may be hard to prove the ongoing pain relates to MS.

Under the new legislation, it’s unclear if their existing physiotherapist could charge for treatment and rehabilitation from their ankle injury, how the person would prove it was related to MS, or if they’d require a separate appointment, not funded by the NDIS, to treat the ankle sprain.

Support outside the NDIS

So, what if you live with chronic pain but you’re not eligible for the NDIS?

People with chronic conditions can access Medicare-subsidised allied health through a GP chronic condition management plan. But this only covers five visits a year across a variety of allied health professionals and may incur out-of-pocket expenses.

Some people may pay for these services in full or receive some rebates through private health insurance or, if an injury is work-related, through workers’ compensation schemes.

But for people without NDIS funding, support for daily tasks such as personal care or chores are rarely affordable. Federal, state and territory governments have agreed to more supports in the community, outside the NDIS – known as “foundational supports” – but they have not yet been implemented for adults, and many questions remain about how they’ll work.

We need better coordination

Amid significant NDIS reform – including tighter eligibility and funding cuts to allied health – there is a risk more people with chronic pain could fall through the cracks.

Without adequate support, we will see a flow-on effect. For people living with disability and chronic pain, their ability to take part in social life and employment, and to maintain their physical and mental wellbeing, is likely to be limited.

We need better coordination between different service systems including Medicare, private health insurance and the NDIS, and more support for those with complex needs.

Some may need health care, while others may require practical support with community access, mobility or personal care to take part in the community, move around, and do everyday tasks like dressing and preparing meals.

The goal should be simple: the support people receive should reflect the life they are trying to live, not just their diagnosis or disability.

We would like to acknowledge Helen Dickinson from the University of New South Wales and Alexandra Devine from The University of Melbourne for their contribution to this article.

Manasi Murthy Mittinty, Senior Research Fellow, Disability and Health Unit, Department of Health Systems, Policy and Economics, Melbourne School of Public Health, The University of Melbourne; Anne Kavanagh, Professor, Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney; RMIT University, and Sophie Yates, Senior Research Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

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

Seeing a specialist keeps getting more expensive, and a new Grattan Institute analysis shows the problem is getting worse, not better.

After years of inaction, reform may finally be on the agenda.

At the end of last year, Health Minister Mark Butler said fees to see medical specialists – such as paediatricians, dermatologists and psychiatrists – were “out of control”. The government has launched a parliamentary inquiry, and the federal health department has consulted on a range of reform options.

To make specialist medical care affordable, the consultations and inquiry must trigger overdue reform to train more specialists, fund more free public clinic appointments, and rein in the most extreme fees.

Specialist fees are out of control

Our 2025 report, Special Treatment, found that between 2010 and 2025, fees for specialist care outside hospitals grew 73% in real terms (meaning adjusted for inflation). That is many times faster than for GPs or other Medicare services. Since then, fee growth has continued unchecked. In the past year alone, specialist fees rose 4% faster than inflation.

Some specialties have seen especially steep rises. The median out-of-pocket fee for an initial psychiatry appointment is now A$351, up $90 in real terms in the past two years. The median initial dermatology appointment costs $217, up $28.

At the same time, fee-free care is dwindling. Fewer than a quarter of initial specialist appointments are now bulk-billed, down from about a third a decade ago. In urology, dermatology, psychiatry, and ear, nose and throat (otolaryngology), it’s fewer than one in ten.

And the most expensive specialists are pulling further ahead.

The priciest 5% of psychiatrists charge a median of $669 for an initial appointment, and their fees have risen $58 a year faster than inflation.

The most expensive paediatricians charge $362, triple what their peers charge. Their fees have risen $50 a year in real terms, compared with just $3 among the other 95% of paediatricians.

Some specialists charge, on average, more than triple the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) fee – the basis for government funding (for care outside hospital; patients usually get back 85% of the MBS fee).

While we argue these can only be described as extreme fees, they are becoming more common. Last year, 2.2 million patients paid at least one extreme fee, more than four times the number a decade ago.

Don’t blame Medicare, or costs

Doctors’ groups blame Medicare rebates for not keeping up with inflation. It’s true government rebates have fallen in real terms, but fees have risen far faster. Since 2012, the average specialist rebate has fallen $9 in real terms, while average out-of-pocket costs have risen $37.

In psychiatry, the rebate for an initial appointment has fallen $44 in real terms since 2012. Fees rose by much more than that in just the past year.

Rising practice costs don’t explain it either. Tax data show private specialist practices’ costs grew just 1.8% a year in the 15 years to 2024–25 – slower than inflation – while their profits grew.

The specialist market is broken

Specialist fees are rising because the usual checks on price are missing. In most markets, if you charge too much, customers go elsewhere. With specialists, there’s often nowhere else to go.

Many areas don’t have enough specialists, especially outside the big cities. The free option, a public clinic, can mean waiting months or even years.

Even when there is a choice, patients aren’t well placed to make it. A GP’s referral is the biggest influence on which specialist a patient sees, and many don’t find out the price until they’re handed the bill. And when facing a health scare, patients might not have time to shop around.

The hard reforms remain

Governments have started to act.

The parliament has passed legislation to publish individual specialists’ fees, and the health department has consulted on bigger reforms. Victoria has funded more specialist clinic appointments for children, and several states are establishing systems to give GPs quick access to specialist advice, so that patients don’t need to make a separate appointment.

But these are mostly the easiest, cheapest steps, and not the ones that will make the biggest difference.

In our 2025 report, we recommended that the federal government set clear training targets for each specialty. The targets should dictate where funding for trainee places goes across the specialties, and how many are in rural areas. Then specialist colleges should be held to account for achieving them. The May budget rolled over existing specialist training funding for another year, without adding new places.

We also recommended governments invest $500 million a year in building the capacity of public clinics, targeting areas with the worst wait times. Extra funding should expand clinics, build new ones, and make telehealth available where it’s the best option.

Better information about fees is good. But it won’t help if you can’t afford them and face a year-long waiting list for a public clinic.

It’s time to rein in extreme fees

Training more specialists and expanding public clinics is essential. But this will take time, and fees are rising every year. That’s why governments must also tackle extreme fees directly.

We recommend a simple rule. If a specialist’s fees average more than triple the MBS fee across a year, they should repay the Medicare rebates for their services that year. Patients would keep their rebates, so the penalty falls on the specialist, not the patient.

This threshold is deliberately high. Averaging across a whole year leaves room for legitimately high fees, such as those for complex patients or long appointments. It would only affect about 6% of all specialists, and they wouldn’t be able to avoid it by shifting fees around. That small minority charge around half of all extreme fees, and almost all the very highest fees.

Charging unjustifiable fees is a choice. It should be a costly one for specialists, not for patients.

Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute and Thomas Shortridge, Associate, Health Program, Grattan Institute

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

The first marvel is the light.

There are so many published images of the new Powerhouse museum’s steel exoskeleton that it is hardly a surprise when two dazzling white structures like giant milk crates suddenly emerge from the depressing jumble of modern office buildings that characterise modern Parramatta.

But the light inside the building is something else, as glass walls invite the sky outside to come in.

An exhibit you can paddle in

Daylight is a key element in Overflow, one of the museum’s five opening exhibitions.

In a large open space with views to the Parramatta skyline and river below, a giant video screen plays a series of short films by Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen, showing seven different First Nations communities in New South Wales caring for their saltwater and freshwater country. Images of riverbanks, lagoons and sandy beaches are reflected in a shallow replica tidal pool in front of the screen.

Contemporary museums pride themselves on interacting with visitors, but this is the first time I have seen a museum encouraging people to wade into an exhibit.

A kids exhibition themed around darkness

According to the ceaseless political campaign against the Parramatta incarnation of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, the original collection has been abandoned in favour of novelty. This is not true. Most of the works in The Dark, an exhibition specifically devised for children, come from the permanent collection.

Darkness here is a friend, not foe. Displays of beautiful minerals and precious stones are captioned with stories of the people who discovered them.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the eccentricities of the original museum in Ultimo can rediscover the pleasures of mechanical birds that sing with a pressed button, and the transparent woman whose body parts light up on command.

Another display features precious personal items lent by local children. Curatorship becomes community engagement.

A tribute to the shopping mall

The Powerhouse’s permanent collection also underpins The Mall, a celebration of the products, design and community life of the shopping mall.

There are arcade window displays and a re-imagined version of the beloved Raindrop Fountain inside Roselands shopping centre. Objects on display include an old-fashioned photobooth, antique cash registers and the original “Parramall” neon sign.

The David Jones archive, now a part of the Powerhouse collection and on display in the exhibition, includes mid-20th century advertising posters and photographs of window displays. It’s a window into a time when DJs was the epitome of style.

A commissioned series of portraits by photographers Jo Duck and Bahram Mia captures those who shop, socialise and work in today’s malls.

An ode to flight and space exploration

The largest and most hyped exhibition is Task Eternal, an exploration of flight – from a Burramattagal bumarang (boomerang) on loan from the British Museum to machines enabling exploitation of the moon.

The commissioned artworks include an immersive installation by American light artist James Turrell. The specially designed room evokes the disorienting Ganzfeld effect through an intense field of changing coloured light.

The curators, working with Chinese design firm OPEN Architecture, have created a nuanced investigation of wonder.

Leonardo da Vinci’s surprisingly fresh sketches of imagined flight sit alongside the Powerhouse’s collection of drawings and models by Australian aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave, who helped shape the 20th century’s achievement of an ancient fantasy.

There is an Apollo space capsule, aeroplanes and rockets, copies of messages sent with the Voyager craft on its endless journey into deep space, space suits – and space junk.

One of the most compelling exhibits is a digital display of the pollution now destroying the night skies, showing how this vandalism has taken less than a lifetime to “achieve”.

Es Devlin: The Turning

The fifth exhibition, The Turning, showcases recent works by British artist and designer Es Devlin, whose practice spans stage design, sculpture and installations, arena concerts by the likes of U2 and Lady Gaga, and large-scale events including the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

The Turning opens with the Forest of Us, a meditation on organic symmetry. Visitors enter by walking past the sentence: “Every time I reach a fork in the road, I take both paths”.

These words lead visitors to a short, poetic film on the nature of organic symmetry. At the end of the film a door appears in the middle of the screen and the viewer walks into a giant mirror maze, beautiful and disorienting.

Memory Palace, a 3D-printed imaginary city composed of key sites throughout history, cites American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

In audio narration, Devlin lists places including the bus stop where Rosa Parks waited, the stadium stage where Martin Luther King spoke, the town hall steps where Greta Thunberg sat and the Block at Redfern, a key site of Australian First Nations activism.

In the next room, people are invited to sit at a long table for 15 minutes and draw a stranger opposite them, looking in their eyes without speaking. This work, titled Collective Portrait, is an actualisation of Devlin’s belief that the act of recording is a reminder that we are all part of a living universe.

On the lawn outside the Powerhouse, Devlin’s drawings of 244 endangered local species have been collaged into an egg-shaped stage. This forms the backdrop for Devlin’s performance work Come Home Again (first staged in London), featuring choral tributes to vulnerable species. The work will be performed at dusk from Thursday to Sunday during November, as part of the Powerhouse’s opening festival.

By any measure, Parramatta is lucky to be able to experience in depth the work of such a major art star.

Supercharging the community

“Powerhouse” has become a popular name for arts centres. Usually they are repurposed industrial buildings, made redundant by technological change. This Powerhouse is named in honour of its history and also, I suspect, in hopes of the impact it will have on both its surrounding suburbs and the wider community.

So far, so good.

Powerhouse Parramatta is open 10am-5pm daily, and until 9pm Thursday-Sunday during November as part of its opening festival. Entry is free.

Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

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

Paris in the 1830s and 40s danced on the edge. Napoleon was dead. The Bourbon royals were back. Revolutions in 1830 and 1848 brought pitched battles to the streets. Glitzy wealth rubbed up against dire poverty.

Yet the city was a honey-pot for 20-something creatives; meet the bohemians. These brooding, passion-infused romantics dominated the art world. Chopin was there penning some of the most romantic piano music ever written. Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame came out in 1831.

Among these dreamers was Henry Murger, a jobbing writer living hand-to-mouth. In 1849, he penned a series of autobiographical sketches glamourising his friends, lovers and exploits.

Murger’s tales were a runaway success. But it was Italian composer Giacomo Puccini who immortalised them with his 1896 opera La Bohème, based on Murger’s 1851 novel Scènes de la vie de bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life).

La Bohème sealed Puccini’s fate as arguably the greatest opera composer of all time. Opera Australia now brings a fresh look to this eternally popular masterpiece.

Puccini’s timeless tale

Rather than spinning a grand plot, La Bohème drops us into four scenes spanning a Parisian winter. Four young down-and-out creatives are following their dreams. But there’s not enough food to go round. They torch the furniture to keep warm. The rent hasn’t been paid for three months.

It is two great love affairs that warm the hearts of audiences as much as they do those of the two leading men, Rodolfo and Marcello. La Bohème lives on quick-fire dialogue among rough-and-tumble young men, but illness and frailty lurk throughout. In the end, tragedy strikes.

Murger’s tale has been repackaged various times in pop culture, including in the 1990s rock musical Rent. Young love, glamour, infatuations, jealousy and loss never tire as theatrical crowd-pleasers.

A bold, vibrant and vivacious take

Opera Australia’s production opened at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre on Saturday. Director Constantine Costi and his team have come up with a contemporary, vivacious and playfully cheeky take on an old favourite.

The leading man, Rodolfo, comes over as a sensitive, slightly over-awed young man. Decked out in green velvet, he is closer to a boy-band heartthrob for the TikTok era than to the traditional Italian lover.

Kang Wang has a fine, compact voice to match. His first act aria on opening night needed to project a bit more, but his presence grew as the night progressed. This Rodolfo is not going to sweep you off your feet. He is too 2026 for that – but he still has many endearing features.

Costume designer Sabina Myers channels Parisian painters of the 1920s to produce a whole catalogue of vivid looks. Her coat for Mimi, Rodolfo’s great flame, pays homage to French artist and designer Sonia Delaunay and Orphism – an offshoot of Cubism.

Fresh from a run as Mimi in Munich last year, Galina Cheplakova makes her Australian debut in the role. Strongest in the high register, she brings a coy smile to her first encounter with Rodolfo and luxuriated in the soaring vocal lines as she recalled the first April sun in her lonely loft.

Act two sees our Bohemians at a famous Parisian cafe. This act made the most demands on the opera’s original creatives. Two writers penned numerous versions before Puccini was happy.

The effort paid off handsomely. The chorus and lead singers toss snappy jokes between each other. Split-second timing is essential, and the Opera Australia team pulls it off brilliantly.

Marcello’s old flame Musetta, played by Alexandra Flood, steals the show at Cafe Momus. Coiffed with a wonderful roaring ‘20s look, she knows how to turn heads. Her sugar daddy tags along but can’t keep up. Flood plays the femme fatale with bravura and a flair for sartorial provocation.

Parisian flair at the Paris end

La Bohème can pose a challenge for directors. The opening and final acts need intimacy. Act two, on the other hand, portrays a bustling street scene with kids, crowds and marching bands. Going too far in either direction risks making the show feel disjointed.

Set designer Dann Barber neatly dodges this bullet with tightly masked apartment scenes, and a hot-air balloon that floats the lovers from Rodolfo’s dingy loft into the let-it-rip colour and Marc Chagall ambience of the street outside Café Momus.

The Regent Theatre takes pride of place at the “Paris end” of Collins Street and makes a beautiful, traditional venue for La Bohème. Yet it lacks an orchestra pit. Orchestra Victoria sits at the front of the stalls and the stage is set well back – sacrificing some immediacy in the drama.

Conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, in his Australian debut, works hard to keep the orchestra from overloading the cast – but this comes at the cost of some lushness in Puccini’s orchestral writing.

Opera Australia has a hit on its hands. No matter if you’re falling in love with Puccini’s gem for the first time, or if it’s an old favourite, this bouncy new Bohème will enchant newcomers and devotees alike.

La Bohème is showing in Melbourne until November 18, and opens in Sydney on January 2, 2027.

Brian Long, Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management, The University of Melbourne

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

Last week, Google announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) policy for schools that use Google apps. It provides new settings for opting in or out of AI products on student accounts. For schools that reject AI in the classroom entirely, they can also turn off search.

Speaking to The New York Times, Google’s vice president for education, Chris Phillips, noted that “search and AI are deeply integrated”. This led to headlines claiming there’s no longer a way to use Google search without AI.

Since AI has become ubiquitous, it’s also facing increasing pushback. Some people may reject it due to personal, ethical, or environmental reasons.

But we all need to look things up on the internet. So is it actually possible to search the web “without AI”? To answer that question, we need to unpack a few things first.

How does a web search engine work?

Google search is a tool known as a web search engine. For you to type in a query and receive results milliseconds later, a bunch of things need to happen under the hood. All of them involve algorithms – simply put, a set of instructions for a computer.

There are six main components of a web search engine:

• crawling: harvesting documents published on the web
• indexing: breaking down documents into efficient data structures
• spam detection: filtering out content that doesn’t offer genuine value to users
• ranking: ordering search results by how relevant they might be to the query
• user interactions: assisting users when they formulate their information needs (for instance, auto-completing your query) or consume the search output (such as serving you snippets or AI summaries)
• evaluation: measuring if search quality improves after making a change in one of the above components.

These features are not static – developers, engineers and informational retrieval researchers are constantly tinkering and improving them.

How does web search use AI?

To answer this question, we first need to define what kind of AI we’re talking about.

All of the components listed above are likely to involve some sort of machine learning and neural networks – that is, AI systems trained to analyse lots of data, learn patterns and make predictions. So, there’s actually no way to use a search engine “without AI”.

But when people talk about AI these days, they tend to mean generative AI. These are AI systems trained on enormous amounts of data and capable of generating new content from prompts.

A version of this, called retrieval-augmented generation, is what allows you to have a conversation with a search engine. It combines a large language model for the generative part, and the web content retrieved by the search engine.

This is the technology behind Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews. They provide handy summaries and a new way to interact with content on the web, but they’re not without issues.

The large language model is built on an astonishing amount of training data, but it’s not updated as frequently as the web search index. Links in AI summaries are associated with the answer after generating it, and this component can also make mistakes.

In addition, searchers who see AI Overviews are accessing fewer sources overall. Overreliance on AI is also a well-known phenomenon in which users may trust an answer without verifying whether it’s correct.

So can I search the web without AI summaries?

Commercial web search engines like Google are increasingly showing AI summaries to users’ queries. At the time of writing this, there’s no official switch that lets Google users disable AI Overviews and other generative AI features.

But there’s one little hack that works: if you append “&udm=14” to the search request link, the Google search results default to the “Web” tab that doesn’t show AI Overviews and other snippets.

For this to work, you’d have to manually add that parameter in the address bar. That’s not always practical, so people have built browser plugins and ways to automate this step.

In Mozilla Firefox and Chromium browsers such as Brave, Chrome and Opera for desktop devices, you can set up a custom search engine to add this parameter every time you hit search on Google.

But Google search isn’t the only search engine available. There are many others out there, such as DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, or Ecosia. These provide a “non-AI mode” that deactivates AI summaries by default, and in some cases even provides the option to filter out AI-generated images.

Where do those search engine results come from?

Maintaining a web index is not easy. The web is constantly changing, and keeping the big volume of searchable information fresh requires enormous computational resources.

There are only a few organisations able to maintain this at a large scale. Google’s and Microsoft Bing’s indexes are the most popular worldwide. But there are some alternatives that are gaining attention.

Brave Search operates from an independent search engine. DuckDuckGo combines multiple sources, including content harvested with its own crawler, and search results sourced from Bing.

Initiatives such as the OpenWebSearch.eu project aim to develop an independent open European infrastructure for web search. It also makes a web index publicly available so others can build their own web search engine.

So, is there a search without AI?

The short answer is “no”. All search engines use AI in one form or another.

What about generative AI specifically?

It is technically possible to disable AI-generated answers from the search results page. Some search engine providers have decided to provide that option to users, while others – like Google – have made it a default.

Damiano Spina, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University

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

When sandpaper comes to mind, it usually relates to a weekend trip to a suburban hardware store. Yet, the Australian men’s cricket team has somehow turned this humble home maintenance staple into a symbol of scandal.

In a 2018 Test series against South Africa, captain Steve Smith and fellow batters David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were exposed for conspiring to tamper with the ball (using sandpaper to create an aerodynamic imbalance) during the third match in Cape Town.

This so-called “Sandpapergate” led to a media storm and widespread condemnation, including by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The three players were suspended and fined.

The scandal was widely revisited in the sport media when the team returned to Cape Town in October during the Test series in South Africa.

Now, the scandal is back in the spotlight after retired batter Usman Khawaja, who was on the 2018 tour, began promoting his soon-to-be published autobiography, Sabr.

What did Khawaja reveal?

The most telling revelation from Khawaja was that Sandpapergate was not a rogue enterprise involving just three players – he said in a media interview: “it was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.”

The official Cricket Australia (CA) line that it was a one-off infraction by a fraction of the team, is therefore cast into serious doubt.

But the governing body recently insisted: “all relevant information presented to CA to date has been properly considered and we remain comfortable with the findings of our integrity process.”

Khawaja claims he unsuccessfully urged the whole dressing room at the time to take collective responsibility, but it was just “those three guys [who] got crucified”.

He also stated sandpaper had been used on the ball by Australia in the previous Test match in Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha.

The changing narrative

Sandpapergate never entirely passed into history, with continuing scepticism that the hasty investigation and determination by CA was designed to cauterise the wound rather than explain how the disease had spread.

The four leading Australian bowlers on that tour released a statement in 2021 responding to a media interview with Bancroft implying others were in the know.

Current captain Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon declared: “we did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field to alter the condition of the ball”, pleading for “an end to the rumour-mongering and innuendo. It has gone on too long and it is time to move on”.

Khawaja’s incendiary comments and dedicated Sandpapergate chapter in his book contradicts that narrative. It vividly reveals the scandal has not gone away, and his insider account cannot be dismissed as mere uninformed speculation.

What is ball tampering?

Roughening one side of the ball to gain “reverse swing” is against the laws and spirit of cricket.

But it is widely believed ball tampering is as old as cricket itself, and that an “arms race” earlier this century involved all Test match nations. Most international teams, including South Africa, England and India have found themselves in the ball tampering dock.

Still, some wicked pleasure was taken in the humiliation of an Australian men’s team described in two commissioned, independent post-Sandpapergate reports as having an “arrogant” and “controlling” culture.

Why this is hugely harmful to cricket

Those who care little for sport will wonder what all the fuss is about, as there are many more important outrages in the world than some elite sportsmen bending the rules. But it must be appreciated that sport is suffused with Olympian myths of honourable competition and respect for opponents and the game itself.

Test cricket, in particular, remains as something of a bulwark against the large-scale commercialisation of sport, including its own “fast food” forms like Twenty20.

It provides nostalgic glimpses of a gentlemanly antiquated world represented by its apologists as enlightened and benign.

When twinned with nationalism and masculinity, cricket is lavishly celebrated by the likes of long-serving Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who in 1997 declared:

All my life I really have regarded being captain of the Australian cricket team as the absolute pinnacle of sporting achievement and really, the pinnacle almost of human achievement in Australia.

That brand of cricketing romanticism is always ripe for a fall from grace.

What happens now?

So, what will result from this latest episode of the Sandpapergate melodrama?

Cricket Australia will be pressured to reopen the case. Captain Cummins, his fellow bowlers, and the rest of the 2018 tour party are now under renewed suspicion.

The “Sandpapergate three” may feel empowered, even compelled to tell their stories.

Khawaja can expect strained relations with some former colleagues as he promotes a book suggesting they committed the original sporting sin: failing to back up your mates.

David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

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

Stroke is often seen as a condition that only affects older people. Yet the incidence of stroke in older people has actually fallen in recent decades. At the same time, rates of stroke in under-55s has been on the rise.

In England, stroke incidence among 35- to 54-year-olds rose by about 2% a year between 2001 and 2010, even as overall rates dropped. In Oxfordshire alone, stroke rates in under-55s were about 90% higher in 2010–2018 than in 1981–1986 – while rates in older people fell.

The US tells a similar story, with stroke rates in 20- to 54-year-olds rising from 34 to 62 cases per 100,000 people a year between 1993-1994 and 2020.

Globally, nearly 2.8 million people under 55 had a stroke in 2021, almost 90% of them in low- and middle-income countries. Between 2020 and 2030, it’s projected that rates of ischaemic stroke (the most common type, which is caused by a blood clot) among 20- to 39-year-olds will rise by about 12%.

What is fuelling the rise?

The rising rates of stroke in young people largely appears to be driven by things we can change.

A large international study identified ten modifiable risk factors which accounted for around 92% of strokes that occurred in people under 55. These factors included high blood pressure, physical inactivity, high cholesterol, poor diet, obesity, smoking, heart problems, diabetes, alcohol consumption and psychosocial factors (such as stress or poor mental health).

High blood pressure alone accounted for almost half of the strokes that occurred in people aged 55 and under. Lack of regular exercise accounted for more than a third.

A UK study, which looked at 1,765 people aged 18-49 who were hospitalised for a stroke, found 42% of patients had high blood pressure, 24% high cholesterol, 23% smoked and 14% had diabetes. About 7% reported recreational drug use.

Rates of obesity and diabetes have been rising in younger people for three decades. These conditions, along with high blood pressure, are often undiagnosed or undertreated in younger adults.

But left untreated, these health problems can quietly raise stroke risk. For instance, research found that under-55s with diabetes were about 3.5 times as likely to suffer a stroke or mini-stroke than those who didn’t have the condition. Those with high blood pressure were about 2.5 times as likely.

But these factors don’t explain everything. Around half of strokes in young people that were caused by a blood clot had no clear cause. Research also shows a growing number of the strokes experienced by young people have no known risk factor.

Researchers are now investigating alternative risk factors, including air pollution, autoimmune conditions and illicit drug use. Stress and overworking are also increasingly being linked to higher risk of stroke in young people.

Lack of awareness is part of the problem, too, as my systematic review showed. People who don’t see themselves as at risk are less likely to visit their doctor or change their lifestyle. Alongside risk factors that already go undetected, this may partly explain why stroke rates in younger adults haven’t fallen as they have in older people.

The signs young people miss

Stroke in younger adults can be easier to miss as well.

A large US analysis found that people aged 18-44 were the age group most likely to be sent home from emergency departments with a missed stroke, often after complaining of dizziness or headache. A Stroke Association survey also found a quarter of stroke survivors aged 60 and under said they were initially misdiagnosed.

The signs of a stroke in younger people can sometimes be different than they are in older people. While most people will look out for symptoms such as face drooping on one side, arms that can’t both be lifted and speech that’s slurred or confused, young people don’t always fit this pattern.

Strokes at the back of the brain, which affects balance and vision rather than the face and arms, are more common in young adults. In these cases, symptoms can manifest as problems with balance or eyesight, a headache, neck pain or vertigo.

Not only can these symptoms be missed by healthcare workers, young people themselves may explain them away as a migraine, tiredness, a hangover or an inner ear problem. Symptoms can also stop after a short time. Even if they do, you should still get medical help immediately.

Speed matters. Clot-busting treatment generally has to be given within 4.5 hours of symptoms starting. The sooner it’s given, the better the outcome and recovery.

What you can do

The good news is that most strokes in younger people are linked to things we can change.

The first thing you can do to lower your risk is to know your blood pressure. High blood pressure usually has no symptoms, so it’s important to have yours checked. You should also get checked for diabetes and high cholesterol, especially if you’re overweight or have a family history of heart disease or stroke.

Lifestyle matters, too. Don’t smoke, avoid recreational drugs and keep alcohol to no more than 14 units a week. It’s also recommended you eat less salt (no more than 6g a day) and more fibre, as these will help keep your blood pressure and cholesterol down.

Exercise is also key. Aim to get at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, such as fast walking or cycling.

You should also take stress and long working hours seriously. Both have been linked to a higher risk of stroke in their own right, even after accounting for other risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking.

Stroke is no longer just an older person’s problem. Knowing the signs, and acting fast, could save your life or someone else’s.

David Olawade, Lecturer, Department of Allied and Public Health, School of Health, Sport and Bioscience, University of East London

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