The first Australian to qualify as an astronaut under Australia’s space program, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, is the 2026 Australian of the Year.

Bennell-Pegg, 41, who has yet to go to space, graduated from Basic Astronaut Training in 2024 as part of a class of six trained by the European Astronaut Centre in Germany. She was the first international candidate to do so. She had been picked for the program from more than 22,500 applicants.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese presented the Australian of the Year awards on Sunday night.

The Senior Australian of the Year is Professor Henry Brodaty, a pioneer in dementia treatment.

Young Australian of the Year is Nedd Brockmann, an ultra-marathon runner who has raised large sums to help the homeless.

The winner of the Local Hero section is Indigenous construction leader Frank Mitchell.

Bennell-Pegg, from South Australia, is an active promoter of Australia’s space program, and had the ambition of becoming an astronaut since she was a child. She regularly makes presentations to school children to inspire the next generation.
National Australia Day Council CEO Mark Fraser said she was “forging new frontiers for Australian space engineering, research and exploration.

"She leads by example, openly sharing her story to inspire the next generation and reminding us all of the power of a dream, and where determination can lead,” he said.

Bennell-Pegg was appointed director of space technology at the Australian Space Agency in 2022.

She has said “I have always dreamed of being an astronaut. When I was young, it was for the adventure, but after more than a decade working in space it’s now because I know the role it plays in tackling real-world problems and developing new knowledge that can benefit our society, environment, and science.”

The work of Brodaty, from New South Wales, is hailed as transformative in the diagnosis, care and prevention of dementia.

Momentum for his work came from the experience of his father, who was diagnosed in 1972 with Alzheimer’s disease, aged just 52. Back then, dementia was much more poorly understood than now.

In 2012, Brodaty co-founded the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing and led internationally-significant research that improved understanding of the risk and prevention of dementia.

His Maintain Your Brain large trial showed cost-effective and targeted intervention could delay the onset of dementia and even prevent it.

“Henry, 78, is a leader who has reshaped dementia care from every angle as he navigates toward a future where dementia is better treated and prevented,” the council said.

Brockmann, now 27 and from NSW, became concerned about homelessness when, as a young electrician from Forbes, on his regular trips to TAFE saw how many people were sleeping rough on Sydney’s Eddy Avenue. He wanted to highlight the problem.

In 2022, he ran from Cottesloe beach in Perth to Bondi beach in Sydney, a journey of 3,952 kilometres which he completed in 46 days, setting a record. He raised more than $2.6 million from 37,000 contributions.

He then established Nedd’s Uncomfortable Challenge in 2024 and with his team has raised more than $8 million to help the homeless.

Mitchell, 43, from Western Australia, a Whadjuk-Yued Noongar man, is co-director of Wilco Electrical and co-founder/director of Kardan, Baldja and Bilyaa in the trades and construction industry.

He was influenced by early experiences of suicide and the loss of best friends.

“As a young single father, being offered an electrical apprenticeship felt like a profound opportunity. When he became a business owner in 2015, he pledged to create the same opportunities for Mob.”

“Starting with just eight staff and $1.5 million turnover, Frank and his partners have created over 70 Aboriginal upskilling positions in the electrical and construction industry, including 30 electrical apprenticeships and awarding over $11 million to Aboriginal subcontractors.

"Today, all four companies collectively employ over 200 full-time staff.

"His story embodies a vision that integrates cultural values with business leadership, strengthening his ties to community while reshaping the construction industry and creating lasting impact and social justice,” the council said in its statement.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

On January 10 1926, Yanagi Sōetsu and the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō sat talking excitedly late into the night at a temple on Mt Kōya, in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture.

They were debating how best to honour the beauty of simple, everyday Japanese crafts. Out of that conversation came a new word, mingei, and a plan to found The Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo. Later, Yanagi would describe what emerged that night as “a new standard of beauty”.

A century on, Yanagi’s ideas feel strikingly relevant. His message was simple: beautiful things need not be rare or expensive – they can be well-designed objects that we use every day.

In an age of fast fashion, disposable products and growing concerns about waste, his approach offers an important reminder to think about the objects we choose to have around us.

How mingei was born

Yanagi (1889–1961) was an art critic and collector who believed beauty was not solely the preserve of famous artists or rare treasures. He and his friends were drawn, instead, to well-made and functional objects: bowls, baskets, fabrics and tools created for daily use, rather than to display.

To Yanagi, these simple things shaped the rhythm of daily life – yet had gone unnoticed in a world rushing toward modern mass production.

The attraction came from looking closely. Yanagi described it as “seeing with one’s own eyes before dissecting with the intellect”. He admired the work of anonymous craftspeople who repeated familiar forms, refining them through long periods of practice.

These makers did not seek fame; their goal was to create objects that balanced beauty and function so completely that they were inseparable.

Japan in the 1920s was changing fast. Mass-produced goods were replacing handmade ones, and many local craft traditions were in decline. Yanagi worried this shift would erase skills and weaken the bond between beauty and everyday life. Mingei aimed to bring this connection back into view.

Yanagi, Hamada and Kawai agreed they needed a new word for the kind of objects they wanted to celebrate. From minshuteki kōgei, meaning “craft of the people”, they coined the shorter term mingei. It describes objects made for use rather than prestige, and by hand rather than by machine. Yanagi believed these objects formed the true heart of Japanese craft.

A year after their Mount Kōya conversation, the group held their first folk craft exhibition in Ginza. None of the works carried signatures. The exhibition aimed to encourage a new way of looking at humble objects, suggesting that everyday things held artistic value when viewed with care.

How mingei shaped Japanese design

Yanagi’s ideas went on to shape Japanese craft and design throughout the 20th century, influencing not only craftspeople but also designers.

His son, Yanagi Sōri, adopted mingei principles in his famous 1954 Butterfly Stool, made from two curved pieces of plywood that meet like wings. Simple, balanced and light, the stool is now an icon of modern design, showing how mingei could take form in new materials and contexts.

The movement also shaped the work of Hamada and Kawai, and many other makers including Tomimoto Kenkichi, Serizawa Keisuke, Munakata Shikō and the Englishman Bernard Leach. They showed how traditional craft practised with care and humility could remain vital in a rapidly changing world.

Another branch of Yanagi’s legacy emerged with the rise of seikatsu kōgei, or “lifestyle crafts”, in the 1990s. These makers turned to simple, functional objects to reconsider how we live. After Japan’s economic bubble burst in the 1980s, many began to question the habit of buying and discarding.

Why Yanagi’s ideas matter today

The influence of mingei continues in contemporary design. Fukasawa Naoto – one of Japan’s most influential designers and the current director of The Japan Folk Crafts Museum – aims to create objects which work so naturally that they seem to disappear into daily life.

He describes this as “without thought” design: things that feel right in the hand, fit their purpose and do not demand attention. His long collaboration with MUJI, known for its pared-back products, shows how closely his work follows the mingei spirit.

This way of thinking sits in sharp contrast to how many goods are made today. A culture of fast buying and quick disposal has left people feeling disconnected from the act of making, from materials and from the things they own.

Mingei offers an alternative way of thinking. It invites us to look closely at the objects we use each day – to notice their shape, feel and purpose. It suggests beauty should be part of everyday life, not an escape from it.

Yanagi believed if we change how we see and choose ordinary things, we might also change how we live. A century later, his call to value simple and well-made objects offers a steady guide through our profit-driven, disposable world.

Penny Bailey, Lecturer in Japanese Studies, The University of Queensland

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

Ancient Roman political leaders could be violent and cruel. Some had odd tastes and were out of touch. Others had wildly eccentric habits that might seem amusing today.

But eccentric behaviour combined with almost unlimited power, made some Roman leaders dangerous and unpredictable.

Hortensius

One oddball was the orator and politician Hortensius (114–50 BCE) of the late Roman republic.

He loved the plane trees on his estate so much he watered them with wine. Receiving news that one of them was dying, Hortensius hastily adjourned a legal case to be by its side.

Crassus

Marcus Licinius Crassus, a contemporary of Hortensius, was a powerful Roman general and politician who kept pet eels in an expensive fishpond.

He adorned his favourite eel with jewellery. When the eel died, Crassus held a funeral and mourned it for three days.

Ancient accounts of eccentric behaviour weren’t just for entertainment. Crassus’ intense devotion to his favourite eel satirised his aristocratic vanity.

Crassus later died in Mesopotamia (southern Turkey) in a disastrous battle against the Parthians (rulers of ancient Iran) in 53 BCE. The Parthian generals lured Crassus into a hot and waterless plain where they destroyed his army. Due to Crassus’ impetuosity, 20,000 men died along with him and his son.

The orator and statesman, Cicero, lampooned the piscanarii (fishpond lovers), of whom Hortensius was also one, for their obscure indulgences. They should have focused more on affairs of state, he believed.

Caligula

The eccentricities of Roman leaders continued under the emperors, after the era of the republic ended. Now, however, almost unlimited power meant eccentricities could easily devolve into violence and cruelty.

The notorious emperor Caligula (ruled 37–41 CE) toyed with appointing his horse as consul. The horse, named Incitatus, was lavished with splendidly appointed stables and its own slaves.

Caligula was known for other unique tastes. He often dressed in the garb of four different divinities, including Venus. Sometimes he wore a beard of gold and held a thunderbolt in his hand to emulate Jupiter.

Increasingly paranoid, perhaps after a breakdown, Caligula held treason trials. Senators and at least one potential imperial rival were executed on trumped up charges. Some claimed he even sexually abused his sisters.

But reports of Caligula’s personal excesses were probably exaggerated. His strong disagreements with the senate got him offside with the class that often wrote the histories.

Caligula’s reputation for eccentric leadership and paranoia saw his assassination in 41 CE.

Nero

Nero is perhaps the most (in)famous Roman politician of all. The nephew of Caligula, Nero’s reign (54–68 CE) was known for brutality, excess and indulgence.

The legend of Nero singing and playing the fiddle (probably a stringed instrument called a cithara) while Rome burned in 64 CE remains strong.

Many doubt this actually happened but what we do know is that after the fire Nero built a 300-room palace – the Golden House (Domus Aurea) – on land cleared of buildings by the fire.

Nero’s penchant for singing and playing the cithara on stage was mocked during and after his reign. He even established a festival called the Neronia and competed on stage as a singer.

In 59 CE, Nero hatched a plan to murder his mother, Agrippina. At first he sent her to sea on a pleasure cruise in a collapsible boat. She survived and swam ashore but was killed soon after by one of Nero’s agents.

For these reasons, and many more, Nero was declared a public enemy in 68 CE and took his own life. He discovered there was a limit to what political elites and the public would accept.

Commodus

Over a century later, emperor Commodus expressed some wildly eccentric behaviour. Known to many of us from the Gladiator movies, Commodus actually did appear in the Colosseum. One (likely exaggerated) ancient source claimed he appeared in the arena 735 times.

Commodus liked to dress up as Hercules, his favourite mythological hero. A famous sculpture in Rome depicts him as such.

Commodus’ reputation for cruelty and erratic behaviour was widespread. The murder of his sister Lucilla in 182 CE on suspicion of involvement in a coup struck fear into many. Commodus was eventually strangled in the bath after all his allies abandoned him.

Elagabalus

Perhaps the most eccentric of all Roman emperors came to power a few decades later. Elagabalus, only 14 on becoming emperor in 218 CE, scandalised Rome with his religious and personal life.

Elagabalus broke time-honoured Roman customs. He married one of the Vestal Virgins, traditionally sacred in Roman religious traditions.

He built a temple in Rome to the god Elagabal whom he was named after. A black stone (probably a meteorite) was central to the god’s worship. Elagabalus brought the stone to Rome from Emesa (modern Homs), his family’s home town in Syria.

The historian Cassius Dio claimed Elagabalus’ fifth spouse was a man named Hierocles – an ex-slave and charioteer – and that Elagabalus liked to be called “wife, mistress, and queen.”

The emperor reportedly played some of the traditional roles of women in this marriage, including spinning wool. It is possible that Elagabalus was transgender but the bias of ancient sources makes this difficult to judge.

Ultimate power

Depictions of the eccentricities of Roman leaders were (and remain) interesting. But such leaders were often also dangerous, unpredictable and out of touch.

With the power of life and death often in their hands, a reign of terror was possible. In some cases, it was a frightening reality.

Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University

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

If you were to visit a bookshop in the ancient world, what would it be like?

You don’t just have to imagine it. The ancient Roman writer Aulus Gellius, who lived in the 2nd century CE, gives us a number of descriptions of his adventures at bookstores. In one passage, he describes an encounter at one in Rome, which he was visiting with a poet friend:

I chanced to be sitting in a bookshop in the Sigillaria with the poet Julius Paulus […] There was on sale there the Annals of Quintus Fabius Pictor in a copy of good and undoubted age, which the dealer maintained was without errors.

Gellius then tells us that, while they are sitting there, another customer enters the shop. The new customer has a disagreement with the dealer. He complains that he “found in the book one error”. The dealer says that’s impossible. Then the customer brings out evidence to prove the dealer wrong.

In different passage, Aulus tells us about some bookstalls he came across when he arrived by ship at the port of Brundisium on the Adriatic coast. The books, he records, were “in Greek, filled with marvellous tales, things unheard of, incredible […] The writers were ancient and of no mean authority”.

The volumes themselves, however, were filthy from neglect, in bad condition and unsightly. Nevertheless, I drew near and asked their price; then, attracted by their extraordinary and unexpected cheapness, I bought a large number of them for a small sum.

Aulus goes on to describe in excited language all the weird facts he derived from these books – like how people in Africa can “work spells by voice and tongue” and through this witchcraft cause people, animals, trees and crops to die.

The origins of writing

These sorts of stories bring us close to how ordinary people in ancient Greek and Roman times obtained books and engaged with books. But if we read stories like this it might lead us to want to know more. How did books and writing come into existence? And how were books written and produced?

Many people in the ancient world thought that writing had been invented by gods or heroes. For example, the ancient Egyptians believed the god Thoth was the first to create signs to represent spoken sounds.

The origins of writing are certainly mysterious. It’s unclear when writing began and who invented it.

The earliest written text is a wooden tablet radiocarbon dated to before 5000 BCE. This is known as the Dispilio tablet, because it was discovered at a neolithic lakeside settlement at Dispilio in Greece. It is carved with strange linear markings. These have not been deciphered, but most scholars think they are a form of writing.

Evidence for writing appears early in different parts of the world. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, the oldest texts, such as the Kish limestone tablet at Uruk or the Narmer Palette at Hierakonpolis, date to before 3000 BCE. In the Indus Valley, the Harappan script, which remains undeciphered, appeared around the same time. In China, the earliest characters, the Dawenkou graphs, also date to around 3000 BCE.

One of the most interesting aspects of early writing is that there is such a variety of different scripts. For example, the earliest known texts in the Greek language are written in the Linear B script, which was used from around 1500-1200 BCE, and wasn’t deciphered until 1952. Linear B is not an alphabet, but a syllabary of more than 80 different signs. A syllabary is a kind of writing system where each sign represents a syllable.

By around the 8th century BCE, most Greeks had starting using an alphabet instead of a syllabary. Unlike a syllabary, in an alphabet each letter represents a vowel or consonant. The Greeks adapted their alphabet from the Phoenician alphabet, probably via interactions with Phoenician traders. The Phoenician alphabet had only 22 letters, making it much easier to learn than the 80-plus syllabary signs of Linear B.

Our English alphabet comes from the Romans, who in the 8th and 7th century BCE also got their alphabet from the Phoenicians, via the Greeks.

The origins of books

People in ancient times used many different things as writing materials.

The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) tells us that the earliest people in the world

used to write on palm-leaves and then on the bark of certain trees, and afterwards folding sheets of lead began to be employed for official muniments, and then also sheets of linen or tablets of wax for private documents.

However, the most popular writing material in the ancient Mediterranean was papyrus, from which we get our word “paper”.

To make papyrus, you get the pith of the papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus), cut it into slender strips, then press it together. Once dried, it forms a thin sheet that you can write on.

Papyrus sheets were usually glued together into rolls. These rolls could be very long. Some of the most lavish Egyptian papyrus rolls were more than 10 metres long, such as the recently discovered Waziri Papyrus containing parts of the Book of the Dead.

When papyri were rolled up they were stored in shelves or boxes. Labels were attached to the handles of the papyri so you could identify their contents. In his play Linus, Greek playwright Alexis (c. 375-275 BC) has one character tell another how to look through a bunch of rolls to find what he wants:

go over and pick any papyrus roll you like out of there and then read it… examining them quietly, and at your leisure, on the basis of the labels. Orpheus is in there, Hesiod, tragedies, Choerilus, Homer, Epicharmus, prose treatises of every type…

Papyrus seems flimsy to the eye, but it is a durable writing material, stronger than modern paper. Many papyri have survived for thousands of years stored in jars or sarcophagi or buried under the sand.

The oldest surviving papyrus text is the so-called Diary of Merer (which you can listen to here), the logbook of a man named Merer, who was an inspector during the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza under Pharaoh Khufu. This papyrus, which dates to around 2600 BCE, gives a day-by-day account of how Merer and his team of about 200 men spent time hauling and transporting stone and doing other work.

Papyrus was susceptible to being eaten by insects or mice. But there were ways to prevent this. Pliny the Elder, for example, advises that sheets of papyrus soaked in citrus-oil won’t be eaten by moths.

How to write a book in antiquity

If you were living in ancient Greece or Rome and wanted to write a book, how would you do it?

First, you would buy sheets or rolls of papyrus to write on. If you couldn’t afford it, you’d have to write on the back or in the margins of papyri you already owned.

If you didn’t own any papyri already, then you would have to write on other materials. According to the Greek historian Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE), the philosopher Cleanthes (c. 331-231 BCE) “wrote down lectures on oyster-shells and the blade-bones of oxen through lack of money to buy papyrus”.

Second, you would get your ink. In the ancient world, there were many varieties of ink. Normal black ink was made from the soot of burnt resin or pitch mixed with vegetable gum. When buying ink, it would come in powder form, and you would need to mix it with water before using it.

Third, you would get your pen. It would be made from reed, hence it was called the “calamus” by Greeks and Romans (“calamus” is the Greek word for reed). To sharpen your pen you would need a knife. If you made a mistake, you would erase it with a wet sponge.

Now you have all the materials you need. However, you don’t need to use the pen and papyrus yourself. If you want, you can get a scribe to write down your words for you.

The Greek orator Dio Chrysostom (c.40-110 CE) even advised writers not to use the pen themselves:

Writing I do not advise you to engage in with your own hand, or only very rarely, but rather to dictate to a secretary.

If you needed to consult other books while writing, you could get friends to send them to you or ask book dealers to make you a copy. In a papyrus from the 2nd century CE found at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, and written in Greek, the writer asks his friend to find the books that he needs and make copies of them. Otherwise, you would go to a library, though the best libraries at Alexandria, Rome and Athens might be far away.

When you finished drafting your book you would need to revise and correct it. You could then publish it by having many copies made by scribes and delivering these copies to friends and booksellers.

When all this was done, your book would be out in public. Perhaps someone like Aulus Gellius would stumble across it in a busy Roman bookshop. Maybe he’d even buy it.

Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

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

OpenAI has announced plans to introduce advertising in ChatGPT in the United States. Ads will appear on the free version and the low-cost Go tier, but not for Pro, Business, or Enterprise subscribers.

The company says ads will be clearly separated from chatbot responses and will not influence outputs. It has also pledged not to sell user conversations, to let users turn off personalised ads, and to avoid ads for users under 18 or around sensitive topics such as health and politics.

Still, the move has raised concerns among some users. The key question is whether OpenAI’s voluntary safeguards will hold once advertising becomes central to its business.

Why ads in AI were always likely

We’ve seen this before. Fifteen years ago, social media platforms struggled to turn vast audiences into profit.

The breakthrough came with targeted advertising: tailoring ads to what users search for, click on, and pay attention to. This model became the dominant revenue source for Google and Facebook, reshaping their services so they maximised user engagement.

Large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) is extremely expensive. Training and running advanced models requires vast data centres, specialised chips, and constant engineering. Despite rapid user growth, many AI firms still operate at a loss. OpenAI alone expects to burn US$115 billion over the next five years.

Only a few companies can absorb these costs. For most AI providers, a scalable revenue model is urgent and targeted advertising is the obvious answer. It remains the most reliable way to profit from large audiences.

What history teaches us about OpenAI’s promises

OpenAI says it will keep ads separate from answers and protect user privacy. These assurances may sound comforting, but, for now, they rest on vague and easily reinterpreted commitments.

The company proposes not to show ads “near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health or politics”, yet offers little clarity about what counts as “sensitive,” how broadly “health” will be defined, or who decides where the boundaries lie.

Most real-world conversations with AI will sit outside these narrow categories. So far OpenAI has not provided any details on which advertising categories will be included or excluded. However, if no restrictions were placed on the content of the ads, it’s easy to picture that a user asking “how to wind down after a stressful day” might be shown alcohol delivery ads. A query about “fun weekend ideas” could surface gambling promotions.

These products are linked to recognised health and social harms. Placed beside personalised guidance at the moment of decision-making, such ads can steer behaviour in subtle but powerful ways, even when no explicit health issue is discussed.

Similar promises about guardrails marked the early years of social media. History shows how self-regulation weakens under commercial pressure, ultimately benefiting companies while leaving users exposed to harm.

Advertising incentives have a long record of undermining the public interest. The Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed how personal data collected for ads could be repurposed for political influence. The “Facebook files” revealed that Meta knew its platforms were causing serious harms, including to teenage mental health, but resisted changes that threatened advertising revenue.

More recent investigations show Meta continues to generate revenue from scam and fraudulent ads even after being warned about their harms.

Why chatbots raise the stakes

Chatbots are not merely another social media feed. People use them in intimate, personal ways for advice, emotional support and private reflection. These interactions feel discreet and non-judgmental, and often prompt disclosures people would not make publicly.

That trust amplifies persuasion in ways social media does not. People seek help and make decisions when they consult chatbots. Even with formal separation from responses, ads appear in a private, conversational setting rather than a public feed.

Messages placed beside personalised guidance – about products, lifestyle choices, finances or politics – are likely to be more influential than the same ads seen while browsing.

As OpenAI positions ChatGPT as a “super assistant” for everything from finances to health, the line between advice and persuasion blurs.

For scammers and autocrats, the appeal of a more powerful propaganda tool is clear. For AI providers, the financial incentives to accommodate them will be hard to resist.

The root problem is a structural conflict of interest. Advertising models reward platforms for maximising engagement, yet the content that best sustains attention is often misleading, emotionally charged or harmful to health.

This is why voluntary restraint by online platforms has repeatedly failed.

Is there a better way forward?

One option is to treat AI as digital public infrastructure: these are essential systems designed to serve the public rather than maximise advertising revenue.

This need not exclude private firms. It requires at least one high-quality public option, democratically overseen – akin to public broadcasters alongside commercial media.

Elements of this model already exist. Switzerland developed the publicly funded AI system Apertus through its universities and national supercomputing centre. It is open source, compliant with European AI law, and free from advertising.

Australia could go further. Alongside building our own AI tools, regulators could impose clear rules on commercial providers: mandating transparency, banning health-harming or political advertising, and enforcing penalties – including shutdowns – for serious breaches.

Advertising did not corrupt social media overnight. It slowly changed incentives until public harm became the collateral damage of private profit. Bringing it into conversational AI risks repeating the mistake, this time in systems people trust far more deeply.

The key question is not technical but political: should AI serve the public, or advertisers and investors?

Raffaele F Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney and Kathryn Backholer, Co-Director, Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition, Deakin University

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

Valentino, who died on Monday at 93, leaves a lasting legacy full of celebrities, glamour and, in his words, knowing what women want: “to be beautiful”.

The Italian fashion powerhouse has secured his dream of making a lasting impact, outliving Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent.

Valentino was known for his unique blend between the bold and colourful Italian fashion and the elegant French haute couture – the highest level of craftsmanship in fashion, with exceptional detail and strict professional dressmaking standards.

The blending of these styles to create the signature Valentino silhouette made his style distinctive. Valentino’s style was reserved, and over his career he built upon the haute couture skills he had developed, maintaining his signature style while he led his fashion house for five decades.

But he was certainly not without his own controversial views on beauty for women.

Becoming the designer

Born in Voghera, Italy, in 1932, Valentino Clemente Ludovico began his career early, knowing from a young age he would pursue fashion.

He drew from a young age and studied fashion drawing at Santa Marta Institute of Fashion Drawing in Milan before honing his technical design skills at École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the fashion trade association, in Paris.

He started his fashion career at two prominent Parisian haute couture houses, first at Jean Dessès before moving to Guy Laroche.

He opened his own fashion house in Italy in 1959.

His early work had a heavy French influence with simple, clean designs and complex silhouettes and construction. His early work had blocked colour and more of a minimalist approach, before his Italian culture really came through later in his collections.

He achieved early success through his connections to the Italian film industry, including dressing Elizabeth Taylor fresh off her appearance in Cleopatra (1963).

Valentino joined the world stage on his first showing at the Pritti Palace in Florence in 1962.

His most notable collection during that era was in 1968 with The White Collection, a series of A-line dresses and classic suit jackets. The collection was striking: all in white, while Italy was all about colour.

He quickly grew in international popularity. He was beloved by European celebrities, and an elite group of women who were willing to spend the money – the dresses ran into the thousands of dollars.

In 1963, he travelled to the United States to attract Hollywood stars.

The Valentino woman

Valentino’s wish was to make women beautiful. He certainly attracted the A-list celebrities to do so. The Valentino woman was one who would hold themselves with confidence and a lady-like elegance.

Valentino wanted to see women attract attention with his classic silhouettes and balanced proportions. Valentino dressed women such as Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Hathaway.

His aristocratic taste inherited ideas of beauty and old European style, rather than innovating with new trends. His signature style was formal designs that had the ability to quietly intimidate – including the insatiable Valentino red.

Red was a signature colour of his collections. The colour provided confidence and romance, while not distracting away from the beauty of the woman.

French influence

Being French-trained, Valentino was well acquainted with the rules of couture.

With this expertise, he was one of the first Italian designers to be successful in France as an outsider with the launch of his first Paris collection in 1975. This Paris collection showcased more relaxed silhouettes with many layers, playing towards the casual nature of fashion.

While his design base was in Rome, many of his collections were shown in Paris over the next four decades. His Italian culture mixed with the technicality of Parisian haute couture made Valentino the designer he was.

Throughout his career, his designs often maintained a classic silhouette bust, matched with a bold Italian colour or texture.

Unlike some designers today, Valentino’s collections didn’t change too dramatically each season. Instead, they continued to maintain the craftsmanship and high couture standards.

“Quintessentially beautiful” is often the description of Valentino’s work – however this devotion to high beauty standards has seen criticism of the industry. In 2007, Valentino defended the trend of very skinny women on runways, saying when “girls are skinny, the dresses are more attractive”.

Critics said his designs reinforce exclusion, gatekeeping fashion from those who don’t conform to traditional beauty standards.

The Valentino runways only recently have started to feature more average sized bodies and expand their definition of beauty.

The $300 million sale of Valentino

The Valentino fashion brand sold for US$300 million in 1998 to Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali, with Valentino still designing until his retirement in 2007.

Valentino sold to increase the size of his brand: he knew without the support of a larger corporation surviving alone would be impossible. Since Valentino’s retirement, the fashion house has continued under other creative directors.

Valentino will leave a lasting legacy as the Italian designer who managed to break through the noise of the French haute couture elite and make a name for himself.

The iconic Valentino red will forever be remembered for its glamour, and will live on with his legacy. A true Roman visionary with unmatched craftsmanship.

Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology

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

We all scream for ice-cream, especially as temperatures soar in the summer. Ancient civilisations had the same desire for a cold, sweet treat to cope with heat waves.

There are plenty of contenders claiming credit for the first frozen desserts, from Italy and France in the 17th century to China in the first century.

But before you can make ice-cream, you need a reliable source of ice. The technology to make and store ice was originally developed in Persia (modern-day Iran) in 550 BCE.

Ancient ice makers

These ancient Persians built large stone beehive shaped structures called yakhchal (“ice pit”). They were constructed in the desert, with deep, insulated subterranean storage, making it possible to store ice all year.

High domes pulled hot air up and out, and wind catchers funnelled cooler air into the base. The yakhchal was not just an ancient ice house, it was also an ice maker.

Canals filled shallow ponds, shaded from the sun, with fresh water during the winter. Overnight temperatures dropped, and in the dry desert air the water would cool through evaporation.

Some yakhchals have survived centuries of desert erosion, and are found across Iran in areas where it is cold enough to produce ice in the winter, or close to mountains where ice could be harvested.

A study of one 400-year-old yakhchal, still standing in Meybod, estimated its annual production at 50 cubic metres – about 3 million ice cubes.

Early frozen desserts

Stored ice was used to make frozen desserts such as fruit sorbets, sharbats, and faloudeh (frozen rosewater and vermicelli noodles) sweetened with honey syrup.

After the Arab conquest of Persia circa 650 CE, the Persian method for ice production and storage spread across the Middle East.

The new technology was used to freeze milk and sugar mixed with salep flour (powdered orchid root) and mastic (dried sap from an evergreen bush) to make stretchy forms of ice-cream in Syria, like booza and bastani, in Persia.

A frozen dessert, sushan, (literally “crispy mountain”) was also developed in China in this period, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Goat’s milk curd was melted, strained and poured into metal moulds shaped like mountains.

The final texture was described by poet Wang Lingran as being somewhere between a liquid and a solid, melting in his mouth.

Discovering the science of freezing

Freezing techniques changed when a popular book on “natural magic” – meaning everything from natural science to astrology and alchemy – was first published by Giambattista della Porta in Naples in 1558.

Magia Naturalis included instructions on how saltpetre (potassium nitrate) could be added to ice to rapidly chill wine for summer feasts:

cast snow into a wooden vessel, and strew into it Salt-peter, powdred, or the cleansing of Salt-peter, called vulgarly Salazzo. Turn the Vial in the snow, and it will congeal by degrees.

This method meant it was much easier to freeze liquids, because potassium nitrate dissolved in water draws heat out of the surrounding environment.

Experiments in the 17th century revealed a similar reaction occurs with mixture of ordinary salt, water and ice. Smaller quantities of stored ice could now be used to freeze and chill mixtures to create frozen desserts on demand.

This technology was combined with supplies of cheaper sugar sourced from European plantations in the Caribbean. Sugar is an important element of frozen desserts because it keeps mixtures from freezing into impenetrable ice blocks.

France v Italy in the claim for first ice-cream

Two claims for the “first” ice-cream recipes emerge at almost the same time in France and Italy in the 1690s.

Earlier attempts produced granular, slushy confections. Recipes that produced results we would recognise today were introduced by men who managed households for noble patrons.

Alberto Latini, working for Cardinal Barberini (nephew of Pope Urban VIII), had access to expensive and novel ingredients, like chocolate and tomatoes. His recipe for a new “milk sorbet” aligned with the cutting edge cooking methods in the 1694 edition of his book, Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward).

This recipe used milk, sugar, water and candied fruits, and is considered a precursor to Italian gelato.

The other contender for first ice-cream is Nicolas Audiger, who had worked for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister to Louis XIV, who helped prepare feasts at Versailles.

He published a handbook on running noble households, La maison réglée, in 1692 with numerous recipes for fruit sorbets, and one for ice-cream sweetened with sugar and flavoured with orange blossom water.

While both claims have merit, Audiger’s recipe included detailed descriptions of the techniques for stirring and scraping to ensuring a better texture and even distribution of sugar throughout the mixture. He wrote his volume after spending 18 months in Italy, so he probably learned Italian techniques and refined them, leading to the creamy delights we now enjoy.

The ice-cream paradox?

In the northeastern United States, the original Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream factory in Vermont used to run a promotion where prices changed as the weather got colder. As temperatures dropped below freezing, ice-cream cones got cheaper.

This might lead you to think that people in the hottest climates eat more ice-cream, but the highest per capita consumption in the world is in Aotearoa New Zealand, followed by the US and Australia. The next four countries are famous for being cold: Finland, Sweden, Canada and Denmark.

Maybe the answer to this apparent paradox is that when it is hot you need ice-cream to cool you down, and when you are cold and miserable you need it to cheer you up.

Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

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

In Hamnet, Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) asks William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) to introduce himself by telling her a story. It is her way of seeing who this man really is.

Here, storytelling becomes a mirror held up to the heart. Are we, as human beings, moved by the same things? Are our hearts shaped from the same material?

Chloé Zhao knows how to make people feel. Hamnet sees a new phrase in her artistry, turning a Western literary classic into a quiet meditation on grief, love and the enduring power of art.

From Beijing to the world

Born in Beijing in 1982, as a child Chloé Zhao (赵婷, Zhào Tíng) loved manga, drawn to Japanese Shinto ideas, where every object carries a spirit.

She wrote fan fiction, went to movies and fell in love with Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), a life-changing film she still rewatches.

At 14, she was sent to a boarding school in England, speaking almost no English. The isolation forced her to look beyond language. “A smile is a smile, a touch is a touch,” she later told the BBC. That attentiveness to gesture and silence became a signature of her filmmaking.

Allured by Hollywood, Zhao moved to Los Angeles for high school, then studied political science at college. She eventually found her way to cinema at New York University, where Spike Lee encouraged her to trust her own voice.

Open landscapes to inner lives

In 2015, Zhao started directing small-scale, slow-burn features set in the American heartland.

Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017) capture the vast, lunar beauty of South Dakota’s badlands and the dignity of the people who live there. She often used non-professional actors, achieving a documentary-like naturalism.

Nomadland (2020), her third film, brought this style to a global audience. The story is about a stoic, hard-working widow in her early 60s who loses everything in the Great Recession and finds a new life on the road.

Receiving the Oscar for best director, she quoted a classic Chinese text teaching Confucian morality, history and basic knowledge: “people at birth are inherently good (人之初，性本善)”.

By focusing on nomads, cowboys and Indigenous communities, her first three films make space for those who are rarely seen.

“I’ve spent my whole life telling stories about people who feel separated, who feel they don’t belong,” she said, linking that to her own experience as “an outsider”.

With Hamnet, that sensibility turns inward. The immense skies and wide-open landscapes are replaced by forests, quiet rooms and the raw inner world of parental grief.

Through East and West

That Shakespeare, the wellspring of Britain’s national mythology, is being reinvented by an Asian director is striking.

Zhao initially turned down adapting and directing Hamnet, as she neither grow up with Western reverence for Shakespeare nor felt a cultural connection to his grief-filled family life. But after reading Maggie O’Farrell’s book, she felt something intimate and universal that drew her in.

Her approach to demystifying that feeling reflects a sensibility shaped equally by Eastern and Western philosophy.

From the Chinese practice of qi (气, life force), Zhao shows life flowing through wind, breath and Agnes’s bond with the forest, where she gives birth to her first child.

From the Hindu Tantra, she blurs the line between the actors and their surroundings, showing the world as an extension of the self.

From the ideas of Carl Jung, she explores opposing forces within the self, guiding the actors to reveal both masculine and feminine qualities in Agnes and William.

All three of these philosophies talk of accessing deeper wisdom within the self and the symbolic nature of creation.

Zhao also assigns chakra colours to Hamnet’s protagonists. In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, chakras are energy centres in the body, each linked to a colour and connected to physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

In Zhao’s telling, Shakespeare often appears in blue, echoing the colour of throat and third-eye chakras, which symbolises openness, clarity and intuition. Agnes appears in red, reflecting the root chakra: the beating heart of the earth. This visual language also draws from Taoist philosophy, which understands humans as existing within nature.

Like Ang Lee, Zhao brings an East Asian sensitivity to interiority and emotional restraint. Both filmmakers have bridged art-house cinema and mainstream Hollywood, achieving rare critical recognition while remaining deeply focused on human experience.

The deeply human

Hamnet imagines the world surrounding Shakespeare and his wild-hearted wife, Agnes, and the tragic death of their 11-year-old son from the plague.

In the final sequence of the film, we watch the first performance of Hamlet. Their son returns on stage as the prince, speaking lines Shakespeare has written out of loss.

As Hamlet is poisoned, the audience inside the theatre – nobles and labourers alike – break into tears. They do not know the child behind the character, but they feel loss all the same.

Among them stands Agnes. Through her eyes, we see how art turns personal sorrow into something others can share. She alone recognises that the story being told is a memory. The woman history remembers merely as “Shakespeare’s wife” becomes the very soul of Hamnet.

Hamnet, in Zhao’s retelling, is not an escape from pain but a way of living with it. Buckley’s stirring performance feels not only Oscar-worthy, but emblematic of Zhao’s humanist cinema.

Her cinema reminds us of what cannot be automated: the deeply human capacity to feel, to grieve and to love.

Yanyan Hong, Adjunct Fellow in Communication, Media and Film Studies, Adelaide University

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

It’s mango season. They’re cheap, delicious, in the shops or you can buy trays at roadside stalls.

But what can you actually do with a trayful?

Sure, smoothies are great, but what if you want to try something else?

I’ve collected mango recipes from super simple to those for more confident cooks. These versatile recipes range from nutritious main meals to delicious sweet treats.

Try out these top five sweet and savoury mango recipes this summer.

Well done for choosing mangoes

Mangoes are not only a delicious summer treat, they are packed full of essential vitamins and minerals.

Eating just one mango provides roughly:

• 12–16% of an adult’s daily potassium requirement

• 45–58% of their vitamin A

• 24% of their folate

• 158% of their vitamin C.

Choosing seasonal produce, such as mangoes in summer, not only helps to increase diversity in your eating habits, but can also help save you money at the checkout.

5 recipes to try

1. Fresh prawn mango avocado summer salad is an alternative to the classic “prawn on the barbie”. This high-protein, high-fibre salad works perfectly as a side dish or a light meal. However, the sodium content is high, so I’d suggest reducing the salt by half, especially for those watching their blood pressure. With lots of options for variations, this is an easy recipe to make your own way, including serving it with couscous or rice.

2. Thai mango chicken curry is another great way to get mangoes (pureed and diced) into your meal. This gluten-free, dairy-free recipe is high in iron, potassium and vitamin C. However, it’s also high in sodium and saturated fat. I suggest filling half of your plate with this delicious curry and the other half with your favourite veggies to balance out the meal.

3. Toasted muesli, mango and yoghurt breakfast parfait works for breakfast, dessert or a snack at any time of day. This nutrient-dense recipe provides fibre, protein, calcium and lots of other vitamins and minerals. You can layer the ingredients in a glass and serve the parfait at a party, or make it just for one. This recipe is easy to tailor to whatever ingredients you have at hand. For example, you could swap the toasted muesli for granola, nuts or seeds, or go for untoasted muesli or rolled oats for a slightly leaner option.

4. Mango melba is a twist on a classic Aussie summer dessert that you can cook in a pan or on the barbecue. This recipe perfectly showcases summer fruits as the centrepiece of the dish. Including fruit, such as mangoes, in desserts is a great way to add flavour and nutritional value to boost your daily vitamin and mineral intake. The mangoes and raspberries in this recipe are packed full of vitamin C and other antioxidants.

5. Mango ice cream is a perfect sweet treat for summer. To get the best flavour, make this with Kensington Pride, Honey Gold or Pearl varieties, rather than Calypso. This recipe is high in saturated fat and sugar, so it should be enjoyed in small quantities as a special treat. Of course, you are still getting the vitamin A, vitamin C and potassium from the mango.

Can you have too much of a good thing?

Adults are recommended to eat two serves of fruit a day. For children and adolescents the recommended intake ranges from half to two serves of fruit a day, depending on the age.

Half a mango is equivalent to one serve of fruit, so eating one whole mango would fulfil an adult’s daily fruit needs.

For people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the fructose (a type of sugar) in mangoes may contribute to symptoms such as bloating, stomach pains, constipation or diarrhoea. If you have IBS, you should seek advice from a dietitian on how to manage your diet.

In rare cases, contact with mangoes can cause a skin rash known as dermatitis. If you are affected by mango dermatitis it is best to avoid handling mangoes. However, you may still be able to eat the flesh if someone else prepares it.

Otherwise, enjoy this seasonal fruit over summer and try out one of these delicious recipes.

Margaret Murray, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Swinburne University of Technology

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

Humans have long believed horses can “smell fear”. Nervous riders are often told to “relax, or the horse will feel it”. Until recently, though, there was little scientific evidence to show whether this was anything more than folklore.

A new study has found that this belief is no myth. Its results show that horses can detect chemical signals linked to human emotions, and that these signals can influence their behaviour and physiology.

Previous research has pointed to a form of emotional contagion between humans and horses. This is a phenomenon in which the emotional state of one person or animal influences the emotional state of another. But this is the first study to find evidence horses can detect human fear using their sense of smell.

Horses rely heavily on their sense of smell to understand the world around them. Their olfactory system is far more sensitive than ours, allowing them to detect subtle chemical differences in the environment.

There is scientific evidence that horses can select the most nutritious food by smelling it. A 2016 found that horses select foods based on nutrient content (such as protein), not just flavour, and that the way their body responds after eating influences future choices they make about food.

So how can horses smell our fear? Well, human emotions come with physiological changes. When people experience fear or stress, their body, face and voice changes. Their body also releases hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, heart rate increases, and their sweat composition changes. These changes alter the chemical profile of a person’s body odour, which can carry information about their emotional state.

The scent of fear

The new study found evidence horses not only detect but also respond to human emotional odours. Horses in the study were exposed to human body odours collected via cotton pads wiped under the armpits of people.

These research participants watched either an excerpt from the 2012 horror movie Sinister (to induce fear) or clips, like the Singing in the Rain’s dance scene (to induce joy). The researchers also collected control odours with no emotional association.

The horses showed distinct behavioural and physiological changes when exposed to fear-related odours through the cotton pads, which were secured by a nylon mask on the horses’ noses. They were more alert, more reactive to sudden events and less inclined to approach humans.

And they showed increases in maximum heart rate, which indicates stress, during the exposure to the fear smell from sweat. Crucially, these responses happened without any visual or vocal cues from humans displaying fear.

This finding shows that smell alone can influence a horse’s emotional state. Horses were not reacting to tense body language, facial expressions or nervous movements – they were responding to chemical signals carried in human scent.

Previous research has shown horses seem to be sensitive to humans’ emotional states. In a May 2025 study, horses were shown videos of humans expressing fear, joy or neutral emotions in their facial expressions and voice.

Researchers measured the horses’ heart rate, behaviour and facial expressions while they watched the videos. The horses showed increased heart rates when exposed to fearful or joyful human expressions compared with neutral ones, which indicates heightened emotional arousal.

Fearful expressions depicted in the videos were associated with alert postures in the horses, like holding their head high and pointing their ears back and stress-related facial movements, like wide eyes. Joyful expressions depicted in the videos were linked to patterns associated with positive emotional states, like relaxed nostrils and ears.

Together, these findings are consistent with emotional contagion. Emotional contagion has been documented between humans and dogs, for instance, and these results suggest horses may also be affected by human emotions.

What this does – and doesn’t – mean

These studies do not suggest that horses understand fear in the same way humans do, or that they know why a person is afraid. Instead, the evidence shows horses are highly sensitive to the chemical, visual and vocal cues associated with emotional states.

Smell is probably just one part of a broader physiological system. Horses are adept at reading human posture, muscle tension, breathing patterns, heart rate and movement – all of which change when a person is anxious. These cues shape how a horse perceives and responds to a human.

Understanding how horses perceive human emotions has important implications for welfare, training and safety. Riders, handlers and therapists working with horses may unintentionally influence an animal’s emotional state through their own stress or calmness.

More broadly, the research challenges outdated assumptions about animal perception. Horses are not passive responders to human commands, as equine professionals and researchers thought until recently. They are sensitive social partners, finely tuned to the emotional signals we give off.

Horses evolved as social prey animals living in large herds on open grasslands, where survival depended on detecting danger quickly. Although humans began domesticating horses around 5,500 years ago, this is evolutionarily recent, meaning modern horses still retain highly sensitive sensory systems adapted for vigilance and social awareness.

So, when people say horses can smell fear, science now suggests they may be closer to the truth than we originally thought. And next time you are close to a horse, try to relax, and make the interaction more enjoyable for both of you.

Roberta Blake, Professor of Animal Performance Science, Anglia Ruskin University

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

In the modern workplace, flexible arrangements can be as important as salary for some. For many employees, flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have luxury. It has become a fundamental requirement for staying in the workforce, especially after COVID.

Reports – from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, professional services firm Aon and UNSW – indicate while a substantial number of workers prioritise flexibility, many of their requests are still being declined.

This leaves many employees with a stark choice: either conform to standard, rigid office hours or look for better conditions elsewhere.

The stakes of these negotiations are remarkably high. For the employee, a successful deal can mean the difference between professional growth and total burnout. For the employer, it is a major lever for retaining top talent.

Yet, many employees approach these conversations as simple “asks”, unaware that the success of their requests often hinge on invisible factors that have little to do with their actual job performance.

In our new research, published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, we wanted to provide an evidence base for how to negotiate for flexible work, so both employers and employees can benefit.

Request for approval

To understand why some flexible work requests are approved and others are rejected, we ran two studies with more than 300 participants.

Instead of asking people what they think influences flexible work approvals, we asked them to make real decisions on a series of requests presented to them.

To strengthen our findings, all participants had management experience.

In both studies, participants read short requests from hypothetical employees asking to work flexibly.

Each request was designed to look realistic, but was given a focus on one of four different things:

• caring responsibilities
• improved productivity
• greater wellbeing via work-life integration
• task completion instead of hours worked.

In the second study, we varied both the gender of the requester and how much flexibility they asked for: either two or four days working from home.

What we found

Across both studies, a clear pattern emerged. Requests related to caring responsibilities and improved productivity had the greatest success. Requests which focused on improved personal wellbeing or greater autonomy over their time were less successful.

However, contrary to what we expected, we found men and women were equally likely to be approved for flexible work.

This suggests that, at least at the approval stage, “gendered flexibility stigma”, or bias against workers (usually women) who access flexible work arrangements, may be less pronounced than earlier research has suggested.

Overall, we found managers have a clear preference for fewer days of flexible working. Requests for two days of flexible work were much more likely to be approved than requests for four days.

Some good news for parents

Remote work, normalised in the pandemic, allowed fathers to become more engaged in caring.

Our results indicate fathers won’t be penalised for asking for flexible work to provide care to their children. However, there’s an important caveat. While their requests were just as likely as women’s to be approved, our research cannot speak to the impact on men’s (or any workers’) careers after they take up flexible work.

The stigma against those who cannot be seen in the office or workplace – a perceived lack of commitment, judgements about decreased productivity, reduced likelihood of getting promoted – may still be present.

Other ways to make a strong case

Flexible work debates often focus on and even favour parents. That can leave non-parents with fewer options. Our research provides good news for those without caring responsibilities who still want to embrace the benefits of flexible work.

We found the business case was equally as effective as the child-care argument. Non-carers should strongly consider the mutual benefits to their employers and to themselves and be sure to make a strong case for how the company will reap the rewards.

For example, workers could highlight the possibility for increased productivity or fewer sick days.

Resources and tools are available to help employees construct their business cases, such as the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s page on legal requirements in Australia and evidence for a business case.

What the law says

Anyone can ask for flexible working arrangements; your boss might say no, but it’s worth a shot. At a national level, in Australia where this study was conducted, employers cannot unreasonably refuse flexible working arrangements for people in certain circumstances, including those who have worked for the same employer for more than 12 months and who are:

• pregnant
• a person with disability
• have various caring responsibilities
• 55 or older
• experiencing family and domestic violence
• providing care for someone who is experiencing family and domestic violence.

Employers are legally required to respond to such flexible work requests in writing within 21 days, and make their approval decisions based on “reasonable business grounds”.

Room to make things fairer

Together, our findings show that flexible work is still not doled out fairly. Because these negotiations often occur on a one-on-one basis, they are highly susceptible to individual bias, favouritism, and assumptions about who deserves to work flexibly.

One factor outside an employee’s control is their manager’s attitude. Our research found managers who held positive views about flexible work were more likely to approve requests of any kind. Those with negative attitudes were more likely to say no, regardless of how the request was framed.

Ultimately, success depends on how the request is framed, how much flexibility is asked for, and who is making the decision.

Melissa A. Wheeler, Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University; Anne Bardoel, Adjunct Professor of Human Resource Management, Swinburne University of Technology; Asanka Gunasekara, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management/People Analytics, RMIT University, and Lindsie Arthur, Postdoctoral Researcher, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne

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

Valentino, who died on Monday at 93, leaves a lasting legacy full of celebrities, glamour and, in his words, knowing what women want: “to be beautiful”.

The Italian fashion powerhouse has secured his dream of making a lasting impact, outliving Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent.

Valentino was known for his unique blend between the bold and colourful Italian fashion and the elegant French haute couture – the highest level of craftsmanship in fashion, with exceptional detail and strict professional dressmaking standards.

The blending of these styles to create the signature Valentino silhouette made his style distinctive. Valentino’s style was reserved, and over his career he built upon the haute couture skills he had developed, maintaining his signature style while he led his fashion house for five decades.

But he was certainly not without his own controversial views on beauty for women.

Becoming the designer

Born in Voghera, Italy, in 1932, Valentino Clemente Ludovico began his career early, knowing from a young age he would pursue fashion.

He drew from a young age and studied fashion drawing at Santa Marta Institute of Fashion Drawing in Milan before honing his technical design skills at École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the fashion trade association, in Paris.

He started his fashion career at two prominent Parisian haute couture houses, first at Jean Dessès before moving to Guy Laroche.

He opened his own fashion house in Italy in 1959.

His early work had a heavy French influence with simple, clean designs and complex silhouettes and construction. His early work had blocked colour and more of a minimalist approach, before his Italian culture really came through later in his collections.

He achieved early success through his connections to the Italian film industry, including dressing Elizabeth Taylor fresh off her appearance in Cleopatra (1963).

Valentino joined the world stage on his first showing at the Pritti Palace in Florence in 1962.

His most notable collection during that era was in 1968 with The White Collection, a series of A-line dresses and classic suit jackets. The collection was striking: all in white, while Italy was all about colour.

He quickly grew in international popularity. He was beloved by European celebrities, and an elite group of women who were willing to spend the money – the dresses ran into the thousands of dollars.

In 1963, he travelled to the United States to attract Hollywood stars.

The Valentino woman

Valentino’s wish was to make women beautiful. He certainly attracted the A-list celebrities to do so. The Valentino woman was one who would hold themselves with confidence and a lady-like elegance.

Valentino wanted to see women attract attention with his classic silhouettes and balanced proportions. Valentino dressed women such as Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Hathaway.

His aristocratic taste inherited ideas of beauty and old European style, rather than innovating with new trends. His signature style was formal designs that had the ability to quietly intimidate – including the insatiable Valentino red.

Red was a signature colour of his collections. The colour provided confidence and romance, while not distracting away from the beauty of the woman.

French influence

Being French-trained, Valentino was well acquainted with the rules of couture.

With this expertise, he was one of the first Italian designers to be successful in France as an outsider with the launch of his first Paris collection in 1975. This Paris collection showcased more relaxed silhouettes with many layers, playing towards the casual nature of fashion.

While his design base was in Rome, many of his collections were shown in Paris over the next four decades. His Italian culture mixed with the technicality of Parisian haute couture made Valentino the designer he was.

Throughout his career, his designs often maintained a classic silhouette bust, matched with a bold Italian colour or texture.

Unlike some designers today, Valentino’s collections didn’t change too dramatically each season. Instead, they continued to maintain the craftsmanship and high couture standards.

“Quintessentially beautiful” is often the description of Valentino’s work – however this devotion to high beauty standards has seen criticism of the industry. In 2007, Valentino defended the trend of very skinny women on runways, saying when “girls are skinny, the dresses are more attractive”.

Critics said his designs reinforce exclusion, gatekeeping fashion from those who don’t conform to traditional beauty standards.

The Valentino runways only recently have started to feature more average sized bodies and expand their definition of beauty.

The $300 million sale of Valentino

The Valentino fashion brand sold for US$300 million in 1998 to Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali, with Valentino still designing until his retirement in 2007.

Valentino sold to increase the size of his brand: he knew without the support of a larger corporation surviving alone would be impossible. Since Valentino’s retirement, the fashion house has continued under other creative directors.

Valentino will leave a lasting legacy as the Italian designer who managed to break through the noise of the French haute couture elite and make a name for himself.

The iconic Valentino red will forever be remembered for its glamour, and will live on with his legacy. A true Roman visionary with unmatched craftsmanship.

Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology

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

Southeast Australia is enduring a record-breaking heatwave, with temperatures rising above 40ºC in many areas.

For vulnerable people, particularly older Australians, this heat is not only uncomfortable but dangerous. High temperatures can worsen existing health problems and in some cases even prove fatal.

So as the mercury climbs, it’s important to understand why some people are more at risk.

Here’s how to tell if someone is not coping with the heat – and how to stay safe.

Why is it harder for older people to keep cool?

Our bodies have a number of processes to regulate temperature.

First, the heart directs blood toward the skin, delivering heat from the body’s core to the surface.

Second, when we sweat and it evaporates off our skin, this allows excess body heat to escape into the air.

But as we age, these processes become less efficient. Older people’s blood flow and sweating are reduced compared to younger people. This means their bodies store more heat for longer.

Why this is dangerous

Often, the real danger isn’t simply overheating – it’s the strain heat puts on the cardiovascular system (the heart, blood and blood vessels) trying to serve two masters.

During hot weather, the heart works significantly harder. It diverts blood to the skin to shed excess heat, while still trying to satisfy the oxygen demands of other vital organs.

This helps explain why, during heatwaves, hospitals are not overrun with older people suffering from heatstroke. Instead, the overwhelming surge in emergency department admissions is mostly due to underlying health conditions that get much worse, such as diabetes and heart, lung or kidney diseases.

Older adults are more likely to have at least one chronic condition, and in heatwaves that last for days without a break these conditions can rapidly worsen.

The more chronic conditions someone has, the more likely they are to be hospitalised during hot weather.

Common medications can also interfere with the body’s cooling mechanisms.

Diuretics increase the risk of dehydration, while beta-blockers and some antidepressants can impair sweating, as can anticholinergic drugs (found in some medications for bladder problems, allergies and Parkinson’s disease).

Social factors can also make things worse

While the number of air conditioners has soared in Australia in the past two decades, rising energy costs mean many older adults may be reluctant to run their units.

Others may live alone or be less mobile. Conditions which affect thinking and memory, such as dementia, can also make it difficult for someone to assess their own risk and remember to drink fluids.

What to look for

Keep an eye out for signs you or your loved ones are not coping with the heat.

For older adults, these can be subtle. Early signs of heat stress include:

• being unusually tired or lethargic
• losing balance
• feeling confused
• feeling short of breath
• urinating less or dark urine (this can indicate dehydration and kidney strain).

In those with chronic conditions, watch for any worsening of usual symptoms.

Heat exhaustion is more serious, and requires fluids and rest in a cool environment. Signs of heat exhaustion include very heavy sweating, nausea, headache and muscle cramps.

Heat stroke has similar symptoms but is a medical emergency – it requires immediate medical attention.

Heat stroke is also characterised by hot and dry skin as the body’s heat regulation system fails.

This happens when the body’s core temperature exceeds 40ºC, and can lead to loss of consciousness and organ failure.

How to stay safe

Beyond the usual advice to stay hydrated, seek shade and reduce physical activity, there are some simple strategies that can also help the impact of extreme heat for older adults.

Air conditioning remains the most effective defence against the heat. If you don’t have air conditioning at home, consider going somewhere such as a shopping centre or library during the hottest part of the day.

If you do have an air conditioner, setting it to 26–27ºC and using a pedestal fan can result in a 76% reduction in electricity consumption and improves comfort.

For those without air conditioning, fans alone can help. Wetting the skin or clothing in combination with a fan boosts evaporative cooling without requiring your body to produce more sweat.

However, for older adults (who sweat less) the effectiveness of fans begins to diminish between 33 and 37ºC. Above 37ºC, fans may actually make the body hotter faster than sweating can compensate for.

So for older adults it’s important to keep the skin moist or find other ways to cool down if using a fan when temperature is above 37ºC.

Even something as simple as immersing your hands and forearms in cool tap water – for ten minutes every half hour – has been shown to meaningfully lower body temperatures and stress on the heart.

The bottom line

Heat doesn’t discriminate, but its consequences do. In a heatwave, look out for older family members and neighbours.

If you or someone you know has symptoms of heat stroke such as slurred speech, confusion, fainting, or hot, dry skin, call 000 immediately.

Aaron Bach, Researcher and Lecturer in Exercise Science, Griffith University and Fergus O'Connor, Research Fellow in Exercise Science, Griffith University

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has appointed the Secretary of the Defence Department, Greg Moriarty, to be Australia’s new ambassador to Washington, succeeding Kevin Rudd, who leaves the position in March.

The highly-respected senior bureaucrat is a safe choice, and his defence background gives him special qualifications for the post when the further development of AUKUS will be a major preoccupation in coming years.

Moriarty will not be surrounded by any of the controversy that came with the appointment and tenure of Rudd, who had vehemently attacked US President Donald Trump in the years before becoming ambassador. In an embarrassing moment when Albanese had his first formal meeting with Trump last year, the president said to Rudd, “I don’t like you either, and I probably never will”.

Both sides of politics have tended to choose political appointments for the Washington post. Although there was some speculation Albanese might name a Labor figure as next ambassador, it always seemed likely he would opt for a more cautious choice this time around.

Albanese told the ABC while the appointment was his to make, he had discussed widely as to who was the appropriate person. The Trump administration had also been consulted.

Moriarty, 61, has headed the defence department since 2017, appointed under the Coalition government.

He served in the headquarters of the United States Central Command in the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

In a career extending across defence and diplomacy, he was ambassador to Indonesia in 2010-14 and ambassador to Iran in 2005-08.

Earlier he served in Papua New Guinea and as Senior Negotiator of the Peace Monitoring Group on Bougainville.

In 2015 he was appointed Australia’s first Counter Terrorismn Coordinator in the Prime Minister’s department .

He is well regarded by both sides of politics, and was international and national security advisor and then chief of staff to Malcolm Turnbull when Turnbull was prime minister.

The departure of Moriarty also gives the government more opportunity to shake up the top layers of the defence establishment, which it has begun to do.

The opposition welcomed the appointment.

In a statement opposition leader Sussan Ley and foreign affair spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said: “The Liberal Party has always stood for a strong alliance with the United States and Mr Moriarty has a proven track record of advancing Australia’s national interest under both Labor and Liberal governments.

"In this period of global uncertainty a strong alliance with the United States of America is more important than ever. Mr Moriarty is a safe pair of hands to advance Australia’s interest, build this relationship and ensure AUKUS reaches its full potential.”

Turnbull and former ambassador to Washington Arthur Sinodinos also praised the choice of Moriarty.

Canadian PM to address parliament in March

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney will visit Australia and address federal parliament in March, Albanese said on Sunday.

Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos Carney made an splash with a speech in which he declared the international rules-based order was undergoing a “rupture, not a transition”. He said middle powers “must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”.

Asked about Carney’s comments Albanese told the ABC: “I agree with him and it’s consistent with what I said at the United Nations and with our engagement as well with middle powers”.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

The distinctive smell of smoke in summer is often all you need to know there is a bushfire burning.

Even if the fire is many kilometres away, the drop in air quality can be harmful for your health. Some of us – including older people and those with pre-existing health conditions – are particularly vulnerable.

There is no safe level of exposure. So here’s what to know and how to minimise your risk.

How can smoke affect your health?

Bushfire smoke contains a mix of particles (including fine particulate matter, or PM2.5) and vapours and gases, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Breathing in this toxic mixture can affect how much oxygen our lungs can absorb and how well the cells in our bodies work.

Being exposed to smoke can affect your health immediately and in the long term. The risks increase with the amount you’re exposed to – usually related to how close the fire is – and for how long.

In the short term, you might have itchy eyes, a runny nose or sore throat, and wheezing or coughing.

In healthy people, these symptoms often clear up away from smoke. But in vulnerable people, breathing in smoke can be serious and even fatal.

At-risk groups include children, the elderly, people who are pregnant, and those with diabetes or pre-existing heart and lung conditions, such as asthma.

If you experience difficulty breathing, or chest pain or tightness, you should call 000.

The long-term risks are also serious

But these often get less attention.

Sustained exposure to bushfire smoke has been linked to lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It can also increase your risk of cardiovascular diseases, which affect the heart and blood vessels, and other diseases such as dementia and lung and brain cancers.

Short-term exposure can also exacerbate existing lung and heart conditions and lead to hospitalisations and, in some cases, deaths.

Smoke exposure during pregnancy is also risky, as it can reduce birthweight and increase the risk the child will later develop diseases such as asthma. The increased risk of pregnancy loss is very small, but devastating.

How can I tell if air quality is poor?

Often, we can see or smell smoke in the air. But air that seems clear can still pose health risks.

Luckily in Australia we have several reliable sources for information about air quality. These are managed by state, territory and local governments, for example Air Quality New South Wales.

You can find information about where you live by checking the the federal government’s air quality website.

How can I stay safe indoors?

You should avoid breathing in smoke as much as possible. Of course, this can be tricky – but there are some ways to minimise exposure.

If you can, stay indoors with the doors and windows closed.

Set air conditioners to recirculate mode – this stops any any outdoor air from entering the building.

If you have an indoor air purifier, turn it on. Most air purifiers use a physical filter to remove particles from the air. So the more efficient its filtration is, the better it will protect you.

High efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters are among the best available. To qualify as a HEPA filter, it must remove at least 99.97% of very small airborne particles.

Make sure to check the manufacturer’s information for efficiency and how it was tested. Look for filters that are certified as “true” HEPA, or H13 or H14 HEPA filters.

And beware of marketing jargon such as “HEPA-style” filter or “99% HEPA” – this designation doesn’t exist and these filters will likely be less effective.

Remember, even HEPA filters are only effective if they are replaced regularly – generally at least every 12 months – and fitted according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

Most air conditioners will contain a more basic filter, and sometimes these can be upgraded to a HEPA filter. It’s best to talk to your service agent as not all filters are compatible with all air conditioning units.

Indoor plants can also improve air quality. Research has shown they can help remove the toxic gases found in bushfire smoke. But they can’t remove particles from the air, so it’s best to use them along with an air purifier.

If you have to go outside

Wear a mask, especially if you have to be outside for long periods.

Masks that have good filtration (N95, P3 or higher) are the best at preventing you breathing in particles. But these type of masks only work if they form a tight seal on your face.

And while N95 or P3 masks reduce risks by removing smoke particles from the air, they do not stop toxic gases from entering your lungs.

People working outdoors close to the bushfire may need a respirator or a gas mask. These filter toxic gases and/or provide clean air.

The best way to know what mask is right for you is to get professionally fitted. Your employer may pay for a “fit test”.

Wearing a surgical mask or pulling a t-shirt or scarf over your face offers very little protection. It’s better than nothing, but should only be done as a last resort.

If you are close to the fire, a mask won’t be enough. You need to take extra precautions such as those outlined by the rural fire service to protect you from smoke as well as heat and embers.

The takeaway

If you’re concerned about smoke, it’s important to talk to your health-care provider – especially if you’re pregnant or have a pre-existing health condition. In an emergency, call triple 000.

Brian Oliver, Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

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

If you’ve been pregnant in the past few months, you may have faced a dilemma. You wake up with a fever, a pounding headache or back pain – and then pause. Is it safe to take paracetamol?

That hesitation isn’t surprising. In September last year, the United States government sowed widespread doubt and anxiety by linking paracetamol use in pregnancy to autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity (ADHD).

But now a major new international study, published today in The Lancet, provides some much-needed clarity.

The research confirms that taking paracetamol – also known as acetaminophen, or by brand names such as Panadol and Tylenol – does not increase a baby’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability when used in pregnancy.

Paracetamol remains a safe and effective way to treat fever and pain at any stage of pregnancy.

What the new study looked at

The researchers carried out a large systematic review and meta-analysis, meaning they didn’t just study one group of people. Instead, they pulled together results from many previous studies.

In total, they reviewed 43 studies that focused on whether children exposed to paracetamol in the womb were more likely to later be diagnosed with autism, ADHD or intellectual disability.

Crucially, the authors prioritised sibling-comparison studies. Sibling studies compare siblings from the same family, where one used paracetamol during pregnancy and another didn’t.

This approach produces higher-quality results for comparison. It helps researchers isolate what they’re studying – in this case, paracetamol.

Siblings’ shared genetics, home environment and family background mean there won’t be differences in these factors, which could distort results (known as “confounding factors”).

The authors used extensive statistical methods to ensure their results were accurate.

So, what did they find?

Across these higher-quality studies, the researchers found no meaningful increase in the risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in children whose mothers used paracetamol during pregnancy.

This was true when the authors (a) looked only at sibling studies, (b) focused on studies with low risk of bias and (c) examined children followed for more than five years.

In other words, when the strongest methods were used, the earlier alarming links simply didn’t hold up. The study concludes that paracetamol, when used as directed, remains safe during pregnancy.

These results echo those of another landmark study in 2024, conducted in Sweden and including almost 2.5 million children (born between 1995 and 2019).

This Swedish study illuminated the need for good controls in scientific research.

It showed when studies didn’t use sibling comparison as a way to control confounding factors, there appeared to be a small increased risk of autism and ADHD associated with using paracetamol while pregnancy.

However, when the researchers used rigorous statistical methodology in sibling studies to account for the confounding factors between people – differences such as genetics or living conditions – these associations disappeared.

The Swedish study, just like the current Lancet study, also concluded there was absolutely no evidence of increased risk of autism, ADHD or neurodevelopmental disability with paracetamol use in pregnancy.

Why this is important

Paracetamol isn’t just another medication. It’s often the only recommended option for treating pain and fever in pregnancy.

The Therapeutics Goods Administration, responsible for regulating medication safety and quality in Australia, maintains that paracetamol remains a pregnancy “Category A” drug. This means it is safe for use in pregnancy when used according to directions.

Being able to rely on a safe drug to reduce fever is really important for pregnant people.

Leaving fever untreated during pregnancy can be harmful for both the fetus and the mother. Fever in pregnancy has been linked to miscarriage, pre-term birth and birth complications.

So avoiding paracetamol “just in case” in fact isn’t a cautious choice. The risks of not treating pain or fever may be greater than the risks of the medication itself.

For pregnant people weighing up whether to take a tablet for a feverish night or pregnancy aches, this study should help reassure them taking paracetamol is safe and evidence-based.

Paracetamol remains, as it has for decades, the first-line option.

If you have concerns, speak to your health-care provider.

Anya Arthurs, Research Fellow in Cell and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

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

While period pain and heavy menstrual bleeding are common, they’re often dealt with privately. Yet they take a profound toll on a person’s health – and finances.

Now, our new study has calculated how much these menstrual symptoms cost the broader Australian economy.

Our study was based on a survey of 1,796 Australian working women and is published today in The Australian Journal of Social Issues. We found period pain and heavy bleeding costs the Australian economy about A$14 billion every year in lost productivity.

Women aged 35–44 reported significantly higher lost productivity than their younger counterparts.

Our findings highlight the substantial economic rationale for government and workplace policies to help people manage menstrual symptoms.

Periods can be debilitating

In Australia, girls experience their first period (menarche) around 12 years of age.

Periods (menstruation) typically happen every 21–34 days. Most women (and those who menstruate) have regular periods until around 45–55 years of age. Then, menstrual cycles become less regular before stopping altogether at menopause.

Most women will experience around 400–600 periods over their lifetime, unless their menstrual cycles are suppressed by hormonal contraception.

For the majority of women, periods often have significant negative impacts on overall wellbeing.

Two common causes of problematic periods are dysmenorrhea (period pain) and heavy menstrual bleeding.

The most common type of period pain (primary dysmenorrhea) affects around 90% of young women under 25 in Australia.

This type of period pain is often worst during the first two days of bleeding. It is primarily caused by high levels of prostaglandin hormones, which are responsible for cramps. Many women also feel fatigue, dizziness, back pain and headaches.

Heavy menstrual bleeding is when the period is so heavy that excessive blood loss affects health and quality of life. This affects 20–25% of women of reproductive age in Australia.

People with heavy menstrual bleeding often also experience moderate to severe period pain.

Excessive iron loss due to heavy bleeding also contributes to fatigue.

The stigma and taboo associated with menstruation means many women feel they must work very hard to conceal period problems at work. This labour is usually invisible and exhausting. Some women quit work altogether.

What we did and what we found

Our research aimed to investigate:

• how common period pain and other menstrual symptoms are for Australian women in paid employment over 18 years and
• the impact of menstruation on work productivity (via presenteeism and absenteeism).

Presenteeism accounts for productivity losses at work while an employee is present but not working at full capacity. It’s like going to work with a migraine: you might be physically present but you aren’t doing your best work.

Absenteeism is being away from work on paid or unpaid sick leave.

We collected data via an online survey of 1,796 Australian working women.

Survey participants were over 18, currently living in Australia and had had at least one period in the last three months. They were in paid employment (including self-employment) and/or volunteering for at least three months.

Our study found that 97% of women who responded had period pain in the last three months, and 75% said they always have period pain when menstruating. Previous research in Australia has found that over 90% of young women report period pain and around 71% worldwide.

Because of this we used more conservative estimates of 90% of women experiencing period pain (high) and 70% experiencing period pain (low) to calculate our range of economic figures for the population.

We estimated lost productivity in Australia associated with menstrual symptoms at A$7,176 per person annually, with an estimated total annual economic burden of $14.005 billion.

Together, presenteeism and absenteeism accounted for 46% of total productivity loss.

And remember, our study only looked at paid employment among full‑time and part‑time workers. The implications for unpaid labour, particularly women’s unpaid care work and its profound economic and social importance, demands further study (which we are progressing).

We also note that the impact of menstruation on the Australian economy is more complex than is established through our current data set, which doesn’t account for things such as the economy-wide costs of medical care and treatment.

In other words, our estimate is conservative.

Why does this matter?

Given the substantive economic impacts demonstrated through our study, menstrual symptom management in the workplace is not a private concern to be managed by individual workers.

Menstrual symptoms affect the broader economy and society. Workplace policies and guidelines are needed to support employees experiencing period pain, fatigue and associated symptoms.

At the workplace level, employers have an opportunity to start a dialogue with staff about changes to workplace conditions that could enhance employee productivity, health and wellbeing.

This could, for instance, include things such as reproductive leave (on top of the usual sick leave provisions), remote and hybrid work arrangements and flexible time management policies (including rest periods).

Our study findings also highlight the significant economic rationale for government to address this workplace issue with laws and policies.

Enshrining minimum standards for workplaces to support employees impacted by menstrual symptoms reduces the burden on individual workplaces to formulate policies and eliminates reliance on senior management’s interest.

If governments and employers want to increase productivity, our research shows the answer could be hiding in plain sight.

Michelle O'Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University and Mike Armour, Associate Professor at NICM Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University

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

In recent decades, millions of Australians have embraced body art – an estimated 30% of adults have a tattoo. Over a third of those with tattoos have five or more pieces.

Trend reporting from industry and lifestyle sources suggests designs are becoming increasingly large, colourful and complex. Although tattoos have become more common, less attention has been paid to what’s in the inks being injected into people’s skin.

In a study published today in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, our team analysed tattoo inks available in Australia. We found they contain carcinogenic organic chemicals and toxic metals at levels that wouldn’t meet existing European safety standards.

Tattoo ink regulations

Injected into living tissue, tattoo inks are designed to last essentially permanently. Once in the body, pigments can persist, migrate through the lymphatic system or slowly break down over time.

Concerns about tattoo ink composition are not new. In Europe, early guidance on such inks emerged more than a decade ago, and was initially non-binding. As tattooing became more widespread, regulators moved towards stricter controls.

Since 2022, the European Union has enforced binding chemical limits on tattoo inks, restricting metals including arsenic, cadmium and lead as well as specific organic compounds that are known or suspected to be carcinogenic. Tattoo inks that don’t comply cannot be legally sold in EU member countries.

Australia doesn’t have an equivalent national framework for regulating tattoo ink. There’s minimal routine oversight of what tattoo inks contain in Australia, and consumers have limited information available. There’s no requirement to perform routine batch testing of inks sold in Australia.

Oversight relies on voluntary compliance, with one government survey released in 2016, and updated in 2018. That survey found many inks wouldn’t meet European guidelines, which at the time were less restrictive than the current EU framework.

Similar issues with tattoo inks have been found in the United States, Sweden and Turkey. Problems included inaccurate labelling, elevated metal concentrations, and in some cases evidence of cellular toxicity in lab tests. While people sometimes have acute reactions to tattoo ink, detecting potential long-term or chronic exposures is much harder.

What we did and what we found

The project began with an interesting question from a high school student. As part of her senior year research project, Bianca Tasevski, then at St Mary Star of the Sea College in Wollongong, contacted the School of Chemistry at UNSW Sydney to ask what was actually in tattoo inks.

To answer the question, we analysed 15 tattoo inks including black and coloured inks sold in Australia. The inks were all from major, established international brands widely used by tattoo artists.

This analysis provides a snapshot of inks currently sold in Australia, and was not intended to monitor batches across locations as a surveillance exercise, which is a role arguably more suited to regulators. Thus, specific brands are not disclosed.

With two standard, widely used laboratory approaches, we measured the concentrations of metals in the inks and screened for a broad range of organic chemicals.

Every ink we tested would have failed at least one EU safety requirement. We detected multiple toxic metals at concentrations exceeding EU law. These include arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead. Although detected at trace levels, these concentrations are considered unacceptable for tattoo inks by EU regulators.

We also identified organic compounds in some inks, including aromatic amines restricted in EU countries because of their carcinogenic potential.

Some patterns emerged across ink types. Black inks contained a broader range of regulated metals, while brightly coloured inks often contained high levels of specific pigment-associated metals.

Why pigments often contain metals

Ideally, tattoo pigments should be bright, stable and resistant to fading. Metals are particularly important in obtaining such properties.

Metals are not always intentionally included in inks. They can be residues or impurities from pigment manufacturing, or byproducts from incomplete purification.

In our study, we found extremely high concentrations of some pigment-associated metals including titanium, aluminium and zirconium in specific coloured inks.

These metals aren’t currently restricted in tattoo ink under EU legislation, but their presence at such high levels is notable because of long exposure times, unknown chemical forms, and unknown effects of chronic exposure.

Ink chemistry is not the same as health risk

We’re not toxicologists, and our study doesn’t assess health effects. Our work was limited to analysing the chemical composition of tattoo inks. We didn’t measure how much of these substances are absorbed into the body, how they behave over time, or whether they cause any harm.

Health effects will depend strongly on many factors including chemical form, dose, exposure time and individual biology. Cancer Council Australia advises tattoos have not been shown to cause cancer, but notes concerns about ink composition.

A number of epidemiological studies have examined potential links between tattoos and health outcomes. However, such studies are challenging to interpret without directly measuring ink chemistry or exposure.

We need better regulation

The findings point to a clear regulatory gap in consumer protection. Many tattoo inks available in Australia wouldn’t meet current EU standards and there’s no routine system in place to identify or address this blind spot.

A sensible, practical step would be increasing the monitoring of tattoo inks and reviewing Australian standards to align with international best practice. This would improve transparency, provide clearer information to consumers, and reduce unnecessary exposure to hazardous substances.

Tattoos are a form of self-expression that many Australians value. As with other products that are injected into the body, knowing what they contain is a reasonable starting point for oversight and informed decision-making.

William Alexander Donald, Professor of Chemistry, UNSW Sydney and Jake P. Violi, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Chemistry, UNSW Sydney

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

When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia dramatically reshapes this picture.

Our research, published today in the journal Nature, reveals people living in what is now eastern Indonesia were producing rock art significantly earlier than previously demonstrated.

These artists were not only among the world’s first image-makers, they were also likely part of the population that would eventually give rise to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans.

A hand stencil from deep time

The discovery comes from limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi. Here, faint red hand stencils, created by blowing pigment over a hand pressed against the rock, are visible on cave walls beneath layers of mineral deposits.

By analysing very small amounts of uranium in the mineral layers, we could work out when those layers formed. Because the minerals formed on top of the paintings, they tell us the youngest possible age of the art underneath.

In some cases, when paintings were made on top of mineral layers, these can also show the oldest possible age of the images.

One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art ever found anywhere in the world.

This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France. It shows humans were making cave art images much earlier than we once believed.

This hand stencil is also special because it belongs to a style only found in Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them look pointed, as though they were animal claws.

Altering images of human hands in this manner may have had a symbolic meaning, possibly connected to this ancient society’s understanding of human-animal relations.

In earlier research in Sulawesi, we found images of human figures with bird heads and other animal features, dated to at least 48,000 years ago. Together, these discoveries suggest that early peoples in this region had complex ideas about humans, animals and identity far back in time.

Not a one-off moment of creativity

The dating shows these caves were used for painting over an extraordinarily long period. Paintings were produced repeatedly, continuing until around the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago – the peak of the most recent ice age.

After a long gap, the caves were painted again by Indonesia’s first farmers, the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who arrived in the region about 4,000 years ago and added new imagery over the much older ice age paintings.

This long sequence shows that symbolic expression was not a brief or isolated innovation. Instead, it was a durable cultural tradition maintained by generations of people living in Wallacea, the island zone separating mainland Asia from Australia and New Guinea.

What this tells us about the first Australians

The implications go well beyond art history.

Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests modern humans reached the ancient continent of Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and New Guinea, by around 65,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Getting there required deliberate ocean crossings, representing the earliest known long-distance sea voyages undertaken by our species.

Researchers have proposed two main migration routes into Sahul. A northern route would have taken people from mainland Southeast Asia through Borneo and Sulawesi, before crossing onward to Papua and Australia. A southern route would have passed through Sumatra and Java, then across the Lesser Sunda Islands, including Timor, before reaching north-western Australia.

Until now, there has been a major gap in archaeological evidence along these pathways. The newly dated rock art from Sulawesi lies directly along the northern route, providing the oldest direct evidence of modern humans in this key migration corridor into Sahul.

In other words, the people who made these hand stencils in the caves of Sulawesi were very likely part of the population that would later cross the sea and become the ancestors of Indigenous Australians.

Rethinking where culture began

The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that early human creativity did not emerge in a single place, nor was it confined to ice age Europe.

Instead, symbolic behaviour, including art, storytelling, and the marking of place and identity, was already well established in Southeast Asia as humans spread across the world.

This suggests that the first populations to reach Australia carried with them long-standing cultural traditions, including sophisticated forms of symbolic expression whose deeper roots most probably lie in Africa.

The discovery raises an obvious question. If such ancient art exists in Sulawesi, how much more remains to be found?

Large parts of Indonesia and neighbouring islands remain archaeologically unexplored. If our results are any guide, evidence for equally ancient, or even older, cultural traditions may still be waiting on cave walls across the region.

As we continue to search, one thing is already clear. The story of human creativity is far older, richer and more geographically diverse than we once imagined.

The research on early rock art in Sulawesi has been featured in a documentary film, Sulawesi l'île des premières images produced by ARTE and released in Europe today.

Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University; Adam Brumm, Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University; Adhi Oktaviana, Research Centre of Archeometry, Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Professor in Geochronology and Geochemistry, Southern Cross University

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

Autistic people are so rarely depicted in media and entertainment, it’s no wonder most people don’t really understand much about the neurotype.

So we were pleased to see the launch of autistic Barbie.

Autism is a life-long neurodevelopmental difference, meaning autistic children grow into autistic adults. As autistic researchers, who advocate for the increased meaningful representation of our community, it was a good sign that multinational toy company Mattel worked with an autistic-led advocacy organisation based in the US, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, in creating this new toy.

We have seen mixed reviews from autistic people since the launch, with some praising representation while others have been more critical of the doll.

Here are some considerations about her features to help you make up your own mind.

The tablet

Autistic Barbie is shown with a tablet with an augmented and alternative communication (AAC) application, which speaks aloud when buttons are pressed.

Some autistic people find communicating extremely challenging, and around a third cannot communicate reliably by speaking. This leads to needs going unmet, feeling misunderstood and often significant distress.

That is, unless an alternative mode of communication is available. Applications available on tablets, such as Proloquo2Go and Coughdrop, are helpful for some autistic people to communicate their needs and preferences.

Although some non-speaking autistic people find it easier to communicate with non-digital options such as printed cards, or using a low-tech signboard with letter tiles alongside a skilled communication partner, we think it’s great that this Barbie comes with a tablet.

The headphones

Sensory sensitivities are a core element of autistic lived experience. Autistic people are commonly sensitive to noise, light, smells, textures and taste. To represent this, autistic Barbie comes with noise-cancelling headphones which can be vital for some autistic people with noise sensitivities. However, other autistic people may find them too uncomfortable to wear and prefer in-ear options. For this reason, autistic people should be allowed to wear ear protection any time it is safe.

Eye contact

The development team reportedly gave Barbie a sideways glance, which aimed to show that eye contact may be uncomfortable and thus avoided in autistic people. An additional way to strengthen autistic Barbie could be to show the potential of visual distress, and to provide her with a coloured glasses accessory. Coloured lenses are a helpful tool to reduce the pain some autistic people feel in response to light, movement and colours. In reality, a specialist test can be used to help autistic people figure out what colour is best for them.

The outfit

Mattel seem to have invested thought in making Barbie’s outfit comfortable from a sensory point of view. Her outfit does not come with labels sewn in – a common cause of irritation to autistic people.

Her dress is loose and flowing, which may appeal to those with tactile hypersensitivity. We didn’t have an autistic Barbie to hand, so we aren’t sure what the fabric is like, but soft and comfortable fabric is a must for many autistic people.

It is worth noting that autistic people often have individual clothing preferences, and some may prefer tight – or even restrictive – clothing as it provides proprioceptive feedback, which can be comforting. It can also support hypermobile joints, which are at least three times as common in autistic people compared to non-autistic people. Furthermore, many autistic people are gender non-conforming, so may not see themselves represented in this outfit.

Autistic Barbie is wearing Mary Jane-style flat shoes, rather than Barbie’s typical high heels. Many autistic people struggle with shoes and rigid slim shoes may be uncomfortable for some. Almost half of autistic young people also walk on their tiptoes as a way of stimming, so allowing a movable ankle would have allowed this to be visible.

The stim tool

Stimming is an important way for autistic people to stay comfortable and regulated. It can undo some of the pain and discomfort of an unsuitable sensory environment. For this reason, we were really pleased to see that Barbie has two opportunities to stim. First, she has bendable elbows and wrists – many autistic people do some form of repetitive movement of their arms and hands as part of stimming. Also, Barbie holds a fidget spinner. This is a small toy that creates an interesting tactile and visual response.

Although not all autistic people will like fidget spinners, most engage in stims with their hands, so this is a good representation of one object that autistic people use to stim.

So how did Mattel do?

Social science researchers have claimed that Barbie – regardless of neurotype – has historically been reductive and problematic. Barbie is unachievably thin, extremely feminine and all too often white. It is important not to ignore these criticisms, however, Barbies are very popular toys and have a reach beyond other brands, and their range of disabled Barbies feels important to raise awareness.

There is no single “look” to being autistic, so the Barbie Mattel created can’t represent everyone, especially as her design is limited to visual elements. Despite these issues, we think, in general, that Mattel and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network have done a great job of creating the autistic Barbie doll.

Her existence is an overall positive. Her inclusion creates a much-needed opportunity for representation, education and normalises the use of disability accommodations.

Aimee Grant, Associate Professor in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University and Rebecca Ellis, Assistant Researcher in Public Health, Swansea University

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

At the start of the new year, many of us will commit to joining a gym, eating healthier or cutting back on drinking and smoking. We do this knowing that investing in our health today will pay off into to the future – that prevention is better (and cheaper) than the cure.

It’s advice the Productivity Commission thinks federal and state governments should also follow to improve Australia’s finances and productivity.

Late last year, my co-authors and I gave the federal government the final report of our inquiry on delivering quality care more efficiently.

We found preventative investments could save taxpayers billions of dollars in health and social care costs. But to achieve these gains, the way we think about investing in prevention needs to change.

Investing in early intervention

Australia’s spending on health and social care is growing as a share of the economy and now makes up five of the top seven fiscal pressures facing the federal budget. The care sector is also absorbing more of our workforce – close to one-third of new jobs since the pandemic have been in the care sector.

In many respects this reflects changing preferences. As the nation has become wealthier, we care more about our health and wellbeing. But making the most of this spending is one of Australia’s key productivity challenges.

That means investing early to save costs later. Take for example the SunSmart skin cancer awareness campaign, which is estimated to have prevented more than 43,000 skin cancers from 1988 to 2010.

Investments like this save lives and money. We estimate that an investment of A$1.5 billion across all prevention programs over five years could be expected to save governments $2.7 billion over ten years. Factoring in the broader health, social and economic benefits, the total benefits would be about $5.4 billion.

Other countries are ahead of the game: Canada, the UK and Finland spend over twice as much of their health budgets on prevention as Australia.

Australia’s own health prevention strategy recommends that we increase spending on prevention from 2% to 5% of the health budget.

The big picture

Prevention goes beyond just health care. Investments in youth justice, out of home care and homelessness improve outcomes in a range of other areas, improving Australians’ quality of life and governments’ bottom lines.

For example, when people experiencing homelessness get stable housing, they tend to end up in hospital less often, make fewer trips to the emergency department, and in some cases, even avoid incarceration. It’s also easier to look for and hold down a job when you have a stable place to call home.

Such investments can also address systemic inequities in both access and quality of care.

One early childhood education program in outer Melbourne led to improved IQ and language development among socially disadvantaged Australian children, with participants reaching the same level of development as their peers within three years.

Evaluations of similar initiatives in the United States suggest that benefits can persist well into adulthood and even intergenerationally, through improved lifetime education attainment, employment and health, and reduced criminal behaviour.

A whole of government approach

Unfortunately, the way our government is structured can work against these investments. While it’s often one agency or level of government that needs to put up the money for these investments, they only enjoy part of the benefit.

The way governments think about and invest in prevention and early intervention needs to change. The Productivity Commission’s proposed solution is for a National Prevention and Early Intervention Framework to support strategic investments in programs that improve outcomes and reduce demand for future services.

The framework’s consistent approach to assessing interventions would bring all levels of government to the table, so that worthwhile investments no longer fall between the cracks.

It offers a practical way to put into operation the government’s Measuring What Matters framework. By directing funding towards outcomes and tracking progress against them, it would give federal and state governments confidence that they are investing in effective programs.

Like a person struggling with a new year’s resolution, policymakers often find it hard to delay gratification.

But given health and social care spending is only set to grow further, we need to start thinking long term to ensure we can afford to give future generations the standard of care we enjoy today. With a greater focus on prevention and early intervention, we can better care for future generations and put our care sector on a more sustainable path.

Angela Jackson, Social Policy Commissioner, Productivity Commission, and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Tasmania

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

In what has become a familiar, exhausting cycle, the rest of the world is left with the futile task of trying to dredge meaning from the wreckage left behind by US President Donald Trump.

As Trump departed the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, much was made of the content of his rambling, hour-long speech because the president had so escalated his rhetoric over Greenland.

Trump had said the United States would take the semi-autonomous Danish territory “whether they like it or not”. He had threatened direct tariffs on NATO allies that opposed him. Europe was considering reciprocal tariffs and had even gotten to the point of sending troops to Greenland as a demonstration of resolve.

NATO itself seemed on the verge of collapse.

While some analysis suggests a reprieve, there is no permanence to Trump’s statements. This president plays with lives, and the future of entire countries, with no care for the consequences.

‘Big, beautiful piece of ice’

Those who seek clarity in the chaos may have been relieved to hear the president make what may seem, on the face of it, a definitive statement of his position on Greenland:

I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.

That may well seem a clear statement of intent. But attempting to impose clarity by stripping sentences of their context risks dramatically misinterpreting that intent.

Even the sentences around this one hint that Trump has far from given up on acquiring that “big, beautiful piece of ice”.

In a speech riddled with inaccuracies, the president continued:

All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland. Where were we already had it as a trustee but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War Two. We gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now.

Never mind that Greenland was never the US’ to “give” or “take” back – this is a president who has long demonstrated himself impervious to fact checking.

Trump went on to describe, in detail, his plan to build new battleships for the US Navy. The implication is fairly straightforward. Trump’s United States may not have to use force, but it can if it wants to.

Be grateful, or else

In this same section of the speech, Trump fell back on a familiar theme – that the US bears all the burden of global security, with none of the benefits. As he put it,

We’ve never gotten anything except we pay for NATO.

(Never mind the hundreds of NATO troops who died fighting with the Americans in Afghanistan after September 11, the only time Article 5 of the NATO alliance has been invoked).

That Trumpian resentment was only fuelled, unsurprisingly, by a striking speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Carney’s excoriation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the world order was unlikely to be met with anything else from Trump.

Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also. But they’re not. I watched their prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful, they should be grateful to us. Canada, Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that Mark [Carney], the next time you make your statements.

The Trump administration is seeking “ownership” of the western hemisphere – that is, all of the continents of north and south America and surrounds. By implication, that leaves the other hemispheres to other great powers and strongmen, with whom Trump “has always had a very good relationship”.

This is the violent world Trump wants to create – a world divided into fiefdoms run by Mafia-style bosses paid simpering tributes by their weaker supplicants.

The rhetoric of white supremacy

Trump went to Europe to give a speech dripping with disdain for the people who live there. In contrast to those leaders with whom he has a “great relationship” (Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, et al), the Trump administration sees Europe and European leaders not just as weak, but as responsible for the demise of western civilisation – something only he can reverse.

After a racist rant directed at Somali immigrants, Trump claimed:

The explosion of prosperity and conclusion and progress that built the West did not come from our tax codes. It ultimately came from our very special culture. This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common.

Trump’s talk of inheritance, of his pure European bloodlines, of the “mass import of foreign cultures” reveal, once again, the ideological drive behind his administration and its attempt to radically remake not just the US but the world.

While the president may have softened his rhetoric on Greenland specifically, this drive is a constant for the administration.

Live the truth

This is why Carney’s speech was so striking. It identified, in clear language, the truth of what the Trump administration is doing.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Trump may have temporarily “backed down” on Greenland, but as Carney put it, the “rupture in the world order” cannot be undone. But what comes next is not inevitable, and it does not have to be left up to Trump.

Carney’s speech is a clear indication that while the American president will not break his constant cycle of chaotic cruelty, the rest of the world may be attempting to step outside it.

There is meaning in that.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

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

Sussan Ley may pay the price for the implosion of the Coalition, but the blame rests squarely with Nationals leader David Littleproud. He’s the one whose leadership should be on the line.

When you stand back from it, the behaviour of the Nationals has been extraordinary and, many would argue, reprehensible.

What was the issue the Nationals chose to make their stand on? It was the provision in the government’s legislation that will enable the banning of hate-spruiking groups, notably the Islamist extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and neo-Nazi groups.

The Nationals said this was too broad, and endangered free speech. However important the principle of free speech is, dealing with these purveyors of hate outweighs it in this instance. Also, the measure as passed is surrounded by reasonable guardrails.

The Nationals’ claims they want radical Islamists dealt with are hollow when they oppose this measure – which is also attacked, it should be noted, by some on the progressive side of politics, in the name of free speech. The antisemitism issue has produced a convergence of sections of the right and the left, aligned against the pragmatic centre.

In the run up to the Coalition crisis, a Sunday night meeting of shadow cabinet, which included Littleproud, decided to seek changes to the hate crime legislation; on Monday the opposition obtained concessions from the government.

Ley says that was the proper end of the process, clearing the way for the opposition to support the bill, and therefore the Nationals frontbench senators who voted against it had broken shadow cabinet solidarity.

Littleproud argues there should have been further processes. He claims it was “persecution” to insist on the resignation of the three frontbenchers who voted against the bill, who were following the orders of their party room.

Regardless of the argument over process, Ley ended up with no choice but to discipline the three senators. Liberals (some with reservations) who had stayed in line with the decision to vote for the bill would have been appalled if their leader had then turned a blind eye to the Nationals’ action. That is especially the case given many of the Liberals are enduring blowback on social media for their stand.

Occupying the same kennel requires give and take. Liberals point out that some of their frontbenchers would have preferred to vote for the government’s gun reform bill. But they accommodated the Nationals, and their own rural members, by opposing it. There was no quid pro quo from the Nationals.

If Littleproud had wanted, he could have found a middle course over the hate-crime legislation, potentially avoiding a crisis: he could have had the Nationals abstain on the vote. That may perhaps have allowed a skate-through for both leaders. But Litteproud and his party chose to be as provocative as possible.

The Nationals showed poor judgement in deciding to oppose the legislation. Their subsequent breaking of the Coalition is a massive blow for an already enfeebled opposition. Moreover, Littleproud’s announcement on the day of national mourning over the Bondi massacre was completely tone deaf. Sources said Ley had counseled him all media should be paused for 24 hours, advice he did not take.

The Nationals are self-indulgent. They have become more overbearing in recent times, preempting the Liberals on the Voice and insisting they agree to demands after the election. Littleproud likes to point out the Liberals can’t reach government without them (which is true).

His lack of respect for Ley goes back a long way. In Thursday’s comments, he painted Ley as the villain in the crisis and declared, “Sussan Ley has put protecting her own leadership ahead of maintaining the Coalition”. He made it all as personal as possible, and essentially told the Liberals to get a new leader. “There is no [Nationals] shadow minister that wants to be ultimately serving in Sussan Ley’s shadow ministry,” he said.

But the Nationals are not just self-indulgent – they are deeply frightened. They’re spooked by the One Nation vote surge and the defection of Barnaby Joyce. The Newspoll published at the weekend had One Nation on 22%, with the Coalition 21%.

Given Joyce couldn’t lead the Nationals again, he is trying to make One Nation the replacement for his old party in regional Australia. He responded to the Littleproud announcement by saying:

David just hasn’t thought this through. It is going to be a cartwheel cluster. […] Maybe they’re on a recruitment drive for One Nation. Of course, it’s going to help us.

The Liberals are furious with Littleproud, and scathing in their personal descriptions of him. But that doesn’t mean they will stick by their leader, reluctant as some might be to appear to reward the Nationals, whose departure has left the official opposition with just 28 in the House of Representatives and forced Ley into yet another reshuffle.

Even before this crisis it was generally accepted Ley would not survive for long. This has made the prospect of her demise as leader even more likely, although the timing is uncertain. That could be influenced by the opinion polls to come.

But where do the Liberals turn? The alternatives, Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor (who has been overseas and missed the crisis), are both deeply flawed as potential leaders. Taylor, though a conservative and a poor performer as shadow treasurer last term, may have more appeal to moderates who fear some of Hastie’s hard right views. But Hastie could appeal to the younger Liberals, looking for generational change.

To replace Ley, the Liberals first need to agree on a contender. If both Hastie and Taylor ran, and Ley (who doesn’t lack guts) contested too, she might come through the middle. That would just prolong the agony.

While timelines are totally unclear, this week’s events will trigger numbers-counting by supporters of the aspirants.

With little fix on what will or should happen now, or when the next eruption might come, many shell-shocked Liberals are comforting themselves by unloading their feelings about Littleproud and his band of bomb throwers.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

The federal Coalition is dead, with Nationals leader David Littleproud on Thursday morning declaring it “untenable” after Liberal leader Sussan Ley stared down the Liberals’ minor partner.

This followed all Nationals frontbenchers resigning from the shadow ministry on Wednesday night, in protest at Ley’s retaliation against three Nationals senators, Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald, breaking shadow cabinet solidarity.

In a statement, Littleproud said Ley “has put protecting her own leadership ahead of maintaining the Coalition”.

“We can not be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley”, Littleproud told a news conference early Thursday.

“No one in our ministry could work in a Sussan Ley ministry.”

This leaves the Liberals alone as the opposition, with the Nationals as a crossbench party with no role in the official opposition.

Littleproud said the parties would be “two different armies” going forward for “the time being”.

The crisis dramatically increases the threat to Ley’s leadership, which was already unstable and not expected to last. Although Littleproud would not acknowledge it explicitly, the Nationals are encouraging a change in the Liberal leadership.

Most immediately, Ley will have to reshuffle her frontbench with Liberal members only.

Littleproud said the “sovereign position of the National party had been disrespected” and the three senators had been “courageous”.

“We were not going to stand by and have three of our senators be made scapegoats. We were going to stand with them because they did the right thing.”

The senators voted against the government’s hate crimes legislation, which passed with Liberal support. Their action was in accord with the Nationals’ decision to oppose the legislation. The Nationals disagreed in particular with the bill’s provision to enable the banning of hate-spruiking organisations. The party argued it was too wide and would endanger free speech.

Ley insisted there had been a shadow cabinet decision to obtain changes to the bill and then support it. Littleproud said a final decision on the legislation had not been made by the shadow cabinet or the joint parties.

Littleproud accused Ley of mismanaging the situation.

He stressed he had warned Ley of the consequences if she accepted the three senators’ resignations.

He spoke to her again early Thursday morning before announcing the decision. She held to her position.

This is the second break in the Coalition since the election.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

The federal Coalition was imploding on Wednesday night, with all Nationals frontbenchers, including leader David Littleproud, quitting the shadow ministry.

They were retaliating against Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s insistence three Nationals senators must resign for defying shadow cabinet solidarity.

The Nationals ratified the mass walkout in a special party hook up at 6pm. This followed Ley accepting the resignation of the trio – Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald – who voted, in accordance with their party’s decision, against the government’s hate crime bill, which passed with Liberal support on Tuesday night.

The chaos deepened further when Ley declined to accept the latest batch of resignations.

As she desperately tries to hold the disintegrating opposition together, she said in a 9pm statement:

This evening, I spoke with Leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, and strongly urged him not to walk away from the Coalition.

I have received additional offers of resignation from National Party Shadow Ministers, which I and my Liberal Leadership Group have determined are unnecessary.

The Liberal Party supports the Coalition arrangements because they deliver the most effective political alliance for good government. I note that in David’s letter, he has not indicated that the Nationals are leaving the Coalition.

No permanent changes will be made to the Shadow Ministry at this time, giving the National Party time to reconsider these offers of resignation.

The crisis plunges Ley’s leadership into fresh turmoil, and is also putting Littleproud under pressure.

While the resignations do not automatically break the Coalition, its future appears untenable in the present circumstances. Ley sent Littleproud a message on Wednesday evening, asking him to pass it on to Nationals colleagues, in which she said maintaining a strong and functional Coalition “is in the national interest”.

Early Wednesday, Littleproud warned Ley of the walkout if the Senate trio was forced off the frontbench.

The Nationals had put the Liberal leader in a diabolical position. The party’s Senate frontbenchers had defied the principle of shadow cabinet solidarity, and convention would indicate they should resign or be sacked. As Cadell told Sky early Wednesday, “I understand if you do the crime you take the time”.

But the question for Ley was: should she press the convention, or let the “crime” go unpunished to avoid a blow up?

To turn a blind eye, however, would be seen as weakness and further harm her fragile leadership. To let the Nationals get away with their defiance would be interpreted as a dramatic case of the tail wagging the dog.

Liberals, who are now getting blowback for voting for the hate crime legislation, would have been infuriated if the Nationals had been shown lenience.

Former Liberal prime minister John Howard backed Ley, telling The Australian, “She had no choice. She behaved absolutely correctly.”

After hours of public silence in which she consulted with her senior colleagues, Ley issued a statement just before 3pm, indicating the three Nationals would pay the price for their action.

“Shadow cabinet solidarity is not optional. It is the foundation of serious opposition and credible government,” she said.

She said shadow cabinet had on Sunday night examined the government’s hate crime legislation. “The unanimous shadow cabinet decision was to negotiate specific fixes with the government and having secured those amendments, members of the shadow cabinet were bound not to vote against the legislation.”

Ley said that when the Coalition re-formed after last year’s brief split, “the foundational principle underpinning that agreement was a commitment to shadow cabinet solidarity”.

She said she’d made it clear on Tuesday to Littleproud “that members of the shadow cabinet could not vote against the shadow cabinet position”.

Littleproud understood action was now required, she said.

But a letter Littleproud sent Ley early Wednesday made it clear the Nationals’ leader disputed her version of events.

He wrote that there was “also a conventíon of shadow cabinet that a final bill position must be approved by shadow cabinet”.

“This did not take place for this bill, nor was the position presented to the joint party room,” he said.

Littleproud wrote that, “If these [three] resignations are accepted, the entire National Party ministry will resign to take collective responsibility.

"Opposing this bill was a party room decision. The entire National Party shadow ministry is equally bound.”

In her statement Ley said the three senators had offered their resignations from the shadow cabinet, “as is appropriate, and I have accepted them”.

“All three Senators have written to me confirming that they ‘remain ready to continue serving the Coalition in whatever capacity you consider appropriate,’” and she’d asked them to continue serving “in the Coalition team”, outside the frontbench.

She’d also asked Littleproud to nominate replacements.

Last year, Ley was seen as emerging well in her post-election tussle with the Nationals, even though Littleproud extracted concessions.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who a week ago had been on the defensive over his legislation, has now had passed much (albeit not all) of what he initially wanted, and had the additional advantage of seeing the opposition thrown into chaos. The political wheel can turn very fast.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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