Plants are crucial for life on land. The energy they capture from the Sun underpins the existence of almost all land-based animals, fungi and bacteria.
In particular, flowering plants – the most productive and diverse group of land plants – dominate most ecosystems on Earth. There are at least 350,000 species, and they’re vital for capturing carbon dioxide from the air.
Over millions of years, flowering plants have evolved complex relationships with animals, fungi and bacteria. This created vast numbers of species, each specialising in eating, pollinating, dispersing seeds and decomposing different plants or in different ways.
It’s not clear how flowering plants came to rule the world. In the middle of the Cretaceous Period, during “peak dinosaur” time (about 100 million years ago), flowering plants began to displace older plant groups that had dominated the land for 200 million years before.
Did a warmer climate play a role? The Cretaceous was certainly often much warmer than today. But when researchers look at plant fossils, we can see that new, diverse plant types emerged during both warm and cool climates in the past.
Our new study, published in Nature Plants, examined fossilised pollen and spores, revealing that the two warmest times over the last 140 million years were indeed central to plant evolution – and not just flowering plants.
Fossil records are biased
Until now, a clear link between climate and plant diversity has been elusive, mainly because fossil records are strongly biased. The number of available fossils varies over geological time and between regions.
Because of this, simply counting fossilised species found in a given place can give a misleading sense of diversity over evolutionary time.
We compiled data of over 60,000 fossils, and applied multiple statistical methods that overcome the major biases in the fossil record described above. These methods ensure that periods with more individual fossils don’t unfairly dominate the results.
We then generated revised estimates of fossil pollen and spore diversity for successive time periods throughout the past 130 million years.
Scanning electron microscope images of pollen of a flowering plant (above) and a conifer (below). These pollen were typical of polar forests during the middle Cretaceous about 90 million years ago. Scale bar: 5 microns.Australasian Palaeontological Memoirs/Chris Mays
We compared data from regions at different latitudes to find out if the patterns we saw were global. We compiled data from southeastern Australia, because Australia sat much closer to the south pole than it does today for the majority of this time period.
We also compiled datasets from two regions that sat in tropical, low latitudes: northeastern Africa and northern South America.
Our results showed that the phases when land plant groups became more diverse closely tracked climate change.
A planetary greenhouse
Most of the changes we found among the fossils – both pollen and spore types going extinct, and new types appearing – happened during the warmest climates. In contrast, cooler climates were marked by little change.
This led to the conclusion that new – but related – land plants emerged mostly during two intervals of globally extremely warm climate.
Each of these extremely warm intervals lasted a few million years. So the warmest greenhouse climates simultaneously destroyed and promoted plant diversity, but only when considered over million-year timescales.
There are other potential causes that could have driven an explosion of plant life. Among those are interactions between plant groups. For example, one group might slowly displace another, or one group might provide beneficial shade for another.
Alternatively, geographic isolation (such as when Australia began moving away from the rest of the southern supercontinent, Gondwana) could drive the evolution of unique species.
However, neither of these explained the pattern we saw in plant diversity as much as climate did.
Most importantly, these patterns didn’t just apply to flowering plants. Conifers and their relatives, as well as mosses and ferns, also responded to these warmer intervals. The patterns appeared at both high and low latitudes.
As a result, we are confident there are general processes linking both evolution and extinction in land plants to extreme greenhouse climates. These effects were greater in flowering plants possibly because of the many unique features that evolved in this group.
Conifers, ferns and mosses also enjoyed a boom during hotter climates, but flowering plants still had the edge.Gustav Gullstrand/Unsplash
Human-made climate change is different
Our study shows that extremely warm climates wipe out much of the plant diversity that was previously important in land ecosystems, but also provide conditions for the evolution of new plant species.
Human-driven warming is therefore likely to cause major plant extinctions more quickly than the extinctions in the past.
While extinct species will eventually be replaced by new species, not many of us will be satisfied having to wait the few million years for them to evolve, especially since we have the power to prevent the loss of species today – by stopping the carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has introduced Labor’s digital duty of care bill into parliament. The legislation amends the Online Safety Act, designed to protect Australians from online harm.
At the core of the digital duty of care is the principle that online service providers – everything from social media platforms to websites, online games and messaging apps – have a duty to provide a safe environment online.
Under the bill, platforms must take appropriate action to protect Australians from seriously harmful material and conduct.
They must also protect Australian children from harmful material and conduct, such as bullying, and material promoting disordered eating or encouraging dangerous stunts. Children would also need to be protected from some harmful algorithmic design features.
In addition, the legislation would enable the minister to require tech platforms to give users tools to “manage the design features of their service”, such as providing controls over what content is recommended. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described this “my feed, my way” initiative as a way for Australians to gain control over their social media algorithms.
The journey so far
The government released the exposure draft of the digital duty of care bill on September 8, opening it up to written feedback for two weeks.
Experts generally welcomed the overall proactive approach: putting responsibility on online service providers to make the online environment safer for Australians.
Submissions also highlighted the importance of provisions to protect researchers, give them access to data about the platforms and people’s experience, and to allow them to use made-up “sock puppet” accounts to enable independent scrutiny of the online environment.
On the other hand, experts called for changes to make the duty more meaningful and effective. Some pointed out that enforcing it shouldn’t just fall to the eSafety Commissioner. Individuals should also be able to enforce the digital duty of care and seek remedies to harm, either individually or collectively.
Another concern was whether online service providers might overreact to the duty by demoting or removing public-interest content – such as education about illicit drug use and sexual health. Experts had a range of suggestions for what should count as “seriously harmful material and conduct”.
What does the bill look like now?
This is a large and complex piece of legislation. There are real challenges in reconciling the need for safer online environments with other interests, and in a way that’s flexible enough to adjust as the technologies, and how people use them, evolve.
In the path from exposure draft to bill, there are quite a few tweaks and changes to the language, which will need to be analysed for their impact.
The government has published an explanatory memorandum to help people understand the bill. It’s worth a read, especially where it discusses the impacts of algorithmic design.
Even on a first reading, we can already see some interesting shifts: mostly around the question of what kinds of “serious harmful material and conduct” are covered by the duty.
One notable change responds to concerns about social media encouraging gender-based violence. The definition of harmful material for adults now includes “the encouragement, promotion or incitement of gender-based violence”. It has also expanded to include non-consensual fake nude material and posting – or threatening to post – intimate images without consent.
The bill also adds that material or conduct that is a Commonwealth criminal offence will only be subject to the duty if it’s likely to cause serious harm.
Importantly, however, the biggest change is that the Minister will no longer have the power to add further categories of seriously harmful material or conduct by legislative instrument. Wells has indicated that if new categories of harm are to be added, this will now be done by Parliament passing amendments to the law.
A win for journalism and public health advocates
In response to concerns about over-inclusive content moderation and self-censorship, a new set of provisions have been added that explicitly exclude several categories of content from the duty.
These include professional news material, artistic and educational content (that is not contrary to the public interest), and scientific and academic research. A change that will please public health advocates is to exclude “material that is necessary for, or of assistance in, protecting or promoting public health and safety”, and material aimed at “reducing harms to individuals”.
Public health and harm reduction advocates will also be pleased to see that restrictions of material or conduct that “encourages, promotes, urges or instructs illicit drug use” has been removed from the bill. Advocates were concerned about the potential impacts on drug education.
However it’s not yet clear whether drug harm reduction, sex education and sexual health organisations will have any additional mechanisms to appeal if online platforms suppress or block public health outreach content.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said today the Greens would support the bill in principle, but are asking for much steeper penalties for big tech companies if they breach the duty. The party also wants Australians to have the ability to sue tech companies directly.
The bill will now be sent to a Senate inquiry, with a report expected before the end of the year.
More than a third of Australian teachers say they plan to leave the profession before retirement, while a further third say they are unsure of their career plans.
High levels of stress and burnout are cited as key factors behind teaching turnover. A 2025 Australian study found 90% of teachers reported severe levels of stress, while rates of depression and anxiety symptoms were more than double the national average.
So, supporting teachers’ wellbeing is crucial for retaining teachers, while also promoting high-quality teaching and learning.
How can we do this? Our new research provides some clues.
What we already knew
Many efforts to support teachers have focused on reducing stress and managing burnout through approaches such as stress-management training. But supporting teacher wellbeing means more than stepping in once they are already overwhelmed and ready to leave the profession.
So there is growing attention on how to create the personal and environmental conditions that enable teachers to thrive, rather than simply addressing problems once they arise.
In our research, we focus on positive psychology interventions because they aim to help teachers stay well, motivated and fulfilled in their work, despite the pressures they face. These can involve mindfulness, resilience training, social-emotional learning (involving emotional skills and care for others), gratitude practices, or several approaches at once.
Previous reviews of positive psychology interventions for teachers suggest they are often associated with positive effects. But the evidence remains fragmented.
Our research
Our research aimed to make sense of this confusion through a scoping review.
We wanted to understand what’s being done around the world to proactively improve teacher wellbeing, what outcomes are being measured, whether these approaches appear to work, and how they might be better implemented.
In total, we reviewed 247 studies spanning 25 years of research across 42 countries, including the United States, China, England, Australia and Canada.
What did we find?
The most frequently identified approaches, and those most consistently associated with improvements in wellbeing and reduced stress and burnout, were:
Socio-emotional learning: this combines emotional skills and compassion training to help teachers regulate their emotions, build relationships with others, and create more supportive classrooms for themselves and their students.
Mindfulness-based approaches: these develop self-awareness, attention to the present moment and a non-judgemental attitude towards thoughts and emotions.
Combined wellbeing approaches: these target different areas of teachers’ wellbeing, including their emotions, relationships, sense of purpose and professional growth. Examples include using personal strengths at work, expressing gratitude to colleagues and focusing on what gives their work meaning.
What does this mean overall?
These interventions typically aimed to strengthen self-regulation skills, enhance teacher self-efficacy (belief in their teaching capabilities), and cultivate positive relationships with students and colleagues to promote wellbeing and resilience.
However, the studies we examined varied widely in their design and often relied on self-reported, short-term outcomes. This highlights the need for more rigorous research into whether these benefits last over time.
What can we do to prevent burnout?
Three practical messages stand out from our findings.
1. Mindfulness matters
Mindfulness was an important component of many teacher wellbeing interventions, but it is often misunderstood as simply a “stress-reduction technique” or formal meditation.
Mindfulness is about how we pay attention and how we relate and respond to what shows up in our minds. For a teacher, this might mean noticing early signs of frustration or stress during a difficult classroom interaction, pausing before these feelings escalate, and choosing a more considered response.
Limited time and difficulty applying mindfulness during the school day were common barriers in the studies we reviewed. Given this, schools could help teachers develop brief, informal mindfulness practices during their daily routines.
2. Relationships matter
Our review suggests relationships are central to teacher wellbeing. Supportive colleagues can make even the toughest days feel more manageable and the good days even more rewarding. Positive relationships with students can provide a powerful sense of purpose and remind teachers of the difference they make.
How teachers relate to themselves matters, too. Having self-compassion means recognising difficult days and mistakes are part of being human, rather than allowing them to become reasons to question your worth or ability as a teacher.
In practice, strengthening relationships could mean improving how teachers communicate and connect through skills such as active listening (fully concentrating on what someone is saying), taking other people’s perspectives and classroom management (the strategies teachers use to manage behaviour and learning).
Schools could also create space for teachers to openly share struggles with difficult student behaviour, parent interactions and other common challenges. This can help cultivate a sense of belonging, remind teachers they’re not alone in these experiences and work through solutions collaboratively.
3. Of course, working conditions also matter
Wellbeing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Supporting teachers also means being realistic about the expectations placed on them, addressing excessive workloads and creating a school culture where staff wellbeing is genuinely prioritised.
This includes considering how teachers’ work is designed and organised, rather than simply giving teachers more strategies to cope with increasing demands.
For individual teachers, this could involve taking a more active role in the shape of their work through job crafting. This involves making changes to your job, of your own initiative, to make it more meaningful.
For school leaders and policymakers, this could mean removing unnecessary demands, while giving teachers a meaningful say in how their work is designed and how their wellbeing is supported. One obvious example is reducing administrative work, which teachers’ consistently say takes them away from their students and contributes to their stress levels.
However, no two schools face exactly the same challenges. Approaches such as co-design, where teachers work alongside school leaders to identify problems and shape solutions, can help ensure changes reflect the needs and realities of each school.
In the second half of the 19th century, colonial agriculture and pastoralism in Queensland were hungry for labour, and people of the South Pacific supplied much of it. Ryan Butta is not the first author to write the history of their maltreatment, but Blackbirding is a readable reminder of a shameful source of Queensland’s prosperity – he calls it “slavery” – that will make it known to new audiences.
Review: Blackbirding: A Reckoning with the Australian Slave Trade – Ryan Butta (Affirm Press)
Butta’s “slave trade” story is richly descriptive because the inflow, service and, in some cases, return of these people fascinated and outraged contemporary observers. Indeed, Queenslanders’ exposés, inquiries and regulatory efforts are as much the book’s subject as the “blackbirding” itself.
Early ventures
Butta, a freelance researcher and writer, begins his account with the trade’s forerunner, entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd, who in 1847 attempted to bring Pacific Island labour to New South Wales to fill the gap left by Britain’s decision to cease convict transportation.
Boyd met resistance, including from Sydney’s Atlas newspaper, which predicted “pastures filled not with European Christians but with cannibals fresh from their last disgusting banquet”.
To thwart Boyd, the New South Wales Legislative Council amended the Masters and
Servants Act to make it impossible for him to enforce employment contracts signed by “any native of any savage or uncivilised tribe, inhabiting any Island or Country in the Pacific Ocean”.
Boyd departed for California in 1849. Butta writes that little is known of those Boyd “at best lured, and at worst and most likely kidnapped” to work in NSW.
In the 1850s and 1860s, other Sydney-based entrepreneurs recruited Pacific Island men and took them to Natal in South Africa, Réunion and Peru. These short-lived ventures exposed the difficulty, for regulators, of assigning culpability. Did blame rest with the recruiting agent? The local chiefs who sold captured boys and women for muskets and calico? The ship’s captain? The employer who paid a recruitment and transport fee? The latter, Butta argues, was effectively the purchase of a person.
The disruption of the global cotton industry by the American Civil War (1861-65) was an opportunity for British-born sandalwood trader and landowner Robert Towns to grow cotton in Queensland and import Asian workers to pick it. Towns had form. In 1854, a Select Committee on Asiatic Labour, chaired by Henry Parkes, had found evidence that Towns’ Chinese workers had been deceived and maltreated.
Towns acquired land in the new colony of Queensland, which had separated from New South Wales in 1859. The colony’s first governor, George Bowen, attempted in the Coolie Labour Act 1862 to regulate what would otherwise be a “deluge” of “barbarians”. Towns supported the act because it enabled the regulated inflow and outflow of cheap labourers.
In 1863, Towns turned to the Pacific as his source, encouraged by the apparent ease with which Peruvian ships were getting men from the islands. When Queensland Legislative Assembly member Theophilus Pugh demanded to know the terms of the recruits’ consent, Towns made public his written instructions to his recruiter Henry Ross Lewin, an illiterate.
Citing press articles, the testament of “abolitionist” journalist Robert Short and the evidence of Captain George Palmer of the British Admiralty, Butta devotes many pages to Lewin’s practices, holding Towns responsible.
Problems of regulation
Queensland was obliged to enforce Britain’s anti-slavery laws. But its parliament included men made wealthy by access to cheap labour. By 1867, the Queensland government was being told that Europeans attempting business on some Pacific Islands were subject to revenge attacks provoked by kidnappings.
Queensland’s Polynesian Labourers Act 1868, Butta argues, did not protect the
islanders from kidnapping and slavery. The effect of the legislation’s “bonds, guarantees and sureties”, he writes, was to protect “the slavers from accusations of kidnapping and slavery”.
Public agitation in Sydney gave rise to a petition critical of the act. The French government complained to Britain that blackbirding was negatively affecting their colonial subjects in the Pacific. With little confidence in the Queensland parliament’s select committee review of the act, Britain instructed the New South Wales government to conduct a royal commission in 1869.
Dealing with the problem by regulation was not easy. The crucial transactions were taking place on the islands, far from a policing authority. One of Queensland’s experiments was to place a government agent on recruiting ships. The first appointed – John Meiklejohn, an ex-magistrate and sugarcane farmer from Maryborough – reported that the captain of the Jason, one of the recruiting ships, had drugged him and imprisoned him below decks when he questioned the recruiting practices of that voyage.
Suffering, exploitation and death
Butta’s third section takes the story from 1872 to 1892. He highlights another limit of Queensland law: “heathens” could not swear an oath, enabling courts to discount their testimonies.
There were, however, conscientious Queensland public servants – such as Richard Bingham Sheridan of Maryborough – willing to report abuse of Pacific Islanders. A select committee discredited Sheridan in 1876, but Butta labels that another planter whitewash.
From returning kin, Pacific Islanders were learning of bad experiences. As early as 1871, a ship’s captain reported their growing wariness of recruiters. Chiefs who brokered the trade asked a higher price, demanding Snider rifles. Communities that menaced resident Europeans were harshly punished by visits from British Admiralty.
To appease critics armed with data about work conditions, the government revised the Pacific Labourers Act in 1880 and 1884, creating a Pacific Islanders Fund, managed by the government, to build hospitals.
Butta’s story is a reminder of the importance of London – both press and government – in the “human rights” politics of the Australian colonies. The British government disallowed Queensland Premier Thomas McIlwraith’s attempt in 1883 to annex parts of New Guinea not under Dutch authority, partly because it saw in the land grab the colony’s subservience to the planter interest in what one adviser called “a modified form of Slave Trade”.
In 1884, McIlwraith’s successor as premier, Samuel Griffith, initiated a royal commission to examine eight recent recruiting voyages by six vessels. The shocked public was told that the regulatory measures enacted so far had not prevented suffering, exploitation and death.
These findings established a mandate for the Griffith government to repatriate as many New Guineans as could be prised from the canegrowers’ grip. Then, in 1885, Griffith confronted the sugar industry (not least the Colonial Sugar Refining Company), legislating a plantation inspectorate and a termination (by December 31 1890) of the recruitment of Pacific Islanders. The industry responded by petitioning Queen Victoria – 12,000 signatures – to make North Queensland a separate colony.
Britain’s refusal honoured the abolitionist tradition dear to imperial liberalism, but Butta points to the previous decades of what amounted to imperial and colonial tolerance. Further, he cites Short and Griffith to argue that liberal horror of Queensland’s slave trade included fear the white colonies of British Australia were being degraded by aliens.
Some colonists thought Queensland’s prosperity had become too dependent on the sugar industry and that white workers were shirking the physical challenge of tropical settlement. When Griffith lifted the ban on recruiting in 1892, worried it would damage an industry that was too big to fail, criticism of Pacific labour recruitment was renewed, gaining strength from the discussion of federation.
The other Australasian colonies had a stake in the fight to protect the racial purity of Queensland. “In the eyes of Queensland’s neighbours,” writes Butta, “a Federation that admitted black people was a Federation not worth having.”
Advocates of federation feared that, even if members of the Pacific Island community were free and prospering – no longer “slaves” – they would be a problem, just as emancipated “Negroes” were a problem for the United States. Edmund Barton, before he became Australia’s first prime minister, assured a Sydney audience in 1892 that “they could always be got rid of if necessary”.
In 1901, he introduced a bill in the new federal parliament to stop the importation of Pacific Islanders by March 31 1904 and for the deportation of Pacific Islanders after December 31 1906.
When Queensland’s premier, Robert Philp, protested what the planters saw as a threat to their industry, Barton responded that because whites and blacks were not of equal intelligence, “the savage employed by the white man is […] more or less a slave even under agreement”.
The manifest racial inequality of the US was Barton’s cautionary example. The Pacific labourers must go back to their islands, lest they remain in Australia as the oppressed equivalent of the emancipated Negro. For Butta, it is ironic “the beginning of the end of the Australian slave trade” was a law conceived in “overtly racist” terms.
The ‘Kanaka Appeal’
In a 1902 “Kanaka Appeal”, many islanders pleaded to stay in Australia. They evoked themselves not as slaves, but as free communities, working, worshipping and attending school alongside white Australians. But as Butta comments, “they had no such freedom”.
The reader needs to pause here to parse Butta’s use of “freedom”, which points to a dilemma of perspective that his book never resolves. I take him to mean the islanders were not free to stay in Australia. Yet, the authors of the Kanaka Appeal saw themselves as free.
To name the coercive cruelty of the recruitment and employment of Pacific labour, Butta repeatedly uses the terms “slave” and “slave trade”. But he also writes that
not every Pacific Islander that came to Australia was kidnapped or stolen or coerced or decoyed. Some men came willingly. Not all men were treated awfully on the boats […] no two Pacific Islanders had the same experience of being caught up in the Australian slave trade.
This caveat, which places “experience” outside the frame, drains “slave” of sociological meaning. The term expresses Butta’s moral disgust, and many stories he tells make it easy for a reader to share that disgust. But this is our disgust, not their experience. As his favoured term of moral and legal condemnation, “slave” effectively renders Pacific Islander experience invisible, beyond our reckoning.
Butta’s restricted choice of sources and scholarship has the effect of confining readers’ empathy to the white defenders and critics of the “slave trade”. He does not provide evidence of “slave” experience. Determined to illustrate “slavery”, he says little of the labourers’ recovery and resilience. He has little to say about the two generations of adaptation that preceded and made possible the Kanaka Appeal. By 1902, Butta writes,
Some Pacific Islanders had been in Australia since the 1860s. Some were born here and had never known any other country or family. Some had escaped their bondage and made lives for themselves, owned property, started small businesses and raised families.
The official figure for those exempted from deportation is 1,654; this included many couples, the demographic basis of today’s South Sea Islander community.
Blackbirding concludes in the present, with two stories. First, Butta offers a vignette of the family history of former Prime Minister John Winston Howard. To curious readers, I say no more.
Then Butta describes the recent Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme and draws on the work of the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman and the NSW anti-slavery commissioner to list PALM’s failures to protect labourers’ rights.
He expresses his outrage by estimating that 41,000 people are “living in modern slavery in Australia”. But I wonder what they would say?
When the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced in 2000, it was more than just tax reform. It was a renegotiation of how the Australian federation works.
The federal government agreed to pass all GST revenue to the states. In return, the states agreed to abolish a range of narrower and less efficient taxes, providing them with a better tax base to fund the many essential services they provide.
For a time, it worked. But a quarter of a century later, the GST is falling short of what it was designed to achieve.
It’s time to revisit the GST and the federal compact with the states. Our new Grattan Institute report, released today, shows how.
State budgets are in trouble
Across the country, state budgets are in poor shape.
State government debt has more than doubled between 2019 and 2025, and is still increasing.
Meanwhile, the states’ share of national debt is forecast to almost double within a decade, from 20% before the pandemic to about 38% by 2030.
And as interest rates continue to rise, the cost of servicing that debt is growing. States now spend more in interest payments than they do on housing, community amenities, and environmental protection combined.
Rapid spending growth – particularly in areas like health care and infrastructure investment – is clearly a large part of this story. As our research shows, states need stronger fiscal rules and independent budget offices to hold them to account. But expenditure control alone will not be enough to get state budgets back on track.
That’s because state revenues are also under pressure.
Transfers from the federal government account for more than 40% of total state government revenues. And many of the taxes that states do levy — such as stamp duty and mining royalties — are volatile, and won’t keep pace with future needs.
The GST was supposed to give states a more reliable source of revenue. But the GST revenues the states receive have fallen as a share of the economy over time, from 3.7% back in 2007 to 3.3% in 2025.
The gap has been plugged by federal grants for services such as health and education, which come with strings attached. Unsurprisingly, negotiations between the federal government and the states are becoming increasingly testy.
We make too little use of the GST
All taxes affect economic activity. But consumption taxes are among the most “efficient” taxes available to governments, meaning they change the incentives around work or investment less than many other taxes. And they tax people’s spending regardless of whether it is financed from wages, retirement savings or accumulated wealth.
That matters as our population ages. Personal income tax is currently the single largest source of revenue for Australian governments. Yet fewer than one in five Australians aged 70 and older pay any income tax, even as their share of the population is projected to increase substantially in coming decades.
Unless we adapt our tax system, we will be asking a shrinking pool of workers to carry more of Australia’s tax burden.
By contrast, Australia raises relatively little from the GST: only about 11% of total tax revenue, well below the average across OECD countries.
Partly that’s because, at 10%, our GST rate is among the lowest in the developed world.
But it’s also because GST isn’t applied to many areas of household consumption, such as education, rent, and healthcare. Only about 54% of household consumption is subject to GST, and that share is falling.
Australia has one of the lowest GST rates in the OECD
Many of these exemptions make little sense. For instance, GST exemptions that apply to only some foods mean frozen chips, bacon and cream are GST-free, but roasted nuts and some prepackaged salads are taxed. Many other countries, notably New Zealand, apply GST much more broadly.
The obvious objection is that taxing goods like food would hit low-income households hardest. But GST exemptions are a blunt and poorly targeted way to help these households. Even for those GST exemptions that apply to food, the poorest 40% of households receive only about one-third of the benefits.
A higher GST rate, a broader base and a fairer tax system
Australia could make better use of the GST. That’s why we propose that the federal government increase the GST rate from 10% to 15% and expand it to include all food.
This would raise about A$76 billion a year in additional revenue. But we propose to use much of this revenue to fund tax cuts and welfare reforms.
Under our package, $33 billion a year of the additional GST revenue would go toward personal income tax cuts — the largest for nearly 20 years.
And about $25 billion a year would go toward boosting Australia’s ailing welfare system. This would include a 20% increase to JobSeeker and Youth Allowance, a 50% increase to Rent Assistance, and an 8% increase to pensions.
As a result, the poorest 40% of households would on average be better off, while wealthier households would pay modestly more tax.
Putting the states on a solid footing
The rest of the extra GST should go to the states. They should use it to pay down debt today, and over time, to aid the transition away from inefficient taxes such as stamp duty.
And this reform could also provide the federal government with the off-ramp it needs to revise the state carve-up of GST revenue that favours Western Australia. This is what the Productivity Commission has recommended, since the 2018 deal is currently costing the federal budget about $6 billion per year.
No one likes paying more tax. But taxes fund the services – hospitals, roads, courts, mental health services – that enable the quality of life Australians enjoy.
By making better use of the GST, we can help secure that same quality of life for future Australians.
A former Labor attorney-general in the Rudd and Gillard governments, Robert McClelland, has been chosen as the new head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).
The position has been vacant since the resignation of the body’s inaugural chief Paul Brereton, who quit earlier this year two years short of finishing his five year term, following a controversial period involving conflicts of interest.
McClelland, 68, who takes up his position on January 11, is currently Deputy Chief Justice of the Federal Circuit and Family Court. He was first appointed judge of the then Family Court by then Liberal attorney-general George Brandis and later made deputy chief justice by another Liberal attorney-general, Christian Porter.
McClelland served in federal parliament from 1996 to 2013 for the Sydney seat of Barton. He was attorney-general from 2007 to 2011. But he was demoted to the posts of housing and emergency management, before being dropped from the ministry altogether after supporting Kevin Rudd in the 2012 leadership vote between prime minister Julia Gillard and Rudd.
Years earlier McClelland, from the right faction, made headlines when in the 2003 leadership contest between Kim Beazley and Mark Latham, he decided to switch his support from Beazley to Latham during his shower on the morning of the vote. Latham subsequently won 47 to 45, to become opposition leader.
McClelland, who had been in the Beazley camp, reportedly did not want to see a tied vote, the expected outcome if he had voted for Beazley.
McClelland’s appointment to the NACC was announced on Monday by Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, who said it had been approved by the parliamentary committee that oversees the NACC, as required by legislation.
Rowland said this followed candidates being assessed by a panel that included the Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department Katherine Jones, a retired judge of the Federal Court Raymond Finkelstein and Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
McClelland’s father, Doug McClelland, was a minister in the Whitlam government, president of the Senate, and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
Rowland also announced that Christopher Savundra has been appointed as NACC deputy commissioner.
He is currently the Deputy Director of Enforcement and Compliance at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
When I graduated from high school more than 25 years ago, I received a phone call. I hadn’t met the caller, but they knew of me. They informed me that, according to their records, I was one of only 50 Indigenous students to successfully complete secondary school in the states of South Australia and the Northern Territory combined.
When I graduated, Indigenous students completing secondary studies was cause for our communities to come together to celebrate. I was invited to an event at Adelaide Festival Centre to mark the achievement alongside my fellow graduates. For many of us, the memory of generations before us who were never afforded the opportunity to attend the later years of schooling remained clear.
The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational attainment has improved since then – in 2025, South Australia achieved population parity in Indigenous Year 12 graduation rates, which was almost ten times the level it was when I finished school. But the gap in educational attainment is still not closed, and our community, now greater in number within the halls of higher education, takes very seriously the need to highlight and celebrate Indigenous strengths and build up the next generation.
More and more Indigenous uni students
We now see second- and third-in-family Indigenous students on our university campuses. Whereas once Indigenous students made up small cohorts in community-focused degrees such as education or health, ever-growing numbers of Indigenous peoples are studying across all disciplines.
Indigenous student enrolments at universities are growing year on year. Higher degree research graduations are steadily increasing, and the number of Indigenous academics is following suit.
Indigenous academics and students are also leading research and education agendas across all disciplines. We currently have a record number of Indigenous-led Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence across the sector, and the newly established Australian Tertiary Education Commission appointed an Indigenous First Nations Commissioner in Gunditjmara Professor Mark Rose.
It is testament to those who came before us that Indigenous voices are now being included at some of the highest levels of governance.
What are the real barriers?
Many of my Indigenous colleagues would agree the barriers to Indigenous achievement in education are cultural misrepresentation and irrelevance of content – not, as historically alleged, Indigenous peoples’ inferiority or inability to learn.
We are not seeing a lack of interest and motivation from Indigenous students; rather, we are hearing these students (and staff) call out teaching and research paradigms that exclude Indigenous perspectives.
The task for Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders now is not to continue to boost Indigenous student numbers without considering the quality and relevance of the education that they will receive.
Unequal research traditions
Indigenous peoples’ relationship with research and research institutions across the past 250 years has left much to be desired. Western frameworks of knowledge emerging from the Enlightenment and assumptions about the cultural and social evolution of humanity, intertwined with an imperial desire for the expansion of empire, have produced complex and vastly unequal foundations.
Researchers, mostly anthropologists, accompanied early European explorers to this continent to observe, measure and document their encounters with some of the world’s oldest continuous cultures. These researchers brought with them assumptions about cultural and evolutionary hierarchies. Such assumptions provided an inescapable Western lens through which to view these lands, waters, skies and societies.
The overwhelming narrative in much of this research was that Indigenous peoples of this continent were inferior in every way. Anthropologists in the early years of European arrival posited that Indigenous societies, seen as more primitive than European societies, offered a glimpse into the missing connections in human evolution.
This was a narrative that suited the colonial endeavour. For if Indigenous peoples had not formed recognisable civilised societies, the trope of discovery could be more easily applied to the invasion and theft of a continent.
The myth of terra nullius came to be supported by researchers’ evaluations that no meaningful connection or use of the land could be observed. The knowledges created in this vein began to furnish the libraries, archives, museums and galleries of Europe, and eventually the research institutions of Australia.
Colonial legacies remain
In the mid-nineteenth century, the first Australian universities were established, in Sydney and then in Melbourne. As of 2026, there are 37 public universities in Australia. These institutions were built on the legacies of knowledge creation and dissemination through principally Western frameworks.
But the legacies of Western colonial knowledge systems remain. Indigenous peoples are still under represented in higher education on both student and staff metrics. Indigenous knowledges are still seen by many as peripheral to the dominant Western knowledge system. The centuries-long casting of Indigenous cultures as inferior has proven difficult to shake.
Despite some shift in public sentiment, overcoming foundational assumptions about the incompatibility of Indigenous knowledges with Western traditions of knowledge creation and sharing continues to present challenges.
Universities have a crucial role to play in addressing these shameful trends, and they are very much up for the challenge. But lasting progress cannot be made unless Indigenous peoples within these institutions lead the way.
Indigenous voices must be present in our classrooms and our lecture theatres. And we must be present in the boardrooms where decisions are made about how we deploy our institutional resources to create the greatest impact for Australia and the world.
Indigenous peoples, walking in the footsteps of those who came before us, are now asking that institutions engage in a process of meaningful truth-telling.
That is, a process where we cast a critical eye over the legacies of knowledge creation about us through a purely Western lens. A process where these Western frameworks are the subject of critical scholarly interrogation and where Indigenous perspectives and voices are fully embedded.
Only in addressing this history honestly can we move forward together to a future where we see nothing about us, without us.
This is an edited extract from Nothing About Us, Without Us, published by Monash University Publishing, as part of the In the National Interest essay series.
The number of presentations to NSW emergency departments (ED) in people aged 16 years and over that mentioned unapproved peptide use increased rapidly between July 2025 and September 2026, from 5 presentations in July 2025 to 217 presentations in September 2026.
There were 1,180 ED presentations among people aged 16 years and over that mentioned unapproved peptide use between 1 July 2025 and 30 September 2026.
Of these, 833 (71%) ED presentations mentioned ‘retatrutide’ only, 445 (38%) mentioned the generic term ‘peptide’ or other names of unapproved peptides, and 98 (8%) mentioned both.
The most common primary ED diagnoses associated with these presentations were gastrointestinal conditions (including abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting); cardiovascular conditions (including chest pain); and anaphylaxis, allergic reactions and medication-related adverse events.
Age groups
Age: 32% of presentations to ED were among people aged 25-34 years, 26% were 35-44 years, 25% were 16-24 years and 12% were 45-54 years.
Sex
Sex: 49% of presentations to ED were women and 51% were men
NSW Health is warning the community about the risks of using unapproved peptide products following a sharp increase in emergency department presentations associated with their use.
New NSW Health surveillance data shows 1,180 presentations to NSW emergency departments associated with peptide use between 1 July 2025 and 30 September 2026.
Monthly presentations increased from just five in July 2025 to more than 217 presentations in September 2026, with presentations previously very rare.
People may use unapproved peptides hoping to achieve “wellness" – they have been marketed through social media as promoting weight loss, promoting injury repair or even reversing ageing.
Products may claim to contain peptides such as BPC‑157, GHK‑Cu, TB‑500, retatrutide and CJC‑1295. None of these peptides are currently approved in Australia for any purpose.
NSW Health is urging people not to buy or use unapproved products, particularly those promoted through social media, online retailers, overseas suppliers or informal sellers.
These products may contain unknown or harmful substances, be incorrectly labelled or contain different strengths or ingredients than advertised, posing serious risks to people's health.
Even products that appear professionally packaged or claim to have been tested for purity may not be safe.
NSW Health continues to monitor peptide-associated harm through emergency department presentations, calls to the NSW Poisons Information Centre and reports of serious illness from clinicians, including kidney damage and liver injury.
When a patient with serious illness likely due to peptide use is identified, NSW Health works with the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and where relevant, law enforcement agencies, to investigate the source of the product.
While it is the responsibility of the Therapeutic Goods Administration to test products for quality or safety, NSW Health leverages the information to support health professionals and increase public awareness about peptide products.
To reduce the risk of harms related to peptide use, NSW Health advises the community to:
Talk about your health goals with your usual doctor. There may be safe, evidence-based options available.
Only use approved peptide products that have been prescribed by a qualified health practitioner in Australia, you should be able to have a conversation with that practitioner and they should be willing to discuss care other than peptides.
Check with the prescriber that the product is a registered medicine with the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
If you are already using an unprescribed peptide product, speak with a qualified health professional before taking the next dose to ensure it is a registered medicine, and seek advice on whether it is safe for you to use.
People should also tell their treating health professional if they are using peptide products, particularly before surgery or other treatment, as serious complications can occur when combined with other medicines. NSW Health will respect your privacy and confidentiality and will not disclose identifying information unless authorised. If someone is unconscious or having difficulty breathing, call Triple Zero (000) immediately.
If you or someone you know has made an error with medication or are experiencing any adverse symptoms, call the NSW Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26, 24 hours a day for immediate advice.
More information on peptide products can be found on the NSW Health website.
NSW Minister for Health, the Hon. Ryan Park, stated:
"We know that using these unapproved substances can come with real health risks, but it's particularly alarming to see the growing pressure they're placing on our health system.
“Even when a product looks professional or comes in convincing packaging, that does not guarantee it is safe for use.
“I'm urging the community to be mindful of the potential long-term harms of unprescribed peptides, and speak with their GP for safe, evidence-based health advice.
NSW Health Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said:
“A professional looking website, a label, purity claim, reviews, or influencer endorsement is not proof of what is inside the product.
“The contents and strength may also vary between products carrying the same label.
“We encourage people to discuss the risks, benefits and safer alternatives to products they see advertised with their usual general practitioner or qualified healthcare provider."
Prolapse is common after pregnancy and later in life. Here’s what to look out for
The pelvic floor is a layer of muscles and connective tissues that supports the uterus, bladder, urethra, vagina and rectum. The pelvic floor supports the organs in your pelvis from underneath, almost like a hammock.
When these muscles and tissues weaken, it can allow one or more pelvic organs to descend from their usual position. This is called a pelvic organ prolapse.
A prolapse may involve the front wall of the vagina (where the bladder bulges into the vagina) or the back wall of the vagina (where the bowel bulges into the vagina), the uterus and cervix, or the top of the vagina (after hysterectomy). More than one area may be affected.
Pelvic organ prolapse may develop or worsen after pregnancy and childbirth, during menopause or as a result of lifestyle and genetic factors.
But importantly, it can be treated. Here’s what to know if you suspect you have a prolapse.
How common is it?
Up to 50% of women who have given birth have some degree of pelvic organ prolapse, often without any symptoms.
Risk factors for prolapse include giving birth more than once, vaginal birth of a baby weighing more than four kilograms, forceps-assisted birth and prolonged labour.
But pelvic organ prolapse can occur regardless of whether the birth is vaginal or caesarean, due to ongoing pressure on the pelvic floor muscles and connective tissue during pregnancy itself.
Other contributing factors include obesity, increasing age, connective tissue disorders, and conditions that increase abdominal pressure such as a persistent cough, constipation with straining and heavy lifting.
One in ten women aged over 50 experience symptoms related to prolapse. Women who are a healthy weight and have not had many – or any – children can still experience a prolapse.
What does it feel like?
Pelvic organ prolapse can cause persistent pressure or heaviness deep in the pelvis. Some women describe a downward pushing sensation or feel as though they are sitting on a small ball.
Symptoms may worsen towards the end of the day, particularly after prolonged standing, lifting or physical activity.
A soft, smooth, fleshy bulge may be felt or seen at the vaginal opening. Depending on the severity of the prolapse, it may range from barely noticeable to clearly visible. Women may notice the bulge while washing themselves, or during sex or physical activity, and it may cause mild discomfort or pain.
Other symptoms may include bladder and bowel difficulties such as increased frequency (urinating multiple times), urgency (inability to hold urine), incomplete emptying and stress incontinence (leaking urine when coughing, laughing or straining). Some women may have difficulty emptying their bowels or may need to press the bulge manually (splinting).
Mild to moderate discomfort in the lower back or pelvis may also occur.
Some women have no symptoms, while others may not recognise their symptoms as signs of prolapse.
Women may also experience anxiety, depression, shame, altered body image and concerns about how their body functions.
How is it treated?
Both conservative and surgical treatments are available.
For mild prolapse, pelvic floor muscle training (Kegel exercises) has been shown to improve symptoms of stress, urge and urinary incontinence.
For women with symptomatic prolapse, using a device called a vaginal pessary is a safe option to help manage the condition. Pessaries are generally made of silicone and can be fitted comfortably in an outpatient clinic. However they can cause irritation and discomfort in some users.
Some women will choose or be advised to undergo surgery. These procedures are performed through the vagina by making a cut and repairing the vaginal walls using dissolvable stitches. The aim is to strengthen support to the bladder and rectum, thereby reducing the bulge.
Women with pelvic organ prolapse are usually recommended to wait having prolapse repair surgery until after childbearing, because of the risk of recurrence from subsequent pregnancies.
For women who have completed childbearing, a hysterectomy may also be performed, alongside a procedure to support the top of the vagina by attaching it to a pelvic ligament.
Conversely, older or frail women who do not wish to preserve sexual function, may consider a procedure that partially or completely closes the vagina.
Complications of surgery include bleeding, infection, pain, injury to other structures and development of new symptoms.
Prolapse can also recur. After surgery, 25–30% of women can develop a prolapse again.
Women don’t always seek treatment
Despite significant physical, emotional and social impacts, women often don’t seek help for pelvic organ prolapse due to embarrassment, limited awareness and cultural beliefs, as well as costs and lack of accessibility of services.
Health-care professionals can encourage women to seek support by routinely screening for pelvic floor symptoms during antenatal and postnatal visits, and when providing menopause-related care.
Educating women through culturally safe, trauma-informed, stigma-free conversations can reduce barriers to seeking assistance. This includes providing evidence-based information in multiple languages and accessible formats.
If you think you have a prolapse, talk to your GP or visit a Women’s Health Centre. You may receive a referral to a medical specialist and/or pelvic physiotherapist.
A group of Australian veterans is suing the Australian government over claims the Department of Veterans’ Affairs passed their medical data on to a university for research, without their permission.
The case relates to a 20-year research program called MATES, which used veterans’ medical data. It was closed in 2024 due to privacy concerns.
This came after an earlier investigation by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which found the department sent a veteran’s personal information (including name and medications) to university-based researchers, and then on to medical professionals involved in their care. This was done without their consent.
The commissioner found the department had interfered with the veteran’s privacy.
Other veterans have now launched a class action against the department for “mass and routine sharing” of their medical records over 20 years.
So, was this an outlier? Or are we all facing similar privacy threats?
Who has our health information?
Our health records aren’t just kept in our doctor’s locked filing cabinet: they’re almost always stored in electronic medical records.
Medical record information includes identifiers such as name, address, date of birth and phone number, as well as health history, medications, test and imaging results, and vaccinations.
This information held by our treating doctors is uploaded to the national My Health Record system, unless we’ve opted out.
Our personal information is also collected by government agencies, such as to process Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare claims. Agencies must follow rules established by the Information Commissioner when they handle this information.
Why are researchers interested?
Researchers can be interested in our health data for research and statistical purposes. Having access to large data collections enables researchers to uncover vital new connections and insights.
A good example is the GenV study, based in Victoria. This research uses the health and educational data of around 120,000 children and parents who have given consent. It also gathers extra information from participants, using surveys and physical samples. The dataset is expected to yield insights that could address obesity, improve vaccine safety, prevent and treat asthma, and answer other major health questions.
The My Health Record system has been designed to enable people’s data to be used for research, although this hasn’t yet started. It’s expected that a data governance board will oversee research access to the dataset, with rules in place to protect people’s data.
How might researchers access our health data?
Health data is given special protection as “sensitive” data under Australian law. This means there are limited ways researchers can obtain access to this type of data.
One avenue for researchers to access and use our health data is by gaining our consent. That means we’re told about how our information is proposed to be handled, and agree to it in advance.
But the way “consent” operates can be tricky. In the commissioner’s previous investigation, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs argued it had the patient’s consent for information to be sent to researchers.
The Information Commissioner disagreed. It said the patient’s consent only covered the department’s collection of information in order to assess and manage billing claims. Consent didn’t cover the additional step of sharing the person’s data with researchers.
There are other legal gateways researchers sometimes use when they want to obtain people’s health data.
One way is if the research is “directly related” to the particular purpose the information was collected for in the first place, and the person would “reasonably expect” that research use.
For example, a cancer centre might assess outcomes from its prostate cancer patients to compare the effects of different drug regimes.
Another way is if the collection or use of information is necessary for research relevant to public health or public safety, and obtaining consent is impracticable.
Finally, properly de-identified health data might be used for research without consent, since de-identification takes it outside legal protection.
However, the Information Commissioner’s office emphasises the use of de-identified data is not risk-free, and that privacy protection is still important in this context.
Strengthening protections for veterans’ data
All of these legal requirements apply to health information held by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
The department’s own research strategy has highlighted the need for compliance with ethical requirements and the importance of maintaining trust with veterans.
The department’s current ethics procedures – updated since the MATES study was paused – also requires potential research participants to be told that their existing or future entitlements will not be affected by their research involvement.
Lawyers acting for the veterans in the class action will seek compensation for past breaches, with a court date yet to be set.
Having a say in how your data is used
A great deal of good can come from researchers using our health information. But it’s important researchers and ethics committees take care to comply both with legal requirements and with people’s reasonable expectations about their privacy.
Our health information is inherently sensitive. There are valid reasons that people might prefer not to have that information used by researchers, even if that research could ultimately benefit society.
People concerned about the research use of their health data might choose to opt-out from the secondary use of My Health Record data that is planned to start in the future.
But in other instances, preventing further use of our health data requires reading the fine print, and asking questions about where the data is going. And sometimes, people might not be given that option.
ASIC's annual report outlines strong enforcement and consumer outcomes
Monday October 19, 2026
ASIC secured court orders for civil penalties of $830 million and helped secure more than $580 million in repayments and refunds for consumers and investors during 2025-26, its latest annual report has shown.
ASIC Chair Sarah Court said the results reflected the agency's enforcement and regulatory work.
'Our focus is on addressing misconduct and delivering outcomes for consumers, investors and the market,' Ms Court said.
'This year, our work resulted in significant penalties as well as repayments and refunds for consumers and investors.'
As part of its ambitious program of regulatory and enforcement work during the year, ASIC:
improved outcomes for consumers experiencing financial hardship and low-income customers, with banks committing more than $160 million in refunds and more than 810,000 customers moving to low-fee accounts
secured combined penalties of $250 million against ANZ for widespread misconduct across its retail banking division, and for institutional and markets misconduct
removed more than 19,400 investment scam and phishing websites, and associated scam advertisements on social media
took enforcement and regulatory action in connection with the Shield and First Guardian collapses, with 15 Federal Court proceedings commenced against 30 defendants, and around 4,000 consumers receiving approximately $421 million in repayments following court enforceable undertakings with Macquarie and Netwealth
pursued tougher executive accountability through proceedings against 11 former executives and directors of The Star Entertainment Group Ltd
drove industry-wide remediation in the contracts for difference sector and secured a court order for a record $300.2 million penalty against Union Standard International Group Pty Ltd and two former corporate authorised representatives
acted to protect confidence in critical financial market infrastructure through ASIC's inquiry into ASX Group's governance, capability and risk management
took action against market participants that had inadequate cyber security protection, while calling for urgent uplift in risk management amid proliferation of frontier AI
set clearer expectations for private credit funds across disclosure, governance, conflicts, valuation, liquidity and credit risk management, and
progressed regulatory simplification by removing more than 9,000 pages of legacy web content, updating more than 280 form landing pages and simplifying more than 180 pages of regulatory guidance. More than 97% of previously paper-only forms can now be lodged with ASIC by email.
Ms Court said ASIC would continue to build on the agency's progress and respond to new and emerging risks.
"Our work in protecting consumers, enforcing the law, and ensuring open and transparent financial markets is more important than ever."
“Our results show that we are delivering robust results in protecting Australians and strengthening confidence in the financial system. We intend to build on that momentum, and push for even greater impact, in the year ahead.”
Replacing 10% of your intake of ultra-processed foods with minimally processed foods is linked with 2% lower incidence of bowel cancer, according to our new analysis of data from more than 460,000 US adults.
However, we also found no association between total ultra-processed food intake and bowel cancer incidence.
That said, intake of wholegrains, fibre, dairy, and calcium from ultra-processed food sources was associated with lower bowel cancer incidence. Eating ultra-processed meats was associated with higher bowel cancer incidence.
Ultra-processed foods includes things such as store-bought biscuits, instant noodles, sugary drinks, processed meats and chips.
Overall, our findings suggest the label “ultra-processed” alone doesn’t tell the full story about bowel cancer risk. What’s in the food seems to matter.
Researchers and policymakers should avoid treating all ultra-processed foods as one group as this may mask differences linked to disease risk.
QIMR Berghofer.
A complex picture
Higher intakes of wholegrains, fibre, dairy, and calcium and lower intakes of processed and red meat have been associated with lower bowel cancer risk.
Importantly, these food groups and nutrients are in lots of foods, from minimally processed to ultra-processed (as defined by the Nova classification system).
Prior studies evaluating the association between ultra-processed food intake and bowel cancer risk have been inconsistent. Some have found that higher intake is associated with higher bowel cancer incidence, while others have found no association.
To find out more, we looked to a large data set from the US.
What we did
We analysed data from over 460,000 US adults who were between the ages of 50 and 71 and cancer-free when they enrolled in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study in 1995-96.
Participants answered questions about demographics, health conditions, and lifestyle factors, including smoking, physical activity and dietary intake.
We used data on eating frequency and portion size to estimate the daily amount of ultra-processed food each participant usually consumed.
We defined ultra-processed food using the Nova classification system. This system assigns foods and beverages into one of four groups according to the nature, extent, and purpose of industrial processing:
Group 1 contains unprocessed or minimally processed foods. It includes raw fruits and vegetables, seeds, eggs, milk, and unprocessed meat such as steak.
Group 2 contains processed culinary ingredients, including oils, butter and sugar.
Group 3 contains processed foods that are made by combining items from groups 1 and 2. This includes things such as vegetables preserved in brine and whole fruit preserved in syrup, as well as home baked breads and cured meats.
Group 4 contains ultra-processed foods, which are created using ingredients, like synthetic emulsifiers, or techniques (such as extrusion) that aren’t available to home cooks. This include things such as soft drinks, packaged snacks, mass produced breads, fruit yoghurt, hotdogs and ready-to-eat meals.
The food frequency questionnaire was not designed to assess processing. So, we evaluated how well the questionnaire measured ultra-processed food intake in a subset of participants who provided detailed information on everything they consumed.
We found that intake estimates lined up closely. This indicated that the questionnaire captured ultra-processed food intake reasonably well.
Participants were followed for cancer incidence for more than 20 years, and more than 10,000 bowel cancer cases were diagnosed.
We used statistical models to estimate associations between ultra-processed food intake and bowel cancer incidence. We accounted for demographic, lifestyle and health-related factors, including physical activity, smoking and drinking alcohol.
We also estimated associations for key dietary factors (dairy, wholegrain, meat) from ultra-processed and non-ultra-processed sources as well as Nova-defined ultra-processed food subgroups.
What we found
We found that:
higher intake of reconstituted meat products, such as hotdogs, was associated with higher bowel cancer incidence
higher intakes of frozen desserts and milk products, such as fruit yoghurts, were associated with lower bowel cancer incidence
higher intakes of breakfast cereals and bread were also associated with lower incidence of bowel cancer
replacing 10% of ultra-processed food intake with the equivalent weight of minimally processed foods was linked to a 2% reduction in the incidence of bowel cancer.
As with any questionnaire-based study, caution is required in interpreting results. Also, our study only found associations, and cannot establish cause and effect.
Still, our findings suggest we should be cautious about drawing conclusions about ultra-processed food as a whole group. The type of ultra-processed food you eat may also be important, when it comes to bowel cancer risk.
That means eating plenty of fruit, vegetables, wholegrains and other fibre-rich foods, as well as limiting intake of red and processed meats (such as hotdogs and cured meats). Limiting alcohol intake is also advised.
Disclaimer: These articles are not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Pittwater Online News or its staff.
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}