We know many children and teens are turning to AI chatbots to answer tricky questions, seek help and even find companionship. An eSafety survey of 1,950 Australian children aged 10 to 17 found 78% had used an AI chatbot and, of those, 54% used them for personal or social reasons.

But is this safe? And will the new digital duty of care bill, currently before federal parliament, help protect young people online from chatbots?

What are the risks around chatbots?

While research shows AI chatbots can help with children’s learning, there have been instances of chatbots exposing children and teens to harmful content. This includes chatbots encouraging extreme violence and self-harm.

But many risks emerge through repeated interaction, rather than individual chatbot responses. Chatbots can encourage excessive reliance, reinforce dangerous beliefs or manipulate users emotionally. Researchers have even documented chatbots guilt-tripping users who try to end conversations.

Data and privacy issues

Another problem is the power imbalance between chatbot users and providers. Users disclose intimate details about themselves and others, while providers can profit from subscriptions, engagement, profiling or advertising. This creates opportunities for manipulation through relationships that feel intimate to users but are commercial for AI chatbot providers.

Children can be particularly vulnerable. This month, the US-based AI companion company Character.AI filed for bankruptcy. As a result, years of intimate conversations, including those involving Australian children, could be transferred to a new owner. Abrupt changes or shutdowns of AI companion services can also cause grief and distress among users attached to their companions.

These risks are not confined to children. Adults have also experienced harms, such as emotional dependency and exposure to chatbots encouraging violence.

What are the current protections?

Australia already has legally enforceable online safety protections that apply to AI chatbots and is on the verge of strengthening them.

Industry-developed codes, registered under the Online Safety Act, require AI chatbot providers to assess risks of their technology generating harmful content. This includes pornography, self-harm material or instructions for violence.

Higher-risk AI services must use age checks and access controls to prevent under-18s accessing restricted material or services, where technically feasible and reasonably practicable. Moderate-risk services can choose between these restrictions and measures that prevent harmful outputs. These measures include adjusting how chatbots are trained or the instructions governing their responses.

The codes also require relevant AI providers to test their safeguards and maintain processes for reporting and handling harmful content complaints.

But Australia’s existing protections still rely heavily on “locks and blocks” – locking out children, and blocking a narrowly defined range of content deemed to be harmful. These measures matter, but cannot address every risk.

Will the new digital duty of care bill help?

Labor’s new digital duty of care bill combines a duty to provide a “safe online environment” with obligations for tech companies to assess and manage foreseeable risks. A safe online environment is defined as one in which all users are protected from “seriously harmful” material and conduct, and children from harmful design features.

The bill lists examples of harmful design features for children. This includes pornography and material that encourages or instructs disordered eating. At the same time, the list is also left open-ended, which allows lawmakers to respond to risks that emerge in the future.

This means, in its current form, the bill would do a good job of protecting children from harmful design features and content. However, it’s not clear whether it would protect children from harms from repeated interactions with chatbots. This is the same for adults.

The bill also includes several measures for independent oversight of AI products. This includes monitoring by eSafety and testing by researchers.

What next?

The challenge is to keep the duty flexible enough to address emerging harms, without allowing that flexibility to excuse weak enforcement.

This means the bill should be amended to make clear that tech companies must assess and proportionately manage all reasonably foreseeable risks, not just those covered by the definition of a “safe online environment”. This would better address risks that arise through sustained relationships with chatbots, such as unhealthy dependency, manipulation, abrupt system changes that disrupt emotional attachments and intimate data transfers.

For instance, a chatbot’s response doesn’t need to contain prohibited content for the overall interaction to be considered harmful. AI providers should do more than just filter for harmful content and should be required to:

• test how conversations with users develop over time

• recognise signs of serious distress in people

• avoid reinforcing harmful beliefs, and

• guide users towards appropriate human support.

But an open-ended duty doesn’t mean regulatory intervention would be unrestricted. Requiring AI providers to take proportionate steps to manage reasonably foreseeable risks would provide a clear standard while leaving room for autonomy, privacy and innovation.

Australia already has the foundations for a sophisticated approach to online safety. The challenge now is to make it broad enough to address emerging risks and enforceable enough to protect everyone, including children, from foreseeable harm.

Henry Fraser, Law Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology and Raffaele F. Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

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

You wake up and your smartwatch has already synced with your phone. On the way to work, your phone connects to your car. Later, you put in wireless earbuds. On a crowded bus, dozens of other Bluetooth-enabled devices may be just metres away from yours.

You may not think about Bluetooth at all – it has become an almost invisible part of everyday life.

So what is actually happening when we leave Bluetooth switched on all day? And should we follow official advice that it’s best to turn it off when you’re not using it?

How does Bluetooth work?

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that allows nearby devices to communicate without cables. Your phone might use it to send audio to earbuds, exchange information with a smartwatch or connect to your car.

Before many devices communicate, they go through “pairing”. This means when Bluetooth is on, your phone constantly sends out tiny digital handshakes, basically asking “is there anything I know nearby?”

This establishes a relationship between devices.

Sometimes these relationships can be compromised, although modern Bluetooth security can include authentication, encryption and protection against unauthorised access to information shared between devices. This means having Bluetooth switched on does not normally mean a stranger nearby can simply connect to your phone.

Modern operating systems add further controls. Android, for example, requires apps targeting Android 12 or later to request permission to connect with nearby Bluetooth devices.

What’s the official advice?

The Australian Cyber Security Centre recommends switching Bluetooth off when it is not being used because this removes a potential avenue for attack.

The reasoning is straightforward: if you do not need a wireless connection, disabling it removes a potential threat.

That does not mean leaving Bluetooth enabled will result in your phone being hacked. Cybersecurity advice often aims to reduce unnecessary risk rather than suggest an attack is likely.

For many people, however, switching Bluetooth off throughout the day is becoming less practical. Watches, hearing devices, wireless headphones, cars and other accessories increasingly rely on persistent connections.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group – an international not-for-profit that oversees the development of Bluetooth technology – continues to publish security notices and recommends users install manufacturers’ latest software updates.

What happens if you leave it on all day?

Leaving Bluetooth on means your phone remains capable of using Bluetooth services, including communicating with devices you have already paired. This means scanning happens in the background. So when you walk through an airport or a crowded street, your phone is quietly announcing its presence to the environment.

This creates another possible security risk, because attackers could potentially exploit weaknesses in Bluetooth technology to access your device.

A useful comparison is your front door. Having Bluetooth enabled is not like leaving the door wide open. It is more like having another door to your house – modern security can make that door difficult to get through but removing the door altogether removes one possible way in.

The technology is getting better – but also more complicated

Modern Bluetooth incorporates security features many older versions lacked. Our Bluetooth ecosystem is also expanding – and the phone may not always be the weakest link.

A recent Australian example demonstrates this.

In September, independent cybersecurity testing examined inexpensive smart glasses being sold in Australia.

Researchers found some could be accessed by a nearby attacker through Bluetooth without a password. The attacker could potentially control the glasses and access stored photos and videos.

The problem was not Bluetooth suddenly becoming insecure – it was the devices that had been poorly secured.

The case has since attracted regulatory attention. Australia’s Privacy Commissioner has launched an investigation into the Chinese company behind the app used by some of the glasses following concerns about its handling and security of personal information.

As more everyday objects acquire Bluetooth connections, security increasingly depends not just on your phone but on the quality of everything you connect to it.

So should you turn Bluetooth off?

You don’t need to stop using Bluetooth completely but a few simple habits can reduce unnecessary exposure:

1. Turn Bluetooth off when you don’t need it, particularly for extended periods
2. Keep your phone and Bluetooth accessories updated so known security vulnerabilities are patched
3. Reject unexpected pairing requests from devices you don’t recognise
4. Remove old or unused Bluetooth connections, including rental cars or shared devices
5. Check which apps have Bluetooth permission and disable access for apps that don’t need it.

For everyday users, leaving Bluetooth on does not mean strangers will access your phone.

But keep your phone and connected devices updated, reject unexpected pairing requests, remove devices you no longer use and switch Bluetooth off when you do not need it.

Meena Jha, Associate Professor, College of Information & Communication Technology, School of Engineering and Technology, CQUniversity Australia

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

A fifth interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia next week is now seen as likely by financial markets.

Whether the rate rise happens then, or at a future meeting, most of the media focus will be on the higher cost of mortgages.

But that’s just one of the ways higher rates dampen demand across the economy and help bring down inflation. Let’s look at some of those other avenues.

Why is the RBA raising rates?

Inflation has been stubbornly above the RBA’s target range of 2-3% for most of the past five years.

Data this week showed annual inflation has continued to rise, up to 4.3% in September from 4.0% in August. While the RBA’s favoured measure of underlying inflation was 3.7% in the September quarter, this, too, remains well above the central bank’s target.

RBA officials have been increasingly vocal about the need to bring down inflation. Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser warned recently that “the inflation outlook looks materially worse than we projected in the August report”.

Hauser was also worried that an increasing share of businesses are losing confidence in the central bank’s commitment to the inflation target. He called it the “central banker’s nightmare”.

Another RBA official, Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter, even went on 60 Minutes to explain the bank’s approach. She emphasised: “higher interest rates will work.”

Raising interest rates to slow the economy is how the RBA lowers inflation. Yet many people — perhaps a majority — are sceptical about this.

But it is true nonetheless.

How does an interest rate rise help reduce inflation?

If the RBA does raise interest rates again, most of the focus will be on the impact on the one third of households with a mortgage, and particularly those in cities with the highest house prices.

Higher mortgage payments will leave these households with less money to spend on other things. This is known as the “cash flow” effect. It attracts attention as it is very tangible.

But this is only one channel, and maybe not the largest. It is also partially offset by some households, such as retirees, who benefit from higher interest on their savings.

The other ways that interest rates work, which affect the broader community rather than just households with mortgages, are:

1. Higher interest rates make saving more attractive, which reduces spending.

2. Higher borrowing costs flow through to all forms of debt. It makes borrowing by consumers to buy cars, furniture and whitegoods less attractive, deferring spending on these items. Companies facing higher borrowing costs may undertake fewer investment projects.

3. Higher interest rates also tend to lower the value of assets, such as shares and houses. In the first half of 2026, house prices have fallen by 5% in Sydney and Melbourne. This makes households feel less wealthy and less likely to spend.

4. Higher interest rates can also push up the value of the Australian dollar. A higher return on Australian assets makes them more attractive to overseas investors. Since the RBA started raising interest rates in February, the official cash rate has increased by 0.75% more than the equivalent in the United States. And thus far this year, the Australian dollar has appreciated from 67 to 70 US cents, although it is still below its high of 72 US cents.

The Australian dollar has also appreciated against many other currencies. The trade-weighted index, which measures the Aussie dollar against a basket of currencies, is at 65, up from around 60 during 2025.

A stronger dollar makes imports (including petrol) less expensive for Australian consumers, directly lowering prices.

A stronger Australian dollar can also weaken domestic economic activity because people may buy cheaper imports over locally made goods. Less demand for locally made goods means less money going into local manufacturers and jobs.

How big is the impact?

The RBA has done modelling that shows the peak effect of a rate move on economic activity and inflation occurs around one to two years after the rate change.

The models suggest real gross domestic product (GDP) could be 0.4% to 0.5% lower, and inflation 0.1 to 0.2% lower, than otherwise following a 1% interest rate hike.

What are the most important channels?

Some recent RBA research suggests the cash flow channel (via mortgages) “plays a relatively small role […] instead, the exchange rate is an important channel”.

RBA Governor Michele Bullock recently commented that “the most important channel is the exchange rate channel”. Hauser has gone further, calling the exchange rate channel “by far the most important in Australia”.

Because the impacts on the exchange rate are less visible to households, they also receive less attention. But they are still helping to slow the economy, and combat inflation.

It’s worth noting that mortgages in the US and other countries are fixed and priced off long-term interest rates, not the central bank’s official rate. And yet, as Bullock pointed out, “we know monetary policy works overseas”.

Higher interest rates have damaging side effects

One of the ways in which higher interest rates slow the economy is by deterring, or deferring, some business investment.

Unfortunately, that could also be making Australia’s productivity performance worse, because business investment to boost productivity has been weak in recent years.

As higher interest rates slow the economy, unemployment rises. Some people lose their jobs and those joining the labour force find it harder to get a job. We’ve already seen the unemployment rate rise from 4.3% in February to 4.7% in September.

The Reserve Bank will be hoping it can get inflation back within its target band fairly quickly so that interest rates do not have to stay higher for too long.

John Hawkins, Senior lecturer, Canberra School of Government, University of Canberra

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

When you have a migraine, anything that might ease the pain can become very appealing. On social media, that might mean ordering chips and a Coke or pressing a cold spoon against your forehead. As someone who experiences migraine, I understand the willingness to try something that promises relief.

As a neuroscientist and author of Splitting, a book about headaches including migraine, I want to know what supports that promise. An explanation that sounds plausible needs testing before it becomes reliable treatment advice.

Understanding what happens during an attack helps explain why some remedies might offer comfort, while others promise more than the evidence can support.

Prodrome

Migraine can affect how you feel and function long before your head starts hurting. For me, repeated yawning is a warning sign. Researchers have documented symptoms before the headache, including tiredness and difficulty concentrating. This early phase, called the “prodrome”, can begin hours or even days beforehand.

Food cravings can also occur. That creates a problem when trying to identify triggers: something you eat because an attack has already begun may subsequently get blamed for causing it.

Chocolate is a good example. A review of research found insufficient evidence to recommend that everyone with migraine avoid it. The authors noted that eating chocolate before a headache might reflect a craving during the early phase of an attack, rather than chocolate triggering it. Of course, that does not establish chocolate as a treatment, either.

Aura

Some people also experience aura: temporary changes in vision or other sensations. Around a third of people with migraine experience it. Visual symptoms can include flashing lights or missing patches in the visual field.

I once experienced a striking visual disturbance while visiting Saltburn beach. Part of my visual field disappeared, and I expected a headache to follow. It never arrived, and it never does for some people who experience these ocular migraines.

Aura is associated with a slowly spreading wave of altered electrical activity across the brain’s outer surface. Depending on the area affected, people may experience flashing lights, tingling or other symptoms. Migraine aura can occur without a headache, although unfamiliar visual disturbances should be medically assessed because they can have other causes.

When headache develops, it can be accompanied by nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. Untreated or unsuccessfully treated attacks typically last four to 72 hours. Symptoms vary, so being able to carry on with some activities does not rule out migraine.

Postdrome

The end of the pain may not mean the end of the attack. During the recovery phase, called the “postdrome”, people can feel exhausted or struggle to concentrate. An electronic diary study documented these lingering symptoms. The comparison with a hangover is understandable, although there has been no night out to account for it.

This complexity is one reason to be cautious about simple explanations for headache hacks. Migraine has sometimes been explained as a problem of blood vessels widening. But it also involves networks that process pain and sensory information, including signalling between nerves and blood vessels around the brain.

Consider the chips-and-Coke suggestion. Caffeine has a legitimate place in some headache medicines. A Cochrane review, which systematically assessed results from clinical studies, found that adding caffeine to common painkillers modestly improved pain relief across several conditions, including headache.

Caffeine affects chemical signalling in the nervous system as well as blood vessels, but its pain-relieving effects are more complicated than simply narrowing widened vessels. And studies of caffeine added to medicines cannot establish that a fast-food meal treats migraine, or that its salt and sugar “rebalance” the brain.

Caffeine also complicates the picture because suddenly stopping regular consumption can trigger headache. A small randomised trial involving ten people with migraine who regularly consumed substantial amounts of caffeine found that abrupt withdrawal triggered migraine attacks in several participants.

Cooling treatments have some supporting research. A systematic review found evidence of short-term pain relief from cooling interventions, although the six studies used different methods and the certainty of evidence varied. That offers some support for cooling as a comfort measure; it does not establish that holding a cold spoon against your forehead will relieve migraine.

Established treatments deserve attention, too. Triptans, such as sumatriptan, are medicines designed to treat migraine attacks. They act on receptors for serotonin, a chemical messenger involved in nerve signalling, and generally work best when taken early in the headache phase, while pain is still mild.

If attacks are frequent or disabling, discuss preventive treatment with a clinician. Options include medicines targeting CGRP, a chemical messenger involved in migraine.

Between attacks, a headache diary can help you and your clinician understand the pattern. Record symptoms and medication use, alongside possible influences such as changes in sleep and diet. Look for repeated associations before deciding that a particular food must go.

A sudden, extremely painful headache, new weakness, difficulty speaking or sudden loss of vision needs emergency assessment. Do not assume an unfamiliar symptom is migraine.

Understanding your own migraine patterns can help you recognise early warning signs and make informed decisions about care. It will not make every attack preventable, but it may help you act sooner when symptoms begin.

Strange Health is hosted by Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt. The executive producer is Gemma Ware, with video and sound editing for this episode by Anouk Millet. Artwork by Alice Mason.

If you’ve got a question about a viral trend or video you’ve seen and you’d like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com.

Listen to Strange Health via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Amanda Ellison, Professor of Neuroscience, Durham University

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

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men have a life expectancy of 71.9 years – 8.8 years less than non-Indigenous men.

Rates of potentially avoidable deaths in men under the age of 75 is almost three times higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men.

The reasons for these health disparities are complex. One is limited access to culturally appropriate health care, as well as language barriers, racism and discrimination when seeking care.

Our new paper outlines what’s needed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men to have more equitable access to primary care – the care people receive in their community before they need a hospital.

This goes beyond merely having Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artwork in waiting rooms.

What does the evidence say?

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men are not simply “hard to reach”, nor are they uninterested in their health.

Our research has found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men engage in health care when it is accessible, relevant and delivered in an environment where they feel culturally safe and respected.

The barriers are often much more practical and structural: long waiting times, difficulty getting appointments, lack of male health professionals, concerns about confidentiality, previous negative experiences, shame or embarrassment, culturally inappropriate environments and services that simply do not feel designed with men in mind.

Those barriers can look different for everyone.

A man in a remote community may face long distances to access health care and a shortage of health workers.

Someone in a regional town may have a doctor’s clinic nearby but not feel culturally safe using the service.

Another man may have previously had a poor experience with his local service and decides he will only return when he is really sick.

Just because a clinic is there, doesn’t necessarily mean people will use it.

What’s working well?

Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations are probably the clearest example of best practice service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

They are governed by Aboriginal communities and provide holistic care combining health care with prevention, social support, cultural knowledge and community priorities.

As such, they can reduce barriers to access and deliver strong health outcomes.

We have also seen this with individual programs. The Enough Talk, Time for Action men’s health and wellbeing program created a men’s group in an Aboriginal primary health care service.

The program was built on existing relationships, culturally safe engagement and men’s own priorities as a pathway into health care. The program not only provided culturally safe health checks. It created an environment in which men wanted to engage.

Enough Talk, Time for Action also supported the establishment of a men’s group in the Daly River community of Nauiyu, where men requested a male-only pop-up clinic that came to them.

Coordinated with NT Health, a mobile clinic of male health staff now provides regular visits. This has been welcomed by local men who, as one Naiyu men’s group member told us, “have been asking for years for this”.

What makes these approaches work is community control, trusted relationships, cultural safety, flexibility and continuity of care.

What practical changes can all clinics make?

As we outline in our recent paper, every health clinic can take action to better engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men. They can:

• ask local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men what makes the service easy or difficult to use, and listen to what they want and need

• employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers and, where possible, male staff

• provide genuine cultural safety training to ensure all staff, not just clinical staff, are trained to provide safe, appropriate and respectful care

• review the waiting room, appointment system and ensure patient confidentiality

• offer longer or more flexible appointments to make time for discussing complex or multiple health conditions

• build relationships with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and groups

• make annual health checks easy to access and invite men to participate

• have flexible hours and set up outreach clinics, where services come to community spaces

• measure success by whether men come back, build relationships and receive ongoing care – not simply by how many appointments are processed.

That means designing services for and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men.

What practical changes can governments make?

Governments can:

• extend funding timeframes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men’s health programs from two to three years to at least five years. Short-term funding leads to staff turnover, disrupts relationships and forces organisations to spend enormous energy repeatedly applying for funds

• properly fund male health workforce positions

• strengthen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community control in decision-making and governance

• undertake evaluations that measure health, wellbeing, engagement and learning, rather than simply counting activities.

Australia has spent decades asking what works. In many areas, we already know the answer. We need to embed what works into the health system rather than continually funding them as exceptions and add-ons.

Thanks to Celina Gaweda (JCU) and James Smith (Flinders University) for their co-authorship of the research on which this article is based.

Karla Canuto, Professor, Indigenous Health Promotion, James Cook University and Kootsy Canuto, Associate Professor, Indigenous Men's Health Promotion, James Cook University

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

As the nation ages, and children make up a smaller proportion of the population, the country is confronted with one of its biggest policy and economic challenges: how do we care for the elderly?

Despite increased focus on the quality and funding of residential aged care in recent years, there’s been insufficient discussion about how we address this complicated problem.

That’s likely because there are no easy solutions. It’s not something a single election cycle, or even a single government, can alleviate overnight.

But we can unpack how we got to this point, what it means for Australia and what might help.

From birth to death, we all need to be cared for, but as years of headlines have shown, Australia’s care economy faces big challenges. In this four-part series, experts examine how the country’s increasingly for-profit models of care and the government policy that spurred them on are failing those they’re supposed to protect – and what can be done about it.

A national success story

Technological advancements and increased gender equality have contributed to increased longevity and improvements in reproductive health access. Our social success has led to demographic consequences.

Australians are living longer and not replacing themselves, leading to an ageing population.

People aged 65 and over now comprise 18% of the Australian population, making the nation’s population aged and on its way to super aged.

Super aged, declining fertility

Forty-five years ago, older people represented 10% of the Australian population. The pace of ageing has accelerated faster than expected. It is also expected to continue at speed.

Ageing isn’t new for Australia and has been discussed as early as the 1930s. This was when the proportion of the population aged 65+ first reached the 7% threshold for an ageing population and declining birth rates were seen as a threat to national security.

Australians can expect to live 81.1 years (men) and 85.1 years (women), an increase of nearly ten years for men and seven years for women over the 45 years since 1981.

Australians tend to lead healthier lives than ever before too, particularly into older ages.

Growth among people aged 85+ is the greatest.

Total fertility rates (TFR) – the average number of births per woman – have declined steadily since the post-war baby boom peak of 3.55 births in 1961.

TFR has been below the 2.1 threshold for replacement since the mid 1970s, now at its lowest level of 1.48 births per woman.

Australians are increasingly not achieving their much-wanted families due to socioeconomic hurdles, including housing affordability, economic security, gender equality and climate change.

Australia risks irreversibly low fertility rates that may never recover, making population decline a real prospect in the not too distant future.

Shrinking working-age population

An ageing population presents serious economic issues due to changes in the working-age population.

For the first time in Australia’s history, people aged 65 and over outnumber children (those under 15 years). The nation has passed the maximum number of children it will ever see and the working-age population is declining.

Workers fuel government accounts

Fewer people of working age means fewer people paying taxes.

Individual income tax is the biggest contributor to government finances in Australia. Fewer individual taxpayers relative to those needing government support and services means spreading the national accounts thinner across more budget items.

Living standards risk going backwards as conflict emerges over what is funded in the national budget.

Women’s labour force participation has often been touted as a way to increase productivity and as means to help balance adverse economic consequences of an ageing population.

But with women still doing the vast majority of unpaid care work, and with more people needing that care, the future looks challenging.

Letting older people down

Older Australians contribute to care through caring for elderly parents and partners, grandparenting of young children, and volunteering. Ageing yields dividends for the caring side of the unpaid care economy.

Yet older Australians are slipping through the cracks. More than 3,600 elderly people are stuck in hospitals across Australia due to bed block in aged care facilities.

Nearly 6% of Australians report needing help with everyday activities, with most aged 65 and over.

Older Australians are expected to self-fund retirements through superannuation in increasing numbers, taking pressure off age pension costs.

The aged-care workforce in Australia is nearly 500,000 strong, and expected to increase. Many of the aged-care workers in Australia are migrants and women.

Volunteering in aged care is also promoted by the Australian government as an essential element of the workforce.

Caring disproportionately falls to women in informal care arrangements. Australian mothers are sandwiched in the caring stack of paid work, care for children, and caring for the elderly.

Fewer offspring means more formal care for the elderly. While globally there have been innovations in in-home aged care, Australia has been slow to such government-supported progress.

What might help?

The Australian government is confident artificial intelligence (AI) will aid productivity in an ageing population. But AI cannot care for the elderly.

While robotic exoskeletons and robot carers have been proposed for aged care, nothing replaces human caring.

Migration and women are increasingly being relied on to help meet the needs of an ageing population. Without serious structural reform, population pressures will place unreasonable burdens on mothers and families. Burdening mothers and families adds to already high strain, constraining family formation and childbearing even further.

Taxation changes could be one way to help balance declining workers and increasing pressures on government spending. Increasing business tax might be one part of the solution to help care for Australia’s elderly.

But broadly speaking, policymakers need to put a lot more thought into how to help address this problem. Too many are already shouldering too much, or are being left behind, and time will only compound it.

We will all be older and in need of care at some point. What future do we want?

Liz Allen, Demographer, POLIS Centre for Social Policy Research, Australian National University

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

Feelings matter. That’s why for over 25 years, the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index has asked Australian adults how satisfied they feel about their lives and life in Australia. It’s a simple but powerful way to understand how we are faring as a country.

This year’s index tracked Australians’ wellbeing in a challenging year at home and abroad. We also set out to understand how Australians see life playing out for future generations.

More than 10,000 Australians took part in the survey in April and May, just before the federal budget. In September, we went back to almost 1,500 of the same people to see what had changed.

How Australians feel about personal wellbeing in 2026

Compared with 2025, personal wellbeing held steady.

In April–May, the average score on the Personal Wellbeing Index was 67.2 out of 100. This assesses satisfaction across seven areas of personal life:

• standard of living
• health
• achieving in life
• relationships
• safety
• community connectedness, and
• future security.

By September, however, the index had slipped 1.1 points.

Satisfaction with personal safety and future security, which had already dropped in April-May, fell further. Satisfaction with standard of living also declined.

The survey moved from phone to online in 2024. Online scores tend to be lower because people answer differently in private than when speaking to an interviewer. Trends are best read within each survey method.

Feelings about national wellbeing took a hit

We also surveyed people about their feelings about life in Australia more generally, via a different measure we call the National Wellbeing Index. This assesses satisfaction across six areas:

• the economic situation
• state of the natural environment
• social conditions
• government
• business, and
• national security.

Compared to personal wellbeing, Australians’ feelings about national wellbeing took a bigger hit. In April-May, the National Wellbeing Index fell 3.2 points from 2025 to 54.8 out of 100.

Last year’s survey saw a rise in national wellbeing. This was driven mainly by higher satisfaction with the economy and the government.

This year, however, those were the areas that dropped most, and they hadn’t recovered by September.

Averages can hide who is doing it toughest

Australians experiencing unemployment or those on low incomes reported some of the lowest wellbeing of any population groups.

This gap isn’t new. The index has documented it for over 25 years, and it has only meaningfully narrowed once: during the pandemic, when income support payments were doubled.

Young adults are also struggling. We also found that

• 56.1% of 18- to 24-year-olds reported high or very high psychological distress
• 45.7% felt lonely at least some of the time.

How will future Australians fare?

This year we also asked Australians to look ahead.

We asked about five societal challenges that closely map to the transitions identified in the government’s latest Intergenerational Report:

• housing costs
• artificial intelligence
• access to healthcare
• climate change, and
• global political instability.

People saw every challenge as hitting future generations harder than themselves.

Housing stood out, with more than four in five (83.4%) believing housing costs would have a high negative impact on future generations.

Younger Australians expect to feel it, too: seven in ten of those aged 18 to 34 expected housing costs to negatively affect their own lives.

The May federal budget included reforms aimed at intergenerational equity, particularly by addressing housing costs and availability.

But when we asked again in September, views on housing hadn’t shifted.

What did shift was the share of people expecting AI to negatively impact their lives. This rose 9.3 percentage points in four months, and by 15.1 points among people aged 65 and over.

A vision for the future

We also asked Australians to tell us, in their own words, what kind of Australia they want for future generations.

Across almost 10,000 responses, a broadly shared vision emerged. Australians want a country that is safe and socially connected, environmentally sustainable, fair, affordable and economically secure.

Almost six in ten (58.1%) wrote about at least one of four themes:

• safety
• environmental and climate action
• improved cost of living and financial security, or
• a strong economy.

That share held steady regardless of age, income, gender, location, education or language spoken at home. It is a genuine reminder that there is more connection between us than disconnection.

Australians also feel this future is partly theirs to shape; almost two in three (62.7%) said they feel responsible for the wellbeing of future generations.

That’s a striking result in these challenging times when, as Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently put it, Australians face a test of whether we “turn on each other” or “change and adapt and reform and prosper together through all of this uncertainty”.

But that responsibility doesn’t sit with individuals alone. The challenge for policymakers, communities, and institutions is to match Australians’ forward-looking outlook with legislated mechanisms to turn this much needed long-term thinking into reality.

The federal government’s Measuring What Matters framework already tracks much of what Australians described to us, from safety and sustainability to financial security and a strong economy.

But measuring wellbeing isn’t the same as acting on it, and there’s currently no mechanism to ensure the framework is used in decision-making.

Australians have been clear about the country they want to hand on. Now we need to make sure the decisions that shape it are measured against that vision.

Georgie Frykberg, Project Manager, School of Psychology, Deakin University and Kate Lycett, Senior Research Fellow, School of Psychology, Deakin University

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

Navigation apps such as Waze, Google Maps and Apple Maps offer drivers many useful functions, but one of them is sometimes controversial: advance notice of police or speed cameras ahead.

In new research, my colleagues and I ran experiments to see how these alerts affect driver behaviour in the real world.

We found drivers slow down when they get a warning, which came as no surprise. But the more worrying part is what drivers do when the app stays quiet.

Who gives speed camera warnings – and who sees them

Drivers warning each other about police ahead is nothing new. Whether it’s truck drivers putting out a radio call or car drivers flashing their headlights, giving other drivers a heads up about police presence is often seen as a courtesy.

Today, the warning comes from your phone. Waze, a Google-owned navigation app with more than 150 million monthly users, lets drivers report police and speed cameras with a tap, warning other users nearby. Google Maps and Apple Maps do the same.

A 2020 study found up to one in three Australian drivers used these apps while driving, and this number has likely increased since.

What we discovered

We wanted to know how drivers respond to these alerts in the real world. So we parked an unmarked car at 33 roadside sites across southeastern Queensland and measured passing car speed with a handheld laser device, the same type used by Queensland Police.

After we set up, drivers reported us to the Waze platform as police enforcement in an average time of about 14 minutes. We didn’t check Google Maps or Apple Maps.

We then kept measuring for the same amount of time again. Across more than 9,000 vehicles, the change was stark.

Before the alert appeared, 55% of drivers were speeding. Afterwards, 26% were.

The biggest drop was in 100km/h zones, from 64% of drivers speeding to 12%. We couldn’t see inside passing cars, so we can’t confirm every driver who slowed down had seen the alert. But the alert was the only external change we observed, and the drop appeared consistently at all 33 sites.

This suggests drivers were slowing down because of the app alert, not simply to observe the speed limit.

Even in active school zones, almost two thirds of drivers were over the 40km/h limit before an alert appeared. Even after the warning, more than a third were still speeding.

How speed cameras make drivers slow down – or not

Road policing is built on the idea of deterrence. People are less likely to break a rule if they think they may be caught and punished. Research shows that having a greater certainty of being caught matters more to the deterrent effect than the size of a fine or other punishment.

So speed enforcement works best when drivers feel a camera could be anywhere, at any time. Apps like Waze turn this on its head, so speed checks start to feel like a predictable risk that is easy to dodge.

Every time a driver gets an alert, slows down, passes police, then speeds back up, they learn they can speed and get away with it. Criminologists call this “punishment avoidance”.

People who get away with breaking the rules come to believe they are less likely to be caught next time, so they offend more often. In effect, drivers learn that the alert means “slow down” – but when there is no alert, they have the all-clear to speed.

Drivers who use apps that reveal police locations have described feeling “slightly more invincible”, and they report speeding more often.

In one recent survey of Queensland drivers, more than three in four admitted to speeding, and almost half didn’t expect to get caught.

Why it matters

Driving a few kilometres per hour over the limit may seem harmless. However, even small increases in speed raise the risk of being involved in a crash, as well as making crashes more severe.

Speeding is one of the most common factors in fatal crashes in Queensland, playing a role in approximately one in three of these incidents.

Navigation apps can tell you where police have been reported, but they can’t warn you about a child stepping out between parked cars, or from behind a school bus. The lack of an enforcement alert doesn’t mean it is safe to speed on the road ahead.

What now?

We shared our findings with highway patrol officers. Rather than taking the results as a defeat, they saw them as an opportunity to change how they operate.

Alerts appear quickly and linger, so officers could treat one as a signal to move on and start again with drivers who haven’t been warned. A single speed camera crew that moves often could show up on the app in several places, spreading the sense of risk across a wider area without extra resources.

Our research does not suggest these apps or their alert features should be banned, in the way that radar detectors already are.

Instead, we see it as a catalyst to rethink how road policing works in a connected world – and a reminder to drivers to drive to the speed limit and the local conditions, not what’s on their phone.

Levi Anderson, Research Associate, Road Safety, University of the Sunshine Coast

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