On Tuesday, the Australian federal government announced a long-awaited amendment to the Online Safety Act, outlining a digital duty of care to protect Australians from preventable online harms.

The bill will be discussed by parliament before the end of the year. While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has presented the legislation as “world leading”, the European Union has had something similar in place for a while now.

The EU Digital Services Act came into effect in 2022. Like in Australia’s draft regulation, it gives users more power to choose what their social media feeds look like. It requires companies to provide the option of a feed in which content is not based on “profiling” – algorithmic content selection based on how you previously interacted with the app.

You would assume, then, that European users already have a very different experience of social media apps compared to people in Australia. But that’s not the case (more on that in a moment).

Due to a 2025 court ruling, the Netherlands is an exception, with an Instagram app that really does look slightly different. But is the Dutch version of Instagram a good blueprint for what we want in Australia?

What happened in the EU?

The Digital Services Act requires large social media platforms (with more than 45 million monthly users in the EU) to let users opt for non-personalised content (content recommended by the algorithm).

When it came to platforms actually implementing the act, research has shown that social media companies didn’t make it easy for users to change their settings.

Some critics have called this “malicious compliance”, where platforms do what the law orders, but in such a clunky way that users don’t actually enjoy the option and stick with the default, algorithmic experience.

Which leads us to the Netherlands exception. In 2025, Dutch digital rights group Bits of Freedom won a court case arguing Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) was not compliant with the Digital Services Act.

The court ordered Meta to add an easily accessible option for Facebook and Instagram users to get rid of algorithmic recommendations. Non-compliance would lead to substantial fines.

As a result, Dutch users have more options to shape the way they experience Instagram compared to users elsewhere, including other European nations.

What does Instagram look like in the Netherlands?

The difference isn’t as major as you’d think.

Australian users already have the option to change their feed on Instragram. You can do this by clicking on the Instagram logo at the top of your screen and choosing “following”. This brings up a feed with posts from people you follow. (“Favorites” presents a feed from people you’ve added to a special category.)

In “following” mode, you can’t use many of Instagram’s normal functionalities, such as sending private messages. And the option doesn’t stay on by default: when you open Instagram again, you’re brought back to the regular, algorithm-governed feed.

By contrast, when Dutch users click on the Instagram logo, they can choose not only between favourites or followers, but also a “voor jou” (for you) feed. This option is the one with algorithmic content recommendations.

Unlike in other countries, whatever option users in the Netherlands choose will be remembered when they open Instagram again. Regardless of which feed they choose, they can also use all of Instagram’s functionalities such as direct messaging.

Arguably, the Dutch version of Instagram does give users more choice.

However, just like for Australian users, you need to know how to get to these feed options. The Dutch court order explicitly states users must be made aware of the new options through a pop-up. Some Dutch Instagram users I spoke with vaguely remembered getting a pop-up, whereas others didn’t.

How can Australia learn from this?

Australia’s draft legislation lists a number of harmful design features and obliges social media companies to implement “user empowerment tools” so they can turn these features off.

However, there are no requirements for the way in which these empowerment tools are presented to users. This could lead to the same “malicious compliance” situation as is currently seen in the EU.

To address this issue, the Australian government could specifically require social media companies to make a “following” feed the default option. That way, users would only see posts from accounts they follow without having to enable any special settings.

Alternatively, Australian law could require social media companies to not bury any settings behind a logo or deep in the app. The Dutch case shows a pop-up is not necessarily helpful. A lot of effort, then, would have to be put into educating the public about the new powers they have over the algorithm.

Other experts have proposed the idea of algorithmic choice, which may give users even more control – choosing what types of feeds to follow and how those feeds prioritise information.

Unless forced to do so, big tech companies are unlikely to implement features that go against their business model – to keep us all on the apps as long as possible.

As we have seen in the Netherlands, a design change still required a court ruling. And many European users are still waiting for a meaningful option to take control over their social media feeds.

Chris Zomer, Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University

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

Social media users could switch off recommender algorithms in their social media feeds, under new draft laws the Australian government plans to unveil this week.

The proposed digital duty of care legislation would hold social media companies to greater account for content on their platforms. Opposition leader Angus Taylor said the Coalition had yet to see the proposal but warned against efforts to “censor social media”.

The digital duty of care plan is separate to the government’s proposed Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill, which aims to toughen existing rules around the under-16 social media ban.

So what’s been proposed in these digital duty of care laws? And will it help reduce harm?

What’s been proposed?

Under the proposed digital duty of care legislation:

• users could opt out of social media recommender algorithms via pop-up messages
• social media companies would be expected to identify and manage risks on their platforms
• the onus would be on platforms to stop harmful content (such as illegal pornography) from being shared.

The ABC reported that, for under-18s:

about half a dozen additional areas of ‘psycho-social harm’ would be identified, including content about body image and bullying.

Under the plan, breaches of the law would lead to fines of more than A$100 million.

Will it help?

The devil will be in the detail, which we won’t know until the full plans are released in the week ahead.

That said, there have long been calls for digital duty of care laws in Australia – since well before the under-16s social media ban – and it’s good to see these calls being considered.

The onus should be on platforms and other online entities to better test the risks of their products, before features are rolled out.

In an ideal world, that would mean they could mitigate the risks and evaluate whether features or tools do more harm than good before they are released. If they are found to being causing harm, platforms could not roll them out at all, or ensure they aren’t available to children and young people.

As with the social media ban, it looks like the government will try to put legislation in place before sorting out the technical details of how it will work. That’s a mixed blessing.

It means we are not beholden to companies saying, “This isn’t possible”. But it also might make implementation and enforcement tricky.

Opting out of algorithmic content

The idea of opting out of algorithms sounds great, but raises the question: what would you get instead?

Take Instagram, for example. There’s the main feed, which is one recommender algorithm. There’s disappearing stories, which is a different algorithm. And then there’s reels, which is a third algorithm. They work in different ways and do very different jobs.

So, if you opted out of the algorithm in Instagram, which of those three would be impacted?

It’s been so long since people have seen a chronological feed (as opposed to one serving you algorithmic content tailored to you), it would feel very weird at first.

My suspicion is that the vast majority of people won’t elect to opt out of any algorithms, and will stick with the recommended content in general.

So a more powerful change the government could have chosen instead would be to make it so you get a chronological feed by default; to get algorithmic recommended content you’d have to opt in.

It’s also unclear how parents might manage all this opting-out. If it comes down to vast and complex parental control dashboards for each platform and online service, that places a large burden back on parents.

Harmful content harder to regulate

The draft legislation puts the onus on social media platforms to identify and manage risks around content, such as videos promoting disordered eating. But it’s hard to know exactly how.

Historically, holding tech companies responsible for the content shared on their platforms has been very difficult. In the American tradition, the idea is that users (not companies) are responsible for such content.

It’s easy to see how moves to more strongly regulate this could lead to an angry midnight phone call from US President Donald Trump to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

That said, the rest of the world has shown a much stronger appetite for regulation of content on platforms in recent years.

A promising start

Fines of around $100 million for breaches of the proposed digital duty of care laws sound impressive, but it’s a tiny fraction of what some of these tech companies make annually. Making fines a percentage of a company’s yearly revenue in Australia makes more sense.

What matters most with the digital duty of care is ensuring social media platforms are forced to be transparent about their compliance.

One thing Australia got wrong with the social media ban is that we asked the companies to comply with the laws but they don’t have to tell us exactly how they did it.

With the proposed digital duty of care laws, it looks like there might be provisions for the eSafety Commissioner and for researchers to be in involved in finding out about and testing what companies are doing to ensure compliance with these laws.

We haven’t seen the detail but it sounds like this aspect of regulation is being taken seriously – and that’s very promising.

Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin University

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

In the same week the federal government is preparing to introduce its landmark digital duty of care legislation, it is also returning to some unfinished business: strengthening its social media age restrictions.

On Tuesday, the government will move an amendment through federal parliament to give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to investigate whether social media platforms are complying with the minimum age rules.

The changes bring these investigative powers into line with those eSafety already has for other online safety obligations.

Why is the government introducing these laws?

Australia’s social media age restrictions came into effect in December last year. They require major social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to stop Australians under 16 from holding accounts. Importantly, the law doesn’t punish teenagers for using designated platforms. The legal responsibility sits with the platforms to keep them from holding an account.

However, there are already serious questions about platform compliance.

A recent study provides some of the clearest evidence so far. Researchers followed more than 400 Australian teenagers before and after the restrictions took effect. Three months in, more than 85% of participants aged under 16 were still using social media platforms covered by the law. Most were accessing them through their own accounts.

There was certainly some circumvention. Of those that attempted to use a restricted service, between 15% and 19% reported using a fake account, while 6% to 11% reported accessing social media through a private browser.

But the problem isn’t simply crafty teenagers finding ways around the rules. Only about two-thirds of under-16s still using restricted platforms reported encountering any sophisticated age check at all. Common approaches included simply asking users to state their age or upload a selfie.

The researchers ultimately found little evidence that the legislation had produced a substantial immediate reduction in social media use among under-16s. That suggests the gap between passing an age restriction and actually enforcing one is significant.

This is the gap the new Online Safety Amendment Bill is trying to address.

What’s included in the amendments?

The most significant change is to eSafety’s information-gathering powers.

The amendment will empower the commissioner to demand documents – not just information – from social media companies which show what they’ve done (or failed to do) to enforce age restrictions.

It will also empower eSafety to gather information or documents from other people and organisations where it reasonably believes they have evidence relevant to an investigation.

This matters because social media platforms don’t operate in isolation. They sit within a much larger digital ecosystem of app stores, technology vendors, advertising companies, and increasingly, specialist age-assurance providers. A platform may be legally responsible for keeping under-16s from holding accounts, but the systems it relies on to do that may be designed or operated by other companies.

Imagine, for example, a social media platform engages a third-party company to provide its age-checking technology. Under the amendments, eSafety could seek information directly from that company to independently test whether the platform’s approach is actually working. App stores, which sit between platforms and many of their users, are another obvious potential source of information.

This gives eSafety a better view of the whole system rather than just the platform at its centre. Effective regulation can’t depend entirely on asking a company whether it thinks it is complying with the rules. If responsibility is spread across an ecosystem of different technologies and providers, regulators need to be able to follow the evidence across that ecosystem too.

The bill also doubles the fines that companies may be ordered to pay if they are found to have breached the age restrictions, bringing it up to a maximum of A$99 million.

This brings the financial penalties in line with other corporate regulation in Australia. However, the 2024 Rickard Review of the Online Safety Act recommended that courts should be able to impose penalties in an amount that reflects a percentage of global turnover, say 5%, if that is greater.

Other countries do this in their online safety laws. It is also in Australia’s competition and consumer law and privacy law.

Are these changes likely to be effective?

The amendment will give the regulator expanded access to important evidence, and a bigger stick when companies don’t comply. And it will bring the powers for enforcing the social media minimum age restriction into line with the other powers the eSafety Commissioner already has.

But there is a limit to what stronger information gathering and higher penalties for this one measure can achieve.

Researchers, including many of us working in this area, warned before the original legislation passed that age assurance would be difficult, young people would find ways around restrictions, and measuring whether the policy was actually working would be challenging.

The early evidence bears out many of those concerns.

Australia is simultaneously moving towards a digital duty of care, which starts from a somewhat different idea about online safety.

Age restrictions essentially ask: how do we keep young people out of potentially harmful digital environments?

A duty of care asks: how do we make all digital environments safer for everyone?

Teenagers are highly motivated users of digital services, and their online lives stretch across apps, browsers, devices, messaging services and other parts of a complex digital ecosystem. Keeping them out of a handful of social media platforms won’t address the deeper problems of platform design, recommendation systems and business models that can make these environments harmful in the first place.

That is why the digital duty of care may ultimately prove to be the better and more important reform. It puts responsibility back where much of it belongs: on platforms to identify and reduce foreseeable harms created by their services.

The difficulties enforcing the age ban only strengthen the case for getting that broader reform right.

Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology and Christine Parker, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne

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

A child who snores loudly every night might seem like a funny sight. But if that snoring accompanies repeated narrowing or blockage of the airway, the effects can reach far beyond a noisy night.

Obstructive sleep apnoea is often associated with adults who snore and struggle to stay awake during the day. Children can develop it too. Its prevalence is difficult to pin down: a 2024 systematic review of 30 studies found that recent estimates in preschool children ranged from 12.8% to 20.4%, but definitions and testing methods varied considerably. Only two population studies used a full overnight sleep study, so the true figure remains uncertain.

In children, habitual loud snoring is an important warning sign. Parents may also notice mouth breathing, restless sleep, pauses followed by gasps or snorts, or the chest and abdomen working hard to draw breath. Not every child who snores has sleep apnoea, however, and symptoms alone cannot confirm it.

Daytime symptoms

The daytime signs can be less obvious. Rather than appearing sleepy, some children become irritable or unusually active, struggle to concentrate or develop behavioural and learning difficulties. These problems can resemble or worsen symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The conditions can also occur together, so this should not be treated as a simple either-or diagnosis.

During sleep, the muscles that help keep the upper airway open relax. In obstructive sleep apnoea, the passage behind the nose and mouth repeatedly narrows or closes. The child then has to work harder to breathe. These episodes can lower blood oxygen and briefly disturb sleep, even when the child does not appear to wake fully.

Repeatedly disrupted sleep is associated with poorer behaviour, learning and quality of life. Research also links childhood sleep apnoea with changes in blood-pressure control and metabolism, including how the body regulates blood sugar, although the severity of these effects varies between children.

In younger children, enlarged tonsils and adenoids are a leading cause. The tonsils sit at the back of the throat; the adenoids are similar tissue behind the nose. Because a child’s airway is narrow, enlarged tissue can leave too little room for air to pass comfortably.

Obesity, differences in the shape of the skull or jaw and allergic rhinitis, which is inflammation inside the nose caused by an allergy, are also associated with greater risk. Research has additionally found associations with asthma and premature birth. Children with some genetic conditions, particularly Down syndrome, have a much higher prevalence. Globally, obesity among five to 19-year-olds rose from about 2% in 1990 to about 8% in 2022, according to a large analysis of population studies.

Air pollution may contribute too, but the evidence requires caution. Observational studies have linked exposure to fine airborne particles with habitual loud snoring and other breathing problems during sleep. Such studies cannot establish that pollution causes obstructive sleep apnoea.

A child who regularly snores loudly, has pauses or gasps, breathes through their mouth or seems to struggle for breath during sleep should be assessed by a doctor. A GP may refer the child to a paediatrician, sleep service or ear, nose and throat specialist.

The reference test is polysomnography, usually called an overnight sleep study. Sensors record brain activity, airflow, breathing effort, heart rate and blood oxygen, allowing clinicians to see whether breathing is repeatedly obstructed and how severely sleep is affected.

A short video of the child sleeping may also help. Preliminary research on smartphone recordings suggests that they could help clinicians screen and prioritise children, although they cannot diagnose sleep apnoea or replace a sleep study.

Treatment

Treatment depends on the cause and severity. When enlarged tonsils and adenoids are obstructing the airway, removing them is often the first treatment offered. In a randomised trial involving 464 children, surgery improved symptoms, behaviour, quality of life and sleep-study findings compared with watchful waiting. It did not produce a significantly greater improvement on the trial’s main objective test of attention and the mental skills used to plan and control behaviour.

An operation does not always resolve the condition. Up to 40% of children may have persistent sleep apnoea after surgery, with higher rates among those with obesity, severe disease or other medical conditions.

For mild cases, a clinician may recommend monitoring or treating nasal inflammation. Anti-inflammatory steroid nasal sprays may help selected children, but the evidence is mixed. Mouth and facial muscle exercises are sometimes considered, although the supporting studies are small and inconsistent. Evidence for orthodontic devices in children also remains limited.

If surgery is unsuitable or sleep apnoea persists, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) can hold the airway open by delivering gently pressurised air through a mask during sleep.

Some mild cases resolve as children grow, but others persist or worsen. Follow-up is therefore important. Routine child health checks should include a question recommended in paediatric guidance: “Does your child snore?”

Obstructive sleep apnoea is treatable but easy to miss. When a child is restless, unusually active or struggling to concentrate, asking what happens after bedtime may reveal an important part of the picture.

Mirja Quante, Attending Neonatologist; Director, Pediatric Sleep Program, University of Tübingen

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

You’ve just finished eating lunch and you’re back at your desk, ready to dive into the rest of the day’s work. Yet by 3pm, you find your eyes starting to droop. Before long, the only thing you can think about is how much you’d like to take a nap.

The “afternoon slump” (also sometimes called the “3pm slump”) is a common experience. It’s that distinct drop in energy that tends to occur in the mid-afternoon hours.

While it’s tempting to blame this sudden urge to snooze on what you’ve eaten for lunch, this alone can’t take the blame. The afternoon slump is actually caused by several distinct biological pressures beginning to converge.

One part of the explanation begins long before lunch. From the moment we wake up, our drive to sleep gradually increases. Adenosine – an organic compound involved in regulating sleep and wakefulness – accumulates in the brain while we’re awake, contributing to our gradual need to sleep, referred to as “sleep pressure”.

Yet the reason we do not simply become progressively sleepier from breakfast onwards is because another system is working alongside it. Our circadian clock, which controls our body’s sleep-wake system, generates a changing drive for wakefulness across the day.

During the morning, this system helps to counteract increasing sleep pressure. But in the early afternoon, we enter a natural period of increased sleep propensity. As sleep pressure has continued to build regardless, this creates a window in which tiredness becomes easier to feel.

Lunch can then add another layer. Eating changes signalling between the gut, metabolism and brain, as the brain receives information about stomach distension, nutrients and gut hormones.

The size and composition of the meal can also influence how we perform afterwards. Larger lunches have been associated with poorer attention and greater post-meal sleepiness – although it’s not clear that any particular food group, such as fat, carbohydrate or sugar, is specifically responsible.

So a very large lunch may exaggerate the slump, but there’s no convincing evidence that one particular macronutrient is universally to blame.

We’re still teasing apart exactly how eating contributes to the mid-afternoon slump, but one intriguing candidate is the brain’s orexin system. Orexin-producing nerve cells in the hypothalamus (a region which regulates basic body function) help sustain wakefulness and are sensitive to metabolic signals, including glucose. Eating may therefore influence some of the neural circuits responsible for keeping us awake.

Recent research suggests that this post-meal sleepiness may also be neurologically distinct from simply being short of sleep.

In a study measuring brain activity and vigilance before and after eating, post-meal drowsiness was associated with a shift in activity within the brain’s cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain that’s involved in attention, perception and complex cognitive processes. This shift pushed brain activity towards inhibition and slower reaction times.

Sleep deprivation, by contrast, was associated with greater cortical excitability – meaning that neurons in the cerebral cortex were more readily activated. We can therefore experience something that feels remarkably similar to sleep deprivation – tiredness, slower thinking and a desire to stop concentrating – while the brain may have arrived there by different routes.

What you shouldn’t and should do

While many people make themselves a cup of coffee or tea, this isn’t a great strategy for overcoming the slump.

Caffeine does not give the brain more energy. It works largely by blocking adenosine receptors. Although caffeine may temporarily block these sleep-promoting signals, adenosine will still continue accumulating. This is why caffeine can improve alertness but cannot substitute for sleep.

Timing matters too. A late-afternoon caffeine hit may solve one problem, but if enough caffeine remains circulating in your system by bedtime, you may struggle to sleep. This may cause even more fatigue the next day.

A better way to push back against the afternoon dip is using natural light.

Light is a powerful signal to the systems that control alertness. A 2024 systematic review of 62 experimental studies found daylight most consistently improved subjective alertness and working memory – although effects on sustained attention were less consistent.

The effect is not limited to natural light, either. One study found that using a lamp which simulated the blue light wavelengths of natural daylight improved reaction times, lapses in attention, sleepiness and motivation in office workers.

For those spending afternoons indoors, getting a bit of daylight (or simulated daylight) may help to wake you up. But if coffee and bright light isn’t enough, there is another option: stop fighting the sleep pressure.

A short afternoon nap can take the edge off the slump. Around ten to 20 minutes is often enough to reduce sleepiness and improve alertness while keeping you largely in lighter sleep, reducing the chance of waking with the grogginess known as sleep inertia.

Set an alarm and aim to nap in the early afternoon rather than late in the day, when sleep may interfere with bedtime. Trial and error can help find your own optimal duration.

Longer naps of around 60 minutes may offer additional benefits – including for memory – but they increase the chance of waking from a deeper sleep feeling temporarily worse.

Perhaps the most useful response to the afternoon slump is not to treat it as evidence of laziness or declining motivation. Human cognitive performance is not designed to remain perfectly flat across the working day. Attention, alertness and reaction time fluctuate according to biology as well as workload. We have simply constructed working days that often assume otherwise.

Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol

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

More than 1.4 billion people worldwide live with high blood pressure (hypertension). It’s the single biggest metabolic risk factor for early death – driving diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and dementia.

Most of these cases of high blood pressure are shaped by how we live and what we eat. This means that making changes to your diet can have a big impact on your risk of developing high blood pressure.

Even small changes can help, as our latest research shows. We found that adding just one serving of nuts into your daily diet is linked with lower hypertension risk.

It’s well known that eating more plant foods is associated with a lower risk of hypertension – but research on the impact of nuts has been limited to date.

Fruits and vegetables are associated with a lower risk of hypertension, with consumption of 800g (ten portions) per day reducing the risk by 11%.

Whole grains – brown rice, oats, wholemeal bread – are similarly linked to lower risk of hypertension. Our research found that the people who consumed the highest amount of whole grains each day had a roughly 26% lower risk compared to people consuming the least.

We have also shown that legumes and soya are associated with a 16% and 19% lower risk of hypertension respectively.

Our latest analysis published in the British Journal of Nutrition, now shows the clear impact eating nuts can have on hypertension risk.

Our study pooled data from 143,000 people – including 20,665 people who had hypertension. We found that eating around a handful of nuts daily (between 30-35g) was linked with a 26% lower risk of hypertension compared to not eating any nuts.

Why plant foods work

Plant foods share a few key characteristics, which may explain why they’re beneficial for the heart.

They are an excellent source of potassium, which helps to lower blood pressure by shedding sodium and relaxing blood vessels.

Plant foods also provide fibre that feeds gut bacteria so they can produce short-chain fatty acids – compounds that are linked to lower blood pressure.

Many plant foods also contain L-arginine and nitrates, which the body converts into nitric oxide in order to widen blood vessels. Plant foods are rich in polyphenols, which have also been associated with lower blood pressure.

Despite nuts being energy-dense, they’re linked to lower obesity rates – thus helping to mitigate another risk factor for hypertension.

These overlapping mechanisms all nudge blood pressure down, and help explain the link between plant-rich diets and lower risk of cardiovascular diseases.

But as tempting as it might be to call nuts a heart health “superfood,” their real power lies within a broader pattern of healthy eating. While reductions in hypertension risk are observed with intake of even just one daily serving of nuts, a diet built around several whole plant foods may provide even further benefits.

This is exactly what Dash, Mediterranean and plant-based diets prove. They all work because they put these different plant-based foods on the same plate.

However, it’s worth noting that the studies included in our analysis are observational. This means they show that people who eat more nuts tend to have lower blood pressure, but they cannot fully prove that nuts are the cause.

People who consume more plant foods in their diet also tend to follow other healthy lifestyle habits such as regular physical activity. Although our analysis adjusted for many of these factors, we cannot fully rule their impact out.

But the randomised controlled Dash diet trials, where diet is actually changed to include more vegetables, whole grains and lean protein, are what give us confidence the link is real. Similarly, intervention trials, which compared the effects of multiple different plant-based diets, also show benefits for blood pressure reduction.

There are knowledge gaps to note, too. The nut studies we included in our review did not separate salted from unsalted. Since salt raises blood pressure, the true benefit of unsalted nuts may even be larger than reported.

Most of the data also came from Europe, the Americas and East Asia. Little evidence came from Africa and India. More large studies conducted in a variety of regions will help sharpen the evidence base.

The takeaway is practical and affordable. You don’t need supplements or fads. Fill half your plate with fruit and veg, choose whole grains, build meals around beans and tofu and add a handful of unsalted nuts. These are small habits that add up to a significant reduction in one of our biggest health risks.

Shireen Kassam, Visiting Professor, Health and Wellbeing Research Group, University of Winchester and Dagfinn Aune, Research Fellow, School of Public Health, Imperial College London

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

Across Australia, thousands of people are waiting to find out if their homes will be built, after several separate construction company collapses.

By far the biggest of those recent collapses has been the Bathla Group, a Sydney developer that’s been one of Australia’s largest affordable home builders.

Owing about A$3.4 billion to private lenders, Bathla’s voluntary administration has thrown the construction of more than 2,000 apartments into limbo, while jeopardising a further pipeline of 14,000 homes.

More builders going bust since COVID

Figures released last week show 3,472 Australian construction companies went bust in the financial year to June 30 2026: one in four (24.5%) of all company insolvencies nationally.

The only good news? The number of builder insolvencies was slightly down for the first time since a steep rise began during COVID.

However, our research has found insolvencies in the construction sector remain consistently higher than in other industries. That makes it harder to build the housing we need.

Australia is falling further behind in meeting the federal government’s 1.2 million new homes goal by 2029. Official forecasts released last month indicate the target won’t be met until December 2030. New South Wales – Australia’s largest housing market – may not meet its targets until March 2032, three years late on a five-year target.

There’s no shortage of demand for new homes. What we lack is a construction system capable of delivering them reliably, sustainably and at scale.

Bathla’s financial ripple effects

On Monday, more than 200 of Bathla’s 350 staff were stood down as the administrator continues to work on a rescue deal.

While most of its building projects are in Western Sydney, Bathla’s collapse is being watched around Australia because of its wider financial impacts.

Like any company collapse, there are specific circumstances involved in Bathla’s current woes. Its business model relied on high volumes of low-cost building.

The NSW building regulator has also conducted more than 40 inspections of Bathla sites in recent months, and ordered the builder to fix serious defects in one major development.

Bathla may have taken as many as 1,000 deposits from buyers for homes now stalled. But home buyers aren’t the only people affected.

‘Troubling developments’ in private credit

As well as owing money to subcontractors, Bathla owes money to a long list of non‑bank lenders – also known as private credit firms.

This reflects the construction industry’s heavy reliance on alternative finance, because banks have reduced their exposure to riskier lending.

On Friday, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chair Sarah Court said the corporate watchdog was closely following “several troubling developments in the private credit sector, most notably with the recent collapse of Bathla”.

Court pointed out that many Australians are exposed to private credit through their superannuation funds – meaning “this is not some peripheral issue”.

The perfect storm hitting builders

Bathla is not an isolated case. The wider construction industry is under strain, with higher costs, thinner profit margins and rising risks.

Figures released last month show house construction costs are now 51% higher than before COVID.

For builders with slim profit margins, the rise in costs can make some projects uneconomic.

With costs rising unpredictably, builders locked into fixed-price contracts are absorbing losses they cannot sustain. This was a major driver of the spike in builder insolvencies during COVID.

Falling house prices and poor market sentiment mean some projects no longer stack up financially.

Many investors and buyers are spooked by three interest rate rises this year, higher costs, and recent federal budget changes to housing tax concessions that have made housing less attractive to investors. The prospect of further interest rate increases is also likely to see projects stalled, as the market waits for conditions to improve.

Then there are ongoing shortages of tradespeople. On top of those, home builders are now competing with data centre builders for tradies, which has driven up salaries.

Little wonder construction insolvencies have risen back to pre-COVID levels, despite strong demand for housing.

Structural change is needed

Governments can’t fix all the problems we face, such as price hikes driven by the Middle East war.

But federal, state and local governments are increasingly recognising their role in creating structural barriers to building more homes.

A Productivity Commission draft report released in July identified many of the problems we need to address, including restrictive land-use regulation, slow and inconsistent approvals, poor coordination on key infrastructure, and complex regulation. These all increase costs and delays.

Our 2025 report showed over-regulation is particularly hard on small builders, who struggle to comply with overlapping national, state and local requirements. That matters because our research also showed almost two-thirds (63%) of building company collapses were concentrated among small builders.

The National Construction Code is another challenge. Even with some states deferring 2025 code changes, the national rules remain complex and frequently updated – again, making compliance difficult for small builders.

What’s safer than houses?

Some builders are responding by pivoting to infrastructure and commercial projects, such as Victoria’s Big Housing Build or Queensland’s Olympics construction projects. These can offer more manageable terms and less exposure to market volatility.

Good builders can pick and choose their work. Right now, housing is the riskiest option on the table.

Until that changes, we’re likely to see more Australian builders moving away from creating the homes we urgently need – along with more headlines about another builder going bust.

Lyndall Bryant, Senior lecturer, QUT Centre for Justice, School of Econmics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology and Amanda Bull, Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology

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Australian governments have an unfortunate history with community grants programs. Sports infrastructure programs, car park grants and other schemes have repeatedly raised the same concern: public money intended to serve communities becomes entangled with electoral politics.

The Albanese government’s $560.9 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program (MLCIP) was established to deliver community infrastructure commitments made at the 2025 election.

It was a one-off, invitation-only and non-competitive program. More than 220 organisations were invited to apply — but beyond saying they were election commitments, the government has never publicly explained how it decided which community projects were invited.

New analysis released this week by the Centre for Public Integrity raises serious questions about the scheme, with almost three-quarters of the funding going to the government’s own electorates. Even after accounting for Labor holding more seats, Labor-held electorates received substantially more funding than a proportional distribution would predict, while Coalition and other electorates received correspondingly less.

A closed, invitation-only program

The integrity questions around this program began before we even knew where the money went. Unlike an ordinary competitive grants program, community organisations could only apply if invited by the federal government.

The 2022 New South Wales ICAC Report on investigations into pork barrelling described closed, non-competitive, one-off grants as relying on ministerial discretion, and often announced during election campaigns. The report warned:

[F]or obvious reasons, this category of grant is at high risk of pork barrelling.

The report recommended that if this type of grant is adopted, the government must explain why, and “outlin[e] the risk mitigation strategies”.

Yet the Albanese government has never publicly explained how projects were selected for invitation or why a closed, non-competitive process was necessary, let alone provided a risk mitigation strategy.

Attempts to get answers from the government through parliament produced little clarity. Independent Senator David Pocock asked in Senate Estimates who within government had determined who could apply. The answer was simply that projects had been “identified by government”. No further information was provided.

Why community infrastructure grants programs are vulnerable

This is not a problem peculiar to Labor. Australian governments from both sides of politics have repeatedly used discretionary grants programs in ways that blur the line between public benefit and electoral advantage.

In relation to the Morrison government’s 2018–19 “sports rorts” affair, the auditor-general found the sports minister’s office ran a parallel assessment process that gave priority to marginal electorates, rather than simply following Sport Australia’s assessment of merit.

Nine of the ten electorates receiving the most funding were marginal or Coalition-targeted seats. In the $660 million commuter car parks program, the auditor-general again found project selection was neither open nor transparent, and not demonstrably merit-based. It also reflected the political profile of those given the opportunity to nominate projects.

In another instance, Labor’s 2008 Better Regions Program funded 2007 election commitments. The auditor-general found funding was largely concentrated in marginal and fairly safe seats held by the Coalition before the election. These included electorates that Labor was seeking to win.

So where did the community infrastructure grants go?

Using information from the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sports and the Arts, the Australian Electoral Commission and by examining Labor’s media releases, social media posts and local news articles, the centre found the following:

1. Almost three quarters of funding (73.2%, or $409.1 million) went to notionally Labor-held divisions. This compared to 22.6% of funding to Coalition-held divisions. For every dollar going to a Coalition-held seat, more than $3.20 went to a Labor-held seat.This disparity cannot simply be explained by Labor holding more seats: even after accounting for the number of electorates held by each party, Labor-held seats received about $118 million more than they would have under a proportional distribution.

2. Accounting for the different number of electorates in each category, marginal seats in which Labor was competitive received $66.5 million more than they would have received if funding had been distributed proportionately across categories of electorates. Fairly safe Labor seats received $62.9 million more. By contrast, marginal seats where Labor was not competitive, fairly safe non-Labor seats and safe non-Labor seats collectively received $116.6 million less.

3 Using household income and “community connectedness” as indicators of community need, there appears to be no relationship between the level of funding received by an electorate and its level of need on these measures. If community need explains the distribution of funding, the government should make the basis for that assessment publicly available.

The data do not definitively show individual grants were awarded for partisan reasons. But combined with a process in which government decided who could apply, and without publishing how it made that decision, this pattern demands an explanation.

The existing framework isn’t enough

The Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles provide a non-binding framework for the government. They say competitive, merit-based selection should be used unless another approach is specifically agreed on. If another method is used, the rationale should be documented in the grant opportunity guidelines. For closed processes, the framework describes it as “better practice” to identify eligible applicants or explain how eligibility was determined.

The Centre for Public Integrity has argued reform requires three things.

First, the government must be required to set clear, merit-based criteria that govern the allocation of grants.

Second, the government must be required to report to parliament how decisions about funding were made against those criteria.

Finally, there must be proper accountability for the grants system, including by making the grants framework enforceable and introducing greater parliamentary accountability.

Public money should not be treated by governments as money they can use for political advantage. The distribution of the community funds raises concerns this is exactly what happened.

Community organisations should not need to be in the right electorate — or receive an invitation from the government of the day — to have the opportunity to make their case for funding.

This article was written in collaboration with Zoe Neumayer and Max Douglas from the Centre for Public Integrity.

Gabrielle Appleby, Professor of Law, UNSW Law School, UNSW

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Every September, Australians are encouraged to ask someone a simple question: “Are you OK?”

R U OK? Day is Australia’s most recognisable mental health campaign, and a familiar part of workplace morning teas, school assemblies and social media feeds.

But does it actually improve mental health? Our new study suggests it does. We found a small but measurable improvement in mental wellbeing after R U OK? Day. The gain was largest among men aged 25–49.

But we found no increase in visits to a GP for a mental health treatment plan, or in prescriptions filled for mental health-related medicines.

Together, these findings show both the value and the limits of public awareness campaigns.

What we studied and how

R U OK? Day is held annually on the second Thursday of September. The campaign asks Australians to follow four steps:

• ask someone whether they’re OK
• listen with an open mind
• encourage them to take action if needed
• check in with them over the next couple of weeks.

We used nine years of data drawn from across the Australian population, from 2011 to 2019, to test whether the campaign changed two main outcomes.

First, we used responses from the long-running Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, which happens to conduct annual interviews in the months around R U OK? Day. Participants answered nine questions about how they had felt during the previous four weeks. These included how often they had felt happy, nervous, full of life, or so down that nothing could cheer them up. We combined their answers into an overall measure of mental wellbeing.

Second, we used national health records from Medicare to count the daily number of mental health treatment plans GPs prepared and prescriptions filled for psychiatric medicines.

The statistical analysis compared the change in these outcomes in the four weeks before and after R U OK? Day in more recent years, when the campaign was highly visible, with the same change in earlier years, when its reach was much smaller. We also accounted for weather, seasonal patterns, economic conditions and other factors.

This comparison captures the campaign’s short-term population-level effect. That includes the combined effect of direct conversations, workplace events, media coverage, and the wider attention given to mental health around R U OK? Day.

A small lift in how people feel

The encouraging finding is that R U OK? Day does appear to improve mental wellbeing.

Across the population, the campaign produced a measurable increase in self-assessed mental wellbeing, equivalent to moving the average person from the 50th to the 53rd percentile of wellbeing.

This is not a dramatic change – it means people felt slightly more full of life, calm, energetic or happy, and slightly less down in the dumps.

But this is an average across the whole population, including many people who had no direct contact with the campaign. The improvement among people who took part in an R U OK? conversation was probably much larger, although our data cannot isolate that effect.

The effect was strongest for men aged 25 to 49 – the increase in their mental wellbeing was twice as large. This is important because middle-aged men are among the least likely to seek help for mental health problems, and they are disproportionately represented in Australia’s suicide statistics.

The most plausible mechanism is social connection. Being asked “are you OK?” by a colleague or friend, or getting together with others to talk openly about mental health, may reduce feelings of isolation. It may also signal that it is socially acceptable to acknowledge when you are struggling.

We see this reflected in our results. R U OK? Day increased people’s sense that they had someone to turn to for support, with the strongest improvement again among men aged 25 to 49.

No increase in mental health care

R U OK? Day also encourages people who are struggling to seek professional support. On this outcome, however, we found no detectable effect.

National records showed no increase in visits to a GP for a mental health treatment plan.

Nor was there an increase in prescriptions filled for mental health-related medicines.

The result was the same when we extended the follow-up period from four weeks to two and three months.

This doesn’t mean nobody sought help because of R U OK? Day. But any individual responses were not large enough to produce a measurable increase across the population. It is also possible that individuals sought help from other services, such as helplines, which we cannot measure.

Encouraging someone to seek help is only one part of the process. A person may still worry about stigma or be unsure where to go. Even when someone decides to seek professional help, the health-care system itself can create barriers, including long waits for appointments and high out-of-pocket costs.

Policy implications

R U OK? Day appears to be achieving something valuable.

Our findings suggest peer-support campaigns can produce real psychological benefits. Encouraging people to check in with one another, listen and offer support can make a meaningful difference, especially for population groups unlikely to seek out help.

Public campaigns also point people towards support. But whether people can act on that encouragement depends on the health system: care needs to be accessible, timely and affordable. Achieving this may require changes that reduce waiting times, lower out-of-pocket costs and make care easier to navigate.

R U OK? Day shows that asking a simple question can help people feel more supported. But when the answer is “no”, the next step also needs to be within reach.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Nicole Black, Associate Professor of Health Economics, Monash University; David Johnston, Professor of Health Economics, Monash University; Johannes Kunz, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, and Lachlan Deer, Lecturer in Marketing, The University of Melbourne

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After a bad night’s sleep, you squabble with your kids at breakfast. Then a neighbour parks you in. When you finally get to work an hour late, your boss makes one more impossible demand. No wonder you’re angry with the world.

So what is the best way to control your anger? Is it going for a run to blow off some steam?

Or would you be better off meditating?

I’m a psychology researcher with a special interest in anger and aggression. Here’s what the evidence says does and doesn’t work.

When you’re angry

Feeling angry is not just about having a feeling. Your body becomes aroused – your face turns red, your heart rate, blood pressure and respiration rate increase, and you sweat.

On any given day, 22% of us report being angry. Most of this anger doesn’t turn into aggression (harming other people). However, about 8% of people say their anger negatively impacts their lives.

1. Exercise can backfire

You may feel like you need to “blow off some steam”, in other words, do something active to ease the anger and stave off any aggressive urges.

This “catharsis” is an idea popularised by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Now it has found its way into modern life.

But some of these physical activities can increase your anger and aggression. That includes going for a run or climbing the stairs.

Let’s suppose you argue with your partner and you correctly interpret that feeling of arousal as being angry. But going for a run can also make you aroused or “amped up”. So when you return from your run, even a relatively innocuous comment can trigger more anger or aggression.

But you don’t have to blow off steam to try to alleviate anger. For most people, anger will dissipate within 30 minutes all by itself.

2. Mulling it over and over won’t help

Replaying the event constantly in our minds and thinking about how we might get even is all part of angry rumination. This involves diving deep into thinking about the causes and consequences of a personally important provocation and how to respond.

Rumination may feel like we’re processing the event in a helpful way. And many people who struggle with controlling their anger tend to use rumination, albeit ineffectively.

Many experiments show angry rumination actually increases or maintains anger, and increases aggressive behaviour. That’s because rather than looking for solutions and effectively processing the anger-inducing event, people just focus on their angry feelings, and the causes and consequences of the event.

3. Distraction works

Distraction, perhaps the opposite of rumination, works much better. It’s also one of the simplest things you can do to alleviate angry feelings.

My colleagues and I have done this in experiments by asking participants to think about a neutral topic, such as the layout of their university campus. But you could play a non-aggressive game on your phone, read a book, or recall happy memories.

This distraction allows the arousal to dissipate and, along with it, the feelings of anger.

In one experiment we did with university students, about 85% distracted themselves and reduced their anger.

4. Sit with your anger, don’t react

As anger is a high-arousal state, another way to combat angry feelings is to induce a state of low arousal.

When colleagues and I grouped together the best available evidence in a meta-analysis, we found mindfulness meditation is effective in reducing anger and aggression.

In simple terms, mindfulness involves being fully aware of your body, thoughts, feelings and emotions in the present moment, in an accepting and non-judgemental way.

It’s something you can learn to do, using a free app, such as Smiling Mind.

In addition to lowering arousal, mindfulness involves accepting the anger. That means “sitting” with the anger and not reacting to it, which makes it difficult to feel angry and aggressive.

In another meta-analysis, researchers found low-arousal activities such as relaxation exercises, meditation and yoga lowered anger. This included in university students, people with criminal histories, people of all ages, and people from Eastern and Western cultures.

5. Look at it another way

Another way is to use a strategy called “cognitive reappraisal”. This is a broad term for thinking about the anger provocation in an objective way that reduces your anger.

You could do this by looking at the situation from an outsider’s perspective. How would a passerby evaluate the argument you two are having? You could imagine the provocation as if you were floating above yourself and the person who provoked you. You might consider that the person who provoked you is experiencing a lot of stress in their lives.

The key is you’re creating psychological distance between the anger and you to create more objective thinking and less-personal responses.

People who tend to habitually use cognitive reappraisal are less angry, less aggressive, and show more healthy cardiovascular responses to provocation.

What’s the take-home message?

By using the techniques that work, and avoiding the others, your relationships, wellbeing, and even heart health can improve.

However, if you find this doesn’t work, and your anger episodes are frequent, distressing to yourself or others, long-lasting, or accompanied by aggression, it may be time to seek professional help.

Tom Denson, Professor of Psychology, UNSW

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