In less than four months, world-first legislation will ban Australian under-16s from certain social media platforms.

Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, X, Reddit and YouTube will all be off limits for children and teens.

It’s still not clear exactly how the restrictions will be implemented. But the federal government says social media platforms must take “reasonable steps” to delete the accounts of minors before or on December 10 and stop them from creating new accounts through age verification software.

Parents will not be able to give their consent to allow under-16s to use these platforms.

Not everyone’s a fan

Unsurprisingly, there has been a fierce debate about the potential benefits and risks of this ban on young Australians.

Regardless, the ban is here. Cutting back on screen time and social media will be challenging for many young people.

Research suggests social media allows young people to express themselves, develop their identity and seek social connection. In a society where two out five young Australians feel lonely, seeking out social support is crucial.

Equally, social media can be addictive and the “fear of missing out” can see young people engage more intensely on these platforms.

Here are five ways to prepare your child for the December 10 ban.

1. Don’t wait until December 10

The sudden removal of social media could be a shock to young people. So start the conversation as early as possible with your child and work together to create a plan on how to manage the ban.

Talk to kids and teens about why the ban is being implemented and how it will affect both their friendships and their daily routines.

This can help children feel informed, supported and importantly, heard.

Conversations could include gentle curiosity around the role of social media in their life, seeking their views on an impending ban, acknowledgement of the anxiety this might cause, as well as online safety.

Revisiting the topic in a series of smaller chats might also be helpful.

2. Fade out social media

Gradually reducing your child’s time on social media rather than suddenly stopping it will help them to adjust slowly and prevent feelings of withdrawal and frustration.

You could try reducing time spent on social media by a quarter each week and completely stop after one month. Families might opt to do this faster or slower.

By planning this approach together, your child can understand and accept it, making the removal of social media smoother and less stressful for the whole family.

3. Replace, rather than remove

Social media meets young people’s needs to socially connect with others, develop their identity, and belong to a community.

These needs will not disappear when the ban is introduced.

You could consider signing up to some other activities for regular social connection and a sense of belonging. These might include team sports, group hobbies, or volunteering. Consider creative pursuits such as art, music, or handicrafts so your child can express their identity.

4. Start offline connections

Normalise and encourage engagement within your communities that isn’t reliant on social media.

In US psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s divisive book, The Anxious Generation, he contends it is much harder to replace a child’s screen time with play if they are the only one in their peer group not using screens and in the park.

The ban presents an opportunity for parents to encourage and support children to build supportive offline groups together, where children can regularly connect in person. These could be connected to existing friends or newly established groups of like-minded families.

These groups can stick to the social media ban together and use alternative means of communication such as by phone, text or email.

5. Do it yourself

Children and young people absorb the behaviours and attitudes that are modelled to them in the home.

So this means parents can help by managing their own screen time, prioritising face-to-face connections with friends and family, and setting aside regular time for hobbies and activities.

This reinforces the importance of balancing digital and offline experiences. Modelling these behaviours consistently will help your child feel supported in the upcoming ban.

Micah Boerma, Adjunct Lecturer, School of Psychology and Wellbeing, University of Southern Queensland and Daniel You, Clinical Associate Lecturer, Child Psychiatry, University of Sydney

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

On Monday, the Federal Court of Australia handed Qantas a record fine of A$90 million for breaching the Fair Work Act by unlawfully terminating the employment of 1,820 ground workers during the pandemic.

The decision to impose this penalty – the largest ever issued under the Fair Work Act – marks the final instalment in a five-year litigation saga initiated by the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU).

Delivering the ruling, Federal Court Justice Michael Lee ordered $50 million of the fine be paid to the union, partly to act as a deterrent that “should encourage others to pursue compliance with industrial relations laws”.

The fate of the remaining $40 million will depend on a later hearing to determine if some or all of it should be paid to the sacked workers. That would be on top of $120 million in compensation already agreed.

A quick recap

This saga began in 2020, after the TWU launched an action alleging that Qantas had unlawfully terminated the employment of 1,820 ground handling workers when it made the decision to outsource the staff at the height of the pandemic.

The union argued Qantas made this decision because of the workers’ future right to engage in collective bargaining and take protected industrial action when their enterprise agreement expired.

At trial, Qantas failed to show that this reason had not been a substantial and operative factor in making the outsourcing decision.

This meant that in making the workers redundant, Qantas had breached the Fair Work Act 1,820 times – once for each affected worker. Qantas appealed this outcome all the way to the High Court, but ultimately failed.

Once Qantas had exhausted all rights of appeal, the matter was returned to Justice Lee to determine compensation for the affected workers. After much toing and froing between the parties, in December 2024, a compensation package totalling $120 million was agreed between Qantas and the TWU.

A meaningful deterrent

That left a final outstanding matter for the court – the “appropriate” penalty to be imposed against Qantas for breaching the law. The maximum penalty available for this breach under the Fair Work Act was just over $120 million.

To determine an appropriate penalty under the Fair Work Act, a judge must exercise a level of discretion and weigh up various factors. These include the nature, circumstances and consequences of the breach, the size of the business and the extent to which the contravenor has shown remorse.

So why the record fine? The size of this penalty is partly because there were so many workers affected by Qantas’ breach of the Fair Work Act.

But it also reflects Justice Lee’s view that there was a need for “real deterrence” to ensure big employers are not tempted to “get away” with unlawful conduct because the potential rewards outweigh the risks of getting caught.

‘The wrong kind of sorry’

On whether Qantas had shown genuine remorse, Justice Lee acknowledged Qantas had belatedly apologised for its conduct.

But the company’s formal expression of regret was described as “the wrong kind of sorry”. That is, the company seemed to be sorry they got caught and suffered financial and reputational loss, but not truly sorry for the effect of the unlawful conduct and its impact on the workers.

Justice Lee expressed scepticism that Qantas’ corporate culture had genuinely changed. In deciding to outsource its ground handling operations, Qantas was found to have been “lawyered from the start and up to the hilt”.

The judge noted that, throughout the litigation, Qantas pursued a vigorous defence, alongside an aggressive public relations strategy, continuing to deny any wrongdoing.

Justice Lee also observed that, at the 11th hour, even after the High Court decision had found in favour of the union, Qantas tried to deploy a strategy to ensure the affected workers received nothing.

It was only when facing the prospect of a massive fine, that Qantas expressed regret, putting forward evidence their corporate culture had changed. However, it continued to use the same legal team that came up with the outsourcing strategy.

In Justice Lee’s view, it was telling that no senior leaders who had been involved in the decision and remained with Qantas took the stand to explain what they had learned and why it would not happen again.

Ultimately, this outsourcing decision cost Qantas a combined amount of around $210 million in compensation and penalties. This figure does not include the millions of dollars of legal fees Qantas incurred in fighting the litigation.

But it was estimated outsourcing the ground handling operations saved Qantas about $100 million per year. In essence, despite being handed the biggest fine on record, Qantas still appears to be financially better off as a result of the unlawful outsourcing decision.

Portion paid to the union

Under the Fair Work Act, it is difficult to recover legal costs. This makes it challenging for unions, and others, to pursue litigation through the courts and hold companies to account.

The decision to pay $50 million – more than half of the penalty – to the TWU was made partly because the union took on the perils of protracted litigation. And, as Justice Lee pointed out, adverse action cases can be dicey. The outcomes are by no means certain.

Here, the union bore the risk and has reaped the reward. This means more money in the TWU coffers to pursue other employers who may breach the Fair Work Act. It is also an important signal to other unions, and worker representatives, that the benefits of enforcing the law may now outweigh the risks of doing so.

Shae McCrystal, Professor of Labour Law, University of Sydney and Tess Hardy, Associate Professor, Director of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, The University of Melbourne

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

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have used artificial intelligence (AI) to design two new antibiotics effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or “superbugs”.

This is a potentially exciting development, but it’s important to note there are several hurdles to overcome before we might see these antibiotics used in the real world. And if this eventuates, it’s likely to be some years away.

So how did the researchers harness AI to develop these antibiotics? Which superbugs will they target? And what happens next?

Antibiotic resistance is a global health threat

Frequent overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture has led to the evolution of new strains of bacteria resistant to an increasing range of antibiotics. This global public health crisis makes the development of new antibiotics a significant challenge.

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs contribute to around 5 million deaths worldwide annually, and directly cause more than 1.2 million deaths.

It’s estimated superbug infections could lead to more than A$2.5 trillion in lost economic output globally by 2050.

Antibiotic resistance is also increasingly a problem of inequity, with many poorer countries unable to access newer antibiotics to overcome resistant bacteria.

Targeting 2 key superbugs

The researchers used AI to design antibiotics against two prominent superbugs: Neisseria gonorrhoeae and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

N. gonorrhoeae causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhoea, which has developed high levels of resistance to antibiotics in recent years. The inability to treat it effectively has contributed to a rapid spread of the disease. There were more than 82 million new cases in 2020, mostly in developing nations.

MRSA is a resistant strain of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (often referred to as “golden staph”). S. aureus can cause skin infections or serious blood and organ infections. Patients who get sick with the resistant MRSA strain are estimated to be 64% more likely to die as a result of an infection.

To address these challenges, the MIT team harnessed generative AI in two ways.

What did the researchers do?

The research team trained an AI algorithm, called a machine learning neural network, using chemical structures. We can think of this as similar to the way an AI language model would be trained using words.

The first approach, used for gonorrhoea, involved the algorithm screening a large database of existing compounds that had demonstrated antibiotic activity against N. gonorrhoeae. The AI algorithm then used the chemical structures of these compounds as “seeds” and built on them, generating new compounds by adding chemical structures one by one.

This approach led to 80 new candidate compounds, two of which could be chemically synthesised (meaning the scientists could make them in the lab). In the end, one of these demonstrated strong effectiveness against N. gonorrhoeae. It was able to kill the bacteria on a petri dish and in a mouse model.

The second approach, used for MRSA, started from scratch, prompting the AI algorithm with only simple chemical structures such as water and ammonia. The algorithm then predicted chemical structures that would interact effectively with vulnerabilities in the bacteria’s cell defences, and came up with entirely new antibiotic compounds.

Out of around 90 candidates, 22 were synthesised and tested in the lab. Six showed strong antibacterial activity against MRSA in a petri dish. The most promising compound successfully cleared an MRSA skin infection in a mouse model.

Advantages and challenges

An important element of this research is that the two new antibiotics are not just novel in their structure, but also in their mechanisms of action (in other words, how they work against the bacteria).

Traditionally, antibiotic development has relied on tweaking existing antibiotics. It’s hoped the fact these AI-generated molecules have entirely new mechanisms of action will make them more difficult for gonorrhoea and MRSA to evade.

Prior to this research, when it comes to antibiotic development, AI has mainly been used to narrow down libraries of already existing compounds or to modify chemical structures of currently used drugs.

While this work is very promising, several hurdles remain. Both antibiotics must undergo vigorous testing for safety and efficacy in humans through clinical trials, which will take several years and require significant funding.

Another challenge could be financial. As these antibiotics would be intended as “last resort” drugs to preserve their effectiveness, their market use will be limited. This limits the financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest in their development and production.

Nevertheless, this work marks a significant milestone in drug discovery and is an example of how AI might reshape the fight against infectious diseases in the future.

Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University

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

If you’ve spent time on social media recently you have probably been exposed to questionable “wellness” content. You may have been instructed to dip your toes in icy water or let the sun shine where it usually doesn’t.

Wellness trends such as drinking “loaded” water or taking ice baths may be benign for most people, while others such as drinking raw milk, eating raw organ meats, or taping your mouth while you sleep carry real risks.

The online spaces where they circulate can also be harmful, serving as breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination sentiment, and misuse of appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs.

It’s easy to dismiss followers of extreme wellness trends as gullible or misinformed. But research suggests personality traits may help explain why some educated, well-intentioned people sometimes reject conventional medicine in favour of fringe practices.

The big five personality traits

Psychologists have shown that many aspects of human personality can be described via five fundamental dimensions, of which we all have varying levels.

Two of these “big five” traits – openness and agreeableness – are particularly relevant to people’s interest in alternative health practices. (The remaining three traits are conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism.)

People high in openness are curious, imaginative and adventurous. They question tradition and are attracted to novelty and unconventional ideas. As a result, they are more likely to try new and unorthodox diets or treatments.

Highly agreeable people are trusting, cooperative and empathetic. They are very receptive to emotional messages, especially when they appeal to ideas of caring for others and benefiting the community.

These personality traits also influence how people search for and evaluate online information. People higher in openness tend to adopt an exploratory search strategy, preferring to seek novel or unconventional sources rather than relying on established information channels.

Because they value harmony, trust and maintaining relationships, highly agreeable people tend to give greater weight to information that comes from familiar or socially endorsed sources. They do so even when this information has not been critically evaluated.

Personality and persuasive influence

In the online wellness ecosystem, high levels of openness and agreeableness can make people susceptible to persuasion.

Influencers have a powerful advantage. They can position themselves as both novel and trustworthy. Open people can be seduced by original, eye-catching content, and agreeable people by community-focused narratives.

Influencers cultivate one-sided “parasocial” relationships in which followers feel an intimate connection with someone they have never met. These close bonds, coupled with the open personality’s attraction to unconventional ideas, can draw people into extreme, untested and unsafe health practices.

Openness to new experiences and being interpersonally agreeable are usually seen as strengths. However, in the buzzing, emotionally charged environment of online wellness culture they can become vulnerabilities.

From ice baths to anti-vax

Not all wellness practices peddled by online influencers are harmful. But some relatively innocuous trends can be a gateway to more extreme practices.

Someone might start taking ice baths for a mood boost, move on to restrictive raw diets for “clean eating”, and eventually arrive at anti-vaccine beliefs grounded in deep mistrust of health authorities.

Gateway effects can occur if a trusted influencer makes increasingly extreme recommendations. If the influencer pivots to more dangerous ideas, many followers will follow.

Over time, exposure to fringe wellness narratives can erode trust in mainstream institutions. What began as curiosity and warmth may, through repeated exposure to extreme content, shift towards cynicism and institutional mistrust.

How can public health messages adapt?

Public health campaigns sometimes assume people reject mainstream health advice because they lack knowledge or have low “health literacy”.

But if personality traits influence receptiveness to alternative wellness claims, simply giving people more information may not produce positive change.

Public health campaigns should consider personality traits for more effective preventive interventions. They can target people high in openness, for example, by presenting health science as dynamic and evolving, not just a set of rules and prescriptions. They can reach highly agreeable people with health messages that emphasise empathy and community.

To be effective for all of us, public health communication needs to be as engaging as the messages emanating from influencers. It must use eye-catching visuals, personal stories, and moral hooks while remaining truthful.

People who engage in extreme or unusual wellness practices aren’t merely misinformed. Often, they’re driven by the same urge to explore, connect, and live well as everyone else. The challenge we face is to steer that drive toward health, not harm.

Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney and Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

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

Videos promoting #testosteronemaxxing are racking up millions of views. Like “looksmaxxing” or “fibremaxxing” this trend takes something related to body image (improving your looks) or health (eating a lot of fibre) and pushes it to extreme levels.

Testosterone or “T” maxxing encourages young men – mostly teenage boys – to increase their testosterone levels, either naturally (for example, through diet) or by taking synthetic hormones.

Podcasters popular among young men, such as Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman, enthusiastically promote it as a way to fight ageing, enhance performance or build strength.

However, taking testosterone when there’s no medical need has serious health risks. And the trend plays into the insecurities of young men and developing boys who want to be considered masculine and strong. This can leave them vulnerable to exploitation – and seriously affect their health.

What is testosterone?

We all produce the sex hormone testosterone, but levels are naturally much higher in males. It’s produced mainly in the testes, and in much smaller amounts in the ovaries and adrenal glands.

Testosterone’s effects on the body are wide ranging, including helping you grow and repair muscle and bone, produce red blood cells and stabilise mood and libido.

During male puberty, testosterone production increases 30-fold and drives changes such as a deeper voice, developing facial hair and increasing muscle mass and sperm production.

It’s normal for testosterone levels to change across your lifetime, and even to fluctuate daily (usually at their highest in the morning).

Lifestyle factors such as diet, sleep and stress can also affect how much testosterone you produce.

Natural testosterone levels generally peak in early adulthood, around the mid-twenties. They then start to progressively decline with age.

A doctor can check hormone levels with a blood test. For males, healthy testosterone levels usually range between about 450 and 600 ng/dL (nanograms per decilitre of blood serum). Low testosterone is generally below 300 ng/dL.

Diagnosing low testosterone

In Australia, taking testosterone is only legal with a doctor’s prescription and ongoing supervision. The only way to diagnose low testosterone is via a blood test.

Testosterone may be prescribed to men diagnosed with hypogonadism, meaning the testes don’t produce enough testosterone.

This condition can lead to:

• reduced muscle mass
• increased body fat
• lower bone density (increasing the risk of fracture)
• low libido
• erectile dysfunction
• fatigue
• depression
• anaemia
• difficulty concentrating.

Hypogonadism has even been linked to early death in men.

A manufactured panic about ‘low T’

Hypogonadism affects around one in 200 men, although estimates vary. It is more common among older men and those with diabetes or obesity.

Yet on social media, “low T” is being framed as an epidemic among young men. Influencers warn them to look for signs, such as not developing muscle mass or strength as quickly as hoped – or simply not looking “masculine”.

Extreme self-improvement and optimisation trends spread like wildfire online. They tap into common anxieties about masculinity, status and popularity.

Conflating “manliness” with testosterone levels and a muscular physical appearance exploits an insecurity ripe for marketing.

This has fuelled a market surge for “solutions” including private clinics offering “testosterone optimisation” packages, supplements claiming to increase testosterone levels and influencers on social media promoting extreme exercise and diet programs.

There is evidence some people are undergoing testosterone replacement therapy, even when they don’t have clinically low levels of testosterone.

What are the risks of testosterone replacement?

Taking testosterone as a medication can suppress the body’s own production, by shutting down the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, which controls testosterone and sperm production.

While testosterone production can recover after you stop taking testosterone, this can be slow and is not guaranteed, particularly after long-term or unsupervised use. This means some men may feel a significant difference when they stop taking testosterone.

Testosterone therapy can also lead to side effects for some people, including acne and skin conditions, balding, reduced fertility and a high red blood cell count. It can also interact with some medications.

So there are added risks from using testosterone without a prescription and appropriate supervision.

On the black market, testosterone is sold in gyms, or online via encrypted messaging apps. These products can be contaminated, counterfeit or incorrectly dosed.

People taking these drugs without medical supervision face potential infection, organ damage, or even death, since contaminated or counterfeit products have been linked to toxic metal poisoning, heart attacks, strokes and fatal organ failure.

Harm reduction is key

T maxxing offers young men an enticing image: raise your testosterone, be more manly.

But for healthy young men without hypogonadism, the best ways to regulate hormones and development are healthy lifestyle choices. This includes sleeping and eating well and staying active.

To fight misinformation and empower men to make informed choices, we need to meet them where they are. This means recognising their drive for self-improvement without judgement while helping them understand the real risks of non-medical hormone use.

We also need to acknowledge that young men chasing T maxxing often mask deeper issues, such as body image anxiety, social pressure or mental health issues.

Young men often delay seeking help until they have a medical emergency.

If you’re worried about your testosterone levels, speak to your doctor.

Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney; Luke Cox, Lecturer in Sport Integrity, Swansea University, and Timothy Piatkowski, Lecturer in Psychology, Griffith University

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

How long has it been since you last cleaned your bathroom? If it’s been longer than you planned, you might see a build up of scum, slime or mould around your taps, between the tiles and on the edges of the bath or shower floor.

But why is this sometimes pink or orange? And can this pink slime make us sick?

Sometimes it’s mould

In some instances, the pink slime may be a microfungi (also called a mould) named Rhodotorula.

Rhodotorula is a yeasty little fungus that makes sticky red stains appear on plastics and other wet items left in storage too long, including your toothbrush.

The first part of it’s name, “Rhodo”, refers to its red appearance in nature and comes from the Greek work for rose. It can be found pretty well everywhere, including on and in the wet bits of your skin, as it thrives in humid nooks and crannies.

Most microbes need large amounts of nitrogen to survive. But Rhodotorula is excellent at scavenging nitrogen from its environment. It can survive with a fraction of the typical amount of nitrogen in its cells compared with other microbes.

This nitrogen scavenging allows it to persist in hostile and nutrient-poor environments, such as between your tiles where other microbes would starve. It also means it can pack itself full of lipids and nutrients when times are good, like gloopy little protein pills to survive the lean times.

Rhodotorula doesn’t pose a big risk for healthy people, but it can cause infection for those with weakened immune systems, such as patients hospitalised with catheters.

More commonly, it’s bacteria

The second and more likely candidate for pink scum in your bathroom is a bacteria called Serratia marcescens, another microbe that prefers to multiply in the damp and humid conditions found in bathrooms and laundries.

It’s also a scavenger of nutrients but in this case it scavenges phosphorous, a key component of DNA.

We’ve tried to reduce the amount of phosphates in detergents and soaps as they degrade waterways, but Serratia is excellent at wringing what little remains out of soap scum, or just happily living directly in liquid soap itself, while turning everything pink in the process.

Serratia was once a laboratory research tool. Scientists would puff clouds of the bacteria into the air or splatter it around to predict how a more dangerous bacteria might disperse. Serratia’s scarlet colouring made it easy to spot in lab tests.

But since then, Serratia has been recognised as an emerging pathogen. This means it’s an infectious agent we’ve only recently realised can cause illness, or we’ve only just worked out is actually the cause of a disease.

Serratia now ranks in the top ten most common causes of becteremia: bacteria in the blood. This starts with an infection, leading to sepsis, hospitalisation and sometimes death.

Serratia infections can start in a range of different ways: as a pneumonia, in the urinary tract, or from cuts and wounds. It can cause fever, chills and fatigue, and can be tough to treat due to antibiotic resistance.

Most people exposed to Serratia either won’t get sick or will develop only a mild infection. This may look like a cut that takes a long time to heal, or a phleghmy cough that hangs around but eventually goes away.

The US Army conducted studies where soldiers were exposed to concentrated clouds containing millions of Serratia and after a mild fever and chills, all subjects had recovered after four days.

A study over ten years in Canberra estimated the incidence of Serratia infections as 1.03 per 100,000 people, with similar rates of about 0.9 per 100,000 in Canada. So, in a given year about one person per 100,000 will get an infection from Serratia, which is roughly 2,800 people per year in Australia.

Most serious infections from Serratia occur in hospitals among people at a higher risk of infection because they’re immunocompromised, elderly or have other health conditions.

In a particularly chilling illustration of this, there have been hundreds of case reports of babies contracting Serratia infections in hospitals. In a 2005 outbreak of 159 babies in Gaza, almost half died.

What can you do about pink slime in your bathroom?

Although it’s impossible to live in a sterile environment, there are some simple things you can do to reduce the presence of these microorganisms in your home.

Drying wet areas can go a long way to slowing these critters down, as bacteria and mould need moisture to grow well.

Cleaning with detergents or disinfectants is very effective and is most successful after first removing soil and other debris. Don’t just spray bleach onto the muck and hope for the best; you’re better to scrub, wipe and then disinfect.

Or better yet, clean every two to three weeks (depending on how many kids, pets and roommates you have) to stop gunk building up and to starve these microbes of food.

Wearing dish-washing or disposable gloves during cleaning is a good way to reduce exposure, followed by washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water, and drying them.

Michael Taylor, Adjunct academic, mycology, Flinders University

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

Australia’s health workforce is under pressure. Wait times are growing. Burnout is rising. Yet the country is awash in policy – just not the kind that solves these problems at the root.

This can explain why you’re struggling to see a GP, can’t find a dentist, or struggling to coordinate care between a mental health professional and aged-care nurse.

These issues aren’t isolated problems. As we outline in research published in the Medical Journal of Australia, they reflect a deeper issue in how Australia plans and governs its health workforce.

Despite long-standing concern about shortages of health workers in both rural and urban areas, there’s no overarching national strategy for health workforce planning in Australia.

That’s the type of long-term strategy that helps a country make sure it has enough trained health workers in the right places to meet people’s health needs, now and in the future. Instead, there is fragmentation.

When we reviewed all 121 current federal health workforce policy documents, we found a patchwork of policies for specific professions (for example, doctors, nurses and midwives) that were often short term. These rely heavily on grants and programs rather than long-term strategies and operate in parallel rather than in concert.

They also don’t seem to pay attention to key professions – especially pharmacy, public health and emergency care.

So with more than 850,000 registered health professionals, there are still not enough to meet demand, particularly in regional and remote areas. This is also the case in sectors with rising demand, such as aged care, mental health and rehabilitation.

What should we do?

More than a decade of reports have recommended improvements to national health workforce governance or strategy. Our study shows why those recommendations still matter.

In 2025, the challenge isn’t just to add more staff – it is to coordinate the system and the policy better, and plan for a future where health care is sustainable, equitable, and fit for purpose.

Australia once had a national body to guide health workforce planning – Health Workforce Australia. It was established in 2009 but disbanded in 2014 (ironically) as part of a government efficiency drive.

Since then, the responsibility for workforce planning has been split across multiple government departments, statutory authorities, and state and territories.

For instance, five states have their own individual ten-year health workforce strategic plans.

Some professions have their own national strategies. There’s a national medical workforce strategy, a nurse practitioner workforce plan and a mental health workforce strategy. Others are still being developed, such as the allied health workforce strategy, which would cover health workers such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and podiatrists.

But there’s no effective mechanism to ensure these strategies work together coherently – or to ensure important professions or service areas aren’t left behind.

More programs, fewer solutions

Of the 121 federal policies we analysed, 81% were time-limited grants, programs or sub-programs. These types of policies are typically designed to respond quickly to a specific gap – such as with scholarships, rural relocation bonuses, or individual professional development. But they’re not necessarily designed to create sustained change.

We found 23 policies that could set longer-term direction. But it was not clear how these relate to each other. Few documents cross-referenced one another or reflected on the way solutions in one would impact on the solutions in another.

Most federal documents focus on workforce supply – such as training or recruitment. Fewer tackle the arguably harder, but equally important, issues.

These include how to improve workforce performance, such as by addressing skills mismatch or under-use (where individuals are not able to use their qualifications or skills as part of their job), or how to better distribute staff across regions.

So what needs to change?

In Australia, the federal government funds most of primary care, aged care and Indigenous health. But states and territories employ most health workers. So governance is decentralised.

Private providers, Primary Health Networks (federal government-funded organisations that support services to meet local health needs) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled services (which provide primary health care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people) add further complexity to the health workforce landscape.

So without national coordination, workforce policy and planning risks being reactive, inconsistent, and susceptible to political cycles. This risks focusing on what’s most visible, and apparently urgent, rather than what’s systemic and enduring.

Here’s what needs to change:

• Australia needs to re-establish a national body for health workforce planning, similar to the former Health Workforce Australia. A recent independent review agrees the current meeting of health ministers is not an effective way to govern health workers. Without a national hub, the current patchwork approach will continue

• policymakers must shift from profession-specific and short-term responses to a system-wide approach. This means recognising how different parts of the health workforce interact as part of a broader labour market, and how policies for doctors, nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals need to work together, especially in rural and remote care

• we need fewer ad hoc grants that turn over with each new federal government. Instead, we need greater emphasis on durable strategies and agreements that can guide action over time, while allowing states and territories to adapt them if needed. These should be backed by clear data, and be evaluated and accountable.

Stephanie M. Topp, Professor, Global Health and Development, James Cook University; Lana Elliott, Senior lecturer, School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, and Thu Nguyen, Research Fellow, Health Policy and Systems, James Cook University

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

There was much cause for celebration when no-grounds evictions were abolished in New South Wales on May 19.

Keeping a pre-election promise, the NSW government amended the state’s Residential Tenancies Act to end no-grounds evictions and add new reasonable grounds for termination instead.

In doing so, NSW joined the ACT and South Australia, which had recently abolished no-grounds evictions. Since then Victoria has also legislated to end no-grounds evictions.

Queensland has joined Tasmania in ending no-grounds eviction in periodic tenancies and the National Cabinet has adopted “genuine reasonable grounds for eviction” as part of its “better deal for renters” reform agenda.

But now, the NSW government has created a loophole for so-called “renovictions” that is big enough to drive a ute through.

Grounds for termination

In states and territories that have scrapped no-grounds evictions, landlords must have reasonable grounds to evict tenants before the rental agreement period is set to end.

The grounds include if a tenant has failed to pay rent or otherwise breached the terms of their tenancy agreement. They also include if the landlord is selling the property to someone who requires the premises to be vacant.

These grounds have been part of the law for decades.

Now NSW’s new grounds for termination include if the landlord:

• will make significant repairs or renovations to the premises
• is going to live in the premises (or a family member will)
• is offering the premises for sale regardless of who is buying it or whether they are prepared to retain the tenant
• will not use the premises as rented residential premises for 12 months.

These grounds mean landlords still enjoy a lot of control over their properties – and their tenants’ homes.

For example, if they want to evict the tenants to put the premises on Airbnb, they can, using the “no longer used as rented residential premises” ground.

And if they want to evict the tenant to make it easier to market the premises for sale – as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese controversially did last year – they can use the “offering for sale” ground.

And if they want to renovate, they can use that ground.

The ‘renoviction’ loophole

When the NSW government scrapped no-grounds evictions, landlords who wanted to use renovations as a premise for ending a tenancy were required to provide a written statement and at least one piece of evidence, such as a development application or a quote from a licensed builder or tradesperson.

However, on June 20, the requirement to provide evidence was quietly scrapped: a landlord now only has to provide a written statement signalling they intend to renovate the property.

This could be wide open to abuse.

The government made the change without any public consultation.

The opposition, Greens and independent MPs tried in parliament to reverse the changes, but were defeated by the government’s numbers in the Legislative Assembly.

The change is yet to be debated in the upper house.

Some 30 organisations working with tenants released a joint statement on July 19 criticising the change, stating:

Without the full evidence requirements for this prescribed ground for termination, there is a real risk that the government’s commitment to end no-grounds evictions and ensure renters have the rights and security they need will be undermined.

Other shortcomings that can impact tenants

Besides the problems associated with renoviction, there are other shortcomings in the new laws.

In eviction proceedings on the new grounds, there is no scope for the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal to decline to terminate a tenancy because of hardship and other circumstances. Only if the tenant can prove the termination notice is motivated by retaliation – a hard thing to prove – can the tribunal refuse to evict.

The tribunal should be able to balance the interests of a landlord against the hardship that will be experienced by the tenant – and decline to evict if the hardship is too great.

Victoria’s Residential Tenancies Act gives its tribunal scope to consider whether an eviction is “reasonable and proportionate”. This consideration has resulted in the tribunal refusing to evict families on the “offering for sale” ground, because the tenants could not find alternative accommodation and would likely be homeless.

Our research

We have studied tenants who had been evicted or threatened with eviction in the private rental sector, and found no-grounds evictions created enormous anxiety.

One interviewee had recently been evicted. He graphically expressed the disempowerment and frustration associated with landlords’ capacity to evict tenants without the need to give a reason:

The unbelievable rights that landlords have over you creates a constant state of anger and you feel violated. I live in a constant state of fear around housing security. There’s nothing you can do.

Our interviews illustrated that tenants, especially low-income tenants, were acutely aware they would struggle to secure alternative accommodation and could find themselves homeless if they were evicted.

Another interviewee, who was single and reliant on the disability support pension, captured this anxiety:

The fear of homelessness is so much closer now than it has ever been in my whole experience with renting in Australia because it’s just so unstable. You have no leg to stand on. You’re always unsure, and you could just get an email from the landlord at any time, or from the real estate agent, and just like that your whole reality’s shifted.

Our study highlighted just why abolishing no-grounds evictions was a major positive reform for tenants.

However, the possibility of renoviction, the various other grounds for eviction and the limited discretion of the tribunal means the power of landlords in NSW is still excessive.

Alan Morris, Professor, Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney and Chris Martin, Senior Research Fellow, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

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

Last Saturday at 9:49am local time, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake occurred about 50km west of Gympie in Queensland. The earthquake was experienced as strong shaking locally, but did not produce any significant damage, likely because of the remote location of the epicentre.

However, the quake was felt far and wide and small aftershocks continue. More than 24,000 people across eastern Australia reported it, not only in the nearest big city (Brisbane) but as far away as Cairns and Sydney. This was the largest earthquake in onshore southeast Queensland since 1935, when an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 occurred near Gayndah.

Most of the world’s earthquake hotspots are near the boundaries between tectonic plates – places such as New Zealand, Japan and Indonesia. Here, earthquakes are frequent because of the immense forces where two plates collide or slide past one another.

But Australia sits in the middle of the Australian tectonic plate, far from any plate edges. So why do earthquakes still happen here?

Tectonically ‘quiet’ – but not silent

Australia is often seen as tectonically “quiet” and stable.

But this picture is only partly true. As Saturday’s seismic event shows, earthquakes do happen here, and Australia has a rich record of recent faults and seismic activity.

On average, Australia has an earthquake larger than magnitude 6.0 about once every seven years, and one greater than magnitude 5.0 roughly once a year. Geological studies of recent faults tell us that Australia could host an earthquake up to around magnitude 7.5.

What drives earthquakes in Australia?

Even though Australia is far from the edges of tectonic plates, the continent is still being squeezed and stressed by the large forces at those distant plate boundaries. These stresses travel deep into the plate and build up.

When the stress becomes too great, it is suddenly released along zones of weakness in the crust (known as fault zones). That release is what we feel as an earthquake.

The map below shows just how widespread earthquakes and active faults are across the continent.

The Australian stress field

Over the past four decades, scientists have built up a detailed picture of the stresses acting in the Australian crust. This comes from many sources including earthquake information, borehole data, mining sites, and large-scale engineering projects.

The results have been compiled in two projects: the Australian Stress Map and the World Stress Map. These show Australia’s stress patterns are highly variable and different from those of other continents.

Unlike some continents, where the direction of maximum horizontal stress tends to line up neatly with the movement of plates, Australia’s stresses twist and turn, changing direction across the country. Large-scale computer modeling shows this can be explained by the combined effect of tectonic forces at the edges of the Indo-Australian Plate.

Stress and earthquakes in Queensland

The recent earthquake occurred near Kilkivan, west of Gympie, in an area where many faults are aligned in a northwest–southeast direction. One of the most important of these is the North Pine Fault System, a wide zone made of many separate fault segments.

This network of fractures tells a long geological story of movement, stretching back millions of years, that has shaped the landscape of eastern Australia. Geoscientists believe the fault system is quite ancient – between around 50 million and 250 million years old.

However, there have been numerous modern earthquakes in the surrounding region, which suggests the fault system may still be active. The area has experienced several significant earthquakes in the past, including events in 1883, 1918, 1935 and more recently, 2015.

The maximum stress in this region is directed from northeast to southwest. The driving forces come from far beyond Australia.

The Australian tectonic plate is compressed from the north and east by the Pacific plate, particularly along boundaries near the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, and the Tonga–Kermadec zone which stretches from New Zealand to Tonga. This compression reaches deep into Queensland.

It is these forces from distant plate boundaries that are behind Australian earthquakes like the recent one in Kilkivan, even though we are far from the world’s active plate edges.

Since Saturday morning’s earthquake, more than 15 aftershocks have been recorded. Most have been quite small, with magnitudes less than 2.0. A main shock of the moderate magnitude experienced near Gympie will typically produce an aftershock as large as magnitude 4.5, in addition to the many more smaller events.

So, as the crust adjusts to the changes in local stress produced by this earthquake, seismic activity is expected to continue for days or weeks, but with overall smaller and less frequent earthquakes as time goes on.

Mojtaba Rajabi, Senior Lecturer in Geoscience, The University of Queensland; Abbas Babaahmadi, Adjunct Research Fellow, Structural Geology, The University of Queensland, and Dee Ninis, Earthquake Scientist, Monash University

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

In July, the United States government made it clear that artificial intelligence (AI) companies wanting to do business with the White House will need to ensure their AI systems are “objective and free from top-down ideological bias”.

In an executive order on “preventing woke AI in the federal government”, President Donald Trump refers to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as an example of a biased ideology.

The apparent contradiction of calling for unbiased AI while also dictating how AI models should discuss DEI shows the notion of ideologically free AI is a fantasy.

Multiple studies have shown most language models skew their responses to left-of-centre viewpoints, such as imposing taxes on flights, restricting rent increases, and legalising abortion.

Chinese chatbots such as DeepSeek, Qwen and others censor information on the events of Tiananmen Square, the political status of Taiwan, and the persecution of Uyghurs, aligning with the official position of the Chinese government.

AI models are not politically neutral nor free from bias. More importantly, it may not even be possible for them to be unbiased. Throughout history, attempts to organise information have shown that one person’s objective truth is another’s ideological bias.

Lying with maps

Humans struggle to organise information about the world without distorting reality.

Take cartography, for example. We might expect maps to be objective – after all, they reflect the natural world. But flattening a globe onto a two-dimensional map means having to distort it somehow. American geographer Mark Monmonier has famously argued maps necessarily lie, distort reality, and can be tools for political propaganda.

Think of the classic world map that uses the Mercator projection, hung in every primary school classroom. It converts the globe into a cylinder and then lays it flat. I grew up thinking Greenland must be massive compared to the rest of the world.

In fact, Africa is 14 times larger than Greenland, despite appearing to be roughly the same size on this type of map.

In the 1970s, German historian Arno Peters argued Mercator’s distortions contributed to a skewed perception of the inferiority of the global south.

Such distortions could be an analogy for the current state of AI. As Monmonier wrote in his book How To Lie With Maps:

a single map is but one of an indefinitely large number of maps that might be produced for the same situation or from the same data.

Similarly, a single large language model’s response is one of an indefinitely large number of responses which might be produced for the same situation or from the same data.

Think of the many ways a chatbot could formulate a response when prompted about something like diversity, equity and inclusion.

A built-in classification bias

Other historic attempts at organising information have shown the bias of their designers and users too.

The widely used Dewey decimal classification (DDC) system for libraries, published in 1876, has been known to be racist and homophobic.

Over the course of the 20th century, LGBTQIA+ books have been categorised under Mental Derangements, Neurological Disorders, or Social Problems in the DDC, with more recent efforts being made to eliminate outdated and derogatory terms from the classification.

Under Religion, roughly 65 sections out of 100 are dedicated to Christianity because the library where the classification was originally developed had a strong focus on Christianity. While Islam has an estimated 2 billion followers to Christianity’s 2.3 billion today, in the DDC Islam only has a single section dedicated to it.

AI learns from humans, after all

The large language models that power AI chatbots are trained on countless pieces of text, from historical works of literature to online discussion forums. Biases from these texts can unknowingly creep into the model, such as negative stereotypes of African Americans from the 1930s.

Just having raw information is not enough. Language models must be trained how to retrieve and present this information in their answers.

One way to do this is to have them learn to copy how humans respond to questions. This process does make them more useful, but studies have found it also makes them align with the beliefs of those who are training them.

AI chatbots also use system prompts: instructions that tell them how to act. These system prompts are, of course, defined by human developers.

For example, the system prompts for Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, reportedly instruct it to “assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased” and to not “shy away from making claims that are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated”.

Musk launched Grok to counter his perceived “liberal bias” of other products such as ChatGPT. However, the recent fallout when Grok started spouting anti-semitic rhetoric clearly illustrates that attempts to correct for bias necessarily replace it with a different kind of bias.

All this goes to show that for all their innovation and wizardry, AI language models suffer from a centuries-old problem. Organising and presenting information is not only an attempt to reflect reality, it is a projection of a worldview.

For users, understanding whose worldview these models represent is just as important as knowing who draws the lines on a map.

Declan Humphreys, Lecturer Cybersecurity and Ethics, University of the Sunshine Coast

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

Ever ordered a salad on a first date when you really wanted the burger?

Many of us eat differently when we’re around other people, often without realising it. Our food choices shift depending on who’s at the table, who’s watching, or who might see our food if it’s shared online.

This isn’t just about manners or appetite. Experts are increasingly interested in the ways in which meals aren’t just eaten, but are curated. Psychologists and nutrition researchers call this “performative eating”.

The most recent viral example of this comes from TikTok, in the form of performative matcha. These videos show young, well-dressed men roaming in public with a matcha drink in one hand and a novel in the other – ostensibly to look attractive to women.

What is performative eating?

Performative eating refers to how we choose or avoid certain foods based not on taste or nutrition, but on what we think it signals to others. Food can be a powerful tool to signal identity and build connection.

People might consume certain foods to send a message about their

• health – such as by opting for a salad to appear “disciplined”

• gender – such as ordering a steak or beer to look “masculine”, or avoiding a “feminine” dessert or cocktail

• morals – such as by eating plant-based, to emphasise environmental values

• aesthetic – such as when people curate meals so they will look beautiful on social media feeds.

The way we eat is often shaped by social influences. We are aware of some of these influences, such as when we choose certain foods to fit in with family or friends. Others happen without us even noticing.

The role of social media

Food has been performative for hundreds of years (maybe more) – especially considering the luxurious and decorative eating habits of royal families.

Social media magnifies the dynamics of performative eating. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are inundated with food content, from aesthetic smoothie bowls, and matcha creations, to viral “what I eat in a day” videos.

These posts don’t just entertain – they influence.

Viewers may copy the meals, lifestyles, or even the values of creators they admire. As such, social media doesn’t just reflect eating trends. It also helps create and reinforce them.

The psychology and sociology of food

As social beings, our eating habits are deeply influenced by social modelling, wherein we tend to mirror what and how much others eat – especially when we like them or feel similar to them.

Research has found that knowing what foods or drinks others have chosen can influence us to make similar choices. Research also suggests people typically eat more when dining with friends or family, compared to when they eat alone. This suggests familiarity and social connection play a role in how much we eat.

Our food choices are also shaped by broader cultural beliefs, or what society says is “good” or “bad”. Online trends such as “trad wives” baking sourdough, detox regimens, and strict diets such as raw foodism can represent ideals of “purity” or discipline, or a desire to belong to a a particular community.

The reverse of this is also visible in popular culture, where indulgence is celebrated. Take mukbangs – videos where people eat large amounts of (often unhealthy) food while chatting with viewers. Originating in South Korea, mukbang videos have become a global trend, with some videos getting more than 30 million views.

Research shows mukbang videos can shape viewers’ eating habits. A recent review of the evidence suggests that for some they are helpful as they can encourage regular eating, and reduce binge eating or loneliness. But for others, they can trigger restrictive eating habits, or relapses into what is called “loss-of-control eating”.

When does it become a problem?

Performative eating sits on a spectrum. Sometimes it’s positive to share in certain foods, such as to connect with friends or family, or to celebrate your culture.

But it crosses the line when most of the focus is on appearing a certain way to others. This influence is particularly strong among adolescents and young adults. People in these age groups are often still figuring out who they are and where they belong, so fitting in can feel very important.

There are a range of potential downsides to performative eating. In more extreme cases, it might lead to disordered eating and body image concerns. For example, striving to present a “perfect”, socially approved diet can spiral into rigid rules or restriction that undermine one’s mental and physical health.

Performative eating may lead to reduced food enjoyment, as meals become more about spectacle rather than moments of nourishment or pleasure.

It can also lead to food shortages or strain on food supply, as we’ve seen in past matcha shortages.

Reconnecting with food

Performative eating isn’t always harmful. But if you think it could be affecting your physical or mental health in any way, you can ask yourself these questions:

• am I consuming this food or drink because I enjoy it, or because I will be viewed a certain way for it?

• do I order what I actually want to eat, or what I think I should be ordering?

• what emotions do I feel before and after engaging with various food content online?

Parents and caregivers can help children build lifelong positive relationships with food by modelling healthy eating, avoiding food restrictions, and encouraging autonomy in childrens’ food choices.

Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland; Emily Burch, Accredited Practising Dietitian and Lecturer, Southern Cross University, and Pearl (Pui Ting) Wong, Accredited Practising Dietitian, PhD Candidate, Casual Academic | Culinary nutrition & adolescent wellbeing, The University of Queensland

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