In The Conversation

As global temperatures increase, Earth’s water cycle is changing. Over the past 50 years, this has led to an expansion of Earth’s tropical and subtropical zones. Tropical areas are moist and lush, but dry at the northern and southern edges.

These dry edges are pushing towards the poles. Regions that used to enjoy a gentler Mediterranean climate, as shown in the map below, are turning into dry subtropical zones.

They include highly populated regions, such as Southern California. Similarly, parts of Australia including Perth and much of southeast Australia has dried in recent decades, in a pattern consistent with tropical expansion.

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In a recent study, I interviewed 12 teachers, primarily in rural towns in the Northeast, about how they deal with problems that arise in the classroom every day. They discussed how they came up with responses based on best practices they had learned in school from resources such as books and videos. They also spoke of techniques they learned in professional development workshops.

Of the nine who worked in public schools or publicly funded child care centers, however, all but one of the teachers were influenced by pressure to follow a curriculum to fidelity. This pressure came from administrators in the form of threats of punishments and even job loss, as well as from colleagues who questioned when they taught a curriculum differently. 

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The term “fidelity” comes from the sciences and refers to the precise execution of a protocol in an experiment to ensure results are reliable. However, a classroom is not a lab, and students are not experiments.

As a result, teachers and teacher educators have long decried fidelity and the impact it has on them and their students.

One participant in my study, a fourth grade public school teacher, described an oppressive environment at her school: “They were really driving the curriculum down our throats. We need to meet this at this date. And everyone should be at this lesson at this date.”

This counteracted what she was taught in college – every student is different, and every classroom is different. Not all teachers will be on the same lesson on the same day.

We mapped the extent to which researchers and advocates have been subject to intimidation tactics by tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food (UPF) companies and their associates. The tactics described include being descredited in public, legal threats, complaints, nefarious use of Freedom of Information legislation, surveillance, cyberattacks, bribery and even physical violence.

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The scale of intimidation we have found is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Many will be too scared to publicly reveal that they have been intimidated because of their work.

We found widespread intimidation across the three sectors, perpetrated by corporations themselves and their third parties. In the most serious forms of intimidation, the perpetrators remained unknown.

Puberty blockers delay the onset of puberty, but don’t necessarily result in a measurable effect at the time they are taken. The main impact is seen when people are older. The physical effects of a puberty that does not match a person’s gender can have serious negative consequences for transgender adults.

In my role as a GP, I regularly hear from transgender adults (who have not had puberty blockers) struggling with distress related to bodily changes which occurred during puberty.

I have met people who don’t speak because their deep voice causes others to make incorrect assumptions about their gender. Some harm themselves or avoid leaving the house because of the distress caused by their breasts. Others seek costly surgical treatments.

This is when the benefits of maintaining equitable access to puberty blockers for those who need them become obvious. People are seeking hormones, surgery and mental health support for changes which could have been prevented by using puberty blockers when they were younger.

The ministry’s position statement recommends that puberty blockers are prescribed by health professionals who have expertise in this area, with input from interdisciplinary colleagues.

In my experience this describes how puberty blockers are currently being prescribed in New Zealand. Clinicians are already cautious in their prescribing. They work with multidisciplinary input to best support the young person and their family. They recognise the importance of mental health and family support for young people. 

The Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill now before parliament offers some hope. It builds on the Ministry for the Environment’s 2021 consultation document, “Taking responsibility for our waste”.

The bill seeks to force manufacturers to provide spare parts, repair information, software and tools to consumers for a reasonable period after the sale of goods. But there is still too much doubt about how long those goods and parts should last in the first place.

To give manufacturers and consumers more certainty, establishing minimum product lifespans is essential. This would be defined as the period for which a product can perform its intended function effectively.

Repairs can extend this functional lifespan. So it is also important to factor in a “repairability period” when products can be repaired at the consumer’s expense, beyond the manufacturer’s implied or expressed guarantee. Spare parts, repair information and necessary tools must be made available.

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Planned obsolescence can involve integrating components that are likely to fail sooner than the product itself, withholding spare parts, or requiring prohibitive information and proprietary tools for repairs.

Ultimately, it is about maximising profitability, and extends from smartphones and appliances to automobiles and farm machinery. It fosters a throwaway culture, adding to the strain on waste systems and landfills.

As Australia begins to plot a recovery strategy from the first recession in the country in decades, the Morrison government needs to examine what has worked well in the past.

Crises require strong leadership, national cohesion and a framework for carrying out recovery efforts on a grand scale.

As such, there is a case to be made for a new Commonwealth agency to lead the recovery effort, built on the model of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction that helped Australia emerge from the turmoil of the second world war.

In December 1942, Prime Minister John Curtin established the Department of Post-War Reconstruction. Even though the war was still raging, its task was to begin planning and coordinating Australia’s transition to a peacetime economy. 

Being able to afford health care is a pressing issue for many Australians. And encouraging GPs to bulk bill is one measure the government is taking to ease the strain.

So what would it take for GPs to bulk bill everyone? In our recent paper, we calculated this is possible and affordable, given the current health budget.

But we show recent incentives for GPs to bulk bill aren’t enough to get us there.

Instead, we need to adjust health policies to increase bulk-billing rates and to make our health system more sustainable.

This research looks at the prevalence and impact of low-use housing for England, Wales and Scotland. Our map of what we’ve called “ghost enclaves” – the most concentrated areas of low-use properties – suggests that this is almost exclusively a coastal phenomenon. It effectively outlines the island of Great Britain in red.

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In the ghost enclaves that topped our ranking, low-use homes account for between 34% and 54% of the local housing stock. These areas include Trawsfynnydd and New Quay in Wales; St Ives, Padstow, Grasmere and Benthall in England; and Earlsferry and Millport in Scotland. 

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We also interviewed 66 experts and campaigners across the UK: housing and planning officials, policy experts, campaigners, residents, councillors and politicians at local and national levels, plus trade body representatives.

They described how second homes and short-term lets have hollowed out many communities. Demand for essential services like schools has reduced as a result. Year-round social infrastructure, such as pubs and cafes, has withered due to the outsized seasonal demand followed by long fallow periods. Communities feel significant resentment.

Our findings chime with census data showing that Londoners are increasingly buying investment properties in the national parks and coastal areas of the south-west. Similarly, affluent households in the north-west of England are buying second homes in north Wales.

One planner we interviewed said any benefits from increasing housing development in rural areas (a policy that many support) – including releasing more land for housing and allowing rural exception sites, barn conversions and developments on small “pocket” sites (such as in a garden or between houses) – are essentially cancelled out by people turning existing stock into Airbnbs, holiday lets and second homes. “And we have no planning control over that,” one planner explained. They likened the whole exercise to filling the bath with the plug pulled out. 

At first blush, these tycoons might seem to be “prepping” for a familiar 20th-century style apocalypse, as depicted in countless disaster movies. But they’re not. 

Yes, their vast estates do include bunkers and other technologies traditionally associated with prepping. For example, the mansions of Ko’olau Ranch are connected through underground tunnels that feed into a large shelter.

However, Zuckerberg, Winfrey, Ellison and others are actually embarking on far more ambitious projects. They are seeking to create entirely self-sustaining ecosystems, in which land, agriculture, the built environment and labour are all controlled and managed by a single person, who has more in common with a mediaeval-era feudal lord than a 21st-century capitalist.

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What we see with Zuckerberg’s project isn’t an overt conflict between billionaire and community. In Kauai, members of a community have consented, or conceded, to grant a plutocrat the stewardship of their land, in the name of preservation. This is a business model that leads directly (back) to feudalism.

This insight is lost in the media’s obsession with the “craziest features” of Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian folly. Rather, what is emerging among billionaires is a belief that survival depends not (only) on hiding out in a reinforced concrete hole in the ground, but (also) on developing, and controlling, an ecosystem of one’s own.

The dispute began with the decision to cancel or postpone (both verbs are contested) a program of “Teen Bootcamp” workshops – funded by the Serp Hills Foundation and the JTM Foundation – for young writers. The library had engaged six authors, including Jinghua Qian, Omar Sakr, Alison Evans and Ariel Slamet Ries, to conduct the workshops.

On social media and elsewhere, the writers had voiced their support for the Palestinian people in the face of Israel’s full-scale invasion of Gaza. 

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In response to the criticism, library management defended the workshop decision as “apolitical”. Meanjin editor Esther Anatolitis tweeted in reply, “There is no such thing as an apolitical cultural institution”.

A boycott, open letters, petitions, resignations: these are definitive evidence something has gone wrong with the library.

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A paradox of neoliberalism over the past three or four decades is that, when commercial-style governance is applied in traditionally less commercial spheres – such as libraries, universities, publishing and the public sector – it is often applied more rigidly and narrowly than in genuinely corporate sectors, such as banking and professional services.

But libraries are not just another type of corporation, and a library CEO is not the same as the head of a commercial corporation.