Etikett: Theconversation.com

Commentators have branded last night’s federal budget as an attempt to win over typical Australian voters concerned about the cost of living, ahead of what is expected to be a tightly fought federal election.

The budget’s big-ticket items included tax cuts and energy bill relief, plus measures to make childcare and healthcare cheaper.

There was little in the budget dedicated to stemming Australia’s environmental crises. Given this, one might assume the average voter cares little for action on conservation and curbing climate change. But is this true?

Polling suggests the clear answer is “no”. Voters consistently say they want more government action on both conservation and climate change. As the federal election looms, Labor is running out of time to show it cares about Australia’s precious natural environment.

Voters consistently say they want more government spending and action on both conservation and climate change.
Dave Hunt/AAP

What environmental spending was in the budget?

The main spending on the environment in last night’s budget had been announced in the weeks before. It includes:

These measures are welcome. However, the overall environment spending is inadequate, given the scale of the challenges Australia faces.

Australia’s protected areas, such as national parks, have suffered decades of poor funding, and the federal budget has not rectified this. It means these sensitive natural places will remain vulnerable to harms such as invasive species and bushfires.

More broadly, Australia is failing to stem the drivers of biodiversity loss, such as land clearing and climate change. This means more native species become threatened with extinction each year.

Experts say conserving Australia’s threatened species would cost an extra $2 billion a year. Clearly, the federal budget spending of an extra $50 million a year falls well short of this.

And global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. This contributes to ever-worsening climate change, bringing heatwaves, more extreme fires, more variable rainfall and rising seas.

Contrary to what the federal budget priorities might suggest, Australians are concerned about these issues.

Climate change is making bushfires worse, which threatens wildlife.
David Mariuz/AAP

What does the average voter think about the environment?

Results from reputable polling provide insight into what the average voters want when it comes to environmental policy and spending.

When it comes to conservation, the evidence is clear. Polling by YouGov in October last year (commissioned by two environment groups) estimated that 70% of Australians think the Labor government should do more to “protect and restore nature”. The vast majority of voters (86%) supported stronger national nature laws.

Essential Research polling in October 2023 found 53% of voters think the government is not doing enough to preserve endangered species. About the same proportion said more government action was needed to preserve native forests, and oceans and rivers.

On climate change, the average voter appears to have views significantly out of step with both major parties. The Australia Institute’s Climate of the Nation report last year found 50% of voters believed the government was not doing enough to prepare for and adapt to climate impacts.

The report also found 50% of voters supported a moratorium on new coal mines in Australia, 69% support charging companies a levy for each tonne of carbon pollution they emit, and 69% are concerned about climate change.

Also in 2024, a Lowy Institute poll found 57% of Australians supported the statement that “global warming is a serious and pressing problem, and that we should take steps now to mitigate it even if it involves significant costs”.

There’s a caveat here. As the cost-of-living crisis has worsened, the issue has edged out all others in terms of voter concerns at the upcoming election.

For example, in January this year, Roy Morgan polling found 57% of voters considered cost of living one of their top-three issues of concern. Only 23% considered global warming a top-three issue.

However, global warming was still more of a concern for voters than managing the economy (22%), keeping interest rates down (19%) and reducing taxes (15%). It was tied with reducing crime (23%).

It’s also important to note that climate change and cost-of-living pressures are not separate issues. Research suggests that as climate change worsens, it will cause inflation to worsen.

Contrary to what the federal budget priorities might suggest, Australians are concerned about the environment.
Jono Searle/AAP

Labor’s unmet election promises

The singular focus on the cost of living in last night’s federal budget means environmental spending has been neglected.

Context matters here. Labor has utterly failed to deliver its 2022 election promise to rewrite federal environmental protection laws and create an environmental protection agency.

The government could have used this budget to repair its environmental credentials going into the next election – but it didn’t. The many voters concerned about the environment might well wonder if Labor considers the environment a policy priority at all.

The upcoming election result may show whether minor parties and independents better reflect the Australian electorate’s views on this important issue. Läs mer…

The Labor government used this week’s budget to announce it plans to ban non-compete agreements for employees on less than A$175,000 per year, a move that will affect about 3 million Australian workers.

Describing them as “unfair”, a media release by federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said non‑compete clauses “are holding back Australian workers from switching to better, higher‑paying jobs”. Banning non-compete clauses could lift the wages of affected workers by up to 4%, the government has said.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry quickly called the measure “heavy-handed”, arguing that very few employees, according to businesses, turn down employment due to non-compete clauses.

However, research I did with colleagues from Melbourne and Monash universities showed very few employees signing a new job contract ever think about the end of the relationship and what might happen after.

Workers often accept non-compete clauses with little understanding or regard for their practical implications.

What the law currently says

The current law says contractual clauses that stop departing workers from taking a new job in their preferred line of work, often for long periods of time, are – in principle – unenforceable.

That is, however, unless a court says a particular non-compete clause is “reasonably required” to protect a “legitimate interest”.

Therein lies the problem: it is hard to predict when, where or under what circumstances a court will find a particular clause is “reasonably required”.

Our research concluded this uncertainty favoured employers with greater nous and resources.

These employers have the advantage over employees, who are rarely willing or able to go to court arguing their non-compete clause is invalid.

This has a chilling effect on the mobility of employees. In other words, these clauses make it harder for workers to change jobs.

That’s detrimental to labour market competition and can hold back knowledge-sharing and economic growth.

Global efforts to ban non-compete clauses

In California, non-compete clauses have long been banned. Many economists have identified this as among the key reasons for the success of the Californian knowledge economy. This example also featured in a submission I made (with researcher Caitlyn Douglas) to a 2024 Treasury review into non-compete clauses in Australia.

US research from 2021 also found non-compete clauses can hinder labour mobility. They can impede fundamental freedoms such as freedom of employment and freedom of general competition.

In 2024, under President Biden, the US Federal Trade Commission banned non-competes clauses across the US.

However, the ban has been blocked due to legal challenges in the US Federal Court. It’s also been reported the Trump administration may kill off these reforms altogether.

The UK government proposed in 2023 limiting non-competes to a maximum of three months.

Holding employees back

Unlike in some countries, Australian law does not require employers to compensate their ex-employee for loss of income during their non-compete period.

This means that if workers comply and do not work in the field they’re most skilled for, they will take a serious financial hit for months or more.

This is another detrimental effect of non-compete clauses. They really hurt if the worker in question is lower paid and has very specific skills (such as hairdressers or dental assistants).

In that respect, Labor’s mooted ban on such clauses for employees on less than $175,000 is well conceived.

Courts will usually only enforce a non-compete clause if its terms are reasonable to protect a legitimate interest, such as trade secrets an employee has learned during their employment.

However, it’s mostly higher-ranked employees that have access to really significant trade secrets, such as technical information, confidential business plans or pricing structures.

Higher paid employees are also more often the “public face of the business”. A court might decide it’s fair to say such workers can’t leave and the next day turn up as the main face of a competing business.

And the new government proposal won’t leave employers without any recourse against employees who take their genuine trade secrets and pass them on to their new employers. They will still be able to sue for breach of confidence.

Non-competes really hurt if the worker in question is lower paid and has very specific skills (such as hairdressers or dental assistants).
Dorde Krstic/Shutterstock

Challenges for reform

The proposed reforms are well supported by authoritative legal and economic research.

The federal government will have to consider carefully how to make sure the prohibition cannot be easily circumvented.

And they’ll have to ensure these reforms don’t make it more likely judges will find restraints valid for those on more than A$175,000. Labour and knowledge mobility remain crucially important for them too.

Another key challenge will be ensuring a ban doesn’t encourage practices or clauses restricting competition to emerge or become too prevalent.

That could include “garden leave” clauses. These give a departing employee a long notice period, during which they are paid but do not work and are isolated from their employment (and instead “doing the gardening” at home).

The risk is that if employers can no longer include non-compete clauses in contracts, they might use long garden leave provisions more often.

Although it is good that “garden leave” employees get paid during that period (unlike during a non-compete term), they are still isolated from their work, stagnating in their skills and unable to move to new employment. Läs mer…

For decades, researchers examined work and home life as separate domains. If they were taken together it was usually to study so-called work-life balance.

But these days, the reality is more complex. Our work and home lives are more seamlessly integrated than ever, largely because of communications technology and the work-from-home trend.

This can mean we deal with a work matter and a bit of domestic or family business virtually simultaneously, shifting attention and focus from one to the other within seconds.

We’ve dubbed this phenomenon “zigzag working” to describe how employees blend work and family roles within times and spaces that might once have been separate.

During and in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, this became more common as many working parents had to perform their paid work at home. But as workers increasingly return to the office, has zigzag working become the new normal?

In our research, we studied zigzag working beyond COVID to test support for it, and to understand its effects on conflict and happiness. Our study used a survey with two samples: 318 employees and 373 managers.

Zigzag working in action

Zigzag working provides a unique way to examine the blending of work and life. Frequent interspersing of family and work happens regularly. But what does it look like?

Consider Raj, a senior banking professional and solo parent of a 14-year-old. Here’s how a couple of hours of interspersing work and family while in the office unfold:

11:02 am. While listening to the CEO’s update, Raj messages his son, encouraging him to play basketball in the school break instead of gaming. His son responds with “whatever”.

11:09 am. Raj replies: “Yes, whatever – go have a run.”

11:48 am. He dashes out to buy lunch, remembering school camp fees are due by 5 pm.

11:54 am. Heading back to his office, he takes a call from a colleague.

12:02 pm. Back at his desk, Raj checks his diary while on the call, realising it’s his mother’s birthday.

12:11 pm. Raj orders flowers for her, remembering he often said “whatever” as a teenager. He starts a message to his son but is interrupted when pulled into an urgent meeting.

12:27 pm. As the meeting unfolds, Raj realises it has minimal impact on his division. Multitasking, he messages his son, replies to an email and mentally reviews his to-do list, including the camp fees.

12.43 pm. Working on a product proposal, he notices no replies from his son or the florist, but his mother has messaged telling him not to bring anything for dinner since he’s so busy.

Technology has allowed employees to blend work and family roles simultaneously.
GaudiLab/Shutterstock

Zigzag working results

After speaking with employees and managers, we were able to identify several key points.

• Zigzag working, characterised by frequent small transitions between work and family responsibilities, occurs throughout the workday.

• Both men and women regularly zigzag between work and family responsibilities during the day. Gender differences were tested for, finding no significant variation in zigzagging behaviour. This contrasts with prior research that often finds gender differences in work-family conflict.

• Managers zigzag more than employees.

• Zigzag working is more prevalent for those working from home. This aligns with the idea that remote work environments make it easier for employees to switch rapidly between work and personal responsibilities.

• Even those not working from home still reported moderate levels of zigzag working, suggesting this phenomenon is not limited to remote work.

• Zigzag working was linked to both work-family conflict and happiness, underscoring its unique impact. While managing multiple responsibilities can be challenging, it can also be rewarding – especially when individuals feel a sense of control over their time and tasks.

The key takeaway? Zigzagging exists, and it is practised across genders, levels of seniority and locations. While it makes workers busier, our research found it also makes them happier.

Employers should embrace zigzag working

Recognising zigzagging as a normal work dynamic can foster a more supportive workplace, enhancing employee wellbeing, focus and overall performance. Employers can promote discussions about zigzagging to challenge rigid work-life boundaries.

Encouraging men to share their zigzagging experiences broadens the conversation beyond the assumption that openly juggling work and family is primarily a women’s issue. Normalising work-family intersections can make them feel more manageable and even gratifying.

Zigzagging is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Employers should recognise that zigzagging can vary by job role, time constraints and caregiving responsibilities, differing across professions and individuals.

Technology can further support zigzag working, enabling staff to efficiently manage both work and family responsibilities.

Zigzagging provides a fresh perspective on the blend of work and family, revealing the interplay between work and family can be simultaneously both beneficial and detrimental. Zigzaggers may be busy, but they are also happy – working as masters of their own universes. Läs mer…

Every day, users ask search engines millions of questions. The information we receive can shape our opinions and behaviour.

We are often not aware of their influence, but internet search tools sort and rank web content when responding to our queries. This can certainly help us learn more things. But search tools can also return low-quality information and even misinformation.

Recently, large language models (LLMs) have entered the search scene. While LLMs are not search engines, commercial web search engines have started to include LLM-based artificial intelligence (AI) features into their products. Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Overviews are examples of this trend.

AI-enhanced search is marketed as convenient. But, together with other changes in the nature of search over the last decades, it raises the question: what is a good search engine?

Our new paper, published in AI and Ethics, explores this. To make the possibilities clearer, we imagine four search tool models: Customer Servant, Librarian, Journalist and Teacher. These models reflect design elements in search tools and are loosely based on matching human roles.

The four models of search tools

Customer Servant

Workers in customer service give people the things they request. If someone asks for a “burger and fries”, they don’t query whether the request is good for the person, or whether they might really be after something else.

The search model we call Customer Servant is somewhat like the first computer-aided information retrieval systems introduced in the 1950s. These returned sets of unranked documents matching a Boolean query – using simple logical rules to define relationships between keywords (e.g. “cats NOT dogs”).

Librarian

As the name suggests, this model somewhat resembles human librarians. Librarian also provides content that people request, but it doesn’t always take queries at face value.

Instead, it aims for “relevance” by inferring user intentions from contextual information such as location, time or the history of user interactions. Classic web search engines of the late 1990s and early 2000s that rank results and provide a list of resources – think early Google – sit in this category.

Librarians don’t just retrieve information, they strive for relevance.
Tyler Olson/Shutterstock

Journalist

Journalists go beyond librarians. While often responding to what people want to know, journalists carefully curate that information, at times weeding out falsehoods and canvassing various public viewpoints.

Journalists aim to make people better informed. The Journalist search model does something similar. It may customise the presentation of results by providing additional information, or by diversifying search results to give a more balanced list of viewpoints or perspectives.

Teacher

Human teachers, like journalists, aim at giving accurate information. However, they may exercise even more control: teachers may strenuously debunk erroneous information, while pointing learners to the very best expert sources, including lesser-known ones. They may even refuse to expand on claims they deem false or superficial.

LLM-based conversational search systems such as Copilot or Gemini may play a roughly similar role. By providing a synthesised response to a prompt, they exercise more control over presented information than classic web search engines.

They may also try to explicitly discredit problematic views on topics such as health, politics, the environment or history. They might reply with “I can’t promote misinformation” or “This topic requires nuance”. Some LLMs convey a strong “opinion” on what is genuine knowledge and what is unedifying.

No search model is best

We argue each search tool model has strengths and drawbacks.

The Customer Servant is highly explainable: every result can be directly tied to keywords in your query. But this precision also limits the system, as it can’t grasp broader or deeper information needs beyond the exact terms used.

The Librarian model uses additional signals like data about clicks to return content more aligned with what users are really looking for. The catch is these systems may introduce bias. Even with the best intentions, choices about relevance and data sources can reflect underlying value judgements.

The Journalist model shifts the focus toward helping users understand topics, from science to world events, more fully. It aims to present factual information and various perspectives in balanced ways.

This approach is especially useful in moments of crisis – like a global pandemic – where countering misinformation is critical. But there’s a trade-off: tweaking search results for social good raises concerns about user autonomy. It may feel paternalistic, and could open the door to broader content interventions.

The Teacher model is even more interventionist. It guides users towards what it “judges” to be good information, while criticising or discouraging access to content it deems harmful or false. This can promote learning and critical thinking.

But filtering or downranking content can also limit choice, and raises red flags if the “teacher” – whether algorithm or AI – is biased or simply wrong. Current language models often have built-in “guardrails” to align with human values, but these are imperfect. LLMs can also hallucinate plausible-sounding nonsense, or avoid offering perspectives we might actually want to hear.

Staying vigilant is key

We might prefer different models for different purposes. For example, since teacher-like LLMs synthesise and analyse vast amounts of web material, we may sometimes want their more opinionated perspective on a topic, such as on good books, world events or nutrition.

Yet sometimes we may wish to explore specific and verifiable sources about a topic for ourselves. We may also prefer search tools to downrank some content – conspiracy theories, for example.

LLMs make mistakes and can mislead with confidence. As these models become more central to search, we need to stay aware of their drawbacks, and demand transparency and accountability from tech companies on how information is delivered.

Striking the right balance with search engine design and selection is no easy task. Too much control risks eroding individual choice and autonomy, while too little could leave harms unchecked.

Our four ethical models offer a starting point for robust discussion. Further interdisciplinary research is crucial to define when and how search engines can be used ethically and responsibly. Läs mer…

This week’s budget will come as a relief to Australia’s neighbours in the Indo-Pacific that rely on development assistance. The Albanese government did not follow the lead of US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in cutting its foreign aid.

The Trump administration froze foreign assistance and dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) when it came into office. Meanwhile, the UK announced 40% aid cuts of its own.

It is to Australia’s credit this has not happened here. Australia’s development budget remains intact this year and in forward estimates.

Sensible policymakers seem to recognise that Australia’s strategic circumstances are different. As a nation surrounded by low- and middle-income countries, Australia cannot vacate the field on development issues without enormous reputational, diplomatic and strategic damage.

This budget shows Australia is committed to its region – with 75% of the foreign assistance budget flowing to the Indo-Pacific – and sees development partnerships as a way to solve shared problems.

What’s in the budget for aid and development

The details of the development budget show Australia has been listening to its partners to identify critical gaps and reprioritise funds.

In the Pacific, funding has risen to a historic high, with no country receiving less aid. There have been changes in focus to respond to the US funding cuts, including programs on HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea and Fiji and gender-based violence in the Pacific.

This fits with Australia’s desire to be a partner of choice – and to prevent an increased Chinese presence in the region.

In Southeast Asia, Australia has increased its aid to all countries and has shifted funding, particularly in health where the US was a major donor.

This is in Australia’s interest. A new program on Indonesian human and animal health, for example, will help prevent health system failures in areas such as tuberculosis and polio elimination on Australia’s doorstep.

Funds have also been reallocated to support civil society organisations working in vital areas like media freedom and human rights, which would have been a casualty in the US cuts.

There was also a shift in humanitarian funding to Myanmar and Bangladesh, where the US aid withdrawal has left Rohingya refugees in a desperate state.

Rohingya refugees greeting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in March.
Monirul Elam/APA

Importantly, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is helping local organisations survive US cuts by allowing temporary flexibility in the use of grant funding to help them continue to deliver essential services.

Beyond these reprioritisations, the other heartening thing about the budget is its normality.

It maintains funding for assistive technology for people with disabilities and an Inclusion and Equality Fund to support LGBTQIA+ civil society organisations and human rights defenders. There are programs on maternal health, including reproductive rights.

The future is still precarious

However, it would be wrong to think this budget will fill the gaps left by the US withdrawal.

The ANU Development Policy Centre estimates that traditional OECD donors will cut at least 25% of their aid by 2027. It said, “when that much of a thing goes missing, it’s clearly at risk of collapse”.

Some development organisations will close their doors, potentially including household names that Australians have donated to for years. This is a time of huge transformation for the sector.

Another future problem will be maintaining multilateral institutions that rely on US funding – including the World Health Organization, World Food Programme, World Bank and Asian Development Bank. This will require a concerted effort with other countries.

The World Food Programme has issued a warning about the escalating hunger crisis in war-ravaged Yemen.
Yahya Arhab/EPA

So, while the Australian budget shows a government deploying current funding as intelligently as possible, there will eventually be limits to this approach.

In the “new world of uncertainty” described in the treasurer’s budget speech, it simply won’t be possible to meet Australia’s strategic aims and keep development spending at its current rate. It is still far away from 1% of the federal budget.

At some point, Australia must rethink the trajectory of its international commitments.

Analysis by the Development Intelligence Lab, a think tank working on development cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, has shown that over the last 25 years, the international parts of the federal budget – defence, intelligence, diplomacy and development – have held steady at around 10%.

In a time of disruption, this might need to change. In 1949, for example, Australia invested almost 9% of the federal budget on development and diplomacy alone – not including defence.

Those in the foreign aid sector can celebrate Australia has not pulled back on its commitments like the US and UK. At the same time, we should expect the next government will inevitably be called on to do more. Läs mer…

Yesterday, The Atlantic magazine revealed an extraordinary national security blunder in the United States. Top US government officials had discussed plans for a bombing campaign in Yemen against Houthi rebels in a Signal group chat which inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

This is hardly the first time senior US government officials have used non-approved systems to handle classified information. In 2009, the then US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton fatefully decided to accept the risk of storing her emails on a server in her basement because she preferred the convenience of accessing them using her personal BlackBerry.

Much has been written about the unprecedented nature of this latest incident. Reporting has suggested the US officials involved may have also violated federal laws that require any communication, including text messages, about official acts to be properly preserved.

But what can we learn from it to help us better understand how to design secure systems?

A classic case of ‘shadow IT’

Signal is regarded by many cybersecurity experts as one of the world’s most secure messaging apps. It has become an established part of many workplaces, including government.

Even so, it should never be used to store and send classified information. Governments, including in the US, define strict rules for how national security classified information needs to be handled and secured. These rules prohibit the use of non-approved systems, including commercial messaging apps such as Signal plus cloud services such as Dropbox or OneDrive, for sending and storing classified data.

The sharing of military plans on Signal is a classic case of what IT professionals call “shadow IT”.

It refers to the all-too-common practice of employees setting up parallel IT infrastructure for business purposes without the approval of central IT administrators.

This incident highlights the potential for shadow IT to create security risks.

Government agencies and large organisations employ teams of cybersecurity professionals whose job it is to manage and secure the organisation’s IT infrastructure from cyber threats. At a minimum, these teams need to track what systems are being used to store sensitive information. Defending against sophisticated threats requires constant monitoring of IT systems.

In this sense, shadow IT creates security blind spots: systems that adversaries can breach while going undetected, not least because the IT security team doesn’t even know these systems exist.

It’s possible that part of the motivation for the US officials in question using shadow IT systems in this instance might have been avoiding the scrutiny and record-keeping requirements of the official channels. For example, some of the messages in the Signal group chat were set to disappear after one week, and some after four.

However, we have known for at least a decade that employees also build shadow IT systems not because they are trying to weaken their organisation’s cybersecurity. Instead, a common motivation is that by using shadow IT systems many employees can get their work done faster than when using official, approved systems.

Usability is key

The latest incident highlights an important but often overlooked lesson in cybersecurity: whether a security system is easy to use has an outsized impact on the degree to which it helps improve security.

To borrow from US Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, we might say that a system designer who prioritises security at the expense of usability will produce a system that is neither usable nor secure.

The belief that to make a system more secure requires making it harder to use is as widespread as it is wrong. The best systems are the ones that are both highly secure and highly usable.

The reason is simple: a system that is secure yet difficult to use securely will invariably be used insecurely, if at all. Anyone whose inbox auto-complete has caused them to send an email to the wrong person will understand this risk. It likely also explains how The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief might have been mistakenly added by US officials to the Signal group chat.

While we cannot know for certain, reporting suggests Signal displayed the name of Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat group only as “JG”. Signal doesn’t make it easy to confirm the identity of someone in a group chat, except by their phone number or contact name.

In this sense, Signal gives relatively few clues about the identities of people in chats. This makes it relatively easy to inadvertently add the wrong “JG” from one’s contact list to a group chat.

Signal is one of the most secure messaging apps, but should never be used to store and send classified information.
Ink Drop/Shutterstock

A highly secure – and highly usable – system

Fortunately, we can have our cake and eat it too. My own research shows how.

In collaboration with Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group, I helped develop what’s known as the Cross Domain Desktop Compositor. This device allows secure access to classified information while being easier to use than traditional solutions.

It is easier to use because it allows users to connect to the internet. At the same time, it keeps sensitive data physically separate – and therefore secure – but allows it to be displayed alongside internet applications such as web browsers.

One key to making this work was employing mathematical reasoning to prove the device’s software provided rock-solid security guarantees. This allowed us to marry the flexibility of software with the strong hardware-enforced security, without introducing additional vulnerability.

Where to from here?

Avoiding security incidents such as this one requires people following the rules to keep everyone secure. This is especially true when handling classified information, even if doing so requires more work than setting up shadow IT workarounds.

In the meantime, we can avoid the need for people to work around the rules by focusing more research on how to make systems both secure and usable. Läs mer…

Journalist and activist Jess Hill’s Quarterly Essay argues Australia’s primary prevention framework to end violence against women isn’t working.

Hill says the framework focuses too much on addressing gender inequality and changing attitudes, while overlooking crucial opportunities to address drivers of violence such as child maltreatment, alcohol and gambling.

So what does the evidence say works to prevent violence against women?

Australia’s plan to reduce and prevent violence

The World Health Organisation RESPECT framework guides most global intervention programs and includes seven specific strategies to prevent violence against women:

Relationship skills strengthening

Empowerment of women

Services ensured

Poverty reduced

Environments (schools, workplaces, public spaces) made safe

Child and adolescent abuse prevented

Transformed attitudes, beliefs and norms.

These are embedded in the 12 actions of Australia’s prevention framework, called Change the Story, but are not explicitly listed.

The RESPECT strategies are also included in Australia’s National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032.

Interventions are usually separated into three complementary, but overlapping approaches: primary (prevention), secondary (early intervention) and tertiary (responses).

Primary prevention in Change the Story is aimed at addressing the underlying drivers of violence before it occurs. But most interventions have dual purposes of reducing or preventing current and future violence, as we transform into a violence-free community.

Australia’s national plan includes reducing the harmful use of alcohol, support for children to live free from violence, holding perpetrators to account, changing the law, and promoting gender equality in public and private lives.

Together, these strategies chip away at harmful underlying attitudes that drive domestic violence.

Australia’s strategy for preventing violence against women includes holding perpetrators to account.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

What does the evidence say works?

Systematic reviews of interventions to prevent or reduce violence against women and girls find that sufficient investment into the right programs can address the core drivers of violence and lead to a significant reduction and prevention of violence.

The reviews identify that most successful interventions do not typically separate out prevention from early intervention and response. They focus on gender dynamics, power and control, and locally relevant social structures that disempower women and girls.

The global program What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls, for example, reviewed 96 evaluations of interventions. Of these, seven interventions had positive effects across all three domains of responding to, reducing and preventing domestic violence.

None of the effective interventions were the same, but they had common features.

One of the common indicators of success was that they addressed multiple drivers of violence while being relevant to what was important in the participants’ lives, such as an intervention to reduce HIV or couples counselling. These two interventions were designed to challenge gender inequity and the use of violence, while empowering couples with improved communications skills.

Effective interventions also commonly included support for survivors, for things such as mental health support, safe spaces, empowerment activities and mediation skills.

Effective interventions incldue support for survivors and empowerment activites.
Oleg Elkov/Shutterstock

Equally important was including work with perpetrators or key influencers, such as other family members or local leaders. One example developed in Tajikistan involved in-laws, which enabled young women to attend and implement ideas from the program into their family life.

The final two key components of successful interventions were related to implementation of the programs: having the ability to deliver the program with sufficient, well-trained and supported staff, and for a length of time allowing reflection and learning through experience.

The Transforming Masculinities program in the Democratic Republic of Congo promoted gender equality and positive masculinity within faith communities. Careful selection of staff and volunteers was crucial to the intervention’s success.

Effective interventions were delivered over 15 to 30 months. They included a combination of community activities and weekly workshops, allowing facilitators to build on content from previous sessions.

Putting this all together, the most effective programs were rigorously planned and suitable to the client group. They focused on multiple core drivers of violence against women and girls. They worked with perpetrators and community influencers. They also worked with and supported survivors.

Elements which prevented programs from being effective included short-term or inadequate funding, and a lack of sufficient planning to ensure the intervention was adapted to the client’s context.

We have clear evidence about they types of programs that can prevent and reduce violence against women and girls, both internationally and in Australia. We also have service providers and program leaders who have been sharing evidence with governments for more than five decades. What we need now is the will and commitment for intensive programming.

Read more:
Despite some key milestones since 2000, Australia still has a long way to go on gender equality Läs mer…

Less than two months from an election, the Albanese government last night presented a budget that aims to swing the voting pendulum its way.

Headline health expenditure includes:

$8.5 billion to encourage more GP bulk billing and to train doctors and nurses

$1.7 billion to help public hospitals reduce their waiting lists

$644 million to establish 50 more urgent care clinics

$689 million to reduce the price of prescriptions to $25 for non-concessional patients

$793 million for women’s health, to provide greater access to contraception, treatment for urinary tract infections and greater access to perimenopause and menopause care.

These announcements were already strategically made over the past month to maximise media coverage and build election momentum.

Australians want more access to affordable health care – and the budget delivers this for many. But it doesn’t push the process of health reform forward, which is needed to secure the health system’s long-term sustainability.

How does this compare to previous health budgets?

While the budget contains large health expenditure items, a significant amount was not strictly new funding, but already provided for by the government.

Consequently, the budget only allocates an additional $7.7 billion to health compared to actual spending for 2024-25.

This increase aligns with steady long-term spending trends from previous years. It reflects a 6.6% increase in nominal spending (when inflation is included), but only a 3.9% increase in real spending (when inflation is taken out).

Actual and estimated expenditure from the health portfolio

Health spending as a proportion of the budget is reducing.
Treasury

The proportion of the budget spent on health could be considered historically low, projected to be 15.9% for 2025-26.

It’s unclear whether Australians want more of the budget allocated to health, but there is certainly a need for greater investment.

Will this health budget improve Australians’ health?

The Albanese government is trying to kill three birds with one stone with this health budget. It wants to reduce the cost of living, improve health outcomes, and win an election.

Keeping the cost of living down and improving health services are the top two most important issues for this election. Headline health announcements directly address these two issues.

However, they also deliver a political benefit by shifting the media spotlight away from Opposition leader Peter Dutton. He was unable to legitimately counter attack headline health announcements given his unpopularity when he was a health minister. Instead, he promised to match some health announcements if elected.

Increasing bulk-billing rates and reducing prescription prices will directly reduce out-of-pocket costs for many Australians. This will mostly be for people without a concession card.

Increasing access to urgent care clinics will also help reduce cost of living pressures because they deliver services free of charge.

Making health care cheaper for patients will also improve health outcomes. Many Australians sometimes choose not to access health care because of its cost, which can lead to worse health outcomes and expensive hospital care.

The magnitude of any health improvement will depend on how patients respond to cheaper health care.

More health benefit will go to patients who start seeing their GP rather than staying at home and trying to manage their condition themselves.

The health benefit will be less for patients who start seeing their GP instead of an emergency department or urgent care clinic, because they are substituting one place of care for another.

Is this good health policy?

There is an “opportunity cost” every time the government spends money. Using the health budget to reduce the cost of living means less money to improve the health system elsewhere.

In that context, this health budget has missed an opportunity to build a more sustainable health system.

Medicare is not the best way to fund community care from GPs, nurses and allied health providers. It imposes barriers to establishing seamless multidisciplinary team-based care. These include restricting the types of services non-GP clinicians deliver, and not funding enough care coordination. People with chronic disease, such as diabetes and heart disease, often fall through the cracks and become sicker.

A review of general practice incentives submitted to the health department last year recommended transition towards new funding models. This could include funding models that pay for a bundle of services delivered together as a team, rather than a fee for every service delivered by each team member.

But payment reform is extremely hard. Medicare has not substantially changed since 1984 when it was first introduced.

Given this budget allocated $7.9 billion to increase bulk billing alone, and $2.4 billion ongoing, this budget has a missed opportunity to start the payment reform process. This extra funding will reinforce current payment structures, and could have been used as leverage to get GPs over the line on reforming Medicare.

The government also missed an opportunity to start reforming the health workforce. An independent review, also submitted last year, sought to improve access to primary care, improve care quality, and improve workforce productivity.

It outlined 18 recommendations, including payment reform, to remove barriers to increase access to care delivered by multidisciplinary teams of doctors, nurses and allied health providers such as psychologists and physiotherapists.

Again, there was nothing in this budget to suggest this will be pursued in 2025-26.

What happens next?

What next usually depends on which party wins the election.

In this case, Dutton has agreed to match the health budget spending on bulk billing and price reductions for PBS scripts. But the Coalition has not committed to 50 more urgent care clinics.

Whichever party wins, there is an urgent need to substantially reform health care if our health system is to remain one of the world’s best.

Read more:
At a glance: the 2025 federal budget Läs mer…

To mark 10 years since Netflix began operating in Australia, we and our colleagues at the Streaming Industries and Genres Network have published a report that looks at the state of Australia’s streaming industry today – and back at the platforms that have failed over the years.

It once seemed like Netflix was the be-all and end-all of streaming in Australia. But a decade of competition with other streamers, and stress on local content, paint a very different picture.

The streaming wars rage on

Australia’s “streaming wars” kicked off in early 2015 with the arrival of Stan and Netflix, joining smaller players already on the scene. At the time, some industry insiders predicted the new streaming video-on-demand services would quickly consolidate – that there was room for only two major players: Netflix and one other.

These early assumptions were proven wrong. Instead, Australia has sustained numerous streamers of different sizes, audiences and ownership. The larger, more generalist services such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ compete directly with each other for exclusive content.

Other niche genre players such as Shudder (horror) and Hayu (reality TV) have managed to stay afloat by catering to a specific audience segment and keeping their prices low.

There have also been a few fatalities along the way. Quickflix and Presto were early to the market. Both services had gained considerable ground by 2014, with Quicklix leading the way. But they were eventually viewed as sluggish and limited in comparison to Netflix.

Netflix always on top

Netflix has always been the most popular streaming service in Australia. One million users had access to the platform within just three months of its arrival in 2015.

In 2020, analytics firm Ampere Analysis identified Australia as the most highly-penetrated Netflix market in the world, then available in 63% of Australian homes, compared to 50% in the United States.

In the first half of 2024, it was used by 67% of Australian adults, including some 800,000 people with an ad-tier subscription.

The global behemoth has produced some notable local titles.

In January of last year, the series adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe became Netflix’s most successful Australian-made show in its first two weeks on the platform.

Later in April, the second season of the Heartbreak High reboot debuted at number one in Australia and stayed on the Global Top 10 English TV Series list for three consecutive weeks.

Read more:
Streaming, surveillance and the power of suggestion: the hidden cost of 10 years of Netflix

Collectively, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+ and Stan spent A$225.2 million on 55 commissioned or co-commissioned Australian programs in the 2023–24 financial year.

That said, their commitment to the local production sector over the last decade has been limited, as they have no obligation to invest in local content.

A lack of regulation decimates local genres

The lack of streaming regulation in Australia, alongside the gradual watering-down of commercial broadcaster obligations, has resulted in the collapse of investment in local content.

Children’s TV, documentary, drama TV programming and Australian film have all suffered as a result.

The introduction of multi-national streamers has radically shifted financing practices in Australia, leaving our production sector in distress.

Last year, we partnered with ACMI to pull together a symposium where streaming industry insiders discussed the deeper implications of streaming on local genres, as well as the opportunities and challenges ahead.

We heard from Andy Barclay, manager of business and legal affairs at Screen Producer Australia, who said the traditional “jigsaw puzzle” of finance planning based on international territories was all but gone in favour of major streamers offering full funding and “a little premium” upfront.

But this comes at a cost, as the streamers then control global distribution and hold a tight grip on viewership data. It also means local production can become beholden to the whims of US business interests. As Barclay explain:

These huge [streaming] companies, their Australian businesses […] we don’t drive their business decisions. It’s what happens over in the United States that drives their business decisions.

Nonetheless, having fresh, cash-rich and risk-taking players in the Australian content market has led to opportunities for some local creators.

As Sam Lingham of Australian comedy group Aunty Donna remarked on the same panel:

Netflix, creatively, were pretty hands-off. We pitched them the show and they were like, ‘yeah, go do that’.

What’s on the horizon?

The streaming sector in Australia is now poised to splinter even further.

Warner Bros Discovery will launch its streaming platform, Max, next week. It will be a real blow to the Foxtel-owned streamer, Binge, which has long touted its exclusive rights to much of the Warner catalogue.

There are also concerns about the access and affordability of sport. This year, a new AFL broadcast agreement with Fox Sports and Channel Seven saw Saturday night games move behind a paywall. People will now need Kayo Sports or Foxtel to watch these games live.

Big streamers have also entered the fray. Back in 2016, Netflix said it had no intention of investing in live sport. But we’re now seeing it and other players such as Prime Video, Apple TV+ and YouTube buy into sports rights around the world.

According to Free TV Chief Executive Bridget Fair

we saw it [in 2023] with Amazon hoovering up the whole of the World Cup cricket and it’s going to keep happening […] people who previously got a lot of stuff for free are going to have to start paying.

Finally, many streamers – Netflix, Binge, Prime Video and Stan – have introduced or announced that they will introduce ad-tier subscriptions. Streamers can expect to see better profit margins on their advertising-supported offerings, compared to the monthly subscription model.

Cheaper, ad-supported subscriptions may prove to be a popular option for viewers stacking multiple subscriptions. Already, 800,000 Australians have signed up to Netflix’s A$7.99 + ads option. But this does make for a disrupted, broadcast-like viewing experience (and one you still have to pay for).

As the last 10 years of streaming in Australia has shown, the future can be hard to predict when it comes to new players entering established markets. One thing seems certain though – Netflix is here to stay. Läs mer…

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has described the income tax cuts in this week’s federal budget as a “top-up”. They will amount to roughly one cup of coffee a week for every taxpayer in the first year.

But they will add another A$17 billion to the deficit over coming years, in addition to a raft of previously announced spending measures and very little savings.

That is against a backdrop of the most uncertain global economic outlook since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08. Australia may face a real economic shock if trade wars trigger recessions in our major trading partners.

We asked five experts if this is the right budget for these economic times. Only two agreed, with three saying much more is needed to address long-term structural debt and meaningful economic reform. Läs mer…