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If you’re building, renovating or planning to install a solar battery, your builder or installer might ask whether you’ve considered upgrading from single-phase to three-phase power. This upgrade often comes with a hefty price tag.

So what’s the difference between single-phase and three-phase power, and which one will you need?

Understanding your electricity needs

Each house service connection has a maximum amount of electricity that can be drawn from the grid at any one time before the main fuse blows. The limit varies, according to whether you have single- or three-phase power.

The amount is calculated by multiplying a house’s “amps” and “voltage”.

An “amp” is a unit of electric current. Most houses in Australia with single-phase connections have a standard capacity of 63 amps.

In New South Wales, the standard is 100 amps.

However, some older or rural homes in Australia may still have connections of 32 or 40 amps.

Then there’s voltage, which is the pressure that pushes the current through your wiring to power your house. Current and voltage values are determined by the local distribution network service provider, the company that owns and operates the poles and wires.

Since 2000, the standard voltage in most areas of Australia has been 230 volts. In Western Australia, it’s 240 volts.

Multiplying 240 volts by 63 amps gives you 15,120 watts of power (a watt is a unit of power).

So that means in a home with single-phase power, you can draw about 15,120 watts (or about 15 kilowatts) of power from the grid before the main fuse blows.

But this would probably require using all your appliances at the same time – an unlikely scenario.

Your energy bill can help you understand how much energy you’re using (and you can compare to how much other Australians use). When you see kWh (kilowatt hour) on your monthly energy bill, it’s a measurement of your electric appliances’ wattage and the amount of time you use them.

If you can reduce the amount of energy you need to draw from the grid, you might not need to upgrade to three-phase power at all. Solar panels and a battery can cut your electricity bills, keep the lights on during power outages, and reduce your carbon footprint. Plus, you can store energy for later use, boosting your home’s energy independence.

Many people encounter the idea of three-phase power when renovating their home.
Dan Peled/AAP Image

What’s the difference between single-phase and 3-phase power?

Think of single-phase power as a single-lane road.

It’s perfect for handling regular household appliances such as lights, fridges, washing machines, small air conditioners, small induction cooktops, and regular wall chargers for electric vehicles.

But if too many appliances are running at once, the single-phase circuit in your home can get congested. This can lead to issues such as tripping breakers or flickering lights.

Three-phase power is more like a three-lane highway, with each phase carrying peak power at a different point of time.

It’s designed to handle heavy loads such as a more powerful electric vehicle charger, large multi-zone ducted air conditioning systems, high-end and large induction cooktops and their combinations.

Do you need 3-phase power?

For most households, single-phase power is more than enough to keep everything running smoothly.

Unless you’re running a big property with a large swimming pool, fast-charging your electric car, operating an elevator, cranking up ducted air conditioning, baking in multiple ovens, and powering a high-end kitchen full of gadgets – all at the same time – you probably don’t need to make the switch.

That’s good news, because upgrading to three-phase power can be quite pricey (potentially thousands of dollars).

Equipping every house with three-phase power would be like giving everyone a sports car when a regular car does the job just fine.

Installing three-phase power in every home would make the network infrastructure more expensive to build and maintain. Most homes don’t need that much power, so the extra capacity would go to waste – but everyone would still be paying for maintenance of that larger, underutilised system via higher energy bills.

However, things may be changing

As more homes go all-electric and solar battery systems and electric vehicles become the norm, however, more people will switch to three-phase power.

Three-phase power unlocks incredible charging speeds for electric vehicles (but before you get too excited, make sure your car is equipped to handle that extra juice).

You might think it’s smart to get a much bigger solar panel system than you need, so you can earn extra money from feed-in tariffs by exporting excess energy to the grid. However, single-phase rooftop solar can only feed up to five kilowatts at any point in time in a day to the grid. If your system goes over that, you’ll need special approval to connect it.

Switching to three-phase power can be a great move if you’re looking to install a larger solar system. It lets you harness more energy for your home and potentially send more power back to the grid. It’s worth noting that in Australia, however, the amount of solar power you can export varies by state.

For bigger setups, such as solar systems with batteries that can handle up to 30 kilowatts, three-phase power might be necessary. An electrician will ensure everything stays balanced in your connection.

For most of us, the best way to work out whether you need single- or three-phase power is to work out your total electricity use and seek advice from a registered electrical contractor you trust.

Some will calculate how much power you’d need if you were running all the appliances and powered devices in your home at full blast, all at once. But it’s worth questioning whether this scenario would ever actually happen in real life.

No one wants to overspend on something they don’t actually need. Läs mer…

The South Australian government is moving ahead with plans to ban children under 14 from social media. Under the proposal, teens aged 14 and 15 would also need parental consent to have social media accounts.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has flagged the consequences for social media companies that don’t comply with the new rules would be “severe and harsh”.

He discussed the proposal with other state premiers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at a cabinet meeting last week, and is encouraging national adoption of the proposed strategy.

Malinauskas has attributed the decision to “mounting evidence” of the “adverse impact” of social media on young people. This comes despite a lack of consensus among experts, with some researchers explaining there is “not a strong evidence base” of the harms social media pose to young people.

Similar laws exist elsewhere

South Australia’s move follows similar laws introduced elsewhere. In the United States, both Florida and Texas have passed similar legislation.

Like South Australia’s proposal, Florida banned children under 14 from social media, requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds.

In Texas, all teens under 18 now need parental consent to create social media accounts. This is not without controversy, with one commentator describing this as a “misguided attempt to make the internet ‘safe’”, while introducing a law that “infringes on the rights of all Texans”.

In Spain, the minimum age for setting up a social media account increased earlier this year from 14 to 16. Technology companies were also required to install age verification and parental controls on social media and video-sharing platforms.

When South Australia first proposed its ban in May, comments from the community were swift and polarised. At the time, I examined the limitations and potential problems with the technical solutions being proposed for such a ban, including privacy concerns for managing account holders’ data.

So how will this proposed ban work?

The legislation will impose a “duty of care” on social media companies, requiring them to ban children under 14 from social media platforms.

This means Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat and other platforms would need to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent access by any South Australian child under the age of 14. They’d also have to ensure teens aged 14–15 could only access platforms with parental content.

Bans and limited access would be overseen by a state regulator. They would monitor compliance and impose sanctions, such as:

warnings, infringement notices and fines
court proceedings that impose corrective orders or civil penalties.

Legal action could also be taken against providers by either a regulator or parents on behalf of a child who has suffered significant mental or physical harm.

The proposed ban would also provide “exemptions” for beneficial or low-risk social media services (such as educational platforms), which are not yet identified.

What are the challenges of getting this to work?

While exemptions may relieve concerns for those opposed to an outright ban, it’s unclear how specific exemptions would be agreed upon, or how “low-risk” content would be defined.

Another significant challenge is the process by which children’s ages and parental consent mechanisms would be identified and tracked.

Age assurance and verification processes are not foolproof. They require strategies like self-reporting (which is easily circumvented), age verification by an adult (which raises privacy concerns for young people), or steps like uploading government ID (which raise data security concerns).

What is also unclear is how social media companies will respond to this latest move to force them to control platform access.

In other jurisdictions with similar bans – like Florida or Spain – these companies are notably silent. It may well be that to test the long-term viability of these bans, individuals and governments will need to take social media companies to court to prove the platforms have harmed children. Läs mer…

Australia’s construction industry is facing a perfect storm: enormous targets for building – 1.2 million new homes and A$230 billion worth of infrastructure over the next five years – at the same time as net migration is forecast to halve.

Without as many migrants, Australia might not have the workforce it needs to meet these targets.

Unless it does something different. Our team at the University of Technology Sydney has been examining the barriers to employing existing migrants in the construction industry, and we find they are substantial.

Migrants who arrived in Australia in the past five years account for only 2.8% of Australia’s construction workforce, but 4.4% of the entire Australian workforce.

Migrant engineers are significantly more likely than Australian-born engineers to be unemployed or underemployed – working at a more junior level than their skills and experience warrant.

Women face extra barriers

Women skilled in the trades needed face special barriers. This might be expected from an industry in which (in New South Wales at least) around half the employers have a workforce that is nearly all male and one-third employ no women at all.

Our survey of 70 Australian subcontractors found they saw significant safety, productivity and cost risks in employing migrants and refugees and groups including disengaged youth, people with a disability, ex-offenders, women and Indigenous workers.

In many cases, these perceived risks did not align with actual risks.

Our online survey of 79 refugees and migrants who had sought work in construction found that the less experience a refugee or migrant had working in construction overseas, the more likely it was they would secure a full-time job.

Education can hurt foreign jobseekers

Education counted against them as well. High school, undergraduate and masters educated migrants and refugees were more successful in securing full-time permanent work then those with doctorates and technical education.

Employers were often unwilling to recognise their qualifications and experience.

Our in-depth interviews with 16 skilled female migrants who had sought
work in the NSW construction industry found their initial hopes of finding work easily and quickly turned to frustration and an acknowledgement that their qualifications and experience were not as transferable as they had thought.

Shortlists can exclude many people.
Indypendenz/Shutterstock

Most described struggling to get shortlisted for an interview, even when they felt their skills and experience closely matched those needed.

Many complained that the formal, online, and impersonal nature of the initial shortlisting process automatically excluded them from securing interviews.

In the rare events they did secure face-to-face interviews, many
complained many employers used the so-called STAR method (“situation, task, action, and result”) that required them to tell stories about situations they hadn’t been in.

All found their interviews very stressful, impersonal and intimidating.

You shouldn’t need a relative to get a job

Among the challenges facing female migrants with the skills needed by the construction industry were sexism, racism and traditional cultural expectations about their role in society.

Many felt frustrated, abandoned and under-valued after arriving in Australia. This was despite being willing to accept jobs well below their expectations, previous roles, experience and qualifications.

Those fortunate to have family and friends in the construction industry relied heavily on them to find their first jobs. However, these jobs tended to be low level, with limited career opportunities and exposure to exploitation by unscrupulous employers, labour hire companies and job agencies.

Treating foreign-born construction industry workers as well as we treat Australian-born workers, and tackling the special barriers that apply to foreign-born women, ought to be an easy way to boost our construction workforce.

We have identified some of the things holding the industry back. The next step is to examine why.

This research was conducted with refugee and migrant support agencies including Metro Assist and Scarf Illawarra. Läs mer…

Melbourne-based Tony Yap is a leading figure in Australian interpretations of the abstract Japanese dance form of butoh and what he calls “trance dance”. In butoh and trance, movers consider the body as a porous receptacle for spirits and forces from outside of it, and which comes to move it.

Yap founded the Melaka Art & Performance Festival (MAPfest), staged in the Malaysian city of Melaka, in 2008, and this year’s festival ran from August 26 to September 1. Departing from butoh itself, many of the performances involved different levels of introspection and trance, where the focus and concentration of the performers was so intense that they barely seemed aware of their surroundings.

There were also works of what one might call “postmodern classicism”, which draw on ritual and traditional dances from Indonesia and surrounds, reworked within an abstract contemporary framing.

Adam Forbes’s butoh influenced solo.
Photo by and courtesy of Cheah Shelley.

MAPfest features work from experienced masters like Yap, and developing artists – among the more than 50 participants, the youngest artist in this year’s program was just 13 years old. There is a non-hierarchical approach to programming, and pieces are staged for the other performers as a residency designed to showcase work at five locations across Melaka.

Cultural exchange

Traders have moved between Melaka and China since the 15th century, and Yap’s Chinese ancestors have been in Melaka for over three generations.

Melaka has a long history as a site of trade and cultural exchange. The Islamic Sultanate was colonised by Portugal in 1511. Portuguese rule was followed by Holland, Britain and Japan. In 1963, the state of Malaysia was founded. Today, the city is home to ethnic Malays and Chinese, Indian and Eurasian communities.

The city’s relationship to MAPfest hasn’t always been smooth. At one festival, Yap tells me, a dancer embraced the statue of St Francis Xavier situated beside the Portuguese Church of Saint Paul. This led to restrictions on access.

Today, MAPfest’s participants deploy an almost guerilla approach to staging. I have not been involved in a production which seemed so risky, so negotiated in the moment right now, since my student days.

The locations of advertised performances shifted hourly; performers danced under garlands dripping flames; outdoor venues often had dubious surfaces to dance on, presenting hidden dangers. Following updates posted on Messenger, I scuttled from venue to venue, and up winding, nearly condemned staircases, held in place by improvised chains.

Just finding the performance could be an adventure.

Kiki Ando in the temple forecourt, village ruins.
Photo by and courtesy of Lorris Nguan.

Beyond the pretty UNESCO-protected homes of old Melaka lie decaying, overgrown areas, dotted with ruinous 20th century structures. These buildings, open to the elements from above and to the sides, rest amid fields of weeds (which performer Leslie Azzis burrowed beneath), and a temple soon to be bulldozed (home to Kiki Ando’s constantly evolving critique of consumerism).

Some of the most open-ended, improvised pieces were performed here, such as Adam Forbes’ mesmerising portrayal of an almost fluid body. Moving from behind a hanging piece of damaged roofing, he curled and slid across a vine-tangled white wall, dropping to his knees, shoulders rising and falling unevenly, before slowly crossing a plank to approach the audience.

Lee Kien Fei (left) & Tony Yap, Trance ‘Animalising’ workshop and improvisation in the ruins of St Paul’s Church.
Photo by and courtesy of Lorris Nguan.

Even more unexpected was when the multiracial party of artists gathered on a platform below the 16th century Church of Saint Paul to conduct one of three “animalising trance” workshops.

A tropical downpour forced us to seek cover in the remains of the ruined church up the hill. Hardier members moved onto the drenched, uneven stone pavings. Soft splashings in the puddles added an atmosphere of wonder.

As Yap told me later, this was typical of Melaka, where a problem leads to something unplanned and magical.

Destruction of the ego

The closing performance, the large scale, ecstatic improvisation Eulogy For the Living, was presided over by Javan trance master Agus Riyanto. Riyanto set up an altar at the rear of an indoor skate park, adorned with incense and offerings. He paced around the dancers, cracking a whip to bring on, and then dispel, trance.

Yap likened Eulogy For the Living to the involuntary, therapeutic dance of southern Italy known as tarantism, to the convulsive, almost hypnotised postures 19th century physicians witnessed in their hysterical patients, and to Antonin Artaud’s 1931 essay comparing theatre to the plague.

Artaud wrote that both theatre and the plague take “images [of] latent […] disorder and suddenly carries them to the point of the most extreme gestures” so there is a “destruction” of the ego.

Eulogy For the Living: Hysterics, Plague & Tarantism.
Photo by and courtesy of Teo Swee An.

Yap instructed male participants to wear black dresses, further evoking the mad rituals performed by acolytes of theatre’s sex-changing patron, Dionysus.

The choreography was by turns bouncy and vibrating (tarantism), extreme and violent (hysterical or plague-like), collective and infectious, as well as blending lyricism with mourning and gender ambiguity (Dionysian).

The performance cycled through eight or so states, plateauing before energy rose again. An otherworldly din of drone and electronic noise music sustained these choreographic cycles.

Resolving the performance, Riyanto flicked water from garlands onto the dancers. Many trancers required further ministrations from him to expel resistant visiting forces.

I was seated to one side in Muslim robes I had purchased nearby. Smoke from the incense burned my eyes, almost forcing me to exit, as the dancers groaned and meditated before me. Eulogy For the Living provided an epic, immersive conclusion to a week of performance.

If a city characterised by cross-racial couplings and sometimes fraught multicultural exchanges can be translated into a festival, then this year’s MAPfest ably rose to the challenge. Läs mer…

One month after a US court ruled Google had illegally maintained its monopoly on internet search, the tech giant will this week face the start of yet another important antitrust case.

This new case is focused on Google’s online advertising business, which last year brought in more than US$200 billion. The US Department of Justice, along with 17 states, claims Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has monopolised multiple digital advertising technology products by neutralising or eliminating its competitors. The department says this “has caused great harm to online publishers and advertisers and American consumers.”

Google has denied this claim. In a statement published when the lawsuit was filed late last year, it said:

No one is forced to use our advertising technologies – they choose to use them because they’re effective.

Over the past decade, the European Union has successfully proved in a number of cases that digital platforms including Google have acted anticompetitively. This case further shows the US is also more willing to take on Google and other tech giants. And depending on what happens over the course of the trial, it could have enormous ramifications for big tech – and, by extension, the entire internet.

What is this case about?

Because the trial begins today, many aspects of the case are not yet known.

However, from court documents that have already been made public, we know the US Department of Justice is accusing Google of creating an anticompetitive monopoly over the online advertising markets. It says the tech giant has done this through long-running practices such as acquiring competitors and forcing website publishers to adopt Google’s tools.

These practices have led to the full vertical integration of Google in the online advertising industry. Google has effectively been acting as “buyer, seller, and auctioneer of digital display advertising.”

Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter says this has had – and continues to have – the effect of:

driving out rivals, diminishing competition, inflating advertising costs, reducing revenues for news publishers and content creators, snuffing out innovation, and harming the exchange of information and ideas in the public sphere.

The Department of Justice’s success will depend on proving its claims about the nature of online advertising markets and Google’s significant power over them.

The most difficult part for prosecutors will be persuading the court that Google has monopolised these markets by unlawfully excluding its rivals from competition.

The US is finally catching up to the EU

Historically, the European Union has been a leader when it comes to taking up the legal fight against big tech.

More than 20 years ago, the European Commission successfully prosecuted Microsoft for violating competition law. This was followed by other successful anticompetition law cases. For example, in 2017, the commission fined Google more than €2.4 billion for abusing its dominant position as a search engine.

The US now appears to be finally catching up with what has been happening on the other side of the Atlantic. Last month the US District Court ruled Google had an illegal monopoly on online search.

This marked the first time US prosecutors had successfully launched an anticompetition case against a digital platform such as Google. However, the case is not yet over: Google is currently planning an appeal.

But these two cases against Google are not the only ones US authorities are pursuing against big tech.

Recently, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have brought other lawsuits against Apple, Amazon and Meta.

A number of big tech companies are facing lawsuits in the US.
Ascannio/Shutterstock

An extremely important development

The “ad tech” case against Google and other cases against big digital platforms are extremely important for the future development of US antitrust law in the digital economy.

They will determine whether competitiveness will be restored in the digital markets or whether the monopolisation will continue to flourish. Either way, this will have significant implications for innovation, technological development and prices.

If this new case against Google is ultimately successful, it will make digital advertising markets more competitive. Google will have to change its long-running advertising business. In turn, this will mean the way in which advertisements are bought, sold and placed on the internet will also be overhauled.

More broadly, however, a win for prosecutors may make big tech companies such as Google think more seriously about respecting competition. Läs mer…

“Where,” Vee wonders, “in God’s name did all that anger come from? And more to the point, where the fuck has it all gone?”

Catherine Wheel is a book for women – angry women, sad women, women who refuse to be broken – who keep going despite, and changed by, the men who wage war in their lives.

Journalist Liz Evans’ debut novel is about Kate and her ex-husband’s ex (and mistress), Vee (or Valerie). Kate is still reeling from the unravelling of her and Max’s marriage. She is determined to find out why Max left her for Vee, among the myriads of women with whom he had affairs.

Review: Catherine Wheel – Liz Evans (Ultimo)

“If I could find out what Valerie had gained,” she reasons, “I would better understand my loss.” Kate has tracked down Vee in Bridgewell, and moves there to teach yoga and work in the library. She slowly integrates herself into Vee’s life, even babysitting Vee and Max’s daughter, Iona, an experience she likens to “walking on the tips of swords”.

Kate carefully curates a friendship with Vee, keeping Vee ignorant of her past. She is wound “as tight as a drum … perfectly tensioned, precisely tuned, ready to spring”. As Kate drinks from Vee’s wine glass, matching her lips to the lipstick stain exactly, you wonder how far Kate will go in her unrelenting obsession to understand the attraction Vee holds.

Catherine Wheel is a compelling, if not groundbreaking psychological thriller, with a beautiful cadence.

Liz Evans’ debut novel is a compelling psychological thriller.
Sophie L. Reid

Women connected by men

The novel is deliberate and carefully crafted. Kate and Vee’s alternating points of view illuminate how they look at and think about each other. The comparisons highlight their insecurities: both women see the best of each other and the worst of themselves.

Kate’s story reads as a confessional, directed to Max, as she struggles to make sense of why he left her for Vee. “If I met her at a party,” Kate muses, “or in a supermarket queue, what would I notice? What would I think? What would strike me?” She continues:

I struggle with this, I really do, because what I am most struck by, continually, is her lack of definition. Is that what attracted you?

Her voice is intimate and familiar, referencing their old life together – a backstory that unfurls and deepens throughout the novel. To Kate, Max is still hers and they still share something intimate, even if he broke her and moved on. Valerie is almost an in-joke within their relationship.

But the entry of the charmingly boyish, badly dressed artist, Tom, brings something new to the narrative. In Tom, Vee finds a potential new love to prise her away from her on-again, off-again relationship with Max. Kate, seeing the opportunity to inflict pain on Vee, starts her own relationship with Tom.

Where Vee sees the chance for romance, Kate sees another Max – a womaniser, with little regard for women. But even she has little idea of the depths of Tom’s disregard for women.

The plot may sound like a lot to get your head around. But the book is really about Kate and Vee, and the damage done to them – and changes to their lives – because of men. These women are woven together, inexplicably, painfully, by the men in their lives.

Critiquing toxic masculinity

The novel stalls towards the middle, as Kate edges her way into Vee’s life. The process is naturally mundane and repetitive, revolving around love interests, jobs and motherhood. While Evans is methodological in building suspense and establishing the plot, it seems to rush into the climax and ending. I wanted a little more time to sit in the wake of the consequences.

But the impact of Catherine Wheel isn’t in the pacing – it’s in Evans’ emotional critique of toxic masculinity. Tom and Max, Max and Tom: two three-letter-named men who collect and leave a trail of so-called “hysterical” and “monstrous” women in their wake. Singularly, Max is an obsession for Kate to pursue. But together, Max and Tom represent a pattern of coercive control, gaslighting, abuse and internalised misogyny; a wheel, as it were, that needs to be broken.

The emotion of Evans’ writing feels real: the anger comes with great tiredness and the fight against the abuse the women experience is draining. The novel’s emotions resonate beyond the page; they linger. Evans’ observations often threaten to hit a little too close to home. Her portraits of the modern woman, demure and masked through her romantic experiences, left me wincing with recognition:

She’s not good with anger. They didn’t do anger in her family […] So now, she deals with upsets and injuries by remaining calm, keeping her distance, or complying to the point of self-erasure.

This book of fractured souls and tentative female trust can be confronting, even jarring. Catherine Wheel is a natural evolution of the genre of #Metoo fiction. It’s not about violence done to women’s bodies by men – or not solely about that – but about women’s minds and lives, and their self image. Läs mer…

Australian media has entered a new phase in its painful transformation, yet so far it has been poorly reported and is only vaguely understood.

The evidence is everywhere. It’s in the poor commercial performance of all TV broadcasters, summed up in Bill Shorten’s recent claim on the ABC’s Q+A that free-to-air TV is in “diabolical trouble”.

It’s in Rupert Murdoch’s airy speculation that newspapers might only be around for another 15 years. It’s in the Reuters 2024 Digital News Report warning of growing news avoidance among the young.

It’s also in Meta’s withdrawal from funding media under the Australian government’s News Media Bargaining Code. Or the continuing job cuts across the media and the changing balance of power between media companies and tech platforms.

Even at public broadcasters such as the ABC, audiences are fragmenting and declining. There is an air of alarm in the morale-boosting efforts of its loquacious new chair, Kim Williams.

The fact the media itself has done a poor job joining all these dots is unlikely to surprise anyone familiar with US writer Upton Sinclair’s famous line that it’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it.

But the significance of the changes to the news media in Australia reach far beyond the vested interests of media moguls and journalists.

Williams correctly identified what’s at stake in the Sir John Monash Oration last week, when he warned of the implications of declining trust in media for social cohesion and the health of democracy.

He said “the very institutions of our society are losing the public’s trust, in large part because there is no longer a broad consensus about the facts”.

Today we are launching a new series on the future of Australian media, to better explain the powerful forces buffeting our media and how they will ultimately reshape society.

In our first piece, journalism academics Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodd examine the ways in which power has shifted from media barons to tech bros.

Ricketson and Dodd hold no illusions about the ruthless and hypocritical way traditional media owners wielded power, but they argue the tech bros are even worse because they don’t claim any fourth estate role: “If anything, they seem to hold journalism with tongs as far from their face as possible.”

In the coming days we’ll cover the commercial business models for radio and TV, rural and regional media, the future of printed newspapers, regulation of social media, and more. Läs mer…

Timor-Leste has had much to celebrate recently. August 30 marked 25 years since the Popular Consultation – or “The Referendum”, as many call it – when more than 98% of the population braced themselves against brutal repression to vote for their freedom.

Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, recently visited. This was a bigger deal than one might think: he’s a hero in Timorese eyes because of his international advocacy for their self-determination when he was prime minister of Portugal. He spoke to the parliament, praising the people’s “enormous courage and relentless determination”.

This week, an even bigger hero visits the island: Pope Francis. This occasion is of profound cultural and religious significance for one the most predominantly Catholic countries in the world. More than 97% of the population is Catholic.

History of Catholic activism

Churches in Dili, mostly in Portuguese style, are immaculately kept. Graveyards are revered and often attended by family members who have lights installed around their plots.

Yet surprisingly, this Catholic convergence is only recent. When the Portuguese left in 1975, estimates suggest only 20–30% of the country was Catholic.

During the Indonesian occupation, this number changed drastically. For some, this was because of the role the church played as a “shield of the oppressed”. Timorese beliefs of ancestor worship and animism also cohabited with Catholicism.

Pope Francis is visiting Dili.
Author provided, Author provided (no reuse)

During the years of occupation and the resistance, the Catholic church often advocated for Timorese protections when others turned a blind eye or remained complicit.

Catholic priests and nuns sought to protect human rights against military abuses. Atrocities were repeatedly denounced by the Apostolic Administrators of Dili.

Only staunch international support groups, such as East Timor Action Network or the Campaign for an Independent East Timor, mainly active in Australia, undertook a similarly powerful advocacy role.

Pope John Paul II briefly visited the territory in October 1989, which drew significant attention to the plight of the East Timorese under Indonesian occupation.

In his homily, made directly for the people, he said “you are the salt of the earth” (referring to how the East Timorese extract salt on the coastal plains) and “the light of the world”.

Later on, he affirmed that:

respect for the rights which render life more human must be firmly ensured: the rights of individuals and the rights of families.

This was a rare, radical claim for such a conservative pontiff.

City at a standstill

None of this has been forgotten by the East Timorese.

The mood is festive. Each successive second street lamp on Dili’s main roads has placards or images of the Pope, with alternating posts adorned with lights of stars or hearts.

While independence celebrations saw much of the colours of Timor-Leste’s flag across the city, the pope’s visit has much Catholic iconography, including the sale of many T-shirts.

The city will literally stop for this event. We’ve been told to stock up on water and food in preparation.

Pope Francis’ visit to Timor-Leste has drummed up excitement and merchandise.
Author provided, Author provided (no reuse)

Alongside Timor-Leste, Francis is visiting Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore. The visits were originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the COVID pandemic.

The government has allocated US$12 million (about A$18 million) for the visit. But there have been other costs too.

Some residents on “illegal” settlements have had their homes demolished for the site of Francis’ mass, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend.

Read more:
With pope’s visit, Timor-Leste must shine a light on its democratic ideals – not intolerance for dissent

‘One of the biggest events since independence’

The visit is a spiritual, cultural, and diplomatic mission all at once.

Spiritually, the visit promises “blessings and hopes” for a nation whose development remains precarious. It also offers a sense of unity via a promise of justice in faith.

Culturally, the papal visit will reinforce nation-building through the country’s strong Catholic identity, which remains one of the few predominant shared core values.

Diplomatically, Francis is paying respects to first cardinals of Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore – all key allies.

The pope’s visit also has geopolitical implications.

It is symbolic of peace and an endorsement for ongoing reconciliation with Indonesia. Indonesian Muslim leaders have helped plan the event, which they see as crucial for promoting “shared understanding”.

The other close neighbour, Australia, also views the visit as an “important moment”, with Australia’s ambassador to Timor-Leste, Caitlin Wilson, calling it “one of the biggest events held in the country since its restoration of independence in 2002”.

East Timorese academic Mica Barreto Soares says the visit is a “privilege for a country like Timor” because:

all eyes of the international community will zoom in on a now independent Timor, so it is not just religious but political.

But perhaps the greatest hope is the international and internal political solidarity that may come with the visit.

Domestic political impact

Politics on the island remains fraught, partly because of historical legacies and generational shifts in leadership.

Independence hero and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, leader of the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT), remains highly revered but holds tight reins on power and is ageing.

So-called “Generation ‘75”, figures from the independence era, dominate the island’s leadership with little representation from younger generations. This is despite the fact around 75% of the country are under 30.

The minority FRETLIN party has reduced in voter popularity and is excluded from executive power, highlighting ongoing feuds and some shifts in internal political dynamics.

The government has been criticised for centralising power and marginalising other political voices. It’s also been accused of prioritising politically motivated large-scale infrastructure projects unaligned with people’s needs.

Most dangerous of all, it’s relying on the depletion of oil reserves. This is a fiscal cliff looming ever closer as Timor-Leste continues to draw down on its sovereign wealth fund (or Petroleum Fund), projected to be exhausted within the decade.

According to the World Bank, non-oil-related revenue stood at merely 14% of gross domestic product. Meanwhile, government spending was among some of the highest globally at 87% in 2023.

Francis is known for his advocacy of social justice and the poor. His visit to Timor-Leste could highlight these issues, pushing the country to focus on human development indicators and social services. These remain inadequately addressed, creating inequality that fuels political tensions. Läs mer…

The 2024 Paris Paralympics delivered heightened attention and awareness of a pinnacle sporting event for para athletes.

Australia has often set the standard for para sport, consistently achieving top ten medal tally results at the Paralympic games.

However, other nations have begun to invest more seriously in para sport, which may be a sign we need to devote more time and energy towards non-playing roles to keep up with this increased professionalism.

From rehabilitation to professionalism to advocacy

The Paralympic Games evolved from an event to rehabilitate war veterans and foster social integration to a global phenomenon with mass media attention, heightened levels of professionalism, and increasing expectations.

Much of this exposure serves to challenge deeply ingrained and often negative or tragic societal views of people with disabilities, by showcasing the incredible athletic performances of para athletes.

Indeed, many countries now fund Paralympic athlete pathways, champion the image of the Paralympic games and athletes as a platform for human rights advocacy and pay them equally for winning medals.

Paralympic athletes are painted as role models for people with disabilities while also being admired for their “positive” life stories and celebrated for their “superhuman” abilities.

However, while Paralympians are the face of this evolution, behind the scenes are a variety of others whose roles and pathways are less clear.

So what is the coach’s role in all of this?

Accompanying Paralympic sport’s rise in profile, professionalism and popularity has been a critical focus on developing high quality coaches in these contexts.

However, the growing attention given to Paralympians has not extended to the support given to coaches.

This is an important oversight, as the delivery and success of para sport revolves around a coaching workforce with the knowledge and understanding of how to create the necessary conditions for inclusion, as well as for supporting high performance.

Coaches often provide future Paralympians with their first taste of sport, guide them through crucial milestones such as classification, support them through often turbulent or accelerated performance trajectories and through major career hurdles such as retirement or declassification.

However, the importance of coaches and performance staff cannot be overestimated.

Becoming a Paralympic coach

The journey to becoming a coach in para sport is not as systematic as you might think.

Most coaches tend to migrate through to para sport after coaching non-disabled athletes, despite evidence suggesting coaching para athletes places demands on the skills and knowledge of coaches beyond that usually required in non-disabled contexts.

Further, the number of para athletes transitioning into leadership opportunities in para sport is often limited, with a recent EU workforce audit outlining the dominance of non-disabled coaches in this context.

This is symptomatic of a broader issue in which people with disabilities are underrepresented in sports leadership.

There are however many para athletes who’ve successfully transitioned from elite athlete to coach.

Wotjobaluk Elder Kevin Coombes was Australia’s first Indigenous Paralympian.

He played wheelchair basketball at five successive Paralympics and made his transition to coaching while still playing – as captain-coach during the 1972 Paralympics.

Louise Sauvage, who dominated wheelchair racing for decades, planned to become a para athletics coach following her retirement from the sport in 2004.

While she had doubts about her potential as a coach, she undertook postgraduate studies in applied science and drew upon good mentors and her own personal coaches to develop her coaching expertise.

Swimmer Roly Crichton competed at two Paralympics for New Zealand before dedicating three further Paralympic cycles to coaching para swimmers.

Crichton was instrumental in supporting fellow Kiwi Sophie Pascoe on her way to a record 11 Paralympic gold medals.

Together, these examples provide a clear need to mobilise the power of lived experience of former para athletes to support future Paralympic ambitions.

Looking to the future

An infusion approach to coach education has been signalled as a potential movement for sport organisations.

It places disability content, topics and issues throughout coach education curricula.

This plays a crucial role in shifting coach education away from positioning people with disabilities as “problems to be fixed” towards a more human understanding of disability.

Our research has highlighted the need for visible and accessible pathways for people with disabilities to transition into coaching.

Recently, Athletics Australia released an expression of interest to attract “recently retired international/national level para athletes interested in high performance coaching”.

Such initiatives are crucial to redress the lack of disability representation in para sport coaching.

Furthermore, clearer coach certification pathways in which disability is a central focus are required because many coaches never receive formalised training or education specific to disability.

This means those who do make the jump into para sport are “thrown in at the deep end”, and left to learn through trial and error.

Understandably, for coaches who have limited exposure to disability, this can be quite daunting and limits the transition of coaches into para sport due to a fear of the unknown.

With record numbers of delegations at Paris 2024, national Paralympic committees will naturally look to the future as they seek to advance the Paralympic movement and their own para sport development pathways.

It is crucial coaches are prepared for the complexity of para sport.

Coach education reform and targeted programs for para athlete transitions remain an area of considerable opportunity for national Paralympic committees and sport organisations wishing to leverage the legacy of Paris 2024. Läs mer…

In July 2023, rising US basketball star Bronny James collapsed on the court during practice and was sent to hospital. The 18-year-old athlete, son of famous LA Lakers’ veteran LeBron James, had experienced a cardiac arrest.

Many media outlets incorrectly referred to the event as a “heart attack” or used the terms interchangeably.

A cardiac arrest and a heart attack are distinct yet overlapping concepts associated with the heart.

With some background in how the heart works, we can see how they differ and how they’re related.

Understanding the heart

The heart is a muscle that contracts to work as a pump. When it contracts it pushes blood – containing oxygen and nutrients – to all the tissues of our body.

For the heart muscle to work effectively as a pump, it needs to be fed its own blood supply, delivered by the coronary arteries. If these arteries are blocked, the heart muscle doesn’t get the blood it needs.

This can cause the heart muscle to become injured or die, and results in the heart not pumping properly.

Heart attack or cardiac arrest?

Simply put, a heart attack, technically known as a myocardial infarction, describes injury to, or death of, the heart muscle.

A cardiac arrest, sometimes called a sudden cardiac arrest, is when the heart stops beating, or put another way, stops working as an effective pump.

In other words, both relate to the heart not working as it should, but for different reasons. As we’ll see later, one can lead to the other.

Why do they happen? Who’s at risk?

Heart attacks typically result from blockages in the coronary arteries. Sometimes this is called coronary artery disease, but in Australia, we tend to refer to it as ischaemic heart disease.

The underlying cause in about 75% of people is a process called atherosclerosis. This is where fatty and fibrous tissue build up in the walls of the coronary arteries, forming a plaque. The plaque can block the blood vessel or, in some instances, lead to the formation of a blood clot.

Atherosclerosis is a long-term, stealthy process, with a number of risk factors that can sneak up on anyone. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diet, diabetes, stress, and your genes have all been implicated in this plaque-building process.

Other causes of heart attacks include spasms of the coronary arteries (causing them to constrict), chest trauma, or anything else that reduces blood flow to the heart muscle.

Regardless of the cause, blocking or reducing the flow of blood through these pipes can result in the heart muscle not receiving enough oxygen and nutrients. So cells in the heart muscle can be injured or die.

Here’s a simple way to remember the difference.
Author provided

But a cardiac arrest is the result of heartbeat irregularities, making it harder for the heart to pump blood effectively around the body. These heartbeat irregularities are generally due to electrical malfunctions in the heart. There are four distinct types:

ventricular tachycardia: a rapid and abnormal heart rhythm in which the heartbeat is more than 100 beats per minute (normal adult, resting heart rate is generally 60-90 beats per minute). This fast heart rate prevents the heart from filling with blood and thus pumping adequately
ventricular fibrillation: instead of regular beats, the heart quivers or “fibrillates”, resembling a bag of worms, resulting in an irregular heartbeat greater than 300 beats per minute
pulseless electrical activity: arises when the heart muscle fails to generate sufficient pumping force after electrical stimulation, resulting in no pulse
asystole: the classic flat-line heart rhythm you see in movies, indicating no electrical activity in the heart.

Remember this flat-line rhythm from the movies? It’s asystole, when there’s no electrical activity in the heart.
Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock

Cardiac arrest can arise from numerous underlying conditions, both heart-related and not, such as drowning, trauma, asphyxia, electrical shock and drug overdose. James’ cardiac arrest was attributed to a congenital heart defect, a heart condition he was born with.

But among the many causes of a cardiac arrest, ischaemic heart disease, such as a heart attack, stands out as the most common cause, accounting for 70% of all cases.

So how can a heart attack cause a cardiac arrest? You’ll remember that during a heart attack, heart muscle can be damaged or parts of it may die. This damaged or dead tissue can disrupt the heart’s ability to conduct electrical signals, increasing the risk of developing arrhythmias, possibly causing a cardiac arrest.

So while a heart attack is a common cause of cardiac arrest, a cardiac arrest generally does not cause a heart attack.

What do they look like?

Because a cardiac arrest results in the sudden loss of effective heart pumping, the most common signs and symptoms are a sudden loss of consciousness, absence of pulse or heartbeat, stopping of breathing, and pale or blue-tinged skin.

But the common signs and symptoms of a heart attack include chest pain or discomfort, which can show up in other regions of the body such as the arms, back, neck, jaw, or stomach. Also frequent are shortness of breath, nausea, light-headedness, looking pale, and sweating.

What’s the take-home message?

While both heart attack and cardiac arrest are disorders related to the heart, they differ in their mechanisms and outcomes.

A heart attack is like a blockage in the plumbing supplying water to a house. But a cardiac arrest is like an electrical malfunction in the house’s wiring.

Despite their different nature both conditions can have severe consequences and require immediate medical attention. Läs mer…