Sir Donald Bradman needs little introduction.

Cricket – and possibly world sport’s – most dominant figure, “The Don” is known for his staggering batting feats, including a scarcely believable batting average of 99.94, and his leadership of Australia’s 1948 team nicknamed the “Invincibles”.

However, few would know Bradman was a key figure behind cricket’s transformation from time-consuming five-day matches to the chaotic world of one-day and Twenty20 (T20) games that dominate the sport’s calendar, broadcasts and finances today.

And it was all sparked by Melbourne’s oft-criticised weather, some worried bean-counters, and a bright idea.

Sports can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, these moments create immediate shockwaves. Other times, it’s not until much later that their impact become obvious. This is the first story in a rolling series that explores key (and sometimes long forgotten) moments in sports history.

Read more: Game changers: how soccer’s mega-money era was sparked by a little-known Belgian athlete

The first one-day international

Domestic one-day matches of between 40 and 60 overs a side had been played in India and England since the 1950s.

These shorter, more dynamic games were aimed at attracting new spectators.

However, they had not been considered for international matches.

The first one-day international (ODI) in 1971 was an accident: an unscheduled match played as a last-minute replacement for a Test abandoned due to heavy rain.

According to Australia’s captain Bill Lawry, the match was conceived by Bradman for financial reasons. Facing heavy financial losses the English and Australian cricket boards agreed to play a game on what would have been the last day of the Test.

Around 46,000 spectators saw Australia win after each side was allotted 40 eight-ball overs.

It was a financial hit, popular with spectators and deemed an “overwhelming success” by the media.

But growth of this format was slow, mainly due to the conservative nature of international boards.

The next ODI did not happen until August 1972, and other countries did not start playing them until 1973.

Remarkably, considering the amateur status of women athletes at the time, the first limited-overs World Cup was a women’s tournament in England in 1973 – two years before the maiden men’s World Cup was played.

One-day cricket’s popularity soon soared, especially after the men’s World Cup in 1975.

Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, launched in 1977, confirmed its place on the international cricketing calendar and played a huge role in the shorter format’s popularity.

The media baron was desperate to showcase cricket on Channel Nine but his TV rights bid was rejected by the Australian Cricket Board. Aggrieved, Packer instead set up a breakaway competition, signing many of the world’s best players.

The new-look competition featured brightly coloured team kits, white balls, games under lights and batters wearing helmets – all of which are still in place today.

How ODIs changed cricket

Test cricket was, and often still is, criticised for being too slow and boring.

The limited number of overs in ODIs increased the speed of the game: batters looked to score more quickly and take more risks, which resulted in more boundaries.

Clive Lloyd, who captained the West Indies to two World Cup wins, called limited-overs cricket the greatest innovation for the sport. He specifically referred to improved standards of fielding and tactical awareness.

ODIs have greatly increased athleticism: batters need to be stronger to hit more boundaries and quicker to ensure they are fast enough when running between wickets.

Fielders need to be faster and more athletic to stop boundaries and extra runs. They also need stronger arms to throw the ball faster.

In 1992, fielding restrictions were introduced for the first 15 overs, only allowing two fielders outside of a 30-yard circle. This promoted early aggressive batting.

These fielding restrictions forced captains to rethink field placements and bowling rotations.

While Australia scored 191 runs to win the first ODI, current teams regularly surpass 300.

Scoring has increased because of power hitting, bigger bats, specific training and better running between wickets.

Boundary ropes introduced for player safety also reduced the distance required to hit a boundary.

Bowlers have had to develop more variations, such as slower balls, to make it harder for them to score runs.

In this shorter format, the importance of all-rounders (players who can bat and bowl competently) has increased greatly.

Wicketkeepers are also expected to be better batters. Former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist had success opening the batting, which gave his team more flexibility to include other batters and all-rounders.

Player uniforms also evolved.

One-day clashes originally used traditional white clothing, but colour uniforms introduced a new dimension for televised cricket. They have been used permanently since the 1992 World Cup.

As the format evolved, player names and then numbers were gradually added to playing tops, making identification easier for commentators and spectators.

Read more: Game changers: how one team’s dominance transformed rugby league forever

Continuing relevance

Limited-overs cricket laid the platform for even shorter formats such as T20s, the Hundred and even ten over games.

Ironically, these innovative formats now threaten the continued relevance of 50-over cricket.

Analysis of more than 340 ODI matches played in Australia between 1985 and 2015 shows average attendances have declined over time. In the 1980s, games in Australia regularly drew crowds of more than 35,000, but in recent years attendance has struggled to regularly reach 25,000 per match.

However, major events like World Cups can still draw large crowds. The 2023 tournament was attended by a record 1.25 million people and made Australian captain Pat Cummins “fall in love with ODI cricket again”.

ODIs have given fans decades of drama and achievement.

Older fans still remember classic games such as Australia’s tied 1999 World Cup semifinal against South Africa, and Michael Bevan’s last-ball four to beat the West Indies on New Year’s Day in 1996.

But 50-over cricket now faces a challenge to stay relevant alongside more exciting and more profitable T20 tournaments.

If ODIs are to keep their place in a busy cricket calendar, they must continue evolving to ensure they maintain player and audience interest.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

In recent weeks, the back-to-back state visits to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump have put China in the global spotlight.

For some international analysts, the summits showcased China as a “stabilising force capable of hosting two major rivals within days”, a “broker between the big powers” and a “pillar of global stability”.

To others, the visits highlighted how China is becoming an “indispensable global power” and President Xi Jinping a “world leader to be reckoned with and courted”.

Chinese analysts, meanwhile, noted that over the past six months, numerous other world leaders have visited Beijing, including those from France, Britain, Canada, South Korea and Germany. Crucially, some leaders returned after long gaps. It was the first visit in eight years by a UK prime minister, for example. And the first visit in nine years for a Canadian, South Korean and American leader.

With all these visits happening one after another, Chinese media described the Chinese capital as an international “living room” that provides stability in a turbulent world. Another headline read, “The world is entering ”Beijing time“.

Beyond the optics

While this has undeniably been a big moment on the global stage for Beijing, these interpretations miss three important points.

First, it is unclear whether world leaders are visiting China because of proactive Chinese diplomacy or as a way of gaining leverage in dealings with the Trump administration.

For example, when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Beijing in January, it was widely interpreted as a response to Canada’s structural dependence on the US and the volatility of the second Trump administration. Some media said he was playing the "China card” to negotiate better terms with the US.

Second, Beijing sets a high “entry price” for visits to its “living room”. Occasionally, these summits have been linked to major policy shifts by visiting dignitaries.

When Trump visited Beijing, for instance, he backtracked on earlier calls to block Chinese nationals from buying farmland in the US and to impose limits on the number of Chinese students at US universities. Chinese media highlighted the negative reactions these concessions got from Trump’s MAGA base and other Republicans in the US.

Similarly, Carney’s visit to China resulted in a trade deal reducing tariffs on made-in-China electric vehicles to 6.1% for the first 49,000 cars annually. In late 2024, Canada had imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. Months later, during the 2025 election, Carney called China the biggest threat “from a geopolitical sense”.

Carney’s concession on electric cars drew criticism back home. Politicians warned it would invite a “flood of cheap made-in-China electric vehicles”, without guarantees of investment in Canada’s economy.

Finally, these visits by foreign leaders have clearly not changed China’s core foreign policy positions.

The appeals of European leaders did not, for example, change Beijing’s material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Nor did they reduce China’s large trade surplus with the European Union.

Similarly, Beijing did not agree to assist the Trump administration on Iran, despite Trump’s praise for Xi’s leadership and his decision to pause a weapons sale to Taiwan.

And even Putin failed to resolve disagreements over the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a project long sought by Putin. If built, the pipeline could carry 50 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas annually to China, or about 12% of China’s gas use in 2025.

Visibility without influence?

The recent influx of international leaders to China may instead be a reflection of growing uncertainty in the global order.

The dramatic shifts in US foreign policy under the Trump administration have prompted a great deal of concern among Washington’s traditional allies. It’s also provided an opportunity for China to project itself as a stable partner after years of pursuing its more aggressive, wolf-warrior diplomacy.

But these visits do not prove China’s diplomatic efforts have become more effective. Domestic economic pressures and competing international priorities still limit what Beijing can realistically deliver.

For example, to prevent factory closures and meet growth targets, Beijing channels massive state subsidies into certain manufacturing sectors. This creates surplus output that is exported globally – including to the EU – at artificially low prices. China can’t afford to rein these exports in.

At the same time, China has continued to support Russia and Iran in challenging the US and Europe’s security, despite the importance of these Western markets to China’s economic development.

As a result, high-profile meetings in Beijing produce ceremony and pomp, but deliver limited concrete outcomes.

These recent visits by Trump, Putin and other world leaders have certainly made China appear more central to global diplomacy. But this visibility does not necessarily translate into effective global leadership.

Czeslaw Tubilewicz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

News on AI and audiobooks is coming thick and fast. Australia-based audiobook producer Bolinda recently announced it will create a “bespoke” AI clone of romance bestseller Barbara Cartland’s voice, in partnership with her estate. (She died in 2000.)

Two days later, Spotify announced a tool (created by synthetic voice company ElevenLabs) that will allow self-published authors to create audiobooks voiced by AI on its platform, and publish them anywhere.

Meanwhile, a recent New York Times exposé revealed AI-enabled audiobook piracy on a massive scale on YouTube, with versions appearing of everything from literary fiction to Harry Potter, business bestsellers to John Grisham. A pirated version of his latest legal thriller, The Widow, accompanied by an “AI slop” video, has over 80,000 views. Listeners called the voice “boring” and “awful”.

“If you look up any best seller, you find a free audiobook on YouTube,” said the chief executive of the United States Authors Guild. A 2025 survey found that 35% of audiobook consumers had listened to a YouTube audiobook – and that AI-narrated audiobooks now account for 23% of new releases.

Around 17% of Australian audiobook listeners have (knowingly) listened to an AI audiobook, according to my own recent survey of over 500 Australian audiobook listeners. This rate is higher among listeners with vision impairments and other disabilities, who have long used AI for accessibility reasons – and should be centred in these discussions.

How have AI voices in audiobook listening evolved? And where is it heading?

The evolution of AI voices

The large language models behind ChatGPT and Claude map the relationship between words across billions of pieces of text. Similar models map sound patterns across recorded speech to produce contemporary “AI voices”.

AI voices were originally used for accessibility. The first automated text-to-speech system was created in 1968 by a Japanese research laboratory. The first screen reader technology was developed by IBM in the early 1980s. In 1986, it introduced its first screen reader for general use on personal computers.

This text-to-speech technology was originally for vision-impaired readers, who were the first to embrace it.

But as AI voices became more convincing, concern about their impact on human-narrated audiobooks grew. In 2009, the US Authors Guild blocked implementation of the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function, claiming it infringed their audiobook rights.

Many high profile authors argued against the decision and its impact on accessibility. “The day that artificial intelligence gives us perfect Kindle readings, we’ll have bigger fish to fry than audiobook rights,” science fiction and tech author Cory Doctorow wrote in the Guardian. He called the idea that computer narration might ever seriously rival human narration “nonsensical”.

Voice clones and pirates

Swedish Storytel, the largest streaming platform in Nordic markets, reported in 2024 that nine out of ten listeners “could not tell which narration was human” when it tested the AI-generated voices in its Voice Switcher program.

Like Spotify, Storytel uses ElevenLabs AI technology. With Voice Switcher, listeners can choose between the original human narrator, three different AI-generated voices, or an AI version of popular Swedish actor and narrator Stefan Sauk, who has licensed his voice to Storytel.

Only a handful of Barbara Cartland’s 723 novels were available as audiobooks before her estate signed an exclusive agreement with Bolinda, the leading producer of Australian audiobooks. Bolinda started by distributing accessibility materials, such as large print and talking books, in 1986, and moved to audiobooks in 1995.

Cartland’s voice clone will be used to frame the beginning and end of her audiobooks, while human narrators will continue to narrate the books themselves. Even for this limited use, Cartland fans have described the announcement as “creepy”, “haunting”, “gross” and “disappointing” on social media.

Voice clones are being put to worrying uses. Along with other “deepfakes”, this led to the UN publishing a “wake-up call” to organised fraud in March. Audiobook publishing is not immune to these deepfakes, or artificially generated imitations of real people.

Recordings of Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter series were used to generate an illegal clone of his voice in 2023. And this year, author Shaun Rein discovered deepfakes of himself on YouTube, reading chapters of his book. “The voice clone was probably created from the author’s publicly available interviews,” wrote publishing commentator Jane Friedman.

Piracy is a problem for digital content in general – including audiobooks. YouTube addresses piracy by automatically scanning uploads to see if they match with material in their massive database of copyright content. Pirates alter or add bracketing material to try to circumvent it. Publishers told the New York Times that the program, built for music, is “less effective” with audiobooks, where “even slight changes – like shifts in speed, pitch or voice, or added background noise or music – can prevent a match”.

Audible, Spotify and Project Gutenberg

Audible, owned by Amazon, began implementing AI-voiced audiobooks in late 2023. A year later, it added a service that lets select narrators create and monetise replicas of their own voices.

The other major global player in audiobooks, Spotify, first offered AI-narrated audiobooks in 2023, the year it launched its audiobook business.

Last year, it began accepting audiobooks narrated using ElevenLabs’ AI voice technology, which lets self-publishers create an audiobook with a voice from a catalogue, or create their own voice clone. The catalogue includes trademarked clones of actors like Michael Caine. And now, self-publishers can create AI-voiced audiobooks on Spotify itself.

Commercial and pirate audiobooks sit alongside projects like public domain repository Project Gutenberg’s free catalogue of 5,000 AI-narrated audiobooks of out-of-copyright books, created by Microsoft and MIT. It was named one of the best inventions of 2023 by TIME magazine.

The future of audiobooks

Voice actors are concerned about the erosion of skilled jobs and the use of cloning technologies to infringe on their vocal rights. Unions and advocacy groups are actively campaigning for tighter regulatory controls. And authors and publishers want action on YouTube piracy.

These issues are intensified by the important ethical and environmental questions raised by AI use. Legislators, technology companies and major commercial players have a responsibility to ensure AI narration technologies are made and used transparently and ethically.

But there is no one way to read a book. Only a fraction of books published will ever be available as human-narrated audiobooks, due to the significant time and expense of making them. And for many readers – those with vision impairments or some forms of neurodivergence, for instance – audiobooks are an essential resource.

Human performance offers a gold standard listening experience: expressive, immersive and authentic. But AI narration has a growing role in the audiobook’s future.

Millicent Weber received funding for this research from Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award DE240100466, 'Audiobooks and Digital Book Culture'.

If your child has ever dug their heels in on the morning of the school athletics or cross country day, or refused to speak in front of the class, you’re not alone.

For some children, these kinds of events bring a heavy, anxious feeling: what if I’m the slowest, what if everyone’s watching, what if I get it wrong?

For parents, it can be hard to know what to do. Push too hard and the morning becomes a meltdown. Let them off and you worry you’ve taught them to opt out.

Is it ever okay to follow their lead? And how do you give them the best chance of having a go next time?

Why (gently) facing fears matters

When we avoid something we’re afraid of, we feel instant relief. That relief is powerful, and it teaches the brain that avoiding worked. Over time, the fear grows and the impulse to avoid gets stronger. This is true for all of us, not just children.

So, in general, it helps for children to face fears sooner rather than later, before avoidance settles in.

But that doesn’t mean forcing a child through a panic. Pushing too hard can confirm to them the situation really is dangerous.

It’s worth helping your child face the fear before avoidance takes hold. What that looks like depends on what’s driving it.

Start by understanding what’s going on

If you can see a tricky day coming, talk to your child about how they are feeling ahead of time. Ask gentle questions to work out what the resistance is actually about.

Did something happen last time? Is something going on with friends? Is your child worried about failing, being judged, or being laughed at?

You might say:

I noticed you got really quiet when Dad mentioned athletics day. Is something about it worrying you?

Children won’t always have the words straight away, so give them time. It can help to have these conversations side-by-side rather than face-to-face: at bedtime, walking or driving together. Without eye contact, children find it easier to think and talk about hard things.

Try not to jump in to say “you’ll be fine” or “there’s nothing to worry about”. This can come across as dismissing the feeling, and your child may stop talking. Just listening can help children open up.

Validate the feeling

Once you have a sense of what’s going on, let your child know the feeling makes sense before moving to suggesting what to do. Children find it easier to think about solutions once they feel heard. You might say:

I can see this feels really big right now. It makes sense you’re worried.

Pause and stay silent for a moment. They may start crying, which is often part of processing fears.

This is often when we are tempted to rescue or reassure them. Instead, try to just remain a supportive presence. You can offer a hug and say, “This sounds really hard”.

Then work out a plan together

At this point, help your child think about what taking part might look like in a way that feels safe and manageable for them. You might say:

I wonder what might make it easier to go? What’s one small part of it you think you could manage?

Options might be walking the cross country instead of running it, reading the speech to one trusted teacher before presenting to the class, or going along and just observing to start with.

For some events, it’s worth having a quiet word with the teacher too, so the plan works at school as well as at home. The goal isn’t a perfect performance, it’s helping your child take part in a way they can manage.

Try not to rush or pressure them. If they say “I don’t know” acknowledge it can be hard to think when you are feeling worried. Sometimes it helps to take a brief break and come back to explore options later.

On the day

You can calmly remind them of what has been discussed. It can help to state what you would like to happen and then provide opportunity for the child to express how they are feeling:

It’s time to go. I know this is not easy and a part of you really doesn’t want to do this.

If they become upset, stay close and let the feelings be there. You don’t need to fix it or hurry them through it. A hand on their back or a quiet “I’m here” is often enough.

Children often need to feel their fear before they can move through it. This is where courage grows. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s being able to move forward even when fear is present.

When children see they can carry their worries and still take part, they begin to develop confidence in their ability to cope with challenges.

Is it ever okay to follow their lead?

Sometimes, yes, if your child is really distressed, a brief step back will help them regain a sense of control.

A one-off opt-out isn’t a problem, and children are allowed to dislike things.

The warning sign is a pattern: when avoidance is creeping in more often, or your child is missing out on things they actually want to do.

If there’s a history of bullying, a bad past experience, or their fear and anxiety is starting to limit daily life, it’s worth seeing your GP for a referral to a psychologist who works with children.

How to approach ‘achievement’ and ‘participation’ in general

Most of what helps a child “have a go” is built in to the everyday conversations at home, not on the morning of the event. It’s about gently setting expectations: that we don’t always have to win, be the best, or get it right, and that’s okay.

A few themes are worth weaving in often.

The first is everyone has different brains and bodies so some things will come more or less easily to each of us. Difference is normal, and worth admiring rather than ranking. You might say:

I loved learning from my colleague Penny at work today. She knows so much about how water works in the environment.

The second is that skill is built, not bestowed. Children often think of sport, music or performance as fixed talents you either have or you don’t. But ability develops with practice. A child who plays sport every day will find running at athletics day easier, because they’ve put in the time, not because they were born for it.

The third is to help children notice progress against their own past self, rather than the ranking.

Last week you could swim 20 metres, and now you are swimming almost 30!

And the fourth, persisting at something hard is the real achievement. It’s easy to do what you’re already good at. Sticking with the thing that doesn’t come easily is harder, and worth naming when you see it.

I can see how frustrated you are with your reading. Keeping going – when it’s this hard is the bit I’m most proud of.

The goal isn’t a fearless child

The goal is a child who learns, over time and in small steps, that they can do hard things, and that being different from the child next to them is okay and a normal part of life.

Elizabeth Westrupp receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Mental Health & Prevention, affiliated with the Parenting and Family Research Alliance, and is a registered clinical psychologist.

Christiane Kehoe is co-author on the Tuning in to Kids suite of programs and receives royalties from the sale of the facilitator manuals used by clinicians who deliver the parenting groups. She is affiliated with the Parenting and Family Research Alliance and Deputy Editor of the journal Mental Health & Prevention.

Rebecca Knapp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

If you’ve ever taken your child to a maternal, child and family health nurse for a growth check, you might have felt a mix of curiosity and anxiety.

As health professionals, we’re often asked: is my baby gaining enough weight? Am I feeding enough? Why did they drop a percentile? Why is my friend’s baby bigger than mine? Am I doing something wrong?

In most cases, the answer is that there is nothing wrong at all. Let’s look at what the measurements actually mean and we’ll answer some questions that commonly arise during these appointments.

What actually happens at a growth check?

Growth checks are usually done by a maternal, child and family health nurse at a community health centre, or by your family GP.

Each state and territory, as well as New Zealand, has its own schedule of recommended growth and development checks. In Victoria, for example, appointments are booked when your baby is aged two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, four months, eight months, 12 months, 18 months, two years, and three and a half years.

In the early weeks, when feeding is still being established and child growth is rapid, these appointments can help identify feeding difficulties.

First, the nurse will observe your baby or child, then they will weigh them, measure their length (if they’re babies) or height, and measure their head circumference. They plot these numbers on a growth chart in your child’s health record or the Well Child Tamariki Ora book in New Zealand.

The nurse will check your child’s alertness, appearance and muscle tone. They will also ask questions about feeding, sleep, wet/dirty nappies and any recent changes.

Nurses are there to support you as a new parent. They provide reassurance and a chance to ask questions to help build confidence during a period that can feel uncertain.

Over time, growth checks allow nurses to see if your child is growing and developing at an expected rate.

For toddlers and preschoolers, the nurse will check for typical development in behaviour, language and play. If required, they will provide support or referrals to a GP who may then refer to a paediatrician, speech pathologist, occupational therapist, or psychologist, depending on the child’s needs.

What do the dots on a growth chart really mean?

Growth charts in Australia and New Zealand are based on the World Health Organization’s Child Growth Standards, which reflect optimal growth for healthy, breastfed children.

They provide context for your child’s growth through a reference population of children of the same age and sex. The curved lines are called percentiles.

• a child on the 50th percentile is right in the middle
• a child on the 25th percentile is smaller than average
• a child on the 85th percentile is larger than average.

If your child is on the 25th percentile for weight, it means that if 100 children of the same age and sex were lined up in increasing order of weight, your child would be number 25. So 75 children would weigh more and 24 would weigh less.

A single measurement tells very little. The pattern of the weight over time is even more important.

But there is no “ideal” percentile. Every child grows at their own pace and this can be influenced by their genetics, ethnicity, birthweight and gestation. Even siblings or twins may follow different patterns.

Read more: Our obsession with infant growth charts may be fuelling childhood obesity

When should parents be concerned?

Small fluctuations on the chart are common, as babies grow in spurts. But nurses may look more closely if a child:

• crosses several percentile lines over time – either in an upward or downward trend
• is showing signs of feeding difficulties or dehydration
• appears unwell.

Even in these cases, the approach is careful assessment, not alarm, and your nurse might suggest additional checks. This helps see whether a feeding adjustment is working, or whether something else might need attention.

In most cases, extra visits end with reassurance. When there is a concern, extra visits allow things to be identified and addressed early.

Read more: How do I know if my child is developing normally?

3 common questions answered

1. When should I consider supplementing with formula?

Breastfeeding is recommended where possible. But there are situations where supplementing with formula might be recommended – for example, when there are concerns about weight gain. In these cases, we always recommend to discuss supplementing with your trusted health care provider.

Your nurse is there to support your child and reassure you – not to judge how you feed them.

2. Should I start solids early if my baby is ‘big’?

In short, no. The guidelines recommend introducing solids at around six months. This should be done when babies show developmental readiness, not because of their size or percentile.

Breastmilk or formula still meets all nutritional needs until around six months.

Starting solids early may increase risks of choking, tummy upset and a greater chance of being overweight later in life.

3. Why doesn’t growth happen steadily week to week?

Babies grow in spurts, not in smooth lines and weight can vary with feeding, sleep and any recent illness.

Periods of rapid growth often occur in the early weeks, around six to eight weeks, three to four months, and around six months with babies growing rapidly throughout the first year of life. During these times, babies may feed more or seem unsettled.

Where to find more support

For more support, contact your local GP and consider asking for a referral to a lactation consultant, paediatrician or dietitian.

As part of the Australian government’s Pregnancy, Birth and Baby program, you can phone (1800 882 436) or video call a maternal and child health nurses for free, seven days a week from 7am to midnight. Or for breastfeeding issues, call the Breastfeeding Helpline on 1800 mum 2 mum (1800 686 268).

For parents in New Zealand, the government’s Plunketline (0800 933 922) is available 24–7 for advice about child health and parenting.

Read more: Need a doctor or nurse after hours? How to get virtual or in-person care in Australia – including for free

Amit Arora receives funding from the Australlian National Health and Medical Research Council and NSW Ministry of Health.

Hannah Dahlen receives funding from Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Future Fund.

Jessica Appleton is a board member with Australian College of Children and Young People's Nurses.

Lynn Kemp receives funding from Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund.

Did you know your body has an inbuilt sewerage system?

It’s called the lymphatic system, and is a crucial part of how your body fights infection and disease.

Lately the lymphatic system is causing a stir online, with some social media personalities promoting “lymphatic drainage” for beauty and skin health.

So what is lymphatic drainage? And is it backed by science?

What does the lymphatic system do?

The lymphatic system is a network of tiny vessels that, like your blood vessels, branch out to most tissues in the human body.

These vessels carry lymph, a colourless fluid that contains specialised white blood cells known as lymphocytes. Lymphocytes help the body fight infection.

Unlike blood, which circulates around your body in a loop, lymph moves in one direction. It starts off as extra fluid in the tissues in your body, which is then picked up by lymphatic capillaries. From there it travels through to larger lymph vessels and nodes, before draining back into the bloodstream.

The lymphatic system has three main jobs:

• draining excess fluid, mainly to prevent swelling
• supporting immunity, by helping the immune system detect and respond to unwanted substances such as bacteria, viruses, parasites and cancer cells
• absorbing fats, mainly from food, to transport them back into the body.

When something’s wrong

If the lymphatic system is not working properly, the affected body part can start to swell. This swelling is known as lymphoedema, and most commonly affects the arms or legs.

There are two main types of lymphoedema.

Primary lymphoedema occurs when the lymphatic system does not develop properly. This may be due to a genetic condition which impacts the number of lymphatic vessels you have, or their ability to pump fluid. Primary lymphoedema may be present from birth, or may develop during puberty or in adulthood.

Secondary lymphoedema occurs when the lymphatic system is damaged in some way. A common cause of secondary lymphoedema is cancer. This is because cancer treatment may involve surgically removing lymph nodes or unintentionally damaging them with radiation therapy.

Lymphoedema is a sign your lymph fluid isn’t draining properly. To keep things moving, your body pushes lymph into the tiny lymphatic capillaries near your skin. It’s similar to a traffic jam, where cars need to leave the highway to drive on backroads. However, these backroads soon become congested because they aren’t designed to handle that much traffic.

A special type of imaging known as indocyanine green lymphography can test whether your lymphatic system is congested. If your limbs show signs of persistent swelling, your GP will first assess the swelling to rule out other common causes. If they suspect lymphoedema is the cause, they can refer you to a lymphoedema specialist who may request indocyanine green lymphography to help with diagnosis and/or treatment.

People with lymphoedema may also be more vulnerable to infections because their lymphatic system isn’t working as it should. A common and potentially serious one is cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection which can leave you with red, swollen skin.

Read more: What are lymph nodes? And can a massage really improve lymphatic drainage?

What is ‘lymphatic drainage’?

The main treatment for lymphoedema is compression. This involves using medical stockings or bandaging to apply pressure to the swollen body part. This helps move excess fluid from the affected area while also softening any hard, swollen tissue.

Exercise and skincare may also help treat lymphoedema. When your muscles contract during exercise, they act like a pump and help move fluids – such as lymph – around the body. Daily skincare, which may involve washing with a pH-neutral soap and applying moisturiser, is important for keeping the skin clean and well-moisturised. It also helps prevent cracks and infections, which might make lymphoedema worse.

Some people with lymphoedema may benefit from manual lymphatic drainage. This usually involves a trained lymphoedema practitioner using specialised massage techniques that help move fluid out of congested areas. This ensures your body drains lymph fluid if, for some reason, it can’t do so properly by itself.

However, there’s little evidence that manual lymphatic drainage alone treats lymphoedema in any significant or lasting way. This is also the case with claims – mainly circulated on social media – that manual lymphatic drainage can make your skin healthier and more beautiful. The research here is even more limited, and any potential benefits are likely to be small or short-lived.

The bottom line

If your lymphatic system is healthy and you don’t have any swelling, you probably don’t need “lymphatic drainage”. To keep your lymphatic system working well, it’s best to have a balanced diet, stay hydrated and exercise regularly.

If you do notice any swelling or have concerns about your lymphatic system, speak to your GP. If you are having treatment for cancer, you should consult an accredited lymphoedema practitioner. If they recommend trying manual lymphatic drainage, it should be done by a trained lymphoedema therapist. And you should receive it alongside other evidence-based treatments such as compression, exercise and skin care.

Belinda Thompson receives funding from Essity and Haddenham Healthcare.

Louise Koelmeyer receives funding from Essity and Haddenham Healthcare.

Last week, OpenAI shocked the mathematical community by revealing that one of its internal artificial intelligence (AI) models had found a counterexample to a famous conjecture made by legendary Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946.

The planar unit distance problem, or Erdős problem 90, has intrigued mathematicians for decades. The new result is no mere curiosity. Canadian mathematician Daniel Litt described it as “the first result produced autonomously by an AI that I find interesting in itself”.

The breakthrough, produced with a general-purpose AI model rather than one specialised for mathematics, also highlights how AI is changing mathematical research itself. Days after OpenAI’s paper, US mathematician Will Sawin followed the same line of reasoning to an improved result. Also last week, a team from Google DeepMind used one of their own models to resolve nine lesser open problems left by Erdős.

At the same time, results like this show us what kind of mathematics current AI models are good at – and where their capabilities are still uncertain.

Dots and lines

Paul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians of the twentieth century. He was famous for asking deceptively simple questions whose solutions often resisted decades of effort.

At first glance, the underlying problem seems relatively straightforward. Suppose you have some number of points – call the number n – drawn on an infinitely large piece of paper. Given you can arrange the points any way you like, how many pairs of points can be positioned exactly one unit of distance away from each other?

If you try this problem yourself (on a presumably finite piece of paper), you may quickly gravitate towards a square grid as a promising candidate for the best arrangement. The spacing of the grid naturally creates many pairs at a regular distance apart.

This intuition influenced much of the early thinking about the problem. As the number of points grows, grid-like arrangements continue to appear to be remarkably effective.

For decades it was widely believed these highly regular structures were about as good as it gets. Erdős himself conjectured that no construction could improve substantially on these intuitive arrangements, even for an extremely large number of points. (The new best result, by Sawin, reportedly only starts to yield improvements for around 10^2000000 points – that’s a one followed by two million zeroes.)

Over the past 80 years, mathematicians have tried to prove Erdős either right or wrong. Their efforts have linked the problem to other areas of mathematics called incidence geometry, graph theory and extremal combinatorics. While a full proof remained elusive, there was a general feeling that Erdős’ conjecture was probably true.

However, OpenAI’s recent breakthrough proved Erdős’ intuition wrong. The new result uses tools from an area of mathematics called algebraic number theory to show there are patterns of dots that involve many more unit-distance pairs than the square grid, for infinitely many values of n.

No hesitation

In an article OpenAI published alongside the new paper, several leading mathematicians remarked on the result.

Fields Medallist Timothy Gowers wrote that if a human researcher had submitted the paper with this result to the prestigious journal Annals of Mathematics, he would have recommended publication “without any hesitation”. He also added that no previous AI-generated proof had come close to this level of sophistication.

This breakthrough also represents the first major mathematical open problem solved with AI with minimal human intervention beyond the initial prompt. The accompanying paper shows the prompt given to the model, as well as a recount of the “chain of thought” conducted by the model.

This has renewed broader questions about the capabilities of AI to aid in, and perform, mathematical research.

Three keys to mathematical research

Research mathematicians have been using computers for a long time, but their work is rarely driven by computation alone. Most major breakthroughs emerge from a delicate combination of three things: expertise developed over years, sustained effort to apply that expertise creatively to explore ideas (many of which turn out to be dead ends), and occasional conceptual leaps that suddenly reorganise how a problem is understood.

The first two are domains where AI models excel: as noted by Gowers, large language models such as ChatGPT have an “encyclopaedic knowledge of mathematics”. Moreover, they can follow huge numbers of speculative lines of enquiry, even those unlikely to lead anywhere, without human time constraints.

The latter seems to be what provided the key to success here. In hindsight, it seems an expert given a small number of hints would be likely to be able to reach the same proof. As Gowers notes:

Many of the ideas needed for the proof were present in the literature already, and for such ideas either no hint is needed, since the expert is aware of that piece of literature, or a highly generic “look it up” hint would be enough.

Lightbulb moments

The harder question is how much AI can contribute to genuine conceptual leaps. These acute moments of insight, where a lightbulb moment reframes a problem in an entirely new way, are often seen as the most human part of mathematics.

These leaps are hard to formalise and even harder to predict. It remains unclear whether AI models can replicate them, even with recent advances.

What is clear is that AI models are causing a seismic shift in the way mathematics is discovered.

For centuries, progress in mathematics depended almost entirely on human creativity and persistence. Now, for the first time, researchers are working alongside systems capable of autonomously exploring enormous spaces of ideas and contributing to problems once thought accessible only to human insight.

Melissa Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Tax time is coming – and with it, the unfortunate reality of needing to do something to get ready.

Don’t put your head in the sand and ignore it. That’s how you can end up missing the October 31 deadline and potentially end up with fines and penalties.

And don’t risk taking tax advice from unofficial sources.

This year, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has warned against relying on online tips or “tax hacks” from “finfluencers”: financial influencers on social media. It’s also warned artificial intelligence platforms can draw from outdated, inaccurate or foreign sources – so using them for your tax can be risky.

If you’re seeking advice, always ensure you are dealing with a registered tax agent.

Luckily, the ATO has been improving its online tax tools, so lodging your tax yourself is not as daunting as it once was.

A growing trend to DIY taxes

More than 6.1 million Australians (around 43%) did their own tax online with MyTax in 2025.

More than 8.1 million (around 57%) still choose to use a tax agent.

But doing your own tax has been a steadily growing trend for more than a decade, as more people realise the ease of using MyTax.

The tax office knows a lot

As a taxpayer, you have the obligation to tell the ATO what you have earned – even if you think you don’t have to pay any tax.

While the ATO know a lot more about you than you might realise, they are not mind readers.

The tax office collects more than 600 million transactions annually from various third parties. Sometimes they share the information with you – such as when they pre-fill sections of your MyTax form – but sometimes they don’t.

While articles like this about tax time often focus on claiming deductions, being transparent about your income is non-negotiable.

Whatever you claim on your tax return, the onus is on you to get it right.

If you have deposits in your bank account, can you explain where those came from? If not, the ATO may deem that those deposits were income. Then it is up to you as the taxpayer to prove otherwise.

Claiming work deductions

When you get to your deductions, there are three “golden rules” to remember:

• you have to have spent the money and not been reimbursed (such as if your employer paid for your phone or petrol expenses)
• your spending must be directly related to earning your income
• you must have proof (usually a receipt).

If you are claiming working from home, there are two options to reduce your tax bill: the fixed rate or actual cost approaches.

The $0.70 per hour fixed-rate method is much simpler. For most people doing their own tax, it’s the one you’re more likely to use.

But watch out for traps. To claim this deduction, you need to keep records the entire year.

And the fixed-rate method includes common expenses such as phones and stationery, so don’t double dip by claiming those separately.

You cannot claim rent or interest for working from home, unless your home is an actual place of business, such as a doctor’s surgery or hair salon.

Similarly, you cannot claim everyday clothing. To claim a deduction on clothing, it needs to be occupation specific, protective (such as steel-capped boots), a compulsory uniform (likely to be written into your employment contract) or a registered non-compulsory work uniform.

You cannot claim private travel. This includes driving to and from work, or commuting on public transport. There are very limited exceptions.

Don’t just rollover your claims from last year, either. What have you actually spent this year – and have you got the receipts to back it up?

Why you can’t claim a $1,000 ‘instant’ deduction just yet

There’s been a lot of coverage about the $1,000 “instant” tax deduction and the “working Australians tax offset” of $250, announced in last month’s federal budget.

These are not relevant for this tax season. Those are due to start from next financial year and beyond, assuming they’re passed by parliament.

Read more: How much a new $1,000 tax offset would really be worth – and who’s better off avoiding it

When it’s better to lodge early or later

Taxpayers should lodge when required. Think Goldilocks here: not too soon – and not too late.

If you try to do it too early, ATO data matching may not be complete. Generally that’s done by around end of July.

You’re better off waiting until all the information is there, otherwise the ATO is likely to amend your return. You can either lodge yourself or use a registered tax agent.

Expecting a tax refund? You’re better off lodging earlier, from late July on. For simple, self-lodged tax returns, you can generally expect to get a refund within about two weeks. So that means you’ll have more money in your bank account sooner.

Expecting a tax bill? That’s when you’re better off lodging just in time: by October 31 if you’re submitting yourself, or making sure you have a tax agent locked in by then.

Where to get help

The ATO provides a variety of guidance and advice to support taxpayers, while tax agents can help you to pay the right amount of tax.

Be careful of unregistered tax agents, particularly those tax “influencers” offering huge refunds. If you’re unsure, check this official register.

Never give out your login details to myGov or myTax. Registered tax agents will never ask for your passwords.

If you’re facing financial, social or personal challenges and need help, free tax clinics can provide targeted assistance.

And if you’re having difficulties meeting your tax obligations, or are unable to lodge on time, contact the tax office or a registered tax agent as soon as possible.

Disclaimer: This is not tax advice, it is for educational purposes only. Taxpayers should seek advice from a registered tax agent or suitably qualified professional.

Elizabeth Morton has previously been contracted to co-facilitate a short-term training contract for tax and crypto facilitated by UNSW for the ATO and is currently a member of the ATO's Crypto Industry Working Group. This is unrelated to this article. Elizabeth has not received grant funding directly related to the content of this article. Elizabeth is a Chartered Accountant, Fellow of the Tax Institute and member of the Institute of Public Accountants.

Lisa Greig has previously been contracted to co-facilitate a short-term training contract for tax and crypto facilitated by UNSW for the ATO. Lisa has not received grant funding directly related to the content of this article. Lisa is a fellow of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, a chartered tax adviser with the Tax Institute and a fellow of the Institute of Public Accountants. Lisa volunteers at the Melbourne Law School Tax Clinic.

One argument often used to quell concerns about the rising energy and resource demand of data centres is that artificial intelligence (AI) models will need less in the future as they improve and become more efficient.

But this seemingly logical thinking is a trap, according to a new United Nations report that quantifies the environmental costs of AI.

The report estimates that by 2030, AI’s energy use could double to consume 3% of the world’s electricity, produce emissions to equal the UK and deplete more water for cooling than the annual drinking water need of the global population.

It also anticipates the use of AI will follow an economic principle known as the “Jevons paradox”, which predicts that when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource, it leads to a rise, rather than a fall, in the total consumption of that resource.

The paradox is named after economist William Stanley Jevons who observed this effect with the use of coal in 19th-century England. Efficiency gains did not reduce overall consumption. Instead, the lower costs resulted in expanded use and higher overall demand.

As AI models become cheaper and more attractive, the report expects this to encourage new uses and higher volumes of use, eroding and possibly erasing any savings from efficiency advances.

To avoid falling into this trap, it lays out a roadmap for responsible AI use based on guiding principles of transparency, efficiency by design, equity and justice, lifecycle responsibility, global cooperation and sustainable use.

The scale of the problem

Last year, data centres already consumed as much electricity as Saudi Arabia, which ranks as the world’s 11th largest electricity consumer.

If electricity use doubles as projected by 2030, the associated carbon footprint would require 6.7 billion trees grown over ten years to offset this demand.

Data centres would also require 9.3 trillion litres of water and land nearly ten times the size of Mexico City.

Beyond resource use, the report also underscores the structural inequity at the heart of the AI boom, with only 32 nations hosting AI-specific cloud infrastructure and 90% of that capacity located in the US and China.

It warns of a widening digital divide between nations that build and control AI systems and those that consume them, with the latter often bearing a disproportionate environmental burden caused by mineral extraction and e-waste.

Responsible AI use

Two main forces shape AI’s operational footprint: how much we use it and how we use it.

This involves all tasks AI models perform, from text and code generation to image and video. Each of these tasks requires different levels of computational effort.

The model choice also matters as each AI system performs these task with distinct energy and environmental costs.

The report argues responsible AI requires full value-chain governance, from mineral sourcing to recycling and safe disposal.

It calls for a twinning of capability and environmental stewardship – thinking about both what AI can do for us and the protection of the natural environment.

This would mean making environmental disclosures a routine part of AI development, at both the model and task level, and incorporating projected AI demand in climate and energy planning.

Responsible AI is crucial as countries are promoting and adopting AI across government and the public sector.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the government has launched a national AI strategy and a public service AI framework.

While the framework was informed by the OECD’s values-based AI principles, including inclusive and sustainable development, there is no requirement for environmental disclosures and no regulator compiling energy use or emissions.

Likewise in Australia, improving public services is part of the national AI plan. For example, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has created Bowerbird, a machine learning-enabled mass audio and video transcription engine, to document material. The Department of Veteran’s Affairs has developed a proof-of-concept tool to see whether AI can help speed up the processing of claims.

Both countries take a deliberate “light touch” and principles-based regulatory approach to AI. But this approach risks overlooking the growing environmental cost of AI that can’t be solved by improving it.

The natural environment is foundational to the economy, culture and wellbeing. It should be at the centre of our thinking. It’s time to rethink the AI innovation playbook and shift focus toward a sustainable tech future.

Amanda Turnbull-McRae does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Cities around the world are planting more trees to cope with rising urban heat. But our research shows trees alone are often not enough. In some cases, the wrong kind of greening can even make streets feel less comfortable on a hot day.

We compared field measurements from Melbourne, Munich and Hong Kong to test how different kinds of urban planting changed the heat people experience outdoors.

The results showed layered vegetation – where trees are combined with shrubs and ground cover – often cooled cities more effectively than trees alone. We also found local climate and street design strongly shaped whether greening worked well.

These findings matter because urban greening is no longer just about aesthetics. As cities spend billions adapting to extreme heat, planting design may matter as much as planting quantity.

Cities are getting hotter

Cities trap heat. Roads, buildings and asphalt absorb solar energy during the day and slowly release it back into the air, especially at night.

This “urban heat island” effect, combined with climate change, is making heatwaves more intense and more dangerous in our cities.

Trees are one of the most popular responses because they provide shade and reduce the amount of heat absorbed by surrounding surfaces. But outdoor comfort depends on more than air temperature alone.

People experience heat through sunlight, reflected heat, humidity and airflow. A shaded street can still feel uncomfortable if humidity is high or if wind cannot move through the space.

That is why a “one-size fits all” greening strategy can fail. A planting design that works well in Melbourne may behave very differently in Hong Kong or Munich.

What we found

To better understand how urban vegetation affects heat stress, we did field measurements in three cities with different climates: temperate Melbourne, cooler Munich and humid subtropical Hong Kong.

Rather than relying only on computer models, we measured real conditions in streets and green spaces during summer.

We compared open urban spaces (with no plantings), sites with trees only, and layered planting (which means trees, shrubs and ground cover together).

Importantly, we did not just measure air temperature. We also measured “mean radiant temperature”, which captures the heat radiating from roads, walls and other surfaces onto the human body.

In Melbourne, street trees reduced radiant heat absorbed by pedestrians by more than 18°C, compared with open streets. Even where air temperatures changed only slightly, shaded streets felt substantially cooler.

Munich showed the strongest benefits from layered planting. There, streets and green spaces containing trees, shrubs and ground cover reduced afternoon heat stress by almost 8°C compared with more open spaces.

Hong Kong also benefited from vegetation, especially through shade created by overlapping tree canopies. But the results there were more mixed because the humid climate changed how cooling worked (more on that later).

Across all three cities, one finding stood out: vegetation structure matters.

Combining trees with shrubs and ground cover often performed better than trees alone, but the benefits depended on how the planting interacted with the local environment.

Why some greening can fail

The study showed that more vegetation is not automatically better.

In Hong Kong, dense vegetation sometimes increased humidity enough to reduce some of the cooling benefit. Plants release water vapour into the air through transpiration, which can help to cool dry climates. But in already humid cities, extra moisture can make outdoor spaces feel sticky and uncomfortable because sweat evaporates less efficiently.

In some Munich streets, dense vegetation reduced airflow through narrow urban corridors, trapping warm air and slowing the movement of vehicle pollution away from pedestrians.

These findings highlight why cities cannot rely on generic canopy targets copied from elsewhere. Climate, street width and airflow all shape whether vegetation improves comfort or creates unintended side effects.

Designing cooler cities

The solution is not to stop planting trees. It is to design urban greening more carefully.

Cities need planting strategies tailored to local conditions rather than universal greening formulas. In parks and open green spaces, layered vegetation can provide strong cooling while also supporting biodiversity. In dense streets, planners may need to balance shade with ventilation.

The findings also suggest cities should move beyond measuring success through tree numbers alone. The arrangement, density and type of vegetation matter just as much as canopy cover.

Designing for local conditions

Our research shows urban vegetation can reduce heat stress, but the benefits depend on how and where cities plant it.

Melbourne demonstrated the strong cooling effect of street trees on radiant heat, Munich showed the added value of layered vegetation, and Hong Kong revealed how dense planting can sometimes backfire in humid conditions.

Cities need climate-smart green spaces designed for local conditions, airflow and human comfort to remain liveable as temperatures rise.

Mohammad A Rahman receives funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG), TREE Fund, Humboldt Foundation, Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI), University of Manchester and the European Union.

In years gone by, school leavers had one main chance to get into university – by finishing their Year 12 exams with certain marks.

Media coverage of Year 12 results perpetuates the idea everything hinges on your final exams. Every year it runs the same stories of star students with perfect ATARs (Australian Tertiary Entrance Rank).

In reality, the ATAR is just one way to begin undergraduate study. There are multiple paths that can take you to uni if that’s where you want to go.

One of these paths is an enabling program. How do these work?

Read more: Help! I’m almost finished school but don’t know what I want to do next

What are enabling courses?

Enabling courses are designed to lead to a university course, usually an undergraduate degree.

They were traditionally called “bridging” programs because they bridge the gap between high school and university for students who don’t meet university entrance requirements. They are also called tertiary preparation programs (or TPPs) because they prepare students for undergraduate tertiary study. You may also hear them called “uni ready” courses.

Enabling courses are fee-free for Australian citizens, as part of a federal government push to encourage wider participation in university study.

Some students enter straight out of school or during the senior years of school. Some enter many years after leaving school and may not have completed Year 12.

Different universities in different states will have different admission requirements, for example, English language requirements. Students should check the specific website of the university for the most detailed and current information.

How do they work?

There are about 48 enabling programs offered by universities across Australia.

The courses can cover a variety of different subjects like academic writing, study skills, mathematics, science, digital literacy and discipline-specific options.

They all teach the skills you need to do well in university study, even if you have not completed high school.

The courses are taught by university lecturers who are especially focused on student support and inclusive teaching.

What’s involved?

These courses can be delivered in high schools, on university campuses, face-to-face or online.

Usually students complete four courses that relate to the undergraduate discipline they want to enter. Successful completion of these usually allows the student to enrol directly into the undergraduate program.

This can include areas such as law, communications, science, arts, education, business, engineering and healthcare, but may vary across different universities.

The programs, with four courses, can potentially be completed in a single semester, or even in a compressed study session over the summer holiday period. So, in theory, you could do an enabling course and enrol in an undergraduate degree mid-year or the next year.

To get started you can search the website of the university of your choice for “enabling”, “TPP” or “FFUR” courses and apply directly online. Also speak directly to support staff at the uni to ask what prerequisites you need to apply for the degree you are interested in.

Who can do an enabling course?

It is estimated approximately 25,000 students Australia-wide will undertake a fee-free enabling course in 2026.

Around 60% of enabling students are from equity groups who are less likely to go to uni. This includes students from regional and remote areas, students from a non-English speaking background, people with a disability or students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Enabling programs can also benefit students who experienced significant illness or disruption in their final years at school.

Or perhaps they are the first person in their family to go to university.

What does it mean for later study?

Doing an enabling program does not mean you are less able to cope with uni than peers who enrolled with an ATAR.

Data suggests students who enter degree programs via enabling courses do just as well in their studies as students who come straight from high school.

In our own experience, we see some students enjoy enabling programs more than school study – they prefer the more flexible, adult environment.

Some young people don’t know what they want to do when they leave school. So an enabling course also gives them a chance to try out higher education without incurring a debt.

Susan Hopkins teaches in an enabling education program and works for a university which offers a Tertiary Preparation Program.

Greg Nash teaches in an enabling education program and works for a university which offers a Tertiary Preparation Program.

Amanda Lohrey’s Capture plays out as a sequence of conversations in strange rooms.

The centre of the novel is the consulting room of psychiatrist James Mather, lately stripped of all its therapeutic paintings and suggestive curios to a state of clinical blankness. There is also the apartment where the psychiatrist and his former lover regard each other from “two enormous couches in the centre of the room”. And there are the rooms of a shiatsu sensei, cavernous and empty, except for a “big glass aquarium of shimmering fish”.

Shadowing all these rooms, in this novel of the ordinary and the divine, are the dream-interiors of UFOs. James is studying people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, and Capture is partly composed of his interviews with them. “I wake up in this weird room, this weird shiny room,” says Mary, a beautician.

But it feels like every room in Lohrey’s novel is a weird shiny room, where humans are studied with curiosity and partial incomprehension.

Review: Capture – Amanda Lohrey (Text Publishing)

Lohrey was raised as a Catholic in postwar working-class Hobart. Though she fled the faith as a teenager, her fiction has always been concerned with the personal and political dimensions of belief.

Her later career works – including the multi-award-winning The Labyrinth (2021) and The Conversion (2023) – all focus on myth, dreams and the limits of rationality. In these novels, a lonely and adrift protagonist takes on a quixotic project in the hope of giving their life a meaning and a shape.

In Capture, Lohrey sketches James as a quietly self-doubting rationalist. Though he deals in symbols and narratives, he puts himself in the science camp. He does not read fiction because it “mostly lacks substance”. He keeps himself free from the “weeds of superstition”.

His assistant, Lucy Cheng, is one of “you people in the humanities”: a historian with a doctorate on 19th-century medicine, who has a “healthy scepticism of the DSM” and an awareness of psychology’s history of oppression. “What, at any given moment,” Lucy asks, “is credible science?”

To his colleagues, James is a man “radiating complacency”, yet his glassy demeanour is already faintly rippled with uncertainty. “We make it up as we go along,” he replies to Lucy’s question. “Unless we are adhering to a rigidly prescribed set of doctrines, how else could it be?”

James wields his doubt as a professional virtue, but it also affects him in a more gnawingly existential way. After a long career, he is approaching retirement with a sense of incompleteness. Having broken his back coming off a motorbike in his twenties, the arthritic pain in his spine keeps returning him to a body he would prefer to transcend.

So he takes up the alien capture research on a whim, as a last hurrah and a grand distraction. “By immersing myself in another reality I might disengage my mind from its prison of flesh and bone,” he thinks, “for in my worst moments, pain threatened to unhinge my sense of self.”

What he expects is an enjoyably diverting cavalcade of Roswell truthers and hillbillies: “in my preparatory reading,” he says, “I have gained the impression that captives belonged to a lower socio-economic category, the kind of people prone to paranoid fears, and dreams so vivid they cannot be distinguished from reality.”

Read more: Intellectual fearlessness, politics and the spiritual impulse: the remarkable career of Amanda Lohrey

Everyday epiphanies

There is something here of the liberal political imagination in the age of Trump, which too readily blames the rise of a post-truth world on poor people who are easily tricked.

At first, the psychiatrist seems confident in his ability to explain away the experiences of his subjects. He concludes that his first case, Anthony, may be suffering “unconscious grief at the prospect of having no heirs,” which has “induced a psychotic episode”.

James’s favoured technique is to get patients talking on their pet topic, watching how they light up and how they construct their narratives. He encourages the beautician Mary to detail the art of eyelash extensions, while he savours “the accuracy, indeed a kind of eloquence, with which she describes her technique.”

He does the same to everyone. He encourages his assistant Lucy’s young son to monologue about Transformers, and his grown-up son to rhapsodise about bread baking. “I am content to listen as he describes his art,” he says.

This is how the psychiatrist understands other humans, but these are also moments when he finds humans to be at their most obsessive, arcane and alien. Rituals and icons – the “everyday epiphany” of a fresh loaf of bread, or the plastic gods of a small child – belong to a realm of shamanic experience James cannot fully comprehend. “My psyche is stripped bare of consoling ritual,” he says, “and what remains is the pain in my spine.”

The emotional core of the novel is a scene in which James contemplates the evening rituals and icons of his wife. He recalls “watching Deborah prepare for bed, an unvarying ritual of small observances, never rushed”. In her absence, her presence is felt as a “constellation of intimate traces”.

On the bureau opposite the bed, Deborah keeps a framed photograph from 1870 that she discovered during her archival research. It shows a bargemaster’s wife and baby aboard a canal boat. The boat’s confined living space is decorated like a shrine.

Every night before turning out her lamp my wife glances at this icon. On many nights it’s the last thing she sees. Why? It is so unlike Deborah to romanticise the past. My instinct tells me that these late-night glances are a rite of mourning, but for what? Could it be that some infant, some lost or unborn child, lives aboard the boat of my wife’s dreams?

James considers showing the photograph to his assistant Lucy, to see what another woman might make of it, but he thinks better of it: “It is not, after all, my shrine.”

Alien otherness

His wife and her household gods are a dark canal James cannot fathom. So he is unsettled when he interviews Bernard, a draughtsman with the city planning authority, who claims to have experienced a religious awakening in his close encounter with a UFO, and who mourns every day for his absent alien gods.

In a pair of wonderfully freewheeling scenes, James takes his incomprehension to a folklorist and to a theologian. The latter suggests that this is “just one of the many symptoms of the god-shaped hole in our culture […] We’ve been deprived of metaphysical hope so we take it where we can find it.”

The confidence James took into the project is already evaporating. His subjects are sober and middle class; their stories, though extraordinary, are “linear, consistent and rational”. Every one of his theories seems inadequate.

This leaves him to contemplate the ultimate horror: that these experiences cannot be adequately captured by the language of psychiatry as delusions or symptoms, projections or wish fulfilments. What if these things actually happened? What if the gods are real?

“I have arrived in a cul-de-sac of unknowing,” he says. “I no longer believe that I can account for and interpret the reality of others.”

When Flick, the folklorist and James’s ex-lover, tries to talk him out of his newfound doubts about doubt, the psychiatrist resorts to the language used by alien abductees themselves. Only those who witnessed the interviews in his consulting room, he says, can really understand:

Her logic is impeccable but rankles with me. You were not in the room, I want to say. You were not in the room. In the room there’s an electricity, a vibration; it’s a different order of experience. Outside the room, it’s all words. And after all her theories are applied, in my mind there remains a surplus of meaning.

And so it comes back to a conversation in a room: to the psychiatrist’s art, which is also the novelist’s art, of reading the vibrations: probing, diagnosing and interpreting the alien otherness of human consciousness. What if, Lohrey asks, the textures of everyday life – with all of its attachments and private obsessions – are too much for the psychiatrist or the novelist to capture?

Robbie Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.