Opinion

When roads become rivers: forming a Plan B can stop people driving into floodwaters

18 May 2022

Driving into floodwater is the leading cause of flood-related death. So why do people do it?

In a year of endless floods, why isn’t disaster governance front and centre in the election campaign?

18 May 2022

The federal election presents an opportunity to promote plans for improving national disaster governance and resilience. But the silence on these issues in political debates has been remarkable.

State of the states: six politics experts take us around Australia in the final week of the campaign

17 May 2022

In the first week of the campaign we journeyed around the country with a team of politics experts. Now we retrace our steps to look at what’s happened since.

Australia is bringing migrant workers back – but exploitation is still rampant

17 May 2022

Exploitation flourishes because regulators do not routinely detect or punish labour law noncompliance.

Humans have big plans for mining in space – but there are many things holding us back

16 May 2022

There’s a lot of technological progress required before off-Earth mining operations can be considered feasible.

Middle age woman sitting on bed clutches at back in apparent pain

One in three chronic pain sufferers have difficulty getting ongoing opioid prescriptions

13 May 2022

Measures to curb growing rates of opioid use are also making it difficult for people with long-term, chronic pain to get ongoing prescriptions.

A manuscript page of an ancient Hindu text

AI, philosophy and religion: what machine learning can tell us about the Bhagavad Gita

13 May 2022

Using machine learning, we analysed meaning and feeling in different translations of an ancient Hindu holy text.

Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison during a debate

Election humour 2022: can the major parties win votes with a funny marmot or a joke about Star Wars?

11 May 2022

Humour is now part of the modern election campaign. Facebook and TikTok have become joke battlegrounds.

an illustration of trains trucks boats and planes

Australia could rapidly shift to clean transport – if we had a strategy. So we put this plan together

11 May 2022

We’re lagging behind on the shift to electric vehicles and clean transport. Here’s what we need to do.

Stuff-up or conspiracy? Whistleblowers claim Facebook deliberately let important pages fail in blackout

11 May 2022

A Meta spokesperson told The Conversation non-news pages had been taken down by mistake. Whistleblower allegations contradict this.

Opinion

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