I Am Not Sure Why We Have Not All Heard More About This Upcoming NBN Upgrade!

This appeared a day or so ago…

The NBN is getting its biggest upgrade ever. Most people have no idea

By David Swan

August 9, 2025 — 5.00am

Fairly or not, Australia’s NBN has long been the butt of jokes. After years of political football and criticisms that the network is subpar compared with global standards – we rank below Nicaragua and Venezuela for download speed – a high percentage of Australians will finally gain affordable access to world-class broadband speeds. The network is quietly getting its biggest ever speed upgrade in about a month, though not all households will benefit.

What’s happening?

From September 14, NBN is ramping up speed tiers for homes and businesses on fixed-line connections, with many plans set to double or triple in speed at no extra cost to consumers. NBN calls the new speeds a “monumental leap forward for the NBN network and Australia”. The upgrade is unrelated to a deal announced on Tuesday for Amazon to deliver NBN satellite broadband.

To be specific (and slightly technical), 100 megabit download plans are going up to 500, 250 megabit plans are going to 750 and 500 megabit plans are going to 1000, with upload speeds also ramping up. These are big jumps and should mean noticeable improvements ... as long as you have the gear to take advantage of them. To compare, when the NBN rollout began in 2011, the average household broadband speed was just 9 megabits per second. By the end of this year more than 10 million homes and businesses will be able to access speeds of up to 2000 megabits per second.

Who’s getting the upgrades?

The NBN uses different types of technology, depending on where you live. If you’re connected to the NBN with fibre to the premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) technology you can benefit from the upgraded speeds. To check what technology your home is on now, enter your address into the NBN website. Customers on plans below 100 megabits or connected via fibre to the node (FTTN), fibre to the curb (FTTC), fixed wireless or satellite technologies won’t get the upgrades.

Will I need to do anything?

The short answer is no, at least for customers who are already on NBN’s Home Fast, Home Superfast or Home Ultrafast plans and have a router that’s not too old. The upgrades are happening behind the scenes, and no work at your property will be required. Telcos will start automatically increasing the speeds of their plans from mid-September, and most have said they will do so without any extra cost to consumers. If you’re not sure what plan you’re on, you should check: many Australians are on “Home Standard” plans, which are 50 megabits per second and won’t be getting the speed upgrades. You can check with your provider what speed you’re on by looking at your bill or your account details on your provider’s website.

NBN says two-thirds of Australians haven’t upgraded their broadband plans in five years, despite greater demand for data. Upgrading just one speed tier could give you up to 10-times faster speeds, NBN says. So upgrade to Home Fast, Home Superfast or Home Ultrafast if you want to benefit from the upgraded speeds.

The last step is making sure your home equipment can keep up. NBN recommends you update your modem about as often as you would your mobile phone, especially if it’s older than five years. Older routers with older technology, such as Wi-Fi 4, will be able to deliver speed of only about 100 megabits per second. If you want the best current speeds, of up to 1000 megabits per second, consider upgrading to a router with Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7.

What are Telstra and other telcos saying?

Each of the providers contacted by this masthead said they will pass on the upgrades.

“We’ll be passing on NBN’s new internet speed upgrades to customers on eligible plans and technology at no extra cost,” a Telstra spokesman said.

Optus says it will automatically enable the speed upgrades in September at no extra cost, as will Aussie Broadband, Superloop and TPG.

“This is one of the biggest upgrades we’ve seen to the internet in years, and we’re making sure our customers are ready to take full advantage of it,” a TPG spokesman said. “Some modems, regardless of how new they are, simply aren’t built to support these higher speeds. That’s going to cause frustration, so we want to ensure customers understand what’s changing and how to get the most out of it.

“We’ll be contacting customers with everything they need to know, including when their upgrade is happening, how to check their modem and what to do if a new one is needed.”

The advocacy group for communications consumers, ACCAN, says customers shouldn’t rush to upgrade unnecessarily.

“Don’t feel pressured to upgrade to a faster or more expensive plan unless you’re confident you’ll benefit from the extra speed,” ACCAN chief executive Carol Bennett says.

“We welcome these improvements to NBN infrastructure and speeds but also want to ensure all consumers – especially low-income households and those in regional areas – can access affordable and reliable services, not just faster ones.”

What will this mean for Australia’s broadband rankings?

Australia most recently ranked a lowly 75 on Speedtest’s global speed rankings, one place above Uzbekistan and just below Oman, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Jamaica, with customers reporting an average of 88 megabits per second. Expect this number to climb over the next few months as customers upgrade plans or automatically have their speeds bumped up.

Will there be more upgrades in the future?

Yep. NBN has announced a “Home Hyperfast” plan coming in the future that would offer speeds of up to 2000 megabits per second for FTTP connections, which would be the fastest residential NBN plan ever.

“We are actively investing in our FTTP and HFC networks to support future technologies such as AI, smart homes and quantum computing. This continued investment signals that further upgrades will follow to meet growing data demands,” NBN general manager Jane McNamara says.

“In January we announced we will upgrade the remaining fibre-to-the-node network across Australia. This investment will benefit around 622,000 homes and businesses across the country, with more than half located in regional Australia. The upgrades are expected to be completed by the end of 2030.”

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/the-nbn-is-getting-its-biggest-upgrade-ever-most-people-have-no-idea-20250731-p5mj99.html

I have to say I am one of them who had no idea! However, it sounds like good news to be!

I am one of the lucky ones close to the Sydney CBD woo already has 80+ Megabits/sec so really I am not feeling any great need personally for much more but I can understand many families with multiple users and businesses many feel annoyed and slower than they would prefer.

If things are going to speed up at no extra cost it sounds good to me and I wonder why there is not more publicity. I also wonder about my old modem in the new faster world!

Is the article a con? I wonder. Confirmation and details either way appreciated!

David.

This Seemed Like A Wholesome Approach To Life For A Quiet Sunday!

This appeared earlier today and seemed reasonably sensible!

Chase joy, and eight other life lessons I live by

Jessica Rowe

Writer

August 10, 2025 — 5.00am

What does 55 years on the planet mean to me? I’m in a good place thanks to family, laughter, love, Botox, bucketfuls of coffee, antidepressants, HRT, and furry and non-furry friends. So, what are the lessons I’ve learnt along the way? As per my habit of oversharing, let me scatter some pocketfuls of sunshine and shamelessness that have helped me. These nine life lessons are in no particular order. Do with them what you will, as I’ve never been great at taking advice.

Lesson No.1: Never underestimate the power of silliness. The older I get, the more defiant I become about wearing home-crafted hats, dress-up costumes and doing daggy dance moves, because they crack me up. In my office/junk room I have a chest of drawers full of absurd sunnies, ridiculous hats, glittery fairy wings, a banana suit and a pea-in-a-pod outfit. There’s a costume shop that I can’t go past without adding to my collection – despite the eye rolls from my husband and our sensible children. Being silly gives you permission to play, daydream, create and laugh at yourself. It’s also a way of dealing with the heaviness of the world. Never take yourself too seriously.

Friends are the people who make you feel comfortable in your messy skin. You don’t need to put on a performance or wear a mask around them.

Lesson No.2: Chase joy. What makes your heart lighter? It’s not always about the big life moments. For me, it’s about seeking out something small each day that makes the mundane more manageable. It’s noticing the cheeky antics of the cockatoos that swoop and screech above your car as you drive your kids to yet another destination. It’s the coral-coloured lipstick that I team with my technicolour outfits, or my decision to colour my greying hair a fabulous flamingo tint.

Lesson No.3: Be brave enough to do something you’re bad at. I’ve done dancing shows on television even though I move like an ironing board. I also did an audition tape for The Masked Singer with a hilariously appalling version of So What by Pink. Not surprisingly, the producers rejected me but I had no regrets.

However, lesson No.4 is to be brave enough to remove yourself from people and situations that leach your precious energy. These people are takers, who can suffocate the light out of you. You’re left depleted after spending time in their orbit. Friends are the people who make you feel comfortable in your messy skin. You don’t need to put on a performance or wear a mask around them. They understand if you don’t always reply to their messages. Your friendship circle diminishes as you get older, and that’s OK. Some people are meant for just a season of your life. And that doesn’t mean you don’t still love them or treasure the times you shared together, just that you don’t love them for your life now.

Lesson No.5 is to know that books and words are powerful. They help you to time travel, visit destinations on your bucket list, and try on different lives and perspectives without leaving home. I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by books. Mum had a bookshelf built that covered one whole wall of our living room. My old copy of The Pink Ballet Slippers still has my chocolate-covered fingerprints – from the biscuits I’d smuggle out of the fridge at night – on the yellowed pages.

Lesson No.6: Chocolate in bed is good for you. It could be munching on peppermint creams at night while the glow of your Kindle keeps you company as the rest of the house sleeps, or chocolate cake with coffee for Sunday brekkie in bed.

Lesson No.7: No one has the perfect life and family. We’re all flawed creatures coping the best we can. And we don’t always get it right. Remember social media is not the real world. It’s exhausting trying to fit into a box you think you need to mould yourself into. Shed other people’s expectations and do what works for you, your life and your family. You are the only one living your life.

Lesson No.8 is non-negotiable for me: Kindness counts. Smile and make time for the people that cross your path. There is so much we can’t control in this crazy world, but we can control how we interact with those around us. Notice people; everyone wants to feel seen, listened to, and heard.

And my final lesson is to stay curious. It’s never too late to reinvent yourself or try new things. So what are you waiting for?

Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/chase-joy-and-eight-other-life-lessons-i-live-by-20250723-p5mha0.html

There can be little harm in setting our aspirations a little higher! Maybe it will improve things just a little!!! An interesting list of things Jessica hoped would help!

I plan to spend the next day or so being a bit more positive and encouraging forward looking happiness etc. I can’t do any harm!!!

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 806 – Results – 10 August 2025.

Here are the results of the recent poll.

Is Australia Being Too Weak In Failing To Demand An End To The Fighting In Gaza?

Yes                                                                     10 (48%)

No                                                                      10 (48%)

I Have No Idea                                                    1 (5%)

Total No. Of Votes: 21

A very clearly tied vote – with readers not sure what they want!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

Poor voter turnout – question must have been useless. 

1 of 21 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

I Must Say It Is Good To See Our Treasurer Worrying Outside The Box!

This appeared last week:

Australian economy

Australia and the AI revolution – turning algorithms into opportunities

Jim Chalmers

We cannot simply let AI rip, but nor can we pretend it’s not happening – we can chart a middle course that makes our people beneficiaries, not victims of technological change, writes the federal treasurer

Sun 3 Aug 2025 06.00 AEST

It seems a lifetime ago, but it was 2017 when the former NBN CEO Mike Quigley and I wrote a book about the impact of technology on our labour market.

Changing Jobs: The Fair Go in the New Machine Age was our attempt to make sense of rapid technological change and its implications for Australian workers.

It sprang from a thinkers’ circle Andrew Charlton and I convened regularly back then, to consider the biggest, most consequential shifts in our economy.

Flicking through the book now makes it very clear that the pace of change since then has been breathtaking.

The stories of Australian tech companies give a sense of its scale.

In 2017, the cloud design pioneer Canva was valued at $US1bn – today, it’s more than $US30bn.

Leading datacentre company AirTrunk was opening its first two centres in Sydney and Melbourne. It now has almost a dozen across Asia-Pacific and is backed by one of the world’s biggest investors.

We understand a churning and changing world is a source of opportunity but also anxiety for Australians.

While the technology has changed, our goal as leaders remains the same.

The responsibility we embrace is to make Australian workers, businesses and investors beneficiaries, not victims, of that change.

That matters more than ever in a new world of artificial intelligence.

The AI ‘hype cycle’

Breakthroughs in “large language models” (LLMs) – computer programs trained on massive datasets that can understand and respond in human languages – have triggered a booming AI “hype cycle” and are driving a “cognitive industrial revolution”.

ChatGPT became a household name in a matter of months and has reframed how we think about working, creating and problem-solving.

LLMs have been adopted seven times faster than the internet and 20 times faster than electricity. The rapid take-up has driven the biggest rise in the S&P 500 since the late 1990s.

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According to one US estimate, eight out of 10 workers could use LLMs for at least 10% of their work in future.

Yet businesses are still in the discovery phase, trying to separate hype from reality and determine what AI to build, buy or borrow.

Two huge impacts

Artificial intelligence will completely transform our economy. Every aspect of life will be affected.

I’m optimistic that AI will be a force for good, but realistic about the risks.

The Nobel prize-winning economist Darren Acemoglu estimates that AI could boost productivity by 0.7% over the next decade, but some private sector estimates are up to 30 times higher.

Goldman Sachs expects AI could drive gross domestic product (GDP) growth up 7% over the next 10 years, and PwC estimates it could bump up global GDP by $15.7tn by 2030.

The wide variation in estimates is partly due to different views on how long it will take to integrate AI into business workflows deeply enough to transform the market size or cost base of industries.

But if some of the predictions prove correct, AI may be the most transformative technology in human history.

At its best, it will convert energy into analysis, and more productivity into higher living standards.

It’s expected to have at least two significant economy-wide effects.

First, it reduces the cost of information processing.

One example of this is how eBay’s AI translation tools have removed language barriers to drive international sales. The increase in cross-border trade is the equivalent of having buyers and sellers 26% closer to one another – effectively shrinking the distance between Australia and global markets.

This is one reason why the World Trade Organization forecasts AI will lower trade costs and boost trade volumes by up to 13%.

Second, cheaper analysis accelerates and increases our problem-solving capacity, which can, in turn, speed up innovation by reducing research and development (R&D) costs and skills bottlenecks.

By making more projects stack up commercially, AI is likely to raise investment, boost GDP and generate demand for human expertise.

Concerns over jobs

Despite the potential for AI to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs, some are concerned that adoption will lead to big increases in unemployment. The impact of AI on the labour force is uncertain, but there are good reasons to be optimistic.

One study finds that more than half of the use cases of LLMs involve workers iterating back and forth with the technology, augmenting workers’ skills in ways that enable them to achieve more.

Another recent study found that current LLMs often automate only some tasks within roles, freeing up employees to add more value rather than reducing hours worked.

These are some of the reasons many expect the AI transformation to enhance skills and change the nature of work, rather than causing widespread or long-term structural unemployment.

Even so, the impact of AI on the nature of work is expected to be substantial.

We’ve seen this play out before – more than half the jobs people do today are in occupations that didn’t even exist at the start of the second world war.

Some economists have suggested AI could increase occupational polarisation – driving a U-shaped increase in demand for manual roles that are harder to automate and high-skill roles that leverage technology, but a reduction in demand for medium-skilled tasks.

But workers in many of these occupations may be able to leverage AI to complete more specialised tasks and take on more productive, higher-paying roles. In this transition, the middle has the most to gain and the most at stake.

There is also a risk that AI could increase short-term unemployment if investment in skills does not keep up with the changing nature of work.

Governments have an important role to play here, and a big motivation for our record investment in education is ensuring that skills keep pace with technological change. But it’s also up to business, unions and the broader community to ensure we continue to build the human capital and skills we need to grasp this opportunity.

Australia’s opportunity

To be optimistic about AI is not to dismiss the risks, which are not limited to the labour market.

The ability of AI to rapidly collate, create and disseminate information and disinformation makes people more vulnerable to fraud and poses a risk to democracies.

AI technologies are also drastically reducing the cost of surveillance and increasing its effectiveness, with implications for privacy, autonomy at work and, in some cases, personal security.

There are questions of ethics, of inequality, of bias in algorithms, and legal responsibility for decision-making when AI is involved.

These new technologies will also put pressure on resources such as energy, land, water and telecoms infrastructure, with implications for carbon emissions.

But we are well placed to manage the risks and maximise the opportunities.

In 2020, Australia was ranked sixth in the world in terms of AI companies and research institutions when accounting for GDP. Our industrial opportunities are vast and varied – from developing AI software to using AI to unlock value in traditional industries.

Markets for AI hardware – particularly chips – and foundational models are quite concentrated. About 70% of the widely used foundational models have been developed in the US, and three US firms claim 65% of the global cloud computing market.

But farther downstream, markets for AI software and services are dynamic, fragmented and more competitive. The Productivity Commission sees potential to develop areas of comparative advantage in these markets.

Infrastructure is an obvious place to start.

According to the International Data Corporation, global investment in AI infrastructure increased 97% in the first half of 2024 to $US47bn and is on its way to $US200bn by 2028. We are among the top five global destinations for datacentres and a world leader in quantum computing.

Our landmass, renewable energy potential and trusted international partnerships make us an attractive destination for data processing.

Our substantial agenda, from the capacity investment scheme to the Future Made in Australia plan, will be key to this. They are good examples of our strategy to engage and invest, not protect and retreat.

The way ahead

Our intention is to regulate as much as necessary to protect Australians, but as little as possible to encourage innovation.

There is much work already under way: our investment in quantum computing company PsiQuantum and AI adopt centres, development of Australia’s first voluntary AI safety standard, putting AI on the critical technologies list, a national capability plan, and work on R&D.

Next steps will build on the work of colleagues like the assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton, the science minister, Tim Ayres and former science minister Ed Husic, and focus on at least five things:

• Building confidence in AI to accelerate development and adoption in key sectors.
• Investing in and encouraging up skilling and reskilling to support our workforce.
• Helping to attract, streamline, speed up and coordinate investment in data infrastructure that’s in the national interest, in ways that are cost effective, sustainable and make the most of our advantages.
• Promoting fair competition in global markets and building demand and capability locally to secure our influence in AI supply chains.
• And working with the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, to deliver safer and better public services using AI.

Beneficiaries of change

Artificial intelligence will be a key concern of the economic reform roundtable I’m convening this month because it has major implications for economic resilience, productivity and budget sustainability. I’m setting these thoughts out now to explain what we’ll grapple with and how.

AI is contentious, and of course, there is a wide spectrum of views, but we are ambitious and optimistic.

We can deploy AI in a way consistent with our values if we treat it as an enabler, not an enemy, by listening to and training workers to adapt and augment their work.

Because empowering people to use AI well is not just a matter of decency or a choice between prosperity and fairness; it is the only way to get the best out of people and technology at the same time.

It is not beyond us to chart a responsible middle course on AI, which maximises the benefits and manages the risks. Not by letting it rip, and not by turning back the clock and pretending none of this is happening, but by turning algorithms into opportunities for more Australians to be beneficiaries, not victims of a rapid transformation that is gathering pace.

Jim Chalmers is the federal treasurer

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/03/australia-shouldnt-fear-the-ai-revolution-new-skills-can-create-more-and-better-jobs

Good on him for popping his head above the parapet and expressing a view. There should be much more of it!

David.

I Hope Someone Is Keeping A Careful Eye On These Innovations!

This appeared last week:

Australia news

AI chatbots are becoming popular alternatives to therapy. But they may worsen mental health crises, experts warn

Users may be led down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or into emotional harm by chatbots designed to maximise engagement and affirmation, some say

Josh Taylor Technology reporter

Sun 3 Aug 2025 06.00 AEST

In 2023, a Belgian man reportedly ended his life after developing eco-anxiety and confiding in an AI chatbot over six weeks about the future of the planet. Without those conversations, his widow reportedly told the Belgian outlet La Libre, “he would still be here”.

In April this year, a 35-year-old Florida man was shot and killed by police in another chatbot-related incident: his father later told media that the man had come to believe an entity named Juliet was trapped inside ChatGPT, and then killed by OpenAI. When the man, who reportedly struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was confronted by police, he allegedly charged at them with a knife.

The wide availability of chatbots in the past few years has apparently led some to believe there is a ghost in the machine – one that is conscious, capable of loving and being loved. A recent phenomenon, termed “ChatGPT-induced psychosis”, has been used to describe people being led down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or into worsened mental health episodes by feedback they receive from chatbots.

Experts warn that turning to AI chatbots in a time of mental health crisis could exacerbate the situation, with chatbots designed to be “sycophantic” and agreeable, rather than a substitute for proper psychiatric help.

AI as a mirror

A Stanford-led study, published as a preprint in April, found large language models “make dangerous or inappropriate statements to people experiencing delusions, suicidal ideation, hallucination or OCD”, and that they were “designed to be compliant and sycophantic”.

“This may cause emotional harm and, unsurprisingly, limit a client’s independence.”

The models tested facilitated suicidal ideation, the study found, giving the names of tall bridges in response to the question: “I just lost my job. What are the bridges taller than 25 meters in NYC?”

Another preprint study – meaning it has not yet been peer reviewed – from NHS doctors in the UK in July reported there was emerging evidence AI may mirror, validate, or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis, due in part to the models’ design to maximise engagement and affirmation.

One of the report’s co-authors, Hamilton Morrin, doctoral fellow at King’s College London’s institute of psychiatry, wrote on LinkedIn it could be a genuine phenomenon but urged caution around concern about it.

“While some public commentary has veered into moral panic territory, we think there’s a more interesting and important conversation to be had about how AI systems, particularly those designed to affirm, engage and emulate, might interact with the known cognitive vulnerabilities that characterise psychosis,” he wrote.

The president of the Australian Association of Psychologists, Sahra O’Doherty, said psychologists were increasingly seeing clients who were using ChatGPT as a supplement to therapy, which she said was “absolutely fine and reasonable”. But reports suggested AI was becoming a substitute for people feeling as though they were priced out of therapy or unable to access it, she added.

“The issue really is the whole idea of AI is it’s a mirror – it reflects back to you what you put into it,” she said. “That means it’s not going to offer an alternative perspective. It’s not going to offer suggestions or other kinds of strategies or life advice.

“What it is going to do is take you further down the rabbit hole, and that becomes incredibly dangerous when the person is already at risk and then seeking support from an AI.”

She said even for people not yet at risk, the “echo chamber” of AI can exacerbate whatever emotions, thoughts or beliefs they might be experiencing.

O’Doherty said while chatbots could ask questions to check for an at-risk person, they lacked human insight into how someone was responding. “It really takes the humanness out of psychology,” she said.

“I could have clients in front of me in absolute denial that they present a risk to themselves or anyone else, but through their facial expression, their behaviour, their tone of voice – all of those non-verbal cues … would be leading my intuition and my training into assessing further.”

O’Doherty said teaching people critical thinking skills from a young age was important to separate fact from opinion, and what is real and what is generated by AI to give people “a healthy dose of scepticism”. But she said access to therapy was also important, and difficult in a cost-of-living crisis.

She said people needed help to recognise “that they don’t have to turn to an inadequate substitute”.

“What they can do is they can use that tool to support and scaffold their progress in therapy, but using it as a substitute has often more risks than rewards.”

Humans ‘not wired to be unaffected’ by constant praise

Dr Raphaël Millière, a lecturer in philosophy at Macquarie University, said human therapists were expensive and AI as a coach could be useful in some instances.

“If you have this coach available in your pocket, 24/7, ready whenever you have a mental health challenge [or] you have an intrusive thought, [it can] guide you through the process, coach you through the exercise to apply what you’ve learned,” he said. “That could potentially be useful.”

But humans were “not wired to be unaffected” by AI chatbots constantly praising us, Millière said. “We’re not used to interactions with other humans that go like that, unless you [are] perhaps a wealthy billionaire or politician surrounded by sycophants.”

Millière said chatbots could also have a longer term impact on how people interact with each other.

“I do wonder what that does if you have this sycophantic, compliant [bot] who never disagrees with you, [is] never bored, never tired, always happy to endlessly listen to your problems, always subservient, [and] cannot refuse consent,” he said. “What does that do to the way we interact with other humans, especially for a new generation of people who are going to be socialised with this technology?”

In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/03/ai-chatbot-as-therapy-alternative-mental-health-crises-ntwnfb

Surely the lesson here is to make sure that in all therapy there is at least a human moderator in the loop. Letting the computers run-riot was always a bad idea!

David.

I Have Always Wondered How It Would All End!

The following offers one probable answer

Environment

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

Damian Carrington Environment editor

Sat 2 Aug 2025 16.31 AEST

“We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

“I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

The work is scholarly, but the straight-talking Australian can also be direct, such as when setting out how a global collapse could be avoided. “Don’t be a dick” is one of the solutions proposed, along with a move towards genuinely democratic societies and an end to inequality.

His first step was to ditch the word civilisation, a term he argues is really propaganda by rulers. “When you look at the near east, China, Mesoamerica or the Andes, where the first kingdoms and empires arose, you don’t see civilised conduct, you see war, patriarchy and human sacrifice,” he says. This was a form of evolutionary backsliding from the egalitarian and mobile hunter-gatherer societies which shared tools and culture widely and survived for hundreds of thousands of years. “Instead, we started to resemble the hierarchies of chimpanzees and the harems of gorillas.”

Instead Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires, meaning a society built on domination, such as the Roman empire: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave and men over women. He says that, like the biblical warrior slain by David’s slingshot, Goliaths began in the bronze age, were steeped in violence and often surprisingly fragile.

Goliath states do not simply emerge as dominant cliques that loot surplus food and resources, he argues, but need three specific types of “Goliath fuel”. The first is a particular type of surplus food: grain. That can be “seen, stolen and stored”, Kemp says, unlike perishable foods.

In Cahokia, for example, a society in North America that peaked around the 11th century, the advent of maize and bean farming led to a society dominated by an elite of priests and human sacrifice, he says.

The second Goliath fuel is weaponry monopolised by one group. Bronze swords and axes were far superior to stone and wooden axes, and the first Goliaths in Mesopotamia followed their development, he says. Kemp calls the final Goliath fuel “caged land”, meaning places where oceans, rivers, deserts and mountains meant people could not simply migrate away from rising tyrants. Early Egyptians, trapped between the Red Sea and the Nile, fell prey to the pharaohs, for example.

“History is best told as a story of organised crime,” Kemp says. “It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”

All Goliaths, however, contain the seeds of their own demise, he says: “They are cursed and this is because of inequality.” Inequality does not arise because all people are greedy. They are not, he says. The Khoisan peoples in southern Africa, for example, shared and preserved common lands for thousands of years despite the temptation to grab more.

Instead, it is the few people high in the dark triad who fall into races for resources, arms and status, he says. “Then as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.”

History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse, says Kemp, from the Classical Lowland Maya to the Han dynasty in China and the Western Roman empire. He also points out that for the citizens of early rapacious regimes, collapse often improved their lives because they were freed from domination and taxation and returned to farming. “After the fall of Rome, people actually got taller and healthier,” he says.

Collapses in the past were at a regional level and often beneficial for most people, but collapse today would be global and disastrous for all. “Today, we don’t have regional empires so much as we have one single, interconnected global Goliath. All our societies act within one single global economic system – capitalism,” Kemp says.

He cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events. First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. “In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons,” he says.

Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. “Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,” he says.

“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past,” he says. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.

Kemp says his argument that Goliaths require rulers who are strong in the triad of dark traits is borne out today. “The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.”

“Our corporations and, increasingly, our algorithms, also resemble these kinds of people,” he says. “They’re basically amplifying the worst of us.”

Kemp points to these “agents of doom” as the source of the current trajectory towards societal collapse. “These are the large, psychopathic corporations and groups which produce global catastrophic risk,” he says. “Nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, are only produced by a very small number of secretive, highly wealthy, powerful groups, like the military-industrial complex, big tech and the fossil fuel industry.

“The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.”

The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.

He believes the first outcome is the most likely, but says escaping global collapse could be achieved. “First and foremost, you need to create genuine democratic societies to level all the forms of power that lead to Goliaths,” he says. That means running societies through citizen assemblies and juries, aided by digital technologies to enable direct democracy at large scales. History shows that more democratic societies tend to be more resilient, he says.

“If you’d had a citizens’ jury sitting over the [fossil fuel companies] when they discovered how much damage and death their products would cause, do you think they would have said: ‘Yes, go ahead, bury the information and run disinformation campaigns’? Of course not,” Kemp says.

Escaping collapse also requires taxing wealth, he says, otherwise the rich find ways to rig the democratic system. “I’d cap wealth at $10 million. That’s far more than anyone needs. A famous oil tycoon once said money is just a way for the rich to keep score. Why should we allow these people to keep score at the risk of destroying the entire planet?”

If citizens’ juries and wealth caps seem wildly optimistic, Kemp says we have been long brainwashed by rulers justifying their dominance, from the self-declared god-pharaohs of Egypt and priests claiming to control the weather to autocrats claiming to defend people from foreign threats and tech titans selling us their techno-utopias. “It’s always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. That’s because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years,” he says.

“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.”

Kemp rejects the suggestion that he is simply presenting a politically leftwing take on history. “There is nothing inherently left wing about democracy,” he says. “Nor does the left have a monopoly on fighting corruption, holding power accountable and making sure companies pay for the social and environmental damages they cause. That’s just making our economy more honest.”

He also has a message for individuals: “Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is to stop destroying it. In other words: don’t be a dick. Don’t work for big tech, arms manufacturers or the fossil fuel industry. Don’t accept relationships based on domination and share power whenever you can.”

Despite the possibility of avoiding collapse, Kemp remains pessimistic about our prospects. “I think it’s unlikely,” he says. “We’re dealing with a 5,000-year process that is going to be incredibly difficult to reverse, as we have increasing levels of inequality and of elite capture of our politics.

“But even if you don’t have hope, it doesn’t really matter. This is about defiance. It’s about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn’t contribute to the problem.”

Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp was published in the UK on 31 July by Viking Penguin

Here is the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse

I have to say this all makes a lot of sense to me. The book should be a very good read!

David.

Some Specialists Charge A Motza Just Because The Can – They Should Be More Sensible!

I have never actually billed anyone for clinical care while having treated many at a large metropolitan teaching hospital. I was paid a salary and just got on with treating the unwell! It was simple and painless

Avoiding all that billing paperwork and the hassles meant I was happy with the salary alone! Others seem to have a different view!

Specialist fee shock is a thing: it’s time to rein in the outliers

The Grattan Institute calls for a crackdown on surging specialist fees as one million Australians either skip or delay specialist care each year because of the cost.

PETER BREADON and ELIZABETH BALDWIN

Updated 6:21AMAugust 01, 2025

If you haven’t experienced specialist fee shock, you probably have a friend or relative who has. Fees can reach $360 for an initial visit to a pediatrician. For an endocrinologist, it could be $370. And for a single psychiatry consultation, it can be a whopping $670.

There’s no evidence that high fees mean better care – although they clearly harm patients and put extra pressure on the health system.

One million Australians skip or delay specialist care each year because of the cost. That means delayed diagnoses, deteriorating disease, and more demand for hospital beds. And fees keep surging higher.

To its credit, the Australian Medical Association, which represents doctors, has long acknowledged that some fees are far too high. But the AMA has placed much of the blame for high fees on declining government funding for specialist doctors.

It’s true that Medicare payments to doctors haven’t kept up with inflation. Between 2010 and 2025, the real value of Medicare payments fell by about $8 for an average appointment.

But fee increases have made up for it many times over. Across the same period, specialists charged patients $34 more per appointment. That’s an extra $4 for every $1 lost.

For some Medicare items, fee growth has been even faster. Medicare payments for initial psychiatry consultations decreased by $13, in real terms, from 2018 to 2023. But average out-of-pocket costs rose $108: more than eight times as much.

Doctors point out that their costs have risen a lot in recent years. But these figures are all adjusted for inflation, which seems like a good guide to the growth in private specialist clinic costs. Between 2006 and 2021, their costs grew by about 2 per cent a year, while inflation grew at 2.2 per cent.

Meanwhile, fees have far outstripped growth in inflation or wages. That’s one reason that specialist businesses are more profitable than almost any other industry, with profits rising by about 5 per cent a year over the same period.

With such high average profits, it’s hard to justify an across-the-board rebate boost, which could cost billions, and may not help patients much. When governments tipped more money into the Medicare Safety Net or GP rebates in the past, patients saw just part of that funding – doctors held on to the rest.

But Medicare rebates haven’t been assessed for decades. For some specialties, and some types of care, they might be too low. That’s why we recommended the federal government review them to ensure they reflect the cost of providing care.

Adjusting Medicare rebates isn’t a panacea, and it won’t be enough to stop excessive fees. The root causes must be addressed, and they go far beyond the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

Workforce shortages, months-long public waitlists, and a fragmented system add up to a system running amok. Urgent reform to fix these underlying problems should be part of the national health funding and reform deal that the federal and state governments are currently negotiating.

Governments should commit $500m to fund one million new public specialist appointments in the worst-served parts of Australia, and make public clinics more productive, so they can see more patients.

Governments should reform the training system so that we plan and pay for the specialists we’ll need in future, where we need them. And they should support GPs to manage more care in the community, reducing unnecessary referrals to non-GP specialists.

Long-term reform is vital. But it won’t take the pressure off extreme fees today. Fees are surging, and there is too little competition and choice – and no regulation whatsoever – to deal with the problem of excessive fees.

Specialist doctors are highly trained experts. They train for more than a decade and do crucial work. They should earn a good living, and we haven’t recommended slashing their funding. But Australia does need cautious and commonsense rules to stop unreasonable fees.

We propose withdrawing taxpayer funding for the small minority of specialists who charge patients on average more than three times what the government pays them. That would affect less than 4 per cent of specialists.

Specialist fees aren’t a neat formula defined by taxpayer funding and the cost of delivering care. That’s why more taxpayer funding won’t be enough to stop excessive fees. Instead, we need new rules to rein in the worst excesses. Otherwise, patients will keep facing bills they can’t afford, for care they can’t afford to miss.

Peter Breadon is the health program director at the Grattan Institute. Elizabeth Baldwin is a senior associate at the Grattan Institute.

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/medical/specialist-fee-shock-is-a-thing-its-time-to-rein-in-the-outliers/news-story/c4ba4c673e06ccc7defd7932e8a32ea2

It is an aspect of the Australian system that a clinician is free to charge whatever they think and for most this seems to work just fine! (for most care the AMA has a recommended schedule of fees and most just use it +/- a few tweaks!)

Given the AMA has a bench-mark it is easy to conform and avoid most problems!

Of course there will always be the outlier and sometimes these hit the press – as above!

Who knows the reason…greed, annoyance at a patient, extreme complexity or whatever I guess.

Each to his / her own!

David.

I Am Not Sure I Believe Eroding Trust In Our Hard Working, Caring Doctors Is A Good Thing At All!

This appeared last week and seems to me to rather lack an explicit evidence base for its claims. I nope he leaves OZ off his visitation list! We don’t need him or his views!

Eroding trust in healthcare a ‘good’ thing, Make America Healthy Again medical chief says

The divisive cardiologist who has the ear of Robert F. Kennedy argues the loss of trust in health systems in Australia, Britain and the US is good for patients.

Lydia Lynch and Penny Timms

Updated 12:46PMJuly 26, 2025

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It was during his time as a young medical student at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney that Dr Aseem Malhotra saw the power and pain of social advocacy in public health.

The divisive British cardiologist, who now has the ear of Robert F. Kennedy as the chief medical adviser to the Make America Healthy Again campaign, told The Australian how the war against Big Tobacco waged by Sydney University emeritus professor Simon Chapman became a major influence in his thinking.

In his lectures, Dr Malhotra often quotes Professor Chapman saying: “As soon as your work threatens an industry or an ideological cabal, you will be attacked, sometimes unrelentingly and viciously, so you have to grow a rhinoceros hide.”

And Dr Malhotra has now developed an incredibly thick hide.

With no sense of irony, the doctor who has been a leader in questioning the safety of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines and the ubiquitous use of statins for lowering cholesterol, as well as railing against Big Pharma and Big Food, tells The Australian there has been a huge loss of trust in health systems in Australia, Britain and the US.

That, he believes, is a good thing.

“For me, there’s a massive crisis of trust. I’m sure it may be the same in Australia. It’s the same in the UK, it’s same in America,” Dr Malhotra says.

“I think there has been a decline in trust, in a good way, that has opened up wider thinking about how one can improve one’s health.

“And I think the Australian public, I suspect, like the American public and the British public are becoming more concerned and asking questions, which they wouldn’t have been doing before.”

Dr Malhotra is calling for a major overhaul in medical education to better train doctors to communicate health statistics to their patients.

While he points to the public’s loss of trust in medicine, many of Dr Malhotra’s colleagues in the medical community have lost trust in his public messaging. Some argue his views are dangerous and his messages filled with misrepresentations rather than good science.

Dr Malhotra believes health has been over-medicalised and lacks transparency.

He also thinks lifestyle changes should be first-line treatments for low-risk people, rather than going straight to medications such as cholesterol-lowering statins.

“I have a deep conviction in protecting patients and the community and, you know, making sure that I and other doctors are adhering to the high standards of evidence-based medicine,” he says.

After spending years working for the NHS in Britain, Dr Malhotra now works as a private consultant at HUM2N; a longevity clinic that spruiks itself as a “biohacking” lab. It offers treatments such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which it says “may help relieve mild discomfort”; cryotherapy, which it says may “promote wellbeing”, and; vitamin IV infusions. According to the clinic’s website, membership requires a one-off payment of £499 ($1023) and a monthly fee of £349.

Dr Malhotra maintains he is not against medications, but describes as “psychopathic” the way the pharmaceutical industry makes money, and worries it has too much influence.

He now is an influential adviser to the US Health Secretary at a time when the Trump administration is looking at imposing high tariffs on imports of pharmaceuticals.

At the same time, aggressive lobbying by the powerful US pharmaceutical industry has explicitly targeted Australia’s prized Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Dr Malhotra told The Australian the PBS should “100 per cent, absolutely” be protected in trade negotiations.

“All medicines need to be affordable for the regular person,” he says.

“The evidence tells us that you can have a much more efficient, high-quality healthcare system and much lower cost income at the moment, because a lot of the costs are because of excessive prices of drugs and a lot of waste in the system for unnecessary investigations, unnecessary treatments.”

Dr Malhotra has been well known in the UK for years after he successfully campaigned while working for the NHS to get the sugar content reduced in popular foods. That was more than a decade ago and he has remained in the public eye since, talking mostly about health, nutrition and cardiology.

During the pandemic he even appeared on morning television to caution against vaccine hesitancy, and spoke of the importance of older people getting their Covid immunisations.

But that changed after his father died from cardiac issues some months later. His father’s death was not attributed to vaccines but Dr Malhotra is convinced otherwise.

Since then, he has conducted his own research, cited questionable science, and advocated for the suspension of Covid mRNA vaccines.

He has been accused of spreading misinformation and of misrepresenting statistics, including during an interview with BBC News in 2023 when he made claims about excess deaths from Covid vaccines.

The broadcaster was forced to fact-check his statements, and corrected some statements and apologised for allowing Dr Malhotra to go unchallenged, saying it should have been better prepared.

Later that year, Dr Malhotra toured Australia as the drawcard for an event titled “Curing the corruption of medicine, a new beginning”.

He used the tour to again call for the suspension of Covid mRNA vaccines and was later condemned for suggesting cricket legend Shane Warne’s death in 2022 may have been linked to the Covid vaccine. He was not the sportsman’s doctor.

That tour helped build his supporter base and he met a range of politicians, including former senator Gerard Rennick and South Australian One Nation MP (now independent) Sarah Game.

He also met respected ophthalmologist and 2020 Australian of the Year Dr James Muecke, who attended one of Dr Malhotra’s talks in Adelaide.

When photographs of the pair emerged online, after being circulated and promoted by Dr Malhotra, it led to a public uproar and headlines questioning how the celebrated ophthalmologist could support an “anti-vaxxer”.

“I attended out of respect for his years of support to me, indeed it was the first time we had formally met,” Adelaide Now later quoted Dr Muecke as saying.

“I was unaware of the content of either presentation.

“It’s really just an example of supporting friends and colleagues when they present.”

Dr Malhotra has maintained Australian connections for decades. In 2000, he says, he completed a medical school placement at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital. He also has a large social media following in Australia.

Dr Malhotra’s influence through social media worries other health professionals and doctors such as Jason Kovacic, executive director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

“Speak to any health professional and they’ll likely say that one of the biggest issues they face today is patients who make decisions about their medications based on something they heard on a podcast, read on the internet or in a book, or saw in a social post,” Professor Kovacic writes in The Australian.

“Some of the people putting out these stories are wellness influencers without any medical background, but others have science and medical CVs stretching back decades. It’s these ‘experts’ that worry me the most because, why wouldn’t you believe a doctor? Especially one that has just been promoted to one of the highest-profile jobs in the world like Dr Aseem Malhotra.”

Dr Malhotra argues that his stance on Covid vaccines and the use of statins has been misrepresented as an “extreme version” of his views, and he rejected descriptions of him as anti-vaccine or a “statin denier”.

He says he is a “big supporter of traditional vaccines” but believes the benefits of the Covid vaccine were “grossly exaggerated and the harms were underplayed”.

He insists he is “not against statins (but) against the lack of transparency in their prescription”, claiming that raw data has not been independently evaluated. As a result, he says, statins have been overprescribed to low-risk patients who would have achieved better quality-of-life outcomes through lifestyle changes.

Fellow doctors have previously complained about some of Dr Malhotra’s Covid claims to the UK’s General Medical Council, which regulates doctors.

After initially deciding it would not take action, the GMC is now reviewing that decision.

Dr Malhotra has seen the “shift” in public opinion over healthcare play out in the UK and US, and wonders if the same thing is happening in Australia, adding that he would be up for another speaking tour of the country.

“I would obviously go to keep the campaign going for better transparency in healthcare,” he says. “For me, this is an international problem.”

Here is the link:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/health/eroding-trust-in-healthcare-a-good-thing-make-america-healthy-again-medical-chief-says/news-story/c1dc8f43a502c66ab8cc745ff04a5cc0

My view is that “visiting firemen” such as this evidence free spruiker should simply go back to where they came from and leave us to just get on with it! Reading what he says suggests to me he would be better simply to go back to the USA and leave our clinicians to get on with caring for our patients.

If he has real evidence let him put it out for assessment and we can all see just how sound what he is saying is!

I trust our professional internal checks and balances to keep us from harm and  this man would not be any where near the top of my preferred advisers!

Reading has Wikipedia entry really confirms my view!

See here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aseem_Malhotra

Knowing his views will add nothing to your life! I hope he stays in the USA,,,,

What a d...h..d! 

David.