☕️ Screen time limit for schools

In case you missed it, an Australian athlete suffered from a rather badly timed incontinence issue during a HYROX race in Beijing over the weekend. Yes… she pooed herself.

But she did win the race. Safe to say, she left everything out on the course!

(In all seriousness, people are not happy that HYROX let the Aussie athlete continue competing on all of the shared equipment, despite the situation. We talk about what happened at the end of today’s podcast.)

The quote: “Andy Burnham must now be facing up to the idea that he will go down in history as the final prime minister of the United Kingdom.”
Scottish First Minister John Swinney in a statement to The Telegraph on an upcoming meeting with the leaders of Wales and Northern Ireland to discuss long-term plans for independence from the UK.

The stat: $2.84 million. The payout Australian Grand Prix organisers must make to promoter World Touring Melbourne, after Victoria's Court of Appeal upheld a 2024 ruling over an axed Robbie Williams concert due to take place at the 2020 F1 Grand Prix.

The big question:

Yesterday’s results: 63% of you said you could comfortably cover an unexpected $500 expense, 29% said yes but it would hurt, 6% said no, and 2% said they’d have to ask family. Thanks for voting - your responses inform TDA's journalism and research. [3,531 votes].

Together with AAP.

Can you see your own reflection in your laptop screen right now?

Glare is a common contributor to eye strain, and Specsavers recommends taking steps to reduce it. An anti-glare screen on your monitor helps, and if you wear glasses, look for lenses with an anti-reflective coating like Specsavers' UltraClear SuperClean lenses. Still squinting? An eye test at Specsavers can help identify what's contributing to your symptoms.

^{Transparency: This is a sponsored part of the newsletter - the best way to keep the newsletter free for you.}

Starting next year, the NSW Government will cap how much time public school students spend on screens each day.

Under the changes, screentime will be capped at fifteen minutes a day for kids in kindy to year 2, increasing with age.

The NSW Government says its research shows less than half (45%) of secondary parents and one-third (32%) of primary parents think technology’s benefits outweigh its downsides in schools. Half of students surveyed for the Government’s research said they are distracted by screens in class.

The research lines up with findings from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which tracks education outcomes from 38 nations. It found that students in NSW are nearly twice as likely as the OECD average to use digital devices for learning for more than two hours a day.

On Sunday, the NSW Government announced new screentime limits for all public schools, starting Term 1, 2027.

Between kindergarten and Year 2, students will only be allowed up to 15 minutes of personal device use a day. On the older end, students in years 11 and 12 will be able to use devices up to half of the class time per subject.

Digital homework won’t be recommended before Year 5, and schools will be encouraged to set aside at least an hour a day for handwriting and reading on paper.

Announcing the policy, NSW Education Minister Prue Car said: “We are seeing reading and writing skills going backwards for a whole generation of children, we have to act.”

Shadow Education Minister Mark Speakman said he supports limits on screentime, but that the Government “needs to explain the evidence behind these rules and how schools will be supported to implement them, particularly in technology-based subjects and online exams.“

Reporting by Elliot Lawry.

💊 What if doctors could test a treatment on an individual patient's tumour before they started it? In a recent newsletter edition, we unpacked how Brisbane biotech Gelomics is doing just that - using Google AI to grow personalised, lab-grown tumours to test treatments on, before they're given to a patient.

^{Transparency: This is a sponsored part of the newsletter - the best way to keep the newsletter free for you.}

On Monday, One Nation shared its immigration policy.

The party wants to see “net-negative” overseas migration, or more people leaving Australia than arriving. The plan would also see international student visa numbers capped at 100,000 per year, reduced from 157,000 in 2024-25.

Labor and Coalition leaders have criticised the plan, as well as industry bodies from the university, farming and business sectors.

Each year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals Australia’s net overseas migration rate. This is the number of people who arrive and stay for at least 12 months, minus the number who leave and stay away for at least 12 months.

If 500,000 people move here for a year or more, and 200,000 leave for a year or more, net overseas migration would be 300,000.

The latest ABS data, released in December, shows net overseas migration fell to 306,000 in the 2024–25 financial year.

The rate was down for the second year in a row after reaching a record high of 538,000 in 2022–23, when migration surged following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. Temporary students made up the largest group of arrivals.

This week, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson announced that if it formed Government, the party would seek net-negative overseas migration levels, with more people leaving the country than arriving.

The plan includes reducing the number of people who hold temporary visas, and “unlawful non-citizens,” by 750,000 over three years.

Hanson said “illegal migrants” would be given three months to leave Australia. If they remain in Australia after this, the party would deport them and ban them from ever re-entering the country. Currently, people who overstay their visa can be deported (and must pay the costs of this) and are generally banned from re-entering for up to three years.

One Nation would also block people from migrating from countries with a “do not travel” warning from Smartraveller. The most recent advice labels 26 destinations with a “do not travel” notice, including Ukraine, Lebanon, Russia, Palestine, Myanmar, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Hanson said universities could enrol 100,000 international students annually, down around 36% from 2024-25 numbers. In the 2024-25 financial year, the Government says international education contributed $53 billion to the economy.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the plan would “smash industries like construction,” and “devastate the health sector and aged care and disabilities, which rely heavily on migrant workers, particularly in rural and regional Australia”.

At a press conference on Monday, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said One Nation “need to explain what their policies mean for hard-working small businesses in this country.”

Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy said: “A vote for dramatically fewer international students is a vote for a poorer, less skilled Australia.”

The Business Council of Australia said it is “concerned that One Nation’s proposal… risks holding back economic growth and worsening Australia’s skills shortages.”

National Farmers’ Federation CEO Michael Guerin said: “Temporary workers help put food on tables, with backpackers alone filling roughly one in seven farm jobs nationally.”

Reporting by Emily Donohoe.

Your newest sport obsession starts this weekend.

This Saturday, the Hungry Jack's NBL27 Season is tipping off with a Melbourne United V Adelaide 36ers clash, and it's promising good viewing. Why? Former NBA guard Cole Anthony is taking the court in Australia for the first time, and he's going up against six-time MVP Bryce Cotton - who is on the brink of being in rare air alongside Andrew Gaze on seven.

And that's just one game. There are 12 more in the first 2 rounds. Talk about Playing It Loud.

Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist (she studies how water shapes landscapes), found the tooth of a mastodon, a kind of giant prehistoric elephant, while out doing an environmental survey. The tooth is well-preserved and is at least 11,700 years old. Local palaeontologist Wayne Thompson said it was “the most spectacular mastodon molar that I’ve ever seen”.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.

As if ‘The Cat in the Hat’ (2003) wasn’t creepy enough, pranksters are now using it to unsettle a whole new generation of children.

Multiple outlets from around the world report people are dressing up as the titular cat to scare school kids, or using AI to generate creepy images of him standing on the street.

It’s freaking meow-t.

Reporting by Lucy Tassell.