Latest news with #LaTrobe
Perth Now
3 days ago
- Health
- Perth Now
Big problem with popular plant sold at Bunnings
A popular garden plant sold at Bunnings is even more invasive and potentially dangerous to Australia's natural environment than originally thought, new research has revealed. La Trobe scientists, writing in the Frontiers journal, warn that gazania daisies, a brightly coloured ornamental plant sold in nurseries nationwide, is a 'highly-invasive plant' that is beginning to impact grain production and grasslands across southern Australia. The plant can germinate and thrive in almost all conditions, the report shows, regardless of moisture, temperature or salinity levels. 'Due to its flexible growth requirements, gazania is now widespread and naturalised in a variety of habitats including coastal sand dunes, stream banks, wastelands, open grasslands, along roadsides and on cultivated and irrigated sites,' the report states. 'While gazania has long been considered as an environmental weed in Australia, a trend of 'jumping the fence' has been observed in recent years, infesting grain crop production fields in low-rainfall regions of South Australia. The invasive gazania is a brightly coloured daisy. Supplied Credit: News Corp Australia 'The presence of gazania in cropping fields is proving highly problematic, with farmers finding it difficult to control with common herbicides.' The researchers warn the weed is now 'rapidly spreading' across Australia and urgent long-term management strategies are needed to control the invasion. Gazania is native to South Africa and was introduced into Australia in the 1950s and 1970s. Invasive Species Council advocacy manager Imogen Ebsworth said the daisies should be banned from sale immediately. 'Gazanias are the perfect example of an escaped invasive garden plant that needs to be banned from sale,' she said. 'They are already banned in South Australia, but it's clear we need them pulled nationally. The invasive weed has escaped into the wild and is 'rapidly spreading' across Australia. Supplied Credit: News Corp Australia 'I urge the nursery industry to act on this new evidence and stop selling it … we've seen this story unfold far too many times. Ornamental plants that turn into unstoppable weeds, costing us billions in control efforts and wiping out native species in the process.' The council estimates more than 30,000 plant species have been imported into Australia for gardening, but 'fewer than a quarter' have been assessed nationally for their weed risk. Weeds cost the country more than $5bn a year in agricultural and environmental damage, the council said, with 'escaped' ornamental plants making up more than 70 per cent of the country's environmental weeds. Garden plants can escape and germinate in the wild via garden waste, lawn clippings and seed dispersal. Bunnings continues to sell gazanias, NewsWire has confirmed. According to the retail giant, each state and territory has its own list of declared weeds and laws and regulations for invasive weeds. Bunnings nurseries sell gazanias, along with other nurseries across the country. NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw Credit: News Corp Australia The plants Bunnings sells across its stores differ depending on where they are sold and their declaration status. 'Like many nurseries and retailers, we sell a wide range of locally sourced plants across our stores and we work hard to create an assortment that caters to customer preferences and demand,' Bunnings director of merchandise Cam Rist said. 'As always, we closely follow all relevant local biosecurity regulations and the advice of regulators about the plants we sell.' The plant is also sold at other nurseries, including online marketplaces. The council argues 'self-regulation' has not worked and wants a federal government response. 'We've spent decades relying mainly on self-regulation, which just doesn't work,' Ms Ebsworth said. 'You can still legally buy plants that are banned in neighbouring states or overseas. 'Unless governments act, we'll keep selling the next lantana, the next gazania, straight into our backyards and bushland.' Environment Minister Murray Watt has been contacted for comment.
West Australian
3 days ago
- Science
- West Australian
La Trobe researchers warn gazania garden plant sold at Bunnings is ‘highly invasive'
A popular garden plant sold at Bunnings is even more invasive and potentially dangerous to Australia's natural environment than originally thought, new research has revealed. La Trobe scientists, writing in the Frontiers journal, warn that gazania daisies, a brightly coloured ornamental plant sold in nurseries nationwide, is a 'highly-invasive plant' that is beginning to impact grain production and grasslands across southern Australia. The plant can germinate and thrive in almost all conditions, the report shows, regardless of moisture, temperature or salinity levels. 'Due to its flexible growth requirements, gazania is now widespread and naturalised in a variety of habitats including coastal sand dunes, stream banks, wastelands, open grasslands, along roadsides and on cultivated and irrigated sites,' the report states. 'While gazania has long been considered as an environmental weed in Australia, a trend of 'jumping the fence' has been observed in recent years, infesting grain crop production fields in low-rainfall regions of South Australia. 'The presence of gazania in cropping fields is proving highly problematic, with farmers finding it difficult to control with common herbicides.' The researchers warn the weed is now 'rapidly spreading' across Australia and urgent long-term management strategies are needed to control the invasion. Gazania is native to South Africa and was introduced into Australia in the 1950s and 1970s. Invasive Species Council advocacy manager Imogen Ebsworth said the daisies should be banned from sale immediately. 'Gazanias are the perfect example of an escaped invasive garden plant that needs to be banned from sale,' she said. 'They are already banned in South Australia, but it's clear we need them pulled nationally. 'I urge the nursery industry to act on this new evidence and stop selling it … we've seen this story unfold far too many times. Ornamental plants that turn into unstoppable weeds, costing us billions in control efforts and wiping out native species in the process.' The council estimates more than 30,000 plant species have been imported into Australia for gardening, but 'fewer than a quarter' have been assessed nationally for their weed risk. Weeds cost the country more than $5bn a year in agricultural and environmental damage, the council said, with 'escaped' ornamental plants making up more than 70 per cent of the country's environmental weeds. Garden plants can escape and germinate in the wild via garden waste, lawn clippings and seed dispersal. Bunnings continues to sell gazanias, NewsWire has confirmed. According to the retail giant, each state and territory has its own list of declared weeds and laws and regulations for invasive weeds. The plants Bunnings sells across its stores differ depending on where they are sold and their declaration status. 'Like many nurseries and retailers, we sell a wide range of locally sourced plants across our stores and we work hard to create an assortment that caters to customer preferences and demand,' Bunnings director of merchandise Cam Rist said. 'As always, we closely follow all relevant local biosecurity regulations and the advice of regulators about the plants we sell.' The plant is also sold at other nurseries, including online marketplaces. The council argues 'self-regulation' has not worked and wants a federal government response. 'We've spent decades relying mainly on self-regulation, which just doesn't work,' Ms Ebsworth said. 'You can still legally buy plants that are banned in neighbouring states or overseas. 'Unless governments act, we'll keep selling the next lantana, the next gazania, straight into our backyards and bushland.' Environment Minister Murray Watt has been contacted for comment.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Big problem with plant sold at Bunnings
A popular garden plant sold at Bunnings is even more invasive and potentially dangerous to Australia's natural environment than originally thought, new research has revealed. La Trobe scientists, writing in the Frontiers journal, warn that gazania daisies, a brightly coloured ornamental plant sold in nurseries nationwide, is a 'highly-invasive plant' that is beginning to impact grain production and grasslands across southern Australia. The plant can germinate and thrive in almost all conditions, the report shows, regardless of moisture, temperature or salinity levels. 'Due to its flexible growth requirements, gazania is now widespread and naturalised in a variety of habitats including coastal sand dunes, stream banks, wastelands, open grasslands, along roadsides and on cultivated and irrigated sites,' the report states. 'While gazania has long been considered as an environmental weed in Australia, a trend of 'jumping the fence' has been observed in recent years, infesting grain crop production fields in low-rainfall regions of South Australia. 'The presence of gazania in cropping fields is proving highly problematic, with farmers finding it difficult to control with common herbicides.' The researchers warn the weed is now 'rapidly spreading' across Australia and urgent long-term management strategies are needed to control the invasion. Gazania is native to South Africa and was introduced into Australia in the 1950s and 1970s. Invasive Species Council advocacy manager Imogen Ebsworth said the daisies should be banned from sale immediately. 'Gazanias are the perfect example of an escaped invasive garden plant that needs to be banned from sale,' she said. 'They are already banned in South Australia, but it's clear we need them pulled nationally. 'I urge the nursery industry to act on this new evidence and stop selling it … we've seen this story unfold far too many times. Ornamental plants that turn into unstoppable weeds, costing us billions in control efforts and wiping out native species in the process.' The council estimates more than 30,000 plant species have been imported into Australia for gardening, but 'fewer than a quarter' have been assessed nationally for their weed risk. Weeds cost the country more than $5bn a year in agricultural and environmental damage, the council said, with 'escaped' ornamental plants making up more than 70 per cent of the country's environmental weeds. Garden plants can escape and germinate in the wild via garden waste, lawn clippings and seed dispersal. Bunnings continues to sell gazanias, NewsWire has confirmed. According to the retail giant, each state and territory has its own list of declared weeds and laws and regulations for invasive weeds. The plants Bunnings sells across its stores differ depending on where they are sold and their declaration status. 'Like many nurseries and retailers, we sell a wide range of locally sourced plants across our stores and we work hard to create an assortment that caters to customer preferences and demand,' Bunnings director of merchandise Cam Rist said. 'As always, we closely follow all relevant local biosecurity regulations and the advice of regulators about the plants we sell.' The plant is also sold at other nurseries, including online marketplaces. The council argues 'self-regulation' has not worked and wants a federal government response. 'We've spent decades relying mainly on self-regulation, which just doesn't work,' Ms Ebsworth said. 'You can still legally buy plants that are banned in neighbouring states or overseas. 'Unless governments act, we'll keep selling the next lantana, the next gazania, straight into our backyards and bushland.' Environment Minister Murray Watt has been contacted for comment.
The Guardian
20-02-2025
- General
- The Guardian
When I was an undergraduate, student life was on campus. A lot is being lost in the shift to online learning
When I contemplate life in today's universities I have two comparisons to draw on: my undergraduate days in the late 1960s at the University of Melbourne, and my more than 20 years teaching Australian politics at La Trobe. Of the many changes the one that stands out to me is the loss of the face-to-face in student life and of teaching. When I was an undergraduate, student life was on campus – in the clubs, the caf, the union, the library and in the tutorials where a dozen or so young people and a rare mature-age student would be led in discussion by a tutor, sometimes a recent graduate, sometimes one of the tenured staff. Coming from a suburban high school, I knew no one when I started and made my first friends in tutorials as we continued our arguments outside, in the caf, or walking downtown to catch our trains home, and gossiped about our fellow students. When I moved into college in second year, and later into a share house, I could also go to meetings or the pub at night, and to the film society's Friday night screenings. Without cars or mobile phones, social life depended on running into each other and on informal gathering places. Few people had part-time jobs and most late afternoons in the final years of my degree a dozen or more of us would gather in the mixed lounge for coffee, some food perhaps, and to talk and flirt, making friendships and building networks which have lasted a life time. In those liminal years, between youth and adulthood, as we left our parents' homes, we were there, present to each other, face to face. I have just finished a biography of the second wave feminist activist Beatrice Faust, who started at Melbourne University a decade before I did, and recognised the same pattern of intense daily interaction among students. When a decade later in 1972 she started the Women's Electoral Lobby she turned to her undergraduate networks for recruits. When I started teaching at La Trobe in 1989, campus life was thinner. A suburban university, most students still lived in their childhood home, and they had jobs. During the day the car parks were full as students drove in for classes but at night the campus was empty, and even during the day many students simply dropped in for class. I'm sure friendships still formed but the campus was no longer the intense social world of my undergraduate days. Perhaps more of it survived at an inner city campus like Melbourne's but there too students were taking jobs and cheap student digs were being lost to gentrification. Teaching, though, was still face-to-face. I was lucky to join a department which saw teaching undergraduates as our main raison d'etre and which included a number of gifted and dedicated teachers, including Robin Jeffrey, Joe Camilleri and Robert Manne, all of whom taught first year and took tutorials. Their styles were very different. Robin's was quirky and occasionally whimsical, Joe's urgent and Robert's urbane but all were built on extensive knowledge of their subject matter and rigorous thinking. They modelled for students how to work through a problem, how to organise and interrogate a body of material, how to come to a conclusion. They showed that thinking was hard-won and serious, and they invited emotional identification with the process. This more than the informational content is the lasting effect of great teaching, testified to in countless memoirs in which people remember teachers who turned them serious and changed their lives. I've thought a lot about what is being lost in the shift to online teaching. Information can be conveyed, and people can be taught protocols, as in the ubiquitous compliance modules, but can they be taught how to think or, more importantly, inspired to want to learn how to think? Perhaps, but I'm not convinced. A talking head on a screen is not the same as a flesh and blood person standing in front of you, face to face, whom you admire and want to emulate or impress. It drains teaching of its emotional pull. And it is hard to fit a complex piece of reasoning on a screen. Dot points are a very limited cognitive tool. The shift to online teaching is only one of the developments which has eroded the centrality and quality of teaching in our universities. Others are the availability of research-only positions such as ARC fellowships, which took many gifted senior academics out of the class room altogether and replaced them with casually employed less experienced teachers. Many of these were excellent, dedicated teachers but the message sent by the flight of leading academics into research-only positions was that teaching was a second-order activity. The situation is different in the sciences but, to my mind, in the humanities and social sciences, teaching our fellow citizens is the core of our jobs, what the taxpayers pay us to do, and the source of our social licence. Judith Brett is a political historian and biographer, and an emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. Her biography of Beatrice Faust will be published by Text on 23 April
