Got some brown bananas on the counter, or soggy salad in the fridge?

If so, you’re not alone. Research shows on average, Australian households waste about 30% of the food we buy – or 2.5 million tonnes each year.

But in a cost of living crisis, where everything from fuel to groceries is getting more expensive, wasting food feels especially painful.

These economic pressures mean more Australians are using food relief services. Many are also buying fewer fresh foods and are taking more risks around food safety.

But with a bit of knowledge and creativity, you can salvage certain foods without risking your health.

Don’t risk it

It’s worth noting, you won’t be able to rescue every bit of food. That’s because they may have become unsafe to eat.

Here are four key signs to look out for.

1. visible mould

2. slime

3. leaking liquid

4. strong or sour smells.

If you have food that has one or more of these signs, it’s best to bin it. That way you can avoid food poisoning, which can cause stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

But other characteristics, such as wrinkles, browning and dryness, are often just signs of age, not harmful spoilage.

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Read more: Want to reduce your food waste at home? Here are the 6 best evidence-based ways to do it

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Fruits

Brown or black bananas may look unappealing, but they are perfectly safe to use in banana bread, pancakes or smoothies. But it’s best to keep any old bananas away from your fresh ones because darker bananas produce ethylene gas, which makes other fruit ripen faster.

Old apples may look wrinkly, because they lose water as they sit. But these apples are ideal for stewing, baking or grating.

Citrus skins, such as those from lemons or oranges, go tough and dry with age. However, you can still use the zest in baked goods and marmalade, and the flesh in drinks, dressings and marinades.

If you notice any mould on larger, firm fruits, it’s generally safe to cut it off. Just make sure you chop off the mouldy section with a large margin of at least a few centimetres. But if you find mould on soft or small fruit, such as berries, it’s best to throw it out.

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Read more: Why healthy eating may be the best way to reduce food waste

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Vegetables

Floppy or shrivelled veggies have lost moisture, but are not necessarily spoilt. You can roast, mash or puree them, adding them into everything from soups to curries. You can also use an ice-water soak to revive leafy greens such as spinach or kale. This involves separating the leaves and soaking them in cold water for at least 30 minutes to re-hydrate them.

For firm vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and pumpkin, any damaged or bruised areas can often be cut off. With potatoes, however, look out for any extensive greening or sprouting, as these contain natural toxins that are harmful if eaten in large amounts.

You may notice a fluffy white fuzz developing on mushrooms. This usually is not mould but mycelium, which is part of the mushrooms’ root system. Mould can grow on mushrooms but often appears in isolated, brightly coloured clusters that look blue, green, grey or yellow.

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Read more: Don’t throw it out! How to cook using ingredients too good to waste

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Grains

It’s best to discard any mouldy bread. This is because mould spreads more easily in porous foods, such as bread and cakes. But you can save stale, mould-free bread by toasting or turning it into croutons or breadcrumbs. And storing bread in dry environments – such as a bread box, cloth or paper bag – means mould won’t grow as quickly.

You can use leftover cooked rice or pasta in stir-fries or pasta bakes within a couple of days. But make sure to promptly and properly store it in the fridge and reheat it fully, meaning to piping hot or at least 60°C. And if heating in the microwave, make sure to stir so the food heats evenly. But, always discard any leftovers that have sat at room temperature for two hours or more, as they may contain bacteria that you can’t simply remove by reheating.

Dairy

We often consume milk and yogurt straight from the fridge, without a cooking or reheating step to kill bacteria. So it’s safest to chuck dairy products that are past their use-by date. And to prevent premature spoilage, only use clean utensils to serve dairy products and promptly return them to the fridge.

If you’re a fan of soft cheeses but notice any mould, throw the whole block or wheel away. This is because the roots of mould can penetrate deep into the cheese. Hard cheeses such as parmesan aren’t as susceptible to mould, so you can often cut off any mouldy bits with a generous margin. Proper storage – for example wrapping it in wax or baking paper and placing it in a container – can help cheese last longer.

There are many ways to rescue food that’s past its prime, but not spoiled. By following some simple food safety rules, and thinking outside the box, you can both reduce waste and save money.

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Read more: Why ‘best before’ food labelling is not best for the planet or your budget

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Emma Beckett has previously received funding for research or payment for consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, FOODiQ Global, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the AMP Foundation, Kelloggs, Hort Innovation, Dairy Australia, and the a2 milk company. She is a member of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Nutrition and the National Health and Medical Research Council Iodine Expert Working Group. She is a registered nutritionist, and a member of the Nutrition Society of Australia and the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology. She is the author of 'You Are More Than What You Eat'.

The latest round of national testing has shown Australian school students’ skills around digital tools, such as computers and tablets, has dropped.

This is despite students spending significant time online and on devices.

What is the test and what is going on?

A different kind of literacy

The latest test is run by the same national organisation that runs the NAPLAN testing. This round looks only at “ICT literacy”.

This is about students’ ability to use information and communication technology tools appropriately, critically and safely. This is also referred to in the national curriculum as “digital literacy”.

Since 2005, a national sample of students in Years 6 and 10 have been tested on their technology skills. This is designed to provide a measure of how well Australian students can use digital tools and technologies.

The latest test

The 2025 test – the first for three years – uses a representative sample of 5,498 Year 6 students and 4,753 Year 10 students.

The test asked students to complete tasks such as creating digital presentations, analysing data, designing algorithms, and responding to scenarios involving online safety and ethics.

For example, one task might require students to read an email from a school technology committee and follow instructions to update an inter-school sports day webpage. In another they might have to demonstrate how to navigate a website.

Alongside the test, students were also surveyed about their use of and attitudes towards digital technology.

Year 6 results

Unsurprisingly, most students reported they had extensive experience using digital tools, such as computers, tablets, smart phones and watches. More than 60% of Year 6 students had at least five years’ experience using digital tools. For Year 10, this figure was 77%.

But more surprisingly the 2025 results show a decline in student proficiency in ICT literacy.

Half (50%) of Year 6 students met or exceeded the national “proficient standard” for digital literacy. The proficient standard is a “challenging but reasonable” level of achievement expected for each year level.

This is a decline from 55% in 2022.

What about Year 10?

In 2025, only 37% of Year 10 students across Australia met or exceeded the proficient standard.

This represents a significant decline from 2022, when 46% of Year 10 students met the standard. As the report notes, it is also the lowest proportion of students achieving the proficient standard since the assessment began in 2005.

What is happening?

So, students are using digital tools but not building digital literacy skills at the same time.

At face value, the finding is troubling: students are surrounded by technology yet appear to be getting worse at using it.

This apparent contradiction reflects a deeper issue. Literacy is a far more complex capability than simply using technology.

High levels of digital access or frequency of digital technology use do not guarantee this deeper capability. Other studies tell us students may be highly adept at navigating apps or platforms while lacking the critical and reflective skills needed for learning, problem-solving, managing online safety or civic participation.

Concerning gaps in results

The latest results also show some concerning and ongoing inequities.

For example students from schools in major cities generally outperformed those in regional and remote schools. Non-indigenous students also outperformed their Indigenous peers.

We know regional and remote areas and some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities do not have reliable access to devices, or reliable internet connections.

What now?

This national assessment attempts to capture a very wide range of skills. This includes technical skills, information management, critical evaluation and ethical engagement.

As with many large-scale assessments, there is a tension between breadth and depth – in trying to measure everything, the instrument may struggle to do any one dimension well.

This raises a broader curriculum question. Despite being identified as a general capability for students, digital literacy has no clear disciplinary “home” in the same way literacy or numeracy does.

It sits across all learning areas, from humanities and social sciences, through to the arts. This means both teaching and assessment become fragmented.

If we are serious about improving digital literacy, we need to rethink how we teach and how we assess it.

This shift could better align assessment with the complex, evolving nature of digital technology and provide a more meaningful picture of what students can do.

Kate Highfield has received funding from the Australia Government, but none in relation to this work.

Holly Tootell has historically received funding from the Australian government for specific research projects. She has no current affiliation to ACARA.

Katie Wilson 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.

Pope Leo XIV has just declared artificial intelligence one of the defining moral challenges of our time, in his first encyclical: a formal letter intended to guide moral, social and theological thought. Titled Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), it argues technology must serve humanity, rather than concentrate power or weaken human dignity.

He presented it at the Vatican alongside AI developer Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, who acknowledged that companies like his need moral guidance to guard against “incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”, the New York Times reported.

“Technology is not simply a tool,” read the roughly 42,300-word open letter. “When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”

It warns that AI is never truly neutral, but “takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it”. And it calls for ethical oversight, social justice, protection of workers, responsible governance and peace.

Automated warfare

The encyclical criticises the use of AI in warfare, calling for imposing the “most rigorous ethical constraints” on weapons developed using AI.

As governments invest heavily in autonomous military technologies and AI-assisted defence systems, the “growing ease” of deploying them makes war more likely and “less subject to human control”, it warns. This “violates the principle that armed force should be used only as a last resort in cases of legitimate self-defense”.

The letter also criticises the growing concentration of technological power, and systems that reduce people to data or economic functions. It promotes what it calls a “civilisation of love”, centred on human dignity, solidarity, truth, compassion and the common good.

Pope Leo’s response to the the AI revolution deliberately references his predecessor Pope Leo XIII’s response to the problems of the Industrial Revolution, Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”), in 1891. Though Magnifica Humanitas was released on May 25 2026, it is symbolically dated May 15, the date of Rerum Novarum.

Industrial Revolution to AI Revolution

An encyclical is not an ordinary papal statement. Traditionally addressed to bishops and the wider Catholic world, it is one of the Catholic church’s most authoritative teaching documents.

The pope no longer has the direct political power the papacy held in the 19th century. But papal teaching still carries moral weight across a global Catholic network of schools, universities, charities, hospitals and community organisations.

The Vatican cannot regulate AI. It cannot write safety standards, police data centres, or force companies to disclose how their systems work. But it can help shape the moral terms of the debate. For more than a century, Catholic social teaching has influenced public arguments about work, inequality, poverty, human dignity and the ethical limits of economic power.

Although popes issued encyclicals long before the modern era, Rerum Novarum made social encyclicals globally influential.

It confronted exploitative labour conditions, widening inequality, and conflict between workers and employers. Pope Leo XIII defended workers’ rights and argued that wealth carried social responsibilities. He criticised both unrestricted capitalism and revolutionary socialism.

The document influenced debates about labour rights and economic justice well beyond the church. In Australia in 1907, Justice H.B. Higgins drew on Rerum Novarum when establishing principles for a fair living wage.

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical attempts to do for the AI age what Rerum Novarum did for the industrial age: provide a moral framework for a technological transformation reshaping work, power and human relationships.

Human dignity in the age of algorithms

Pope Leo XIV argues human rights are not granted by governments or corporations: they arise from the intrinsic dignity of every person. Technologies should serve humanity rather than reduce people to data, economic units or optimisation problems.

He builds on Pope Francis’ critique of “the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control and profit alone shape personal, social and economic decisions”, in his 2015 encyclical. It, too, warned of the risks of technology.

Pope Leo XIV argues moral responsibility can’t be transferred to automated systems, regardless of how sophisticated they become. He also rejects transhumanist ideas that human limitations should be technologically overcome, arguing vulnerability, dependence and imperfection are essential to being human. Relationships, care, solidarity and compassion are not weaknesses. “Humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.”

Running throughout the encyclical is a contrast between a “culture of power” and a “civilization of love”. One treats technology primarily as a tool for domination and control. The other places human dignity, justice and care at the centre of social life.

Why this matters

The significance of Magnifica Humanitas lies in its ability to shape public conversation and moral imagination. Moral frameworks matter. They influence what societies fear, what they tolerate, what they defend – and what they refuse to sacrifice.

Governments are investing in AI capability while still developing frameworks for transparency, accountability and safe deployment. Businesses are adopting AI tools at speed. Schools and universities are rethinking assessment, authorship and learning. Workers are being asked to adapt to systems they did not design and often cannot challenge. And citizens are increasingly governed, assessed and targeted by automated systems they may never see.

Pope Leo XIV’s intervention reminds us the central question is not whether AI will be powerful: it already is. The question is whether that power will be made answerable to human dignity.

The future of AI will not just be decided in laboratories, boardrooms or parliaments. It will also be decided by the moral limits societies are willing to set. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical is an attempt to draw those limits.

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.

The Albanese government has promised to undertake “once-in-a-generation” reforms of the government’s employment services system, which could affect the roughly one million Australians who access unemployment payments including JobSeeker.

Announcing the changes at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth said the current system was “ill-equipped to respond” to unemployed people’s needs and is:

letting too many people in the caseload fall through the cracks, and failing to support them into a job.

The goal of the changes is to move from a “one-size-fits-all” approach of helping people find work, to giving different levels of support depending on what people need. However, there’s no clear start date for these changes yet.

The government’s plan to make improvements to a punitive system is welcome. Yet only three years ago, it was talking about even more ambitious changes.

Here’s what’s just been promised – and where the government still has the opportunity to do more.

What’s going to change?

The federal government says it will overhaul the current “one‑size‑fits‑all” system of Workforce Australia. This government service helps people find and keep secure work and manages the “mutual obligation” requirements for receiving certain payments.

For example, an individual receiving JobSeeker payments may have to apply for a certain number of jobs, take part in training and attend job interviews.

Under the proposed new system, job seekers will be sorted into three groups, known as “service streams”. These will offer different levels of support based on differing needs, with different mutual obligations.

Service stream one will be designed for people who are seen as ready to work and just need help to find a job. This would offer an improved digital service with individualised online tools and brief contact-centre support. The government says it will invest A$205 million in building this new service.

Service stream two will be for people who need more active help. That could mean coaching, confidence building, more direct support from a provider and goals tied more clearly to actual jobs in local labour markets.

Service stream three is for long-term unemployed people, or those with complex needs, who have been poorly served by the current system. This could include people who may need longer-term help, work experience, social enterprise or volunteering opportunities. A total of $52 million of funding has been earmarked in the budget for rolling out, testing and refining this more intensive service.

The government also announced it would put $27 million towards developing a revised assessment process, alongside the introduction of tailored employment goal plans in place of standardised job plans.

How we got here

This week’s announcement marks the long-anticipated outcome of consultations that began more than three years ago, with a parliamentary review of Workforce Australia led by Labor MP Julian Hill.

Workforce Australia was introduced in 2022 and designed by the Morrison government to replace the earlier jobactive service system. The 2023 Hill review argued there were many problems with the new system.

These included an “excessive” focus on mutual obligations, often forcing job seekers to perform unnecessary tasks, or apply for jobs they weren’t qualified for.

Others included the alienation of employers, such as by not pairing suitable candidates with jobs available, as well as a high turnover of employment service providers due to a “Hunger Games style contracting model”.

The review’s final report made 75 recommendations to comprehensively rebuild the system.

Problems yet to be addressed

The federal government formally responded to the review in 2024, saying it agreed reform was necessary. But it also said given such a complex system this “will take time to get right”.

This week’s announcement still leaves many of the Hill review’s recommendations unaddressed.

The single biggest gap between what the Hill review found was needed just three years ago, versus what’s been done now, is on mutual obligations.

Under the new system, mutual obligations will be different for each stream.

For those closest to work in stream one, there’ll be a simpler focus on job searches and other vocational activities. For stream two, a flexible focus on training and other support, connected to a participant’s employment goals. And obligations in stream three will focus on “meaningful engagement and building someone’s readiness to work”.

The Hill review did not recommend the complete abolition of mutual obligations, rather a move to a “shared accountability” framework. This would include giving frontline workers more discretion to “educate and counsel” people when they failed to meet their obligations a limited number of times, rather than automatically withhold payments.

The language of “meaningful engagement” is better than blunt punishment. But it still makes little sense to threaten the income of people already living below the poverty line to make them engage with services when they are already desperate for work.

Other recommendations that haven’t yet been acted on include:

• creating a new public entity, called Employment Services Australia, to help run employment services
• establishing a network of regional hubs
• establishing an independent Employment Services Quality Commission.

Further changes possible

The government says there will be further consultation to further shape some of the design elements of the new service.

The main takeaway is these proposed reforms do not live up to the aspirations of the Albanese government’s own Hill review.

The government has tried to sell this as “once-in-a-generation” reform. For that to be true, there’s still much work to be done.

Sonia Martin 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.

Pope Leo XIV has just declared artificial intelligence one of the defining moral challenges of our time, in his first encyclical: a formal letter intended to guide moral, social and theological thought. Titled Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), it argues technology must serve humanity, rather than concentrate power or weaken human dignity.

He presented it at the Vatican alongside AI developer Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, who acknowledged that companies like his need moral guidance to guard against “incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”, the New York Times reported.

“Technology is not simply a tool,” read the roughly 42,300-word open letter. “When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”

It warns that AI is never truly neutral, but “takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it”. And it calls for ethical oversight, social justice, protection of workers, responsible governance and peace.

Automated warfare

The encyclical criticises the use of AI in warfare, calling for imposing the “most rigorous ethical constraints” on weapons developed using AI.

As governments invest heavily in autonomous military technologies and AI-assisted defence systems, the “growing ease” of deploying them makes war more likely and “less subject to human control”, it warns. This “violates the principle that armed force should be used only as a last resort in cases of legitimate self-defense”.

The letter also criticises the growing concentration of technological power, and systems that reduce people to data or economic functions. It promotes what it calls a “civilisation of love”, centred on human dignity, solidarity, truth, compassion and the common good.

Pope Leo’s response to the the AI revolution deliberately references his predecessor Pope Leo XIII’s response to the problems of the Industrial Revolution, Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”), in 1891. Though Magnifica Humanitas was released on May 25 2026, it is symbolically dated May 15, the date of Rerum Novarum.

Industrial Revolution to AI Revolution

An encyclical is not an ordinary papal statement. Traditionally addressed to bishops and the wider Catholic world, it is one of the Catholic church’s most authoritative teaching documents.

The pope no longer has the direct political power the papacy held in the 19th century. But papal teaching still carries moral weight across a global Catholic network of schools, universities, charities, hospitals and community organisations.

The Vatican cannot regulate AI. It cannot write safety standards, police data centres, or force companies to disclose how their systems work. But it can help shape the moral terms of the debate. For more than a century, Catholic social teaching has influenced public arguments about work, inequality, poverty, human dignity and the ethical limits of economic power.

Although popes issued encyclicals long before the modern era, Rerum Novarum made social encyclicals globally influential.

It confronted exploitative labour conditions, widening inequality, and conflict between workers and employers. Pope Leo XIII defended workers’ rights and argued that wealth carried social responsibilities. He criticised both unrestricted capitalism and revolutionary socialism.

The document influenced debates about labour rights and economic justice well beyond the church. In Australia in 1907, Justice H.B. Higgins drew on Rerum Novarum when establishing principles for a fair living wage.

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical attempts to do for the AI age what Rerum Novarum did for the industrial age: provide a moral framework for a technological transformation reshaping work, power and human relationships.

Human dignity in the age of algorithms

Pope Leo XIV argues human rights are not granted by governments or corporations: they arise from the intrinsic dignity of every person. Technologies should serve humanity rather than reduce people to data, economic units or optimisation problems.

He builds on Pope Francis’ critique of “the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control and profit alone shape personal, social and economic decisions”, in his 2015 encyclical. It, too, warned of the risks of technology.

Pope Leo XIV argues moral responsibility can’t be transferred to automated systems, regardless of how sophisticated they become. He also rejects transhumanist ideas that human limitations should be technologically overcome, arguing vulnerability, dependence and imperfection are essential to being human. Relationships, care, solidarity and compassion are not weaknesses. “Humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.”

Running throughout the encyclical is a contrast between a “culture of power” and a “civilization of love”. One treats technology primarily as a tool for domination and control. The other places human dignity, justice and care at the centre of social life.

Why this matters

The significance of Magnifica Humanitas lies in its ability to shape public conversation and moral imagination. Moral frameworks matter. They influence what societies fear, what they tolerate, what they defend – and what they refuse to sacrifice.

Governments are investing in AI capability while still developing frameworks for transparency, accountability and safe deployment. Businesses are adopting AI tools at speed. Schools and universities are rethinking assessment, authorship and learning. Workers are being asked to adapt to systems they did not design and often cannot challenge. And citizens are increasingly governed, assessed and targeted by automated systems they may never see.

Pope Leo XIV’s intervention reminds us the central question is not whether AI will be powerful: it already is. The question is whether that power will be made answerable to human dignity.

The future of AI will not just be decided in laboratories, boardrooms or parliaments. It will also be decided by the moral limits societies are willing to set. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical is an attempt to draw those limits.

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.