Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Bennett, Disability Program Director, Grattan Institute

Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has grown too big, too fast.

The NDIS is a government-funded program providing support to more than 760,000 disabled Australians. It launched in 2013 as a way to make disability support more accessible and equitable.

But public support for the NDIS is faltering. It’s one of the most expensive items in the federal budget, expected to cost taypaxers more than A$50 billion this year. And it’s a flawed system in urgent need of reform.

Reform is coming in May, with the federal government aiming to reduce the scheme’s annual growth from 10% to between 5% and 6% in the forthcoming budget.

So is that achievable? And what needs to change?

Ripe for reform

The NDIS was designed to replace an existing disability support system that was underfunded, fragmented and deeply inequitable.

In 2011, the Productivity Commission estimated the fully-developed scheme would cost $13.5 billion and would grow between 3% and 6% each year.

But this year its costs will grow to more than $50 billion. And growth is tracking at over 10% this year so far.

The government is now aiming to curb the annual growth of NDIS expenditure to 5% or 6%. This is not an unreasonable target. Both Medicare and aged care costs are projected to grow within this same range.

But if it’s not careful, the government risks hitting the target while missing the point. Rather than fixing the flaws in the NDIS, tightening at the margins alone may make the scheme worse for Australians with disability that need it most.

Where to start?

One of the clearest flaws is early childhood supports.

When the Productivity Commission first proposed the NDIS in 2011, it estimated how many adults and children would be supported by the scheme. Today, the number of adults on the NDIS is only slightly higher that original estimate. The number of children, however, is more than double.

Children with autism or developmental delay make up almost half of all people on the NDIS. In 2025, about 170,000 of these children were receiving early intervention supports, such as speech pathology or occupational therapy.

These supports are delivered through individualised funding. This means each person on the scheme is given a budget with which to purchase their own supports. That’s instead of funding going directly to a service provider.

However, this individualised funding model has its downsides. It has led to a disproportionate focus on therapies delivered in clinical settings rather than supporting children and families in their everyday environments, such as at home or in childcare.

This NDIS has also contributed to an increase in diagnoses. Research suggests during the NDIS rollout, there was a 32% increase in reported diagnoses of child autism compared to rates before the NDIS was introduced.

The government made a major policy misjudgement in including early childhood intervention in the NDIS. It’s a major reason why the cost of the scheme is growing so rapidly.

Instead, we should deliver early childhood intervention supports as a commissioned program. This would involve directly funding service providers to offer evidence-based supports for children in places where they live, learn and play.

The government should expand its Thriving Kids initiative. This new nationwide program aims to support children with developmental delay and/or autism who have low to moderate support needs.

In its current form, Thriving Kids will target children aged eight years and below. But to help curb the growing costs of the NDIS, the government should make this program available to all school-age children. The NDIS should be reserved for children with permanent and significant disabilities.

What else needs to change?

To reach its 5% to 6% growth target, the government should prioritise reform in three other parts of the NDIS.

1. Improving planning

The current way the NDIS builds plans for participants is a major driver of the scheme’s unsustainable growth. The process involves a person requesting support items, and an NDIS planner then determining which ones are “reasonable and necessary” for them. This is a highly subjective, and often adversarial, process which leads to inconsistency between plans. It also contributes to year-on-year inflation, meaning individual plans cost more.

Importantly, the government’s “new framework planning” approach is a step in the right direction. It aims to make planning clearer and more transparent for NDIS participants. Standardised assessments, which look at a participant’s individual support needs and personal and environmental context, should ensure funding is more fairly distributed, according to need.

2. Rethinking psychosocial support

To date, the NDIS has failed to provide suitable support to many people with psychosocial disability. This refers to disability arising from significant mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia, major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, that affects a person’s ability to function.

Current NDIS psychosocial spending is poorly targeted. More than 90% of all government spending in this area funds packages for 66,000 people on the NDIS. Meanwhile, more than 130,000 adults with the greatest support needs miss out entirely.

Many of the supports currently funded by the NDIS don’t encourage personal recovery, which aims to give participants a sense of independence and purpose. Instead, about 80% of currently-funded supports focus on practical daily tasks, such as cleaning, cooking and transportation. These are important for people with psychosocial disability. However, there’s no evidence funding these supports long-term aids people’s recovery. Instead, the government should redirect a portion of these funds to a program outside the NDIS that prioritises evidence-based, recovery-oriented supports to reduce demand on the scheme.

3. Better supporting people with the highest needs

About one-third of NDIS payments go to just 5% of participants. These are people with disability who require the highest level of daily support.

Providing support to these Australians is one of the scheme’s most important responsibilities. However, it’s also where it currently delivers the least value for money.

A major reason is too many participants remain in group homes where they share supports with other disabled people. The Disability Royal Commission raised serious concerns about group homes, with residents frequently experiencing violence, abuse and neglect. They are also expensive, with individual plans including funding for group homes costing an average of $487,300 each year.

Thankfully, there are better options. Alternative models, such as living with host families or in home-share arrangements, allow people with disability to live independently in regular homes while still getting the support they need. They often improve participants’ quality of life by increasing their community involvement. And they can also reduce the cost of care by using different types of support, instead of relying solely on paid support workers.

The bottom line

The current NDIS system is financially unsustainable, so the government must act quickly to moderate its growth. But it must do so in a way that makes the scheme work better for the people who need it most. If not, we risk creating an NDIS that costs less, but delivers less too.

– ref. The government wants to curb NDIS spending. Here’s how it might succeed – https://theconversation.com/the-government-wants-to-curb-ndis-spending-heres-how-it-might-succeed-280033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Horvath, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

The landslide victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party in Hungary’s parliamentary election represents much more than a routine change of government. It marks the fall of an “electoral autocracy”, a regime that used elections to shroud and legitimise a system designed to keep the ruling Fidesz party and its leader, Viktor Orbán, in power indefinitely.

The Orbán regime was founded on three pillars. The first was the concentration of power in Orbán’s hands and the destruction of constitutional restraints and oversight mechanisms.

Propelled to power in 2010 by a wave of revulsion at corruption scandals and economic crisis, Orbán quickly took over key state institutions like the judiciary, the taxation office, the prosecutor’s office and the election commission. Each were stacked with Fidesz loyalists, who transformed them into instruments of the regime.

The second pillar was corruption. The Orbán regime enriched Hungary’s elite by transferring vast resources to a group of loyal oligarchs and Orbán cronies.

It achieved this through skewered tendering processes to award massive state contracts to people like Lőrinc Mészáros, a former gas-fitter who had been one of Orbán’s close childhood friends. In 2010, Mészáros was a minor local businessman, but his wealth doubled every year of Orbán’s rule. By 2018, he was the richest man in Hungary.

The third pillar was the media, slowly subjugated by a pincer movement of government institutions and loyal oligarchs.

Legislation passed in 2011 created a Fidesz-controlled Media Council, which was empowered to impose fines for “unbalanced” reporting. This had a chilling effect on journalists.

At the same time, the regime distributed lavish subsidies and advertising contracts to pro-regime outlets. And loyal oligarchs acquired the last bastions of the Hungarian mainstream media. In 2016, one of Hungary’s most influential newspapers, Népszabadság, was purchased by a company linked to Mészáros and promptly shut down.

The culmination of this war of attrition was the creation of a massive media conglomerate, the Central European Press and Media Foundation. It came to control hundreds of media holdings donated by pro-regime businesses. The result was the consolidation of the regime’s control over an estimated 80% of Hungary’s media market.

Orbán justified this concentration of power by posing as a defender of Hungary’s sovereignty and traditional values against threats to the nation.

His rule was punctuated by a series of scare campaigns constructed around external threats – the philanthropist George Soros, the European Union, refugees and Ukraine. He used these threats to justify increasingly draconian controls over civil society and the domestic opposition.

Who is Péter Magyar?

What enabled opposition leader Péter Magyar to topple this system in Sunday’s election was the fact he was an insider.

As a moderate conservative and former Fidesz functionary, Magyar was not easy to stigmatise using the regime’s usual stereotypes. At the same time, he had deep knowledge of the inner workings of the system.

In early 2024, he broke with Fidesz during a massive scandal over a presidential pardon for a man convicted of covering up paedophilia in a children’s home. And he became an anti-corruption crusader.

On his Facebook page, Magyar reflected he had always believed in Fidesz’s vision of a “national, sovereign, civic Hungary”, but had slowly come to realise:

[…]this is really just a political product, a sugar coating that serves only two purposes: to conceal the operation of the power factory and to amass immense wealth.

A few weeks later, he magnified the impact of this bombshell by releasing audio recordings of a conversation in which his ex-wife, former Justice Minister Judit Varga, discussed how Orbán’s Cabinet chief had organised the removal of files in a corruption case.

Before the Orbán regime had time to react, Magyar had emerged as the leader of an obscure centre-right party, Tisza, in the elections to the European parliament. In a blow to Fidesz, it came from nowhere to win 30% of the vote. The result transformed Magyar into the undisputed leader of Hungary’s democratic movement.

Taking down an autocrat

Magyar undermined the Orbán regime in two ways.

The first was to neutralise Orbán’s populist, anti-elitist politics by focusing on corruption. Magyar repeatedly drew attention to the luxurious estate at Hatvanpuszta, a 19th century country estate and model farm that was massively redeveloped after 2018.

Although formally owned by Orbán’s father, Győző, it was widely believed to be a personal retreat of Viktor Orbán himself. Magyar called Hatvanpuszta “the heart of the system”, and likened it to one of Putin’s palaces.

The second was to reach out to Orbán’s rural heartland. In 2025, Magyar walked hundreds of kilometres in a series of political marches across the Hungarian countryside, visiting the small towns and villages that traditionally voted for Fidesz.

His party, Tisza, soon overtook Fidesz in the pre-election polls, but a peaceful transition of power was far from inevitable.

During its final years, the Orbán regime had became increasingly repressive. It used the security services to conduct a covert operation to penetrate the Tisza party’s computer servers. It also laid espionage charges against the country’s famous investigative journalist, Szabolcs Panyi, for exposing how Orbán’s foreign minister was collaborating with the Kremlin.

And a disinformation campaign, apparently of Russian origin, prepared the ground for a government crackdown by raising the spectre of post-election violence and attempts to assassinate Orbán.

But what broke the regime was the tidal wave of popular support for Magyar’s campaign. In the lead-up to the election, fractures began to emerge within the regime. A combination of whistleblower testimony and leaks from the security forces shone a spotlight on its abuses of power.

When the scale of Magyar’s victory became clear on election night, there was no room to dispute the verdict of the people. Orbán was finished.

– ref. He exposed corruption and walked across Hungary. Now Péter Magyar has defeated a powerful state machine – https://theconversation.com/he-exposed-corruption-and-walked-across-hungary-now-peter-magyar-has-defeated-a-powerful-state-machine-280455

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warlpa Thompson, Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owner of Mutawintji National Park, Indigenous Knowledge

Hidden among the red sandstone escarpments of Mutawintji National Park in western New South Wales lives a rare lizard, long isolated in this arid landscape.

Known to Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owners as kungaka – “the hidden one” – we have now scientifically described it as a new species: Liopholis mutawintji.

For decades, this little lizard was thought to be an isolated population of a widespread skink. However, through a research collaboration between Wiimpatja and scientists we have confirmed it as a distinct species found nowhere else on Earth.

We have been monitoring them for 25 years. We believe there may be only be up to 20 individual kungaka remaining. It may be one of Australia’s rarest reptiles.

How we identified this new species

The kungaka was previously thought to be a highly isolated population of White’s skink (Liopholis whitii), a widespread species that lives in rocky habitats across south-eastern Australia.

But through analysing its genetics, and variations in body shape, we confirmed this skink is actually three distinct species. Two of these, the southern White’s skink (Liopholis whitii) and northern White’s skink (Liopholis compressicauda) occur across large areas of south-east Australia. The third – the kungaka – is restricted to Mutawintji National Park, about 500km from its closest relatives.

The kungaka represents an ancient lineage that likely originated during earlier, wetter periods in Australia’s history. As the continent dried, this skink persisted in humid rocky refuges. Today, it survives in a tiny, isolated pocket of sheltered gorge in Mutawintji, surrounded by a hot and dry expanse of saltbush and stony plains.

Wiimpatja have worked alongside ecologists and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to monitor the kungaka population since 2000, with surveys intensifying since 2019. Over that time, the outlook has become increasingly concerning. Fewer than 20 individuals have been counted since surveys in 2024, using pattern recognition methods from photographs. And there has been a decline in its range, the number of skinks observed and the habitat where it lives.

Goats, cats and foxes

One of the most significant threats to the kungaka is feral goats. These occur in large numbers in the region and damage the environment by overgrazing vegetation and trampling fragile rocky areas.

This damages the rocks kungaka rely on for shelter, and exposes them to predators and extreme temperatures. Goats are also a significant threat to Mutawintji’s endangered Wangarru, or yellow-footed rock-wallaby, as they compete for the same food and shelter. However, conservation work for Wangarru has been a major success story, with the population growing over the past decade.

Other threats are compounding the problem for the kungaka. Introduced predators such as cats and foxes may prey on them, while climate change is intensifying heat and drought across the region. The 2017–19 drought was the hottest and driest on record for far western NSW. For a species with such a small population, these pressures may be overwhelming.

Kungaka as family

From Warlpa Thompson: For Wiimpatja, the kungaka is inseparable from people, country and culture. Every animal and every plant have people attached to them. There would have been people whose meat, their blood, their family is the kungaka. And these people are now gone. But the lizards aren’t.

In some places the animal is gone out of the landscape, but the people are still there. Like the bilby mob that live in Wilcannia, or the dingo mob from Mutawintji. With the kungaka, we’ve got the reverse. The people are gone but the lizards are still here.

Our old people had to fight for the right to get their country back. Now we’ve got it, we’re looking at how do we bring things back. How do we bring culture back? How do we bring our animals back?

The numbers of Wangurru have boomed in the last ten years. Hopefully we can do the same with the kungaka. A big part of that is making sure that our young people are involved so they know what it means to look after country, and the plants and animals from our country.

It’s important our kids don’t just get the cultural knowledge from us, but they get the scientific knowledge and understanding, so they know everything that it is to talk for that animal, not just balanced with one side or the other.

The future of the kungaka

There is a shared responsibility to protect and conserve the kungaka. We need to control goats, cats and foxes, search for additional populations and monitor them long-term. Given the kungaka’s extremely small population size, actions such as captive breeding may be required.

Scientific description of the kungaka is just the first step. If fewer than 20 individuals remain, it stands on the brink of extinction. The survival of this unique lizard will depend on sustained, long-term collaborative partnerships.

From Warlpa Thompson: Whatever we do needs to be done on Country, and led by Wiimpatja. That knowledge has to be driven by us but we need help to look after this lizard. It’s in such a bad position that we’re going to need everyone working together, in a culturally grounded way.

Acknowledgements: scientific description and conservation of the kungaka has been a truly collaborative effort, made possible through the dedication and knowledge of many individuals. We acknowledge the important work and contributions of Gerry Swan, Lyndy Marshall, Keanu Garni Bates, Ray Hunter-McKeller, Nhalpa Thompson and Dane Trembath, whose involvement have been integral to this research and its outcomes.

– ref. Meet kungaka – ‘the hidden one’. This ancient lizard could be the rarest reptile in Australia – https://theconversation.com/meet-kungaka-the-hidden-one-this-ancient-lizard-could-be-the-rarest-reptile-in-australia-279561

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Professor of History, Australian Catholic University

When Pope Leo XIV condemned threats to destroy Iranian civilisation as “truly unacceptable” in April 2026, the backlash was immediate. US President Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against the pope on social media, accusing him of being “weak on crime”, “terrible for foreign policy”, and acting like a politician rather than a religious leader.

But the exchange that followed matters more than the accusation. Confronted with criticism from Trump, Leo did not retreat. He made his position explicit: he was not afraid to speak, because his task was to proclaim the gospel.

Leo said he had “no fear of the Trump administration”, and “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing”.

That response clarifies the logic of his pontificate. Leo XIV is not trying to enter politics. He is defining the limits within which politics can operate.

Trump’s attack was heightened when he posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, which caused an outcry even among his supporters. He has since deleted the post.

God, not politics

Pope Leo’s opposition to the Iran war is not political in origin. It is moral and theological. It rests on a consistent claim: power must be judged, violence must be restrained, and invoking God to justify destruction is a distortion of both religion and public life.

From the beginning of his pontificate, Leo XIV has made this clear. Elected on May 8 2025, he used his first public address to call for dialogue, unity, and what he described as an “unarmed and disarming peace”. This was not positioning. It was a statement of purpose.

Since then, his interventions have followed a clear pattern. In 2025, as conflicts intensified in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, he called repeatedly for ceasefires, humanitarian protection, and renewed diplomacy. He avoided strategic language. Instead, he focused on human dignity and the moral cost of war.

The pattern continued into 2026. On March 8, as the Iran conflict escalated, he called for an end to bombing and urged that “weapons may fall silent” to allow dialogue. On April 11, at a prayer vigil in St Peter’s Basilica, he sharpened his language. He warned of a “delusion of omnipotence” driving war and declared: “Enough of war”.

These are not policy prescriptions. They do not tell governments how to conduct war. They ask whether such wars can be justified at all.

This distinction lies at the centre of the current dispute. Political leaders operate within frameworks of interest, security, and power. Leo XIV operates within a framework of moral judgement. When those frameworks collide, his interventions are labelled political.

Yet his response to Trump shows he does not accept that framing. He has insisted his role is not to compete with political authority, but to speak from the gospel, even when that provokes criticism.

This is not new, but it is unusually explicit. Leo is drawing a line between two forms of authority: one grounded in power, the other in moral responsibility. He does not claim to direct political outcomes. He claims the right, and the duty, to judge them.

Beyond war

The same logic shapes his interventions beyond war. On migration, he has framed the issue in terms of human dignity, questioning whether harsh treatment of migrants can be reconciled with a consistent ethic of life. On social questions, he has resisted partisan categories, insisting moral coherence matters more than political alignment.

His engagement with artificial intelligence follows the same pattern. In December 2025, he warned that technological development must serve the common good, not concentrate power in the hands of a few. The question, again, was not technical but ethical: what does it mean to respect human dignity in a changing world?

Across these issues, the method is consistent. Leo XIV begins with principles, not interests. He does not align with factions. He applies moral reasoning to contemporary problems, even when doing so invites political backlash.

This approach reflects his formation. Born in Chicago in 1955 and shaped by decades of pastoral work in Peru, he encountered the realities of violence, inequality, and political instability firsthand. Those experiences did not draw him into politics. They reinforced a conviction that power must be accountable to moral limits.

His intellectual work supports this view. In his 1987 doctoral thesis, he argued authority is not domination but service, grounded in a moral order rather than human will. That understanding carries into his papacy. When Leo XIV speaks, he does not seek to exercise power. He seeks to define its boundaries.

This is why his interventions provoke strong reactions. They do not remain abstract. They challenge real decisions, real policies, and real uses of force. They question the assumptions that underpin them.

In a political culture that often treats moral claims as secondary, this is disruptive. It exposes a tension that cannot easily be resolved: whether decisions about war, migration, or technology can be separated from questions of right and wrong.

Leo XIV’s answer is clear. They cannot.

His exchange with Trump brings that tension into focus. Trump’s criticism reflects a familiar expectation: that religious leaders should avoid direct engagement with political decisions. His response rejects that expectation. He does not present himself as a political actor. He presents himself as a moral voice that cannot be silent.

There is also a longer perspective at work. Political leaders operate within electoral cycles. Their decisions are shaped by immediate pressures. The papacy operates across generations. Its interventions are rarely decisive in the moment, but they shape how events are judged over time.

Leo XIV’s stance on the Iran war belongs to that longer horizon. It is not an attempt to determine outcomes. It is an attempt to set limits: on power, on violence, and on the use of religious language to justify either.

– ref. Pope Leo’s resolute response to Trump attack reveals a man of God, not politics – https://theconversation.com/pope-leos-resolute-response-to-trump-attack-reveals-a-man-of-god-not-politics-280469

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne

The recent military conflict in the Middle East triggered a sharp increase in petrol prices throughout March, with the federal government’s subsequent excise cut providing only partial relief.

To address the increased cost of travel, Victoria and Tasmania introduced free public transport.

Queensland already had a 50-cent flat fare in place.

Other states and territories have not implemented similar measures.

But the moves by Victoria and Tasmania created a natural comparison: there are similar fuel price pressures but different public transport pricing across Australian states.

We examined how car use and travel patterns have changed since early April across three Australian states. Here’s what we found.

An unprecedented situation

The effectiveness of free public transport lies not only in increasing patronage, but in how much of that increase comes from reduced car use.

Evidence from Australia and other countries shows more people use public transport when it’s free. But much of this increase does not come from drivers switching modes. It often reflects more frequent use by existing public transport users, or shifts from walking and cycling.

What had not been tested is how people respond under a sudden fuel price increase. This created a rare situation where past evidence offered limited guidance.

We therefore examined this empirically. We surveyed nearly 2,000 Australians across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland about a week after free public transport was introduced in Victoria. This allowed us to observe how travellers responded to rising fuel prices under different public transport pricing regimes.

How rising fuel prices changed travel

Our analysis shows car use has declined: across the three states, about 42% of respondents reported reducing their driving, with broadly similar patterns across states.

The shift to public transport, however, has not been uniform.

In Queensland, where fares were already heavily discounted, 21% reported shifting some commuting trips from car to public transport. This compares to about 24% in NSW and 26% in Victoria.

Free public transport in Victoria appears to have had some effect in shifting demand away from cars, but the difference compared to NSW – where fares remained unchanged – is modest rather than dramatic.

Non-work trips have been less responsive. On average, about 17% reported shifting some non-work trips to public transport, again with Victoria slightly higher at around 19%.

Other adjustments have also emerged. Around 16% reported working from home more often, while about 12% are now considering purchasing an electric vehicle.

The barriers beyond fare price

Given the high price of fuel and free public transport in Victoria, what has stopped people from embracing public transport more?

Access could be the key.

Across the sample, only about 49% reported they had good access to public transport, while the rest reported limited or none.

More than 30% reported public transport is not accessible to them within a reasonable walking distance (10-15 minutes). About 25% said it requires at least a short drive.

About 62% reported either they do not have a park-and-ride option (car parks at train stations) at the nearest station or stop, or that the parking is always full.

Another issue is the increase in travel time when using public transport, with about 70% saying their trip will be slower with public transport.

Access and travel time are only part of the story though. For many car users, familiarity with the public transport network also matters.

Planned disruptions – such as service replacements or altered routes – can make journeys more complex and less predictable.

For regular users, these may be manageable. But for those considering a mode shift, even small complications can act as a deterrent and negate the free fare policy. In that sense, disruptions are not conducive to encouraging new users at a time when incentives are in place.

Effective or just popular policy?

The patterns we observe suggest travellers are sensitive to cost.

Around four in ten people reported reducing their driving during the fuel price spike, indicating clear sensitivity to rising costs.

However, the relatively small difference between Victoria, where public transport was free, and NSW – where fares remained unchanged – suggests price is not the main constraint on mode shift. Access, travel time, service reliability and the ability to make specific trips appear to matter more.

This limits how effective fare-free policies can be in reducing car dependence. But effectiveness is only one dimension of policy. There is also public support.

Our results show free public transport is widely popular, with around 78% of respondents agreeing to varying degrees that it should be implemented during periods of high fuel prices – even if they are unlikely to use it themselves.

There is also recognition of shared responsibility: more than 70% agree reducing car use during such periods is a social responsibility, particularly to help ease demand for fuel.

But the broader reduction in car use appears to have been driven by fuel prices themselves, not fare policy. Victoria’s free public transport may have helped at the margins, but it did not produce a markedly different outcome from states that did not intervene.

This suggests that while fare relief is popular and can expand options, it is not, on its own, a decisive lever for reducing car dependence.

– ref. Victoria has made public transport free – NSW hasn’t. Has there been any difference in uptake? – https://theconversation.com/victoria-has-made-public-transport-free-nsw-hasnt-has-there-been-any-difference-in-uptake-280361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria Research Institute

Those who venture into Foul Air Cave, below Buchan township in eastern Victoria, quickly realise how it got its ominous name. In its deepest chambers, bacteria consume oxygen and excrete organic gases to produce a toxic stench.

The cave is also a natural pitfall trap. Its water-worn entrance offers no escape to any creature unlucky enough to tumble in. The smell of death clings to your nostrils as you navigate vertiginous drops and calf-deep, sucking mud.

Tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch, Foul Air Cave accumulated remains of diverse, often-giant mammals known collectively as Australia’s megafauna.

One of these mammals was the giant echidna Megalibgwilia owenii, as we report in a new paper published today in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. We recognised this extinct monotreme, twice the size of Australian echidnas today, from a newly identified fossil collected almost 120 years ago.

And the specimen is enough to verify for the first time that this species once roamed Ice Age Victoria, spanning a 1,000 kilometre gap in its previously known distribution.

Scores of ancient bones

The first scientific expeditions to Foul Air Cave were made in 1906–7 by Frank Palmer Spry who worked for what’s now called Museums Victoria, local caves curator Francis Moon, and geologist Thomas Sergeant Hall.

They were among the first to enter the cave. They encountered scores of fossil bones loosely buried in damp earth, including powerful, clawed mega-marsupial palorchestids and predatory marsupial “lions”.

They deposited their finds in the state collection, now housed at Melbourne Museum.

Over a century later, the fossils of Foul Air Cave have granted us a further insight into deep time.

A robust creature

Previously described fossils of Megalibgwilia owenii derive from a handful of sites in Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales. They’re sparse, too: one well-preserved skeleton, four skulls of varying completeness, and a range of isolated bones.

Together, they illustrate a robust mammal a metre long and weighing in at 15 kilograms – roughly as big as a four-year-old child.

The meaning of its name is straightforward. Mega-libgwil-ia joins the ancient Greek prefix “mega-”, meaning large or mighty, with “libgwil”, the name for the echidna in the language of the Wemba Wemba people of northern Victoria and south-eastern NSW.

We can combine this with the species epithet owenii (acknowledging prolific 19th century anatomist Sir Richard Owen) to coin a common name: “Owen’s giant echidna”.

Using its fossil remains as a guide, Owen’s giant echidna most resembled the long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus), which today occupies the wet tropical cloud forests of New Guinea. Its broad limbs and shoulders bore prominent bony scars indicating it was more heavily muscled than other monotremes. It also had a wide, long and straight untoothed beak, with bony ridges across its palate.

This suite of differences implies Megalibgwilia was adapted to a different lifestyle than its modern relatives. One can imagine it tearing to pieces fallen logs or digging hard soils to seek out moth and beetle larvae, rather than feeding on termites or earthworms.

A fossil awaits its finder

Our new fossil came to light during the systematic documentation and maintenance of thousands of fossil bones, teeth, and skeletons preserved by Museums Victoria.

But even this obscure seven centimetre fragment of skull was sufficient to identify the unique proportions of M. owenii – especially when we examined material in museum collections across Australia.

As well as identifying the fossil, we also researched its connection to Foul Air Cave by drawing on collection notes, hand-drawn maps, diaries and public newspaper archives.

These historical ephemera established Spry as the fossil’s collector. And they inspired a return to the cave in his footsteps.

Ready for re-examination

Spry and Moon wore their everyday outfits of breeches, jacket and waistcoat for their fossicking. They lit their path with candles or kerosene lamps, and entrusted their life to stiff, heavy nautical rope. The trained geologist Hall never ventured into the cave himself. Under those conditions, who would judge him?

By comparison, modern caving is a technical affair. Brilliant headlamps illuminate entire caverns. Heavy-duty nylon oversuits protect from skin-shredding rocky surfaces. And the climbing ropes and devices are strong enough to suspend a small car.

The collaboration between Spry, Moon and Hall combined an informed perspective, fluent local knowledge, and technical know-how to succeed. Despite obvious advances in technology and disciplinary knowledge, our success is rooted in the same foundation as theirs – curiosity and community spirit.

During my own investigations at Buchan, families spanning generations have shared local history and acted as subterranean guides. Parks Victoria rangers have facilitated and overseen work on public reserves. Recreational cavers from the Victorian Speleological Association have been a wellspring of enthusiastic support.

The long residence of this specimen in Victoria’s state collection epitomises how, thanks to past work, palaeontological discoveries arise from “collection-based” fieldwork as often as investigations outdoors.

And if one illuminating specimen can lie unnoticed across a century, why not others?

Sparse fossil bones of large, slender echidnas, seemingly distinct from Megalibgwilia owenii, have been noted from Victoria and South Australia. These warrant re-examination to test if Owen’s giant echidna adapted to different conditions over space or time, or if another unknown species co-occupied the landscape.

The latter option is intriguing in light of the proposition that Zaglossus may even have occupied northern Australia until as late as the 20th century.

If true, then surely one of its ancestors awaits recognition – either among the landscape or preserved carefully among the nation’s public scientific assets.

– ref. An extinct echidna the size of a small child once roamed Victoria, new fossil shows – https://theconversation.com/an-extinct-echidna-the-size-of-a-small-child-once-roamed-victoria-new-fossil-shows-279860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leon Goldsmith, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Middle East and Comparative Politics, University of Otago

After the breakdown of ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran, President Donald Trump has now ordered a blockade of the pivotal Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

It’s just the latest and most combustible phase of a broader regional conflict with global impacts and long, complex roots.

But while there has been copious analysis of this “coronary artery” of global oil and gas trade, much less attention has been paid to the history and sociopolitical fabric of the Hormuz region itself.

This is something of a blind spot, because understanding the deeper cultural dynamics of the strait and its surrounds can tell us something of what might now lie ahead.

Indeed, just as the 1956 Suez Crisis marked the eclipse of the old British Empire, the Hormuz crisis of 2026 may be remembered as a turning point for the US-led global order.

Origins of the oil monarchies

Great powers have long sought to control the Strait of Hormuz. Following the expulsion of the Portuguese in the early 17th century, imperial Britain evolved into the chief external power in the region over the next three-and-a-half centuries.

For much of this Pax Britannica commercial shipping through the strait – essential to links with Britain’s imperial territories in South Asia – faced attacks from local raiders in swift dhows that would emerge and quickly disappear into the complex and often foggy coastlines.

Not fully understanding the human and physical geography of the area, the British set out to closely map the coasts and populations. Based on this, Britain switched to co-opting certain tribes and sheikhs with financial incentives.

It also coordinated closely with the powerful sultan of Oman, who presided over an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar in east Africa, to tame the unruly populations of the Hormuz coastline.

This set the pattern of enriching local tribal rulers in the eastern Arabian peninsula that transformed into the contemporary oil monarchies in the 20th century.

The same tribes and clans that Britain privileged in the 19th century remain the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait (Saudi Arabia evolved more independently). The result was long-term secure passage for commercial oil and gas shipping through Hormuz.

When the US inherited security responsibility for the Persian Gulf from the British after 1971, by which time eastern Arabian states were granted formal independence, it focused on these existing ruling families. Other facets of the region’s complex human geography were neglected.

In parallel, local rulers on both sides of the Gulf constructed narrow nationalisms based on Arab Sunni Islamic (apart from Oman, which is partly Ibadi) and Persian Shi’a Islamic identities. The combined effect was an illusion of political and cultural homogeneity.

Despite this, highly diverse communities continue to live along both coasts. The northern coast of the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz is home to significant ethnic Arab and Baluchi communities, both of which have long had testy relations with the Persian-dominant Iranian state (as well as with Pakistan).

Even less well known are the populations of the southern coastlines of Hormuz, including Oman’s governorate of Musandam at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula jutting into the Gulf, forming the Strait of Hormuz.

Only directly reachable from the Omani mainland by ferry, it contains a complex archipelago of islands and precipitous fiords and is surrounded by the UAE to the south and west.

Some of the indigenous population speak a unique language called Kumzari, with Arabic and Persian elements. The island communities have lived for centuries, virtually unknown, in a deeply symbiotic relationship with the sea.

For example, Kumzaris’ primary reference for direction is not north, south, east or west, but simply upward (bāla) and downward (zērin) – as a fisherman would perceive the depths of the sea relative to the mountains.

When I visited in 2019, I noted how many Musandam residents seemed relatively uncommitted to their Omani nationality. Many even wore the Emirati dish dasha – the traditional white robes that mark out the separate nationalities of the Gulf states.

This explains the special treatment Musandam residents receive, including social welfare assistance not available in other governorates, as a means of keeping the population loyal to Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Local forces, global tensions

All of this has potential implications for the current crisis.

On one hand, the ideological legitimacy of the Iranian state has increasingly been hollowed out in the face of internal unrest and external attacks by Israel and now the US.

Power in Tehran has been whittled down to a narrow clique within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This weakening of state institutions opens the potential for sub-national identities, including those communities adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, to crystallise and mobilise in the vacuum.

On the other hand, Oman is increasingly at odds with the UAE over Iran and the war. While the UAE is hawkish towards Tehran, Oman – long the Gulf’s most trusted neutral broker – has been implicated with Iran in a plan to establish a toll system for the Strait of Hormuz. Oman has denied this strenuously.

Ultimately, Oman’s control of the Musandam peninsula and its closeness to Iran create an uncomfortable tension with Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital.

The potential for the UAE to exploit local identity politics to try and bring the strategic Musandam peninsula under its own control is very real. Whether the US and other Gulf states would stand in the way is not clear.

Omani sensitivity to this possibility is extreme. At a university seminar I attended in Muscat in 2019, a map of the peninsula that failed to designate Musandam as part of Oman sparked a furious response from some in the audience.

More broadly, the fate of the Strait of Hormuz is emblematic of shifting world orders.

In 1956, Britain misread rising grassroots Arab nationalism and a changing world order as it sought to preserve its imperial lifelines through the Suez Canal. The risk for the US now is that it is making similar mistakes in the Strait of Hormuz, failing to adapt to local dynamics as the world changes again.

– ref. Strait of Hormuz blockade: the complex regional realities the US ignores at its peril – https://theconversation.com/strait-of-hormuz-blockade-the-complex-regional-realities-the-us-ignores-at-its-peril-280427