Ten days into 2024, Port Moresby descended into chaos as opportunists looted and burned shops in Waigani, Gerehu and other suburbs.
That morning, police, military and correctional service personnel gathered at the Unagi Oval in protest over deductions made to their pays that fortnight. Unsatisfied with the explanations, they withdrew their services and converged on Parliament to seek answers.
It took just a few hours for the delicate balance between order and chaos to be tipped to one side.
In the absence of police, people took to the streets. They looted shops nearest to them and forced the closure of the entire city. Several people died during the looting.
The politicians — the lawmakers — were left powerless as the enforcers of the law became spectators allowing the mayhem to worsen.
While many saw the so-called Black Wednesday, 10 January, 202, as a one off incident caused by “disgruntled” members of the services, the warning signs had been flashing for many years and had been largely ignored.
Two weeks back, I asked a constable attached with one of Lae’s Sector Response Units (SRU) about his take home pay. It is an uncomfortable discussion to have.
Living conditions But it is necessary to understand the pay and living conditions of the men and women who maintain that delicate balance in Papua New Guinea.
He said his take home pay was about K900 (NZ$385). When the so-called “glitch” happened in the Finance Department, many RPNGC members like him had up to one third of their pay deducted. That’s a sizable chunk for a small family.
Policemen and women won’t talk about it publicly.
They also won’t talk about the difficulties and frustrations they face at home when there’s a pay deduction like the one in January.
Black Wednesday showed the culmination of frustrations over years of unpaid allowances, poor living conditions and successive governments that have ignored basic needs in favour of grand announcements and flashy deployments that prop up political egos.
Why am I raising this? What does Black Wednesday have to do with anything?
That incident showed just how important the lowest paid frontline cops are in the socioeconomic ecosystem that we live in. The politicians, make the laws, they “maintain law and order” and we’re supposed to obey.
Oath of service Police, military and correctional service personnel, entrust their welfare to the state when they sign an oath of service. This means the government is obliged to care for them, while they SERVE the state and the people of Papua New Guinea.
But for decades, successive governments seem to have forgotten their obligations.
Out of sight. Out of mind.
Politicians have opted for short term adhoc welfare “pills” like paying for deployment allowances while ignoring the long term needs like housing and general living conditions.
Let me bring your attention now to 17 police families living in dormitories at at a condemned training center owned by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock at 3-mile in Lae.
The policemen who live with their families didn’t want to speak on record. But their wives spoke for their families. Many have little option but to remain there. Rent is expensive. Living in settlements puts their policemen husbands at risk.
Here’s the question There’s no running water or electricity.
Here’s the question: How does the government expect a constable to function when his or her family is unsafe and unwell?
The Acting ACP for the Northern Division, Chris Kunyanban has seen it play out time and time again. He said, as a commander, it is difficult to get a cop who is struggling to fix his rundown police housing to work 12 hour shifts while there’s a leaking roof and a sick child.
It’s that simple.
The government says it is committed to increasing police numbers. Recruitments are ongoing. But there is still a dire shortage of housing for police.
Jana Fayyad, a Palestinian activist, had some sharp words about “the silence of Western feminists” at International Women’s Day, asking in her address to the Palestine rally in Sydney last Saturday: “Are you only progressive until Palestine?”
No Palestinian speaker had been asked to address the annual protest the previous day and Fayyad did not mince her words.
“Save your corporate high teas, your bullshit speeches, your ridiculous and laughable social media posts on this International Women’s Day!” she said.
“We don’t think of Margaret Thatcher or Ursula Von der Leyen or Hillary Clinton.
“We think of Besan [Helasa], we think of Dr Amira al Assori, we think of Hind Khoudary — we think Plestia [Alaqad], we think of Lama Jamous.
“We think of the women that we honour — the women in Gaza.
“And beyond the women of Gaza, we think of Leila Khaled and Hanan Ashrawi and Fadua Tuqan and Amira Hass and Dr Mona el Farrah — the women at the forefront of Palestinian liberation.”
She said considering that 9000 women had been “slaughtered by the terrorist state of Israel”, the silence of Western feminists had been deafening.
“The silence has been deafening — the silence on the 15,000 children slaughtered; the silence on the sexual assault and the rape that woman in Gaza have been subjected to; the silence on the horrific conditions that 50,000 pregnant women face having to do C-sections without anesthesia; and the silence on the mothers having to pick up their children in pieces,” Fayyad said.
“The silence is deafening!”
“Where is your feminism?” she asked.
“I don’t see it anywhere! I don’t hear of it! Where are your voices? Or are you only progressive until Palestine?”
The War on Gaza will be etched in the memories of generations to come — the brutality of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, and the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation.
In this Four Corners investigative report, The Forever War, broadcast in Australia last night, ABC’s global affairs editor John Lyons asks the tough questions — challenging some of Israel’s most powerful political and military voices about the country’s strategy and intentions.
The result is a compelling interview-led piece of public interest journalism about one of the most controversial wars of modern times.
Former prime minister Ehud Barak says Benjamin Netanyahu can’t be trusted, former Shin Bet internal security director Ami Ayalon describes two key far-right Israeli ministers as “terrorists”, and cabinet minister Avi Dichter makes a grave prediction about the conflict’s future.
Is there any way out of what’s beginning to look like the forever war? Lyons gives his perspective on the tough decisions for the future of both Palestinians and Israelis.
‘The Forever War’ – ABC Four Corners. ABC Trailer on YouTube
In his strongest speech yet on the Coalition’s commitment to pursuing nuclear power, Peter Dutton dug deep into the past to try to discredit Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
“Our nation is diminished in having Chris Bowen as the federal Energy Minister”, Dutton told a business conference in Sydney on Tuesday. Apart from showing “complete irreverence for the truth”, Bowen was “a modern-day Rex Connor”.
Dutton inserted a qualification to his disparaging of the one-time minerals and energy minister: Connor “believed in nuclear energy”.
The potency of invoking the Connor name to sledge Bowen is dubious. Most people in the general community today wouldn’t have heard of him, unless they’re seniors, mining industry buffs, or know their Whitlam government history.
Connor was at the centre of that government’s notorious loans affair, hanging around a telex late in the night seeking (unsuccessfully) a huge foreign loan through a shady intermediary. He was boldly ambitious in policy – though those ambitions were often unrealised and unrealistic – and politically divisive. He was conventionally known as “The Strangler”.
Bowen is the minister driving the massive energy transformation modern Australia is undergoing. The Connor sledge might be over-the-top, but Dutton and Bowen are in each other’s sights, and it will be an “anything goes” battle until the election.
Dutton told his audience the government didn’t have “a credible pathway” to zero emissions by 2050.
“I believe that too many leaders, CEOs, and inner-city advocates have burrowed so deeply down this rabbit hole to a renewables wonderland that they have lost all sense of objectivity,” he said.
“Instead of having a proper debate about what’s in our country’s best interests, Mr Bowen acts like a child and dismisses everything he disagrees with as a ‘scare campaign’.
“His behaviour is symptomatic of his government whose energy policy is grounded in ideology rather than pragmatism.”
With his ever-more enthusiastic embrace of nuclear, Dutton is making the energy transition a point of the sharpest difference between the government and opposition for the 2025 election.
“Under the Coalition’s plan, Australians will get cheaper power, consistent power and increasingly cleaner power,” he said.
Undeterred by pushback from Labor and scepticism from many experts about cost and impracticability, Dutton said: “If there was ever a time to consider nuclear energy, it is now”.
Not that he’s promising a quick fix.
“Of course, we can’t switch on a system tomorrow. It’s a long journey ahead,” which would involve a Coalition government ramping up gas.
Earlier, when the Coalition was focused on small nuclear reactors, a “DO YOU WANT A REACTOR IN YOUR BACK YARD?” scare campaign was obvious. Now Dutton is talking about a limited number of nuclear facilities at sites where coal-fired power stations will be closing down.
He said there would be only “in the vicinity of about six sites where new nuclear technologies could be placed”. These would be “on, or near the sites, of decommissioned or retiring coal-fired power plants using the existing grid”, thus avoiding the currently planned massive roll-out of new transmission lines.
Labor paints the opposition as ideologically opposed to renewables. Dutton maintained it supported renewables having a significant role in the system. But the government’s “renewables only” policy was “an engineering feat of pure fantasy”, and “economically and environmentally damaging”.
“Labor sees nuclear power as a competitor to renewables.
“We see nuclear power as a companion to renewables.”
Tapping into the discontent in some regional about transmission lines and windfarms, Dutton also sought to bring morality into the mix.
“There’s a moral element to this argument as well – pitching one Australian against the other, whether you live in a capital city or whether you live in a regional area.”
Dutton contested the critics’ argument about price; as for waste, he said “all the used-fuel produced by the US nuclear industry since the 1950s would fit in the area the size of a football field, to a depth of about nine meters”.
“Australia is the only country in the top 20 economies which hasn’t embraced domestic nuclear power or is taking steps to do so,” he said.
Michelle Grattan 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.
A ceasefire is expected on the battlefields of Wapenamanda in Papua New Guinea’s Enga Province that has claimed hundreds of lives and caused massive destruction to properties in three constituencies.
According to lead peace negotiator and Enga Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka, a ceasefire agreement is anticipated to be signed this week among three parties to solve the crisis.
These parties are the state and two warring tribal leaders to make way for the peace process to start.
The leaders of both warring factions are currently involved in intense negotiations with the State Conflict Resolution team led by key negotiator and Chief Magistrate Mark Pupaka in Port Moresby.
The state negotiating team comprises Deputy Police Commissioner (Operations) Dr Philip Mitna; Assistant Commissioner of Police Julius Tasion; newly appointed Enga provincial police commander Chief Superintendent Fred Yakasa; Enga Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka and Chief Magistrate Pupaka.
The government negotiators are meeting and having discussions separately with each faction.
According to the state team, the roundtable conference was brought to Port Moresby because a ceasefire agreement and subsequently a Preventive Order issued in September last year failed.
Guerrilla-style warfare The preventive order did not work when the tribal factions took up arms in guerrilla-style warfare.
The conference will ensure that both parties, including the allies of 25 tribes from Tsaka valley, Aiyale valley and Middle Lai constituencies, agree to an amicable resolution in consultations with neighbouring tribes.
The Yopo tribe’s leader Roy Opone Andoi of Tsaka valley apologised in a public statement to the state for damaging government properties and for the lives lost in the three-year tribal conflict.
The Yopo tribal alliance leader Roy Andoi (centre) accompanied by tribal leaders presenting their position paper to the state team in Port Moresby yesterday. Image: PNG Post-Courier
Andoi said it was regrettable to see a “trivial” tribal conflict that started with his Yopo tribe and neighbouring Palinau tribe in Tsaka valley escalate to “unimaginable proportions”, displacing more than 40,000 people.
“I want to apologise to the state, rival tribes and neighbouring communities and the country for all the damage, including negative images portrayed through the media during the course of the conflict,” he said.
Andoi said he would like to take the opportunity to thank the government for appointing the state team, comprising Police Commissioner David Manning, Tsaka and Pupaka, to conduct roundtable discussions towards restoring peace and normalcy.
He said the government’s intervention came in following the latest casualties, including a massacre of more than 50 men from the Palinau allies by Yopo allies during an intensified battle on February 28 near Birip and Hela Opone Technical College on the border of Wapenamanda and Wabag districts.
Andoi said that with the help of the state team, he was hoping for a better outcome to bring back normalcy in the district and the province.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
Intermittent fasting has become a popular dietary approach to help people lose or manage their weight. It has also been promoted as a way to reset metabolism, control chronic disease, slow ageing and improve overall health.
Meanwhile, some research suggests intermittent fasting may offer a different way for the brain to access energy and provide protection against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease.
This is not a new idea – the ancient Greeks believed fasting enhanced thinking. But what does the modern-day evidence say?
Our diets – including calories consumed, macronutrient composition (the ratios of fats, protein and carbohydrates we eat) and when meals are consumed – are factors in our lifestyle we can change. People do this for cultural reasons, desired weight loss or potential health gains.
Intermittent fasting consists of short periods of calorie (energy) restriction where food intake is limited for 12 to 48 hours (usually 12 to 16 hours per day), followed by periods of normal food intake. The intermittent component means a re-occurrence of the pattern rather than a “one off” fast.
Food deprivation beyond 24 hours typically constitutes starvation. This is distinct from fasting due to its specific and potentially harmful biochemical alterations and nutrient deficiencies if continued for long periods.
4 ways fasting works and how it might affect the brain
Here are four ways intermittent fasting can act on the body which could help explain its potential effects on the brain.
1. Ketosis
The goal of many intermittent fasting routines is to flip a “metabolic switch” to go from burning predominately carbohydrates to burning fat. This is called ketosis and typically occurs after 12–16 hours of fasting, when liver and glycogen stores are depleted. Ketones – chemicals produced by this metabolic process – become the preferred energy source for the brain.
Due to this being a slower metabolic process to produce energy and potential for lowering blood sugar levels, ketosis can cause symptoms of hunger, fatigue, nausea, low mood, irritability, constipation, headaches, and brain “fog”.
Consistent with this, increasing ketones through supplementation or diet has been shown to improve cognition in adults with mild cognitive decline and those at risk of Alzheimer’s disease respectively.
Time-restricted eating is when you eat your meals within a six to ten-hour window during the day when you’re most active. Time-restricted eating causes changes in expression of genes in tissue and helps the body during rest and activity.
A 2021 study of 883 adults in Italy indicated those who restricted their food intake to ten hours a day were less likely to have cognitive impairment compared to those eating without time restrictions.
Matching your eating to the active parts of your day may have brain benefits. Shutterstock
3. Mitochondria
Intermittent fasting may provide brain protection through improving mitochondrial function, metabolism and reducing oxidants.
Rodent studies suggest alternate day fasting or reducing calories by up to 40% might protect or improve brain mitochondrial function. But not all studies support this theory.
4. The gut-brain axis
The gut and the brain communicate with each other via the body’s nervous systems. The brain can influence how the gut feels (think about how you get “butterflies” in your tummy when nervous) and the gut can affect mood, cognition and mental health.
In mice, intermittent fasting has shown promise for improving brain health by increasing survival and formation of neurons (nerve cells) in the hippocampus brain region, which is involved in memory, learning and emotion.
What we eat can affect our brain, and vice versa. Shutterstock
There’s no clear evidence on the effects of intermittent fasting on cognition in healthy adults. However one 2022 study interviewed 411 older adults and found lower meal frequency (less than three meals a day) was associated with reduced evidence of Alzheimer’s disease on brain imaging.
Some research has suggested calorie restriction may have a protective effect against Alzheimer’s disease by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation and promoting vascular health.
When we look at the effects of overall energy restriction (rather than intermittent fasting specifically) the evidence is mixed. Among people with mild cognitive impairment, one study showed cognitive improvement when participants followed a calorie restricted diet for 12 months.
Another study found a 25% calorie restriction was associated with slightly improved working memory in healthy adults. But a recent study, which looked at the impact of calorie restriction on spatial working memory, found no significant effect.
Studies in mice support a role for intermittent fasting in improving brain health and ageing, but few studies in humans exist, and the evidence we have is mixed.
Rapid weight loss associated with calorie restriction and intermittent fasting can lead to nutrient deficiencies, muscle loss, and decreased immune function, particularly in older adults whose nutritional needs may be higher.
Further, prolonged fasting or severe calorie restriction may pose risks such as fatigue, dizziness, and electrolyte imbalances, which could exacerbate existing health conditions.
If you’re considering intermittent fasting, it’s best to seek advice from a health professional such as a dietitian who can provide guidance on structuring fasting periods, meal timing, and nutrient intake. This ensures intermittent fasting is approached in a safe, sustainable way, tailored to individual needs and goals.
Alongside her academic role, Hayley O’Neill works as a wellness consultant.
Rumours and conspiracies have been swirling following the abdominal surgery and long recovery period of Catherine, Princess of Wales, earlier this year. They intensified on Monday when Kensington Palace released a photo of the princess with her three children.
The photo had clear signs of tampering, and international wire services withdrew the image amid concerns around manipulation. The princess later apologised for any confusion and said she had “experimented with editing” as many amateur photographers do.
Image editing is extremely common these days, and not all of it is for nefarious purposes. However, in an age of rampant misinformation, how can we stay vigilant around suspicious images?
What happened with the royal photo?
A close look reveals at least eight inconsistencies with the image.
Two of these relate to unnatural blur. Catherine’s right hand is unnaturally blurred, even though her left hand is sharp and at the same distance from the camera. The left side of Catherine’s hair is also unnaturally blurred, while the right side of her hair is sharp.
These types of edits are usually made with a blur tool that softens pixels. It is often used to make the background of an image less distracting or to smooth rough patches of texture.
Five of the edits appear to use the “clone stamp” tool. This is a Photoshop tool that takes part of the same or a different image and “stamps” it onto another part.
You can see this with the repeated pattern on Louis’s (on the left) sweater and the tile on the ground. You can also see it with the step behind Louis’s legs and on Charlotte’s hair and sleeve. The zipper on Catherine’s jacket also doesn’t line up.
The most charitable interpretation is that the princess was trying to remove distracting or unflattering elements. But the artefacts could also point to multiple images being blended together. This could either be to try to show the best version of each person (for example, with a smiling face and open eyes), or for another purpose.
How common are image edits?
Image editing is increasingly common as both photography and editing are increasingly becoming more automated.
This sometimes happens without you even knowing.
Take HDR (high dynamic range) images, for example. Point your iPhone or equivalent at a beautiful sunset and watch it capture the scene from the brightest highlights to the darkest shadows. What happens here is your camera makes multiple images and automatically stitches them together to make an image with a wider range of contrast.
While face-smoothing or teeth-whitening filters are nothing new, some smartphone camera apps apply them without being prompted. Newer technology like Google’s “Best Take” feature can even combine the best attributes of multiple images to ensure everyone’s eyes are open and faces are smiling in group shots.
On social media, it seems everyone tries to show themselves in their best light, which is partially why so few of the photos on our camera rolls make it onto our social media feeds. It is also why we often edit our photos to show our best sides.
But in other contexts, such as press photography, the rules are much stricter. The Associated Press, for example, bans all edits beyond simple crops, colour adjustments, and “minor adjustments” that “restore the authentic nature of the photograph”.
Professional photojournalists haven’t always gotten it right, though. While the majority of lens-based news workers adhere to ethical guidelines like those published by the National Press Photographers Association, others have let deadline pressures, competition and the desire for exceptional imagery cloud their judgement.
One such example was in 2017, when British photojournalist Souvid Datta admitted to visually plagiarising another photographer’s work within his own composition.
Concerns around false or misleading visual information are at an all-time high, given advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, this year the World Economic Forum named the risk of misinformation and disinformation as the world’s greatest short-term threat. It placed this above armed conflict and natural disasters.
What to do if you’re unsure about an image you’ve found online
It can be hard to keep up with the more than 3 billion photos that are shared each day.
But, for the ones that matter, we owe it to ourselves to slow down, zoom in and ask ourselves a few simple questions:
1. Who made or shared the image? This can give clues about reliability and the purpose of making or sharing the image.
2. What’s the evidence? Can you find another version of the image, for example, using a reverse-image search engine?
3. What do trusted sources say? Consult resources like AAP FactCheck or AFP Fact Check to see if authoritative sources have already weighed in.
T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliate with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society. Thomson collaborated with the Australian Associated Press in 2021 to produce fact-checking resources for its “Check the Facts” campaign.
Aged care financing is a vexed problem for the Australian government. It is already underfunded for the quality the community expects, and costs will increase dramatically. There are also significant concerns about the complexity of the system.
In 2021–22 the federal government spent A$25 billion on aged services for around 1.2 million people aged 65 and over. Around 60% went to residential care (190,000 people) and one-third to home care (one million people).
The final report from the government’s Aged Care Taskforce, which has been reviewing funding options, estimates the number of people who will need services is likely to grow to more than two million over the next 20 years. Costs are therefore likely to more than double.
The taskforce has considered what aged care services are reasonable and necessary and made recommendations to the government about how they can be paid for. This includes getting aged care users to pay for more of their care.
But rather than recommending an alternative financing arrangement that will safeguard Australians’ aged care services into the future, the taskforce largely recommends tidying up existing arrangements and keeping the status quo.
No Medicare-style levy
The taskforce rejected the aged care royal commission’s recommendation to introduce a levy to meet aged care cost increases. A 1% levy, similar to the Medicare levy, could have raised around $8 billion a year.
The taskforce failed to consider the mix of taxation, personal contributions and social insurance which are commonly used to fund aged care systems internationally. The Japanese system, for example, is financed by long-term insurance paid by those aged 40 and over, plus general taxation and a small copayment.
Instead, the taskforce puts forward a simple, pragmatic argument that older people are becoming wealthier through superannuation, there is a cost of living crisis for younger people and therefore older people should be required to pay more of their aged care costs.
Separating care from other services
In deciding what older people should pay more for, the taskforce divided services into care, everyday living and accommodation.
The taskforce thought the most important services were clinical services (including nursing and allied health) and these should be the main responsibility of government funding. Personal care, including showering and dressing were seen as a middle tier that is likely to attract some co-payment, despite these services often being necessary to maintain independence.
The task force recommended the costs for everyday living (such as food and utilities) and accommodation expenses (such as rent) should increasingly be a personal responsibility.
The taskforce thought it was unfair people in residential care were making substantial contributions for their everyday living expenses (about 25%) and those receiving home care weren’t (about 5%). This is, in part, because home care has always had a muddled set of rules about user co-payments.
But the taskforce provided no analysis of accommodation costs (such as utilities and maintenance) people meet at home compared with residential care.
To address the inefficiencies of upfront daily fees for packages, the taskforce recommends means testing co-payments for home care packages and basing them on the actual level of service users receive for everyday support (for food, cleaning, and so on) and to a lesser extent for support to maintain independence.
It is unclear whether clinical and personal care costs and user contributions will be treated the same for residential and home care.
Making residential aged care sustainable
The taskforce was concerned residential care operators were losing $4 per resident day on “hotel” (accommodation services) and everyday living costs.
The taskforce recommends means tested user contributions for room services and everyday living costs be increased.
It also recommends that wealthier older people be given more choice by allowing them to pay more (per resident day) for better amenities. This would allow providers to fully meet the cost of these services.
Effectively, this means daily living charges for residents are too low and inflexible and that fees would go up, although the taskforce was clear that low-income residents should be protected.
Currently older people who need residential care have a choice of making a refundable up-front payment for their room or to pay rent to offset the loans providers take out to build facilities. Providers raise capital to build aged care facilities through equity or loan financing.
However, the taskforce did not consider the overall efficiency of the private capital market for financing aged care or alternative solutions.
Instead, it recommended capital contributions be streamlined and simplified by phasing out up-front payments and focusing on rental contributions. This echoes the royal commission, which found rent to be a more efficient and less risky method of financing capital for aged care in private capital markets.
It’s likely that in a decade or so, once the new home care arrangements are in place, there will be proportionally fewer older people in residential aged care. Those who do go are likely to be more disabled and have greater care needs. And those with more money will pay more for their accommodation and everyday living arrangements. But they may have more choice too.
Although the federal government has ruled out an aged care levy and changes to assets test on the family home, it has yet to respond to the majority of the recommendations. But given the aged care minister chaired the taskforce, it’s likely to provide a good indication of current thinking.
Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations.
But something went wrong.
It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan yelled at Goodes and called him “an ape”.
Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense.
In 2014, Goodes was awarded Australian of the Year. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive.
In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes celebrated with a cultural dance in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren.
The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people.
From then, Goodes was booed across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field.
After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes left the game in silence.
Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university.
The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.
The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes.
Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance.
The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team.
Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership.
37 is set in the locker room of a local football club. Pia Johnson/MTC
Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the Marngrook, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.
Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test.
The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.
The Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not. Pia Johnson/MTC
The Jayma’s father has a history with the football club – he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.
The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted.
When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers.
Levelling the playing field
Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma.
Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience. Pia Johnson/MTC
It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.
But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.
Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength.
Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport.
37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.
Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations.
But something went wrong.
It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan yelled at Goodes and called him “an ape”.
Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense.
In 2014, Goodes was awarded Australian of the Year. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive.
In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes celebrated with a cultural dance in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren.
The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people.
From then, Goodes was booed across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field.
After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes left the game in silence.
Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university.
The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.
The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes.
Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance.
The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team.
Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership.
37 is set in the locker room of a local football club. Pia Johnson/MTC
Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the Marngrook, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.
Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test.
The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.
The Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not. Pia Johnson/MTC
The Jayma’s father has a history with the football club – he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.
The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted.
When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers.
Levelling the playing field
Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma.
Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience. Pia Johnson/MTC
It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.
But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.
Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength.
Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport.
37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Harper, Pro Vice Chancellor, Centre for Organisational Change and Agility, Torrens University Australia
Shutterstock
Many of us have done leadership training for work, come back to the office and thought: “That was a huge waste of time”. Or returned with the best of intentions but realised, six months on, we never actually used any of skills we learned on the course.
So, what makes leadership development programs effective?
We spent months researching leadership and management courses, in an effort to develop a new way of thinking about it.
Effective leaders are self-motivated learners. Basically, if the staff member isn’t motivated, they won’t learn. So there is no point in managers sending unwilling staff members off to leadership training.
Our research suggests staff need to self-nominate for leadership development courses. Those who put their hand up to this kind of training will be intrinsically motivated learners.
There is no point sending a staff member to leadership training if they don’t want to be there. Shutterstock
2. Managers need to let staff use their new leadership skills at work
Many leadership courses give guidance on how to approach certain challenges at work, such as managing conflict or leading a change process.
But this guidance is of little value if the staff member doing the training can’t practise their newfound skills.
Managers need to ensure the skills staff members learn at training can be applied and practised. That means giving your staff the time, opportunities and support to use what they learned at leadership training.
Managers need to give their staff who have done leadership training the opportunity to take on new challenges at work in a psychologically safe context (staff will also need their regular workload reduced so they can do this new work).
For example, the leadership program could run concurrently with a workplace change such as implementing a new system or process. The person doing the leadership training could be supported by their boss to take carriage of this implementation.
3. Managers need to cultivate a continuous learning mindset
Effective learning at work requires a combination of skills. These include:
self-awareness about one’s learning style
being open to new learning methods and technologies
being able to change the way you do things at work when new opportunities arise
being able to regularly reflect on learning experiences, successes and failures.
In practice, this means managers need to treat leadership training not as a one-off but as part of a broader culture of learning at work.
Managers can support this culture of learning this by, for example, having monthly meetings at which staff can talk openly and constructively about what’s worked lately, what hasn’t, and why. Managers can also ensure staff are given adequate training on new technologies, so they feel more confident about technological change at work.
Managers may also want to find ways to offer different types of learning opportunities at work. Some staff members will thrive in a group work environment; others will prefer to study a manual themselves, watch an instructional video or do a short online course.
If managers cultivate a culture of continuous learning at work, it means that when staff go off to leadership training, they will be more able to absorb and apply the lessons.
Do you have a culture of constructive feedback at work? Shutterstock
4. Managers need to ensure training is delivered by good facilitators
A crucial feature of leadership training is ensuring there is a high-quality facilitator.
A good course facilitator doesn’t just give a lecture and then answer questions. They also help participants find appropriate applied learning projects, help them learn self-reflection skills, and provide coaching and feedback.
They also play a crucial role in supporting individual and group learning.
In practice, this means managers need to do some due diligence before sending staff off to a leadership training course.
That might involve reading reviews, getting feedback from people who have already done the course, and carefully checking the credentials of the facilitator.
5. Organisations need both individual leaders and collective leadership
Successful organisations don’t just have good individual leaders. They also need collective leadership. That means developing a culture at work that values:
learning
innovation
being adaptable
being able to deal with continuous change.
Managers can foster this culture of collective leadership at work by facilitating honest, safe conversations about innovation and change.
It means making all staff aware it’s everyone’s job to identify ways the organisation can improve, rather than just relying on one or two leaders.
It’s crucial managers find leadership training courses that can embed this message into their training.
Change is all around us, whether that’s climate change, economic change or technological change with the development of AI. The workplaces that will survive and thrive in this era of rapid change are those that take skills development seriously.
Treating leadership training as a box-ticking exercise won’t cut it. Good leadership training is crucial to developing good leadership, but managers need to make sure the course is actually worth it in the first place.
Ros Cameron is a fellow of AHRI Australian Human Resources Institute.
Gregory Harper 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.
Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations.
But something went wrong.
It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan yelled at Goodes and called him “an ape”.
Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense.
In 2014, Goodes was awarded Australian of the Year. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive.
In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes celebrated with a cultural dance in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren.
The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people.
From then, Goodes was booed across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field.
After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes left the game in silence.
Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university.
The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.
The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes.
Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance.
The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team.
Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership.
37 is set in the locker room of a local football club. Pia Johnson/MTC
Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the Marngrook, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.
Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test.
The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.
The Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not. Pia Johnson/MTC
The Jayma’s father has a history with the football club – he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.
The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted.
When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers.
Levelling the playing field
Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma.
Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience. Pia Johnson/MTC
It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.
But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.
Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength.
Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport.
37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.
On Monday, LATAM Airlines flight 800 from Sydney to Auckland experienced what officials are describing as a “technical fault” that meant the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner “just dropped” without any warning.
The aircraft pitched downward very quickly, causing some passengers and crew members who were not wearing seatbelts to hit the ceiling, and leaving at least 50 people injured. The flight landed without further incident and the injured passengers and crew were transferred to local hospitals.
So what happened? And should air passengers be concerned?
The short answer is there’s no need to worry – if anything, it seems the plane’s safety systems worked as intended. The real takeaway from the story is you should always wear your seatbelt while seated, just like the cabin crew have been telling you.
Keep perspective
When we plan a trip, we usually have adventure or work on our minds as we wing our way to our destination. We think about what types of activities we’ll do, like hiking or water sports, and where we can find great meals.
Most of us never think about what is happening up front in the cockpit as we watch a movie or enjoy the in-flight meal. We generally don’t feel the need to worry about the flights as we feel confident we’ll get to our destination without a problem. Airline incidents are rare when you consider how much travelling is taking place around the globe.
On peak travel days, there can be more than 16,000 planes in the air at any time. There are around 4 billion air travel passengers each year, and the number is expected to double by 2035 by some estimates.
The vast majority of these flights pass without incident. However, when an emergency does occur it receives a lot of attention – a lot more attention than the far more frequent crashes or other accidents that happen on our roads, for example.
So when you do hear about an incident on a plane, the first thing to do is keep it in perspective.
What happened on LATAM 800?
Authorities have not released a lot of detail on the cause of the incident, beyond saying it was a “technical fault”. As LATAM Flight 800 originated in Australia, the transportation investigation teams from Australia, New Zealand, Boeing and LATAM will scrutinise the incident to better understand what happened.
Modern airliners have redundant systems for flight-critical controls. If one fails, it can be transferred to the backup automatically or manually by the flight crew.
One passenger stated that one of the pilots said his instruments went blank, he lost control briefly, and the backup system returned the aircraft back to normal operations.
If the aircraft experienced a sudden loss of electrical power – from a generator failure, for example – it would cause the autopilot to fail as well. This could have caused the aircraft to abruptly change its flight configuration and descend rapidly.
Whatever happened in this case, it seems the redundant systems on the 787, which includes six backup generators, were able to rapidly return all systems to normal.
Wear your seatbelt
LATAM 800 is an example of why we should always wear seatbelts when we are seated on an airplane. While technical faults of this kind are rare, turbulence is a much more common occurrence that can lead to injuries for unsecured passengers.
The US Federal Aviation Administration has reported that, in the United States, 30 passengers and 116 crew members were hospitalised due to in-flight injuries caused by turbulence between 2009 and 2021.
Crew members are most susceptible due to the nature of their job. The Federal Aviation Administration states the annual cost to the global aviation industry due to turbulence injuries is US$100 million.
Climate change and turbulence
With climate change heating up our atmosphere every year, we can expect more turbulence. Wind speeds at the altitudes where most aircraft fly are increasing, causing more turbulence.
This type of turbulence is known as “clear air turbulence” and is difficult to predict or see with current aircraft technologies. Researchers have found that severe clear air turbulence over the North Atlantic increased by 55% from 1979 to 2020.
For airlines, more turbulence will mean more wear and tear on aircraft. But for travellers, the bottom line is clear: always follow the safety instructions from the cabin crew, and keep your seatbelt fastened at all times when seated.
Doug Drury 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.
Papua New Guinea police in Eastern Highlands are investigating a bomb threat that was sent via an email to the Goroka courthouse yesterday morning.
Goroka police station commander Chief Inspector Timothy Pomoso confirmed the incident and threat.
According to information received by the PNG Post-Courier, the email from someone by the name of “Adams Jailer” stated in the email that a “bomb will detonate at Goroka Court house today”.
The email also said: “I am innocent, justice not served.”
The threat added: “You don’t believe me, try mock me and see”.
The email was signed off as “Kumul” — a bird of paradise in Tok Pisin.
Chief Inspector Pomoso said: “Someone sent a threatening email that there’s a bomb planted at the Goroka courthouse.”
“Police were deployed including our local task force and criminal investigation division units to clear the courthouse area by first removing everyone out.
“We are investigating,” he added.
More than a month ago, a bomb threat was also sent to another organisation which was attended to by police in Port Moresby.
The emailed bomb threat. Image: PNG Post-Courier
A senior police officer said that a new trend of sending threats electronically was now occurring in Papua New Guinea.
Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
Television is experiencing a boom of queer representation, and Australian series are no exception. Our new study reveals how trends in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary (gender and sexually diverse) scripted stories have developed onscreen over the 2000s and 2010s.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, Australia was considered relatively radical in its representations of gender and sexually diverse people. We’re credited with the first positive portrayal of a gay man, Don Finlayson (Joe Hasham), in the soap opera Number 96 (1972–77).
We also portrayed the first lesbian kiss, between Vicki Stafford (Judy Nunn) and Felicity Baker (Helen Hemingway) in the pilot episode of The Box (1974–77), two weeks before the UK’s first televised lesbian kiss.
Australian TV drama The Box (1974) became the first in the world to show a lesbian kiss. Youtube
By the 1990s, queer character appearances shifted to predominantly once-off stories in medical and crime dramas. But things have changed substantially since then.
Gay and bisexual men
Between 2000 and 2019, Australian-scripted television represented gay men more regularly than bisexual men. Specifically, our research found 44 series featuring gay men and only three featuring bisexual men.
Similar to trends in US television throughout the 2000s, many of these examples focused on characters “coming out” as gay – a popular storytelling device.
While bisexual coming-out narratives were rare, one notable exception was the character Sammy Lieberman (Thom Green) in Dance Academy (2010–13), who rejects labels others try to put on him.
Sammy Lieberman in ABC’s Dance Academy came out as bisexual. IMDB
Although we found a prominence of coming-out narratives, we also saw an increase in already out characters. Previously, gay and bisexual men were commonly written into one-off storylines in which coming out seemed like the only available narrative. Now they’re often shown with complex lives and other sources of drama.
The avoidance of gay intimacy onscreen remains prominent; we noted a tendency to use camera movements and cuts to avoid showing gay sex scenes. But some series are pushing these boundaries. For instance, season three of Please Like Me included a meaningful and critically acclaimed sex scene between Josh (Josh Thomas) and Arnold (Keegan Joyce).
While there is a significant number of lesbian and bisexual women in Australian scripted television, they appear in fewer series overall compared with gay and bisexual men. Of a total 38 series, we found 32 with lesbians and 15 with bisexual women. Nine of the series included both.
Trends for lesbian and bisexual women often focus on characters who are assured of their sexuality, or who engage in temporary exploration as a “passing phase”. Coming-out narratives are rare for these women.
For example, Charlie Buckton (Esther Anderson) in Home and Away (1988–) temporarily explores attraction to out lesbian Joey Collins (Kate Bell). The relationship isn’t mentioned again after Joey is written out and Charlie returns to dating men.
Alongside this theme of temporary attraction is a troubling trend of unnamed bisexuality, wherein we identified bisexual women, but the bisexuality wasn’t clearly named.
That said, we do note instances where this is due to a resistance to labels. As Bridget (Libby Tanner) tells Bea (Danielle Cormack) in Wentworth (2013–21): “Fuck the labels.”
Prison drama Wentworth had several lesbian and bisexual woman characters. IMDB
There are also several examples of lesbian and bisexual women raising families. In 2003, a two-part episode of Blue Heelers (1994–2006) focuses on a custody dispute between a lesbian couple and their sperm donor. These stories often incorporate themes of same-sex IVF and adoption, reflecting legal changes in Australia throughout the decades.
Until recently, and with rare exceptions, out gender-diverse characters have been largely invisible in Australian scripted television.
We found eight series with transgender women, three with transgender men, and one with a non-binary person. Within our study, only one of these characters appeared before 2010.
Most transgender storylines included some focus on self-identity, with the character either coming out or asserting their identity with others. Some stories also included romantic attraction, although almost all were in a heterosexual framing. One exception was Chris (Harvey Zielinski) in Starting From… Now (2014–16) – a trans man who is pansexual.
From 2018 onwards, all gender-diverse characters were portrayed by out actors who aligned with their identity. Before this, only Robyn Ross (Carlotta) in Number 96 and Chris in Starting From… Now were played by out transgender actors.
The emergence of queer story worlds
Australian scripted television has moved away from representing solitary gay or lesbian figures, and towards more inclusive representations that portray queer characters belonging to a shared community. We found increasing instances of these characters appearing in regular, recurring and one-off stories in the same series.
We also found an increase in series that are set in queer story worlds. Outland (2012) was the first Australian series to feature an entirely gay and lesbian ensemble of characters.
Similarly, Starting From… Now is a web series that follows a group of lesbian women living in Sydney’s Newtown. The final two seasons were picked up by SBS in 2016 and, along with Wentworth, contribute significantly to the number of lesbian and bisexual women appearing onscreen.
The queer story world has been featuring even more from 2020 onward, in particular through digital-first and pilot initiatives for talent from underrepresented communities. These initiatives are giving more opportunities to queer creatives, resulting in series such as Iggy & Ace 5eva (2021) and All My Friends Are Racist (2021).
The appearances of gender and sexually diverse stories in Australian television continue to change. We hope our research can provide a starting point for further analysis of these decades and those to come.
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.
Ruth Mackenzie is the new artistic director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and for her first Adelaide gig she has brought in two heavyweights: performance artist Marina Abramović and avant-garde artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Both were major events, very much of the moment.
The Marina Abramović Institute’s Takeover featured nine performance artists over three days.
To begin at the beginning, audience members are instructed to arrive at 11am each day. We are ushered into a compelling virtual presentation, where Abramović inducts us into being a participative community.
She tells us performance is the most difficult of the art forms, that you need to abandon time and surrender to the moment. Then she runs the audience through a series of Tibetan breathing exercises to make us attuned to reading the mysteries and personal language of performance artists.
Durational performance
Mike Parr’s Portrait of Marina Abramović is the most extreme. A blind painting event, his eyes remain closed for the entire 12 hours. His aim was to paint four black squares, one on each side of a constructed white cube gallery space, in homage to Russian constructivist painter Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 Black Square.
Like Malevich, Parr says his blind painting is the creation of nothingness with a view to a rebirth. But he departs from Malevich: Parr is currently driven by the reality of the shocking events in Gaza, as set out in the painted text which starts on the walls of the show: “free Palestine” and “Gaza is a Warsaw ghetto”.
Mike Parr’s work started with words looking at the war in Gaza. Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival
These sentiments are amplified in his “vision” statement distributed at the performance. His impassioned text says:
the Jewish diaspora rise up to join hands, to relinquish the obscene policies of its political leadership […] to demand justice, freedom, prosperity for the Palestinian people and an end to the oppression and antisemitism of the apartheid.
Over the next 12 hours, Parr paints four black squares – at times from perilously high up on a ladder – to be covered with red paint in homage to Abramović’s former Yugoslavian communist background, then covered again with black. The painted squares, complete with drips of red paint running down to the floor, remained after the performance for viewers to ponder their meaning, along with a video of the entire event.
Place and Country
Less sensational but equally demanding was the durational performance by Collective Absentia, a Bangkok-based group in a work entitled Our Glorious Past, Our Glorious Present, Our Glorious Future: Our Glorious Spring.
One performer meditated on non-violent forms of resistance to ongoing political events in Myanmar. Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival
A member of their collective sat with his head covered and immobile in the middle of a passage-way, meditating on non-violent forms of resistance to ongoing political events in Myanmar.
All attendees at the event had to walk past and around this performance. Most stopped and connected with the sentiment of non-violent forms of resistance. One person even sat directly opposite the performer and meditated.
Christian Thomson’s postcolonial performance, Wait in Gold, involved him slowly and methodically pinning gold painted native daisies to every item of his exterior clothing so that he transforms from human into a larger flower form connected to Country. In this moving performance, he is responding to the denial of a voice as a result of the 2023 referendum outcome, and seeking refuge in the safety of Country.
Christian Thomson seeks refuge in the safety of Country. Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival
In Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo’s absorbing durational work, Amnesia, she slowly covers a large black board with a set of chalk markings. At each mark made, she utters “I’m sorry”.
The mark making is interspersed with her taking off her black shirt, placing it with other discarded shirts, and sewing a new one to put on. At other times she abandons mark making and moves across the floor, writhing as if in deep remorse, again uttering “I’m sorry”.
Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo’s absorbing durational work, Amnesia. Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival
The promotional material accompanying her performance points to the work as an inner exploration of “untold narratives and forgotten realities of the past”. Her felt emotion in the performance is deeply persuasive, but I kept wondering about the amnesia from which Suryodarmo is recoiling: is it a deeply personal journey, or more?
In a different vein, Laurie Anderson’s exhibition I’ll be your mirror is an encounter with AI. Taking phrases from her song O Superman and her late husband Lou Reed’s song I’ll be your mirror, Anderson has generated intriguing text which hangs in five panels in the Adelaide Circulating Library, the city’s original lending library.
I’ll be your mirror uses AI building off songs from Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. Roy VanDerVegt/Adelaide Festival
The AI generated conversations between Anderson and Reed, who passed away in 2013, oscillate between the surreal and the eerie with phrases such as
There’s a mirror in the room
And when I look at night
It reflects nothing back to me.
The Bible is on display and open at Psalms 84-88, but hanging above the Bible is AI generated text based on biblical phrases, displayed as Genesis 1: 26-31.
A section from that text reads:
Some nights now Noah dreams he sees his boat leave the dock
It’s just another day on planet Earth
Only this time it’s with an animal friend.
As an adjunct to the exhibition of 21st century textual artefacts set amid 19th texts, Anderson held a virtual public conversation with the machine generating gurus she worked in Adelaide – the takeaway message being what machines generate depends on the input.
The exhibition is utterly intriguing, but novice viewers need an introduction to what they are about to encounter.
Catherine Speck, with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and Alison Inglis, has received funding from the ARC to investigate Australian art exhibitions.
Australia currently has the most restrictive tobacco and vaping policies in the developed world. Australian smokers are taxed at one of the highest rates among comparable nations, with taxes set to further increase at rate of 5% per year. Meanwhile, Australia is the only country to have a prescription model for accessing vaping products.
Australia’s policies have been backed by some medical experts as a means to drive down and eventually eliminate smoking and vaping. There has been much alarm around youth vaping, in particular.
While arguably well-intentioned, the increasing taxes and restrictions on cigarettes and vaping products have resulted in an unintended and dangerous outcome – the rise of a lucrative and expanding black market for these products.
Emerging black markets tend to attract established organised crime groups, which have the capacity to use violence to enforce contracts, collect debts and threaten competitors.
According to police, this serious criminal activity is being committed at the behest of rival criminal networks who are engaged in a “turf war” for control of the lucrative trade.
Since October, police have searched almost 70 stores believed to be involved in the illegal tobacco trade, seizing more than 100,000 vapes with an estimated street value of A$3.2 million, along with 3.2 million cigarettes.
These numbers may sound impressive, but they represent a drop in the ocean of the total black market. Authorities estimate the size of the illicit vape market could be worth up to $500 million in Victoria alone.
The economics of the black market
The black market for illicit tobacco and vaping products has been driven by economic forces on both the supply and demand side.
People who vape are also largely rejecting the government’s prescription model, with 87% reporting they source their vapes illegally.
Vaping rates are on the increase, particularly among younger adults. Shutterstock
This demand is only likely to increase as cigarette prices increase further and prescription vapes become even less appealing with the introduction of new flavour restrictions.
On the supply side, economic models suggest traffickers of illicit products are attracted to opportunities that present the lowest risks and highest rewards.
Similar to drugs like cocaine, the importation of illicit tobacco offers attractive profits. The difference is that while importing large quantities of cocaine can lead to substantial prison sentences, the penalties for the importation of illicit tobacco are not as severe.
Vapes are similarly low risk and highly profitable. They can be purchased wholesale from China for as little as $2.50 and sold “on the street” in Australia for more than ten times that amount.
The limits and dangers of prohibition
These economic realities suggest it is unlikely law enforcement agencies will be able to effectively tackle the black market under current government settings.
The Australian Border Force is already stretched beyond capacity tackling the booming illicit drug market. So, even if eight out of ten consignments of illicit vapes are intercepted at the border (an unrealistically high proportion on the best of days), the two that make it through are sufficient for traffickers to make a profit.
And while law enforcement agencies have made inroads with arrests of black marketeers and seizures of their products, these are often quickly replaced so trafficking operations can continue unabated.
As previous examples of prohibition on alcohol and other drugs have demonstrated, the dangers of black markets extend beyond systemic violence. Other harms include the influx of inferior and adulterated products, which can pose even more health risks than legal tobacco products. Young people also have greater access to vapes as black market retailers ignore restrictions on sales to minors. (It should be noted, though, that many retailers may be doing so under duress.)
Added to this is the risk of criminalisation of consumers. A teenager in NSW was recently arrested, for example, following an altercation with police over his possession of a vape.
Then there is the lost tax revenue from tobacco goods sold under the counter, which the Taxation Office estimated at $2.3 billion in 2021-22.
The Australian public and policymakers, as well as other countries considering emulating our policies, need to be mindful of these risks and the implacable economic forces that are driving the black market.
Australia’s tobacco and vaping policies have transformed two largely legal and peaceful markets into increasingly dangerous and uncontrolled ones. The situation could even get worse in the absence of meaningful legislative reform, enhanced multi-agency cooperation, nationally consistent policy platforms and the winding back of some restrictions.
As the history of prohibition has taught us time and again, there is a “sweet spot” in restricting the sale of harmful products – one that limits access and reduces harm, but is not so onerous as to create a large black market. The violence unfolding on our streets suggests our current tobacco and vaping polices are failing to strike this balance.
Dr Martin has received funding from the Australian Institute of Criminology and the National Health and Medical Research Centre for research into illicit markets.
David Bright receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Criminology.
Television New Zealand’s chief executive has been challenged by the public broadcaster’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver at a fiery staff meeting over job cuts and axing of high profile programmes, reports The New Zealand Herald.
Writing in his Media Insider column today, editor-at-large Shayne Currie reported that Dreaver, one of TVNZ’s most respected and senior journalists, had made the challenge over the planned layoffs and axing of shows such as the current affairs Sunday and consumer affairs Fair Go.
Dreaver reportedly asked chief executive Jodi O’Donnell if she would apologise to staff — “apparently for referring to her watch during an earlier staff meeting on Friday”.
“TVNZ would not confirm specific details last night, but it is understood O’Donnell pushed back during yesterday’s meeting, along the lines that perhaps she might also be owed an apology,” wrote Currie, a former Herald managing editor.
“One source said she talked at one stage about the response she had been receiving.”
Media Insider quoted a TVNZ spokeswoman as saying: “We expect sessions like this to be robust, but to give all TVNZers the opportunity to be free and frank in their participation, we don’t comment on the details of these internal meetings to the media.”
Dreaver told 1News last night: “We need really strong leadership and we expect to get it. And I’m quite happy to call out and challenge it [and] my own bosses when we don’t get that, just as I would a politician or any other person who deserves it.”
A ‘legend, icon, queen’ Media Insider reported that in a social media post today, Sunday journalist Kristin Hall had described Kiribati-born Dreaver as a “legend, icon, queen” for her Pacific reporting.
In November 2022, Dreaver was named Reporter of the Year at the New Zealand Television Awards and in 2019 she won two awards at the Voyager Media Awards for her coverage of the Samoa measles outbreak.
Yesterday’s TVNZ meeting came amid a strained relationship between the TVNZ newsroom and management over the way the company has handled the announcement of up to 68 job cuts, as least two-thirds of them journalists.
The shock news followed a week after the US-based Warner Bros Discovery announced that it would be closing its entire Newshub newsroom at the end of June.
The Labour Party's Willie Jackson and the National Party's Tama Potaka debate the National-led Government's health repeal of the previous government's health reforms.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
On Monday morning on RNZ’s Morning Report, Revenue Minister Simon Watts admitted that it was a legitimate option for ‘landlords’ to leave their houses empty. (Refer Revenue Minister on mortgage tax deductions for landlords, RNZ 11 March 2024.) The official narrative of the elite political class is that when tenancies on rental properties end, the houses are retenanted or sold; sold either to an owner-occupier or to a landlord who lets the property to new tenants. They don’t usually admit to owning homes which are fully or substantially empty.
I might also mention that, in one of the leaders’ political debates before the 2023 election, both Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon were asked a question about whether they favoured a tax on owners of empty houses. Both leaders appeared discomforted, as if this was a naughty question that should not have been asked, and then recombobulated themselves by saying ‘no’; a response that was to be expected from Luxon, but which may have cost Hipkins a significant number of votes. (In addition to not including such an obvious policy in the Labour manifesto, Hipkins’ cold rejection of an empty-house tax revealed that Luxon is not our only tone-deaf political leader.) Clearly neither leader had been briefed on the issue, despite such taxes being adopted overseas and despite the policy idea circulating widely in the New Zealand non-mainstream media.
An additional feature of the Simon Watts interview was the Minister’s defensiveness towards Corin Dann’s use of the term “property speculator”. When Dann pressed Watts on the matter, Watts was unable to deny that some so-called ‘investors’ were indeed ‘speculators’, and sought to fudge the issue by saying that typical ‘landlords’ are ‘ma and pa investors’ with just one or two rentals (presumably in addition to their ‘ma and pa family home’. This seems at odds with his earlier admission that professional investors have a valid option to leave rental properties untenanted; because the popular image of ‘ma and pa’ landlords is of people housing tenants who they know and have a relationship with, not an image of ruthless speculators.
It is worth reminding ourselves about maverick economist Gareth Morgan’s 2017 comments about residential landlords: see A hard look at Gareth Morgan’s plan to save New Zealand’s renters, Madeleine Holden, The Spinoff, 9 August 2017. Quote from Morgan: ‘”Look at me, I own six houses, ” he stated on The Nation. “I don’t have tenants; they just make carpets dirty. I do it because I know you [other investors] want to get in on this as well, and so you’re going to bid the price of those houses up.”‘
Leverage: how it works to create speculator paradise
Ruthless property speculators – of which there were many from 2003 to 2008 and again from 2011 to 2017 – use the principle of financial leverage to get a return principally from capital gain. (Capital gains taxes in other countries did not stop this process.)
The context is that New Zealand’s housing crisis is principally one of market and government failure in private rental housing. And we should note that this failure is less an Auckland problem and more a problem of New Zealand’s provincial cities and towns, and Wellington. Additionally, it is a crisis of urban land prices, and – as in the later 2000s – a crisis aggravated by high interest rates. Into this mix we face a change to taxation which will aggravate rather than diminish the housing crisis.
The principle of financial leverage works like this. Mr S has a million dollars and wants to double his money in two years. He has been told by his financial adviser that residential property is appreciating in price by ten percent a year. Further a typical house costs one million dollars. Mr S buys five houses with his million dollars; that $200,000 per house of his own money. He borrows the remaining four million dollars. (He may then list his houses on Airbnb, as ‘short-term’ rentals; he may even let his properties to genuine tenants, or he may leave them empty.) In two years time he expects to sell all five houses for 1.2 million dollars; that’s six million dollars in total. After repaying his mortgages in full, he would get to keep two million dollars. That’s a doubling of his initial outlay of one million. (OK, there will be some expenses; nevertheless Mr S expects to be smiling all the way to the bank when he realises his near 100% capital gain over two years.
Mr S is an example of a leveraged landlord. And he will make even more money if he doesn’t have to pay tax on his mortgage interest ‘costs’. But not all landlords are that highly leveraged. Some are not leveraged at all; they are letting mortgage-free properties to tenants. These landlords cannot gain from the deduction of tax for mortgage interest costs. So, in the coming years, they will not charge lower rents on account of lower costs. And it is these unleveraged landlords who will set the market price for private residential rental houses. (And many of these price-setting landlords will be ‘ma and pa investors’ approaching retirement age.) The leveraged landlords, if actually renting out their properties, when setting rents will take their cue from the unleveraged landlords; therefore, they will accept the reinstated tax deductions as windfall profits.
Rents will be at whatever price the market will bear, and not discounted by individual landlords with falling tax costs.
Auckland Regional Fuel Tax
Something similar will most likely happen with the repeal of the Auckland regional fuel tax. At present with the regional fuel tax in place, petrol prices in Auckland are not much different from the rest of the country. That wider nationwide price will tend to be the main determinant of ongoing petrol prices in Auckland, meaning the petrol retailers will gain a windfall when the tax ends. Auckland petrol consumers will gain less than what Mobil and BP will keep.
More generally, we see a pattern from this government to replace proportional taxes with regressive charges; for example, favouring increased car-registration fees over fuel taxes. The cost burdens are increasingly placed on those least able to afford the costs. (This situation can also occur if fixed charges for water or electricity increase faster than usage charges.)
House Prices
The granting of a licence to speculate is likely to set-up the next round of residential property price appreciation. (My sense is that other global economic headwinds will limit the next property bandwagon to no more than three years.) The issue today is much as it was in 2005, with the downturn in the tradable economy, caused in large part by higher interest rates, pushing bank lending into the non-tradable economy, especially property.
Lending to the property sector is less sensitive to interest rates than lending to businesses which export or compete with imports. The New Zealand economy is now primed for a shift in lending towards the property sector. In addition, consumer lending will likely stay strong; this will be driven more by the budget shortfalls of financially stretched households than by interest rates; consumer lending is largely interest-insensitive.
As house prices rise, rents can be expected to rise as landlords – unleveraged and leveraged – seek to maintain their percentage yields on capital. Let’s say that the expectation is that a $500,000 house in the provinces is expected to yield a rent of $500 per week; landlords’ expectations would be that if the $500,000 house becomes a $600,000 house then it should earn a rent of $600 per week. (In reality, in times of property price booms but little employment growth, there is quite a lag in rent increases; renters are simply unable to pay such proportional rent increases.)
What is likely to happen in the next few years – when the speculator community has its mojo back following the removal of tax on mortgage interest – is rents increasing faster than they otherwise would.
‘Investors’ owning just one home.
There is one class of landlords who require special attention. This is people who own just one home, which they rent out to tenants, while themselves renting their own dwelling.
I was in this situation from 2009 to 2014, having received an inheritance a few months after moving into a rental house which particularly suited my family’s circumstances. Other people will be in this situation if they move out of their family home to accept employment in another city. And other people, wanting to own some property as a hedge against poverty, will want to buy a cheapish rental in another town or an outer suburb; yet will themselves want to keep renting closer to where they work or to where their children go to school.
These people should pay zero tax on their rental income if the rent that they pay is more than the rent which they earn. While there is a case to treat mortgage interest as a legitimate ‘business’ cost for property owners, if the rent they pay offsets the rent they earn, then the question should not arise; there is no income to tax. So the critical reform here, that the National Party should be leading the way on, is to deduct rent paid from rent earned. More generally, these ‘landlords’ – who own just one property – should be treated more as owner-occupiers than as investor businesses.
Fiscal Austerity? Despite tax repeals.
We are being promised public austerity alongside the tax repeals which foster increased private affluence for a few. Tougher times stifle the circular flows that underpin a prosperous economy; austerity begets more austerity in a downward spiral, until someone finally rediscovers Keynesian economics.
Cabinet Minister Tama Potaka unashamedly advocated “austerity” last week, on Newshub’s AM show (1 March 2024): see ‘Not a free ATM card’: Taxpayers won’t bear cost of saving Newshub, minister says | AM. (The ‘austerity’ quote comes 8’38” into the video-recording. Lloyd Burr, the interviewer, looks genuinely surprised at this candid admission.)
Supplementary Question: How many of your four investment properties are currently tenanted?
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Papua New Guinea’s rising voice as opposition candidate for prime minister, East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, has pushed back after addressing recent death threats.
Bird told RNZ Pacific he has declined police protection and is opting to use his own security after his nomination as opposition candidate for prime minister resulted in alleged threats to his personal safety.
“I was informed about 10 days ago of the threats against my life. I’ve heard a few more threats are in fact active,” he said.
“So I thought, probably the best way to declare it would be to put it out in the public domain.”
He said three senior government ministers informed him about the death threats and were no longer contacting him, due to concerns his phone was “being monitored”.
Bird was confident in his security to keep him safe and said whoever was behind the threats had picked on the wrong person.
“My people served with the allied forces in the Second World War. So my grandfather did that. He was uneducated. So picking on me is not a smart thing to do.”
RNZ Pacific has contacted the PNG police for comment after Bird accused authorities of illegally monitoring his phone and looking for dirt to charge and arrest him.
“I have nothing to hide. So, apparently, they haven’t found any dirt.”
PNG riots aftermath “I do understand that they’re trying to connect me as one of the masterminds behind the Black Wednesday day events in Port Moresby.”
He said it would be “almost impossible because I was out of the country prior to that happening. And then I understand they’re looking now at all my travel allowances, so they’re looking at that to see what they can find.”
Regarding the threats, he said: “I’m not too stressed. These are some of the things you expect in PNG, otherwise you wouldn’t be in PNG.”
Bird said he did not trust the country’s police and declined their offer for protection, opting to use his own personal security instead.
“If things get pretty bad in the capital, I will just go back home. But for now, I’m just keeping a low profile, not really moving around, just restricting movements.”
He addressed sceptics who criticised him for attempting to boost his profile to become PNG’s next prime minister.
Bird said he had accepted the nomination as candidate out of “respect to his colleagues.”
‘Asked by my caucus’ “I didn’t put my hand up. I was asked by my caucus.”
He said, the country needed change, even if it was at the expense of his safety.
“Who wants to run around with security guards all the time?
“Whoever gets into the hot seat, whether it’s me or someone else, in all seriousness and honesty will soon to have to deal with these problems, the problems that are begging for solutions, and these are personal criticisms of Prime Minister Marape.”
He said supporters of the nation’s current leader James Marape lacked proper education and said it was “like a cult following”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasiya Byesyedina, PhD Candidate, Department of Government and International Relations, Sessional Teacher and Student Writing Fellow, University of Sydney
I’m an Australian-Ukrainian researcher and I moved back to Kyiv from Sydney in 2022 after the full-scale Russian invasion. My life in a war zone has given me the chance to witness firsthand Russia’s brutality and Ukraine’s limitless bravery.
In late 2022, Russians began targeting critical infrastructure in major cities. Many residents were left without access to electricity, heat and water. My cousins spent most of their school days in shelters.
I spent many winter nights writing my dissertation by candlelight, while searching for Wi-Fi and mobile hotspots and hot meals for my grandma and mother. The sounds of air-raid sirens and missile explosions were as ubiquitous as the sounds of birds chirping in Australia.
In the past year, Russian attacks on large cities have intensified in frequency and volume. Last month, for example, my family woke to a massive explosion. The impact of the missile was so close that my bedroom walls were shaking.
I ran outside to witness the horrendous scene. An apartment building just next to ours was engulfed by flames. Shocked residents were covered in soot, clenching their cats and dogs while watching their homes burn.
Four people died in the strike. A few days later, Anastasiya Nosova, the godmother of a friend who lived in the building, died in intensive care. On March 6, Anastasiya’s father Yurii also died, becoming the sixth victim of the attack.
Ukrainians are understandably fatigued by Russia’s war. According to a poll in September 2023, just 60% of respondents believed the country should continue fighting until it won – a 10% decrease from a year earlier – while 30% favoured negotiations with Russia.
Despite this exhaustion, Ukrainians remain deeply committed to safeguarding and fortifying their national identity in the face of Russian attempts to erase it.
I research the ways in which Ukraine’s various forms of identity, such as religion, collective memory, language and education, have changed during times of unrest. The study and conservation of Ukrainian identity matters now more than ever because it directly challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chauvinistic and derogatory ideology of Russkiy mir (“Russian world”), which has fuelled his justification for the invasion.
In 2021, Putin published an essay on the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, foreshadowing his imperial ambitions for Ukraine. For example, he conveniently distorts language to challenge Ukrainian sovereignty by referring to it as a “periphery” state, from the Old Russian word okraina.
In reality, the name “Ukraine” means “country” or “piece of land” in Ukrainian, which clearly connotes sovereignty.
Guardians of Ukrainian language
In its attempts to erase Ukrainian identity, Russia is specifically targeting the use of the Ukrainian language in the regions it now illegally occupies.
Following the invasion, Russia’s Ministry of Enlightenment began developing and introducing “classic Ukrainian” textbooks in these regions. However, Russia has fabricated a language that is not Ukrainian in any shape or form. It is presented and taught as a Ukrainian dialect of the Russian language.
What this means is that Russia has actively rewritten the Ukrainian language in a way that mimics the Russian language, erasing the understanding of Ukrainian as a language of its own. As such, Russia is blatantly detaching Ukrainian children from their roots.
This is not a new effort. There is a long history of oppressive Russification policies, dating back to the Russian empire (1793-1917), that aimed to destroy Ukrainian nationalism. In 1876, for example, Tsar Alexander II banned book publications in the Ukrainian language.
When Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union in 1922, the new government mandated the Russian language be used in administrative, educational and social spaces. While Ukrainian language was still taught in schools, Russian was the dominant language of instruction.
Since the invasion in 2022, I have observed everyday Ukrainians becoming new custodians of the Ukrainian language. My neighbours, friends and family who have spoken Russian their whole lives have made efforts to practise and relearn Ukrainian with great vigour.
Across the unoccupied regions of the country, around 71% of Ukrainians now report using Ukrainian in their daily lives, up from 64% in 2021.
Furthermore, Ukrainians have changed the way they value the Ukrainian language. Those who considered Ukrainian as their native language grew from 57% in 2012 to 76% in 2022. And 83% believe Ukrainian should be the only official language.
These efforts to speak the language in social and private spaces should not be overlooked because this is a conscious practice of reasserting Ukrainian identity to actively reverse some effects of Russian colonialism.
A cultural rebirth
Ukrainian perceptions of cultural self-worth have also changed, signalling a departure from a culture once dominated by Russian history, philosophy, literature and the arts.
For instance, Ukrainians have made changes in their home libraries. Since 2022, I have witnessed many Kyiv bookstore initiatives for customers to recycle Soviet-era and Russian literature. Last year, I recycled an entire dusty shelf of family-owned, Soviet-era literature that propagated Russian imperial rhetoric and misconceptions of history and Ukraine.
A revival of Ukrainian culture has also taken place in the arts. For instance, the patriotic 1875 song Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow has made a viral comeback thanks to a new variation by Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk. It has inspired Ukrainians to sing a song that was once banned under Soviet rule.
A Latvian film of people around the world singing Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow.
And last year, a children’s animated film, Mavka: The Forest Song, was released. It tells the story of Ukrainian forest mythology based on a 1918 play written by the poet Lesya Ukrainka.
The official trailer for Mavka: The Forest Song.
Memorialising Ukrainian heroism
Every morning at 9am sharp, I hear the Ukrainian national anthem echo through my neighbourhood. All Ukrainians share a minute of silence to remember and reflect on the loss of Ukrainian life in the war.
Military farewell and burial ceremonies also take place every single day in cities across Ukraine. Last month, my neighbours gathered to farewell Oleksiy Zahrebel’nyy, a Ukrainian soldier who died in battle.
There are many other ways in which the war and acts of bravery are being memorialised to reaffirm Ukrainian historical narratives and identity. For instance, Ukrainians have appealed to their local authorities to change the names of streets to commemorate fallen soldiers. Last year, my neighbourhood changed a street from “Marshal Yakubovsky” (marshal of the Soviet Union) to “Heroes of Mariupol”, commemorating the soldiers who died in one of the bloodiest battles in the war.
Similarly, the artist Volodymyr Manzhos (Waone Interesni Kazki) has painted murals across Ukraine and Europe depicting acts of Ukrainian bravery and Russian aggression. Ukrainians have also become enthusiastic collectors of postage stamps illustrating Ukrainian heroism and events from the war.
Such examples demonstrate how Ukrainians are creating new national narratives that challenge the Soviet history that has long dominated society. This, in turn, is writing a new history for the country for future generations.
Anastasiya Byesyedina 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan March, Professor of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne
As extreme fire weather becomes more common across ever larger areas of Australia, we need new options for living with the risk of bushfire. Underground or earth-sheltered housing is one possibility. While still unusual, these homes are being built in bushfire-prone areas.
But before we embrace this form of housing as a widespread solution to increasing bushfire risks, we need to consider its complexities. Things to weigh up include the challenges of designing and building these homes, their costs and occupants’ behaviour. We also have limited real-world evidence of how such homes perform in bushfires.
A broader question is whether we should allow more people to live in bushfire-prone areas. If we let that happen it will lead to more deaths and injuries.
Earth-sheltered houses are often built into slopes, but can be built on flat ground, either by excavating or by mounding earth over the building. In Australia, concrete is generally used for the building structure to provide enough strength to allow soil to cover the roof and walls. The earth-covered areas can be vegetated.
Because of the amount of earth in contact with the exterior, care is needed to ensure the building is watertight and structurally sound.
The house usually has one main wall of windows facing away from the earth-covered side to provide natural light. To meet building regulations for ventilation, these buildings include rear windows in light wells or vents.
One advantage of earth-sheltered buildings is that their internal temperature remains quite stable. They use much less energy – up to 84% less for cooling and up to 48% less for heating – to maintain comfortable temperatures. (These figures are for all climates, compared to buildings with black roofs.)
Bushfires present complex risks. Earth-sheltered buildings are likely to be a useful but somewhat expensive and limited niche solution on challenging legacy sites where housing already exists.
Few such buildings have been subjected to fires so we have limited evidence of their efficacy. However, it is clear they can be engineered to resist the main ways bushfires attack buildings: heat, flames and embers.
Since earth largely covers the building, the most vulnerable parts are windows and other openings. These can be designed to resist heat and flame, depending on the modelled levels.
Bushfire-resistant measures are estimated to add costs of between $53,000 and $273,000 (2020 values) compared to a typical home construction, depending on the site. Glass is often a key component. Because they are highly susceptible to heat, the cost of windows that can withstand a worst-case fire is often prohibitive.
An earth-shelter build usually costs much more than standard once one adds up the engineering, excavation, concrete and construction costs.
Most earth-sheltered structures rely on one side of the building having large windows to admit enough natural light inside. This window side is typically oriented downhill towards views, with the rear built into the slope. Bushfires increase speed and intensity when moving uphill, so the window side usually receives the most intense bushfire attack.
On sites with limited space, this challenge is often difficult to resolve. Sometimes the only solution is to remove large amounts of natural vegetation. This is done at the expense of ecological goals. The loss of plants whose roots bind the soil could also increase landslip risks.
While it is possible to engineer a bushfire-resistant structure with a low risk of destruction, that doesn’t eliminate the risks created by people themselves.
Human factors greatly increase risks, even in well-designed bushfire-resistant structures. Poor maintenance or later modification can put a property at risk. Examples include unsafe storage of gas bottles and fuel, woodpiles, and modification of or failure to secure doors, windows or shutters.
Residents may also modify vegetation around an earth-covered home in ways that increase risks. They might, for example, plant highly flammable species, or allow fuel loads to build up, including mulch they might have laid down.
Despite education campaigns, warnings and alerts, people continue to put themselves in many risky situations before and during bushfires. Reasons include alert fatigue, expenses of evacuation, dangers while driving, being in unfamiliar locations such as holiday houses, retrieving children, protecting livestock and pets, or protecting underinsured or uninsured property. If more people live in bushfire-prone areas, there will be more bushfire-related deaths and injuries among both residents and bushfire responders.
The psychological impacts on people affected by extreme fires are significant. Nearly three-quarters suffered anxiety for two years after Australia’s 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. Even if a structure survives, the emotional burdens of isolation while under duress, loss of communications and the heat, smoke, darkness and noise of extreme fires are powerful and underestimated.
Yet people’s differing levels of awareness and ability are often ignored as a factor in bushfire risk.
It makes little sense to put more people in bushfire-prone locations that will likely become riskier over time. Solutions such as earth-sheltered buildings may be part of a suite of ways to reduce risks in existing bushfire-prone residential areas.
However, at a wider scale, building low-density housing in bushfire-prone areas is unnecessarily risky. It also conflicts with the compelling need to build at much higher densities in existing areas to house Australia’s growing population. Higher-density housing will allow better and more affordable access (because of economies of scale) to services, infrastructure, jobs and public transport.
Alan March receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
In Australia, most fire occurs in the vast tropical savannas of the country’s north. In new research published in Nature Geoscience, we show Indigenous management of fire in these regions began at least 11,000 years ago – and possibly as long as 40,000 years ago.
But climate change and other effects of human activity are making wildfires more common and more severe in many regions, often with catastrophic results. In Australia, fires have caused major economic, environmental and personal losses, most recently in the south of the country.
While southern fires have been particularly damaging in recent years, more than two-thirds of all Australia’s wildfires happen during the dry season in the tropical savannas of the north. These grasslands cover about 2 million square kilometres, or around a quarter of the country.
When Europeans first saw these tropical savannas, they believed they were seeing a “natural” environment. However, we now think these landscapes were maintained by Indigenous fire management (dubbed “firestick farming” in the 1960s).
Indigenous fire management is a complex process that involves strategically burning small areas throughout the dry season. In its absence, savannas have seen the kind of larger, higher-intensity fires occurring late in the dry season that likely existed before people, when lightning was the sole source of ignition.
We know fire was one of the main tools Indigenous people used to manipulate fuel loads, maintain vegetation and enhance biodiversity. We do not know the time frames over which the “natural” fire regime was transformed into one managed by humans.
A 150,000-year record of fire and climate
To understand this transformation better, we took an 18-metre core sample from sediment at Girraween Lagoon on the outskirts of Darwin. Using this sample, we developed detailed pollen records of vegetation and charcoal, and paired them with geochemical records of climate and fire to reveal how fire patterns have changed over the past 150,000 years.
Now surrounded by suburbs, Girraween Lagoon (the “Place of Flowers”) is a significant site to the Larrakia and Wulna peoples. It is also where the crocodile-attack scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee was filmed.
The lagoon was created after a sinkhole formed, and has contained permanent water ever since. The sediment core we took contains a unique 150,000-year record of environmental change in Australia’s northern savannas.
The core records revealed a dynamic, changing environment. The vegetation around Girraween Lagoon today has a tall and relatively dense tree canopy with a thick grass understory in the wet season.
However, during the last ice age 20,000–30,000 years ago, the site where Darwin sits now was more than 300 km from the coast due to the sea level dropping as the polar ice caps expanded. At that time, the lagoon shrank into its sinkhole and it was surrounded by open, grassy savanna with fewer, shorter trees.
Sediment cores retrieved from Girraween Lagoon. Michael Bird / James Cook University
Around 115,000 years ago, and again around 90,000 years ago, Australia was dotted with gigantic inland “megalakes”. At those times, the lagoon expanded into a large, shallow depression surrounded by lush monsoon forest, with almost no grass.
When human fire management began
The Girraween record is one of the few long-term climate records that covers the period before people arrived in Australia some 65,000 years ago, as well as after. This unique coverage provides us with the hard data indicating when the natural fire regime (infrequent, high-intensity fires) switched to a human-managed one (frequent, low-intensity fires).
The data show that by at least 11,000 years ago, as the climate began to resemble the modern climate that established itself after the last ice age, fires became more frequent but less intense.
Frequent, low-intensity fire is the hallmark of Indigenous fire regimes that were observed across northern Australia at European arrival. Our data also showed tantalising indications that this change from a natural to human-dominated fire regime occurred progressively from as early as 40,000 years ago, but it certainly did not occur instantaneously.
Vegetation recovering after a human-ignited ‘cool’ fire. Cassandra Rowe / James Cook University
Unlocking Girraween’s secrets with modern scientific techniques has provided unprecedented insights into how the tropical savannas of Australia, and their attendant biodiversity, coevolved over millennia under this new Indigenous fire regime that reduced risk and increased resources.
The rapid change to a European fire regime – with large, intense fires occurring late in the dry season – abruptly regressed patterns to the pre-human norm. This ecosystem-scale shock altered a carefully nurtured biodiversity established over tens of thousands of years and simultaneously increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Reversing these dangerous trends in Australia’s tropical savanna requires re-establishing an Indigenous fire regime through projects such as the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement managed by Indigenous land managers. By implication, the reintroduction of Indigenous land management in other parts of the world could help reduce the impacts of catastrophic fires and increase carbon sequestration in the future.
Cassandra Rowe receives funding from the Australian Research Council
Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Michael Bird receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn Campbell, Professor, School of Early Childhood & Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology
Mobile phones are currently banned in all Australian state schools and many Catholic and independent schools around the country. This is part of a global trend over more than a decade to restrict phone use in schools.
But previous research has shown there is little evidence on whether the bans actually achieve these aims.
Many places that restricted phones in schools before Australia did have now reversed their decisions. For example, several school districts in Canada implemented outright bans then revoked them as they were too hard to maintain. They now allow teachers to make decisions that suit their own classrooms.
A ban was similarly revoked in New York City, partly because bans made it harder for parents to stay in contact with their children.
What does recent research say about phone bans in schools?
Our study
We conducted a “scoping review” of all published and unpublished global evidence for and against banning mobile phones in schools.
Our review, which is pending publication, aims to shed light on whether mobile phones in schools impact academic achievement (including paying attention and distraction), students’ mental health and wellbeing, and the incidence of cyberbullying.
A scoping review is done when researchers know there aren’t many studies on a particular topic. This means researchers cast a very inclusive net, to gather as much evidence as possible.
Our team screened 1,317 articles and reports as well as dissertations from masters and PhD students. We identified 22 studies that examined schools before and after phone bans. There was a mix of study types. Some looked at multiple schools and jurisdictions, some looked at a small number of schools, some collected quantitative data, others sought qualitative views.
In a sign of just how little research there is on this topic, 12 of the studies we identified were done by masters and doctoral students. This means they are not peer-reviewed but done by research students under supervision by an academic in the field.
But in a sign of how fresh this evidence is, almost half the studies we identified were published or completed since 2020.
The studies looked at schools in Bermuda, China, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Malawi, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. None of them looked at schools in Australia.
Our research found four studies that identified a slight improvement in academic achievement when phones were banned in schools. However, two of these studies found this improvement only applied to disadvantaged or low-achieving students.
Some studies compared schools where there were partial bans against schools with complete bans. This is a problem because it confuses the issue.
But three studies found no differences in academic achievement, whether there were mobile phone bans or not. Two of these studies used very large samples. This masters thesis looked at 30% of all schools in Norway. Another study used a nationwide cohort in Sweden. This means we can be reasonably confident in these results.
Mental health and wellbeing
Two studies in our review, including this doctoral thesis, reported mobile phone bans had positive effects on students’ mental health. However, both studies used teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of students’ wellbeing (the students were not asked themselves).
Two other studies showed no differences in psychological wellbeing following mobile phone bans. However, three studies reported more harm to students’ mental health and wellbeing when they were subjected to phone bans.
The students reported they felt more anxious without being able to use their phone. This was especially evident in one doctoral thesis carried out when students were returning to school after the pandemic, having been very reliant on their devices during lockdown.
So the evidence for banning mobile phones for the mental health and wellbeing of student is inconclusive and based only on anecdotes or perceptions, rather than the recorded incidence of mental illness.
Some studies on the impact of mobile phone bans on mental health are based on parent and teacher perceptions – not students’ own views. Priscilla Du Preez/Unsplash, CC BY
Bullying and cyberbullying
Four studies reported a small reduction in bullying in schools following phone bans, especially among older students. However, the studies did not specify whether or not they were talking about cyberbullying.
Teachers in two other studies, including this doctoral thesis, reported they believed having mobile phones in schools increased cyberbullying.
But two other studies showed the number of incidents of online victimisation and harassment was greater in schools with mobile phone bans compared with those without bans. The study didn’t collect data on whether the online harassment was happening inside or outside school hours.
The authors suggested this might be because students saw the phone bans as punitive, which made the school climate less egalitarian and less positive. Other research has linked a positive school climate with fewer incidents of bullying.
There is no research evidence that students do or don’t use other devices to bully each other if there are phone bans. But it is of course possible for students to use laptops, tablets, smartwatches or library computers to conduct cyberbullying.
Even if phone bans were effective, they would not address the bulk of school bullying. A 2019 Australian study found 99% of students who were cyberbullied were also bullied face-to-face.
Overall, our study suggests the evidence for banning mobile phones in schools is weak and inconclusive.
As Australian education academic Neil Selwyn argued in 2021, the impetus for mobile phone bans says more about MPs responding to community concerns rather than research evidence.
Politicians should leave this decision to individual schools, which have direct experience of the pros or cons of a ban in their particular community. For example, a community in remote Queensland could have different needs and priorities from a school in central Brisbane.
Mobile phones are an integral part of our lives. We need to be teaching children about appropriate use of phones, rather than simply banning them. This will help students learn how to use their phones safely and responsibly at school, at home and beyond.
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.
This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here.
Australia’s rental vacancy rate has hit a historic low of close to zero. The latest estimate from SQM Research is 1.1%. The latest estimate from the property listing firm Domain is 0.7%.
As would be expected with hardly any of Australia’s rental properties vacant and available for rent, rents have soared – at first in 2022 only for newly advertised properties, and later for properties in general as measured by average rents.
The Bureau of Statistics measure of average capital city rents climbed 7.3% throughout 2023. It would have climbed by more – by 8.5% – had the bureau not taken account of the increased rent assistance in the May budget, which depressed recorded rents by 1.2%.
Demand surged while new supply sank
Vacancy rates have fallen and rents have climbed because the demand for living space has surged; at first in the aftermath of lockdowns as Australians sought accommodation with fewer housemates and more home office space, and later as borders reopened and Australia’s population swelled.
At the same time, the number of dwellings completed dived in response to shortages of both labour and materials.
Before COVID about 50,000 new dwellings were completed per quarter. Since then, completions have rarely exceeded 45,000.
Tweaking tax concessions would do little to help
While the Australian Greens are pressing the government to wind back capital gains tax concessions and limit negative gearing in order to wind back home prices, there’s little reason to think the changes would do much to reduce rents.
Half of all Australian landlords negatively gear by making a net loss on rental income in order to profit later from concessionally taxed capital gains. Attacking these tax concessions would be likely to cause some of them to reconsider being landlords.
But if they sold, more renters would be able to buy and stop renting, leaving the balance of renters and properties for rent little changed.
Rent assistance and caps won’t much help either
While there is popular support for increasing rent assistance, and while it has materially cut rents paid over the past year, it won’t create more rental properties.
Very big increases in rent assistance might even lift rents further by increasing the amount renters are able to pay. However, the effect is unlikely to be big because Commonwealth rent assistance is restricted to welfare recipients.
Rent caps or freezes don’t increase supply either, and run the risk of encouraging a black market in bidding to pay rents over the legally sanctioned cap.
What’s needed is more homes, in the right places
The government’s new Housing Australia Future Fund and associated agreements are intended to support the delivery of 20,000 new social and 20,000 new affordable homes over the next five years.
Separately, the Commonwealth and the states have agreed to an ambitious target of 1.2 million “new well-located homes” over the next five years, up from 918,200 over the past five years.
The Commonwealth has set aside A$3 billion for “performance-based funding” to the states paid at the rate of $15,000 for each new well-located home they deliver in excess of their share of 1 million new homes in five years.
If the states and territories are able to deliver 1.2 million homes over five years rather than 1 million, Grattan Institute analysis suggests rents will be 4% lower than they would have been.
NSW is displaying the sort of initiative that will be needed. The state is allowing developers of projects worth more than A$75 million to build taller buildings with more accommodation as long as they use 15% of the floor space for affordable housing.
NSW is also allowing denser development within 400 metres of 31 train stations.
Build-to-rent would help
In Australia, most rental properties (even apartments) are owned by individual so-called “mum and dad” investors.
Overseas in the United States and Europe, they are more likely to be owned by corporations who build entire blocks to lease.
These corporations are more concerned about long-term returns than individual owners who want the flexibility to sell, so they tend to offer long-term leases on better terms.
In last year’s budget the government offered build-to-rent tax rules which the Property Council of Australia says could create thousands of extra homes.
On one hand, they are unlikely to be homes for low-income renters. Developers require commercial returns. On the other hand, an increasing number of renters have high incomes.
The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute says while in 1996 households with incomes worth $140,000 a year or more in today’s dollars accounted for only 8% of renters, by 2021 they accounted for 24%.
Pre-fabs could also help, and more apprentices
Another thing that would help is encouraging the use of prefabrication to cut construction times and costs, using locally sourced materials.
Prefabricated homes were used to house migrants after the second world war. More recently they have been used to house NSW flood victims.
They will still require skilled builders and tradespeople, who are in short supply. Only about half of enrolled apprentices complete their training, and the dropout rate has been climbing.
The government has announced an in-depth review of Australia’s system of apprenticeship support. It’s due to report later this year.
It might also help to prioritise the migration of tradespeople. It’s hard to build more homes in the right places, but that’s what we need.
Ameeta Jain 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.
Men have historically, and still do, drink more than women. But in recent years there has been an uptick in women’s drinking, particularly among women in their late 30s through to their 60s.
But women still drink differently to men, and there are some important reasons why – particularly for women who juggle both paid work and motherhood.
In 2022, we conducted interviews with 22 Australian working mothers aged 36 to 51, to learn more about their daily lives and the role alcohol played. Most of the women were middle-class professionals. Many were partnered to men, some were single, and all had school-aged children they looked after alongside their jobs.
Now, more than ever, women are entering the workforce and developing careers. At the same time, many also have to meet the demands of having children. While we like to think we’re moving towards a more equal society, women are still expected to do the majority of childcare and domestic duties.
This means many women are having to do “double shifts” of paid and unpaid labour, increasing the chance they’re stressed, and limiting how much time they have to relax, unwind, and pursue hobbies. This is where alcohol comes in.
Most women we talked to felt over-committed because of their competing roles. Whether they had partners or not, they were often taking on the “default” caregiver role. This involved tasks such as getting kids ready for school, cooking, cleaning, and organising appointments.
At the same time, their jobs could be mentally or emotionally stressful, such as working in health care or project management.
And it wasn’t uncommon for these two worlds to overlap. For example, some women talked about needing to send emails or make calls from home outside work hours, or feeling there was an expectation for them to take time off work to take kids to appointments.
Many women were fatigued, and they felt a sense of guilt at not being able to commit fully to either role. As Mia, a full-time employed, partnered mother said:
You’ll spend your life feeling compromised, doing a half job as a parent, and a half job as a worker.
When participants talked about drinking alcohol, it was something accessible they could do alongside their home duties. For example, a glass of wine while cooking dinner was almost ubiquitous. Drinking helped women manage busy days, and the amount they drunk was not always something they had the capacity to be mindful of. As Caroline, a full-time employed, separated mother explained:
We don’t sit down and stand around like the boys do drinking, with the beer cans round our feet. We drink a glass of wine while we cook tea […] while we’re sitting doing the kids’ homework or arguing with them about, ‘where’s your sock? Where’s your library book?’ […] it makes it very easy to think ‘I’ve only had one glass of wine’ when you’ve had three or four, because you’re not mindful of what you’re doing.
Many of the women we talked to also described feeling under-supported. This included at work, where they felt there wasn’t always enough flexibility to accommodate their parental obligations, and at home, where their partners were not always around to share the workload.
These stresses and pressures meant alcohol became a “prize” or “reward” for getting through the day. And when participants felt particularly stressed or under-supported (which was often), the reward of a drink at the end of the day was all the more important. According to Penelope, a part-time employed, separated mother:
I think that I reach out to drinking at the end of the day because I’m really quite overwhelmed, or quite exhausted mentally and physically from the day.
Things became even more complicated during the COVID pandemic. Women suddenly took on “triple shifts” – mothering, working and home-schooling – leaving many feeling even more overwhelmed. As Belle, a partnered mother who worked part time, said:
We were all working and trying to home school, and it was just so awful […] so I guess my girlfriends were going through that too, the ones with kids, and they were all definitely drinking a lot more.
The chaos of the pandemic left working mothers feeling even more overwhelmed. Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Alcohol was classified as an “essential service” during lockdowns (bottle shops remained open while many other retail stores closed), and against this backdrop, participants felt it became even more normalised. They talked about seeing media depictions and advertising of alcohol, including online memes that made wine out as a way to cope with the pandemic. Belle said:
Everyone would send each other little memes of women just drinking, and it definitely became […] a socially acceptable way of getting through that really shit time.
Hobbies and exercise activities they would previously turn to to relieve stress were often restricted because of the pandemic. As such, alcohol became one of the few things left. Many women we talked to were either drinking more, more often, or felt an increased desire to drink, especially during the height of the pandemic and when they were home-schooling.
To understand why and how modern working mothers drink alcohol, it’s also important to consider how the alcohol industry targets women, often framing alcohol as a symbol of relief and relaxation among busy working mothers.
But it’s equally important to realise being a modern working mother is tough, especially as traditional gender expectations of women as carers persist. Almost 60 years ago, the Rolling Stones sang about “mother’s little helper” in reference to women using substances to manage everyday life.
Until we see changes in the way women are supported at work and home, alcohol may continue being “mother’s little helper” for many working mothers.
Maree Patsouras receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and the Australian Research Council.
Cassandra Wright receives salary funding from the Australian Research Council. She also receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, Northern Territory Motor Accident Compensation Commission, Music NT and Menzies School of Health Research internal grant scheme.
Emmanuel Kuntsche receives funding from La Trobe University, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Research Council (ARC), and the University of Bayreuth Centre of International Excellence “Alexander von Humboldt”. Emmanuel Kuntsche serves as that Secretary of the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs (APSAD).
Gabriel Caluzzi receives funding via the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.
Sandra Kuntsche receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Our world may seem fragile, but Earth has been around for a very long time. If we ventured far back into the past, would we reach a time when it looked fundamentally different?
The answer lies in some of the earliest extensive relics of Earth’s surface, found in a remote corner of southern Africa’s highveld – a region known to geologists as the Barberton Greenstone Belt.
The geological formations in this region have proved difficult to decipher, despite many attempts. But our new research has shown the key to cracking this code lies in geologically young rocks laid down on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
This has opened up a new perspective on what our planet looked like when it was still young.
Our work began with a new, detailed geological map (by Cornel de Ronde) of part of the Barberton Greenstone Belt. This has revealed a fragment of the ancient deep seafloor, created some 3.3 billion years ago.
There was, however, something very strange about this seafloor, and it has taken our study of rocks laid down in New Zealand, at the other end of the Earth’s long history, to make sense of it.
We argue that the widely held view of the early Earth as a hotter place, free of earthquakes and with a surface so weak it was unable to form rigid plates is wrong.
Instead, the young Earth was continually rocked by large earthquakes, triggered as one tectonic plate slid beneath another in a subduction zone as part of plate tectonics – just like New Zealand today.
The geological formations of the Barberton Greenstone Belt have proved difficult to decipher. Shutterstock/Instinctively RDH
Jumbled rocks
Geologists have long found it hard to interpret the ancient rocks of the Barberton Greenstone Belt.
Layers that formed on land or in shallow water – for example, beautiful crystals of barite that had crystallised as evaporites, or the remains of bubbling mud pools – are found sitting on top of rocks that accumulated on the deep seafloor. Blocks of volcanic rock, chert, sandstone and conglomerate lie topsy turvy and jumbled up.
We realised this map looked remarkably similar to a geological map (by Simon Lamb) made of the aftermath of much more recent submarine landslides. These were triggered by great earthquakes along New Zealand’s largest fault, the megathrust in the Hikurangi subduction zone.
The bedrock is made of a jumble of sedimentary rocks, originally laid down on the seafloor off the coast of New Zealand some 20 million years ago. This region lay on the edges of the deep oceanic trench, where the Pacific tectonic plate is sliding down in a subduction zone triggering frequent large earthquakes.
This sketch profile through the New Zealand subduction zone shows how the bedrock in the shallow shelf region is sliding down into deeper water, where huge blocks pile up on top of each other. Simon Lamb, CC BY-SA
The rocks in New Zealand are the key to reading the geological record in the Barberton Greenstone Belt.
What was once thought to be untranslatable turns out to be a remnant of a gigantic landslide containing sediments deposited both on land or in very shallow water, jumbled with those that accumulated on the deep seafloor.
This detail of a new map by Cornel de Ronde of the Barberton Greenstone Belt shows jumbled rocks with the remains of underwater landslides consisting of huge slide blocks. We think it is the inevitable consequence of one tectonic plate sliding beneath another in a subduction zone, periodically rocked by great earthquakes. Cornel de Ronde, CC BY-SA
The importance of this lies in the fact that New Zealand’s geological record is uniquely created by the profound effects of large earthquakes in a subduction zone. This is still happening today, most recently in November 2016, when the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake set off vast submarine landslides and debris avalanches that flowed down into deep water.
We found the oldest record of these earthquakes, hidden in the highveld of southern Africa.
The key to other mysteries
Our work may have unlocked other mysteries, too, because subduction zones are also associated with explosive volcanic eruptions.
In January 2022, Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted with the energy of a 60 Megaton atomic bomb, sending a vast cloud of ash into space. Over the next 11 hours, more than 200,000 lightning strikes flashed through this cloud.
In the same volcanic region, underwater volcanoes are erupting an extremely rare type of lava called boninite. This is the closest modern example of a lava that was common in the early Earth.
The vast amounts of volcanic ash found in the Barberton Greenstone Belt may be an ancient record of similar volcanic violence. Perhaps the associated lightning strikes created the crucible for life where the basic organic molecules were forged.
Hidden deep in the south-west Pacific are echoes of our planet not long after it was created. They provide unexpected clues about the origins of the world we know today, and possibly life itself. The key to this turns out to be the subduction of tectonic plates.
Simon Lamb receives funding from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Cornel de Ronde 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.
A $4 billion ten-year agreement between the federal and Northern Territory governments that aims to see up to 270 houses built annually in remote Indigenous communities will be unveiled by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday.
The federal government is contributing $2.1 billion, of which about $844 million is new money.
While most of the funding is for new houses, the Commonwealth is committing $120 million over three years to match the NT government’s annual investment for housing and infrastructure upgrades in homelands.
Albanese will make the announcement when he visits the community of Binjari near Katherine. The federal cabinet is meeting in Darwin on Wednesday.
A partnership agreement will be set up, to support the delivery of the housing, between the two governments and Aboriginal Housing NT, the NT’s peak First Nations housing body, and Aboriginal Land Councils.
Albanese said in a statement released ahead of the announcement the “landmark agreement” would help close the gap between Indigenous and other Australians.
“The Northern Territory has the highest level of over-crowding in the country which we are working to halve by building 270 houses each year,” the Prime Minister said.
Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney described the agreement as “an historic investment”. “Increasing housing supply will ease overcrowding which we know is a major barrier to closing he gap,” she said.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler said the agreement would “achieve unprecedented housing outcomes across the Territory. The commitment to build 2700 homes in ten years means new homes for more than 10,000 people.
“This is a game changer for the Territory, as this investment goes straight into the hands of our remote communities and Territory businesses.”
The closing the gap national target on housing is to increase the proportion of Indigenous people living in appropriately sized, not overcrowded, housing to 88% by 2031. There has been improvement but it is not on track.
Since the failure of the Voice referendum the Albanese government is looking to roll out practical measures on closing the gap. The housing announcement follows a $700 million Remote Jobs program aimed at creating 3000 jobs over three years.
The NT government faces an election this year. It has been plagued with problems, including the high rate of crime in the territory and internal scandals.
Michelle Grattan 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.
A government-instituted taskforce has proposed older Australians should pay more of the cost of their aged care, while steering clear of politically fraught options such as a levy or touching the family home to help finance the sector.
Under the recommendations from the Aged Care Taskforce, refundable accommodation deposits (RADs) would eventually be phased out, replaced by a rental-only model. A co-contribution-for-service model for home care would be established.
The taskforce, chaired by Aged Care Minister Anika Wells and with representation from the sector, was charged with examining how funding can be put on a more sustainable basis.
The report says with an ageing population more funding will be needed from both government and participants in the home and residential care sectors.
It contains no costings and the government has not provided its response.
A Royal Commission into the sector under the Morrison government favoured a levy to assist with aged care funding but the commissioners were split over the model. The Albanese government does not want to stir that hornet’s nest.
The report says that over the next 40 years, the number of people over 80 is set to triple to more than 3.5 million.
Government spending on aged care as a proportion of GDP is projected to grow from 1.1% in 2021-22 to 2.5% in 2062-63.
It is estimated that $37 billion investment (in today’s dollars) would be needed to build the extra aged care rooms required in 2050.
Over the decade to 2030 additional investment of about $5.5 billion would be needed to refurbish and upgrade existing aged care rooms, increasing to $19 billion by 2050.
“Current funding arrangements will not deliver the required amount of capital funding,” the report says.
The demand for home care has been increasing strongly: over the next 20 years an average annual increase of 44,000 participants is forecast, totalling nearly two million older people using home care by 2042, compared with about one million now.
“To meet this demand, the home care sector will need to be financially stable and administratively efficient,” the report says.
There are three components in relation to residential care funding: for the care itself, for living costs (food, cleaning, laundry, etc), and for accommodation.
In residential care, the government should continue to focus on care costs, “with a significant role for resident co-contributions in non-care components,” the report says.
At present the government pays for most of the care component (some 94%) and the report suggests taking this to 100%. It wants the daily living component that residents pay boosted, subject to a safety net.
Backing its case for more user-pays, the taskforce says older people are wealthier than in earlier generations, while the tax burden “is being shared among an increasingly smaller group of people as the proportion of the working age population declines”.
“It is appropriate older people make a fair co-contribution to the cost of their aged care based on their means,” the report says.
The report says aged care providers are on average losing $4 per resident a day on daily living costs. They have little flexibility to get more revenue for this.
“There is therefore a critical need for increased funding towards everyday living expenses. The Taskforce believes this should be largely paid for through greater resident co-contributions to ensure sustainability, but with a strong means tested safety net for those who cannot pay a higher rate, such as full-rate pensioners with no other income or assets.”
For residents to meet their daily living costs the taskforce recommends a Basic Daily Fee and a supplement.
The Basic Daily Fee already exists – the taskforce is recommending this continues but with the supplement increased to meet the full cost of everyday living expenses and also means tested so that wealthier residents contribute more towards everyday living.
The taskforce is critical of Refundable Accommodation Deposits, under which people pay an amount which is refundable when they die or leave.
“Phasing out RADs would improve simplicity and equity for residents and reduce liquidity risks for providers.
“RADs create inequity between residents based on how they pay for their accommodation. Wealthier residents who can afford a RAD receive their deposit back in full when they leave care and make no direct contribution to their accommodation costs, while DAP [Daily Accommodation Payment] payers make a significant annual contribution.
“Phasing out RADs will mean all incoming residents will pay using a rental model, making outcomes for residents more consistent, and fees easier for older people to understand.”
The taskforce says that after an independent review in 2030, by 2035 the sector should no longer accept RADs, moving to a rental model. That would be subject to the review finding there was appropriate financial sustainability for the sector and care was affordable for consumers.
In the near term, providers should retain a portion of the RAD to make an immediate improvement in the sector’s financial sustainability, the report recommends.
Michelle Grattan 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.
Like most biopics, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer – which won seven awards, including the big one, Best Picture – seems kind of silly, an exercise in dress up. We watch “serious” actors like Robert Downey Jr. (who won Best Supporting Actor) and Cillian Murphy (Best Actor) go to extraordinary lengths to essentially imitate real life people, inevitably failing to be 100% true to life.
Similarly, the narrative – tracing the involvement of J. Robert Oppenheimer in the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb that would eventually devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki – plods along in a way true story narratives often do.
There’s none of the precision and wit that often characterise genre films, their entanglement with questions of narrative and aesthetic form necessitated by their highly formulaic nature.
Yet Oppenheimer winning Best Picture is no travesty; in fact, it makes a lot of sense.
It works well as an engaging exercise in image and sound, a viscerally charged and hypnotic spectacle shimmering on the big screen shot in glorious 70mm film.
Typically for a Nolan film, it is pretentious and heavy-handed, and seems to think it is more important than it actually is. But as a fun romp through the 1950s – that perennially fetishished period in American cinema and culture – it works splendidly.
It was certainly not the best film nominated, nor the best film of 2023, but it does work as a piece of cinema.
There’s something refreshing about this fact alone: the Academy has eschewed the tedium of the usual didactic, message-driven cinema that has dominated recent years and have rewarded a technically and formally accomplished work, something that actually considers its medium and effectively works within it.
Awards ceremonies are often taken as opportunities to make political statements through dress. At the Oscars, these statements usually take the form of subtle pins or ribbons. In 2021, multiple attendees wore blue #withrefugees ribbons in support of Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
This year, in response to the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, numerous attendees, including Billie Eilish (in Chanel) and Finneas O’Connell, Ava DuVernay (in custom Louis Vuitton), Ramy Youssef (in a chic black thobe by Zegna), Mahershala Ali, Riz Ahmed and Mark Ruffalo donned red Artists4Ceasefire pins.
Other statements are made through design itself.
For Lily Gladstone, the first Native American to be nominated in the Best Actress category, this meant wearing a chic black Gucci column dress featuring a stunning midnight blue train with beading by Indigenous Mohawk, Cree & Comanche artist Joe Big Mountain of Ironhorse Quillwork.
Despite the political nature of these examples, the Academy Awards is conventionally a rather conservative affair. This year was no different. The dominant colour choice for all genders was black, sparkles abounded, and silhouettes were chic, albeit predictable.
Some of the standouts in this sea of monochrome predictability were ensembles by Jonathan Anderson at Loewe. Greta Lee oozed easy elegance in a black and white draped gown straight from the Fall 2024 runway, Celine Song continued her commitment to tailoring in a sharp skirt and blazer, and Andrea Riseborough broke through the shine and shimmer with a long-sleeved plaid dress unlike anything else on the red carpet.
Other highlights included Sandra Hüller in custom Schiaparelli, with sharply winged sleeve detail reminiscent of a gown by Gilbert Adrian worn by American socialite Millicent Rogers in 1947, Emma Stone in mint green Louis Vuitton with a peplum that recalled the exuberant sleeve detailing of her Best Costume Design award-winning costumes in Poor Things, and Wim Wenders in the same Yohji Yamamoto outfit he modelled on the catwalk back in January.
– Harriette Richards
The power of First Nations voices
In a truly historic moment, the Oscars included a powerful performance by Osage musician and composer Scott George with the Osage Tribal Singers performing Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People) from Killers of the Flower Moon.
Wahzhazhe is a song for public consumption, not for ceremonial purposes, and with it George is the first Native American man to receive an Oscar nomination for best original song, losing out to Billie Elish.
The Oscars requires music be submitted for consideration in written form. However, the Osage do not generally keep written music — rather, it is kept in memory. George told Billboard it took “three or four days” to write the work down in musical notation.
Killers of the Flower Moon was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Actress for Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce actor Lily Gladstone who plays Mollie Burkhart. Unbelievably, Gladstone is the first Native American woman to be nominated for best actress in a leading role, but unfortunately missed out on the Oscar, to Emma Stone of Poor Things.
Indigenous communities globally were waiting with bated breath – but regardless of no Oscar, everyone was excited to see her nominated.
Stories like Killer of the Flower Moon, about the “Reign of Terror” where dozens of Osage were brutally murdered, need to be told so that they don’t get to be forgotten. It is both overdue and exciting to see more Indigenous peoples taking leading roles in films, and the success of Killers of the Flower Moon should make Hollywood pay attention that people want these stories to be told.
Even without winning big at these Oscars, Killers of the Flower Moon includes a wonderful cast of Native American actors including Tantoo Cardinal who plays Lizzie Q, mother to Gladstone’s character Mollie Burkhart, and her sisters who are played by Cara Jade Myers (Anna), JaNae Collins (Reta) and Jillian Dion (Minnie).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Da’Vine Joy Randolph gave the first acceptance speech at this year’s Oscars ceremony, awarded Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Holdovers, and she led it with thanks to God.
The ceremony’s 45 second limit on acceptance speeches gives more opportunities for meaningful comment to the presenters than the winners.
Host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening roast was generous towards the Barbie movie, a nod to its gender-inclusive feminism that drew loud applause. He unloaded on Donald Trump near the show’s end, to politically aligned chuckles. More striking, the In Memoriam section led with a cameo from Alexei Navalny that epitomised what polemic can put at stake to move us.
I counted four nominees for the Most Impassioned Acceptance Speech.
Cord Jefferson (Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction) advocated that movie financiers be more ready to take risks by backing less experienced movie-makers.
Jonathan Glazer (Best International Feature Film) positioned his film about Auschwitz, The Zone of Interest, as a call for an end to the mutual dehumanisation that sustains the long war in Israel and in Palestine.
Mstyslav Chernov (Best Documentary) wished he had never had the cause to make a film so successful as 20 Days in Mariupol, his response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
These were passionate and heartfelt speeches, while Randolph’s was passionate, heartfelt and mesmerising.
For the rest, it was largely acceptances by the numbers. There were variously entertaining, grandiose, self-deprecating and anecdote-rich versions of “thank you” from people who make it their life’s work to imbue set-piece moments with meaning.
Ryan Gosling’s performance of I’m Just Ken, written and produced by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, was the definite standout Best original Song of the 2024 Oscars.
I’m Just Ken was one of two songs nominated from Barbie, alongside Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell’s What Was I Made For. They were joined by Becky G’s The Fire Inside from Flamin’ Hot, Jon Batiste’s It Never Went Away from American Symphony, and Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People) from Killers of the Flower Moon.
Becky G celebrated her Mexican American heritage with a passionate performance of The Fire Inside, accompanied beautifully by a choir of Latino children and a blazing visual backdrop.
Jon Batiste’s mesmerising performance of It Never Went Away from American Symphony brought home the deep love and devotion he has for his wife, Suleika Jaouad.
Billie Eilish’s ballad What Was I Made For ultimately won the award for best original song. Her performance was emotional, with her co-writer and producer brother, Finneas O’Connell, accompanying her on the piano. A beautiful orchestral arrangement that brought flair and gravitas to the stage.
Scott George and the Osage Tribal Singers performance of Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People) from Killers Of The Flower Moon was a powerful statement of the strength of what energy collective singers and percussion bring to a performance.
But as the Oscars performances reminded us, sometimes the intimacy of quiet drama sends the loudest message.
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.
Papua New Guinea and Indonesia have formally ratified a defence agreement a decade after its initial signing.
PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and the Indonesian ambassador to the Pacific nation, Andriana Supandy, convened a press briefing in Port Moresby on February 29 to declare the ratification.
The agreement enables an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
According to Tkatchenko as reported by RNZ Pacific citing Benar News, “The Joint border patrols and different types of defence cooperation between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea of course will be part of the ever-growing security mechanism.”
“It would be wonderful to witness the collaboration between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, both now and in the future, as they work together side by side. Indonesia is a rising Southeast Asian power that reaches into the South Pacific region and dwarfs Papua New Guinea in population, economic size and military might,” added the minister.
In recent years, Indonesia has been asserting its own regional hegemony in the Pacific amid the rivalries of two superpowers — the United States and China.
Indonesia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi reiterated Indonesia’s commitment to bolster collaboration with Pacific nations amid heightened geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific region during the recent 2024 annual press statement held by the minister for foreign affairs at the Asian-African Conference in Bandung.
Diverse Indigenous states The Pacific Islands are home to diverse sovereign Indigenous states and islands, and also home to two influential regional powers, Australia and New Zealand. This vast diverse region is increasingly becoming a pivotal strategic and political battleground for foreign powers — aiming to win the hearts and minds of the populations and governments in the region.
Numerous visible and hidden agreements, treaties, talks, and partnerships are being established among local, regional, and global stakeholders in the affairs of this vast region.
The Pacific region carries great importance for powerful military and economic entities such as China, the United States and its coalition, and Indonesia. For them, it serves as a crucial area for strategic bases, resource acquisition, food, and commercial routes.
For Indigenous islanders, states, and tribal communities, the primary concern is around the loss of their territories, islands, and other vital cultural aspects, such as languages and traditional wisdom.
The crumbling of Oceania, reminiscent of its past colonisation by various European powers, is now occurring. However, this time it is being orchestrated by foreign entities appointing their own influential local pawns.
With these local pawns in place, foreign monarchs, nobility, warlords, and miscreants are advancing to reshape the region’s fate.
The rejection by the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to acknowledge the representation of West Papua by the United Liberation for West Papua (ULMWP) as a full member of the regional body in August 2023 highlights the diminishing influence of MSG leaders in decision-making processes concerning issues that are deemed crucial by the Papuan community as part of the “Melanesian family affairs”.
Suspicion over ‘external forces’ This raises suspicion of external forces at play within the Melanesian nations, manipulating their destinies. The question arises, who is orchestrating the fate of the Melanesian nations?
Is it Jakarta, Beijing, Washington, or Canberra?
In a world characterised by instability, safety and security emerges as a crucial prerequisite for fostering a peaceful coexistence, nurturing friendships, and enabling development.
The critical question at hand pertains to the nature of the threats that warrant such protective measures, the identities of both the endangered and the aggressors, and the underlying rationale and mechanisms involved. Whose safety hangs in the balance in this discourse?
And between whom does the spectre of threat loom?
If you are a realist in a world of policymaking, it is perhaps wise not to antagonise the big guy with the big weapon in the room. The Minister of Papua New Guinea may be attempting to underscore the importance of Indonesia in the Pacific region, as indicated by his statements.
If you are West Papuan, it makes little difference whether one leans towards realism or idealism. What truly matters is the survival of West Papuans, in the midst of the significant settler colonial presence of Asian Indonesians in their ancestral homeland.
West Papuan refugee camp Two years ago, PNG’s minister stated the profound existential sentiments experienced by the West Papuans in 2022 while visiting a West Papuan refugee community in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
During the visit, the minister addressed the West Papuan refugees with the following words:
“The line on the map in middle of the island (New Guinea) is the product of colonial impact. These West Papuans are part of our family, part of our members and part of Papua New Guinea. They are not strangers.
“We are separated only by imaginary lines, which is why I am here. I did not come here to fight, to yell, to scream, to dictate, but to reach a common understanding — to respect the law of Papua New Guinea and the sovereignty of Indonesia.”
These types of ambiguous and opaque messages and rhetoric not only instil fake hope among the West Papuans, but also produce despair among displaced Papuans on their own soil.
The seemingly paradoxical language coupled with the significant recent security agreement with the entity — Indonesia — that has been oppressing the West Papuans under the pretext of sovereignty, signifies one ominous prospect:
Is PNG endorsing a “death decree” for the Indonesian security apparatus to hunt Papuans along the border and mountainous region of West Papua and Papua New Guinea?
Security for West Papua Currently, the situation in West Papua is deteriorating steadily. Thousands of Indonesian military personnel have been deployed to various regions in West Papua, especially in the areas afflicted by conflict, such as Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak, Puncak Jaya, Star Mountain, and along the border separating Papua New Guinea from West Papua.
On the 27 February 2024, Indonesian military personnel captured two teenage students and fatally shot a Papuan civilian in the Yahukimo district. They alleged that the deceased individual was affiliated with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNB), although this assertion has yet to be verified by the TPNPB.
Such incidents are tragically a common occurrence throughout West Papua, as the Indonesian military continue to target and wrongfully accuse innocent West Papuans in conflict-ridden regions of being associated with the TPNPB.
Two West Papuan students who were arrested on the banks of Braza River in Yahukimo . . . under the watch of two Indonesian military with heavy SS2 guns standing behind them. Image: Kompas.com
These deplorable acts transpired just prior to the ratification of a border operation agreement between the governments of the Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
As the security agreement was being finalised, the Indonesian government announced a new military campaign in the highlands of West Papua. This operation, is named as “Habema” — meaning “must succeed to the maximum” — and was initiated in Jakarta on the 29 February 2024.
Agus Subiyanto, the Indonesian military command and police command stated during the announcement:
“My approach for Papua involves smart power, a blend of soft power, hard power, and military diplomacy. Establishing the Habema operational command is a key step in ensuring maximum success.”
Indonesian military commander General Agus Subiyanto (left) with National Police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo (centre) and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto while checking defence equipment at the TNI headquarters in Jakarta last Wednesday. Prabowo (right) is expected to become President after his decisive victory in the elections last week. Image: Antara News.
The looming military operation in West Papua and its border regions, employing advanced smart weapon technology poised a profound danger for Papuans.
A looming humanitarian crisis in West Papua, PNG, broader Melanesia and the Pacific region is inevitable, as unmanned aerial drones discern targets indiscriminately, wreak havoc in homes, and villages of the Papuan communities.
The Indonesian security forces have increasingly employed such sophisticated technology in conflict zones since 2019, including regions like Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Pegunungan Bintang, and other volatile regions in West Papua.
Consequently, villages have been razed to the ground, compelling inhabitants to flee to the jungle in search of sanctuary — an exodus that continues unabated as they remain displaced from their homes indefinitely.
On 5 April 2018, the Indonesian government announced a military operation known as Damai Cartenz, which remains active in conflict-ridden regions, such as Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga, and Intan Jaya.
The Habema security initiative will further threaten Papuans residing in the conflict zones, particularly in the vicinity of the border shared by Papua New Guinea and West Papua.
There are already hundreds of people from the Star Mountains who have fled across to Tumolbil, in the Yapsie sub-district of the PNG province of West Sepik, situated on the border. They fled to PNG because of Indonesia’s military operation (RNZ 2021).
According to RNZ News, individuals fleeing military actions conducted by the Indonesian government, including helicopter raids that caused significant harm to approximately 14 villages, have left behind foot tracks.
The speaker explained that Papua New Guineans occasionally cross over to the Indonesian side, typically seeking improved access to basic services.
The PNG government has been placing refugees from West Papua in border camps, the biggest one being at East Awin in the Western Province for many decades, with assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
How should PNG, UN respond? The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007, article 36, states that “Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation with their own members as well as other peoples across borders”.
Over the past six years, regional and international organisations, such as the Melanesian Spearheads groups (MSG), Pacific islands Forum (PIF), Africa, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP), the UN’s human rights commissioner as well as dozens of countries and individual parliaments, lawyers, academics, and politicians have been asking the Indonesian government to allow the UN’s human rights commissioner to visit West Papua.
However, to date, no response has been received from the Indonesian government.
What does this security deal mean for West Papuans? This is not just a simple security arrangement between Jakarta and Port Moresby to address border conflicts, but rather an issue of utmost importance for the people of Papua.
It concerns the sovereignty of a nation — West Papua — that has been unjustly seized by Indonesia, while the international community watched in silence, witnessing the unfurling and unparalleled destruction of human lives and the ecological system.
There is one noble thing the foreign minister of PNG and his government can do: ask why Jakarta is not responding to the request for a UN visit made by the international community, rather than endorsing an ‘illegal security pact’ with the illegal Indonesia colonial occupier over his supposed “family members separated only by imaginary lines”.
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands that share a border with the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He graduated last year with a Master of Arts in International Relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.
A secret ballot by members of the Association of University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and USP Staff Union have voted in favour of strike action at the institution.
Unofficial results in the poll last Wednesday showed 63 percent in favour, above the needed majority threshold.
AUSPS general secretary Rosalia Fatiaki said staff missed out on salary adjustments in 2019 and 2022.
Fatiaki said the union had not pushed USP at the time to adjust the salaries because they were told the university was in a financial crisis.
The regional university gave staff a two percent pay rise in October 2022, January 2023, and January this year.
However, Fatiaki said it was “way below” the increase needed to match the cost of living in Fiji and unions had not been consulted.
“The management has refused to negotiate salary adjustment and that is what the secret ballot was for,” she said.
USP not engaged “We now demand that the university be just and fair to staff by looking and negotiating salary adjustments with the union.”
Fatiaki said USP used to contribute an additional two percent above the national minimum for its superannuation contribution to senior staff but this was reduced to the minimum during the covid-19 pandemic and had not returned which the union was demanding.
She said USP had not engaged with the union but had cited financial reasons for withholding pay.
USP’s vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia . . . both campus unions hope he will “come to the table”. Image: USP
Fatiaki said this was despite more students being on the USP roll.
She said the union was now waiting on Fiji’s Labour Ministry to advise the on next course of action.
“We have not received a confirmation from [the ministry], they have acknowledged the receipt of the secret ballot results and they are yet to formally provide us that confirmation. So we are awaiting for that and we are expecting that to come through today (Friday).”
Fatiaki said she hoped vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia would “come to the table” and take staff grievances seriously.
‘Going round and round’ “We are going round and round and round,” she said.
“Rather than [Professor Ahluwalia] coming to tell us ‘no we can’t, we will not [meet the unions demands]’, he’s sending the representatives to come and talk to us and then they go [and] back to him.
“Now it’s time for him to come to the table and deal with the issues.”
She said staff dissatisfaction with Professor Ahluwalia was not a reason for the strike.
However, she said union members had expressed concerns about the vice-chancellor’s leadership because of “numerous unresolved issues”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University
Australia, Canada and New Zealand share similar colonial stories. Historically, New Zealand has been the most interested of the three in thinking about how the universal human rights of equality, dignity and culture might gradually challenge the colonial order.
Australia hasn’t traditionally taken such issues as seriously, as the defeat of last year’s Voice to Parliament referendum suggested. It struggles to address the consequences of its stolen generations practices, while Canada struggles with the consequences of its residential schools legacy.
Both nations’ policies were intended to “breed out” the original inhabitants of those lands. New Zealand used “native schools”, among other measures of assimilation.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) offers an alternative non-colonial vision, however. While always contested, it has sometimes made New Zealand a leader in Indigenous-state relations.
But in the past month, modest policy developments in Australia, and a significant constitutional development in Canada, have highlighted the extent to which New Zealand is becoming an outlier in international Indigenous policy thinking.
Amending the Oranga Tamariki Act
As part of their coalition agreement, the National and ACT parties will remove section 7AA from child protection agency Oranga Tamariki’s governing legislation.
The section came into force in 2019, allowing “strategic partnerships” with iwi (tribes) and other Māori organisations to improve child care and protection.
In part, it was a response to successive independent reports finding fault with Oranga Tamariki’s ability to care effectively for children at risk, especially Māori children. Last month, the Ombudsman reported 109 “formal deficiencies” in the agency’s work between 2019 and 2023.
Some might argue section 7AA still gave the state too much power, especially when the agency continues to do such a poor job. But without the section, Māori will again be left without recourse within the act to challenge that state power.
Australia and Canada change course
Meanwhile, the Australian government has this year announced it will establish a National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People. According to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:
Indigenous children are almost eleven times more likely to be in out-of-home care than non-Indigenous children. The National Commissioner will focus on working with First Nations people on evidence-based programs and policies to turn those figures around.
It’s a simple ambition that won’t change overall power relationships. And it doesn’t have the far-reaching implications of the Supreme Court of Canada finding Indigenous peoples have an “inherent right of self-government, which includes jurisdiction in relation to child and family matters”.
But the notion that evidence counts, and that Indigenous people have a say in what constitutes that evidence, provides a sharp contrast with the current New Zealand government’s plan to remove reference to the Treaty from the Oranga Tamariki Act.
In Australia, some of the evidence Albanese referred to can be found in Safe & Supported: the national framework for protecting Australia’s children. Developed by the federal and state governments, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives and the non-government sector, it sets out various policies and priorities.
These cover the primary role of families, communities and cultures in effective care, holistic support services, and addressing the causes of abuse and neglect. Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act aimed to foster the same things.
Like Australia and New Zealand, Canada retains its colonial outlook. But its acknowledgement of the right of self-government – with reference to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – shows New Zealand is increasingly out of step on Indigenous policy.
The province of Québec objected to this federal law on the basis it weakened its own powers. However, Canada’s Supreme Court found against Québec. The national Assembly of First Nations said this paves the way to rebuild their role, as the people who preceded the modern state, in caring for children at risk.
Right to self-determination
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States were initially the only UN members to vote against it (11 abstained).
Over time, however, all four countries have come to agree with the rest of the world that the declaration didn’t create any new or special rights. It simply recognised that human rights belong to Indigenous peoples as much as to anybody else.
When New Zealand changed its position in 2010, then National Party leader and prime minister John Key said:
My objective is to build better relationships between Māori and the Crown, and I believe that supporting the declaration is a small but significant step in that direction.
Importantly, the declaration is not binding on member countries. But its essential premise is that Indigenous peoples have the same right to self-determination as others.
By repealing section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, and removing the requirement that Maori agencies are involved in decision making, the presumption that child care and protection policy should work equally well for Māori people is diminished.
This also weakens New Zealand’s commitment to the UN declaration’s insistence that Indigenous peoples have:
the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to […] violence […] including forcibly removing children of the group to another group.
Repealing section 7AA sets back New Zealand’s efforts to uphold those rights, at a time when similar countries are taking steps in the opposite direction.
Dominic O’Sullivan 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.
The 24th edition of the Biennale of Sydney, titled Ten Thousand Suns, is an explosion of joy and creative energy across seven venues, including the sails of the Opera House and White Bay Power Station.
This iteration, led by co-artistic directors Inti Guerrero and Cosmin Costinas, includes the work of 96 artists from 45 countries. Guerrero and Costinas proposed an overarching theme of “celebration” for this edition: celebration not only as an event or social practice, but a method of creative and collective resistance in dark times.
The debut of White Bay Power Station as the Biennale’s new venue and a site for ongoing cultural production is certainly worth celebrating. The Biennale is the first test event at White Bay, Sydney’s newest arts and culture precinct.
The imposing internal spaces provide space for ambitious, celebratory and experiential works. There is Dylan Mooney’s portrait of dancer and activist Malcolm Cole dressed as Captain Cook for Mardi Gras in 1988, and Kaylene Whiskey’s Kaylene TV, an interactive work in the form of a giant television set.
Kaylene TV , 2023 mixed media installation. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain with generous assistance from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. Courtesy the artist, Iwantja Arts and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns , White Bay Power Station. Photo by Daniel Boud.
The building’s history as a site of extractive industries is addressed in some works, such as Monira Al Qadiri’s video work, Crude Eye.
Others connect more closely to the curatorial themes of resistance, cultural hybridity and joy, like Andrew Thomas Huang’s suspended sculpture, The Beast of Jade Mountain: Queen Mother of the West, a powerful depiction of the Chinese deity Xiwangmu.
Andrew Thomas Huang, The Beast of Jade Mountain: Queen Mother of the West ( 西王母 ), 2023 – 2024. Polymer, steel, automotive paint. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from Terra Foundation for American Art. Courtesy the artist. 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns , White Bay Power Station. Photo by Daniel Boud.
The challenge for artworks displayed in sites such as White Bay is in the dialogue with the architecture itself. Here, artworks must compete with the visual impact of these spaces and their heritage machinery. This produces an overwhelming sense of the post-industrial sublime: a feeling of awe experienced in the huge and now-defunct “cathedrals of power”.
Curators working in post-industrial spaces often deal with this issue by programming large-scale, immersive installations or works responding directly to the building’s architecture.
Darrell Sibosabo’s Ngarrgidj Morr (the proper path to follow) is an illuminated reframing of traditional riji (pearl shell) designs from Bard Country in Western Australia. These shells have been ceremonially carved and worn for thousands of years. Through his large-scale light works, Sibosabo reiterates Aboriginal culture is alive, pulsing with energy and adaptive to change.
Darrell Sibosado Galalen at Gumiri, 2023 LED light installation. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Courtesy the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Sydney. 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, White Bay Power Station. Photo by Daniel Boud.
This work simultaneously responds to the building’s scale and connects to the curatorial premise of celebrating cultural practices maintained and reimagined by artists around the world.
Conversations across works and venues
Celebrating multiple perspectives and worldviews, the curators’ expanded notion of art encompasses works by unknown makers, such as the delicate work on amate (tree bark) paper by unrecorded Mexican artists, on display at UNSW Galleries.
The artists have used traditional paper-making practices originating in Mayan and Aztec cultures, banned by Spanish colonisers. This practice continued in secret among at Indigenous communities such as the Otomi, who now create these depictions of cut-out spirits for a commercial market.
Resilience is felt clearly in these works, dissolving the boundaries between collection items collected or stolen as part of colonial museum practices, and artworks continuing cultural practices.
Sibosabo’s work engages across venues in dialogue with the pearl shell collection items at Chau Chak Wing Museum, highlighting the unbroken connections between contemporary art and traditional Indigenous practices.
Also at Chau Chak are enduring celebrations of queer communities and their resistance. Martin Wong’s enigmatic and dreamy visions of urban erotica and William Yang’s candid photographs of young Indigenous dancers celebrate the survival of queer creativity and strength.
Feminist world-making is a joyful focus across multiple venues. VNS Matrix at White Bay celebrate their anarchic, collective and anti-capitalist practice. Kubra Khademi at UNSW Galleries creates a feminist universe that refutes the patriarchal order with humour and subversion. Serwah Attafuah at the Museum of Contemporary Art draws us into a surreal cyberscape, extending the curatorial themes of celebration and resistance into the future.
Joy and imagination
The risk in curating so many works in one show, under such a broad theme, is that individual artworks can be contorted to fit within a generalised framework.
The Biennale falls into this trap at times, particularly in venues such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where the sheer amount of artwork on display makes viewing challenging and the curation occasionally feel heavy-handed and didactic.
Another issue is the de-politicisation of individual works, which, when placed together with artworks from other parts of the world, can lose their contextual power of protest. Individual issues and social injustices can become neutralised as they are combined under one broad theme.
There is occasionally a failure to acknowledge the complexity of artistic responses to trauma and the violent interruption of cultural practices. However, the fact that we are now facing a dark future – with climate chaos well underway and colonialism carrying on in many parts of the world – means we are desperately in need of inspiration and continuing hope.
The artists of the Sydney Biennale provide many strategies for communal strength, joy and imagination to carry us through the dark times ahead, and audiences are sure to join the carnival.
Christiane Keys-Statham 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.
Matu Ngaropo and Ahunim Abebe in Bell Shakespeare s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Photo by Brett Boardman
Shakespeare’s delightful A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a perennial favourite – and the production run by the Bell Shakespeare company (first prepared in 2021 but hindered by COVID lockdowns) is a swift and pared-back reimaginging of the play.
It follows the comedy of four lovers – Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius – who are lost in a forest and get tricked by the fairies, King Oberon, Queen Titania and the impish Puck.
The play also features the bumbling mechanicals – a carpenter, a weaver, a bellows-mender, a tinker, a joiner and a tailor – who meet in the forest to rehearse a play to perform at the upcoming wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta.
This play within a play, performed at the end, has always brought the house down with sidesplitting laughter, and this show is no exception. It must have been just as hilarious during the play’s first performance, if it’s true that Shakespeare wrote it to be performed at an aristocrat’s wedding.
Finally, Shakespeare for the whole family
Bell Shakespeare promotes the show as “fast, funny and family-friendly”. This is welcome news for theatregoing parents. Few of Shakespeare’s plays are suitable for children, despite there being a significant market for Shakespeare-related books and activities designed for young people.
My two boys received a storybook version of Shakespeare’s plays from family members some years ago, but it’s a delicate operation to tell bedtime stories about the fratricide in Hamlet, the domestic violence of Othello, or the romantic suicides of Romeo and Juliet.
Certainly, Shakespeare’s delightful comedies lend themselves more readily to the young. So taking Bell Shakespeare’s promo at its word, I took my son Heathcliff, aged 9 (who contributes to this review) to the show.
Powerful presence onstage
Seasoned playgoers will be thoroughly impressed by the vibrant and engaging performances of the cast, who make Shakespeare’s language (and their connections to it) ring as clear as a bell. This is harder to achieve than it sounds.
The delightful charisma of Matu Ngaropo as Nick Bottom (the weaver) positions him as a type of leading man. A galvanising force, Ngaropo combines refined flamboyancy and outrageous sensitivity to keep the audience firmly in his pocket.
Matu Ngaropo was a galvanising force onstage. Brett Boardman
Ella Prince is subtle in their rendering of Puck, the sprightly spirit – so watchable in their intriguing silences and confusion when manipulating mortals.
Richard Pyros gives a commanding performance as Oberon: fastidious and curious, with a propensity for bellowing through the forest. Imogen Sage also shows tremendous range by delivering a sultry Titania, a restrained Hippolyta, and a librarian-esque Quince.
Ella Prince as Puck, Imogen Sage as Titania and Richard Pyros as Oberon in Bell Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Brett Boardman
Finally, the four comic lovers: Hermia (Ahunim Abebe), Helena (Isabel Burton), Demetrius (Mike Howlett) and Lysander (Laurence Young), give feisty performances wholly committed to the verse.
A subtle set and costumes
This is Bell’s national touring play for 2024, and the set design by Teresa Negroponte centres around a dilapidated wooden construct that looks like the roof of an old barn tipped on its side.
But despite this dynamic set (which might double as the shipwreck from The Tempest), there are no leaves or any sort of greenery to help indicate most of the play is set in a forest – no sylvan milieu.
The set, which resembled a rundown wooden barn, didn’t effectively depict the play’s setting in a forest. Brett Boardman
Indeed, this production seems, in several instances, to presuppose the audience’s familiarity with the play. This can prove confusing for newcomers to Shakespeare.
The costumes are intriguing and subtle if you know the play, but may also be too realistic – too bland and “everyday”. This made it difficult for young people to recognise the kings, queens and fairies.
For example, there was nothing fairylike about the fairies, whose costumes were almost always plain black, with no hint of glitter or sparkles in sight.
As Heathcliff commented: “They all changed into black clothes and called themselves fairies […] I didn’t know they were meant to be fairies until the second half […] they looked more like ghosts.”
“Thou shall wear not black costumes for fairies,” he added.
With actors needing to double (and sometimes triple) character roles, they quickly don a new coat, scarf or hat. But again, these distinctions may be too subtle for newcomers to recognise.
Laurence Young and Ahunim Abebe played Lysander and Hermia, two of the four comic lovers. Brett Boardman
Heathcliff’s highlights
While the acting proved second-to-none, many typical features of this famous play were absent. Heathcliff found the play “entertaining, but not laugh-out-loud funny”.
His favourite parts were the “horse’s head”, the slow-motion sequences, the fake swords used in the ridiculous staging of Pyramus and Thisbe at the play’s end, and “the man playing the princess” (with hairy chest exposed) – which he thought was funny but a bit odd.
Yet, the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe at the end delivered on its promise. Many of the audience members doubled over in stitches, throwing their heads back with laughter.
I’ll remember this show for the many exemplary renditions of the famous characters, but while Shakespeare’s script is itself family-friendly, the play can be confusing when many of its typical features are pared back to the bone.
Kirk Dodd 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.
A Papua New Guinea MP who is being touted by the opposition as the next prime minister of the country says “my life is under threat”.
East Sepik governor Allan Bird said that since his nomination, he had been advised of this by a deputy police commissioner, who said they were monitoring the situation.
“All the apparatus of state have been put on full alert to hunt down the most dangerous criminal in PNG: his name is Allan Bird,” he wrote on Facebook.
“This is not the country I was born into, this is not the country the founding fathers envisioned.”
He said “reliable sources” had told him various state institutions had been instructed to try and find anything illegal on him, and charge and arrest him.
Last week, Bird told RNZ Pacific the country needed to decentralise power to deal with its challenges.
He said PNG had “very serious challenges”.
“Anyone who fixes these problems will be hated just like Sir Mekere [Morauta] did 25 years ago. Doing what needs to be done is not pretty, but it has to be done. Someone has to be willing to do the hard things.
“Many countries have problems, but not many countries have all those challenges all at the same time. PNG does so right now.
“If the problems aren’t fixed quickly then they will continue to get worse. Most of our people experience these problems every day now. It’s a struggle for survival.”
Part of Governor Bird’s FB posting about threats to his life on 9 March 2024. Image: Screenshot APR
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The dog days of summer are upon us. Or so the ancient Romans named the dies caniculares that followed the rise of the “dog star” Sirius which the ancients believed to signal the oncoming sweltering heat and drought of summer.
As succinctly summarised by Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger “summer returns, with its heat; and we must sweat”.
Summer is that time of year in which the soporific heat of the sun reverberates down upon bodies languorously lying out in the open air of the public pool, park or beach, a cold drink in hand as one tries to beat the heat.
These summer rituals and attempts to stay cool are not unique to us. Such traditions can be traced back thousands of years to the ancient Romans.
A trip to the coast
Like many Australians who flock to the coast and seek solace from the heat of the city streets over the summer, the ancient Romans (those who could afford it) escaped to their vacation villas at the coastal hotspots situated along the southern Italian peninsula.
This spot still looks nice for a holiday home today. Shutterstock
These summer homes signalled an increase in luxury and wealth among a rapidly growing Roman upper class during the early first centuries BCE and CE. The coast became the go-to destination spot and social pleasure ground for the wealthy who sought leisure and licentiousness during their annual holidays.
These coastal villas were invariably constructed for the pleasures of the Roman elite, ingeniously designed to follow a series of architectural principles to generate maximum airflow and help the inhabitants stay cool during the blistering heat of summer.
In his architectural treatise, Vitruvius noted houses should be built “in reference to the sun’s course” with rooms occupied during the summer months following a northern or northeastern aspect to avoid the oppressive heat but still allow maximum light and comfort.
As they are for many of us during summer, public baths were an integral part of everyday life in ancient Rome. This social practice originated sometime during the middle republic (roughly the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE), becoming an essential daily routine for those at almost all levels of society and intrinsic to the fabricated design of the city.
Roman baths afforded a shared space for social interaction, the rooms humming with the titillations of current gossip and news shared among friends, as well as offering a commonplace location for social networking, drinking and relaxing, and engaging in various exercises in the pursuit of health.
Public baths: great for keeping cool – and sharing gossip. Tate, CC BY-NC-SA
This social mingling was not without its annoyances. In a fit of moral angst, Seneca the Younger proclaimed against “the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming tank with unconscionable noise and splashing” – this vexatious figure perhaps not unfamiliar to those of us who frequent the local pool.
A body fit for summer
Seneca further complained that his contemporaries lived in a state of excessive luxury by requiring the ability to swim and tan concurrently.
The Romans were no strangers to the ostentatious social currency of the summer tan. In an epigram addressed to one of his patrons embarking on a summer vacation, the poet Martial mirthfully implored him to “inhale the fervid rays of the sun at every pore” so his “pale-faced friends” would “envy the colour” of his tan.
Even ancient Romans strove for a ‘summer body’. Getty Museum
The arrival of summer invariably brings to mind the perennial cultural fixation of the “summer body”: impeccably groomed, sun-kissed and surreptitiously toned. Like us, ancient Romans had the option of attending the public baths for a bit of exercise, followed by a steam, sauna and hot water swim, finished off with a refreshing swim in the cold pools of the frigidarium.
Optional was a dose of depilation: body hair removal was all the rage for much of the Roman Empire and was offered at the public baths, along with massages and body oiling.
A nice cool drink
Presentations of luxury extended into other summertime proclivities such as imbibing chilled or frozen drinks. The Romans concocted the summertime favourite of an iced drink – a “device of ingenious thirst” – by storing snow in underground chambers.
Certain varieties of wine were also chilled or watered down with frozen snow.
Perhaps the boy in this painting from ca. 200-230 C.E. was having a nice cool summer drink? Brooklyn Museum
Writers such as Vitruvius and Seneca noted that this penchant for iced drinks was a signifier of excessive opulence and wealth. Indeed, as a symbol of his performative grandeur, the Emperor Nero not only consumed cold drinks but was purportedly accustomed to baths cooled with snow during the summer.
Cold water was thought to be medically beneficial for those suffering in the heat. Roman encyclopaedist Celsus recommended those who suffered from a “weak head” in the sun to run it under a stream of cold water.
While you lay by the pool working on your summer tan, or perhaps gossip with a friend over an icy drink at your beach side vacation spot, know you are engaging in time-honoured traditions dating back thousands of years. This summer, let’s do as the ancient Romans did. Frosé, anyone?
Lily Moore 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.
Opposition spokesperson for Bougainville affairs Sir Puka Temu has warned the Papua New Guinea government not to take the Bougainville ratification process lightly and has called for an urgent leadership meeting.
He urged Prime Minister James Marape and his Minister for Bougainville Affairs, Manasseh Makibato, convene an urgent meeting between the two governments.
Sir Puka said that the government’s inability to ratify the referendum results last year went against the understanding set out in the Era Kone Covenant and the Wabag Roadmap by both the Autonomous Bougainville government (ABG) and the government of PNG.
“Prime Minister James Marape and the Minister for Bougainville Affairs need to come out clearly on when they will ratify the referendum results in Parliament and give their assurance that they will not fail on their part of the agreement,” Sir Puka said.
“The ratification is the responsibility of the national government and not the ABG’s.
“The people of Bougainville did their part by peacefully conducting the referendum and engaging in meaningful dialogue with the national government on when to ratify the results.
“The Marape/PANGU-led government have already failed their end of the bargain to ratify the results in 2023. And they are continuing to fail the people of Bougainville by delaying their decision on when the results will be ratified.
PM ‘not serious’ “It is evident the Prime Minister and his government are not serious about Bougainville, as there was no mention of it in the first sitting of Parliament this year had it not been for a question without notice from the Member for North Bougainville Francesca Semoso.
“If the government were serious about ratifying the results, they would have made the ratification a priority of theirs on the first sitting of Parliament.
“Yet the government has opted to adjourn Parliament to May 28 nearly halfway through the year, and even then, the ratification of the results are not guaranteed to be a business of the Parliament.
“With the ABG presidential elections set for next year, the people and leaders of Bougainville are running out of time.”
Sir Puka said Marape had had more than five years to ratify the referendum results, yet there had been many promises and little action.
“James Marape is in fact the post-referendum prime minister – it is his leadership that will coincide with the future of Bougainville, and he must not take that status lightly,” Sir Puka said.
Now that Marape had exhausted his international trips over the last two years, he should pay serious attention to the pressing issue domestically.
‘Delaying and distracting’ The leaders and people of Bougainville would soon catch on to Marape-led government’s approach of “delaying and distracting”.
“ABG President Ishmael Toroama and his leaders have been very diplomatic, very patient, and understanding throughout this ongoing process, however, Mr Marape must not think that this considerate treatment will last forever.
“I also appeal to the four Bougainvillean MPs in government to critically assess if Mr Marape is doing all he can in his powers to fulfill the results of the referendum.
“Three of you are in PANGU Pati yet the party leader and your fellow colleague PANGU MP and Minister for Bougainville Affairs are causing rifts and not results.
“The people of Bougainville have decided, and regardless of the ratification process that continues to be delayed, those results will still be there in history. The ball is in the government’s side of the court to guide this process or stand by and watch if they take too long.”
Sir Puka also said he would ask to meet President Toroama to formally discuss the opposition’s alternative policies and position regarding Bougainville as the shadow minister.
The Albanese government will abolish almost 500 so-called “nuisance” import tariffs from July 1.
Items set to become tariff-free include toothbrushes, hand tools, fridges, dishwashers, clothing, and menstrual and sanitary products. The tariff on such products is 5%. The cost to the budget has not yet been announced, partly because the plan is subject to consultations.
The decision will be the centrepiece of a speech Treasurer Jim Chalmers will make to a business audience in Sydney on Monday. Later, in another speech this week, Chalmers will set out some directions for the May budget.
The government says this is “the biggest unilateral tariff reform in at least two decades”, hailing it as a gain for productivity.
“It will cut compliance costs, reduce red tape, make it easier to do business, and boost productivity,” the government said in a statement, adding these tariffs do not protect Australian businesses.
The reforms were an important step in simplifying Australian trade, and would particularly assist small and medium-sized firms.
“After successive trade agreements, most goods are now imported duty-free. This means that businesses spend time and money proving their imports are eligible for existing tariff preferences and concessions, a compliance cost they often pass on to consumers, ” the statement said.
Cheaper toothbrushes, tools and tampons
Chalmers said: “Tariff reform will also provide a small amount of extra help with the cost-of-living challenge by making everyday items such as toothbrushes, tools, fridges, dishwashers and clothing just a little bit cheaper”.
The changes will scrap 14% of Australia’s total tariffs, streamlining about $8.5 billion worth of annual trade. Businesses will save more than $30 million in compliance costs each year, on the government’s estimate.
A Productivity Commission report in 2020 defined nuisance tariffs as
tariffs that raise little revenue, have negligible benefits for producers, but impose compliance burdens
It said the administrative costs of collecting these tariffs amounted to $11 million to $20 million per year.
The government gave the following list of examples of products set to see the removal of the 5% customs duties and what revenue the tariffs currently raise annually:
Washing machines with annual imports worth over $490 million, raise less than $140,000 in revenue per year
Fridge-freezers with imports worth over $668 million – less than $28,000
Tyres for agricultural vehicles, tractors or other machines with imports worth over $102 million – less than $10,000
Protective footwear with imports worth $160 million – less than $112,000
Toothbrushes with imports worth over $84 million – less than $22,000
Menstrual and sanitary products with over $211 million worth of imports – less than $3 million
X-ray film with over $160,000 in imports – less than $200
Chamois leather with $100,000 in imports – less than $1,000
Pyjamas with almost $108 million in imports – less than $120,000
Fishing reels with over $50 million in imports – less than $140,000
Rollercoasters with over $16 million in imports – less than $40,000
Dodgem cars with over $2 million in imports – less than $15,000
Ballpoint pens with imports worth over $57 million – less than $95,000
Toasters with imports worth over $49 million – less than $1,000
Electric blankets with imports worth over $31 million – less than $5,000
Bamboo chopsticks with over $3 million in imports – less than $3,000.
Removing tariffs on menstrual and sanitary items will align tariff policy settings with changes previously made to the GST.
The government said consultation on the proposed initial reforms is underway, with submissions open on the Treasury website and closing on April 1.
“The tariffs identified have been selected because their abolition will deliver benefits for businesses without adversely impacting Australian industries or constraining Australia in sensitive FTA negotiations,” the government said in its statement.
The full list of abolished tariffs will be finalised and provided in the May budget.
Chalmers said:“This is meaningful economic reform that will deliver meaningful benefits to businesses of all sizes around Australia.
“These tariffs impose a regulatory burden on Australian businesses and raise the costs of imported goods but they do little to protect our workers and businesses because they apply to goods that are mostly already eligible for duty-free importation.
“These tariff reforms will be better for businesses, better for consumers and better for the economy.”
Trade Minister Don Farrell said: “With one in four Australian jobs trade-related, and 27% of Australia’s economic output supported by trade, the importance of trade to Australia’s national wellbeing cannot be overstated.
“Trade that is simple, fast, and cost-effective can boost Australia’s international competitiveness, help create jobs, and reduce cost of living pressures.”
The Whitlam government began the journey to cut protection by cutting tariffs 25% across-the-board. The Hawke-Keating governments in the late 1980s and early 1990s undertook comprehensive tariff reductions and the elimination of import quotas.
The Howard government cut most tariffs to no more than 5% and many to zero.
Michelle Grattan 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.
Television New Zealand’s proposals to balance its worsening books by killing news and current affairs programmes mean New Zealanders could end up with almost no national current affairs on TV within weeks.
It is a response to digital era changes in technology, viewing and advertising — but also the consequence of political choices.
“I can see that I’ve chosen a good night to come on,” TVNZ presenter Jack Tame said mournfully on his stint as a Newstalk ZB panelist last Wednesday.
The news that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning had just broken.
It was less than a week since Newshub’s owners had announced a plan to close it completely in mid-year and TVNZ had reported bad financial figures for the last half of 2023.
The following day — last Thursday — TVNZ’s Midday News told viewers 9 percent of TVNZ staff — 68 people in total — would go in a plan to balance the books.
“The broadcaster has told staff that its headcount is high and so are costs,” said reporter Kim Baker-Wilson starkly on TVNZ’s Midday.
On chopping block Twenty-four hours later, it was one of the shows on the chopping block — along with late news show Tonight and TVNZ’s flagship weekly current affairs show Sunday.
“As the last of its kind — is that what we want in our media landscape . . . to have no in-depth current affairs show?” said Sunday presenter Miriama Kamo (also the host of the weekend show Marae).
Consumers investigator Fair Go — with a 47-year track record as one of TVNZ’s most popular local shows — will also be gone by the end of May under this plan.
People at TVNZ’s building in central Auckland. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
If Newshub vanishes from rival channel Three by mid year, there will be just one national daily TV news bulletin left — TVNZ’s 1News — and no long form current affairs at all, except TVNZ’s Q+A and others funded from the public purse by NZ on Air and Te Mangai Paho.
Tellingly, weekday TVNZ shows which will carry on — Breakfast and Seven Sharp — are ones which generate income from “partner content” deals and “integrated advertising” — effectively paid-for slots within the programmes.
TVNZ had made it known cuts were coming months ago because costs were outstripping fast-falling revenue as advertisers tightened their belts or spent elsewhere.
TVNZ executives had also made it clear that reinforcing TVNZ’s digital-first strategy would be a key goal as well as just cutting costs.
Other notable cut So the other notable service to be cut was a surprise — the youth-focused digital-native outlet Re: News.
After its launch in 2017, its young staff revived a mothballed studio and gained a reputation for hard work — and then for the quality of its work.
It won national journalism awards in the past two years and reached younger people who rarely if ever turn on a television set.
Reportedly, the staff of Re: News staff is to be halved and lose some of its leaders.
The main media workers’ union E tū said it will fight to save jobs and extend the short consultation period.
Some staff made it plain that they weren’t giving up just yet either and would present counter-proposals to save shows and jobs.
In a statement, TVNZ said the proposals “in no way relate to the immense contribution of the teams that work on those shows and the significant journalistic value they’ve provided over the years”.
Money-spinners But some were money-spinners too.
Fair Go and Sunday still pull in big six-figure live primetime TV audiences and more views now on TVNZ+. Its marketers frequently tell the advertisers that.
TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell knows all about that. She was previously TVNZ’s commercial director.
So why kill off these programmes now?
TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell . . . “I’ve been quite open with the fact that there are no sacred cows.” Image: TVNZ
Mediawatch’s requests to talk to O’Donnell and TVNZ’s executive editor of news Phil O’Sullivan were unsuccessful.
But O’Donnell did talk to Newstalk ZB on Friday night.
“I’ve been quite open with the fact that there are no sacred cows. And we need to find some ways to stop doing some things for us to reduce our costs,” O’Donnell told Newstalk ZB.
“TVNZ’s still investing over $40 million in news and current affairs — so we absolutely believe in the future of news and current affairs. But we have a situation right now that our operating model is more expensive than the revenue that we’re making. And we have to make some really tough, tough decisions,” she said.
“We’ll constantly be looking at things to keep the operating model in line with what our revenue is. Within the TVNZ Act it’s clear that we need to be a commercial broadcaster, We are a commercial business, so that’s the remit that we need to work on.
“Our competitors these days are not (Newstalk ZB) or Sky or Warner Brothers (Discovery) but Google and Meta. These are multi-trillion dollar organisations. Ninety cents of every dollar spent in digital news advertising is going offshore. That’s 10 cents left for the likes of NZME, TVNZ, Stuff and any of the other local broadcasters.”
Jack Tame also pointed the finger at the titans of tech on his Newstalk ZB Saturday show.
Force of digital giants ‘irrepressible’ “Ultimately the force of those digital giants is irrepressible. Trying to save free-to-air commercial TV, with quality news, current affairs and local programming in a country with five million people . . . is like trying to bail out the Titanic with an empty ice cream container. I’m not aware of any comparable broadcast markets where they’ve managed to pull it off,” he told listeners.
But few countries have a state-owned yet fully-commercial broadcaster trying to do news on TV and online, disconnected from publicly-funded ones also doing news on TV and radio and online.
That makes TVNZ a state-owned broadcaster that serves advertisers as much as New Zealanders.
But if things had panned out differently a year ago, that wouldn’t be the case now either.
What if the public media merger had gone ahead? A new not-for-profit public media entity incorporating RNZ and TVNZ — Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM) — was supposed to start one year ago this week.
It would have been the biggest media reform since the early 1990s.
The previous government was prepared to spend more than $400 million over four years to get it going.
Almost $20 million was spent on a programme called Strong Public Media, put in place because New Zealand’s media sector was weak.
“Ailing” was the word that the business case used, noting “increased competition from overseas players slashed the share of revenue from advertising.”
But the Labour government killed the plan before the last election, citing the cost of living crisis.
The new entity would still have needed TVNZ’s commercial revenue, but if it had gone ahead, would that mean TVNZ wouldn’t now be sacrificing news shows and journalists?
Tracey Martin who had been named as chair of the board charged with getting ANZPM up and running . . . “Nobody’s surprised. Surely nobody is surprised that this ecosystem is not sustainable any longer.” Image: RNZ/Nate McKinnon
“Nobody’s surprised. Surely nobody is surprised that this ecosystem is not sustainable any longer. Something radical had to change,” Tracey Martin — the chair of the board charged with getting ANZPM up and running — told Mediawatch.
“I don’t have any problem believing that (TVNZ) would have had to change what they were delivering. But would it have been cuts to news and current affairs that we would have been seeing? There would have been other decisions made because commerciality . . . was not the major driver (of ANZPM),” Martin said.
“That was where we started from. If Armageddon happens — and all other New Zealand media can no longer exist — you have to be there as the Fourth Estate — to make sure that New Zealanders have a place to go to for truth and trust.”
What were the assumptions about the advertising revenue TVNZ would have been able to pull in?
“[TVNZ] was telling us that it wouldn’t be as bad as we believed it would be. TVNZ modeling was not as dramatic as our modeling. We were happy to accept that [because] our modeling gave us a particular window by which to change the ecosystem in which New Zealand media could survive to try and stabilise,” Martin told Mediawatch.
The business case document tracked TVNZ revenue and expenses from 2012 until 2020 — the start of the planning process for the new entity.
By 2020, a sharp rise in costs already exceeded revenue which was above $300 million.
And as we now know, TVNZ revenue has fallen further and more quickly since then.
“We were predicting linear TV revenue was going to continue to drop substantially and relatively quickly — and they were not going to be able to switch their advertising revenue at the same capacity to digital,” Martin said.
“They had more confidence than we did,” she said.
The ANZPM legislation estimated it as a $400 million a year operation, with roughly half the funding from public sources and half from commercial revenue.
TVNZ’s submission said that was “unambitious”.
Then TVNZ CEO Simon Power addressing Parliament’s EDSI committee last year on the ANZPM legislation. Image: Screenshot/EDSI Committee Facebook
“If the commercial arm of the new entity can aid in gaining more revenue to reinvest into local content and to reinvest into public media outcomes, all the better,” the chief executive at the time Simon Power told Mediawatch in 2023.
“It was a very rosy picture they painted. They had a mandate to be a commercial business that had to give confidence to the advertisers and the rest of New Zealand but they were very confident two years ago that this wouldn’t happen,” she said.
In opposition, National Party leader Christopher Luxon described the merger as “ideological and insane” and “a solution looking for a problem”.
Media and Communications Minister Melissa Lee . . . Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
But if that was based on TVNZ’s bullish assessments of its own revenue-raising capacity — or a disregard of a probable downturn ahead, was that a big mistake?
“I won’t comment for today’s government, but statements being made in the last couple of days about people getting their news from somewhere else; truth and trust has dropped off; linear has got to be transferred into the digital environment . . . none of those things are new comments,” Martin told Mediawatch.
“They’re all in the documentation that we placed into the public domain — and I asked the special permission, as the chair of the ANZPM group, to brief spokespersons for broadcasting of the Greens, Act and National to try and make sure that everybody has as much and as much information as we could give them,” she said.
Media and Communications Minister Melissa Lee said this week she was working on proposals to help the media to take to cabinet.
“I don’t give advice to the minister, but I would advise officials to go back and pull out the business case and paperwork for ANZPM — and to look at the submissions and the number of people who supported the concept, but had concerns about particular areas,” Tracey Martin told Mediawatch.
“Don’t let perfection get in the way of action.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
