Despite the challenges faced by local democratic activists, Thailand has often been an oasis of relative liberalism compared with neighbouring countries such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.
Westerners, in particular, have been largely welcomed and provided with a measure of protection from harassment by the authorities. Thailand’s economy is extremely dependent on foreign tourism. Many Westerners also work in a variety of industries, including as academics at public and private universities.
That arrangement now seems under pressure. Earlier this month, Paul Chambers, an American political science lecturer at Naresuan University, was arrested on charges of violating the Computer Crimes Act and the lèse-majesté law under Section 112 of Thailand’s Criminal Code for allegedly insulting the monarchy.
Chambers’ visa has been revoked and he now faces a potential punishment of 15 years in jail.
The lèse-majesté law has become a common tool for silencing Thai activists. At least 272 people have been charged under the law since pro-democracy protests broke out in 2020, according to rights groups.
Its use against foreigners has, until now, been limited. No foreign academic has ever been charged with it. Because of the law, however, most academics in Thailand usually tread carefully in their critiques of the monarchy.
The decision to charge a foreign academic, therefore, suggests a hardening of views on dissent by conservative forces in the country. It represents a further deterioration in Thailand’s democratic credentials and provides little optimism for reform under the present government.
Thailand’s democratic deficit
Several other recent actions have also sparked concerns about democratic backsliding.
Following a visit by Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to China in February, the government violated domestic and international law by forcibly returning 40 Uyghurs to China.
The Uyghurs had fled China a decade earlier to escape repression in the western Xinjiang region and had been held in detention in Thailand ever since. They now potentially face worse treatment by the Chinese authorities.
Then, in early April, Thailand welcomed the head of the Myanmar junta to a regional summit in Bangkok after a devastating earthquake struck his war-ravaged country.
Min Aung Hlaing has been shunned internationally since the junta launched a coup against the democratically elected government in Myanmar in 2021, sparking a devastating civil war. He has only visited Russia and China since then.
In addition, the military continues to dominate politics in Thailand. After a progressive party, Move Forward, won the 2023 parliamentary elections by committing to amend the lèse-majesté law, the military, the unelected Senate and other conservative forces in the country ignored the will of the people and denied its charismatic leader the prime ministership.
The party was then forcibly dissolved by the Constitutional Court and its leader banned from politics for ten years.
In February, Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission criminally indicted 44 politicians from Move Forward for sponsoring a bill in parliament to reform the lèse-majesté law. They face lifetime bans from politics if they are found guilty of breaching “ethical standards”.
Even the powerful former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is also the uncle of the current prime minister, is not immune from the lèse-majesté law.
He was indicted last year for allegedly insulting the monarchy almost two decades ago. His case is due to be heard in July.
This continued undermining of democratic norms is chipping away at Thailand’s international reputation. The country is now classified as a “flawed democracy” in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, with its ranking falling two years in a row.
The lèse-majesté law has always represented something of a challenge to academic freedom in Thailand, as well as freedom of speech more generally. Campaigners against the law have paid a heavy price.
The US State Department has provided a statement of support for Chambers, urging the Thai government to “ensure that laws are not used to stifle permitted expression”. However, given the Trump administration’s attacks on US universities at the moment, this demand rings somewhat hollow.
Academic freedom is a hallmark of democracies compared with authoritarian regimes. With the US no longer so concerned with protecting academic freedom at home, there is little stopping flawed democracies around the world from stepping up pressure on academics to toe the line.
The undermining of democracy in the US is already having palpable impacts on democratic regression around the world.
With little international pressure to adhere to democratic norms, the current Thai government has taken a significant and deleterious step in arresting a foreign academic.
In the future, universities in Thailand, as in the US, will find it harder to attract international talent. Universities – and the broader society – in both countries will be worse off for it.
Adam Simpson 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.
China has placed curbs on exports of rare germanium and gallium which are critical in manufacturing.Shutterstock
In the escalating trade war between the United States and China, one notable exception stood out: 31 critical minerals, including rare earth elements, were strategically exempted from tariffs.
This was not a gesture of goodwill. It was a tacit acknowledgment of the United States’ deep dependence on China for materials essential to its technological competitiveness, clean energy transition and national defence.
Beijing’s response was swift and calculated. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced expanded export controls and a shift in pricing principles. The move reflects China’s long-standing effort to shift rare earth pricing from market supply and demand to pricing based on their strategic value.
The impact was immediate. Rare earth exports from China effectively ground to a halt, as exporters awaited approvals under a new, opaque licensing regime.
The announcement prompted President Trump to issue a new executive order directing a review of national security risks stemming from the US reliance on imported, processed critical minerals.
As global supply chains reel from these disruptions, Australia finds itself in a unique strategic position. As a trusted US ally, it possesses the resources, partnerships and political capital to step into the breach. But can Australia seize this opportunity – or will it come with strings attached?
China’s new playbook
China’s latest restrictions target seven rare earths – such as dysprosium and terbium – crucial for electric vehicles, wind turbines, fighter jets and missile systems.
While stopping short of a full export ban, the policy functions as a chokepoint. It leverages China’s near-total global control of rare earth refining (around 90%) and its monopoly on heavy rare earth processing (98%).
Domestically, China’s rare earth sector is dominated by two state-owned giants which together control nearly 100% of national mining quotas.
These measures have exposed the vulnerability of Western supply chains. The US has only one operational rare earth mine – Mountain Pass in California – and minimal domestic refining capacity. A new processing facility in Texas owned by Australia’s Lynas is under development, but it will take years to establish a self-sufficient supply chain.
Rare earths have become a source of contention in the tariff war. Shutterstock
Europe faces similar challenges. While rare earths are vital to the EU’s green transition, domestic production remains limited. Efforts to diversify through partners like Australia and Canada show promise but are hindered by high production costs and continued reliance on Chinese technology.
China is also working to redefine how rare earths are priced. One proposal would tie the value of key elements like dysprosium to the price of gold, elevating them from industrial inputs to geopolitical assets. Another would settle rare earth transactions in yuan rather than US dollars, advancing Beijing’s broader ambition to internationalise its currency.
For China, this strategy goes beyond economics. It is a deliberate national resource policy comparable to OPEC’s management of oil, designed to link pricing to the strategic significance of critical minerals.
Australia’s window?
Investors
are closely watching Australian producers. Strategic deposits such as Mt Weld in Western Australia have drawn renewed interest from Japan, Europe and the US.
Industry observers argue Australia is better positioned than the US to develop secure supply chains, due to its rich geological endowment and transparent regulatory environment.
To seize this opportunity, the government has begun to act.
Under its Future Made in Australia initiative, the federal government is considering measures such as strategic stockpiling, production tax credits and expanded support for domestic processing. Iluka Resources has secured A$1.65 billion to build a rare earth refinery, due to be operational by 2026.
Emerging projects like Browns Range and Lynas’s Malaysian refinery already serve as alternative nodes in the global rare earth supply chain network.
However, structural barriers remain. The Western allies, including Australia, still lack key processing technologies and have potentially high environmental compliance costs. Lynas’s Texas plant was intended to expand allied capacity but has faced delays due to environmental approvals.
Walking a diplomatic tightrope
Geopolitical tensions add another layer of complexity. Australia’s dual role – as a major upstream supplier to China and a strategic ally of the US – places it on a diplomatic tightrope.
Aligning too closely with the US could invite Chinese retaliation. Appearing overly aligned with China may provoke scrutiny from Washington.
Ownership concerns are also rising. The government has blocked or forced divestment of Chinese stakes in rare earth and lithium companies including Northern Minerals.
Market volatility compounds these challenges. Prices are currently buoyed by geopolitical risk, but have been volatile. Moreover, China’s ability to undercut global prices could erode the competitiveness of Australian exports.
A strategic opportunity – but with strings attached
Australia stands at the centre of a rare strategic inflection point. It is both a beneficiary of China’s retreat and a potential casualty of intensifying great power competition.
In a world where resources confer influence, the question for Australia is not simply whether it has the mineral deposits but whether it has the strategy to match.
If the government can capitalise on this moment – diversifying partnerships, investing in capabilities, and navigating allies and rivals with strategic care – it could emerge as a leader in a more diverse critical minerals landscape.
In the era of mineral geopolitics, possessing the resources is no longer enough. The real test is whether Australia has the foresight and the will to lead.
Marina Yue Zhang 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.
No one goes into the legal profession thinking it is going to be easy. Long working hours are fairly standard, work is often completed to tight external deadlines, and 24/7 availability to clients is widely understood to be a norm, particularly in commercial and international practice.
But too often, the demands of law can create an unhealthy workplace environment. In 2021, the stress of high workloads, low job control, and risks of secondary trauma led SafeWork NSW to categorise legal work as “high risk” for fatigue hazards – putting it alongside night shift work, emergency services, and fly-in, fly-out roles.
To investigate this problem, we surveyed about 1,900 lawyers across Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia in March and April last year.
We asked them about their workplace culture and its impact on wellbeing, about their levels of psychological distress, and whether they had experienced disrespectful behaviours at work.
We also asked whether they intended to leave either their employer or the legal profession in the near future.
Their answers allowed us to identify the type of workplace culture that is harmful to lawyers’ wellbeing. Here’s why fixing this problem matters to us all.
Unhealthy environments
Among the professionals we surveyed, about half found themselves in a workplace culture with negative effects on wellbeing.
A third of this group said their workplaces were characterised by poor working relationships, self-interest and pressure to cut corners or bend rules.
Alarming numbers of lawyers currently want to leave their current employer or quit the profession entirely. Pormezz/Shutterstock
These poorer workplace cultures involved higher levels of psychological distress and more disrespectful behaviours from superiors and coworkers.
They were also characterised by a lack of effective wellbeing supports such as mental health leave arrangements or workload allocation practices.
Long working hours were common. More than half of participants (53%) said they worked more than 40 hours per week and 11% said they put in more than 60 hours.
About a third of the lawyers we surveyed wanted to quit their firm, while 10% planned to leave the profession, within a year.
Society can’t afford to ignore this problem. Lawyer wellbeing can directly affect the quality of legal services and may even lead to disciplinary action against individual lawyers. All of this can undermine public trust and confidence in the justice system.
Workload ‘cannot be sustained’
We invited participants to explain why they intended to leave the profession. Their answers are telling.
One mid-career lawyer at a large firm said:
I am in my 11th year of practice working as a Senior Associate at a top-tier firm. To put it bluntly, the work rate at which I am currently operating, which is required to meet the billable targets and budgets set for us, cannot be sustained for my whole working life – it’s too much.
A small-firm junior lawyer talked of the workload issues described by many:
The pay is not worth the stress. I can’t sleep because I’m constantly worried about deadlines or making mistakes, and I got paid more when I was a bartender. I love the work, but it’s a very tough slog and damaging my own wellbeing – for what?
Our data showed junior lawyers take a lot of the pressure, reflected in higher-than-average levels of psychological distress. Equally concerning was the extent to which senior lawyers with practice management responsibilities also reported above average distress.
Our research also showed the challenges extended beyond private practice and into government, legal aid and corporate “in-house” settings.
As one mid-career legal aid lawyer put it:
Lack of debriefing and supports, lack of formal mentoring and supervision, mental health toll, high workload and poor workplace culture, lack of training and supports to deal with clients in crisis, [mean it’s] not [a] family-friendly profession.
The positives
There was also good news. Three themes stood out in the responses from the 48% who told us they worked in positive workplace cultures. This suggests where support should be targeted.
For nearly two thirds of our sample, having good colleagues was the most important wellbeing support. As one mid-career lawyer put it:
Informal support such as debriefing with colleagues has been most beneficial for me.
Good flexible working and (mental health) leave arrangements came across as the most important practical support employers could provide.
Good workload allocation practices – and a willingness from managers to “reach out to discuss work-life balance” – make a real difference to peoples’ experience.
Support from colleagues was the most important wellbeing support. UM-UMM/Shutterstock
It matters to the rest of us
The legal profession and its regulators have been engaging with the wellbeing problem for a while now. Our findings suggest there is still more to be done.
For the profession as a whole we felt that there was still a need to develop greater understanding of the specific wellbeing needs of both junior lawyers and those managing them, as these are the two groups experiencing the most distress.
Legal regulatory bodies should work to better understand how economic drivers of legal practice, such as high workloads and billing expectations, can have negative consequences for wellbeing, and whether any regulatory levers could lessen these impacts.
The authors would like to acknowledge the significant contribution of Stephen Tang, clinical psychologist, in undertaking data analysis and coauthoring the original report.
This research was supported by the Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner (VLSB+C), the Law Society of New South Wales, and the Legal Practice Board of Western Australia. Matched funding for the data analysis was provided by the VLSB+C and industry research seed funding from the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North stands as some of the most visceral and moving television produced in Australia in recent memory.
Marking a new accessibility and confidence to director Justin Kurzel, it reunites him with screenwriter Shaun Grant. Having produced some of the most compelling and confronting cinema on Australia’s darker history, this latest collaboration is no exception.
Their previous features Snowtown (2011), True History of the Kelly Gang (2020) and Nitram (2021) focused on disturbed psychopaths wanting to unleash their fury onto a society they blame for their own wrongs and injustices.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the World War II five episode miniseries, continues their exploration of Australia’s violent past while navigating a new direction in how they depict confused and damaged men.
Trauma of survival
Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi/Ciarán Hinds) is a doctor sent to World War II. Captured during the Battle of Java he is taken as a prisoner of war (POW), where he is forced to lead his Australian soldiers on the building of the Burma-Thailand Railway.
Rather than an executor of violence, he is a pacifist and victim. Ultimately he has to make peace with his own trauma and guilt of survival when many around him perished – some of whom he knowingly sent to their inevitable death to ensure his own survival.
Faithfully adapted from Richard Flanagan’s novel, this production effectively creates interchanging timelines (seamlessly edited by Alexandre de Francesch) including prewar, war and postwar, and then flashes forward to Dorrigo in his mid-70s.
Elordi’s younger depiction of Dorrigo is filled with nuance and subtleties, often exuded through his stillness. This is harmoniously taken up by Hinds, who has to carry the weight of Dorrigo’s trauma and guilt decades later, with a worn and damaged quietness. Hinds is remarkable when faced to confront his celebrity as a war hero, desperate to give the truth over the expected yarns of mateship and heroism.
How do we tell the truth?
The Narrow Road to the Deep North has been scheduled to be released close to ANZAC Day, which always provokes broader conversations around the mythmaking and truth-telling of our war service and human sacrifice.
This production arrives as a thought-provoking essay on how military history continues to be told. Does the public really want accurate accounts, or more stories on mateship and heroism? Such questions filter dramatically across each episode and up to the final shot leaving us with much to consider.
As a war drama, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is almost entirely static. The combat the battalion engages in is eclipsed by the soldiers held as starving and malnourished prisoners, brutally forced in several graphic scenes to continue as slaves on the building of the railway at all costs.
The brutal and endless beating of Darky Gardiner (Thomas Weatherall), who crawls to the latrine full of excrement to drown himself, rather than endure more beating, is horrific but necessary to see the endless torture these skeletal and sick POWs are subjected to.
90,000 Asian civilians and 2,800 Australian prisoners of war died constructing the Burma Railway. Prime
One misleading depiction Grant and Kurzel disappointingly do not amend from Flanagan’s novel is the view that the Burma Railway was constructed almost entirely by the bloody hands of Australian soldiers. In reality more than 90,000 Asian civilians died, and 16,000 POWs from several nations, including 2,800 Australians.
Moving across time
Cinematogropher Sam Chiplin brings a sense of gothic dread. The framing of every shot is masterful.
Odessa Young as Amy, Dorrigo’s true love, is a standout. She gives us someone struggling in a loveless marriage and desiring her husband’s nephew while she watches him sent to war. Her sense of entrapment in the quiet seaside Tasmanian coastal town is quite brilliantly realised.
Elordi’s Dorrigo is filled with nuance and subtleties. Odessa Young as Amy, Dorrigo’s true love, is a standout. Prime
Other performances worthy of mention are the Japanese soldiers tasked with the project of building the leg of the Burma-Thailand Railway. Major Nakamura (Shô Kasamatsu) is compelling as the scared and conflicted guard who ultimately spends his post-war years hiding among the ruins of Shinjuku to avoid capture as a war criminal.
Moving across the scenes and contrasting time frames is the haunting, unsettling and dissonant score by Jed Kurzel. Like the memories and trauma of the past, the music follows the characters across time and space.
Immaculate
Structurally immaculate, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is not defined by its brutal torture of the POWs or comradeship of the starving soldiers (though they are powerful to watch). Instead, it points us towards the quieter visions of characters having to sit alone with their distorted memories.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a deeply compelling contribution to the Australian war genre. Prime
The tonal inspiration may be drawn from earlier literary anti-war novels such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and The Naked and the Dead (1948), but The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a work of its own depth and beauty. It will deserve its place as one of the most compelling contributions to the Australian war genre.
The final moments of cutting between the faces of Elordi and Hinds left me silent and reaching for a reread of Flanagan’s novel.
Contemporary television is rarely this good.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is on Prime from April 18.
Stephen Gaunson 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.
In the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle, the driving time between Napier and Wairoa stretched from 90 minutes to over six hours, causing major supply chain delays. Retail prices rose and shoppers faced empty shelves.
Natural hazards such as earthquakes and flooding can wreak havoc on Aotearoa New Zealand’s freight system. These crises can cause extensive road damage, isolating communities and creating disruptions in supply chain operations.
Cyclone Gabrielle was by no means a one-off. The 2021 flooding in Canterbury, for example, forced trucks to travel nearly 900 extra kilometres between Christchurch and Timaru, extending the travel time from two to 13 hours.
Severe weather events, the pandemic and the ongoing dispute about replacing the Cook Strait ferries have made the fragility of the freight system more apparent than ever.
To be fair, natural hazards are beyond our control. But resilience can be increased. Our new research identified the main vulnerabilities in the country’s freight system and analysed the factors leading to post-disaster disruptions and shortages on shelves.
The key to reducing freight disruptions, we found, is embracing and investing in the different ways goods can be moved around the country. In particular, using the thousands of kilometres of coastline offers another way to get items from one region to another.
Rather than relying almost exclusively on the road network to move products, the government should invest in shipping infrastructure. Rachel Moon/Shutterstock
But as they are currently organised, other potentially useful forms of transport such as rail and coastal shipping are not great alternatives. Non-road options run on timetables, for example, resulting in longer transit times.
And unlike road transport, which can move products directly between two points, rail and coastal shipping require multiple points of contact from where the goods are produced through to where they are sold.
As a result, when a disaster hits, alternative road routes are typically used to maintain freight deliveries. The limited alternatives in the road network and the lack of roads that can withstand heavy freight can cause problems for trucking companies. Both travel distances and transit times can increase.
When this happens, more trucks and drivers are needed, but these are already in short supply. The transport industry has been struggling to fill positions, with an estimated shortfall of thousands of drivers across the country.
This is compounded by the shortage of trucks, particularly specialised vehicles such as refrigerated units, which are essential for transporting perishable goods.
NZ’s long coastlines offer options
Government policy has a key role to play in addressing these problems and the lack of resilience in the national infrastructure system. In a country with long coastlines, reducing reliance on road transport and developing coastal shipping should be considered.
By shifting a portion of freight to coastal shipping, the demand for trucks and drivers can be reduced. This would also ensure reliable freight movements between the North and the South Islands when the ferry services are disrupted.
Finally, investing in coastal shipping would create a more flexible and resilient transport system where goods can shift rapidly from road to sea after a disaster.
Achieving this would require infrastructure improvements at our domestic seaports and additional vessels to increase the frequency of service. There would also need to be operational integration between road, rail and sea, with synchronised timetables for shorter transit times.
There will inevitably be another natural disaster that disrupts the freight system, causing delays, empty shelves and increased prices. Diversifying the transport options would increase resilience and keep those goods moving.
Cécile L’Hermitte receives funding from Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCoRE, a Centre for Research Excellence funded by the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission.
Walk into any home or workplace today, and you’re likely to find an array of indoor plants. The global market for indoor plants is growing fast – projected to reach more than US$28 billion (A$44 billion) by 2031.
People keep indoor plants inside for a variety of reasons, including as decoration, to clean the air and for stress relief. But my colleagues and I wanted to delve further. What sort of relationships do people have with indoor plants? And what can this tell us about ties between humans and nature?
We surveyed indoor plant owners in Australia, and found many of us form highly meaningful connections with our leafy companions. Some people even consider their plants as family, get anxious about their health and mourn a plant when it dies.
Evidence suggests Egyptians brought plants indoors in the 3rd century BC. The remains of the former city of Pompeii reveal indoor plants used there more than 2,000 years ago, and in medieval England, indoor plants were used in medicine and cooking.
The keeping of indoor plants became widespread across the world in the second half of the 20th century. The practice was particularly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely due to a desire to connect with nature when access to outdoor green spaces was limited.
The benefits of indoor plants go beyond nature connection. Studies show they can increase positive emotions, reduce stress, enhance productivity, and even decrease physical discomfort such as pain.
However, people have varying levels of connection to their plants, as research by my colleagues and I shows.
Why we love indoor plants
We surveyed 115 Australian adults, recruited through social media posts and poster advertisements at the University of South Australia. Participants were roughly 69% female, 30% male and 1% non-binary, and ranged in age from 18 to 69.
On average, participants owned 15 indoor plants. Some owned a single indoor plant and one person owned a whopping 500!
Between them, respondents kept 51 different varieties of house plants. The most common were succulents, devil’s ivy and monstera. They most commonly kept the plants in the living room, kitchen or bedroom.
Across all participants, 11 benefits of having indoor plants were reported.
Half the respondents described the aesthetic appeal of indoor plants. Comments included that indoor plants were “nice to look at”, “soften rooms” and “add colour”. Participants also reported air quality benefits, and that they found indoor plants calming.
Other less commonly reported benefits were that the plants helped the respondents set habits, improved their physical health, provided distraction, relieved fatigue and had a pleasant smell.
4 types of relationships with indoor plants
Our research identified four types of relationships people have with their indoor plants:
1. Highly connected (14% of respondents)
These people typically described a deep personal connection to their plants. Comments included:
They are like my children. (male, 28)
I often water them and take care of them as family members. (female, 26)
Well I cried over my plants leaf getting broken off today, so you could say I’m pretty attached
to her. (female, 21)
I feel terrible if one dies, I feel as though I have let it down and generally bury it in the garden. (female, 34)
2. Engaged (42% of respondents)
These people enjoyed and tended to their plants, but without deep emotional attachment. For example:
Watering them and watching them grow is exciting, I feel proud to keep them alive so long (female, 22)
I get sad when one dies or is looking droopy, I feel happy when they look alive and freshly
watered. (female, 22)
These respondents enjoyed having indoor plants but spent minimal time caring for them and reported minimal emotional connections to them. One participant said:
Feel like indoor plants are fine but through our large windows we can see our outdoor plants and that’s more important to us. (female, 45)
4. No relationship (12%)
Participants who did not have a relationship with their indoor plants said:
Hardly watered it as it’s a succulent. (male, 21)
They are all gifts rather than something I’ve gone out to buy. (male, 21)
(For the remaining 9% of participants, their responses to the question of their relationship with house plants were invalid and not included.)
Our research suggests indoor plants can enrich our lives in ways we are only beginning to understand.
It’s important to note that data for our study were collected in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This context may have influenced our results. For example, some participants may have felt particularly connected to their indoor plants because their access to outdoor green space was curtailed. So, further research is needed in the post-pandemic context.
Brianna Le Busque 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.
In the run up to the May 3 election, questions are being raised about the value of multiculturalism as a public policy in Australia.
They’ve been prompted by community tensions arising from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the sharp increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes.
Is the erosion of social cohesion a consequence of multiculturalism? Or is multiculturalism the most effective approach to minimising the fissures opening up in the Australian community?
Can Australia still pride itself on being one of the world’s most successful multicultural societies? Or will reinvigorating Australian multiculturalism be one of the great policy challenges for the next government?
Landmark review
It could be argued the election of the Albanese government three years ago was only possible because new multicultural candidates unexpectedly won in marginal electorates.
Yet, the 2022 campaign barely mentioned multicultural policies apart from Labor’s pledge for a Multicultural Framework Review. That pledge was announced the day before the election. It was the first detailed examination of the state of Australia’s multicultural society in 40 years.
Its report last year recommended the existing structures for managing multiculturalism be replaced. A Multicultural Affairs Commission and a standalone Department of Multicultural Affairs should be established.
The existing Australian Multicultural Council was criticised as having “limited influence under Home Affairs”. Its proposed replacement, a renamed Multicultural Community Advisory Council, would be better armed to provide strategic advice. It would also have legislated powers to implement institutional change.
But the government ignored the recommendation. It has persisted with the current Council with a slightly revised membership. Labor hasn’t indicated how it plans to overcome the problem of the Council’s ineffectual influence on multicultural affairs.
The review stressed the importance of bipartisanship and found discrimination and prejudice is “stubbornly common” in Australia.
But bipartisanship has been hard to find. Shadow Citizenship Minister Dan Tehan complained the review failed to deal with antisemitism. Nor did it tackle the strains on social cohesion. He blamed this on pro-Palestine civic action, hate speech and intimidation.
Shifting focus
The review was rapidly overtaken by events, especially public tensions associated with the Israel/Gaza war and local outbreaks of vandalism. Many grassroots initiatives proposed by the review to promote multiculturalism have been supplanted by urgent action to repair community facilities and improve safety.
Two government-appointed envoys against antisemitism and Islamophobia have been crossing the country talking to communities, and testing the capacity of institutions to support their aspirations.
This hive of activity around social cohesion distracts from the limited action on multiculturalism and the persistence and pervasiveness of racism in Australia.
Last month’s federal budget funded increased security and support for multicultural communities. But the government has failed to rework the institutional infrastructure needed to move forward on the deeper issues raised by the review.
Multicultural battleground
There are signs in the first weeks of the campaign that the parties are aware of the issues facing particular communities. However, multiculturalism may struggle to flourish, whoever wins the election.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton launched a preemptive attack on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), by threatening to sack DEI positions in the Australian Public Service. And he nailed his colours to the mast by declaring he won’t stand in front of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags if he is elected prime minister.
The Coalition may have painted itself into a tight corner after Liberal Senator Dave Sharma declared Islamophobia in Australia was “fictitious”. He contradicted the envoy on Islamophobia and potentially alienated hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslim voters.
Nor has Labor been served well by its initial small target position on multiculturalism and its lethargic implementation of the framework review.
It’s been wedged on the Middle East conflict: pilloried by the Coalition for its perceived weakness on antisemitism, and condemned by the Greens, who accuse it of a morally questionable position on Gaza and Palestinian issues.
Labor also suffered a setback with Senator Fatima Payman’s desertion to the cross bench over its approach to the war in Gaza. This was shadowed by rising hostility from the “Arab street”, which could put some Western Sydney seats at risk.
For its part, the coalition is targeting Teal seats with Jewish communities, while the contest to secure the Chinese-Australian vote could be critical in up to ten seats.
Muliticultralism post election
Multicultural policy cannot be allowed to drift, let alone be degraded. High levels of political alienation in many communities across the country suggest a much more fractured electorate.
It is critical for Australians’ sense of community cohesion, inclusion and social justice that a more robust multicultural strategy be articulated by the major parties. A Multicultural Community Advisory Council with the heft to influence debate must be adopted, as should the recommendation for a legislated Australian Multicultural Commission.
Silence on multicultural policy will not deliver these outcomes. At the moment the sound of that silence is deafening.
This is the ninth article in our special series, Australia’s Policy Challenges. You can read the other articles here
Andrew Jakubowicz was a consultant to the Multicultural Framework Review on research.
The federal election campaign has passed the halfway mark, with politicians zig-zagging across the country to spruik their policies and achievements.
Where politicians choose to visit (and not visit) give us some insight into their electoral priorities and strategy.
Here, six experts analyse how the campaign has looked so far in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia.
New South Wales
David Clune, honorary associate, government and international relations, University of Sydney
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s strategy in NSW seems to include a tacit concession Liberal heartland seats won by the Teals in 2022 are unlikely to come back.
Instead, the Liberals are hoping to make inroads into Western Sydney electorates held by Labor. It’s a fast-growing, diverse area where families are struggling to pay the mortgage and household bills, and young people have difficulty renting or buying homes. Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have concentrated their campaigning in this area, both claiming to be the best choice for cost-of-living relief and housing affordability.
Many of these seats are among Labor’s safest. Most would require a two-party preferred swing of 6% or more to be lost. Historically speaking, swings of this size are unlikely, although nevertheless possible.
Labor is putting much effort into “sandbagging” marginal coastal seats. A major issue is Labor’s emphasis on renewables versus the Coalition’s policy of building nuclear power plants, including one in the Hunter Valley.
Dutton’s messaging in the early part of the campaign was confusing, combining pragmatic politics, such as cutting the excise on petrol, with right-wing ideology, such as slashing the public service. The former resonated in the marginals, the latter did not. Albanese, by contrast, stayed on message, releasing a stream of expensive handouts to win the votes of battling Sydneysiders.
A wildcard is the emergence of Muslim lobby groups, The Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter. These were formed to support pro-Palestine candidates in safe Labor seats in Western Sydney where there is a large Muslim population, such as Blaxland and Watson.
One factor that won’t be influential is the state government. Premier Chris Minns leads a Labor administration whose performance has generally been lacklustre, but which is not notably unpopular. Unlike in Victoria, NSW voters seem to have their baseball bats in the closet.
The opinion polls continue to show the trend developing since February of a swing back to Labor in NSW, mirroring the national trend. According to an aggregate of polling data, as at April 15 the Labor two-party preferred vote in NSW was 51.9%, an increase of 1.7% since the March federal budget.
Queensland
Paul Williams, associate professor of politics and journalism, Griffith University
The fact neither Albanese nor Dutton has spent a disproportionate amount of time campaigning in Queensland underscores the view the Sunshine State is not a pathway to The Lodge.
But the fact both leaders have made several visits – Albanese campaigned here four times in 12 days – also indicates neither leader is taking any seat for granted.
Indeed, Albanese has visited normally tough-to-win seats, such as Leichhardt in far north Queensland (held by the Coalition for 26 of the past 29 years), which reveals an emboldened Labor Party. With the retirement of popular Coalition MP Warren Entsch, and held by just 3.44%, Labor thinks Leichhardt is “winnable”, especially after reports the LNP candidate Jeremy Neal had posted questionable comments regarding China and Donald Trump on social media.
If so – and given the growing lead Labor boasts in national polls – the LNP would be also at least a little concerned in Longman (3.1%), Bonner (3.4%), Flynn (3.8%), Forde (4.2%) and Petrie (4.4%).
At least the opposition can placate itself with this week’s Resolve Strategic poll, which indicates it still leads Labor in Queensland by six points after preferences, 53% to 47%. That’s just a one-point swing to Labor since 2022. However, it would be concerned that the LNP’s lead has been slashed ten points from the previous YouGov poll.
But most concerning must surely be a uComms poll in Dutton’s own seat of Dickson, held by a slender 1.7%, which forecast the opposition leader losing to high-profile Labor candidate Ali France, 51.7 to 48.3%. The entry of the Climate 200-backed independent candidate Ellie Smith appears to have disrupted preference flows.
Labor’s own polling indicated a closer contest at 50% each, while the LNP’s polling indicates an easy win for Dutton, 57% to 43%, despite Labor spending A$130,000 on France’s campaign.
An alleged terror plot against Dutton in Brisbane doesn’t appear to have shifted the dial. But voters’ potential to conflate Dutton with Trump may well have, especially given Trump’s tariffs now threaten Queensland beef producers’ $1.4 billion trade with the United States. In the closing weeks, watch as Dutton draws on the new and popular Premier David Crisafulli for electoral succour.
South Australia
Rob Manwaring, associate professor of politics and public policy, Flinders University
Is there a federal election campaign taking place? In South Australia, there is a something of an elusive air about the current festival of democracy, with many voters disengaged. The lack of excitement reflects the fact that only two seats in the state are marginal: Sturt (0.5%) and Boothby (3.3%).
The party campaigns have sparkled and flickered, but not really caught alight. The signature move was Albanese’s early announcement of the $150 million new healthcare centre at Flinders, in the seat of Boothby. For the ALP, this neatly coalesced around Labor’s campaign on Medicare.
Federal Labor also sees its strongest asset in the state in Premier Peter Malinauskas, who was prominent during the recent AFL gather round – the round played entirely in Adelaide and its surrounds.
In a welcome development for the state, Labor’s announcement Adelaide would be put forward to host the next Climate COP conference in 2026 was an interesting flashpoint. Locally, many businesses welcomed the announcement, as it potentially will generate significant footfall and economic activity.
Yet, the Coalition quickly announced they would not support the bid, trying to shift the attention away from climate to cost-of-living issues.
More generally, there is a perception the Coalition has been struggling to build campaign momentum. Notably, in a recent visit by members of the shadow cabinet, energies appear to be focused more on sandbagging the seat of Sturt than on winning Boothy, which Labor holds with a nominal 3.3%.
Other factors also might explain a sense of indifference in South Australia. There have been key developments in state politics, for example, notably the ongoing criminal case against former Liberal leader David Speirs, and independent MP, and former Liberal, Nick McBride, who faces assault charges related to family and domestic violence (to which he’s yet to enter a plea).
Tasmania
Robert Hortle, deputy director of the Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of Tasmania
The Labor and Liberal campaign strategies started quite differently across Tasmania’s five electorates.
Labor is desperate to defend Lyons and Franklin and hopeful of picking up Braddon (though perhaps overly ambitious, given the 8% margin).
Its candidates have focused on promoting Labor’s big, national-level policies. In the first couple of weeks of the campaign, this meant pushing its flagship healthcare and childcare policies. Following the campaign launches on the weekend, housing is the new flavour.
The Liberal Party – there is no Coalition in Tassie – is focused on winning super marginal Lyons (0.9%) and holding Braddon and Bass. In contrast to Labor, the Liberal campaign was initially defined by lots of community-level funding announcements and Tasmania-specific infrastructure support.
Since the Coalition’s plan to halve the fuel excise was announced, the approach has changed somewhat. Tasmanian Liberal candidates are now swinging in behind this and other national policy pronouncements about – you guessed it – housing.
Both major party candidates have been pretty quiet on the controversial issue of salmon farming. This is surprising given the national spotlight on Braddon’s Macquarie Harbour and the waterways of Franklin. The only exception is Braddon Labor candidate Anne Urquhart’s very vocal support for the salmon industry.
For the Greens, the goal is to build on their 2022 vote share and turn one Senate seat into two, although this is a long shot. They have campaigned hard on issues – mainly salmon farming and native forest logging – where agreement between the Labor and Liberal parties has left space for a dissenting voice.
Although the Greens’ chances of winning any of the lower house seats are slim, they will be hoping these issues help them make further inroads into the declining primary vote share of the major parties.
Victoria
Zareh Ghazarian, senior lecturer in politics, school of social sciences, Monash University
Victoria has several seats that can potentially change hands at this election. As ABC election analyst Antony Green reminds us, the state is home to at least a dozen seats the major parties hold by a margin of 6% or less. Additionally, the independents in Kooyong and Goldstein are also on thin margins (2.2% and 3.3% respectively).
Within this context, the campaign in Victoria has been marked by several visits by the major party leaders. The challenge, however, has been how they have worked with their state counterparts.
State Liberal Leader Brad Battin has fallen short of explicitly supporting the Coalition’s focus on nuclear energy. Instead, he says he’s ready to have an “adult conversation” about the prospect. Coal currently provides more than 60% of electricity in Victoria.
Dutton was, however, happy to campaign alongside Battin and also visited a petrol station with the state leader while in Melbourne.
The Labor Party in Victoria, on the other hand, has been grappling with a drop in support in the polls, with Premier Jacinta Allan’s popularity falling. As a result, there’s been much speculation among political commentators about whether Albanese would want to be campaigning with a leader seemingly struggling to attract support.
In one of the first visits to the state, Albanese did not campaign with Allan. This was even though he had been happy to be with the premiers of South Australia and Western Australia while campaigning there.
According to Albanese, it was the fact that parliament was sitting that made it impossible for Allan to join him on the campaign trail. Both leaders were together at a subsequent visit, but this elicited questions about the impact of Allan’s leadership on Labor’s standing in Victoria.
Western Australia
Narelle Miragliotta, associate professor in politics, Murdoch University
Reports the state’s 16 seats will decide which party grouping will form government has resulted in WA voters being treated to regular visits by the major party leaders, including Labor’s campaign launch.
The campaign context in WA is shaped by its mining economy. Perth is the fastest growing capital in the country, which has led to strong growth in the median housing price and an expensive rental market.
On top of this two potentially divisive issues – the nature positive laws and North West shelf gas expansion – have been defused by federal Labor. The party has backtracked in the case of the former. In the case of the latter, it has merely delayed (not without criticism, however) what is likely to be an eventual approval.
Clearer differences have emerged on future of the WA live sheep trade. But while important to communities directly affected by the phasing out of the practice, the issue does not appear to be capturing the attention of most metropolitan voters.
What might we expect? Labor’s two-party-preferred margin is comfortable in eight of the nine seats it holds. The five Liberal-held seats are on much slimmer margins. Polling suggests little improvement in their state-wide share of the two party preferred vote since 2022.
To the extent the polls portend the outcome, the Liberals’ lack of electoral momentum in WA suggests it will be a struggle to regain the target seats of Curtin and Tangney. Only the outcome in WA’s newest seat, Bullwinkel, remains uncertain.
Paul Williams is a research associate with the TJ Ryan Foundation.
David Clune, Narelle Miragliotta, Rob Manwaring, Robert Hortle, and Zareh Ghazarian 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.
Injectable medications originally developed for the treatment of diabetes are also effective for weight loss, and have surged in popularity for this purpose around the world.
In Australia, Ozempic is approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, while Wegovy is approved for weight management. Both are formulations of the drug semaglutide, which mimics the action of the naturally occurring GLP-1 hormone on GLP-1 receptors in the gut and the brain, helping regulate appetite and making you feel fuller for longer.
However these medications are expensive, and sometimes hard to get. They also come with side effects. For these reasons, people are taking to “microdosing” weight-loss drugs, or using less than the dose recommended by the manufacturer.
But is this effective, and is it safe? As a GP, people are asking me these questions. Here’s what we know – and what we don’t know yet.
However, the term is increasingly being used to describe the use of weight-loss injectables at lower-than-recommended doses.
Three common reasons come up when I ask patients why they microdose weight-loss drugs.
Cost: injectables used for weight loss are not covered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, so patients must pay for these out-of-pocket. Costs start from A$260 per month and increase from there.
Side-effects: side-effects are common, and can include nausea, vomiting, bowel habit changes and reflux. Lower doses cause fewer side-effects, which is why the recommended dosing schedule starts low and gradually builds up.
A standard dose of semaglutide is 2.4mg, but we start patients on much lower doses (0.25mg) and gradually build up to this by increasing the dose each month. This is because starting at the full dose invariably causes bad side-effects.
Injectables come in an adjustable auto-injector pen which is twisted until the dose counter shows the prescribed dose in milligrams. There’s a click every time the dial is turned. Once the prescribed dose is showing, it’s injected under the skin.
To microdose, patients simply turn the dial fewer times than recommended for the full dose. They estimate a microdose by “counting clicks”, which means they’re turning it according to the clicks they hear rather than until they see the dial showing the correct dose has been reached.
Weight-loss drugs come in an adjustable auto-injector pen. myskin/Shutterstock
Alternatively, they may inject the full recommended dose but do so less often than once per week.
Is it safe?
Using injectables in this way has not been researched, so the safety has not been established. However, it’s unlikely lower doses would lead to higher safety concerns.
In fact, logically, lower doses are likely to mean fewer side-effects.
But these drugs do expire after a few weeks, and microdosing could increase the risk of inadvertently using them after their expiration date. Injecting out-of-date medication can be a significant health risk. For example, it could cause infection if bacteria has started to grow.
The biggest concern around the safety of microdosing is if patients are doing it without the knowledge of their treating team (such as their GP, dietitian and pharmacist).
Because there are no clear guidelines around microdosing, patients should only try it with caution and under medical care. Their team can assist with issues such as accounting for the limited shelf-life of the medication.
Is it effective?
As lower doses than recommended for weight loss have not been tested, we cannot answer this question yet. However, reduced side-effects at lower doses make it likely there are also reduced therapeutic effects.
In my experience there’s a reason patients increase their doses as recommended: they simply don’t lose enough weight on the starting doses.
It’s best to seek advice from your medical team before making any dose changes. AnnaStills/Shutterstock
At the height of semaglutide shortages in 2023, experts from the American Diabetes Association published recommendations around how to prescribe lower doses for patients with diabetes. But these recommendations were for diabetes management, not for patients using the drug for weight loss.
It’s also important to note that for patients using Wegovy to reduce heart attack and stroke risk – which Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration recently approved it for – there’s no evidence that cardiovascular benefits will be achieved at lower-than-recommended doses.
Is there any role for microdosing weight-loss drugs?
There may be a role for microdosing in a few scenarios:
When side-effects are not manageable: when side-effects are intolerable for patients, even on the lowest introductory dose, there may be a role for individualised approaches. But this is best done with clear communication and regular monitoring, so patients are not under-treated.
Supply disruption: if there’s a supply disruption, lowering the dose or lengthening the time between doses may be preferable to ceasing the medication altogether.
Maintenance of weight loss: once therapeutic levels have helped patients achieve their goal weight, lowering the dose may be a helpful longer-term way of keeping them there. We know stopping these drugs altogether results in rebound weight gain. We await evidence for microdosing for weight maintenance.
So what’s the take-home message?
Patients who use injectables as part of their approach to weight loss should be under the care of an experienced team, including a GP, who can monitor their progress and ensure they achieve their weight loss in a safe and sustainable way.
Microdosing weight-loss drugs currently has no clear evidence base, but if a person wants to attempt it, they should do so with the full knowledge of their treating team.
Natasha Yates wishes to thank Dr Terri-Lynne South – a GP, dietician, and the chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ specific interest group in obesity management – for providing feedback and peer review on this article.
Natasha Yates is affiliated with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
That asset is a customer database containing sensitive personal information about millions of New Zealanders. So what happens to it matters.
Founded in 1996, some 2.9 million New Zealanders representing 74% of the nation’s households eventually signed up to Flybuys. Members collected points at affiliated retailers which they could then redeem through the Flybuys website.
But over the past decade, partners such as Air New Zealand, Mitre 10 and New World pulled out of the scheme to either join other loyalty programmes or start their own.
In May last year, Loyalty New Zealand announced it was closing Flybuys New Zealand and liquidators were called in to manage the company’s end. Flybuys Australia continues to operate, jointly owned by Coles Group and Wesfarmers (which owns retailers K-mart and Bunnings).
According to the first liquidator’s report from early April, Loyalty New Zealand is solvent. This means it is not bankrupt and can pay all debts in full.
Once creditors are paid, the remaining funds will go to shareholders – Z Energy, BNZ, IAG and Foodstuffs Ventures (NZ), a joint subsidiary of Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island.
However, the report is silent on Flybuys’ customer database. That data likely includes years of shopping histories, behavioural profiles and potentially sensitive demographic or inferred financial information.
When the end of Flybuys was announced, Loyalty New Zealand assured customers and retailers it would manage private data according to the New Zealand Privacy Act. But with the liquidation of the company, it is unclear what will now happen to this information.
While no one has publicly said the information will be sold, there is no assurance it will be deleted either. And the database is arguably Loyalty New Zealand’s most valuable, albeit intangible, asset. Unless liquidators explicitly commit to deletion, the data could potentially be transferred or sold.
Loyalty schemes such as Flybuys can gather a great deal of information on those who sign-up. That information can become a valuable – and potentially tradable – asset. Zamrznuti tonovi/Shutterstock
While privacy laws vary by country, the 23andMe case showed how personal data can make customers vulnerable. Flybuys’ data may not be genetic, but it is similarly rich, detailed and easily re-identifiable when combined with other datasets.
In extreme cases, such data can be used to infer sensitive customer characteristics such as financial stress or health-related behaviours. This could lead to political profiling or surveillance captialism – the collection and commodification of personal data.
New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020 is designed to protect personal information. If data is reused for purposes beyond its original intent, or transferred without proper consent, it may breach the law. But the act does not clearly prohibit the sale of data during a liquidation. Nor is it clear on how the rules could be enforced.
Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 offers even less protection. It allows companies to send personal data overseas if they take “reasonable steps” to ensure recipients follow similar privacy rules. This means Australian Flybuys’ data could be sent to countries such as the United States.
That is especially worrying given the power of US tech giants, which routinely collect, profile and monetise data with little oversight. In the wrong hands, Flybuys’ trove of shopping habits, preferences and behavioural patterns could be repurposed to build invasive consumer profiles without people’s knowledge or control.
Setting a global standard
If Flybuys New Zealand’s data is treated as an asset during the liquidation process, could set a precedent and shape future regulatory standards internationally.
We have seen this before. In November 2022, Deliveroo Australia entered voluntary administration, raising concerns about how it would handle its extensive customer data. Users were told they had six months to download their own information, but there was no clarity on whether the data would then be deleted, retained or sold.
This lack of transparency revealed a gap in Australia’s data protection laws during liquidation. While the ultimate fate of the data remains publicly unknown, experts have suggested it was transferred to Deliveroo’s UK-based parent company.
While Australia’s 1988 Privacy Act requires organisations to handle personal information responsibly, it does not clearly regulate the sale or transfer of data during insolvencies or liquidations. There is a legal grey area which leaves customers and consumers vulnerable, as their data could be treated as a tradable asset without their consent.
The need for ethical stewardship
Customer data accumulation is the product of a relationship built on trust that should end when the company and relationship does. Ethical stewardship demands deletion, not redistribution.
When a company winds down, users should be clearly informed of their options: to retrieve their data, delete it or consent to its transfer. That decision should rest with the member or customer, not be made behind closed doors for potential financial gain.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Correspondent is a film every journalist should see.
There are no spoiler alerts. It is based on the globally-publicised jailing in Cairo in 2013 of Australian journalist Peter Greste (played by Richard Roxburgh) and his Al Jazeera English colleagues, Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) and local reporter Baher Mohamed (Rahel Romahn).
Skilfully directed by Kriv Stenders, The Correspondent follows Greste’s 2017 memoir. Roxburgh’s performance as the embattled journalist is breathtaking and career defining. With a tight screenplay by Peter Duncan, the film is a masterclass in political subtlety.
Authenticity in truth telling
At its world premiere at Adelaide Film Festival in October, Greste said The Correspondent “paid huge respect” to his memoir.
The film begins with Greste’s surprise arrest in 2013 by Egyptian authorities at the Marriott hotel in Cairo. This is juxtaposed with historical snippets of the Arab Spring uprising in Tahrir Square in January 2011, which ended the 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.
The next president after Mubarak was Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Freedom and Justice Party. This party was affiliated with the Brotherhood, the country’s oldest and largest Islamist organisation.
In June 2013, a militarised coup d’état in Egypt was led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime. Morsi was jailed by the freshly minted President al-Sisi. By December, the Brotherhood was blacklisted and declared a terrorist organisation.
The Correspondent argues the Al Jazeera English journalists were political pawns for the new Egyptian regime. The regime had a problematic relationship with its wealthy neighbour, Qatar, a country that partially funds Al Jazeera and publicly supported the Muslim Brotherhood.
Working from a media bunker in the Marriott because their offices were subject to a series of raids and closed down by local police, the trio were accused of illegally mastering a grand conspiracy against al-Sisi’s authoritarian regime.
Struggle for justice and risky business
Set between the grimy underworld of the Egyptian jail and the endless circus of Egyptian court trials, The Correspondent is a look into the psychological torment of Greste and his colleagues.
Between card playing, sarcastic humour and planned hunger strikes, the ritual reality of cell life sets in. Friendships are tested and forged between the journalists, student activist detainees and prison authorities.
Greste spent decades writing headlines from conflict zones before becoming a headline himself.
A repetitive motif in The Correspondent is Greste’s flashbacks to his BBC
days during 2005 in Mogadishu, Somalia, where his producer Kate Peyton (Yael Stone) was killed outside the Sahafi Hotel. In these flashbacks, we are privy to Greste’s guilt-driven internal monologues.
Roxburgh’s performance as the embattled journalist is breathtaking and career defining. Maslow Entertainment
In three studies, I examined the reportage by the ABC, the BBC and the Al Jazeera network about Greste’s case. Across these publications, the safety of journalists received minimal coverage.
Coverage focused on the innocence of the trio, impact of Greste’s sentencing on his ageing parents and press freedom. All these facets of the story are reflected in The Correspondent.
This month, the International Federation of Journalists said at least 156 journalists and media workers have been killed in the current war in Palestine. In December, the Committee to Protect Journalists put the number at more than 137, “making it the deadliest period for journalists since [the committee] began gathering data in 1992”.
Imprisonment of a Western foreign correspondent often generates international headlines, but most journalists who are imprisoned are local journalists. Foreign correspondents rely on these local journalists, wrote Greste, “when they land in a new, dangerous environment”.
In focusing tightly on Greste, the film omits the story of the local journalists imprisoned at the same time. Maslow Entertainment
Local journalists hold power to account, as Greste describes it in “ways far more dangerous than any of us in more secure environments could possibly imagine”.
In focusing tightly on Greste’s story, The Correspondent fails to shine a light on the dozens of local journalists imprisoned at the same time.
Rarely have so many of us been imprisoned and beaten up, intimidated or murdered in the course of our duties.
The Correspondent is an extraordinary film about human resilience and the importance of global diplomacy in the ongoing fight for press freedom.
The Correspondent is in cinemas from today.
Andrea Jean Baker 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.
Fiji’s Minister for Defence and Veteran Affairs is facing a backlash after announcing that he was undertaking a multi-country, six-week “official travel overseas” to visit Fijian peacekeepers in the Middle East.
Pio Tikoduadua’s supporters say he should “disregard critics” for his commitment to Fijian peacekeepers, which “highlights a profound dedication to duty and leadership”.
However, those who oppose the 42-day trip say it is “a waste of time”, and that there are other pressing priorities, such as health and infrastructure upgrades, where taxpayers money should be directed.
Tikoduadua has had to defend his travel, saying that the travel cost was “tightly managed”.
He said that, while he accepts that public officials must always be answerable to the people they serve, “I will not remain silent when cheap shots are taken at the dignity of our troops, or when assumptions are passed off as fact.”
“Let me speak plainly: I am not travelling abroad for a vacation,” he said in a statement.
“I am going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our men and women in uniform — Fijians who serve in some of the harshest, most dangerous corners of the world, far away from home and family, under the blue flag of the United Nations and the red, white and blue of our own.
‘I know what that means’ Tikoduadua, a former soldier and peacekeeper, said, “I know what that means [to wear the Fiji Military Forces uniform].”
“I marched under the same sun, carried the same weight, and endured the same silence of being away from home during moments that mattered most.
“This trip spans multiple countries because our troops are spread across multiple missions — UNDOF in the Golan Heights, UNTSO in Jerusalem and Tiberias, and the MFO in Sinai. I will not pick and choose which deployments are ‘worth the airfare’. They all are.”
He added the trip was not about photo opportunities, but about fulfilling his duty of care — to hear peacekeepers’ concerns directly.
“To suggest that a Zoom call can replace that responsibility is not just naïve — it is offensive.”
However, the opposition Labour Party has called it “unbelievably absurd”.
“Six weeks is a long, long time for a highly paid minister to be away from his duties at home,” the party said in a statement.
Standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’ “To make it worse, [Tikoduadua] adds that he is . . . ‘not going on a vacation but to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men and women in uniform’.
“Minister, it’s going to cost the taxpayer thousands to send you on this junket as we see it.”
Tikoduadua confirmed that he is set to receive standard overseas per diem as set by government policy, “just like any public servant representing the country abroad”.
“That allowance covers meals, local transport, and incidentals-not luxury. There is no ‘bonus’, no inflated figure, and certainly no special payout on top of my salary.
As a cabinet minister, the Defence Minister is entitled to business class travel and travel insurance for official meetings. He is also entitled to overseas travelling allowance — UNDP subsistence allowance plus 50 percent, according to the Parliamentary Remunerations Act 2014.
Tikoduadua said that he had heard those who had raised concerns in good faith.
“To those who prefer outrage over facts, and politics over patriotism — I suggest you speak to the families of the soldiers I will be visiting,” he said.
“Ask them if their sons and daughters are worth the minister’s time and presence. Then tell me whether staying behind would have been the right thing to do.”
Responding to criticism on his official Facebook page, Tikoduadua said: “I do not travel to take advantage of taxpayers. I travel because my job demands it.”
His travel ends on May 25.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two “moments” stuck out in Wednesday’s leaders’ debate, the second head-to-head of the campaign.
Peter Dutton cut his losses over his faux pas this week when he wrongly named Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto as having said there had been a Russian approach to base aircraft in Papua.
So that was a mistake, ABC moderator David Speers asked. “It was a mistake.”
The other “moment” was in a discussion about negative gearing, when Anthony Albanese denied the government had sought modelling on that. The public service “certainly wasn’t commissioned by us to do so”. In fact, we know Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked Treasury to do it.
That enabled Dutton to repeat a favourite Coalition line. “This prime minister has a problem with the truth.” (Albanese has given grist for this line by his denial earlier in the campaign that he fell off a stage, when the footage contradicted him.)
While the leaders were predictably well-rehearsed across the broad sweep of issues, they could not prevent their weak spots being put on display.
Albanese struggled with something that has not been canvassed enough.Wasn’t there a case for more means testing of some of the big spending the government has undertaken?
Then of course there was the perennially unanswerable question: when will power prices come down? The PM squirmed.
Dutton left us no more informed about what a Coalition government would cut to finance his programs, although he did concede, when asked whether cuts to the public service would be enough to cover all his spending, “The short answer is no”.
On climate change, the opposition leader looked awkward, when asked what seemed simple questions, such as whether the impact of climate change was getting worse. That’s a judgement he’d prefer to leave to others, “because I’m not a scientist”.
Aware that he is paying a political cost by being painted as Trump-lite, Dutton dodged when asked whether he trusted Trump. “I don’t know Donald Trump” was his lame response (although he continues to declare himself confident of being able to get a deal on tariffs with him).
Albanese, for his part, said he had “no reason not to trust him”.
The PM reconfirmed that in tariff discussions with the US, Australia’s critical minerals were on the table, but lacked clarity when pressed on what precisely was Australia’s proposed critical minerals reserve.
The two leaders were at one on being behind AUKUS (just like they are on not touching negative gearing) despite increasing criticism of the agreement in Australia.
Housing was thoroughly canvassed but without taking us much further. It now seems it is the politicians against the experts, many of whom are sceptical of much of both sides’ offerings.
Speers’ raising the issue of renters was a reminder that the housing issue in this campaign – at least as it’s being argued by the main parties – has been firmly focused on promoting ownership. The plight of renters has been the bailiwick of the Greens.
Asked about the one big reform change they’d like to be remembered for, Albanese nominated affordable child care.
Dutton went to a more ambitious level, nominating energy, which was, he said, “the economy”, an inevitably more contestable area than childcare. This opened the usual claims and counter-claims about nuclear.
For those who want to hear the next round of the leaders’ duelling, they will meet again on April 27 on commercial TV.
Business signals post-election fight on gender-based undervaluation of work
The Albanese government has made reducing the gender pay gap one of its signature issues. Among other initiatives, its legislation in 2022 required the Fair Work Commission to take into account the need to achieve gender equality.
The commission’s expert panel for pay equity has been investigating five areas: pharmacists, health workers, social and community services employees, dental assistants, and child care workers.
On Wednesday its results were released, finding gender-based undervaluation of work in all these areas and proposing pay rises up to 35%.
There is an immediate determination for pharmacists, who will receive a 14.1% pay rise phased in over three years. In the other areas, a process of further hearings will commence.
The government reacted cautiously. The bill for the wages of many workers in the care sector falls on to the public purse.
A Labor spokesperson said: “A re-elected Albanese Government will engage positively with the Commission consistent with the principles set out in our submission [to the expert panel] , including our obligation to manage any changes in a fiscally and economically responsible manner”.
The Australian Industry Group declared “many employers will struggle to meet the scale of the increased costs proposed”.
“Industry will be anxiously awaiting the response of the major sides of politics to the decision and what concrete commitments will be made to assist employers in grappling with its implications.”
The last thing the government wants to make on this before the election is a “concrete commitment”.
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.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have had their second showdown of the 2025 federal election campaign. The debate, hosted by the ABC, was moderated by David Speers in the national broadcaster’s studios in Western Sydney.
The leaders were asked a wide range of questions on topics such as negative gearing, nuclear energy and Australia’s relationships with the US and China. But the debate was kicked off on housing, which has been a major focus of the campaign over the last few days.
So, how did it shape up, and how did it compare to the first debate a fortnight ago? Three experts give their analysis.
Ahead of tonight’s debate, commentators predicted it would have little impact because most people no longer get their news from television and because the election campaign has been deeply uninspiring.
That’s partly an index of how drastically the media landscape has changed. As recently as 2010, nearly 3.4 million people tuned in to watch the debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, which was broadcast on all three commercial networks, as well as the ABC. That number showed evidence of widespread interest in politics.
The number of viewers’ advance questions to the ABC tonight also illustrated keen interest, particularly on issues like the plight of potentially lifelong renters in an overheated housing market and the urgent need to tackle climate change.
The second leaders’ debate didn’t become heated or hostile. Both the prime minister and the opposition leader stayed relentlessly on-message.
As is well known, Albanese is no Cicero, but he was well prepared and generally clear. He was stronger on housing than his opponent, but clearly did not want to get trapped predicting energy prices again, as he had during the 2022 campaign.
Dutton was also clear when he focused on the issue at hand. His strongest line was one he used at least three times: are you better off now than you were three years ago? It is a line used by US President Donald Trump during his successful campaign last year.
But it was on Trump that Dutton tied himself in knots, asserting he would be able to get a deal done with Trump when virtually no one else has and then saying he did not know him. Huh?
He was also defensive when pressed on his nuclear policy and he was all over the shop on climate change.
Befitting the current election campaign, there were meme-able moments on offer for both. Dutton got out his line about Albanese having a problem with the truth. But he coughed up his own when he admitted making a mistake in saying Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had “publicly announced” Russia had asked his country for a base for its aircraft.
After both leaders finished their opening statements in good spirits, the debate quickly turned to housing. As suggested by host David Speers, both parties have “put forward ideas that a lot of experts and economists are warning will only push up prices even more”.
So, could the leaders explain how their plans will make housing more affordable in five or ten years?
Albanese said his party had a plan for both demand and supply. He mentioned the Building Australia’s Future Fund to build more public housing, Build to Rent scheme to increase the private rental supply, and the 5% deposit for first home buyers. He also made note of the 100,000 homes that would be allocated only to first home buyers.
Dutton blamed Albanese for the current housing crisis. He promoted the Coalition’s plans to allow first home buyers access up to $50,000 of their superannuation to buy a home and a planned $5 billion infrastructure fund to free up to 500,000 new home lots. Reducing immigration and foreign ownership also rated a mention.
Dutton explained the most important part of the Coalition’s plan was to allow first home buyers a tax deduction for interest on the first $650,000 of their mortgage. When questioned about this favouring higher income earners, Dutton quickly responded that the average taxpayer would save around $11,000 a year.
Talking tax, this provided the perfect opportunity for Speers to pose the question that many viewers wanted to ask – why are both parties not willing to review the tax breaks for investors and the capital gains tax discount?
Dutton jumped at the chance to challenge Albanese about the modelling on negative gearing conducted by Treasury for the government last year. Albanese replied Treasury was just doing their job and looking at ideas.
The host reminded both leaders that they themselves are property investors. When pressed about possibly placing limits on the number of properties held by investors, Dutton argued there should be no limit as we need the rentals.
Talking rentals, Dutton said renters’ rights were up to the states, while Albanese said his party has delivered the Renter’s Rights Program and increased rental assistance.
For the second leaders’ debate, the ABC’s new Parramatta digs, Studio 91, felt more like the legendary New York dance club, Studio 54. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton stuck to their steps while the host, “DJ” David Speers, tried to disrupt their rhythm.
Dutton opened with the Reaganesque classic, asking viewers: “Are you better off than you were three years ago?”. Albanese countered by saying Australians have done the “hard work” over the past three years, then adding, “there’s much more work to do”.
Dutton wanted to talk about renters. Labor’s policies, he argued, would “drive up the cost of rents”. Albanese held out, preferring to talk first home buyers. “We need to give people a fair crack”, he said.
Dutton retorted, we need to “give young Australians a go”. A “crack” or a “go”. Both options have “hit” written all over them.
Speers then changed tunes, turning to the old election stalwart, spending versus revenue.
“We have improved the bottom line”, Albanese assured viewers. That claim “defies the reality”, Dutton responded. Speers asked Dutton, “Where do you cut?”. No answer. Speers then quizzed Albanese. “When will power bills come down?” No answer.
“I’m friends with Keir Starmer”, Albanese suddenly volunteered, cautioning against the Coalition’s nuclear energy plans. The UK prime minister, Albanese said, regrets his country’s nuclear adventures.
Crossing the Atlantic, Dutton remarked, the Coalition has an “incredible relationship” with the Trump administration. The government’s current ambassador, Kevin Rudd, “can’t get a phone call with the president”, he said. The former ambassador, Joe Hockey, “used to play golf with him.”
The second leaders’ debate traversed the dance floor to the golf course, but got no closer to differing visions for the country.
In a rare moment of harmony, Albanese and Dutton concurred: both sides of government have failed Indigenous Australians. No debate there.
Michelle Cull is an FCPA member of CPA Australia, member of the Financial Advice Association Australia and President Elect of the Academy of Financial Services in the United States. Michelle is an academic member of UniSuper’s Consultative Committee. Michelle co-founded the Western Sydney University Tax Clinic which has received funding from the Australian Taxation Office as part of the National Tax Clinic Program. Michelle has previously volunteered as Chair of the Macarthur Advisory Council for the Salvation Army Australia.
Andy Marks and Matthew Ricketson 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.
Australians strongly disagree with key policies of US President Donald Trump, and have overwhelmingly lost trust in the United States to act responsibly in the world, according to the Lowy Institute’s 2025 poll.
Despite this, 80% of people say the alliance is “very” or “fairly” important for Australia’s security, only fractionally down on last year’s 83%.
The poll also found people nearly evenly divided on whether Peter Dutton (35%) or Anthony Albanese (34%) would be the better leader to manage Australia’s relations with Trump.
But Albanese rated much more strongly than Dutton as better able to manage Australia’s relationship with China and President Xi Jinping (45% to 25%).
Albanese was also well ahead (41%-29%) when people were asked who would be more competent at handling Austrlaia’s foreign policy over the next three years.
The poll comes as the “Trump effect” has overshadowed the campaign, and increasingly worked against Dutton. Labor has cast Dutton as having looked to the US for policies, such as his proposed cuts to the public service. It has labelled him “DOGEy Dutton”, a reference to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Lowy poll of 2,117 people was taken between March 3 and 16. This was after Trump had announced plans for a 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports, and other tariffs, but before his “Liberation Day” regime which saw a 10% general tariff hitting all countries.
Trust in the US has plummeted since the last Lowy poll in 2024, with nearly two-thirds of respondents (64%) having little or no trust in the US to act responsibly in the world, compared with 44% a year before.
This is a new low in the poll’s two-decade history. Trust fell dramatically among older voters. Trust was already relatively low among younger voters, and fell by a smaller margin.
On various Trump stances, the poll found Australians most disapproving (89%) of Trump’s pressure on Denmark to sell or or hand over its self-governing territory of Greenland to the US.
More than eight in ten (81%) disapproved of Trump’s use of tariffs to pressure other countries to comply with his administration’s objectives.
Three-quarters disapproved of the US withdrawing from the World Health Organization (76%) and from international climate change agreements (74%).
In addition, three-quarters (74%) disapproved of Trump negotiating a deal on the future of Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin that might require Ukraine to accept a loss of territory. The dramatic Oval Office showdown between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance took place just before the survey.
Australians also disapproved of the US cutting spending on foreign aid (64%) and undertaking mass deportations of undocumented migrants (56%).
On Trump’s demand that US allies spend more on defence people were, however, evenly divided (49% approved/disapproved).
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 Palestinian advocacy group has called on NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters to take a firm stand for international law and human rights by following the Maldives with a ban on visiting Israelis.
Maher Nazzal, chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand, said in an open letter sent to both NZ politicians that the “decisive decision” by the Maldives reflected a “growing international demand for accountability and justice”.
He said such a measure would serve as a “peaceful protest against the ongoing violence” with more than 51,000 people — mostly women and children — being killed and more than 116,000 wounded by Israel’s brutal 18-month war on Gaza.
Since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, at least 1630 people have been killed — including at least 500 children — and at least 4302 people have been wounded.
The open letter said:
Dear Prime Minister Luxon and Minister Peters,
I am writing to express deep concern over the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to urge the New Zealand government to take a firm stand in support of international law and human rights.
Palestinian Forum of New Zealand chair Maher Nazzal at an Auckland pro-Palestinian rally . . . “New Zealand has a proud history of advocating for human rights and upholding international law.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
The Maldives has recently announced a ban on Israeli passport holders entering their country, citing solidarity with the Palestinian people and condemnation of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
This decisive action reflects a growing international demand for accountability and justice.
New Zealand has a proud history of advocating for human rights and upholding international law. In line with this tradition, I respectfully request that the New Zealand government consider implementing a temporary suspension on the entry of Israeli passport holders. Such a measure would serve as a peaceful protest against the ongoing violence and a call for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilian lives.
I understand the complexities involved in international relations and the importance of maintaining diplomatic channels. However, taking a stand against actions that result in significant civilian casualties and potential violations of international law is imperative.
I appreciate your attention to this matter and urge you to consider this request seriously. New Zealand’s voice can contribute meaningfully to the global call for peace and justice.
Sincerely, Maher Nazzal Chair Palestine Forum of New Zealand
JUST IN: 🇲🇻🇮🇱 Maldives President officially signs the law banning Israelis from entering the country. pic.twitter.com/rKRnlEw6WK
President Mohamed Muizzu signed the legislation after it was passed on Monday by the People’s Majlis, the Maldivian parliament.
Muizzu’s cabinet initially decided to ban all Israeli passport holders from the idyllic island nation in June 2024 until Israel stopped its attacks on Palestine, but progress on the legislation stalled.
A bill was presented in May 2024 in the Maldivian parliament by Meekail Ahmed Naseem, a lawmaker from the main opposition, the Maldivian Democratic Party, which sought to amend the country’s Immigration Act.
The cabinet then decided to change the country’s laws to ban Israeli passport holders, including dual citizens. After several amendments, it passed this week, more than 300 days later.
“The ratification reflects the government’s firm stance in response to the continuing atrocities and ongoing acts of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people,” Muizzu’s office said in a statement.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 1,613 Palestinians had been killed since 18 March, when a ceasefire collapsed, taking the overall death toll since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023 to 50,983.
The ban went into immediate effect.
“The Maldives reaffirms its resolute solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” the statement added.
Last year, in response to talk of a ban, Israel’s Foreign Ministry advised its citizens against travelling to the country.
The Maldives, a popular tourist destination, has a population of more than 525,000 and about 11,000 Israeli tourists visited there in 2023 before the Israeli war on Gaza began.
We now have the competing bids for our votes by the alternative governments on income tax policy.
From Labor, future cuts to the lowest marginal tax rate and new standard deductions for work expenses. From the Coalition, a one-off return to a tax offset for low and middle income earners that was previously nicknamed the “lamington”.
Our modelling shows slightly higher benefits for low- and middle-income earners from the Coalition’s proposals compared to Labor’s.
Labor’s drip-fed tax policies
The Labor government announced its main tax proposal in the recent budget. It is a permanent cut in the lowest marginal tax rate.
Currently, the tax rate on income between A$18,201 and $45,000 is 16%. This will drop to 15% from July 2026 and then to 14% from July 2027.
This will reduce the tax paid by taxpayers in all income brackets, with most receiving $536 a year in relief. But it is proportionately larger for those on lower incomes.
At the weekend, the government announced an additional measure: allowing everyone to claim a standard tax deduction of $1,000 instead of claiming individual work-related expenses.
Those with expenses over $1,000 can continue to claim their deduction in the current way. The government estimates this measure will assist 39% of taxpayers. The average relief for those benefiting will be $205 per year.
Coalition’s revived tax offset
Also at the weekend, the Coalition released its tax policies. It is essentially proposing the reintroduction of the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset (“LMITO”, which led to the nickname the “lamington”), for one financial year only.
The Morrison government introduced a low- and middle-income tax offset in the 2018-19 tax year. It was subsequently extended, but then abolished by the Labor government.
It is now called the Cost of Living Tax Offset. Those with taxable incomes between $48,000 and $104,000 will get a one-off rebate of $1,200. Other taxpayers with incomes below $144,000 will get smaller rebates.
Although Dutton was critical of Labor’s income tax cuts for not starting until 2026, the one-off rebate would also not be paid until mid-2026.
Dutton has not explained why he said three weeks ago that the budget position would not allow for income tax cuts but now he thinks it does.
Who benefits most from the competing proposals?
We have estimated the distribution of the benefits from Labor’s proposed tax cut (but not the instant tax deduction) and the Coalition’s one-year tax offset.
Given a federal election is held every three years, the estimates are provided up to mid-2028. This resulted in a slightly higher cumulative figure of around $10 billion for the Labor proposal (over two years) and $11 billion for the Coalition proposal (over one year). This is slightly higher than the Coalition’s own estimate.
The following charts show disposable household income deciles from the poorest 10% to the 10% with the highest incomes. This is household income that has been adjusted to allow comparison of income levels between households of differing size and composition.
The chart indicates slightly higher benefits from the Coalition for households in the lowest and second-lowest income groups. This may be an overestimate as it assumes those earning less than $37,000 get a $265 benefit. The policy is rather vague on this, saying only that they would get “up to” $265.
The Coalition proposal provides a somewhat higher benefit for middle income earners, but withdraws it for those on higher incomes.
All individual taxpayers earning above $45,000 will receive the same benefit from the Labor proposal. But differences in household composition mean that the benefit calculated by household continues to rise somewhat.
The Coalition proposal gives no benefits to individuals earning over $144,000. But even the households in the highest income groups have some members earning less than this, such as adult children living at home. So the average household with a high income will still get some benefit.
In terms of family type, the Coalition proposal will give less benefit than the Labor plan to couples with children but more to other groups, especially single parents.
From these distributions of both income level and family type, it seems that neither party has a clear plan to target their own traditional constituencies with these policies. The Coalition proposal may be targeting households in outer suburban marginal seats which tend to have more low and middle income households.
How much will they cost?
According to the budget papers, Labor’s cut to the lowest marginal rate will cost $3 billion in 2026-27, $6.7 billion in 2027-28 and $7.4 billion in 2028-29.
The cost of the instant tax deduction will be $2.4 billion over four years.
The Coalition has claimed its rebate would cost $10 billion in 2026-27.
This would of course increase if a Dutton government feels under pressure to extend the new rebate, as happened with the LMITO.
Disappointing for democratic decision-making
It is very disappointing that both major parties are releasing key policies on taxation and housing literally only days before people start voting.
Previous leaders like Robert Menzies (when opposition leader from 1943 to 1949) and Gough Whitlam (1967 to 1972) would spend years developing, then explaining and advocating for policies. This gave time for them to be scrutinised, and if necessary revised, before voters were asked to pass judgement.
John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist in the Australian Treasury.
Yogi Vidyattama 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.
Australia’s renters have to battle rising rents and a lack of available properties. They also face ongoing instability. Our new research suggests half of all landlords sell their investment properties after only two years, adding to renters’ insecurity.
Our study released by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, models the behaviour of landlords using longitudinal data from 2001 to 2021. It looks at what motivates small-scale investors to buy, sell or keep their rental properties.
This work can inform future planning for the private rental sector, which has been projected to continue expanding. Both Labor and the Coalition were strongly criticised for making little mention of renters or supply in their housing policies released on Sunday.
The short-term owners
Those landlords who got rid of their investment after two years, sometimes sooner, often did so because they hadn’t counted on the additional costs of property ownership or their circumstances changed because they divorced or lost their job.
While younger people aged 25–34 years were more likely to buy a rental
property compared to other age groups, this group was also more likely to sell their property sooner.
Landlords who sold after two years or less, were more likely to be women, unemployed, unmarried and with low-to-moderate incomes.
How this makes renting less secure
Landlords who sell after a relatively short investment period disrupt the supply of private rental housing, which can potentially have a negative impact on both tenant security and affordability.
This includes unplanned moves for renters after a notice period, as well as possible increases in the amount of rent they have to pay. This type of exposure to precarious housing conditions adversely affects the wellbeing of tenants.
This is especially important given that the share of private renters in Australia has risen over the last 20 years and there is ongoing concern about affordability among private renters. Private renters now represent about 30% of the market.
What motivates landlords?
Understanding the factors that increase the likelihood of landlords holding onto a property will contribute to tenure security in the rental sector.
These landlords tend to have higher educational qualifications, higher incomes and smaller mortgages on their own homes. As such, these landlords are financially stable and are able to withstand the higher economic costs of holding a rental property.
Our findings show there is value in establishing programs that offer education on property investment. This could support landlords’ efforts to hold their rental properties. It could also increase the supply of long-term rental housing for tenants.
As well, there should be more rigorous financial risk assessments by lenders and appropriate regulations so those who buy rental investment properties can afford to hold them.
Potential impact of policy changes
Policy changes that affect the costs of supplying rental housing for landlords could also have affordability consequences for renters.
Landlords will only continue to invest in the rental market if market conditions offer them income relative to their property values.
For instance, policy changes that apply long-term freezes to rent increases will reduce rental yields for landlords. This might in turn hurt the supply of rental properties available to renters.
Changes to policies affecting landlords’ tax positions could also have major impacts on whether they keep their rental investment over time.
For instance, if changes are made to capital gains tax and interest rates that directly increase the landlord’s cost of holding an investment property, they will likely pass these costs on to tenants.
As a consequence, rents would become less affordable. Any changes to tax settings that affect landlords need to be rolled out incrementally. This will avoid destabilising rental markets and reducing the supply of housing available for tenants.
Why we need a secure rental market
Increasing the supply of private rental dwellings would help make renting more affordable.
Individuals who can afford investment properties add to the supply of private rental stock. And if they can hold their rentals for long periods, the rental market becomes even more secure.
Those who can’t hold their rental investments for long can disrupt the supply of private rental housing, with potentially negative impacts on affordability and security.
Our study has focused on individual landlords, which make up the majority of suppliers of rental housing in Australia. However, improving tenure security for renters will require more than just encouraging a stable flow of rental housing from individual landlords.
Social housing is also a crucial source of secure housing for those who cannot compete in the private rental market. There is now an urgent need to redress decades of under-investment in social housing in Australia.
Ranjodh B. Singh has received funding from AHURI.
Chris Leishman receives funding from AHURI, SMCA, ARC, ESRC, the Office of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Scottish Government, UK Government, Welsh Government, Northern Ireland Government, South Australia Government. He is a non-executive director of Housing Choices Australia, a Trustee for the UK’s Housing Studies Charitable Trust, Chair of the Australasian Housing Studies Association, editor of the Urban Studies journal, guest editor of the Regional Studies, Regional Studies journal. He is not a member of any political party in any country.
Rachel Ong ViforJ is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project FT200100422). She also receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
Jack Hewton 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 Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
As well as the election for the full House of Representatives, there will be an election on May 3 for 40 of the 76 senators. The 72 state senators have six-year terms, with half of them up for election every three years. The four territory senators are all up for election with each House election.
In a double dissolution election, all senators are up for election, but this election won’t be a double dissolution. State senators elected at this election will begin their six-year term on July 1.
The six states are entitled to equal representation in the Senate, so each state has 12 senators. This system greatly overrepresents Tasmania relative to its population. The ACT and Northern Territory have two senators each.
Senators are elected by proportional representation in their jurisdictions with preferences. At a half-Senate election, with six senators in each state up for election, a quota is one-seventh of the vote, or 14.3%. For the territories, a quota is one-third or 33.3%. Half a quota on primary votes (7.1% in a state) is usually enough to give a party a reasonable chance of election.
Voters will be instructed to number at least six boxes above the line or 12 below the line, but only one box above the line or six below is needed for a formal vote. Preferences are voter-directed, with the group ticket voting system scrapped before the 2016 election. Owing to exhausted votes, the final seats in states are likely to be filled on less than a full quota.
To become law, legislation must pass both the House and Senate in the same form. With the Senate’s proportional representation, it’s very unlikely to be under government control, so governments need to negotiate with other parties to pass their legislation through the Senate.
Party standings and seats up for election
The Coalition holds 30 of the 76 total senators, Labor 25, the Greens 11, One Nation two, the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) one, the United Australia Party (UAP) one and all others six.
During this term, Lidia Thorpe defected from the Greens, Fatima Payman from Labor and Tammy Tyrrell from JLN. As all three are state senators who were last elected in 2022, none will be up for election until 2028. The Coalition also lost two senators to defections (Gerard Rennick and David Van) – both were last elected in 2019 and will be up for election this year.
Other than the ACT and NT seats, the seats up for election were last up in 2019. At that election, the Coalition won 17 of the 36 state senators, Labor 11, the Greens six, One Nation one and Jacqui Lambie one.
The Coalition and One Nation combined won four of the six Queensland senators. In Tasmania, Labor and the Greens won three seats, the Liberals two and Lambie one. All other states were tied between the left and right blocs.
In the 2022 election, Labor and the Greens combined won four of the six Western Australian senators, Tasmania once again went three Labor and Greens, two Liberals and Tyrrell from JLN, and the other states were tied between the left and right. The state senators elected in 2022 are not up for election.
The four territory senators elected in 2022 will be up for election. In 2022, the ACT split one Labor and one for independent David Pocock, the first time its senators had not split one Labor, one Liberal. The NT is expected to once again be one Labor, one Country Liberal Party.
Here is a table of Senate seats up for election in 2025. I have ignored the defections of Rennick and Van from the Coalition in Queensland and Victoria. The good news for the left is that only Pocock’s ACT seat looks winnable for the right.
Left-wing parties likely to gain Senate seats
For either the left or the right to win four of the six senators for a state, they need to win nearly four quotas of votes or 57%.
The Poll Bludger’s BludgerTrack by state for the House currently gives Labor a 51.9–48.1 lead in New South Wales, a 52.1–47.9 lead in Victoria, a 56.4–43.6 lead in WA and a 54.7–45.3 lead in South Australia. The Coalition leads in Queensland by 52.7–47.3.
On these vote shares, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and SA would be tied 3–3 between the left and right, while the left would probably repeat their 4–2 win in WA from 2022.
A 3–3 split in Queensland would be a gain for the left from the right, as the right are defending a 4–2 split from 2019. A 4–2 win for the left in WA would also be a gain, as WA was 3–3 in 2019.
Tasmania doesn’t have enough polling to be included in BludgerTrack. But analyst Kevin Bonham, who is a Tasmanian, believes the likely outcome is two Labor, two Liberals, one Green and one to Lambie, the same as in 2019.
There haven’t been any ACT Senate polls, but cities are becoming more left-wing, and the ACT is just a city. In 2022, Labor won the ACT by 67.0–33.0 in the House, a 5.3% two-party swing to Labor. It’s plausible that any Trump-inspired backlash against the Coalition will be strongest in the ACT, so it may be difficult for the Liberals to regain their ACT Senate seat.
If Labor and the Greens gain Senate seats in Queensland and WA, Pocock retains in the ACT, and there are no other changes to the left-right balance, the new Senate would have 38 seats for Labor and the Greens, 33 for the Coalition, One Nation and UAP, and one each of Pocock, Lambie, Thorpe, Payman and Tyrrell.
It’s increasingly likely that Labor will win the House election. Labor and the Greens are likely to increase their Senate numbers. If Labor and the Greens hold 38 of the 76 Senate seats after the election, Labor would only need one more vote to pass legislation supported by the Greens but opposed by right-wing parties. The five others are mostly left-wing, so this shouldn’t be difficult.
Candidate nominations down from 2022
Candidate nominations were declared last Friday. The Poll Bludger said Saturday that there will be 330 total candidates for the Senate, down from 421 in 2022. The total number of groups (above the line boxes) dropped from 151 to 118.
Victoria has the most groups with 20, Queensland has 19, NSW and WA 18, SA 16 and Tasmania 12. With only two vacancies each, the ACT has seven groups and the NT eight.
Adrian Beaumont 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.
Much of the harm results from reckless and impulsive behaviour – including ram raids and gang violence – some people show when under methamphetamine’s influence.
Methamphetamine impairs decision making because it increases the likelihood of users acting impulsively, without regard to risk or long-term consequences.
There has been substantial research and several tests have been developed to measure and define impulsivity. However, the effect of stimulant drugs such as methamphetamine on impulsivity remains unclear.
Laboratory research can help us better understand impulsivity. Specially designed behavioural experiments present animals with choices that provide an equivalent of those humans might experience.
The results can help us unravel the complex nature of impulsivity which we can then translate to human experience and inform treatment programmes. In our research we used rats to study two situations related to impulsivity.
The first is a choice between a smaller reward given sooner or a larger reward received later, known as “delay discounting”. The other choice is between a smaller but certain reward and a larger uncertain reward, known as “probability discounting”. We also examined how the overall magnitude of the rewards affected choice.
How we consider choices
In human studies, people are often asked to make hypothetical choices about money.
In delay discounting, opting for the smaller/sooner reward is an impulsive choice. For example, imagine you are given a choice between $400 now and $500 in one year, and choose the $400 now.
However, if you were asked instead to choose between $40,000 now and $50,000 in one year, you may select the delayed option. When the rewards are larger, we are less likely to choose impulsively.
In probability discounting, choice of the larger/uncertain reward is impulsive. Imagine you are given a choice between $50 for sure or a 50% chance at $100. You might be willing to gamble on the larger amount.
But what if your choice was between $5,000,000 for sure and a 50% chance at $10,000,000? You would be more likely to choose the certain reward because we tend to be less impulsive when the possible loss is greater.
Complex nature of impulsivity
In our research, rats could choose between two alternatives that resulted in food rewards by pressing levers in an experimental chamber.
Some rats completed delay discounting sessions in which they chose between smaller/sooner and larger/later food outcomes. Other rats completed probability discounting sessions and chose between smaller/certain and larger/uncertain outcomes.
We also varied the overall amounts of food to confirm rats were less likely to choose impulsively with larger amounts. We measured the rats’ sensitivity to differences between delay, probability and magnitude.
Results were similar to studies with humans in that the rats’ choices reflected trade-offs between delay, probability and the amount of food. Impulsive choices were reduced with larger amounts.
We then gave the rats gradually increasing doses of methamphetamine and observed how their choices changed. Our results reflected the complex nature of impulsivity. Increasing methamphetamine doses resulted in decreasing sensitivity to the most salient difference between the two choices the rats experienced.
On methamphetamine, more rats chose the larger delayed reward. This means a decrease in impulsive choice because sensitivity to delay was reduced and the smaller/sooner option was less attractive.
However, we found the opposite in probability discounting. Here, methamphetamine increased preference for the larger/uncertain reward, indicating an increase in impulsivity because sensitivity to risk decreased.
Sensitivity to magnitude also decreased, meaning rats were more likely to choose impulsively even when the reward was large.
What this means for people
People are obviously cognitively more complex, but methamphetamine users also demonstrate decreased sensitivity to risk in response to tasks similar to those we used with rats.
Therefore our findings are applicable to human methamphetamine users and highlight that long-term changes to impulsivity should be taken into account in treatment programmes. This is especially important because effects on decision making can persist long after drug use during periods of abstinence.
Psycho-education on impulsivity could be incorporated into existing treatment programmes. This would mean educating methamphetamine users about their increased risks related to decision making and how that may affect treatment outcomes.
The Salvation Army’s Bridge Programme, a well-known drug rehabilitation programme with 20 centres throughout the country, is a good example. It uses a community reinforcement approach as part of their treatment, which involves participants building skills to cultivate rewarding experiences outside of drugs or alcohol use.
Rehabilitation processes could implement a psycho-education component focused on the increased vulnerability to risky choices, regardless of amount, of current and former methamphetamine users. This could raise the personal agency of participants by making them more aware of the increased risk factors for relapse and other negative decision making.
Psycho-education could help release people from the grip of this pervasive and increasingly prolific drug.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fan Yang, Research fellow at Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society., The University of Melbourne
Since 2024, the RECapture research team has been monitoring political disinformation and advertising in Australia.
Our focus is on WeChat, the primary news and information platform for Chinese speakers in Australia, and RedNote (Xiaohongshu), an emerging Chinese information sharing platform similar to Instagram.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Australia use these platforms. They’re often a main source of news.
Our research reveals while Australian news media often focus on foreign interference, in this election cycle, disinformation is being driven by commercial and domestic political interests.
These pose substantial threats to Chinese Australian communities and our democracy.
What is disinformation?
Defining disinformation often hinges on three criteria:
the truthfulness of the content
the intent behind its creation and dissemination
the harm it causes.
However, findings from our 2023 study on the Voice referendum challenge those assumptions. Disinformation isn’t as simple as true or false. It can involve ambiguous intent and produce harm that’s difficult to measure.
With these limitations, we focus on deliberate misrepresentations of policy positions and the manipulation of political speech intended to influence voter behaviour.
What have we discovered?
We found examples that misrepresented political statements and policies and capitalised on preexisting concerns within migrant communities.
Concerns include potential changes to investor visas, undocumented migration, humanitarian programs and Australia’s diplomatic relations with India, the US and China.
We also found several strategies, such as:
exaggerating the likelihood of events (like the revival of the Significant Investment Visa – an invitation-only visa for those investing at least A$5 million in certain sectors)
manipulating timelines and contexts (like re-hyping past news stories to create the impression the events are happening in the present)
and misaligning visuals and text to suggest misleading interpretations.
While we’re working to better understand who’s behind these cases, we know they’re not political parties. Here are two examples.
This post on RedNote, published in April, referred to several statements, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s speech at the Future of Western Sydney Summit. Albanese stated the government had a “balanced” immigration ratio.
However, the Chinese-language text accompanying the post omitted Labor’s past immigration policies and misrepresented the speech:
Labor grants amnesty to all? Albo embraces immigrants! Good news for Chinese people!
Discussions in the comments largely favoured a class-based immigration system. Users argued the Labor government disproportionately favoured humanitarian immigrants and greater preference should be given to upper and middle-class migrants.
We also found examples on WeChat.
On March 4, the Chinese-language media outlet AFN Daily published an article with the provocative headline:
I am furious! How shameless! Australia is really going to be in chaos!
The headline was sensational and intentionally ambiguous. It attracted reader attention to click through past four advertisements, including one political ad by the Liberal candidate for Bennelong, Scott Yung.
The article claimed the Coalition’s support had surpassed Labor’s, while presenting a segment of a poll in which Labor had actually received greater voter support for its welfare, healthcare and education policies.
The article further claimed the Labor Party had naturalised 12,500 new citizens – predominantly of Indian origin – in an attempt to sway the Chinese audience.
This claim had been explicitly refuted by Tony Burke back in February.
The article challenged this assertion by Burke and reinforced anti-Labor sentiment through racially charged narratives. It emphasised the strengthening diplomatic relations between Australia and India, and highlighted the growing number of South Asian and Middle Eastern migrants in comparison to Chinese migrants.
We also observed ad hoc disinformation narratives triggered by natural disasters or public emergencies.
For example, there was a claim on WeChat suggesting “the election is cancelled because of Cyclone Alfred.” Such disinformation requires timely intervention to prevent its rapid spread and impact.
Why is this so harmful?
The harms of disinformation are often more severe on digital media used by marginalised communities. Our research shows a few reasons why.
The limited regulatory oversight of these platforms makes the harms hard to fully identify and prevent.
Australian regulatory bodies keep intervention to address disinformation on these platforms to a minimum. This reflects broader national concerns around cybersecurity and foreign interference.
Unfortunately, this has resulted in a largely unregulated environment where political disinformation thrives during election cycles.
Finally, we see persistent disinformation narratives – from 2019, 2022, 2023 (around the Voice referendum), through to 2025 – where racial stereotypes intersect with partisan biases.
What can be done?
For Chinese-language platforms, our findings suggest disinformation might be less a product of foreign political actors, propaganda or linguistic barriers. What’s more important are the insular structure of WeChat and RedNote’s media ecosystems.
Tailored civic education and media literacy initiatives can help users to spot disinformation. Currently, grassroots debunking efforts are largely done by community members who comment beneath posts.
But more broadly, we need to support the public to think critically when reading digital news. This would help mitigate the exploitation of racial and gender biases for clicks and political point-scoring.
While automation is sometimes used to detect and debunk disinformation, its application is limited here. WeChat and RedNote prohibit external automated tools. Their own systems for flagging content generated by artificial intelligence don’t always work either.
Individual and coordinated human effort remains the best way to accurately inform Australian communities of their choices this election. This applies whether these communities tune in to mainstream broadcasts, major US-based social media platforms or Chinese language apps.
The authors would like to thank researchers Dan Dai, Stevie Zhang, and Mengjie Cai for their contributions to this project.
The research project is funded by the Susan McKinnon Foundation for the period 2024-2025.
Robbie Fordyce is a member of the grants panel for the Australian Communication Consumer Action Network (ACCAN). He has previously worked on studies of online political content that has been funded by the Australian Research Council and by ACCAN.
Luke Heemsbergen 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.
Global markets have remained on edge after Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs caused panic worldwide. Now, more than ever, markets and economists are looking for trying to read the implications.
Joining us from Washington DC is Warwick McKibbin,
an internationally renowned economic modeller from the Australian National University whose services are now in high demand. McKibbin is also a former member of the Reserve Bank board.
With much earlier talk about whether Australia can do a deal with Trump on tariffs, McKibbon argues,
The best way to deal with the president is to ignore him. And I think that’s to take him off the front page of Australia’s newspapers for example. I think what we should be doing is accelerating a process that was already underway. And that was to open up our trade with other partners around the world, Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe, in particular.
There’s a lot of trading opportunities. Our products – fortunately for us – the ones we sell to the US, we can sell somewhere else. We know that that’s a flexibility we have.
McKibbin says it’s “unlikely” Trump’s trade wars will cause a recession in Australia, but,
the problem we do have is that we haven’t dealt with the key problems that Australia faces, which is low productivity. We have a productivity problem which means [you’re] more likely to have a recession if you’re not growing. The second thing is we haven’t been given enough fiscal space. That is, running budget surpluses when we have full employment. But we’ve been running budget deficits, so our debt-to-GDP ratio has gone up, which means we have got less capacity to respond. But we also have a flexible exchange rate, which is good news. That helped us during the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis. We have the central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia, [which] has plenty of capacity to cut interest rates if required.
Our modelling suggests that under the scenario of no change in the severe tariffs that the US put on in the beginning of April, you would probably cut interest rates in Australia by 50 basis points over the year as a result of the tariffs alone.
McKibbin says Australia’s interest rates are “probably a little bit too low”,
I think at the moment where we stand is without this shock Australia’s rates are probably a little bit too low, but probably close to being neutral. This shock will give you an extra 25 to 50 basis points capacity, if you need it. We’re still at full employment, and the bank worries about inflation relative to the target and still above the target if you adjust for the cyclical elements and about employment or output relative to potential which we’re very close to potential, so really there wasn’t a big case for a big interest rate cut.
On the Australian election, McKibbin outlines the need for reforms, which are not being much talked about in this campaign,
We know what the fundamental problems are in Australia. We need serious reform. We need to deal with the tax system not functioning properly. We have a cost of living crisis – our reaction is to pump more money into the housing market, to drive up demand relative to supply. We’re also hitting our own exports of higher education.
And so we’re actually responding completely the opposite way. And both parties are arguing for cutting foreign student numbers. That is a key export of the Australian economy.
The problem with the housing market is lack of supply. You don’t fix the lack of supply by attacking foreign students who are a very, very small part of the demand coming from immigration. And actually those students, they come and they go mostly.
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.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on April 16, 2025.
Trump’s racist, corrupt agenda – like a bank robbery in broad daylight EDITORIAL: By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal US President Donald Trump and his team is pursuing a white man’s racist agenda that is corrupt at its core. Trump’s advisor Elon Musk, who often seems to be the actual president, is handing his companies multiple contracts as his team takes over or takes
Why the Coalition’s tone-deaf diss track was bound to hit all the wrong notes Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Ward, Senior Lecturer in Music, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast Hip-hop is a cultural powerhouse that has infiltrated every facet of popular culture, across a global market. That said, one place you usually don’t see it is on the election
Homelessness – the other housing crisis politicians aren’t talking about Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Parsell, Professor, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland Igor Corovic/Shutterstock Measures to tackle homelessness in Australia have been conspicuously absent from the election campaign. The major parties have rightly identified deep voter anxiety over high house prices. They have responded with a raft of
Superb fairy-wrens’ songs hold clues to their personalities, new study finds Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Diane Colombelli-Négrel, Senior Lecturer, Animal Behaviour, Flinders University Two superb fairy-wrens (_Malurus cyaneus_). ARKphoto/Shutterstock When we think of bird songs, we often imagine a cheerful soundtrack during our morning walks. However, for birds, songs are much more than background music – they are crucial to attract a
‘De-extinction’ of dire wolves promotes false hope: technology can’t undo extinction Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martín Boer-Cueva, Ecologist and Environmental Consultant, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Colossal Biosciences Over the past week, the media have been inundated with news of the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) – a species that went extinct about 13,000 years ago. The breakthrough has been achieved
Students are neither left nor right brained: how some early childhood educators get this ‘neuromyth’ and others wrong Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate E. Williams, Professor of Education, University of the Sunshine Coast MalikNalik/ Shutterstock Many teachers and parents know neuroscience, the study of how the brain functions and develops, is important for children’s education. Brain development is recommended as part of teacher education in universities. Neuroscience is even
Trump’s trade war puts America’s AI ambitions at risk Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Zomaya, Professor, School of Computer Science, University of Sydney remotevfx.com/Shutterstock The global trade war triggered by US President Donald Trump earlier this month shows no signs of ending anytime soon. In recent days, China suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals that are vital
More bulk billing is fine. But what the health system really needs this election is genuine reform Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Worrying signs are emerging about aspects of Australia’s health system, which will require the attention of whoever wins the May election. Despite big money
Half way through the campaign, how are the major party leaders faring? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Mills, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney More than two weeks in, we know one thing for sure. This time, the election campaign does matter. In decades past, when voters were more loyally rusted on to the major parties, news
Safe seat syndrome? Why some hospitals get upgrades and others miss out Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anam Bilgrami, Senior Research Fellow, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University On his campaign trail, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged A$200 million to upgrade St John of God Midland Public Hospital in Perth. He promised more beds and operating theatres, and a redesigned obstetrics
Allowing forests to regrow and regenerate is a great way to restore habitat Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Thomas, PhD candidate in Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland Cynthia A Jackson, Shutterstock Queensland is widely known as the land clearing capital of Australia. But what’s not so well known is many of the cleared trees can grow back naturally. The latest state government figures
A century after its discovery, scientists capture first confirmed footage of a colossal squid in the deep Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kat Bolstad, Associate professor, Auckland University of Technology The colossal squid was first described in 1925 based on specimens from the stomach of a commercially hunted sperm whale. A century later, an international voyage captured the first confirmed video of this species in its natural habitat –
Students are neither left or right brained: how some early childhood educators get this ‘neuromyth’ and others wrong Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate E. Williams, Professor of Education, University of the Sunshine Coast MalikNalik/ Shutterstock Many teachers and parents know neuroscience, the study of how the brain functions and develops, is important for children’s education. Brain development is recommended as part of teacher education in universities. Neuroscience is even
Pagan loaves, Christian bread, a secular treat: a brief history of hot cross buns Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic University Jasmine Waheed/Unsplash Hot cross buns aren’t just a sweet snack that appears around Easter. They carry centuries of storytelling in their dough. From ancient gods to modern supermarkets, these sticky spiced buns have crossed many borders and beliefs. Today,
US-China trade war leaves NZ worse off, but still well placed to weather the storm – new modelling Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niven Winchester, Professor of Economics, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Forecasting the potential impact of Donald Trump’s turbulent tariff policies is a fraught business – and fraught for business. The United States president has changed, paused and exempted various categories of goods so often, the only
Caitlin Johnstone: Every day the Gaza holocaust continues, the empire tells the truth about itself Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. – COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone Every day the Gaza holocaust continues, the Western empire tells the truth about itself. The US government is telling you the truth about itself. Israel is telling you the truth about itself. Their Western allies are telling you the truth about themselves.
PNG’s ‘chief servant’ James Marape defeats no-confidence vote By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has survived a motion of no confidence against him in Parliament. During the proceedings, livestreamed on EMTV, Speaker Job Pomat announced the results of the vote as 16 votes in favour and 89 against. In moving the motion, the member for Abau,
Does Russia have military interest in Indonesia? Here’s what we know – and why Australia would be concerned Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University A news report that Russia has sought to base long-range aircraft in Indonesia caught Australia’s political leaders by surprise during an already hectic election campaign. The military publication Janes
Obama praises Harvard for ‘setting example’ to universities resisting Trump Asia Pacific Report Former US President Barack Obama has taken to social media to praise Harvard’s decision to stand up for academic freedom by rebuffing the Trump administration’s demands. “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions — rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make
Election Diary: for a few hours, it seemed possible the Russians might be coming Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra For a few hours on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed just possible the Russians might be sending their planes to a base very near us. A claim on the military and intelligence site Janes that said the Russians were seeking to
US President Donald Trump and his team is pursuing a white man’s racist agenda that is corrupt at its core. Trump’s advisor Elon Musk, who often seems to be the actual president, is handing his companies multiple contracts as his team takes over or takes down multiple government departments and agencies.
Trump wants to be the “king” of America and is already floating the idea of a third term, an action that would be an obvious violation of the US Constitution he swore to uphold but is doing his best to violate and destroy.
Every time we hear the Trump team spouting a “return to America’s golden age,” they are talking about 60-80 years ago, when white people ruled and schools, hospitals, restrooms and entire neighborhoods were segregated and African Americans and other minority groups had little opportunity.
Every photo of leaders from that time features large numbers of white American men. Trump’s cabinet, in contrast to recent cabinets of Democratic presidents, is mainly white and male.
This is where the US going. And lest any white women feel they are included in the Trump train, think again. Anything to do with women’s empowerment — including whites — is being scrubbed off the agenda by Trump minions in multiple government departments and agencies.
“Women” along with things like “climate change,” “diversity,” “equality,” “gender equity,” “justice,” etc are being removed from US government websites, policies and grant funding.
The white racist campaign against people of colour has seen iconic Americans removed from government websites. For example, a photo and story about Jackie Robinson, a military veteran, was recently removed from the Defense Department website as part of the Trump team’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Broke whites-only colour barrier Robinson was not only a military veteran, he was the first African American to break the whites-only colour barrier in Major League Baseball and went on to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for his stellar performance with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
How about the removal of reference to the Army’s 442nd infantry regiment from World War II that is the most decorated unit in US military history? The 442nd was a fighting unit comprised of nearly all second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who more than proved their courage and loyalty to the United States during World War II.
The Defense Department removing references to these iconic Americans is an outrage. But showing the moronic level of the Trump team, they also deleted a photo of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II because the pilot named it after his mother, “Enola Gay.”
Despite the significance of the Enola Gay airplane in American military history, that latter word couldn’t get past the Pentagon’s scrubbing team, who were determined to wash away anything that hinted at, well, anything other than white, heterosexual male. And there is plenty more that was wiped off the history record of the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, Trump, his team and the Republican Party in general while claiming to be focused on eliminating corruption is authorising it on a grand scale.
Elon Musk’s redirection of contracts to Starlink, SpaceX and other companies he owns is one example among many. What is happening in the American government today is like a bank robbery in broad daylight.
The Trump team fired a score of inspectors general — the very officials who actively work to prevent fraud and theft in the US government. They are eliminating or effectively neutering every enforcement agency, from EPA (which ensures clean air and other anti-pollution programmes) and consumer protection to the National Labor Relations Board, where the mega companies like Musk’s, Facebook, Google and others have pending complaints from employees seeking a fair review of their work issues.
Huge cuts to social security Trump with the aid of the Republican-controlled Congress is going to make huge cuts to Medicaid and Social Security — which will affect Marshallese living in America as much as Americans — all in order to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans and big corporations.
Then there is Trump’s targeting of judges who rule against his illegal and unconstitutional initiatives — Trump criticism that is parroted by Fox News and other Trump minions, and is leading to things like efforts in the Congress to possibly impeach judges or restrict their legal jurisdiction.
These are all anti-democracy, anti-US constitution actions that are already undermining the rule of law in the US. And we haven’t yet mentioned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its sweeping deportations without due process that is having calamitous collateral damage for people swept up in these deportation raids.
ICE is deporting people legally in the US studying at US universities for writing articles or speaking about justice for Palestinians. Whether we like what the writer or speaker says, a fundamental principle of democracy in the US is that freedom of expression is protected by the US constitution under the First Amendment.
That is no longer the case for Trump and his Republican team, which is happily abandoning the rule of law, due process and everything else that makes America what it is.
The irony is that multiple countries, normally American allies, have in recent weeks issued travel advisories to their citizens about traveling to the United States in the present environment where anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t fit into a male or female designation is subject to potential detention and deportation.
The immigration chill from the US will no doubt reduce visitor flow resulting in big losses in revenue, possibly in the billions of dollars, for tourism-related businesses.
Marshallese must pay attention Marshallese need to pay attention to what’s happening and have valid passports at the ready. Sadly, if Marshallese have any sort of conviction no matter how ancient or minor it is likely they will be targets for deportation.
Further, even the visa-free access privilege for Marshallese and other Micronesians is apparently now under scrutiny by US authorities based on a statement by US Ambassador Laura Stone published recently by the Journal
It is a difficult time being one of the closest allies of the US because the RMI must engage at many levels with a US government that is presently in turmoil.
Giff Johnson is the editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and one of the Pacific’s leading journalists and authors. He is the author of several books, including Don’t Ever Whisper, Idyllic No More, and Nuclear Past, Unclear Future. This editorial was first published on 11 April 2025 and is reprinted with permission of the Marshall Islands Journal. marshallislandsjournal.com
Freedom of speech at the Marshall Islands High School
Messages of “inclusiveness” painted by Marshall Islands High School students in the capital Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/Marshall Islands Journal
The above is one section of the outer wall at Marshall Islands High School. Surely, if this was a public school in America today, these messages would already have been whitewashed away by the Trump team censors who don’t like any reference to “inclusiveness,” “women,” and especially “gender equality.”
However, these messages painted by MIHS students are very much in keeping with Marshallese society and customary practices of welcoming visitors, inclusiveness and good treatment of women in this matriarchal society.
But don’t let President Trump know Marshallese think like this. — Giff Johnson
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Ward, Senior Lecturer in Music, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast
Hip-hop is a cultural powerhouse that has infiltrated every facet of popular culture, across a global market. That said, one place you usually don’t see it is on the election campaign trail.
That’s right, I’m talking about the track “Leaving Labour” – the Liberal-National Coalition’s latest attempt to create beef with the Australian Labor Party, via a hip-hop track from an unnamed artist.
You only need to go as far as the (very entertaining) comments section on the Coalition’s SoundCloud to see what people think of the campaign’s new track, the lyrics of which include such zingers as “I just wanna buy some eggs and cheese, a hundred bucks you kidding me?” and “real prices are at the pinnacle”.
For many, it hasn’t struck the right chord. But that will be no surprise to anyone who knows what hip-hop is really about.
With artists such as Lil Baby telling us there are “too many mothers that’s grieving, they kill us for no reason”, and Lil Nas X’s dance with the devil, helping the LGBTQIA+ community rise to prominence while challenging cultural norms, modern hip-hop provides a voice to the disaffected and the oppressed.
Diss tracks: hip-hop through and through
The culture of hip-hop – birthed in the Bronx, New York City, in 1973 – is built on five pillars central to the movement. These are MCing (rapping), DJing (turntablism), breakdancing, graffiti and, last but not least, knowledge.
The first four pillars represent paradigm shifts in the culture of resistance towards non-violent means – initially in African American culture, but today more broadly across the world. The final pillar, knowledge, speaks to the power of education, both formal and street.
The diss (short for disrespect) track is deeply embedded in hip-hop, as it can be considered synonymous with MCing itself. Built on the tradition of Jamaican competitive “toasting”, it was initially a way for MCs to non-violently instigate, battle through, and resolve disputes and conflict.
Over the past 40 year, the diss track has emerged as a form in and of itself, with far-reaching influence. During the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop feuds of the 90s, Biggie Smalls and 2Pac famously traded diss tracks up until both artists were murdered (with the murders often cited as fuelled by the tracks themselves).
In the late 90s and 2000s, artists such as JayZ dissed Mobb Deep and Nas, and vice versa. Nas’ track Ether was so influential it entered the word “ethered” into the hip-hop lexicon as a synonym for being defeated.
Eminem has also established himself as a kind of lyrical assassin, releasing more than 40 diss tracks over some 20 years. His targets have included Limp Bizkit, Mariah Carey, Machine Gun Kelly and Will Smith, to name a few.
More recently, Kendrick Lamar and Drake gained global attention for what can only be described as a beef for the annuls of hip-hop history.
Social media and streaming platforms have increased the speed at which artists can trade blows back and forth. Shutterstock
What were they thinking?
So, if diss tracks have a rich history of anti-establishment action, protest, and are largely deployed by minority voices, why would a party campaigning on conservative “mainstream” values commission a hip-hop track to take on its political rival?
It’s less likely the track signals some kind of cultural shift in the Coalition, and more likely it shows a high level of cultural tone-deafness. This is similar to conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, who was heavily criticised for dropping a racist rap track last year after spending most of his career claiming “rap isn’t music”.
It’s difficult for him and his party to justify using the cultural capital of hip-hop in their campaign. Diss tracks are inherently embedded in Black American spaces and history, and can’t be separated from this. When a largely white, Australian political party adopts this medium – with no ties to the culture it came from – it will feel inauthentic.
Michael Idato, culture editor-at-large at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, described the track as “a hip-hop miss with the rhyming genius of a Little Golden Book”. Another headline from Sky News called it a “bizarre election move amid poor polls”.
Also, for a year where arts policies have been all but completely absent from the election trail, it seems disingenuous for the Coalition to now use art for their own means.
Andy Ward 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.
Measures to tackle homelessness in Australia have been conspicuously absent from the election campaign.
The major parties have rightly identified deep voter anxiety over high house prices. They have responded with a raft of policies, with big dollars attached, to try to make housing more affordable.
But in doing so, homelessness has been rendered a silent crisis. We all see the destitute and displaced on our city streets or sleeping in their cars. But we are hearing very little from Labor and the Coalition about how to help the 122,000 Australians who are without permanent shelter.
This is despite evidence that homeless services are witnessing significantly increased demand, with the rate of homelessness soaring above pre–pandemic levels.
Election efforts to promote home ownership should be welcomed. But they will not help Australia’s homeless, who will remain excluded from shelter, a basic human right.
Impossible dream
Although people experiencing homelessness are not a homogeneous group, they have one thing in common – poverty. People who are homeless are overwhelmingly likely to be living in financial hardship.
Even if they aspire to home ownership, their poverty means buying a home is an improbable solution to their homelessness, regardless of the various incentives on offer during an election campaign.
Further, the experience of homelessness creates health problems and barriers to accessing mainstream services. People’s lives become transient, unpredictable and often dangerous.
When homelessness is lost in major policy announcements about addressing only part of the housing crisis, we fail to confront and deal with the related harms homelessness inflicts.
Strategic plan
The first thing needed to confront the problem is a national housing and homelessness strategic plan. Governments should set measurable targets to end and prevent homelessness and avoid vague terms such as “address” or “respond”.
Overseas experience shows it can be done. A strategic plan in the United States contributed to massive reductions in homelessness among military veterans.
If a standalone homelessness plan sounds familiar, it might be because it was a Labor commitment leading up to the 2022 election. Despite an issues paper and consultation with the sector, the plan has never seen the light of day.
Housing supply
It is self-evident that ending and preventing homelessness, as the recent Australian Homelessness Monitor demonstrates, requires an increase in housing supply.
Trying to fix homelessness without providing shelter would be like trying to prevent polio without vaccines, or ending illiteracy without books.
Extra supply needs to include more social housing for people on low incomes. And permanent supportive housing, which combines affordable housing with health and social services for our most marginalised citizens.
A whole-of-society response is required to find shelter for the 122,000 Australians who are homeless. TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock
Some progress has been made by the Albanese government, which has increased the availability of social housing and boosted subsidies to renters in the private market.
The Liberal Party’s policy platform for the election does not mention homelessness. Rather, it assumes increasing home ownership though measures like the tax deductibility of mortgage repayments for first homebuyers will be a remedy.
More than houses
Housing is critical to ending the scourge of homelessness. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
A much broader approach is needed that recognises we don’t live siloed lives. Poor connections with a range of health, social and charitable services can drive people into homelessness, and make ending it even harder.
A more integrated approach would reduce the risk of homelessness. For example, ensuring people are not discharged from institutions such as prisons, hospitals, and foster care onto the street. The connections between homelessness and other critical areas of human need must be prioritised.
An exclusive focus on building more dwellings will never fix homelessness. This is because the problem and its solutions cut across society, ending and preventing homelessness will require a society wide approach.
Achieving that will be anything but simple.
What do we value?
Societies have worked out ways to overcome many harms to human life. Homelessness can also be remedied, but only if there is the social and political will to do so.
In Australia we achieved significant success for a short time during the COVID pandemic when many people sleeping rough were accommodated. It can be done again.
But any policies to end and prevent homelessness must confront the importance of values. Facts and data are needed to inform policy, but facts and data must always be framed by what we value in society.
The way we respond to people who are homeless would demonstrate how we value each other, and how we can achieve equity and social cohesion well beyond the election campaign.
Cameron Parsell receives funding from the Australian Research Council, as well as from numerous nonprofit organisations.
Karyn Walsh is the CEO of Micah Projects which receives funding from the Commonwealth, state and local governments, and philanthropic and private entities to provide a range of homelessness, health, and community services. Neither Karyn nor Micah Projects will receive any financial benefit from this article
When we think of bird songs, we often imagine a cheerful soundtrack during our morning walks. However, for birds, songs are much more than background music – they are crucial to attract a mate and defend a territory.
But what if a song could reveal something deeper about the singer’s personality? A new study, published today in Royal Society Open Science by my colleagues and me, shows it might.
Addressing a research gap
For many bird species, songs vary in complexity, with some individuals producing more intricate melodies than others. Such differences often indicate individual variation in genetic quality, age, or health. Yet most research to date has focused on males, and very few studies have investigated how song complexity relates to personality in birds.
My colleagues and I studied wild superb fairy-wrens (Malurus cyaneus), a small Australian songbird known for its bright plumage and complex vocal skills. Interestingly, in this species, both males and females learn to sing complex songs. This makes them a good example to study the relationship between song complexity and personality in both males and females.
We captured wild superb fairy-wrens and brought them into short-term captivity to assess their personality. Specifically, we measured their exploration by placing them in a novel environment, where we observed where they went and how much they explored the environment.
We also tested their aggressiveness by using a mirror, as birds often see their reflection as a rival and respond accordingly.
We then released the birds and recorded their songs for several months to assess song complexity (that is, element types per song and syllables per song). Elements are the basic building blocks in bird songs (a little like letters in a word) and element types are categories of elements.
Aggressive versus exploratory
We found that, regardless of sex or life stage, birds that were more exploratory had more element types per song than those that were less exploratory. Also, more aggressive birds produced songs with fewer syllables than those that were less aggressive. You can hear this in the recordings below.
Recording of a more exploratory male superb fairy-wren. Diane Colombelli-Negrel, CC BY-ND50.4 KB(download)
Recoding of a less exploratory male superb fairy-wren. Diane Colombelli-Negrel, CC BY-ND35.5 KB(download)
Regardless of sex or life stage, superb fairy-wrens that were more exploratory had more element types per song than those that were less exploratory, as this chart demonstrates. Diane Colombelli-Negrel, CC BY-ND
We also found that more aggressive fledglings, but not adults, had more element types per song.
Our study demonstrates that both males and females can advertise their personality through their songs. It also raises questions as to whom birds learn their songs from.
In superb fairy-wrens, male and female juveniles learn from both parents as well as from other members of their species. It is possible that rather than learning from any available adults, birds may selectively copy song elements from specific individuals based on their own personality.
In superb fairy-wrens, more exploratory birds may approach and learn from a wider range of tutors than less exploratory ones who may limit themselves to more familiar tutors.
Additionally, our study highlights that the relationship between personality and song complexity could be shifting between different life stages. More aggressive young may experiment with a greater diversity of element types to prepare for the establishment of their own territory in their first year of life, leading to increasing song complexity.
In contrast, adults have already settled in their territories and may not need to experiment as much.
Our study illustrates that learned aspects of sexual signalling are personality dependent, and that this may have some potential implications for survival or reproduction.
This opens up exciting new questions about how vocal communication reflects individual differences — not just in males, but in females too.
Understanding these links can give us deeper insights into how personality traits evolve and how they influence social interactions in the wild.
Diane Colombelli-Négrel receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australia & Pacific Science Foundation.
Over the past week, the media have been inundated with news of the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) – a species that went extinct about 13,000 years ago.
The breakthrough has been achieved by Colossal Biosciences, a multibillion-dollar United States company that claims their goal is to restore biodiversity through the de-extinction of species.
The project is being celebrated and marketed as a conservation win. But does this technology really have the best interests of conservation in mind?
We argue as ecologists that genetic advancements like these, while they are major scientific and technological feats, still risk minimising the severity of the current extinction crisis.
Importantly, they take away focus from proven conservation efforts that are needed to protect the biodiversity that remains.
High-tech copies of wolves
First, it is important to recognise that Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, the three “dire wolf” pups created, are not actually dire wolves.
Colossal carried out 20 edits in 14 genes of the grey wolf genome to create their “dire wolves” using a genetic technique called CRISPR-Cas9.
The grey wolf’s genome is 2,447,000,000 individual bases long. Would we consider a chimpanzee, with which we share 98.8% of our genome, to be human after 20 edits?
The reality is that these are three slightly modified grey wolves.
TIME magazine cover featuring a Colossal Biosciences’ ‘dire wolf’. TIME
This de-extinction project has had millions of dollars poured into it – amounts of money most conservation programs could only dream of. There are proven solutions to help reverse biodiversity loss: habitat protection and restoration, the control of invasive species and the phasing out of fossil fuels.
However, these solutions are not slickly marketed as shiny, techno-fix packages like de-extinction. Instead, they are heavily underfunded.
Extinction is irreversible
Promoting extinction as reversible risks downplaying its gravity and legacy.
Headlines like the one that appeared on the front cover of TIME magazine – with the word “extinct” crossed out – seed a false hope that no matter what environmental damage is done, species loss can be easily undone.
The risk is that de-extinction will be used as an ultimate offset for any environmental impact.
Humans fear death. It is possibly our most primal instinct. We mourn and feel great sadness for the death of an individual, not only because they are gone, but because it is irreversible and final. Permanent.
That finality is the same for humans or any living animal. It is what makes fighting biodiversity loss such an urgent concern, so much so that people risk their lives to prevent it, with 150 wildlife rangers dying each year around the world in their fight to protect endangered species.
Protest movements like the Extinction Rebellion draw attention to irreparable damage to biodiversity. Ethan Wilkinson/Unsplash
In the conservation movement, raising awareness of “martyr” species – like the northern white rhino and the passenger pigeon – helps underline the argument in favour of protecting current species. Framing extinction as temporary creates false hope and undermines motivation for real conservation action.
We might already be seeing this happen in response to the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf. Interior Secretary of the Trump administration, Doug Burgum, praised the new biotechnology advancement and used it as an argument for the removal of the US Endangered Species Act.
What good is bringing back species if there are no protective laws to address the drivers of their declines?
Would we protect the dire wolf even if it did come back?
It is deeply ironic that while millions are being spent recreating a dire wolf proxy, its cousin, the grey wolf, is heavily persecuted globally. Just last month, the Spanish government voted to overturn the legal protection that prevented wolves from being hunted north of the Duero River.
If we can’t safeguard or protect habitat for apex predators today, in ecosystems that are already under immense pressure, what kind of world would we be bringing extinct species back into? Up to 150 species are considered to go extinct every day. No amount of genetic tech will solve this unless we address the root causes: habitat destruction, over-exploitation and climate change.
The de-extinction of the dire wolf may sound like a conservation breakthrough, but it risks distracting us from the protection of our current living species. This approach turns biodiversity conservation into a billionaire’s Jurassic Park fantasy instead of addressing the crisis we already know how to fix.
Dieter Hochuli receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, the City of Sydney and the Inner West Council. He is President-Elect of the Ecological Society of Australia.
Marco Salvatori receives funding from European Union BIODIVERSA+ program.
Peter Banks receives funding from the Australian Research Council, The NSW Environmental Trust and the Australian Forests and Wood Initiative.
Martín Boer-Cueva 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.
Many teachers and parents know neuroscience, the study of how the brain functions and develops, is important for children’s education.
Brain development is recommended as part of teacher education in universities. Neuroscience is even mentioned in Australia’s “early years framework”, which guides early childhood programs.
Previous research has shown there are misunderstandings about how neuroscience works (or “neuromyths”) among teachers both in Australia and overseas.
Our new study shows there are also some widespread neuromyths among early childhood educators.
What are the myths? And what does the evidence say?
Our research
We surveyed more than 520 Australian early childhood educators in 2022 to understand their neuroscience knowledge.
We chose to study early childhood educators because there is a research gap in our understanding of those teaching and caring for younger children. The surveys were distributed online via multiple channels including email lists, social media and professional associations.
About 74% of respondents worked in a long daycare or a preschool/kindergarten (educating children in the final years before formal school). About 63% had either a bachelors degree or postgraduate qualification.
Our research surveyed more than 500 early childhood educators about their neuroscience knowledge. Poppy Pix/ Shutterstock
Our findings
We asked respondents whether various false statements were true, in order to assess their level of knowledge about neuroscience. The average correct score was 13.7 out of 27.
Some myths presented in our study were widely, and correctly, understood to be false. For example, more than 90% of respondents correctly identified “when we sleep our brains shut down” and “mental capacity is solely hereditary and cannot be changed by the environment or experience” as untrue.
But for other myths, most respondents were either unsure or believed the statement to be correct. For example:
only 7% of respondents correctly identified “teaching to different learning styles will improve learning” as false.
only 15% of respondents correctly identified “students are either left or right brained” as false.
This suggests educators need more evidence-based neuroscience content as part of their professional education and development. While some neuromyths may seem harmless, others can have real implications for teaching decisions and student learning.
What is the problem with these neuromyths?
Myth 1: ‘teaching to different learning styles will improve learning’
The idea of learning styles became popular in the 1970s. This argued students will show improved learning if they receive information in a very specific way. For example, “visual learners” need to see information to be able to learn, while “aural learners” need to hear it.
While people may have preferred ways of accessing information, there is no evidence learning suffers if information isn’t provided in this format. Research has also shown teachers’ ideas of a student’s learning style do not tend to match students’ self-reported preferences.
So teaching decisions made on assumed student “learning styles” may be flawed in any case.
There’s no evidence learning needs to be presented in a particular format for certain ‘types’ of learners. myboys.me/ Shutterstock
Myth 2: ‘students are either left or right brained’
Another enduring idea is we have personality traits that are either right-brained (intuitive and creative) or left-brained (analytical and logical)
The harm in this myth comes from students thinking they are “more left-brained than right” and teachers reinforcing this view. And from here, young people might think they should just stick to humanities or just stick to maths or science.
This could rob a student of exploring multiple academic and career paths. Sure, some students will seem to really flourish as an artist, some as mathematicians and some as both. But we should not be labelling students, based on a neuromyth, potentially impacting self-confidence and their potential.
Kate E. Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, Queensland Government Department of Education, and Australian Government Department of Social Services. She is affiliated with Play Matters Australia as Chair of the Board of Directors.
The global trade war triggered by US President Donald Trump earlier this month shows no signs of ending anytime soon. In recent days, China suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals that are vital ingredients in everything from electric cars and drones to the semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI) servers.
All of this is happening at the same time the US is forging ahead with a US$500 billion (A$784 billion) project known as “Stargate” to accelerate the development of AI in the country.
But the escalating trade war does not square with America’s ambitious AI plans. In fact, Trump’s tariffs (which, in the case of China, now total 145%) are set to undermine these plans by increasing the cost of AI development and disrupting supply chains for AI goods.
In turn, this will hinder the pace of AI innovation and adoption in the US – and potentially elsewhere.
US tariffs will directly inflate the prices of these essential components. One analysis estimates tariffs could increase the material costs of data centre building by around 20%, with IT hardware components potentially rising by 25%.
This is a major concern for AI industry leaders such as OpenAI, which operates ChatGPT. For example, the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, recently said his team is “working around-the-clock” to determine how the trade war would affect the cost of running their AI models.
But the increased cost on AI development caused by the trade war will also mean tech startups in the US will have higher barriers to entry and fewer opportunities to test AI capabilities. In turn, this will harm AI innovation.
In theory, tariffs might support the reshoring of chip production in the US through initiatives such as the CHIPS and Science Act, which promotes domestic US semiconductor production. But it would take years for such efforts to fully bear fruit. And Trump has also recently taken steps to walk away from the CHIPS and Science Act.
Aggressive AI nationalism
The trade war also creates risks for the international development of AI.
For example, the cost increases that flow from tariffs could create a reluctance to invest in AI infrastructure – particularly data centres. Other tech companies might also cancel or delay plans to build data centres in the US partly because of higher equipment prices.
In addition, tariffs could push countries into further fortifying their AI efforts, creating a kind of aggressive AI nationalism. They could also encourage domestic AI development to promote national interests. This could lead to isolationism and put another nail in the coffin of the open-source culture that once fuelled AI innovation.
Tariffs are supposed to promote domestic industries. But high costs and a fracturing of the cooperation that is indispensable to the continuation of the AI landscape might well be the outcome.
One analysis estimates US tariffs could increase the material costs of data centre building by around 20%. IM Imagery/Shutterstock
Knock-on effects for Australia
Australia is not the direct target of most US tariffs. But the tariffs on advanced technologies and critical components pose risks to its ability to develop AI.
Although Australia aims to bolster its domestic AI capabilities, it currently relies heavily on imported hardware for AI development. Tariffs will likely make it more expensive for Australian companies and research institutions to acquire the necessary infrastructure, such as semiconductors, GPUs, and cloud computing equipment. In turn, this will potentially hinder their technological progress.
As the US clamps down on trade and technologies, Australia may find itself locked out of international research projects, perhaps those involving US companies or technologies.
Such limits on data sharing, international cross-border AI talent, and cloud infrastructure risk slowing the rate of innovation.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Worrying signs are emerging about aspects of Australia’s health system, which will require the attention of whoever wins the May election.
Despite big money pledged for Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), only limited attention has been paid by the major parties to key reform priorities.
Any fresh reform agenda will be starting from a position of relative strength. Australia has a good health system that consistently ranks well compared with other wealthy nations, including on life expectancy, which is on the high side.
Medicare remains the right infrastructure for funding primary care. But it is now more than 40 years old and needs to be updated and improved.
Policy action is necessary on five fronts:
financial barriers to care
managing chronic conditions
mental health and dental care
public hospitals
workforce
Priced out of care
Despite Medicare’s promise of universality, around one in ten people defer seeing a doctor because of the cost.
And despite the provision of subsidised drugs via the PBS, people also report missing out on filling prescriptions.
Health Minister Mark Butler has said that Medicare is in its ‘worst shape’ in its 40 year history. Robyn Mackenzie/Shutterstock
Labor has announced big-ticket measures to improve bulk-billing rates and cap PBS prices at A$25 a prescription. Given cost-of-living pressures are central to the election, it’s unsurprising the Coalition has pledged to match both policies.
But, critically, neither party has announced anything to improve access to other medical specialists. The gap continues to grow between what specialists charge and what Medicare will cover. This means some patients are delaying or avoiding necessary care altogether.
Complex chronic conditions
The health system has not adapted to the rising prevalence of chronic disease in the Australian community. In 2023–24, 18% of the population saw three or more health professionals. But for 28% of those people, no single provider coordinated their care.
Medicare was designed in a different age and needs to be refurbished to respond to this new reality of more patients who are suffering multiple health conditions.
Work needs to continue in this direction, regardless of who forms the next government.
Forgotten care
Dental and mental health are largely the forgotten sectors of health care. The number of people delaying access to oral health services because of affordability issues is more than twice the 10% who are missing out in other areas of the health system.
Seeing a dentist is very much dependant on income. More than a quarter of Australians living in the most disadvantaged areas defer getting their teeth fixed because of the cost involved. Uncapped access to dental care, as proposed by the Greens, is not the answer. What is needed is a more sophisticated route towards universal access.
By contrast, the pattern for mental health care is different, with people in both poor and rich areas facing access problems.
The Coalition has promised to restore the maximum number of Medicare-subsidised fee-for-service mental health sessions to 20, despite it being regarded as an inequitable policy.
More fee-for-service mental health care is not the right approach. By contrast, Labor is making a $1 billion commitment to expanding services which are free to the consumer. This includes Medicare Mental Health Services and headspace clinics, which generally employ salaried professionals.
Both parties should support another initiative already underway: the universal program for people with low-to-moderate mental health needs, which doesn’t require either a referral or a co-payment. Labor announced the plan in the last budget, scheduled to start in January 2026.
Inadequate hospital funding
The Commonwealth share of public hospital funding has been trending down for the last few years, reversing the growth in its share over much of the last decade.
A deal has been reached to lift the Commonwealth share of hospital funding to 45%. Rose Marinelli/Shutterstock
Some states have fared worse than others, which means some hospitals have become squeezed and waiting times have blown out.
In late 2023, National Cabinet reached a new funding deal which would lift the Commonwealth share to 45% by 2035–36.
But subsequent negotiations have become bogged down in a quagmire of claims and counter-claims. The Albanese government has responded with an interim one-year funding down payment. But both major parties need to address this issue and commit to implementing the full 45% in the agreed time frame.
No doctor in the house
In 2014, the Abbott government abolished Health Workforce Australia, the national agency responsible for health workforce planning. Ten years later, it’s no surprise we are in the middle of a critical shortage of doctors and nurses.
The Albanese government has implemented changes to speed up the recruitment of internationally trained health professionals. It is also offering incentives to encourage more clinicians to work in rural and remote Australia.
But these are just more of the same, similar to the plethora of policies which have left us in the mess we are in. Ensuring we have the right workforce mix to address rural health needs requires a fresh approach. That includes revised funding models – as proposed in the GP incentives review – and allowing all health professionals to work to their full scope of practice.
Reform hard slog
Although health often ranks in the top three issues people say are important to them in elections, cost of living is the main focus of media and political commentary.
The promise to increase bulk billing will help lower primary care costs.
But genuine health care reform does not attract much media attention, which means it doesn’t get the profile necessary to prompt the right political promises.
The hard slog of change takes years, and involves much more than a few carrots thrown to voters in an election. It takes careful negotiation with stakeholders and getting the infrastructure right.
Given the initiatives listed above, Health Minister Mark Butler has done well on reform this term. Unfortunately, voters don’t see that, and appear not to value systematic and coherent reform strategies.
It is hoped that whoever is health minister after the election will continue on the reform path to a more sustainable and affordable health system.
This is the eighth article in our special series, Australia’s Policy Challenges. You can read the other articles here.
Stephen Duckett was a member of the Strengthening Medicare Task Force, the Review of General Prcatice Incentives, the Mental Health Reform Advisory Group, and the Expert Panel on the National Early Intervention Service
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Mills, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney
More than two weeks in, we know one thing for sure. This time, the election campaign does matter.
In decades past, when voters were more loyally rusted on to the major parties, news cycles more sedate, policy platforms fixed and “safe” seats truly safe, it was arguable that election outcomes were largely determined before the campaigns began.
But in 2025, the campaign period has witnessed a dramatic shift in voting intentions, as measured by public opinion polls.
Before the campaign, Labor trailed. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seemed flat-footed, burdened by a poor track record in the 2022 elections and the 2023 Voice referendum.
But even as Cyclone Alfred blew itself out, parliament returned, and the budget was brought down, Labor’s poll numbers were improving. This trend continued through the first weeks of the campaign, such that Labor now seems the likely winner, either in minority or perhaps majority.
Why? Election campaigns can reveal how leaders and their teams behave under pressure. They also require trust and lock-step coordination between the leader and the party’s team of campaign professionals.
Unflashy incrementalism
Albanese has performed solidly and been relentlessly on-message and on-brand. His campaign has rolled out a well-prepared procession of announcements on Medicare urgent care clinics, pharmaceuticals, childcare and TAFE, each with local funding attached.
Albanese does not campaign with Hawke-like charisma, Keating-like oratory or Whitlam-like policy. His one truly visionary change commitment – the Voice – collapsed in a heap.
Instead, as he has shown over the last two weeks, his true identity is as a (Chifley-like?) incrementalist. He boasts a strong grasp of systems – health, roads, renewables – and his campaign is all about fixing, improving and expanding those systems within practical fiscal constraints.
His vision of the future is the present that just works better for more people.
Fattening the policy pig
By contrast, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton seemed ready to shoot the lights out, as an uncompromising conviction politician exploiting voter grievances about cost-of-living issues.
But he wasted a large part of his first week recovering from an off-strategy indulgence about living in Kirribilli House (“we love the harbour”), and much of the second week explaining his backflip on public service working conditions.
The first was a campaign blunder, pure and simple. But the second spoke to a deeper malaise within the Coalition about policy development. The Coalition appeared unprepared for the cut and thrust of the campaign.
Combined with blithe me-tooing of Labor promises on health and roads, and incomplete announcements on cutting foreign student numbers and reserving natural gas for domestic use, the backflip suggested Coalition policy-making has become a bit random: a series of tactical choices, not a strategic plan for government.
Contrary to long-standing Liberal Party campaign wisdom that “you can’t fatten a pig on market day”, this time the Liberals are trying to force-feed their policy pig en route to the market.
Dutton has been much more effective pitching his fuel excise promise. The decision to eschew Labor’s budgeted tax cuts for an immediate reduction at the bowser was bold, instinctive and entirely consistent with the Coalition’s outer-metropolitan electoral strategy.
It took until the second week, but the daily scenes of Dutton pumping petrol into cars – “and utes” as he always adds – is steadily reinforcing his message, however wearying it has become for the travelling press party.
The comfort of incumbents
The first leaders’ debate highlighted this difference. Both leaders remained poised and polished (especially creditable by Dutton given he learned of his father’s heart attack immediately beforehand).
But Albanese simply had more to talk about, more first-term achievements and more commitments on his future shopping list. Dutton articulated grievances without providing many policy solutions.
The contest on the economy was a draw: Dutton conjures up Albanese’s non-delivered pledge on power prices, while Albanese points to high employment and downward trends on inflation and interest rates.
All this has played out against the backdrop of the Donald Trump tariff wars. Like previous mid-campaign crises – Tampa in 2001 and, for those with very long memories, the Kennedy assassination in 1963 – global uncertainty reinforces an Australian incumbent. Albanese’s measured response struck the right note.
Dutton has repeatedly tried to insert himself into the tariff story – difficult for an opposition – but had to take risks to do so. His assertion that AUKUS and ANZUS should be somehow involved was left hanging once Liberal icon John Howard made clear he disagreed.
With policy speeches delivered, and rival policies on housing finally released, the campaign is in its final week, interrupted by Easter, before early voting starts.
The challenge for Albanese will be to maintain his momentum, in all his unflashy, incrementalist style. Labor is likely to ramp up its Dutton-Trump comparison. Dutton will need to put further flesh on the bones of putting Australia “back on track”.
Stephen Mills was a staff member (1986-91) for Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke and since 2015 has volunteered for local Labor election campaigns.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anam Bilgrami, Senior Research Fellow, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University
On his campaign trail, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged A$200 million to upgrade St John of God Midland Public Hospital in Perth. He promised more beds and operating theatres, and a redesigned obstetrics and neonatal unit.
New and expanded health facilities are welcome in fast-growing communities. But are hospital funding pledges in election campaigns based on health-care or political needs?
Does pork-barrelling drive health funding decisions?
Pork-barrelling means using public funds to target specific electorates to win votes, rather than allocating resources based on need. Four in five Australians consider pork-barrelling to be corrupt.
Former New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian suggested pork-barrelling was “business as usual” in her government.
The National Health Reform Agreement makes states and territories responsible for managing public hospitals. States and territories contribute around 58% of hospital funding. They also oversee planning and infrastructure.
Local hospital networks help plan and implement capital projects such as new hospitals and facility upgrades.
Under the National Health Reform Agreement, the Commonwealth government also contributes public hospital funding through:
activity-based funding. This is tied to the number and type of patients treated
block funding for smaller regional and rural hospitals
public health funding for initiatives such as vaccination programs.
The reform agreement outlines the Commonwealth’s responsibility for supporting public hospital services. But it doesn’t restrict the Commonwealth from making hospital infrastructure promises.
The Commonwealth often pledges direct hospital funding through supplementary agreements or ad hoc initiatives. Earlier this year, it announced an additional one-off $1.7 billion payment to ease pressure on public hospitals.
State planning vs federal politics: who decides?
States use formal planning frameworks to plan and prioritise health infrastructure projects. NSW Health, for example, applies a structured Facility Planning Process for projects over $10 million. This considers local population needs, health and community benefits, costs and workforce capacity.
These types of frameworks help ensure health capital investment decisions are transparent and evidence-based.
What is less transparent is how the Commonwealth decides which specific hospitals to pledge money to, particularly during election campaigns.
While some federal funding announcements may align with state priorities, picking one hospital over another comes with an “opportunity cost”. For every community that benefits from a new or upgraded hospital, another potentially higher-need community may miss out.
To prevent Commonwealth funding decisions being swayed by political priorities, more transparent processes for setting priorities and making decisions are needed.
What would a better system look like?
The way funds are allocated to medicines listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) provides the federal government with an exemplary approach to good health-care investment decisions.
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) provides independent advice to the Minister for Health on whether the government should allocate millions to new medicines. The PBAC uses rigorous, transparent processes to make listing recommendations based on patient need and cost-effectiveness.
Prioritising evidence and having transparent decision-making guidelines would mean funding is more likely to be allocated based on the greatest population need rather than electoral considerations.
Other ways to improve federal government hospital funding decisions may include:
incorporating nationally agreed principles for hospital capital funding in future National Health Reform Agreements
increasing transparency. This could be achieved through a national public register of hospital development proposals, ranked by urgency and need
strengthening safeguards on election-period pledges. This could improve disclosures and ensure hospital funding decisions align with independent needs assessments.
More hospitals or better prevention?
Former St Vincent’s Health CEO Toby Hall put it bluntly:
If Australia is to make the most of its healthcare future, it will likely need fewer hospitals, not more.
He pointed to Denmark, which cut its number of hospitals by 67% over 1999–2019. This was achieved by shifting as many services as possible from hospitals to other types of health care including primary care, health centres and outpatient clinics.
While more hospitals in Australia may be inevitable as the population ages, health policy should also focus on keeping people out of hospital in the first place. That means investing in prevention, early intervention and technology to support care at home.
Australia lags behind other wealthy nations in this space, ranking 20th out of 33 OECD countries in per capita spending on prevention. It ranks 27th when measured as a share of total health expenditure.
Some local health districts are showing what’s possible. This includes using home monitoring to help people manage chronic conditions. These kinds of innovations can improve health and reduce pressure on hospital infrastructure.
While new hospitals and wards make for compelling election promises, a better health system will come not just from “bricks and mortar”. It will come from smarter investments in prevention, early intervention and innovative care that keeps people healthier and out of hospital.
Henry Cutler was a member of an Expert Advisory Panel where he received remuneration from the Department of Health and Aged Care for this role. Henry has also previously received funding from NT Health.
Anam Bilgrami 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.
Queensland is widely known as the land clearing capital of Australia. But what’s not so well known is many of the cleared trees can grow back naturally.
The latest state government figures show regrowth across more than 7.6 million hectares in Queensland in 2020-21. These trees, though young, still provide valuable habitat for many threatened species – as long as they’re not bulldozed again.
Our new research explored the benefits of regrowth for 30 threatened animal species in Queensland. We found regrown forests and woodlands provided valuable habitat and food for species after an average of 15 years. Some species were likely to benefit from trees as young as three years.
This presents an opportunity for governments to support landowners and encourage them to retain more regrowing forest and woodland, especially where it can provide much-needed habitat for wildlife. But it’s a challenge because there is strong pressure to clear regrowth, largely to maintain pasture.
Clearing of regrowth woodlands in Queensland. Martin Taylor
When do young forests and woodlands become valuable habitat?
We focused on threatened animal species that depend on forests and woodlands, and occur in regions with substantial regrowth.
We wanted to find out which species use regrowth, and how old the trees need to be. But there’s not much survey data available on threatened species living in naturally regenerated forest and woodlands.
To elicit this information we asked almost 50 experts to complete a detailed questionnaire and attend a workshop.
We found 15 years was the average minimum age at which regrowth became useful to threatened species. But the full range was 3-68 years, depending on factors such as what a species eats, how it moves through the landscape and whether it needs tree hollows for shelter or breeding.
For example, one threatened bird (the squatter pigeon) could use woodlands as young as three years old. Koalas benefited from regrowth as young as nine years old.
Some species, such as the greater glider, need much older forests. This is because they require large tree hollows to shelter in during the day, and large trees to feed on and move between at night.
So young forests shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to protecting old forests. We need both.
We also estimated the proportion of each species’ current habitat that comprises regrowth, using satellite data and publicly available data.
For some species, we found regrowth made up almost a third of their potential habitat in Queensland. On average, it was 18%.
However, nearly three-quarters of the habitat lost in Queensland since 2018 was regrowth forests and woodlands. So while the loss of older, “remnant” vegetation is more damaging per unit area, the regrowth habitat is being lost on a bigger scale.
Our research suggests retaining more regrowth could be an easy and cost-effective way to help save threatened species.
In contrast, tree planting is time-consuming and expensive. What’s more, only 10% of our native plants are readily available as seeds for sale. This, combined with more extreme weather such as prolonged droughts, often causes restoration projects to fail.
Encouraging landholders to retain regrowth
The fact that habitat can regrow naturally in parts of Queensland is a huge bonus. But farmers also need to maintain productivity, which can decrease if there’s too much regrowth.
So, how do we help these landowners retain more regrowth?
One way is to provide incentives. For example, government-funded biodiversity stewardship schemes provide payments to cover the costs of managing the vegetation – such as fencing off habitat and managing weeds – as well as compensation for loss of agricultural production. Targeting areas of regrowth with high habitat values could be a way for such schemes to benefit wildlife.
Alternatively, market-based schemes allow landowners to generate biodiversity or carbon “credits” by keeping more trees on their property. Then, businesses (or governments) buy these credits. For example, some big emitters in Australia have to purchase carbon credits to “offset” their own emissions.
However, Australia’s carbon market has been accused of issuing “low integrity” carbon credits. This means the carbon credits were paid for projects that may not have captured and stored the amount of carbon they were supposed to. To make sure these markets work, robust methods are needed – and until now, there hasn’t been one that worked to retain regrowth.
Trees are good for the land, air and sea
In February, the Queensland government released a method by which landholders could generate carbon credits by agreeing not to clear their regrowing woodlands and forests.
The new carbon method provides a promising opportunity to allow landowners to diversify their farm income.
In addition, tree cover brings direct, on-farm benefits such as more shade and shelter for livestock, natural pest control and better soil health.
At a landscape level, greater tree cover can improve local climate regulation, reduce sediment run-off to the Great Barrier Reef and reduce Australia’s carbon emissions.
Ideally, Australia’s carbon and biodiversity markets would work alongside sufficient government funding for nature recovery, which needs to increase to at least 1% (currently it’s around 0.1%).
Meanwhile, our research has shown embracing natural regeneration potential in Queensland will have benefits for a range of threatened species too.
We acknowledge our research coauthors, Jeremy Simmonds (2rog Consulting), Michelle Ward (Griffith University) and Teresa Eyre (Queensland Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation).
Hannah Thomas received an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship with a $10,000 top-up from WWF-Australia. She is an early-career leader with the Biodiversity Council.
Martine Maron has received funding from various sources including the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Department of Environment and Science, and the federal government’s National Environmental Science Program, and has advised both state and federal government on conservation policy. She is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, a councillor with the Biodiversity Council, and leads the IUCN’s thematic group on Impact Mitigation and Ecological Compensation under the Commission on Ecosystem Management. She currently sits on the Protect and Enhance advisory panel to the NSW Natural Resources Commission.
The colossal squid was first described in 1925 based on specimens from the stomach of a commercially hunted sperm whale. A century later, an international voyage captured the first confirmed video of this species in its natural habitat – a 30-centimetre juvenile, at a depth of 600 metres near the South Sandwich Islands.
Colossal squid can grow up to seven metres and weigh as much as 500 kilograms, making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet. But little is known about their life cycle.
The footage of a young colossal squid in the water column was a serendipitous sighting, as many deep-sea squid observations are.
It was seen during the live “divestream” feed of a remotely operated vehicle during the Schmidt Ocean Institute and Ocean Census partner expedition searching for new deep-sea species and habitats in the far south Atlantic, mostly focusing on the seafloor.
Those tuned into the stream had the remarkable experience of seeing a live colossal squid in its deep-sea home, although its identity was not confirmed until the high-definition footage could be reviewed later.
Predators such as whales and seabirds are still one of our best sources of information about the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) because they are much better at finding it than we are.
This partially explains why we have only just filmed this species in its natural habitat. Not only do these animals live in an enormous, dark and three-dimensional environment, they are also probably actively avoiding us.
Most of our deep-sea exploration equipment is large, noisy and uses bright lights if we are trying to film animals. But the colossal squid can detect and avoid diving sperm whales, which probably produce a strong light signal as they swim down and disturb bioluminescent animals.
The squid best able to avoid such predators have been passing on their genes for millions of years. This leaves us with a current population of visually acute, likely light-avoiding animals, well capable of detecting a light signal from many metres away.
Delicate beauty of deep-sea animals
The colossal squid is part of the “glass” squid family (Cranchiidae). Three known glass squid species are found in the Antarctic ocean, but it can be difficult to distinguish them on camera.
Researchers from the organisation Kolossal, aiming to film the colossal squid, observed a similarly sized glass squid during their fourth Antarctic mission in 2023. But since the characteristic features needed to identify a colossal squid – hooks on the ends of the two long tentacles and in the middle of each of the eight shorter arms – weren’t clearly visible, its exact identity remains unconfirmed.
In the Schmidt Ocean Institute footage, the mid-arm hooks are visible. And for this young individual, the resemblance to other glass squids is also clear. With age and size, colossal squid likely lose their transparent appearance and become much more of an anomaly within the family.
While many will be amused by the idea of a “small colossal” squid, this footage showcases a beauty shared by many deep-sea animals, in contrast to the monster hype and “stuff of nightmares” click-bait titles we see all too often.
This colossal squid looks like a delicate glass sculpture, with fins of such fine musculature they are barely visible. It has shining iridescent eyes and graceful arms fanned out from the head.
At full size, the colossal squid may be a formidable predator, with its stout arms and array of sharp hooks, able to tackle two-metre-long toothfish. But in our first confirmed view of it at home in the deep sea, we can marvel at the elegance of this animal, thriving in an environment where humans require so much technology even to visit remotely.
Stranger than science fiction
Until recently, few people were able to take part in deep-sea exploration. But now, anyone with an internet connection can be “in the room” while we explore these habitats and observe animals for the first time.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the deep sea. It holds hundreds of thousands of undiscovered species, it is probably where life on Earth started, and it makes up 95% of the available living space on our planet.
It has animals more splendid and strange than our most creative science fiction imaginings. This includes squids that start life looking like small light bulbs and then grow into true giants; colonies of individuals living together with each contributing to the group’s success; animals where males (often parasitic) are orders of magnitude smaller than females.
This first confirmed sighting of a colossal squid inspires and reminds us how much we have left to learn.
The expedition that captured the footage of the colossal squid was a collaboration between the Schmidt Ocean Institute, the Nippon Foundation-NEKTON Ocean Census, and GoSouth (a joint project between the University of Plymouth, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research and the British Antarctic Survey).
Kat Bolstad 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.
Many teachers and parents know neuroscience, the study of how the brain functions and develops, is important for children’s education.
Brain development is recommended as part of teacher education in universities. Neuroscience is even mentioned in Australia’s “early years framework”, which guides early childhood programs.
Previous research has shown there are misunderstandings about how neuroscience works (or “neuromyths”) among teachers both in Australia and overseas.
Our new study shows there are also some widespread neuromyths among early childhood educators.
What are the myths? And what does the evidence say?
Our research
We surveyed more than 520 Australian early childhood educators in 2022 to understand their neuroscience knowledge.
We chose to study early childhood educators because there is a research gap in our understanding of those teaching and caring for younger children. The surveys were distributed online via multiple channels including email lists, social media and professional associations.
About 74% of respondents worked in a long daycare or a preschool/kindergarten (educating children in the final years before formal school). About 63% had either a bachelors degree or postgraduate qualification.
Our research surveyed more than 500 early childhood educators about their neuroscience knowledge. Poppy Pix/ Shutterstock
Our findings
We asked respondents whether various false statements were true, in order to assess their level of knowledge about neuroscience. The average correct score was 13.7 out of 27.
Some myths presented in our study were widely, and correctly, understood to be false. For example, more than 90% of respondents correctly identified “when we sleep our brains shut down” and “mental capacity is solely hereditary and cannot be changed by the environment or experience” as untrue.
But for other myths, most respondents were either unsure or believed the statement to be correct. For example:
only 7% of respondents correctly identified “teaching to different learning styles will improve learning” as false.
only 15% of respondents correctly identified “students are either left or right brained” as false.
This suggests educators need more evidence-based neuroscience content as part of their professional education and development. While some neuromyths may seem harmless, others can have real implications for teaching decisions and student learning.
What is the problem with these neuromyths?
Myth 1: ‘teaching to different learning styles will improve learning’
The idea of learning styles became popular in the 1970s. This argued students will show improved learning if they receive information in a very specific way. For example, “visual learners” need to see information to be able to learn, while “aural learners” need to hear it.
While people may have preferred ways of accessing information, there is no evidence learning suffers if information isn’t provided in this format. Research has also shown teachers’ ideas of a student’s learning style do not tend to match students’ self-reported preferences.
So teaching decisions made on assumed student “learning styles” may be flawed in any case.
There’s no evidence learning needs to be presented in a particular format for certain ‘types’ of learners. myboys.me/ Shutterstock
Myth 2: ‘students are either left or right brained’
Another enduring idea is we have personality traits that are either right-brained (intuitive and creative) or left-brained (analytical and logical)
The harm in this myth comes from students thinking they are “more left-brained than right” and teachers reinforcing this view. And from here, young people might think they should just stick to humanities or just stick to maths or science.
This could rob a student of exploring multiple academic and career paths. Sure, some students will seem to really flourish as an artist, some as mathematicians and some as both. But we should not be labelling students, based on a neuromyth, potentially impacting self-confidence and their potential.
Kate E. Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, Queensland Government Department of Education, and Australian Government Department of Social Services. She is affiliated with Play Matters Australia as Chair of the Board of Directors.
Hot cross buns aren’t just a sweet snack that appears around Easter. They carry centuries of storytelling in their dough. From ancient gods to modern supermarkets, these sticky spiced buns have crossed many borders and beliefs.
Today, you can buy them in all kinds of flavours. But their story is far richer than chocolate chips and salted caramel.
Ancient beginnings
In some ancient cultures, bread was more than just food. It was a symbol of faith. Ancient Greeks baked small round loaves marked with crosses to honour their gods. According to some historians, these marks could represent the four seasons or four phases of the moon.
Jewish people have also shared special bread during holy times like Passover, and scholars have debated whether these customs influenced early Christian bread traditions.
Pagan Saxons worshipped a spring goddess named Eostre. They baked bread during springtime festivals to celebrate new life and longer days. The name “Eostre” is where we get the English word “Easter”. Over time, some of these springtime bread traditions blended with Christian customs.
From Pagan loaves to Christian buns
Early Christians started marking bread with a cross to show their devotion, and ate it throughout the year.
According to popular tales, one 12th-century English monk made spiced buns marked with a cross on Good Friday, because that day is the “Day of the Cross”.
In 1592, Queen Elizabeth I restricted the sale of spiced bread and buns, perhaps because of religious tensions. England had broken away from the Catholic Church, and new Church of England officials worried that “holy” buns looked too much like Catholic superstition. Others say it was an issue of bread prices and profits. Then again maybe they were just too special for just everyday.
Under these laws, commercial bakers could only make spiced bread on Christmas, Easter and for funerals.
Good Friday and magic buns
By the 18th century, English street vendors sold “hot cross buns” on Good Friday. We even see an old rhyme about them in Poor Robin’s Almanac in 1733, which says:
Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs,
With one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.
Soon, people believed these Good Friday buns had magical powers. Some hung them from kitchen rafters, believing they would never go mouldy. They kept them for protection against evil or illness. If someone felt sick, they crumbled part of an old hot cross bun into water, hoping it would cure them. Others placed buns in their grain stores to keep pests away.
These beliefs might sound odd today, but they were part of daily life for many.
In Victorian England, people exchanged hot cross buns with friends on Good Friday and said, “Half for you and half for me, between us two good luck shall be”.
Whatever ancient superstition the cross once warded off, today it’s the flavour roulette that keeps us coming back. Proof that tradition now serves taste, not fear.
An enduring symbol
Traditional buns contain dried fruit and spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, but many modern versions swap sultanas for chocolate chips or add flavours like salted caramel, orange – or even Vegemite and cheese. They have become a secular treat. Yet the crisscross pattern remains on top, hinting at the Christian origins.
When you smell a fresh batch of these buns, you’re sharing an experience people enjoyed centuries ago. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Poles, Romans, Saxons, medieval monks and 18th-century street sellers all had their versions of spiced, crossed bread. Each group gave the buns its own meaning, from honouring gods to celebrating Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
A woman giving hot cross buns to two children, in an illustration from 1899. British Library
Eating hot cross buns at Easter also shows how traditions change with each generation. At first, they were hard to find outside Good Friday. Now, you might see them in shops just after New Year’s. They once symbolised pagan festivals, then moved into Christian rites, survived royal bans, and sailed through waves of superstition. Yet they remain a symbol of Easter in Australia and around the world.
Darius von Guttner Sporzynski 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.
Forecasting the potential impact of Donald Trump’s turbulent tariff policies is a fraught business – and fraught for business. The United States president has changed, paused and exempted various categories of goods so often, the only certainty is uncertainty.
On “Liberation Day” (April 2) he famously announced far-reaching “reciprocal tariffs” on imports from most trading nations. Since then he has paused those tariffs, but kept 25% on imports of steel, aluminium and motor vehicles, and 10% “baseline” tariffs on all other imports.
The big exception is China, whose retaliation against the reciprocal US tariffs has resulted in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
On April 9, the US raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%, but later scaled back duties on electronic goods such as laptops and smartphones to 20%. On April 12, China increased its tariff on US goods to 125%.
With China being New Zealand’s largest trade partner by far, and the US its third largest (just behind Australia), the impacts of this global standoff will be indirect but nevertheless significant.
GDP impacts of a trade war
To estimate the impacts of a US-China trade war, as well as other tariffs imposed by the US, I use the same global model of production, trade and consumption of goods and services employed to recently calculate the impacts of the Liberation Day tariffs.
As we can see, China and the US both lose from the tariff war. China’s GDP decreases by US$114 billion (0.58%), which equates to $236 per household per year on average. US GDP declines by $76 billion (0.25%) or $604 per household (all figures in US$).
The tariffs all but eliminate trade in goods between China and the US, except for electronic goods exported from China, which are subject to a lower tariff (for now).
Vietnam and India gain from the trade war because they produce many goods that substitute for Chinese products in the US market.
The trade war will affect New Zealand in at least three ways:
as the two nations buy less from each other, there is room for other nations to expand their exports to these markets
decreased incomes in China and the US will reduce global demand for all goods
and the tariffs will increase the costs of global supply chains.
The net effect is a 0.03% decrease in New Zealand’s GDP, equivalent to $70 million or $36 per household per year (roughly NZ$120 million and NZ$60 respectively).
The global US Trade Policy Uncertainty Index, last updated before the Liberation Day tariffs, is at a record high – 29 times higher than before the 2024 presidential election. This unprecedented uncertainty, coupled with the risk of high tariffs, is making exporters increasingly reluctant to commit to the US market.
The US currently accounts for 26.3% of global GDP. With higher future growth in many developing economies, especially in Asia, this is forecast to fall to 16.3% by 2050.
China is predicted to supplant the US as the world’s largest economy sometime in the 2030s, and by 2050 to account for 18.4% of global GDP (up from 16.9%).
India’s global GDP share is expected to increase significantly, from its current value of 3.7% to 9.7%. Indonesia and Philippines are also expected to grow rapidly.
New Zealand signed a free trade agreement with China in 2008 (and an upgrade to the agreement in 2022), has begun negotiations for one with India, and has regional agreements with many other rapidly developing Asian economies.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s rollout of high tariffs signals a lasting policy shift or is merely a negotiating tactic to secure more favourable terms for US exporters. But New Zealand is well placed to pivot to alternative markets if needed.
Niven Winchester has previously received funding from the Productivity Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to estimate the impacts of potential trade policies. He is affiliated with Motu Economic & Public Policy Research.
Every day the Gaza holocaust continues, the Western empire tells the truth about itself.
The US government is telling you the truth about itself.
Israel is telling you the truth about itself.
Their Western allies are telling you the truth about themselves.
The Western media are telling you the truth about themselves.
One of the most important stages when preparing to leave an abusive relationship is the information-gathering stage. This is when you begin quietly observing and making note of your partner’s abusive behaviour, letting them tell you the truth about themselves with their actions rather than their words.
The information-gathering stage is important because long-term abusive relationships are usually very confusing for the victim; if the abuse were simple and easy to understand, the relationship wouldn’t have continued into the long term.
Every day the Gaza holocaust continues . . . Video/audio: Caitlin Johnstone
It’s therefore often helpful to cultivate a clear understanding of the lay of the land before trying to navigate your way out of it, especially if your abuser is particularly manipulative and adept at confusing you. This ensures that you will be able to view their manipulations with distrust, so you won’t get sucked in by them.
As infuriating as it is to watch this genocide drag out month after bloody month, it would be a mistake to believe everyone is just passively witnessing it all.
If you watched someone you love in the information-gathering stage prior to leaving an abusive relationship, you might get frustrated by what appears to be inertia and passivity on their part when what you want to see is them sprinting for the door with a suitcase. But they’re not inert or passive — they’re gathering information.
Westerners are in a psychologically abusive relationship with the empire. Our minds are hammered with propaganda indoctrination from as soon as we are old enough to start learning about our world to ensure our compliance with the power structure that rules over us.
It happens in school. It happens with the mass media. It happens with the Silicon Valley platforms we look to for information.
And it gets confusing. All the information about our world and our place in it is distorted by mass-scale psychological manipulation for the benefit of the powerful. It’s hard for someone who’s been raised in such an environment to navigate their mind out of its indoctrination. It’s hard to know the truth.
But in Gaza, the empire is telling us the truth. It’s exposing itself in all its naked loathsomeness.
“Hamas says,” as if we haven’t seen the footage or someone else is bombing hospitals in Gaza… https://t.co/lZfEWCJcqZ
Our rulers work to censor, silence, marginalise and deport anyone who criticises their criminality.
We do not live in a free society that is guided by truth and morality. We live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the face of this planet. And we should distrust everything about it.
That’s what they’re showing us with the Gaza holocaust. More and more people are opening their eyes to it every day.
And when enough eyes open, leaving the abusive relationship once and for all becomes a real possibility.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has survived a motion of no confidence against him in Parliament.
During the proceedings, livestreamed on EMTV, Speaker Job Pomat announced the results of the vote as 16 votes in favour and 89 against.
In moving the motion, the member for Abau, Sir Puka Temu, nominated Sir Peter Ipatas as an alternative prime minister to Marape, and said the motion was moved on principle.
“This is not a vote of ambition, it is a vote of accountability, it is a vote of conscience. Mr Speaker what is the role of government if not to uplift its people,” Sir Puka said.
The seconder of the motion, Wabag Open MP Lino Tom acknowledged the government’s superior numbers, but said the opposition were acting in the interest of the people and challenged Marape to address them on the floor.
“He needs to tell the people because he is the chief accountable officer of this country,” Tom said.
“He can no longer blame his incompetent ministers. He can no longer blame any other person here on this floor.”
Speaker put question The Speaker then went to immediately put the question, provoking the ire of the opposition bench with Madang MP Bryan Kramer accusing him of acting contrary to the Supreme Court order that had the House resume to hear the motion, which had initially been denied by the Parliament’s private business committee.
“Mr Speaker must be consistent with the privileges and the spirit and intent of the constitution that provide every member the opportunity to debate,” he said.
“This is a court order if you entertain this motion of ‘question be put’ then there will be contempt proceedings.”
Despite multiple points of order from the opposition calling for the motion to be debated, Pomat proceeded to put the question and the results were overwhelmingly Marape’s favour.
“Those in favour of this motion are 16 and those who are not in favour of this motion and who want the Honourable Member for Tari Pori, Honourable James Marape, to remain as prime minister are 89.”
After the vote, Marape moved a motion to address the movers of the motion, and spoke at length about the achievements of his government, while throwing jabs at the opposition MPs, many of who had served as ministers in his government at different times.
He finished by thanking all who supported him in today’s leadership challenge.
Thanks to members “I want to say thank you for members on both sides of the House for your participation today.
“A sincere thank you to the 89 on their feet, who stood up to vote and I want to say thank you as your chief servant.
“I will try my absolute best to continue on leaving no place and no one behind as the ultimate aim of this government and should be for any government going forward into the future.”
The nominated challenger, Sir Peter, also rose to thank the opposition for nominating him, and to all the people of Papua New Guinea who reached out to him with messages of support.
He said he only accepted the nomination because so many MPs had complained about the prime minister’s performance.
Sir Ipatas challenged government MPs to stop bickering and gossiping about James Marape behind his back.
“As he rightly said, he is putting his time and effort into trying to make this country great,” he said.
Call to ‘not gossip’ “It is about our ministers and leaders and leaders of coalition partners not gossiping, but be open with the prime minister and talk about issues that we have for the country and for the people.
“This country belongs to all of us. Our people.”
Parliament is now adjourned until May 27.
Under new laws passed last month, Marape now has an 18-month reprieve from votes of no confidence.
With only two years left until the next election, RNZ Pacific understands this effectively gives him a clear run to the 2027 National General Election.
Several opposition MPs in Parliament on Tuesday urged Marape to make the most of the upcoming period of stability, and deliver some real results for Papua New Guineans.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
